the bow and rail gun are awesome on regular enemies, and in the first two boss fights
theseus and the bull are really tough with the bow and even tougher with the rail gun, since you have to be stationary to use them and you really need to be able to dash basically whenever against them
I've had the best results with the shield and the sword in that fight
If you're playing with KBAM you can basically spam the rail gun special while dashing nonstop.
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mosssnackYeah right, man, Bishop should go!Good idea!Registered Userregular
I actually had my first clear with the sword. Figured it’d be a throwaway run. Turns out, the sword upgrade that quickens the nova + deflect boons from athena is strong af.
Regular attack also procced doom, which was perfect for throwing in between dashes and deflect novas
I had a run last night where I managed to get a total of 8 Casts, Blade Rift Level 3, and something like 80% bigger. So I would just constantly dash, B, dash, B, dash, B around rooms until everything was dead.
Also had blade rift on dash, spear bounce, and lightning on spear special
I was an untouchable god for all of Asphodel and Elysium, then completely shit my pants and died to Theseus with probably 1% of his health left. C'est la vie.
THESPOOKY on
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
They probably aren't gonna but I kinda want the last weapon to have like a dead cells style turret component to it
I don't think it would really work in this game but they were my favorite way to kill stuff in dead cells
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
I think Blade rift casts, especially with Artemis tracking, are probably a little too strong at this point. You can pretty much just dash constantly to avoid everything and let the rift do all the work. Since the damage stacks and can't be blocked, that last boss fight gets pretty trivial.
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
I finally beat theseus, what worked for me was just a fuck ton of artemis buffs including the epic tier "300 damage when your cast dislodges" and also enough ammo upgrades that I had 8 shots for the boss fight plus the one boon that makes the ammo dislodge faster
I had some other boons but I feel like they could have basically been anything and it still would have worked fantastic
It is an incredibly broken build if it comes together cause it can't be blocked or avoided unless they're in the invulnerability state and I don't think I'll ever beat the current iteration of theseus again without it
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mosssnackYeah right, man, Bishop should go!Good idea!Registered Userregular
I’d say upgraded sword nova plus deflect is way too strong as well. Nothing was landing on me and I was just pouring out damage.
I actually like that this game has extremely strong, synergistic options. There are definitely some things I think were too strong individually that got nerfed (like pre-Elysium Athena dashes that did like 80 damage and had giant AoE), but the fact you can feel like you've got some ultra-powerful thing going with a couple boons and a hammer upgrade all focusing on one aspect of the character is totally fine. The game is still really hard if you dump a ton of difficulty skulls on it.
So before this recent run, I had beaten Meg once. After this run, I got past the bone serpent, it was a pretty huge swing. I was using the shield and got an upgrade where throwing it struck people with lightning. Then it could hit 8 people before coming back. Then a bunch of just vanilla damage upgrades and finally, the ability to attack while the shield is still in flight and the shield will hang out for even longer. So I was just hanging out as far away as I could, throwing the shield over and over again. Unfortunately, I got it pretty bad in a shield + witch combo room and then got nickeled and dimed out of the rest of my hits. A sweet run though!
And why is there even an option to give people more gifts when only the first one does anything?
So before this recent run, I had beaten Meg once. After this run, I got past the bone serpent, it was a pretty huge swing. I was using the shield and got an upgrade where throwing it struck people with lightning. Then it could hit 8 people before coming back. Then a bunch of just vanilla damage upgrades and finally, the ability to attack while the shield is still in flight and the shield will hang out for even longer. So I was just hanging out as far away as I could, throwing the shield over and over again. Unfortunately, I got it pretty bad in a shield + witch combo room and then got nickeled and dimed out of the rest of my hits. A sweet run though!
And why is there even an option to give people more gifts when only the first one does anything?
they all do something- you get more conversations with them and unlock more hearts with them by giving them gifts (which gives more story about them in the codex and, at certain hearts, new conversations with them as well)
And Theseus goes down finally. I got to him with the shield + fog cast upgrade and that was enough to slowly whittle him down. The Minotaur is significantly less dangerous if you're always blocking and I tried to whittle Theseus down as much as possible before finishing off the the Minotaur. Once Theseus got to 50%, it got a lot harder but I was able to dodge/block most of his incoming damage while firing my cast when I could which got around his shield as long as the damage source is coming from behind him. Rough fight but definitely doable after reaching him a few times.
Time to try finishing the game with other weapons now, the spear looks really cool so I want to finish with that one next but it is harder to get through the normal enemies if you can't block everything and then bull rush to deal a bunch of damage and dodge the remaining attacks.
Does Prometheus do anything besides stealing fire? Thats all I know him for
It's all sort of that, but the full version is more complicated. The version I prefer is this one:
Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus* were responsible for making all the creatures of the earth. Prometheus molded them all out of clay by mixing the water and the earth, and then his brother gave them all the gifts they would need to survive. Epimetheus got started with gusto - he made wolves with sharpened teeth and lions with deadly claws and deer with powerful hind legs to outrun them both. But when he got to man, he found he'd run out of useful things to give him. Without a gift such as had been given all of the other animals, man would surely die, and Prometheus interceded.
It was here that Prometheus stole the fire from the forge of Hephaestus, but it should be understood that the fire was not literally fire. I mean, it was, but it was representative of what the gods had - Prometheus was giving man the gift of civilization, the gift of creativity, and the gift of rational thought.
*Names which translate as Forethought and Afterthought, respectively.
There is also the Mekone story, which is a bit contradictory version of the same thing:
Back in the beginning, men did not know how to sacrifice to the gods properly and the gods needed to instruct them how to do so. They agreed to meet at Mekone, where the gods would choose which parts of the ox were to be theirs and which would be left for the mortals. Prometheus, with his soft spot for mankind, slew the ox and divided it into two piles - in the first, he took the best cuts of meat and hid them beneath the stomach of the ox; and in the second, he took the bones and inedible organs and dressed them up with glistening fat. He invited the gods to choose which part of the ox they would prefer to have burned and sacrificed to them, and Zeus chose the bones, believing it to the be the better of the two.
When Zeus discovered the ruse he was furious, and he took the gift of fire away from man, hiding it upon Olympus. Prometheus took pity on man, shivering in caves in the dark night, and stole fire back for them.
Part of my big personal preference for Prometheus is that he is a culture hero, a role that is very frequently occupied by trickster gods but isn't really a part of Hermes whole deal (Hermes has essentially every other trickster thing going for him, but he is decidedly a member of the Olympians and not an advocate of man except in specific circumstances).
Edit: Oh and also Prometheus had one of my favorite poems written about him, and who can say which came first on that one:
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself—and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.
Straightzi on
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
there's a lot to like about Prometheus
for my part I've absolutely adored the musicality of his name ever since I was a kid
yes hello I'm ready to be shoved into a locker now
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
Listen half the reason I made a thread about this game was as a backdoor opportunity to talk about Greek mythology
Straightzi on
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
also a greek myth inspired folk/Americana throwback concept album
incidentally I'd never heard it before and I hated it at first but then I realized I was wrong and had to listen to epic pt 2 on repeat for two days
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
i'd like to see some titans as enemies
even though i guess that doesn't really jive with the game's chronology
but imagine fighting alongside Briareus
with fifty heads and one hundred hands
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Oh also tangentially related to Prometheus stuff:
Epimetheus is frequently presented as the person who married Pandora (who was given to mankind as another revenge against Prometheus). Prometheus warned him not to accept any gifts from Zeus, but as has been mentioned, Epimetheus was an idiot.
Anyways, all that Pandora stuff happens, you've heard that story, but after that, she and Epimetheus have a kid, a daughter named Pyrrha. Pyrrha marries Deucalion, who was the son of Prometheus and someone (there are a variety of conflicting answers). Pyrrha and Deucalion then went on to be the stars of the Greek version of the Flood Myth, as the only survivors who subsequently repopulated the world (which they sometimes do by throwing rocks over their shoulders and sometimes do with run of the mill cousin-sex).
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
man what a bum deal she got! if only there was some word for a victory which came at a cost which outstrips the gained value.
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
man what a bum deal she got! if only there was some word for a victory which came at a cost which outstrips the gained value.
Pyrrhus and Pyrrha are names that turn up a bunch in Greek history/mythology - it's commonly accepted that they mean that the person in question had red hair, which was not exactly a common trait in the Mediterranean.
Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles (who was a necessary part of winning the Trojan War in various post-Iliad sources and committed some really fucked up war crimes in the Aeneid) was also known as Pyrrhus due to the color of his hair.
So Pyrrhus of Epirus, the man from whom we get Pyrrhic Victory, was either a redhead or was named for Neoptolemus, who was still largely considered a hero in Greek sources.
And Theseus goes down finally. I got to him with the shield + fog cast upgrade and that was enough to slowly whittle him down. The Minotaur is significantly less dangerous if you're always blocking and I tried to whittle Theseus down as much as possible before finishing off the the Minotaur. Once Theseus got to 50%, it got a lot harder but I was able to dodge/block most of his incoming damage while firing my cast when I could which got around his shield as long as the damage source is coming from behind him. Rough fight but definitely doable after reaching him a few times.
Time to try finishing the game with other weapons now, the spear looks really cool so I want to finish with that one next but it is harder to get through the normal enemies if you can't block everything and then bull rush to deal a bunch of damage and dodge the remaining attacks.
The spear has a lot of reach. You can catch multiple enemies in a line and stun-lock them down. It's pretty neat.
Also, a fun thing to do with spear that I did last night was grab the Daedalus Hammer upgrade that ditches the spin attack for rapid thrusts on button hold along with the Athena boon that lets your attacks deflect. If you position yourself properly you can basically just sit there spamming far reaching attacks on enemies, even bosses. You can stand right in front of Megaerus and just hold the attack button down and she'll do no damage to you. Hydra requires a little more finesse but works essentially the same. Didn't make it all the way through Elysium. Just started playing yesterday though, so we'll see if I can't net myself a clear soon.
UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Hermes is also one of my favourite episodes of Miscellaneous Myths (my absolute favourite is Dionysus because that dude's backstory fucking goes places)
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I think that apparently I missed some Orpheus content! Let me look that up real quick.
Okay, it looks like this is actually one of the Orphic hymns. So first, a primer on Orphism and mystery cults. Mystery cults were a small religious sects or philosophical societies that were based, at least on some level, around secrecy - you could not fully learn the tenets of a mystery cult without being initiated into one. In addition to Orphism, there's the Eleusinian Mysteries (which were based around Demeter and Persephone (who also figures pretty heavily into Orphism, as I'll get into)). In many ways these cults are closer to modern religion than other Greek practices, but we also don't know a whole lot about them because there was a lot of stuff that was kept secret. Pretty much all we've got on Orphism is based on a collection of poems called the Orphic Hymns.
Orphism was a religious sect or cult that was allegedly based on the teachings of the mythical Orpheus, who was able to relate the knowledge of these mystery cults based on his trip to the underworld. Orphism espouses an idea similar to reincarnation, stating that mortals have divine souls (given to them by the gods) but mortal bodies (created from the dust of the titans), and that their souls can be reborn in new mortal bodies.
This comes from a story about Dionysus, one of the Orphic Hymns which proposes an alternate origin for Dionysus. This origin states that Dionysus was born twice - the first time he was born (to Zeus and Persephone, probably, although possibly from Zeus and Demeter), he was tricked and killed by the Titans, who Zeus proceeded to smite with a lightning bolt, but not before they dismembered his body and ate his flesh. Only his heart was left, which was given to Semele (the mother of Dionysus) who consumed it so that she could give birth a second time. Mortals were made of the dust that was equal parts the divine soul of a god and the mortal bodies of a Titan, therefore the cycle of rebirth.
What makes this interesting is that the first time Dionysus was born, he was named Zagreus, and only on the second time he was named Dionysus. That's the Zagreus that the myth is referencing.
Except we also have the Zagreus of our game, who I would consider a different figure. And part of the reason that I would consider him a different figure is because there is a very scant amount of evidence to that fact - he is referenced as the son of Hades in a lost Aeschylus play. But the name is a strange coincidence, and there's no such thing as coincidences in mythology, so there may be something as to why these two gods are named the same thing. And there are a number of later sources that can complicate things further, of course, by conflating the two Zagreuses.
I think that apparently I missed some Orpheus content! Let me look that up real quick.
Oh yeah. You need to
ambrosia up Orpheus so he feels like singing again, and maybe talk to him long enough that Zagreus runs through all his ridiculous boasts, and then when you pick up Dionysus powerups Zag will get the idea to pull an extremely hardcore prank. You may also have to ambrosia Dionysus a couple times? Can't confirm because I give away the stuff left and right.
I love the incidental god dialogue in general. Everybody's got kind of a Rucks level of flavorful reactivity, about your weapon or some other god you've talked to. Weirdly, nobody's noticed when I ate some chaos - maybe it just weirds them out or maybe those lines coming soon.
Posts
If you're playing with KBAM you can basically spam the rail gun special while dashing nonstop.
Regular attack also procced doom, which was perfect for throwing in between dashes and deflect novas
bnet: moss*1454
Also had blade rift on dash, spear bounce, and lightning on spear special
I was an untouchable god for all of Asphodel and Elysium, then completely shit my pants and died to Theseus with probably 1% of his health left. C'est la vie.
I don't think it would really work in this game but they were my favorite way to kill stuff in dead cells
I had some other boons but I feel like they could have basically been anything and it still would have worked fantastic
It is an incredibly broken build if it comes together cause it can't be blocked or avoided unless they're in the invulnerability state and I don't think I'll ever beat the current iteration of theseus again without it
bnet: moss*1454
there's like 2-3 awesome combos for every weapon, and then the artemis cast and ares cast combo trees as well
And why is there even an option to give people more gifts when only the first one does anything?
they all do something- you get more conversations with them and unlock more hearts with them by giving them gifts (which gives more story about them in the codex and, at certain hearts, new conversations with them as well)
Time to try finishing the game with other weapons now, the spear looks really cool so I want to finish with that one next but it is harder to get through the normal enemies if you can't block everything and then bull rush to deal a bunch of damage and dodge the remaining attacks.
Looks like Hermes to me?
gonna give you some rad shoes
Gimme all the trickster gods
Still glad to have Hermes in the game though, even if I personally was rooting for Apollo (maybe there's still a chance for more gods though).
It's all sort of that, but the full version is more complicated. The version I prefer is this one:
There is also the Mekone story, which is a bit contradictory version of the same thing:
Part of my big personal preference for Prometheus is that he is a culture hero, a role that is very frequently occupied by trickster gods but isn't really a part of Hermes whole deal (Hermes has essentially every other trickster thing going for him, but he is decidedly a member of the Olympians and not an advocate of man except in specific circumstances).
Edit: Oh and also Prometheus had one of my favorite poems written about him, and who can say which came first on that one:
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself—and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.
for my part I've absolutely adored the musicality of his name ever since I was a kid
yes hello I'm ready to be shoved into a locker now
incidentally I'd never heard it before and I hated it at first but then I realized I was wrong and had to listen to epic pt 2 on repeat for two days
even though i guess that doesn't really jive with the game's chronology
but imagine fighting alongside Briareus
with fifty heads and one hundred hands
as he betrays the titans held underneath tartarus
Epimetheus is frequently presented as the person who married Pandora (who was given to mankind as another revenge against Prometheus). Prometheus warned him not to accept any gifts from Zeus, but as has been mentioned, Epimetheus was an idiot.
Anyways, all that Pandora stuff happens, you've heard that story, but after that, she and Epimetheus have a kid, a daughter named Pyrrha. Pyrrha marries Deucalion, who was the son of Prometheus and someone (there are a variety of conflicting answers). Pyrrha and Deucalion then went on to be the stars of the Greek version of the Flood Myth, as the only survivors who subsequently repopulated the world (which they sometimes do by throwing rocks over their shoulders and sometimes do with run of the mill cousin-sex).
ah like a 3rd place near-victory royale
Pyrrhus and Pyrrha are names that turn up a bunch in Greek history/mythology - it's commonly accepted that they mean that the person in question had red hair, which was not exactly a common trait in the Mediterranean.
Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles (who was a necessary part of winning the Trojan War in various post-Iliad sources and committed some really fucked up war crimes in the Aeneid) was also known as Pyrrhus due to the color of his hair.
So Pyrrhus of Epirus, the man from whom we get Pyrrhic Victory, was either a redhead or was named for Neoptolemus, who was still largely considered a hero in Greek sources.
The spear has a lot of reach. You can catch multiple enemies in a line and stun-lock them down. It's pretty neat.
Also, a fun thing to do with spear that I did last night was grab the Daedalus Hammer upgrade that ditches the spin attack for rapid thrusts on button hold along with the Athena boon that lets your attacks deflect. If you position yourself properly you can basically just sit there spamming far reaching attacks on enemies, even bosses. You can stand right in front of Megaerus and just hold the attack button down and she'll do no damage to you. Hydra requires a little more finesse but works essentially the same. Didn't make it all the way through Elysium. Just started playing yesterday though, so we'll see if I can't net myself a clear soon.
FFXIV - Milliardo Beoulve/Sargatanas
"Who's the Greek god you see the most influence of in your everyday life? Wrong, it's Hermes."
So what do you think about Orpheus's hymn to Zagreus? Process and all. I think
Okay, it looks like this is actually one of the Orphic hymns. So first, a primer on Orphism and mystery cults. Mystery cults were a small religious sects or philosophical societies that were based, at least on some level, around secrecy - you could not fully learn the tenets of a mystery cult without being initiated into one. In addition to Orphism, there's the Eleusinian Mysteries (which were based around Demeter and Persephone (who also figures pretty heavily into Orphism, as I'll get into)). In many ways these cults are closer to modern religion than other Greek practices, but we also don't know a whole lot about them because there was a lot of stuff that was kept secret. Pretty much all we've got on Orphism is based on a collection of poems called the Orphic Hymns.
Orphism was a religious sect or cult that was allegedly based on the teachings of the mythical Orpheus, who was able to relate the knowledge of these mystery cults based on his trip to the underworld. Orphism espouses an idea similar to reincarnation, stating that mortals have divine souls (given to them by the gods) but mortal bodies (created from the dust of the titans), and that their souls can be reborn in new mortal bodies.
This comes from a story about Dionysus, one of the Orphic Hymns which proposes an alternate origin for Dionysus. This origin states that Dionysus was born twice - the first time he was born (to Zeus and Persephone, probably, although possibly from Zeus and Demeter), he was tricked and killed by the Titans, who Zeus proceeded to smite with a lightning bolt, but not before they dismembered his body and ate his flesh. Only his heart was left, which was given to Semele (the mother of Dionysus) who consumed it so that she could give birth a second time. Mortals were made of the dust that was equal parts the divine soul of a god and the mortal bodies of a Titan, therefore the cycle of rebirth.
What makes this interesting is that the first time Dionysus was born, he was named Zagreus, and only on the second time he was named Dionysus. That's the Zagreus that the myth is referencing.
Except we also have the Zagreus of our game, who I would consider a different figure. And part of the reason that I would consider him a different figure is because there is a very scant amount of evidence to that fact - he is referenced as the son of Hades in a lost Aeschylus play. But the name is a strange coincidence, and there's no such thing as coincidences in mythology, so there may be something as to why these two gods are named the same thing. And there are a number of later sources that can complicate things further, of course, by conflating the two Zagreuses.
Oh yeah. You need to
I love the incidental god dialogue in general. Everybody's got kind of a Rucks level of flavorful reactivity, about your weapon or some other god you've talked to. Weirdly, nobody's noticed when I ate some chaos - maybe it just weirds them out or maybe those lines coming soon.