How to Get to Stage 20+ Monsoon Effectively?

[Hakertm]

I've been trying to get to at least stage 21 with every character on monsoon (no specific order, just been doing a random one each time I die). On average, I can easily get to between stage 10-13 no problem (characters who lack good mobility tend to be between stage 6-8 for me). I'm always being aware of certain bosses abilities and I'm always self-disciplining myself to dodge more effectively. But no matter what, regardless of how lucky I am with items I get or what character I play (yes I know that with some characters it's a lot more difficult), I just can't get to stage 20+ on Monsoon. So how does one effectively get to stage 20+ on Monsoon?

Also, how do effectively counter/deal with the tracking wisps that the Grovetender boss spawns (specifically when there's a lot of other enemies around you)?

Edit: Just another quick question, why don't people like using Artificer's Ion Surge instead of the Flamethrower (personally I find it way more useful than the flamethrower since it's basically infinite flight), or am I simply looking at a vocal minority? Isn't her biggest weakness mobility, so by using Ion Surge you kind of fix that issue since you have infinite flight via her hover passive, or is the extra damage just really that important in exchange for having to rely on items for mobility?

[Percher]

Don't really have specific tips, but I can answer your question about Ion Surge. Simply put, it sucks. Yes, it's good mobility, but the amount of damage you'll have to trade for it is just too much. It might say 1700% on the box, but it's really somewhere around 4400% damage when taking DoT into account.

[TrueEvil]

Originally posted by Hakertm765:

Originally posted by Percher:

Don't really have specific tips, but I can answer your question about Ion Surge. Simply put, it sucks. Yes, it's good mobility, but the amount of damage you'll have to trade for it is just too much. It might say 1700% on the box, but it's really somewhere around 4400% damage when taking DoT into account.

Does the flamethrower proc things like bleed, or the elemental rings? Cause if it does I can understand why people would prefer the flamethrower over Ion Surge. Personally, I don't want to have to rely too much on rng to get something like a wax quail, feather, or the wings equipment just to fix artificers bad base mobility. I feel like there would be more consistency in runs if you have something that basically gives you infinite air time, which essentially makes it easier to dodge, rather than relying on rng to get specific items.

Flamethrower has 22 chances to proc your on-hits, if you hit one target with every tick.

I don't really like Ion Surge because you lose half your damage and damage uptime, so not only will you be missing out on Artificer's inherent damage, you'll be doing nothing more than half the time.

Generally I don't really have an issue with playing CQC Artificer with low mobility, but from what I've heard it isn't a common strategy, thus why people use Ion Surge.

[AM DERG]

Ok, so there are a few tricks I've found that can somewhat reliably push into the high-levels of Monsoon.

First and foremost is a dedicated Shaped Glass build - once you have enough Shaped Glass to bring your Max HP below your passive healing, you effectively have permanent One-Shot Protection. This will help save you from the vast majority of *normal* attacks, while also providing enough damage output to quickly dispatch more dangerous threats. I believe 5 is generally a good number, or somewhere in that ballpark. You can always take more, because at that stage you're going to die to basically everything that does DoT anyways.

Second, play with friends - I'd recommend 2 players as it's just enough extra goodies to help sculpt both builds effectively, adds a second layer of death protection, and doesn't push enemy generation too far out of control too fast. It's, in my opinion, more manageable than solo and less crazy than a full team. It's also useful to coordinate item locations, chest contents and enemy management with good communication.

Third, you're going to want a dedicated Gesture of the Drowned setup. One Gesture plus any combination of 3 additional Gestures/Fuel Cells will give you permanent uptime on Spinel Tonic, this will give you a very, very hefty boost in stats, especially regeneration. Besides Tonic, Royal Capacitor is your other S-Teir Gesture build - you kill most everything just by looking at it.

Fourth - aim for 100% crit chance. You're bound to pick up some number of Scythes and/or Predatory Instincts and that equates to free damage, free boosts in attack speed (and thus animation time reduction) and free healing, all of which help keep you alive.

Fifth - many, many Tougher Times, you can never have too many, really. At least one Stealthkit is also useful in keeping aggro off you.

Sixth - drones are useless for DPS, but they are extremely useful for drawing aggro. Every enemy attacking them is one that isn't attacking you. Queen's Gland is basically a respawning damage sponge.

Seventh - 57 Leaf Clover. 'Nuff said.

Eighth - If you've got sufficient Lunar Coins (you should) pay close attention to the Lunar Seers in each shop (you should be going to most of them). Sometimes Golden Coast will be offered and Aurelionite is good to have. We call him Big Friend. Always have a Big Friend whenever possible.


Finally, go fast, be efficient and don't be greedy. If you're not instakilling most everything, figure out why and start working on fixing that. Don't be afraid to take a first Shaped Glass if you have none, just be sure you have the fast healing necessary to recover and if you don't you might want to consider more Glass until you do.

Edit: And oh yeah, luck - luck is very useful. You're going to want quite a bit of it.

[AM DERG]

Originally posted by Hakertm765:

So you essentially want to focus more on being a Death Star instead of trying to get tons of healing and defensive items. I can see why you'd want to do that kind of a setup since almost everything late game can one shot you, makes sense. Also, is it really worth using the tonic for the chance that your stats will be reduced by it, or is really that good?

With 1 Gesture of the Drowned and 3 Fuel Cells/Gestures on top of that, you have permanent uptime on Tonic. That means it never goes into cooldown, you never get an affliction. Additionally, the affliction goes away while Tonic is active and only applies while it's off, so with permanent uptime, that never matters anyways. You will ALWAYS have a buff to your stats all of the time.

If you use this strategy, you may wish to learn to properly time your teleport out so as to have minimal downtime coming out of the teleporter as it will take anywhere from 3-5 seconds to reactivate when you reach the next stage and that IS enough time for something to kill you.

[TrueEvil]

Originally posted by Hakertm765:

Originally posted by The Actually for Real Krysto:

Ok, so there are a few tricks I've found that can somewhat reliably push into the high-levels of Monsoon.

First and foremost is a dedicated Shaped Glass build - once you have enough Shaped Glass to bring your Max HP below your passive healing, you effectively have permanent One-Shot Protection. This will help save you from the vast majority of *normal* attacks, while also providing enough damage output to quickly dispatch more dangerous threats. I believe 5 is generally a good number, or somewhere in that ballpark. You can always take more, because at that stage you're going to die to basically everything that does DoT anyways.

Second, play with friends - I'd recommend 2 players as it's just enough extra goodies to help sculpt both builds effectively, adds a second layer of death protection, and doesn't push enemy generation too far out of control too fast. It's, in my opinion, more manageable than solo and less crazy than a full team. It's also useful to coordinate item locations, chest contents and enemy management with good communication.

Third, you're going to want a dedicated Gesture of the Drowned setup. One Gesture plus any combination of 3 additional Gestures/Fuel Cells will give you permanent uptime on Spinel Tonic, this will give you a very, very hefty boost in stats, especially regeneration. Besides Tonic, Royal Capacitor is your other S-Teir Gesture build - you kill most everything just by looking at it.

Fourth - aim for 100% crit chance. You're bound to pick up some number of Scythes and/or Predatory Instincts and that equates to free damage, free boosts in attack speed (and thus animation time reduction) and free healing, all of which help keep you alive.

Fifth - many, many Tougher Times, you can never have too many, really. At least one Stealthkit is also useful in keeping aggro off you.

Sixth - drones are useless for DPS, but they are extremely useful for drawing aggro. Every enemy attacking them is one that isn't attacking you. Queen's Gland is basically a respawning damage sponge.

Seventh - 57 Leaf Clover. 'Nuff said.

Eighth - If you've got sufficient Lunar Coins (you should) pay close attention to the Lunar Seers in each shop (you should be going to most of them). Sometimes Golden Coast will be offered and Aurelionite is good to have. We call him Big Friend. Always have a Big Friend whenever possible.


Finally, go fast, be efficient and don't be greedy. If you're not instakilling most everything, figure out why and start working on fixing that. Don't be afraid to take a first Shaped Glass if you have none, just be sure you have the fast healing necessary to recover and if you don't you might want to consider more Glass until you do.

Edit: And oh yeah, luck - luck is very useful. You're going to want quite a bit of it.

So you essentially want to focus more on being a Death Star instead of trying to get tons of healing and defensive items. I can see why you'd want to do that kind of a setup since almost everything late game can one shot you, makes sense. Also, is it really worth using the tonic for the chance that your stats will be reduced by it, or is really that good?

The affliction is only applied when tonic wears off. If tonic never wears off, then not only is there no debuff, you are permanently a super chad.

[Teoyo]

Part of it is speed. If you can maintain mobility while dealing enough damage, but I never get enough mobility. I suspect 20+ is impossible without Lunar Items which I do not like to use.

[AM DERG]

Originally posted by Teoyo:

Part of it is speed. If you can maintain mobility while dealing enough damage, but I never get enough mobility. I suspect 20+ is impossible without Lunar Items which I do not like to use.

You likely suspect correctly, the game scales up much faster than you do and the added benefit of Lunar Items lets you tip the scales back in your favor a bit.

[Raptros]

Originally posted by The Actually for Real Krysto:

Originally posted by Teoyo:

Part of it is speed. If you can maintain mobility while dealing enough damage, but I never get enough mobility. I suspect 20+ is impossible without Lunar Items which I do not like to use.

You likely suspect correctly, the game scales up much faster than you do and the added benefit of Lunar Items lets you tip the scales back in your favor a bit.

Lunar items are useful, but if you get the right drops, 40+ is possible.

The only tough part about that is luck. You don't get to choose your regular items, so you can only hope.

There's also a commando challenge to finish 20 without blues. So it's definitely possible, just more luck based hoping you get a good assortment of items.

[Rumi]

the best way to get to high rounds, without lunar items, is to find a will o' the wisp printer. print out all of your green items into wisp jars and watch in shock and awe when literally everything on the screen explodes whenever you kill just one enemy.

this requires very good luck though, i guess.

[LackingOxygen]

Sometimes a late game 3d printer for tougher times just saves the entire run

get like 20 of them and you should be good

[TrueEvil]

Originally posted by Hakertm765:

Are there any other "non-luck" tips(tips that aren't "get lucky 2 win") or skill focused tips that I should know too?

Hippity hoppity. Always.

[Rumi]

Originally posted by Hakertm765:

Are there any other "non-luck" tips(tips that aren't "get lucky 2 win") or skill focused tips that I should know too?

this game is based around luck. if you dont want luck to influence your runs then way untill march brings the command artifact that lets you pick your items from the box

[Raptros]

Play to your items strengths. Sometimes you don't get what you want, so try your best to use them as effective as they can be used.

This is most effective with healing items.