Solo play: Madman's Eye + Boiling Blood

[ewpayne]

You can play with just a single minion with Boiling Blood. It basically turns a solo minion into a boss level character.

If you manage to find the Madman's Eye as well they will get twice as many attacks, thus doubling their power.

I personally liked to use the Lich.

With his first ability you can upgrade it so he attacks two enemies. With Madman's Eye that is 4 attacks.

If you get the Spirit Lance and Spirit Chainmail you can use those to accrue 10 charges and upgrade him more.

I recommend capping out his Block and Shield to avoid cheese stunlocks or other debuffs that'll cripple you.

Personally I never manage to do this on GAW difficulty but it's fun on the easier difficulties.

[sandman25dcsss]

Is block/shield that useful for solo? When I tried it, I lost all of them during first turns, everyone is attacking you.

[ewpayne]

I believe so. For example alchemist bomb removing your armor/resistance is very bad.

My lich with his upgrades, and my artifact setup has block 2 shield 5 but could have had more if i built him differently. I avoided a lot of terrible debuffs. The blocks were for avoiding megahits from beefy characters with high crits.

[Sarimal]

what does the madman's eye do?

[ewpayne]

@Helsing

Madman's Eye - If you're the only one left, you get an extra action per turn.

[Raisinthehouse]

Negation orb in place of Madman's eye seems superior on higher difficulties. Debuffs are the primary source of death for solo builds.

[ewpayne]

Thats not a bad strategy. Although what if you did that for super skeleton....oh now there's an idea for a playthrough.

[Raisinthehouse]

Skeleton doesn't have healing, unless you're referring to the bone golem

[ewpayne]

No, I meant skeleton. I used Lich and it didnt have healing and survived. I had to toss him in the crypt about 3 times but other then that he was durable. His blocks and shields helped.

I considered Bone golem too, but i'd stick to the madman eye cause one action could be used to heal and the other would be to aoe stun.

[Tenty]

I've tried solo Dark Knight, Skeleton, Dhampyr, Banshee, and Lich so far. The solo lich was a sacrifice build that unfortunately took too long to spool up (though that wouldn't have been an issue if I'd had the sacrifice stone when I tested it), the Dhampyr was a riposte build that got dumped on when its stance was broken, and the Skeleton and Dark Knight used the classic "boiling blood + bloated flesh" but were able to get overwhelmed by the heavy hitters that appear late-game. Banshee can and will get instagibbed by a party with a musket guy in the dwarven tunnels, but after that point a max evade+boiling blood+slipper banshee is difficult to kill with the bonus perk of providing mana regen as well. Add appropriate artifact support and she becomes functionally immortal, with most enemies no longer even being able to land attacks that aren't auto-hits.

Madman's Eye is a good idea, but generally the bonus stats from Boiling Blood are worth more than an extra action is and the other item slot will usually be needed for giving the unit survivability.