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Rainslick Precipice 4 - Fight Strategies

TriskTrisk Registered User regular
edited June 2013 in Penny Arcade Games
Hiyo, trying to play this game on Insane, it's hard as hell! So I'd like to talk about some fight strategies and certain fights that seem incredibly hard and maybe share some tips about how we overcame them. Avoid spoilers, generic fights should be fine but any bosses should be vaguely described instead of named.

Now, I'm not entirely convinced all fights are to be done in order encountered, especially not on insane, some fights just cannot be done when you encounter them. This is not all fights, sometimes after 10 or so tries, I'll come up with a strategy to get going and win a fight I thought was simply impossible. I'll start us off with 3 fights I've been having trouble with.

Iceking, eesh. I even popped down to veteran to try to fight him but with only one weakness to fire (molotov being the only fire element you have access to) and a resistance to both physical, wind and darkness kind of make his 1500(!!!) hp, in insane, almost impossible to break down to even 600 before he oneshots both partymembers before they get a turn. This is definitely a fight you need to come back to later, not when you first encounter it.

Secondly, possibly a bug, there's a fight that the enemies get boosted if Treatbeast lives, but Treatbeast isn't in the fight? That fight is hard on its own, incredibly high health enemies that deal 60+ damage with spells in a single round. I've tried doing a boosted skydive but spending two rounds to kill one enemy isn't good enough, they just deal way too much damage. My best method is, round one, boost Mr. Beaks, use molotov on the little ice dudes, next round skydive the shivvern and then hope cleanup goes well or that the enemies didn't focus one partymember down or you'll be stuck trying to keep people alive before dying. Doing this fight before Iceking seems pretty vital for reasons after the fight.

The boss of this area is especially hard, you have to time it quite well, every two times he attacks, defends to avoid the massive damage aoe and if you're not defending (and on insane or vet) you'll have already lost. On insane he has a ton of health and if everyone isn't up doing something useful every round, you're in serious trouble. Start off with bleed, it does a good chunk of damage every round so you want it on him from the word go. Get leviathan to use molotov on round one too. My big folly is that I kept trying to buff Leviathan but it's just not worth it, this fight is really quick so the benefit of buffing just does not pay off. Round two same deal, don't bother buffing beaks as the round after this you'll need to defend.

All in all try to get in buffed skydives and use your molotovs, use tickle on leviathan when he's not healing as that little bit of damage counts. I ended up losing this fight several times with less than 200HP on the boss.

tl;dr

insane mode is really hard and a lot of fun. Anyone else got some hard fights to share or discuss strategy on?

Trisk on

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    RainbowDespairRainbowDespair Registered User regular
    Ah, thanks for reminding me about the treatbeast error (it's the cattivan; treatbeast was its original name). I just deployed a patch for the game so it'll use the correct name.

    Clearing out the Ice Cream Cave on Insane is very tough but it is doable. I think it's a rather fun challenge for expert players.

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    TriskTrisk Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Ah, thanks for reminding me about the treatbeast error (it's the cattivan; treatbeast was its original name). I just deployed a patch for the game so it'll use the correct name.

    Clearing out the Ice Cream Cave on Insane is very tough but it is doable. I think it's a rather fun challenge for expert players.

    Agreed, I managed to clear it all by doing some of it out of order and it was -tons- of fun once I figured it all out.

    BUT MAN THE MONKEY FIGHT REALLY? on insane even with switch I can't even get it down half health before it starts doing 800+! HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO GO ON!? 18,000 health left @_@. Cawterize, beakonomics and clutchmate, swapping out with leviathan, both using drain to keep HP up! Nadda! It's almost disappointingly so much easier on Vet.

    btw thank you for this amazing game :D Why the change from treatbeast anyway? Seems like it was a bit more location appropriate.


    (is the hidden ninja inspired by shining force by any chance?)

    Trisk on
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    TertieeTertiee Registered User regular
    Trisk wrote: »
    Iceking, eesh. I even popped down to veteran to try to fight him but with only one weakness to fire (molotov being the only fire element you have access to) and a resistance to both physical, wind and darkness kind of make his 1500(!!!) hp, in insane, almost impossible to break down to even 600 before he oneshots both partymembers before they get a turn. This is definitely a fight you need to come back to later, not when you first encounter it.

    The easiest way I found to beat the Iceking on Insane was to first beat the Scream Cone boss in the cave and get
    the third party member
    Unfortunately to make that doable I found I had to restart the game and buy Mr. Beaks the Mail-Order Axe since I had already spent my money on other items. The strength increase will boost the bleed damage from his Beakonomics. Use that move first and and Power Uped Skydive as much as possible and note Scream Cone's attack pattern to block his party wide attack.

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    TriskTrisk Registered User regular
    Yep, going through the rest of the cave made that much more manageable, the truth is now that I've done all that I've seen where the true "Go eff yourself and die on insane" is.

    End Game. Holy mother. I've checked out all the content and there's at least 5 fights that I just cannot win, very hard. My current approach is to get all my dots up, summon crow and skeleton and use a secret partymember to lower the defense of the entire enemy team, but every fight they just pour so much damage that even chaining as many stuns as possible I just cannot get enough room to A)Kill them or B)Even just focus on staying alive.

    Brodent is amazing, I give him a Buffz and he gets 2-1 turns on boss enemies (and 3-1 on my characters). Ultimately even him chain buffing everyone and using all his MP to stun it just isn't enough.

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    BlackjackBlackjack Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    A tip that may help: Jim has a skill called Quick Study or something. The description makes it sound like it sets your magic score equal to your speed score but it actually sets your speed equal to your magic. Really handy on a magic powerhouse like Philosofly.

    Blackjack on
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    3DS: 1607-3034-6970
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    RainbowDespairRainbowDespair Registered User regular
    Blackjack wrote: »
    A tip that may help: Jim has a skill called Quick Study or something. The description makes it sound like it sets your magic score equal to your speed score but it actually sets your speed equal to your magic. Really handy on a magic powerhouse like Philosofly.

    That's actually a bug so I wouldn't rely too much on it.

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    BlackjackBlackjack Registered User regular
    Boooo!

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    3DS: 1607-3034-6970
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    TriskTrisk Registered User regular
    Blackjack wrote: »
    A tip that may help: Jim has a skill called Quick Study or something. The description makes it sound like it sets your magic score equal to your speed score but it actually sets your speed equal to your magic. Really handy on a magic powerhouse like Philosofly.

    That's actually a bug so I wouldn't rely too much on it.

    Really o_o? I haven't actually noticed a use for it in the flipside, brodent perhaps or maybe ninja z but they lack any significant magic moves it seems! Maybe I'll give it a try!

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    BlackjackBlackjack Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Brodent has his fire spell that gains effectiveness with each use, but if a fight is dragging so long that you're hoping for significant increases in its power, it's probably a fight you're going to lose.

    Yeah, I just looked at my party list and only three characters would benefit at all from their speed becoming their magic, and only Brodent would benefit more than 40-50 points. Add in the fact that to use it at all they have to be set to Jim, which means huge Magic gains and I'm not seeing any use for the skill as intended. I did miss Ninja Z though so maybe he's great with it?

    Blackjack on
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    3DS: 1607-3034-6970
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    RainbowDespairRainbowDespair Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    The patch is live so now it sets Magic to Speed like it was supposed to.

    Brodent is the obvious choice but there are some other fun combos with it now. Whereas before, it was pretty much an outright "I win" on any character with high Magic & low speed.

    Keep in mind that you don't get the spell until fairly late so you can always have them train under another trainer for most of the game and then switch to Jim near the end.

    RainbowDespair on
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    shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    Ah, thanks for reminding me about the treatbeast error (it's the cattivan; treatbeast was its original name). I just deployed a patch for the game so it'll use the correct name.

    I can confirm the XBLIG version is still using the bugged wrong name, not that that fight was super hard on Normal, so it wasn't a big deal.

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    TriskTrisk Registered User regular
    Blackjack wrote: »
    Brodent has his fire spell that gains effectiveness with each use, but if a fight is dragging so long that you're hoping for significant increases in its power, it's probably a fight you're going to lose.

    Yeah, I just looked at my party list and only three characters would benefit at all from their speed becoming their magic, and only Brodent would benefit more than 40-50 points. Add in the fact that to use it at all they have to be set to Jim, which means huge Magic gains and I'm not seeing any use for the skill as intended. I did miss Ninja Z though so maybe he's great with it?

    Switching partymembers to other trainers is vital, it's a temp thing for one fight, and those stat gains are not really all that huge, especially for the possibility of a single fight. That said, Brodent is Moira, he generates turns like a mother and being able to stun an enemy every round basically is a huge boon because if he just boosts himself and uses defense or items he gets turns so quickly.


    Still, against four enemies that would be a challenge on their own it's hard to figure out how to A)Keep my party alive and B)Deal enough damage, because if the fight takes longer than a couple rounds I just don't stand a chance against their speed and damage output.

    INSAAAANEEEEEE

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    RainbowDespairRainbowDespair Registered User regular
    Ah, thanks for reminding me about the treatbeast error (it's the cattivan; treatbeast was its original name). I just deployed a patch for the game so it'll use the correct name.

    I can confirm the XBLIG version is still using the bugged wrong name, not that that fight was super hard on Normal, so it wasn't a big deal.

    That would be because the XBLIG version is unpatched.

    Deploying patches to the game on Steam is a breeze - I can fix the game, Steam's upload tools just upload the files that have changed, and I can have the new version up on Steam's servers in a snap. If it's something as simple as a typo fix, I can fix the game, upload it, and make the new version live on Steam in about 5-10 minutes total. Deploying patches to the XBLIG version is a pain - you have to upload the entire game again, stick it in peer review & wait until 8-9 other developers say everything's fine. Minimum time you're looking at is 2 days but for a patch (which tends to get less interest than a new game), you're probably looking at a couple weeks. And if you do multiple patches, the time it takes to get each new one passed tends to increase.

    I'm probably going to wait a few more days to make sure that the game is as stable as possible & then submit that to XBLIG as a patch. Hopefully, this way we'll only have to do a single patch for the XBLIG version.

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    shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    Ah, thanks for reminding me about the treatbeast error (it's the cattivan; treatbeast was its original name). I just deployed a patch for the game so it'll use the correct name.

    I can confirm the XBLIG version is still using the bugged wrong name, not that that fight was super hard on Normal, so it wasn't a big deal.

    That would be because the XBLIG version is unpatched.

    Deploying patches to the game on Steam is a breeze - I can fix the game, Steam's upload tools just upload the files that have changed, and I can have the new version up on Steam's servers in a snap. If it's something as simple as a typo fix, I can fix the game, upload it, and make the new version live on Steam in about 5-10 minutes total. Deploying patches to the XBLIG version is a pain - you have to upload the entire game again, stick it in peer review & wait until 8-9 other developers say everything's fine. Minimum time you're looking at is 2 days but for a patch (which tends to get less interest than a new game), you're probably looking at a couple weeks. And if you do multiple patches, the time it takes to get each new one passed tends to increase.

    I'm probably going to wait a few more days to make sure that the game is as stable as possible & then submit that to XBLIG as a patch. Hopefully, this way we'll only have to do a single patch for the XBLIG version.

    I figured it was probably the black sheep version. Still, I appreciate that support for 360 didn't get dropped, it would have been a shame after playing the previous 3 there.

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    AskerothAskeroth Registered User regular
    Deploying patches to the XBLIG version is a pain - you have to upload the entire game again, stick it in peer review & wait until 8-9 other developers say everything's fine.
    Something else I don't get. I assume the "content ratings" are made by the peer reviewers, but how did Penny Arcade 4 get Violence=3/3, Sex=3/3, Mature Content=3/3. I get the violence and the mature content, but sex? Doesn't the 3/3 imply there should be a lot of sex or sexual language? I think I would be hard pressed to even think of any that were in the game. Did I overlook something? It seems like the whole process is... bizarre. Because there are a lot of sexual indie games on there that earn a 3/3 sex rating, and Penny Arcade ain't one of them.

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    TriskTrisk Registered User regular
    HAS ANYONE BEEN ABLE TO BEAT THE BONUS END GAME CONTENT ON INSANE YET? if so teach me your ways, I am killing myself trying here, urgh!

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    JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    The trick, if you're having trouble, is to look to make sure you're not trying to force a party member to do something it's not good at. Mr. Beaks isn't a healer. Vendorr isn't an offensive caster.

    Take a look at trainer skills and the monster's overall moveset. For example, let Moira train Brodent and he'll have access to all her interrupt attacks. See that synergy there? You'll figure the rest out as you go along, trust me!

    It's also a good idea to figure out teams. Monsters have roles and classes, just like characters in other games. Some work better with certain kinds of monsters than others- they can prepare enemies for brutal physical beatdowns, or boost magic to drop the pain on foes. On the other hand, they can also help cover weaknesses, like low defense.

    JaysonFour on
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    RainbowDespairRainbowDespair Registered User regular
    Askeroth wrote: »
    Deploying patches to the XBLIG version is a pain - you have to upload the entire game again, stick it in peer review & wait until 8-9 other developers say everything's fine.
    Something else I don't get. I assume the "content ratings" are made by the peer reviewers, but how did Penny Arcade 4 get Violence=3/3, Sex=3/3, Mature Content=3/3. I get the violence and the mature content, but sex? Doesn't the 3/3 imply there should be a lot of sex or sexual language? I think I would be hard pressed to even think of any that were in the game. Did I overlook something? It seems like the whole process is... bizarre. Because there are a lot of sexual indie games on there that earn a 3/3 sex rating, and Penny Arcade ain't one of them.

    The XBLIG ratings are extremely strict. Here's the description of 3/3 for Sexual Overtones:
    3 - The game contains words or activities that amount to obvious sexual innuendo or mildly explicit sexual descriptions or images or sexual posturing.

    There were a sexual innuendo joke or two in the game so I set it to 3/3 just so nobody would have an excuse to fail us.

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    CTMCTM Registered User regular
    I'm stuck on one fight in the game so far on insane, so if anyone has any strategies, tips are welcome!
    The fight against your shadow/grayed-out doubles is insanely hard. They all have so much HP, and after just a couple turns they can one-shot anyone in my party, especially Gabe who deals 3k damage with one punch? That treasure chest better be amazing haha!

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    Corp.ShephardCorp.Shephard Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    CTM wrote: »
    I'm stuck on one fight in the game so far on insane, so if anyone has any strategies, tips are welcome!
    The fight against your shadow/grayed-out doubles is insanely hard. They all have so much HP, and after just a couple turns they can one-shot anyone in my party, especially Gabe who deals 3k damage with one punch? That treasure chest better be amazing haha!

    I found that this fight was the hardest in the game.
    It was entirely too easy to beat most bosses in the game as Brodent with Moria's full speed bonuses + Breather is a perma-stun. However this is four dudes so it's not really possible to stun lock.

    There are some methods that would probably make it easier that I didn't even know about when I beat it. For instance, I didn't know that "Dread", a Mr.Beaks power, is a long duration AoE stun. I thought it was single-target and sort of ignored it for a long time because Breather makes it redundant. If I had been able to drop that AoE Stun early... well I probably would have been able to beat that fight much sooner.

    This was the only fight that required me to innovate with the "switch" item. Really fun gameplay when I got down to it.

    Basically I started the fight with people who could summon aid. Clutch call, Summon Skeleton, Let's Positive Thinking!. I always stun Moria out the gate with Brodent; otherwise she can stunlock someone with Triple tap. The enemy's damage is so high and they're so hard to control that you have to let people drop. The only person I kept in the fight permanently was Brodent because his high speed makes him a constant value for stuns, poisons, interrupts, etc. When someone dropped I would switch their corpse out for someone fresh. My switch was fully upgraded so I was able to pull in really hard hitting mages like Niri-giri and smash the enemy team with MP3 spells. Niri-Giri is really good for this fight (and really the whole game after you get him, no mages manages to smash faces as hard as him); his Tsunami can do ~7000 damage to each team member and with Hestia he is very survivable. The whole process of victory was very chaotic. I remember I brought Vendorr in just so I could use his "free item" to get one bonus switch for another character. After a few Tsunamis and powerful spells I reduced the enemy down to two people. I stunlocked Hestia and killed Gabe, slowly killing Hestia with like Goomez or something silly. I switched through half the cast over the fight.

    Ironically my bread and butter strategy usually revolves around buffing allies with Buffz and then smashing enemies. I think I used like one Buffz on my kill fight. You can't bother using turns for such things. Your first party should be expendable and you switch in you hardest hitters so they hit the fight with full health and 3MP for their first turn.

    Is there anything tougher than the fight detailed above? I thought maybe the Colosseum might have something new after I beat the game like last time but that fight was wayyyy to easy. I was half hoping for another Cameo from a certain super were-combo lady (I always liked her battle music...) but I couldn't find anything!

    Corp.Shephard on
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