Is there a benefit to taking the summoning stone (or not?)

[barbrady123]

So I beat the last boss, I'm at the summoning stone thing. It basically says the bosses come back and are harder (which I think is great), but...I also like the farming aspects of the game (granted they're a bit *too* slow, but whatever). So, I guess I'm wondering if it would be smarter to farm gold without hitting the harder bosses first (I also read that some of the "harder" mobs will start showing up earlier in the levels). Does the gold you gather scale with the difficulty? Does it make sense at all NOT to wait? Or are the harder bosses not really that much harder and it would be quick to plow through them again?

[AK-M]

you can literally ignore the bosses beside the last. the rockpile mimic doesnt respawn its only the 3 gatekeepers 2 of which you can skip. and you wont get the summoning stone if you only defeat the last boss. you get a stone with kills you but you get all the money. Also the bosses drop gold and thorium which makes the later 2 ones good for farming where you can get max gold if you bring gold kernels.

[barbrady123]

Thanks, I didn't realize it didn't "reset" your progress, so you can still bypass the boss rooms, cool. Also, after running a couple levels, I do believe the gold does scale to some extent...I'm seeing a lot of the higher level chunks even in gold mine. :)

[Stafford's Bees]

The 3 bosses won't respawn until you pick up the larger summoning stone. So you have to kill Selt and Mortar before you can kill Noori again.

[barbrady123]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but I did just kill Selt again...honestly didn't notice him being any different other than the color...maybe spawned a few more of the adds, but I'm not even sure about that. Are you saying I have to clear them a second time (in order) before they can be farmed?

[Stafford's Bees]

If Selt is the only one you've killed so far, it means Selt won't respawn until you eventually have killed all three and gotten the larger stone. And it doesn't matter what order you kill them in or whether you do it over multiple runs.

To put it another way, you just killed "Selt 2", and "Selt 3" won't spawn until your peasants collectively have killed "Mortar 2" and "Noori 2".

[Colbat]

More Gold per Reset, quite some Blueprints either get more common per Reset or are simply locked behind a specific reset number (to answer the original question).

So if you dont care about completion or have quite some fun/want to enjoy the power gain per upgrade to its fullest, leave the stone, even with all 3 killed you can go to Menu -> Leave (Instantkill Button for Ending the Run). Otherwise use it, the HP and Dmg Gain are less than 5% with some minor changes which monster can spawn on which floors (Big Slimes in the First Area for example) from i believe reset 3 onwards. the Gold Gain is REALLY worth it for finishing the upgrades and you can still feel the power, especially once you completed the Upgrades, which means you can invest all of your gold heavily into the Shops making the runs a breeze (or complete nightmare if you push for the achievements... :D)

Either way, dont be afraid to use the stone, doesnt hurt as much as it sounds

[barbrady123]

Thanks for the responses guys. I think another thing to add for anybody else also wondering is that the bosses are nearly identical (I've reset 3 times now), so...they don't seem to ramp up very much, if at all.

[Mkronox]

the bosses do get new moves, at least I saw new moves on Mortar VII where he uses multiple beams instead of a single one, didn´t notice anything new on the other 2 except for Noir attacking faster every time you kill him. Also they deal a ton more damage the more summon stones you have

[aib]

For those who land here first before reading about this:

The "summoning stone" level of a run can be adjusted in the pause menu. This should mean that there is no harm in picking up a stone since the effects can be undone by lowering this number by 1 in the next run. This might just apply to %-based monster buffs and not "new attack after N stones" type changes, but in my experience the latter tends to add to the fun.