Mercenary: Ethereal unlock strat independent of Prismatic RNG seed?

[Leafia Barrett]

Okay, so gonna preface this by saying I don't play Mercenary, and am trash at melee characters, I main Artificer, so if you're going to say "lol git gud", either tell me how to git gud or shove it up your elitist ass.

This 3-day seed is Command/Honor. The first area is Rallypoint Delta, and the boss is Blazing Bighorn Bison. I dunno what the second one is, because like I said I'm bad at Mercenary, but I don't see how this one is possible by ANY means on this seed, and if I have to wait for the game to hand me the achievement easily at some arbitrary point instead of being able to do it by being good enough, then that's complete garbage game design. What am I missing with this character? How is this supposed to work exactly, what's the strat?

[brambo]

I'd wager it's completely dependent on RNG. honestly, the seed right before this one was a great trial to do it on since you had glass, but I didn't finish it considering I ragequit as i got hit a second before getting the achivement. Your best bet is a combination of getting lucky and being good at playing mercenary.

You say you main artificer? you're not gonna miss out on a lot considering you don't main merc and you probably won't get a lot of milage out of unlocking the skill, but I do agree it's pretty ♥♥♥♥ design since it's timegated in a way.

[Leafia Barrett]

Originally posted by brambo:

I'd wager it's completely dependent on RNG. honestly, the seed right before this one was a great trial to do it on since you had glass, but I didn't finish it considering I ragequit as i got hit a second before getting the achivement. Your best bet is a combination of getting lucky and being good at playing mercenary.

When something seems unfairly hard, my first assumption is that there's something I'm missing or doing wrong, but if others tell me "no, that IS just bad design" I'm inclined to believe them.

Originally posted by brambo:

You say you main artificer? you're not gonna miss out on a lot considering you don't main merc and you probably won't get a lot of milage out of unlocking the skill, but I do agree it's pretty ♥♥♥♥ design since it's timegated in a way.

I do want to at least give the character a fair chance.

[brambo]

Originally posted by Leafia Barrett:

I do want to at least give the character a fair chance.

yeah that's understandable. from what I know, the skill isn't a direct upgrade and more of a sidegrade. that's my cope with the whole situation.

[Shoepots]

Originally posted by brambo:

Originally posted by Leafia Barrett:

I do want to at least give the character a fair chance.

yeah that's understandable. from what I know, the skill isn't a direct upgrade and more of a sidegrade. that's my cope with the whole situation.

If you're not a completionist, the Merc skill you get isn't worth it imo. His default skill for that slot is much better because it gives a few seconds of invulnerability.
I unlocked it a while ago by getting with amber brooches and making sure that the barrier never broke. I don't know if they changed that at all, but damage on the amber brooch barrier didn't make you fail the challenge before.

[Zeddy]

This one is relatively easy because the boss is bighorn bisons and you can just lure them off the cliff. The stage also has a free preon and you can get a TC280 to bring with you to next stage.

Trials are often so different that it's hard to give a general independent strat, but here's some hints I abide to:

• Start with a scouting run to learn the stage.
  
• Go activate the teleporter right away, then search the stage. The locks will reveal hard to see intractables, cloaked cheats, drones etc.
  
• You want drones, especially missiles drones. Turrets near the teleporter helps a lot too.
  
• Also look out for wood shrines you can turn into squid platforms.
  
• Good items are AP rounds and Guillotine, pick those with Command. Without command you'll have to make a bit of a judgement call.
  
• Try to find an unfair advantage in the boss fight. Luring them off the stage, baiting them into turrets, clipping into walls, knowing where they are and hitting them with band-preon at spawn, etc etc.
  
• Enemy spawns are consistent. If you find a particular group of wisps always hit you, take note of the time they spawned and try to be in a better place.
  
• Seriously, drones. With just two gunner drones, enemies will almost never target you.
  
• Glass trials are always easy.
  
• Keep going until the end even if you get hit. You need to practice the whole route.
  
• Mind the terrain. You can use small hills as very effective cover against almost every enemy.
  
• Counter to how the normal game work, it's fine to move slowly. This early in the game, your levelling will outscale the enemy.
  
• Wisps can be dodged, and it's not even that hard as long as you're prepared. There are many ways, but in general just moving perpendicular to them is plenty.

Ethereal is about planning, patience, and memorization. Make a plan and practice it. A good plan will frontload the difficulty, building power early to make the stage 2 fight easier.

[Leafia Barrett]

Originally posted by Zeddy:

This one is relatively easy because the boss is bighorn bisons and you can just lure them off the cliff. The stage also has a free preon and you can get a TC280 to bring with you to next stage.

Trials are often so different that it's hard to give a general independent strat, but here's some hints I abide to:

• Start with a scouting run to learn the stage.
  
• Go activate the teleporter right away, then search the stage. The locks will reveal hard to see intractables, cloaked cheats, drones etc.
  
• You want drones, especially missiles drones. Turrets near the teleporter helps a lot too.
  
• Also look out for wood shrines you can turn into squid platforms.
  
• Good items are AP rounds and Guillotine, pick those with Command. Without command you'll have to make a bit of a judgement call.
  
• Try to find an unfair advantage in the boss fight. Luring them off the stage, baiting them into turrets, clipping into walls, knowing where they are and hitting them with band-preon at spawn, etc etc.
  
• Enemy spawns are consistent. If you find a particular group of wisps always hit you, take note of the time they spawned and try to be in a better place.
  
• Seriously, drones. With just two gunner drones, enemies will almost never target you.
  
• Glass trials are always easy.
  
• Keep going until the end even if you get hit. You need to practice the whole route.
  
• Mind the terrain. You can use small hills as very effective cover against almost every enemy.
  
• Counter to how the normal game work, it's fine to move slowly. This early in the game, your levelling will outscale the enemy.
  
• Wisps can be dodged, and it's not even that hard as long as you're prepared. There are many ways, but in general just moving perpendicular to them is plenty.

Ethereal is about planning, patience, and memorization. Make a plan and practice it. A good plan will frontload the difficulty, building power early to make the stage 2 fight easier.

In stage 1, the only drone is a TC-280. Stage 2 (Wetland Aspect, boss Blazing Wandering Vagrant) has turrets, but I didn't really look around super hard as Artificer on my scouting run, I guess. Does dragging enemies off the stage proc Amber Brooch?

Side note, sometimes the boss in stage 1 is a Glacial Imp Overlord instead of the bisons, and I really don't know why.

[Zeddy]

Originally posted by Leafia Barrett:

. Does dragging enemies off the stage proc Amber Brooch?

If you were the last one to hit them, it should count as your kill, yes.

Side note, sometimes the boss in stage 1 is a Glacial Imp Overlord instead of the bisons, and I really don't know why.

That happens if you take too long. This ramps up the difficulty enough that the game starts allowing imp overlord to spawn. I would guess this happens around 6-7 minutes for stage 1. Take your time during the fight, not necessarily before it.

For more tips on this specific trial, I'd try to take hints from Cabbage's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upis6wfJ6hM&feature=youtu.be

Cabbage's hobby is making an Ethereal video for every seed. He usually comes out with one within a few hours of a trial rolling in, and has only ever skipped one seed that was especially grueling.

I have a video as well, but it's for the console version that has more drones and a different set of artifacts.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Originally posted by Zeddy:

I have a video as well, but it's for the console version that has more drones and a different set of artifacts.

You know, it never dawned on me that the Console and PC versions would have different Trials active at the same time.

[Zeddy]

Originally posted by Jimmy Hunter:

You know, it never dawned on me that the Console and PC versions would have different Trials active at the same time.

They're not supposed to, and they're very similar. Apart from consoles not being on 1.0 yet, the biggest difference is console trials are locked to the same 4 artifacts every single trial.

These are:

• Command (good, but boring)
  
• Chaos (good/bad)
  
• Soul (mostly bad)
  
• Sacrifice (the freaking worst)

Sacrifice means you have to farm enemies for several minutes just to get one thing to drop, and for the most part you can forget about having equips, but the real problem is you'll never get a glass trial, so on console the options are to either wait until November or tough it out the hard way.

Here's this trials vid if you're interested:
https://youtu.be/w71-YUIGhqY

I'd say this one is easier on console for a change just because there's no honour artifact and in particular the extra two gunner drones is an immense help. Didn't try this PC trial myself yet, but Cabbage using Capacitor to get rid of elite wisps looked clever.

[Vacien]

I say wait till Glass shows up again. Everything else is just BS.

[Arriator]

I'm having massive trouble with this unlock as well, and to put it bluntly, the game seems to have a lot of awkward design in places that aren't just this... is the game even still getting updates? I hesitate to call it "finished" or "1.0"... I really hope something will address this specific unlock. In the meantime, I'll keep trying, I guess.

I made it into the top 500 on the leaderboards by dying in 25 seconds. That probably shouldn't be possible...

[Zeddy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVqfj8kUrHM

This alternative strat by the3rdbanana is for people who are bad at Mercenary. It looks pleasant to run.

[Arriator]

Wisps are the worst things ever, to be honest.