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Motherfucker
Jul 16, 2011

I certainly dont have deep-seated issues involving birthdays.
fuckin' irritating the mummies 'eats all enemy buffs' trick dosn't work on the cathedral enemies damage boosts they get from their features.

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skeleton warrior
Nov 12, 2016


Well, I started over and built up the suggested party for stress and shuffling through poison clouds, and it was fine, though it rarely involved thinking, just pushing people around and waiting for them to spontaneously die.

Then two-thirds through the dwarf level, the enemy got a bunch of crits in a row and wiped out 3/4ths of one of the teams. :xcom:

But I had unlocked headless hunters, so I decided to invest all of my accumulated parts into a new team of Bride, Headless, Zombie, and Skeleton to do physical damage instead, and creating a brand new level 12 party from scratch felt good!

And it turns out they completely sucked, unable to penetrate the armor of enemies to do meaningful damage before getting completely wiped. Not by elites, just by the regular dwarves.

So, in a desperate attempt to not lose all of the accumulated pieces and brains I had invested into these guys, I opened up the menu and hit "last checkpoint" to go back to a save, only it turns out that "last checkpoint" is actually "beginning of the dwarf level", so gently caress this game, I hate it, it sucks, and I'm angry at myself for being stupid enough to waste a dozen hours in a game hoping that "eventually I'll unlock things and have decisions to make".

skeleton warrior fucked around with this message at 04:34 on May 4, 2020

Motherfucker
Jul 16, 2011

I certainly dont have deep-seated issues involving birthdays.

skeleton warrior posted:

Well, I started over and built up the suggested party for stress and shuffling through poison clouds, and it was fine, though it rarely involved thinking, just pushing people around and waiting for them to spontaneously die.

Then two-thirds through the dwarf level, the enemy got a bunch of crits in a row and wiped out 3/4ths of one of the teams. :xcom:

But I had unlocked headless hunters, so I decided to invest all of my accumulated parts into a new team of Bride, Headless, Zombie, and Skeleton to do physical damage instead, and creating a brand new level 12 party from scratch felt good!

And it turns out they completely sucked, unable to penetrate the armor of enemies to do meaningful damage before getting completely wiped. Not by elites, just by the regular dwarves.

So, in a desperate attempt to not lose all of the accumulated pieces and brains I had invested into these guys, I opened up the menu and hit "last checkpoint" to go back to a save, only it turns out that "last checkpoint" is actually "beginning of the dwarf level", so gently caress this game, I hate it, it sucks, and I'm angry at myself for being stupid enough to waste a dozen hours in a game hoping that "eventually I'll unlock things and have decisions to make".

y-you know you can just... rebuild them, just make some more litches and poo poo and stick the old brains in 'em and they'll be back up and running just the same like it never happened.



Plus you unlocked the headless, you've obviously unlocked SOME stuff. I dunno dude it seems like you're having the same problem I am. Level five is infested with highly armored dudes and I only have one armor shredding dhampire and no ability to produce more... basically the enemy finally found answers to my party comp and its been a frustrating challenge but it IS a challenge and its whatever, its fine.

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012
Good Always Wins trip report:

Unfrozen/Head Hunter/Dhampire/Widow: first 4 floors went fine, sometimes too easy even, but floor 5 is really difficult. I still think the composition is pretty good (trap + pulls for good damage, everybody can reduce armor, stance cancels that ignore block/wards) but floor 5 is just brutal and I lost a few too many items + made some bad talent decisions.

I've also made it to end of floor 2 with Unfrozen/Blood Phantom/Ghoul/Ghoul and honestly I have no idea how because there's not much synergy at all.

I'm going to try lost soul/lost soul/wraith/shade on GAW now.

Walh Hara fucked around with this message at 09:53 on May 4, 2020

Arcanuse
Mar 15, 2019

Been trying to write up a build from pre-release, but, well. There's a unit the thread hasn't brought up yet.

The Infested.

They are the builds linchpin and just plain bonkers at how useful they are to the point they overshadowed the other minions in the build (Dark Knight/Mummy/Players Choice) by far.

Here's the deal:
-The Infested has stress debuffs (regular single target and ultimate target all flavors), a self buff or targeted heal, a four-hit stress attack (each hit can crit), and magnified wretchedness to throw in on a otherwise wasted turn to give a whopping +30 luck (with +2 Initiative and 30 accuracy as a bonus).
-The stress multihit attack alone makes them great at finishing off enemies with heart attacks (four chances to other units one) or chewing through wards; but with a bit of luck in gear this gets truly absurd.

See, each minion has their own class gear, making them even better at what they do.
Cursed bandages give the mummy slight regen for each debuff on enemies,
Gruesome Snack gives the ghoul a stack of Lunch Break at the start of a fight,
and Plague Body Organ gives enemies who attack the Infested 20 stress damage per turn for three turns.

That's cute.

See, the real minion item for the infested is Acid Gland, which for reference is

quote:

Every successful ability using grants the minion a chance to strip the enemy of all Armour and Resistance until the end of battle:

- 50% chance for single-target abilities.

- 25% chance for AoE abilities.

Now remember how the Infested has a four hit single target attack usable from the front three spaces.
Then add insult to injury by giving the Infested perfect accuracy with Mechanical Eye and stronger crits with Plaguefall.

The Infested, even without these items or a team that can take advantage of the debuffs is still a wrecker, but with them?
You could use one on just about any team; little to no questions asked.

So, what balances the Infested out?

90 health, a base armor/resistance/ of 0 with no stat upgrades for either and block/ward being pricey as usual.
They have a decent base dodge chance at 16, one of the highest, but are otherwise fragile so a few lucky hits puts them out of the fight.
No tank, infested go squish. don't muster up the stat points for a tick of ward/shield? infested go squish.
Don't have decent protection for them and every fight is a gamble. Do have decent protection, and you tilt the odds a bit.


So with all that in mind, why wouldn't you ever not use one?

It's DLC.

On steam it comes with the games soundtrack and a skin for every unit, but it feels a bit off the supporter pack would have a unit with this much oomph packed in instead of just cosmetics/non-mechanical benefits.
I'unno, it might seem a bit more balanced once I give the other units a more thorough try to see what powerful antics they can do (compared to their tankiness/lack thereof), but it feels like a lot of power out of the dlc box with only room to grow.

Tinfoil Papercut
Jul 27, 2016

by Athanatos
I have the DLC and I never use infested. There are a lot of units that do stress with better utility and they get loving obliterated by anything that hits hard.

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012
The most broken minion+item combo I've encountered so far is Fallen Dhampire + Spider Mandibles. Headless Hunter + Mechanical Eye is also pretty strong.

The most broken item otherwise is Orb of Negation. It just solves so many problems.

Tinfoil Papercut
Jul 27, 2016

by Athanatos
A spider with shackles and Orb is an incredible tank.

One thing I do dislike is that sometimes it takes particular sets of items to make a build come together, and your items seem to favor the current group you're playing with so it can be a challenge to put together the things you need for something else to be successful. I would love to do a Bride with 3 mummies build which trashes the enemy luck so the bride crits all the time, but it's very hard to make that all gel without a full suite of gear.

Nakar
Sep 2, 2002

Ultima Ratio Regum

Walh Hara posted:

The most broken minion+item combo I've encountered so far is Fallen Dhampire + Spider Mandibles. Headless Hunter + Mechanical Eye is also pretty strong.

The most broken item otherwise is Orb of Negation. It just solves so many problems.
The most broken minion item is the Shade-specific unique item that restores Vigor for themselves and Mana/Wrath when they deal damage. Combined with the Boiling Blood and it's just absurd what two Shades can do by just waiting for enemies to kill themselves. It's also really good in a party context if you're using Gloomclaws since that can hit for ludicrous damage and restore a ton of Wrath and Mana all at once.

I've heard that, at least on More Pain, a solo Vampire with Boiling Blood can also be nearly invincible since she gets jacked stats and can heal any damage she takes every turn, but I haven't managed to try that one out.

Motherfucker
Jul 16, 2011

I certainly dont have deep-seated issues involving birthdays.
man. makes me wish I HAD SOME BOILING BLOOD.

AtomikKrab
Jul 17, 2010

Keep on GOP rolling rolling rolling rolling.

I bought this and so far so good. I like the character of Iratus. Haven't gone far yet so i'm using infant combos but I've had a good showing with 2 infected 2 zombie and just lighting up my opposition with stress damage and fire.

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012
Just won on good always wins for the first time. The hardest floor is certainly floor 1 before you get going.

Team composition was 2 lost souls, a banshee and a shade. The "finger of death + shade's voidclaws" combo is simply way too strong. Between shade's unique item, items and artifcats that gave spellpower and lost soul's consume hope I never ran out of mana so I often did it two turns in a row. The final battle was still though, but in hindsight I could have itemised better for it.

Tinfoil Papercut
Jul 27, 2016

by Athanatos
I like Shade but I feel he's in for the nerf bat relatively soon.

Just had another good round with (Lost Soul) (Lost Soul) (Vamp) (DK)

You stance up the DK then spam AoE stress / buff with Lost Souls. This triggers the DK stance twice. On the next round, you use the Lost Soul ultimate. If all went well, the vampire has a 4x buff from her feature PLUS the buff from the lost soul and can proceed to singlehandedly dismantle the enemy team.

AtomikKrab
Jul 17, 2010

Keep on GOP rolling rolling rolling rolling.

As I progress I developed a team of

Lich>Banshee>Skeleton>DK. has plowed through two floors without stopping. DK is built with items to taunt enemies and tank. Skeleton is a mix of buffbot/defense breaker as needed. Banshee debuffs and breaks wards. Lich spams his aoe through the dk who can withstand it and carves up the enemy team(occasionally everything is set on fire.


I have been experimenting with a single boiling blood/regeneration item skeleton. as a team. Its really good at eventually winning fights through just not taking damage while stressing but... not good at killing.

Chakan
Mar 30, 2011
Came back to this game after about a month break, having only finished floor 1, presumably on the easiest difficulty. After clearing out the dwarves I've started to run into an issue with my "plod through everything eventually" build of Bride>Skele>DK>Skele where enemies are starting to be able to hurt my front skeleton. I'm just screwing around and working to unlock different minions so it's fine, but I suspect I'll have to switch to DK front-line once I'm comfortable that I have enough wrath generation to have him ult every turn or so. Game's fun though and I look forward to trying out the different combinations once I unlock a few more minions.

Deckit
Sep 1, 2012

Found this game and love it. Had been working through darkest dungeon so I was fresh off a tactical game into another.

Friggin love all the combinations and tactics you can do. My favorite was when I was trying to unlock the lost soul, so I just spammed Lich and three skeletons while setting everything on the enemy team on fire. :3:

Deckit fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Jun 11, 2020

Chakan
Mar 30, 2011
They announced a DLC called Wrath of the Necromancer and it looks pretty neat. Set to come out in the fall at some point.

double nine
Aug 8, 2013

as someone who enjoyed dankest dungeon what does iratus do better/differently from that eldrich misfortune stimulator?

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012

double nine posted:

as someone who enjoyed dankest dungeon what does iratus do better/differently from that eldrich misfortune stimulator?

* Way better at encouraging the player to theorycraft: tons of interesting combo's, way more possible interaction between minions' abilities
* A lot more potential strategies, for a big part because of the health/stress system
* Iratus himself being able to use spells adds another layer of complexity
* Minions being able to equip items adds another layer of complexity (on top of the minion abilities/stat points upgrade system)
* A campaign is a lot shorter

Story/setting/mood is better in darkest dungeon, but in my opinion the combat itself is just way more interesting in Iratus.

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

Walh Hara posted:

* Way better at encouraging the player to theorycraft: tons of interesting combo's, way more possible interaction between minions' abilities
* A lot more potential strategies, for a big part because of the health/stress system
* Iratus himself being able to use spells adds another layer of complexity
* Minions being able to equip items adds another layer of complexity (on top of the minion abilities/stat points upgrade system)
* A campaign is a lot shorter

Story/setting/mood is better in darkest dungeon, but in my opinion the combat itself is just way more interesting in Iratus.

Counterpoint:

* Abilities in Iratus are built more to play off other classes so you've got a stronger cohesive party theme, but they are very simplistic and not interesting. Edit: Once you unlock all the classes you can get some engaging depth in the combos, but still not on the level of Darkest Dungeon and you're talking playing for quite some time and multiple runs to get them all.
* I'd maybe agree there are "more potential strategies" than Darkest Dungeon, but the vast majority of them are blatantly terrible and/or useless to the point that even a moderately experienced person familiar with the genre will quickly find the few effective strategies. You'll either stick with them or intentionally kill any challenge in order to play with others (which if that is fun for you then that's great).
* The Iratus spells and abilities don't add another layer of complexity, they make up for the lack of complexity in the class combos (see first point) compared to Darkest Dungeon
* Because you will build parties so focused on a one or two stats and targeted for a specific combination of abilities you'll use like clockwork in every single encounter, the equipment and stat point system is boring and tedious with no real flexibility
* The campaign is shorter, no argument there.

Story I'll go with better. Setting is more varied but also each variation is not as deep. Don't really have an opinion on "mood" (not entirely sure what that would encompass outside of "setting"). I personally found Iratus combat to be way to mechanical and repetitive and would say Darkest Dungeon is far better in the gameplay/combat department.

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012

nessin posted:

* Abilities in Iratus are built more to play off other classes so you've got a stronger cohesive party theme, but they are very simplistic and not interesting. Edit: Once you unlock all the classes you can get some engaging depth in the combos, but still not on the level of Darkest Dungeon and you're talking playing for quite some time and multiple runs to get them all.

Can you elaborate about this? It's been a long time since I've played darkest dungeon, so perhaps I'm just not remembering things. That said, I don't remember there being any combo's like how in Iratus you can make a team around shuffling the opposing team (+ abilities that trigger when this happens) or a team around stacking debuffs (+ abilities that trigger on this) or stuff like that. I could easily list 10 interactions between abilities that are interesting in Iratus, in darkest dungeon the only thing I remember is combining abilities that move your own team around?

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

Walh Hara posted:

Can you elaborate about this? It's been a long time since I've played darkest dungeon, so perhaps I'm just not remembering things. That said, I don't remember there being any combo's like how in Iratus you can make a team around shuffling the opposing team (+ abilities that trigger when this happens) or a team around stacking debuffs (+ abilities that trigger on this) or stuff like that. I could easily list 10 interactions between abilities that are interesting in Iratus, in darkest dungeon the only thing I remember is combining abilities that move your own team around?

The "engaging depth" is the key part there, Darkest Dungeon doesn't have the direct combos that Iratus does but Iratus is setup such that certain abilities are basically designed to go together such that they are almost pointless on their own and instead are basically a single ability you press multiple buttons to use. Darkest Dungeon you fight until you need a specific end result or big hit, then setup the combo (like say mark, poison, shift position for a big hitter to be in the right spot, then hit), execute it, and then go on with the fight until you need to setup another combo. Iratus is first character press 1, second character press 2, third character press 2, fourth character press 4, then next round 1, 2, 2, 5 (probably a fury spender), then 1, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 2, 5, 1, 2, 2, 4, etc... Sure the first ability is your taunt/block, the second is your damage on move shift, the third is a enemy shift position which triggers the 2nd character's damage, and the 4th is a pull to trigger the second character again, and on and on. But it's a set pattern you follow basically 100% of the time until you need a heal, then you heal and go back to the set rotation. Yeah it's a combo but it's no more interesting than an opener to a Darkest Dungeon fight.

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012

nessin posted:

The "engaging depth" is the key part there, Darkest Dungeon doesn't have the direct combos that Iratus does but Iratus is setup such that certain abilities are basically designed to go together such that they are almost pointless on their own and instead are basically a single ability you press multiple buttons to use. Darkest Dungeon you fight until you need a specific end result or big hit, then setup the combo (like say mark, poison, shift position for a big hitter to be in the right spot, then hit), execute it, and then go on with the fight until you need to setup another combo. Iratus is first character press 1, second character press 2, third character press 2, fourth character press 4, then next round 1, 2, 2, 5 (probably a fury spender), then 1, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2, 2, 5, 1, 2, 2, 4, etc... Sure the first ability is your taunt/block, the second is your damage on move shift, the third is a enemy shift position which triggers the 2nd character's damage, and the 4th is a pull to trigger the second character again, and on and on. But it's a set pattern you follow basically 100% of the time until you need a heal, then you heal and go back to the set rotation. Yeah it's a combo but it's no more interesting than an opener to a Darkest Dungeon fight.

That kind of combo you describe in darkest dungeon also exists in Iratus though?

That you think minions in Iratus keep spamming the same abilities is extremely baffling to me to be honest. In my experience this happens much less than in DD, because you shuffle more in Iratus, because of the wrath system, because there are a ton of situational abilities and because you have to take blocks/wards/armor/stances/abilities of the enemies into account.

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McGavin
Sep 18, 2012

Once you know what you're doing, you can definitely unlock all minions on a single playthrough. If you do a stress build, the only difficult ones are Vampire and Dhampir, because you have to do different things in specific circumstances to unlock them, and Ghoul, because you need to use a Lich to damage your own team.

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