Tell me one reason to choose Sanctuary over Stilt Village

[Tripitaka (HUN)]

I mean I am not trying to mock the Slumbering Sanctuary, but as far as my experience goes, I attempted it 5-10 times so far and died horribly and miserably ( mostly due to the big guy I don't know the name of or the fog stuff ), and cleared it only once. Whereas stilt village is super easy, I clear it hitless a lot, and 60 kill it almost every time. ( Haven't had much experience with graveyard, but still seems much more tolerable ). Interestingly I see no person complaining about it in the community. Is there some kind of strategy to it I don't know? Or is it supposed to be the middle finger area games usually have?

[Gatebase]

It's purely personal preference. I 100%ed the game on 1.7 and 1.8, so I can't vouch for 1.9, but my default route took Slumbering Sanctuary every single time. Graveyard is harder, but managable. Stilt Village would always completely destroy me.

I think it depends on the playstyle and how familiar you are with certain enemies. Sanctuary allows me to tackle the level at my own pace. In Stilt Village you are constantly forced to react to Zombies throwing worms at you through walls, Pirate Captains rolling or dropping cannon balls from afar, worms popping out of the walls, those damn new crabs hard-countering any ranged weapons - it's just super annoying and hectic for me. I feel like I'm constantly on the defense and have no safe places to rest or think about the next move.

Inquisitors are not a problem since I always ran with a shield, so you can kill them through walls. Purulent Zombies you have to go get since parrying the worms doesn't kill them.
Demons are annoying, but you have to learn how to deal with them anyway, since the Cavern route gives you a lot more power (though I much preferred Clock Tower).
I don't know, I hear many people complain about Golems (the big dudes you mentioned), but I've never had any problems with them. They always start petrified, giving you enough time to set up and then you just overwhelm them with damage. Sure, waiting for your Heavy Grenade or Giant's Fist cooldown can break the flow, but it's super safe to fight them. Running around like a headless chicken or trying to flee is a death sentence. Just prepare and focus them down in a few seconds and they're dead before the first punch. Turrets and ranged weapons also completely counter them, if that's more your style.

The layout of Sanctuary is simple, but kind of sucks - I'll give you that. The teleporter positions are very inconvenient and lead to a bunch of backtracking through long corridors. But easier enemies and access to Caverns made this an easy pick over Stilt Village for me. If you come from Black Bridge and don't need the food shop, I think you should always take Sanctuary into Caverns to give you the best odds against the endgame content. Might change with the next update though, if they stick with buffing items in Clock Tower.

[Tripitaka (HUN)]

Originally posted by Gatebase:

It's purely personal preference. I 100%ed the game on 1.7 and 1.8, so I can't vouch for 1.9, but my default route took Slumbering Sanctuary every single time. Graveyard is harder, but managable. Stilt Village would always completely destroy me.

I think it depends on the playstyle and how familiar you are with certain enemies. Sanctuary allows me to tackle the level at my own pace. In Stilt Village you are constantly forced to react to Zombies throwing worms at you through walls, Pirate Captains rolling or dropping cannon balls from afar, worms popping out of the walls, those damn new crabs hard-countering any ranged weapons - it's just super annoying and hectic for me. I feel like I'm constantly on the defense and have no safe places to rest or think about the next move.

Inquisitors are not a problem since I always ran with a shield, so you can kill them through walls. Purulent Zombies you have to go get since parrying the worms doesn't kill them.
Demons are annoying, but you have to learn how to deal with them anyway, since the Cavern route gives you a lot more power (though I much preferred Clock Tower).
I don't know, I hear many people complain about Golems (the big dudes you mentioned), but I've never had any problems with them. They always start petrified, giving you enough time to set up and then you just overwhelm them with damage. Sure, waiting for your Heavy Grenade or Giant's Fist cooldown can break the flow, but it's super safe to fight them. Running around like a headless chicken or trying to flee is a death sentence. Just prepare and focus them down in a few seconds and they're dead before the first punch. Turrets and ranged weapons also completely counter them, if that's more your style.

The layout of Sanctuary is simple, but kind of sucks - I'll give you that. The teleporter positions are very inconvenient and lead to a bunch of backtracking through long corridors. But easier enemies and access to Caverns made this an easy pick over Stilt Village for me. If you come from Black Bridge and don't need the food shop, I think you should always take Sanctuary into Caverns to give you the best odds against the endgame content. Might change with the next update though, if they stick with buffing items in Clock Tower.

It is very interesting. For me it is not usually true that the golems die before they get off their first attack. In fact. they attack 4-8 times before they die, depending on how good of a build I have got. I don't know what I do wrong, but that dps you are talking about is only a dream for me now. My biggest problem is that yes, I dictate the pace, but only as much as many sections the game allows. And those bastards are never alone. So does not matter when I get to them, if there are going to be a lot of single target enemies. In stilt village I was playing the defensive and had to react to constant pressure, but the pace was so slow that as long as I could afford to wait even 30 seconds every 2 enemy I kill, in the end I will still be rewarded with flawless. Sanctuary Says, " I don't care how patient you are, I tell how many enemies you fight at once", all of which being significantly more painful to deal with than some teleporting crab, a spawner which dies from 2 blows, and a cannonman who kills himself once you pull out some magnet trap. Instead I get the golems, the 3 times stabbing dude, a psy guy who shoots trough wall, invisibile enemies, advanced grenadiers, and a ranged caster who teleports when I get close. Again, I may be terrible, but that is just how I feel.

I never had any sort of problem with the layout of the sanctuary, I would rather blame the structure. It is very anti melee in it's enemy composition, yet the area is enclosed, and filled with walls, tunnles and hallways. It feels to be hard countered by frost blast, but we all know how much freeze sucks against bosses compared to DOT, or just pure damage, so if I build frost as I am fairly new to the game, the hand will hand my ass to me.

Not that I want to cry about how hard the game is on a community post, I am quite the masochist myself when it comes to gaming, but when I see this big of a contrast, I just do want to know what I am missing.

[Gatebase]

Originally posted by Tripitaka (HUN):

Again, I may be terrible, but that is just how I feel.
[...]
Not that I want to cry about how hard the game is on a community post, I am quite the masochist myself when it comes to gaming, but when I see this big of a contrast, I just do want to know what I am missing.

If you can easily flawless Stilt Village there's no way you're terrible. And I don't think you're missing something substantial - it's really just a personal thing where some enemies' patterns will seem "logical" or "natural" to you while others don't. I ran a lot of Stilt Village when I started playing shortly before the 1.0 release. Then they changed a bunch of enemies around and I never bothered learning them so now I avoid it like the plague. If you say you ran Sanctuary ten times and only beat it once - that's nothing. If you flawless it that easily you probably ran Stilt Village dozens of times, which makes it hard to compare.

There may also be a fundamental difference in playstyle. I played efficiently for progression and completion of all the achievements. If you play to enjoy yourself, different rules may apply. I optimized my route and made heavy use to Custom Mode to ensure I got the items I wanted and to exclude garbage. If you enjoy fully randomized runs you will probably have a harder time getting the same DPS as I did. Most runs I did with Giant's Fist. It's a great utility item, allowing you to one-shot enemies through walls (which takes care of the Foggers), but it also has massive single-target DPS against elites or golems.
I'm also a slow and methodical player. I usually full-clear levels, always get the 60 kill door, etc. That way I also tend to find challenge rifts more easily. With Prison Depth, maybe a bonus cursed chest somewhere and 1 or 2 challenge rifts you can get pretty nicely ahead of the curve. Big hitters like Giant's Fist or Heavy Grenade start one-shotting elites and golems. And I never run head-first into the large rooms on Sanctuary. I slowly approach, wake up 1 or 2 enemies and pull them back a bit. When I see a Golem, I back up and go around (usually they're on the ground level) and clear out enemies on the other side until only the Golem is left. Then I focus it down.

It's just a different way of playing probably. It's nice that Dead Cells allows for such different approaches. And if you end up hating Sanctuary and enjoying Stilt Village - just keep going Stilt Village. Nothing wrong with that.

[Tripitaka (HUN)]

Well, thank you for your tips! I will definitely try out your playstyle in action and see where it gets me personally :D

I will likely throw myself at the sanctuary many times until something hits me or just "get gud" as some ppl say though.

Or I will get insane trying to finally get to the caverns and kill the giant, not that it matters XD

Well about stilt village I think we have had a bit of a miscommunication. I get flawless often, but I am far from perfecting it. But the 60 is almost always there, I wanted to point this out as I think you overestimated me a bit :)

Have a nice day!

[mfndonut]

I hear a lot of people say things like "Well, I can DPS such and such down fast so it's easier". I don't really believe in this, because if tables were turned and you had to run a different build or were on the lower end of the stat pool by the time you got to that area, would it really be that easy? I do believe that SS can be easy after a lot of practice, but I do not think that anything in Stilt Village poses quite as big of a threat as a mix of Protectors, Demons, Inquisitors and Golems do. I don't even think that there's a food shop in SS on 1.9.

The question is: if you were in a situation where you had to fight the aforementioned group of enemies or some Pirate Captains, Failed Experiments and knife throwers from Stilt Village, which would you choose?

Personally, I'd say the only reason to run through SS instead of Stilt is either for personal betterment of skill or caverns... SS is my favorite Biome in the game, but I'm also not a fool who would consider it easy.

[Gatebase]

Originally posted by mfndonut:

I do believe that SS can be easy after a lot of practice, but I do not think that anything in Stilt Village poses quite as big of a threat as a mix of Protectors, Demons, Inquisitors and Golems do. I don't even think that there's a food shop in SS on 1.9.

The question is: if you were in a situation where you had to fight the aforementioned group of enemies or some Pirate Captains, Failed Experiments and knife throwers from Stilt Village, which would you choose?

Sancutary any day of the week (even more now that you tell me they have freaking Knife Throwers in Village as well). But you're right - it's mostly a matter of practice and what I'm used to. I'm probably in a tiny minority.

Edit: Removed misinformation. Apparently the food shop in Caverns was taken out in 1.9.

[mfndonut]

Originally posted by Gatebase:

If you go Stilt Village you cannot access Caverns where another food shop is guaranteed. So going Sanctuary into Caverns you still get the same number of food shops between first and second boss.

I got some bad news for you in 1.9.... Lol.

[Enoby]

Slumbering Sanctuary gives more scroll fragments and give you a cursed chest if you need it for Alienation