TRANSITION TO HIGHER DIFFICULTY

[Brtzlmo]

in normal I stop a loop when everything explodes in one hit and the run becomes boring. but hard is so much harder, if you invest in damage you will get wiped in seconds on small cramped maps. I have not seen any armor drop in 3 runs. in the beginning you can invest in streamer loot and hope for better gear down the line, but your damage will be super lackluster just a few maps in. ability and melee get useless almost immediately when you dare to invest into hp or weapon mods. and even with them an elite takes 5 shots from a sniper rifle and there spawn like 5-10 of them at once.

anything I am missing, tips appreciated

[Casurin]

play around with the modifiers:
Try hard without any, or normal and add some extras.

[Gpuna]

Recent patch:
Increased the maximum amount of spawned enemies allowed at once from 45 to 50 on Normal difficulty and from 60 to 100 on Nightmare and Ultra Chaos difficulties

Added new difficulty modifier: Ambushing Elites: An elite spawns on the third island of each biome

Kinda feels like being swarmed

[Jokerdad4]

Have you unlock every weapon?

Originally posted by Brtzlmo:

in normal I stop a loop when everything explodes in one hit and the run becomes boring. but hard is so much harder, if you invest in damage you will get wiped in seconds on small cramped maps. I have not seen any armor drop in 3 runs. in the beginning you can invest in streamer loot and hope for better gear down the line, but your damage will be super lackluster just a few maps in. ability and melee get useless almost immediately when you dare to invest into hp or weapon mods. and even with them an elite takes 5 shots from a sniper rifle and there spawn like 5-10 of them at once.

anything I am missing, tips appreciated

[El Delfín]

my guess is you're supposed to play harder difficulties with at least one other crab. the difficulty stays the same in my experience even if there are multiple crabs.

[Brtzlmo]

Originally posted by Casurin:

play around with the modifiers:
Try hard without any, or normal and add some extras.

this is a good tip actually to make transition smoother, thanks!

btw what is the purpose of weapon ranks???

[Brtzlmo]

Originally posted by Jokerdad4:

Have you unlock every weapon?

I think I have 2/3 unlocked. I have like a 100 keys but I strictly unlock only after a run to make it last longer ;)

[Casurin]

Originally posted by Brtzlmo:

Originally posted by Casurin:

play around with the modifiers:
Try hard without any, or normal and add some extras.

this is a good tip actually to make transition smoother, thanks!

btw what is the purpose of weapon ranks???

they have no direct purpose.
Buuut if you have EVERYTHING on Diamond (all weapons, all unlockable weapons, all sidearms, all melee) you unlock the true nightmare.... it really just is a hellish difficulty.

Originally posted by Brtzlmo:

I think I have 2/3 unlocked. I have like a 100 keys but I strictly unlock only after a run to make it last longer ;)

Don't.
The unlocked weapons aren't per se stronger and once you unlocked all of them then you can use the totem ONCE before each run to get 1 starting item. It can be a world of difference having flameabl-Armor at the first island already.

[Dopey Shepard]

you don't necessarily need any armor to succeed in Nightmare/True Nightmare+

just stack HP, and that's all

forget about building damage/crystal combo then, if you get hit a lot, your combo stays at 1x all the time, and that's fine

You can focus on sharp shot or other shots and play the game just as well

Find Ring of Reinforcement and then you can focus on armor as every point of armor will give you +2

Then take Ring of Armor

Ethereal Ring too

Ring of Regenerating Armor (legendary)

Then your armor should not drop unless you stay still

[Rideps]

Originally posted by Casurin:

Originally posted by Brtzlmo:

I think I have 2/3 unlocked. I have like a 100 keys but I strictly unlock only after a run to make it last longer ;)

Don't.
The unlocked weapons aren't per se stronger and once you unlocked all of them then you can use the totem ONCE before each run to get 1 starting item. It can be a world of difference having flameabl-Armor at the first island already.

Yeah, you're actively gimping yourself, because there's a TON of mods locked into the totem as well, and they'll only start unlocking after weapons.

Aside from that, my personal mantra after putting a lot of time into this and risk of rain 2 is that the lower difficulties don't actually prepare you for the higher ones. The pace is so much different that it almost makes you worse at them if you treat it as "Well I just had a lot of really good normal runs, time to give hard a shot!" It's better to think of it as the opposite, treat lower difficulties as a break from any frustrations the higher give you.

Of course, I made the jump to nightmare before the modifiers were around, so you should probably ease into them, especially with the extra enemy type modifier.

[MangoEagle]

first thing is that damage isn't actually that strong to stack. It is one of the weakest perk lists when looking at purely common perks and is more competitive with scaling options in the epic rank. So scaling damage is just generally not as good as scaling with crit, elemental, or even luck based perks.

This also isn't risk of rain 2, speed is not important at all if you want more mobility always go for stamina as dodges are much better then speed. this is because enemies predicatively fire where you will be regardless of your speed.

The modifiers for the most part are honestly fun and not oppressive. Getting used to them sooner rather than later will make the game more fun.

Health is massive in the newest update and investing into it is basically necessary.

[TheBird]

Practicing dodging is really important. Pay attention to the enemy attacks, they have patterns that can require different movements to dodge. Like the elite lightning crab has that cone shot that you can dodge by moving left or right but the line shot is easier to dodge by moving towards or away from the crab.

You will need less health as you get better at dodging. I won a true ultra chaos run (looped once) with a little over 3K health yesterday. More health would definitely have saved some runs I have lost though.

The timing of enemy attacks changes quite a bit between normal, nightmare, and ultra chaos. That lets you learn "bad" habits on lower difficulties. Like moving directly at a slug and jumping over it is fine on nightmare but the extra attack speed buff on ultra chaos almost guarantees you will be hit doing the same move. That was a habit I had to unlearn.

I usually prefer elemental damage mods over just damage mods. Poison and fire feel pretty good to me right now.

Don't forget to take breaks too. Only 16% of players have the achievement for 5 total wins on nightmare difficulty at this time.

It could be helpful to record your runs and watch them later to see if there was a different choice you could have made that you didn't see in the moment.

[Casurin]

Originally posted by MangoEagle:

first thing is that damage isn't actually that strong to stack. It is one of the weakest perk lists when looking at purely common perks and is more competitive with scaling options in the epic rank. So scaling damage is just generally not as good as scaling with crit, elemental, or even luck based perks.

That depends on the weapon.
on a 2dmg weapon getting +4 is a really strong boost where crit or others don't even come close for a long time, on a sniper getting tripple-shot is one of the best you can get.
but you want a mix or you will have some trouble later on.

[Dopey Shepard]

Originally posted by Casurin:

Originally posted by MangoEagle:

first thing is that damage isn't actually that strong to stack. It is one of the weakest perk lists when looking at purely common perks and is more competitive with scaling options in the epic rank. So scaling damage is just generally not as good as scaling with crit, elemental, or even luck based perks.

That depends on the weapon.
on a 2dmg weapon getting +4 is a really strong boost where crit or others don't even come close for a long time, on a sniper getting tripple-shot is one of the best you can get.
but you want a mix or you will have some trouble later on.

btw no weapon in the game is 2 dmg default. Now it's 3 for laser cannons and minigun))

so picking up sharp shot +4 doesn't feel as impactful now as it used to be before when it would triple your damage

[Casurin]

Originally posted by Dopey Shepard:

btw no weapon in the game is 2 dmg default. Now it's 3 for laser cannons and minigun))

Lightning scepter.

[MangoEagle]

Originally posted by Casurin:

Originally posted by MangoEagle:

first thing is that damage isn't actually that strong to stack. It is one of the weakest perk lists when looking at purely common perks and is more competitive with scaling options in the epic rank. So scaling damage is just generally not as good as scaling with crit, elemental, or even luck based perks.

That depends on the weapon.
on a 2dmg weapon getting +4 is a really strong boost where crit or others don't even come close for a long time, on a sniper getting tripple-shot is one of the best you can get.
but you want a mix or you will have some trouble later on.

Sharp shot drops off pretty hard though and is a specific mod which doesn't do much to bring up the overall quality of the common damage pool. That being a part of why I wouldn't recommend pure damage portals.