what are boons i should be looking for with the rail? i never manged to make this thing work in the beta, and that trend appears to be repeating itself in the final release.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Made it out with the secret rail aspect but I was eating shit the whole way
Used up all my death defiances in Elysium, got them all back from the unique character encounter there, then lost them all again between there and the final boss
I have no idea how to optimize that gun, it feels like it takes forever to kill anything
I only have two gun clears but Flurry Fire + Concentrated fire and Cluster Bomb + Rocket Bomb were both busted.
what are boons i should be looking for with the rail? i never manged to make this thing work in the beta, and that trend appears to be repeating itself in the final release.
Bomb boons tend to be incredibly good, shotgun is fun but high risk, most of the other shot boons tend to be eh.
I ate an engineer
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited October 2020
The main attack for the rail is a lot of quick attacks, so stacking boons seem like the way to go there - Demeter and Dionysus. Or you could turn it into a lightning gun with Zeus and have it spread the damage around a bit better - it does so little damage with the attack itself that the chain lightning will potentially fuck up enemies more.
For the lob, it depends a bit on your playing style, I think. Artemis and Aphrodite will get you massive damage, and possibly some side benefits if your enemies survive, or if you're lobbing enemies that are far away and not really a concern for you yet, Ares might be better - he takes a bit longer to work, but he does a lot of damage in the end.
And if you're doing secret aspect, I would switch everything around - there I want Demeter or Dionysus on the special, and the other one (or maybe Artemis) on the main attack.
Straightzi on
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
I know @The Zombie Penguin likes the Eris rail aspect quite a bit. I'd imagine they would have some advice for you.
The main attack for the rail is a lot of quick attacks, so stacking boons seem like the way to go there - Demeter and Dionysus. Or you could turn it into a lightning gun with Zeus and have it spread the damage around a bit better - it does so little damage with the attack itself that the chain lightning will potentially fuck up enemies more.
For the lob, it depends a bit on your playing style, I think. Artemis and Aphrodite will get you massive damage, and possibly some side benefits if your enemies survive, or if you're lobbing enemies that are far away and not really a concern for you yet, Ares might be better - he takes a bit longer to work, but he does a lot of damage in the end.
The main attack for the rail is a lot of quick attacks, so stacking boons seem like the way to go there - Demeter and Dionysus. Or you could turn it into a lightning gun with Zeus and have it spread the damage around a bit better - it does so little damage with the attack itself that the chain lightning will potentially fuck up enemies more.
For the lob, it depends a bit on your playing style, I think. Artemis and Aphrodite will get you massive damage, and possibly some side benefits if your enemies survive, or if you're lobbing enemies that are far away and not really a concern for you yet, Ares might be better - he takes a bit longer to work, but he does a lot of damage in the end.
The main attack for the rail is a lot of quick attacks, so stacking boons seem like the way to go there - Demeter and Dionysus. Or you could turn it into a lightning gun with Zeus and have it spread the damage around a bit better - it does so little damage with the attack itself that the chain lightning will potentially fuck up enemies more.
For the lob, it depends a bit on your playing style, I think. Artemis and Aphrodite will get you massive damage, and possibly some side benefits if your enemies survive, or if you're lobbing enemies that are far away and not really a concern for you yet, Ares might be better - he takes a bit longer to work, but he does a lot of damage in the end.
And if you're doing secret aspect, I would switch everything around - there I want Demeter or Dionysus on the special, and the other one (or maybe Artemis) on the main attack.
hrm yea the best run i had trying to finally get a clear with this thing was with dionysus on the attack and the hammer that gives you +6 shots and better accuracy. It worked alright but when i got to the final boss i was delivered pretty quickly to sad town, damage was fairly lacking the entire way, but might have just been a problem with my support boons to the main stuff.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I don't think I've ever had a hangover build that really went off.
The dumbest run I’ve ever done in terms of how easy it was, was cluster bombs plus rockets with an Aphrodite boon on special. Just walked up and rocket shotgunned everything to death.
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
edited October 2020
Rail:
Eris aspect is strongest. Maxed out it's +75% damage on bomb absorb, which is a fantastic buff since it works for all your damage sources.
What to choose depends on your hammer updgrades - if you get one of:
Rocket
5 bombs
Triple Launch
as your first option, then pump boons into your special:
aphrodite is a nice big punch of damage, and gives weak status effect
combos nice with dionysus on main attack, and the dual status effect combo is very powerful
or go with artemis crit% on bombs, and then try and get status effects on cast and attack
if you ever get the option to do rocket + 5 bombs as your second hammer upgrade, do that and get the best weapon combo in the game
if you get gun attacks, I enjoy getting the +6 ammo fast shooting hammer, and the explosive fire or chain shot upgrades
then you'd want chain lightning with jolted, or doom with doom stacks and delay, and a special boon that adds a status effect to multiply the damage
the rail is my favorite weapon, there's a lot of variation with how you can put builds together
I find that hangover builds require you to be a bit hyperactive. Land your five shots/punches on one guy, dash to the next, repeat ad nauseum. You never want to waste a stack by hitting someone who's already got 5.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I find that hangover builds require you to be a bit hyperactive. Land your five shots/punches on one guy, dash to the next, repeat ad nauseum. You never want to waste a stack by hitting someone who's already got 5.
Yah, that just feels like a real rough strategy in the whole last stage and the final boss fight.
I could imagine hangover + festive fog with those synergies working pretty well, since you can alternate between spamming out the casts and putting down the hangover damage and it all amplifies pretty well. But I've never managed it.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Yeah, it's all about dodging to the other side of the map and letting the hangover run its course
With certain setups on your alternate attack or cast you can still do something useful, but honestly just hiding while the poison gets shit done for you is a fair call too in my book
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darunia106J-bob in gamesDeath MountainRegistered Userregular
Guess I like living on the edge then cuz I still prefer those rng spikes of healing to only getting healed for 3 per room.
Plus you can improve how much darkness heals you by getting buffs to how much darkness you can collect. But I guess that's more rng bs.
I think you're missing the thrust of the argument.
Darkness is not very useful in the lategame, so you are not encouraged to get it as a general rule.
If you are on the bleeding edge of Heat doing runs, you will get very little darkness at all. Even if you do get darkness from bosses, you are double dipping with the charon well after each stage.
You won't get any darkness in biome 4, the hardest biome.
Biome 4, the hardest biome and also the one right before the final boss, has incredible healing from heals per room. Before the final room of each section you can get somewhere around 15+ healing just for clearing out a bunch of fuckmuppets.
Healing per room helps you more in the latter stages of the game and gives you a bigger spike when you tend to need it.
More like I was trying to save face because I feel like a dumbass for not realizing this after 50+ clears, beating extreme measures Hades twice, and reaching heat 14.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
With incremental advantages like that it's really easy to see something that's working and just stick with it -- it's not like you're gonna do the math on how much life each ability gained you every run and when it saved you from deaths. I know for a fact that there were a few runs where I ran through biome 4 on a knife's edge and life-per-room almost certainly saved me from a death, but did it? Did saving that death save a run or just make me more relaxed? I couldn't tell you. I'm guessing that in my ~20 clears there was at least one that was saved by the healing, but I'd have a hard time arguing two or more.
Granting that I'm a +3 per room guy myself, I can see the argument for the health-from -darkness side. The bosses are the major gatekeepers, so you're likely to be at your lowest after them-- and the post-boss fountain isn't a full heal, so if you're getting Darkness as a boss reward that can refill you the rest of the way, plus incidental pickups. I'd have to run the numbers, but I feel like you probably get close to the same amount of HP across the run, just in larger and less predictable bursts.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
My main source of healing are Charon Wells. Either the instant heal or that Hydralite is good stuff and I'm often bursting with coin since I don't go to his shop until wallet's fat or I think a boss room is coming.
My second clear came on a run where I had the Zagreus Aspect on the rail, got the shotgun upgrade, then Aphrodite on attack and Artemis on dash attack (plus general crit chance). Throw in Ares on Cast and Call, and by God, I was cooking with gas
Then I got the triple bomb and it was downright silly
First clear! Finally unlocked Aspects and picked the Bow because I've heard about Aspect of Chiron's usefulness. Every time I got a Boon I tried to shove it into Special or survivability stuff. This is also the run I first met Demeter and her various Chill boons.
As for the story stuff
Makes sense why Zagreus can't leave the Underworld for long. Dead people don't belong on the surface. Though there must be more to it than just that considering Zagreus is technically a god and gods don't just die at birth for no reason. Nor do they suddenly revive from what was supposedly true death without reason.
Edit: And second clear couple hours later. Though how I don't know. I had a Spear and got Long Range Attack + Triple Spear. My boons were Doom on Attack, Demeter Call, Festive Fog on Cast, Wavedash with Razor Shoals, Fountain = Full HP + 3% damage stacking, 14% damage reduction in Festive Fog, 20% damage reduction below 40% health, +22% damage after Death Defiance, and an extra Dash. No Deflection, no nutty combos, no healing, nothing that clicked together in a way that I can look at it and say "Yes this is how I won." I didn't even lose a Death Defiance until the final boss himself. As far as I could tell I just wavedashed around and stayed at reach stabbing shit while throwing hangover bombs at stuff.
Oh, and the run beforehand, I "borrowed" gold from Charon when I was trying out the Fists and he promptly wrecked me. I demand a rematch in a weapon I actually got some boons in!
Made it out with the secret rail aspect but I was eating shit the whole way
Used up all my death defiances in Elysium, got them all back from the unique character encounter there, then lost them all again between there and the final boss
I have no idea how to optimize that gun, it feels like it takes forever to kill anything
Ares doom on the secret aspect fucking wrecks shit. I haven’t played in a bit but I’m up to 14 heat on that weapon.
Mix ares with either Artemis or Aphrodite (ares/Aphrodite makes dooms continuously hit) and get the Daedalus upgrade that gives infinite ammo. You will melt people.
The ideal build takes the doom delay boon and the boon that allows you to stack damage before the doom hits. With infinite ammo you can make the doom hit very large, and if you are running Artemis you can take the all damage crits boon and the mark debuff and have your dooms suddenly hitting for thousands
I'll also vouch for Zeus on the attack for the secret rail is great with infinite ammo. Fire rate is so fast that the chain lightning melts crowds.
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I've only tried the rail secret aspect once so far, but it seems like the "attack pierces/+50% damage to armor" upgrade is almost essential. Otherwise, dumb mobs keep getting in the way of me trying to shoot the blobs!
Getting that Butterfly Ball encounter in Elysium without armor damage boons seems like a real bad time.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Also it's not strictly true that you don't have to deal with armor in boss fights
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
what are boons i should be looking for with the rail? i never manged to make this thing work in the beta, and that trend appears to be repeating itself in the final release.
Eris Rail: You want a stacking debuff of some kind on your main attack - Dio is king, Demeter is also very good here, Ares is also worth mentioning. Special you want somethign that hits hard. Artemis or Aphordite are your best bets, Athena is good too.
Eris Rail mostly invovles ignoring your cast to a degree, and just sending bombs into the air as much as possible. Hot take: Rocket upgrades are pretty fucking weak, as they throw off the timing on when you can fire a new bomb. You always want to have a new bomb in the air. Carpet bom that shit. In between carpet bombs, use your dash attack cosntantly to reposting and blow things up.
Best upgrades for the rail are anything that makes your shot more powerful, and anything that makes your bomb more powerful - 5x bomb and or super-bomb but now it self damages are the highlights here.
Athena dash is real good, obviously. But mostly, it's just amazing to be able to bomb yourself, kill most things with the bombs (they hit HARD), and get a big arse damage bonus, which in turn lets you blow things apart with your main gun. I hope that helps.
I can record and post some gunplay tomorrow or somehting.
Rail was purple with Darkness boost so I decided to give it a whirl before bed. See what boons are available, weapon upgrades, playstyle, maybe even catch a fish before getting slaughtered so I could go to bed.
And then I kinda just...went all the way for my third clear. Weapon upgrades were triple Special and piercing Attack. Boons were a mix of Artemis and Demeter powering up my Special and Cast, Zeus adding Chain Lightning + Jolted to my Attack, and Dionysus with the ever lovely full heal plus damage boost with every fountain. I had no Deflect or extra Dashes or anything else with some utility. Just straight damage with lots of explosions and lightning. Theseus got absolutely destroyed and Hades didn't fare much better.
Now it is way late and I am absolutely going to regret not pausing the run midway through to go to bed. If that's even possible.
Getting that Butterfly Ball encounter in Elysium without armor damage boons seems like a real bad time.
idk, i've never had any trouble with armored enemies. The only time armored enemies annoy me are when the elysium warriors turn into also armored little blobs but otherwise I barely notice.
I'll advocate for Rocket Bomb on the Eris Rail: my experience trying to activate the damage boost was that I got slapped in the face a lot while trying to move into the space occupied by the enemy I was firing at, since I tend to fire from far enough away that they haven't started attacking yet. Rocket Bomb lets you choose an arbitrary time to blast an enemy at point-blank range, making activating and retaining your damage boost much easier.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
I generally lean towards taking an armor breaking hammer boon if offered one unless the other options enable a busted build or I already have a busted build going
But I also think being able to make enemies susceptible to hit stun as fast as possible is absolutely critical, if I'm running with a build that just isn't coming together being able to bust armor makes a big difference
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I only have two gun clears but Flurry Fire + Concentrated fire and Cluster Bomb + Rocket Bomb were both busted.
Bomb boons tend to be incredibly good, shotgun is fun but high risk, most of the other shot boons tend to be eh.
For the lob, it depends a bit on your playing style, I think. Artemis and Aphrodite will get you massive damage, and possibly some side benefits if your enemies survive, or if you're lobbing enemies that are far away and not really a concern for you yet, Ares might be better - he takes a bit longer to work, but he does a lot of damage in the end.
And if you're doing secret aspect, I would switch everything around - there I want Demeter or Dionysus on the special, and the other one (or maybe Artemis) on the main attack.
You would what? you would what??
Reign secure, and in my choice.
hrm yea the best run i had trying to finally get a clear with this thing was with dionysus on the attack and the hammer that gives you +6 shots and better accuracy. It worked alright but when i got to the final boss i was delivered pretty quickly to sad town, damage was fairly lacking the entire way, but might have just been a problem with my support boons to the main stuff.
I love dio's primary attack with fists or the spear
Eris aspect is strongest. Maxed out it's +75% damage on bomb absorb, which is a fantastic buff since it works for all your damage sources.
What to choose depends on your hammer updgrades - if you get one of:
Rocket
5 bombs
Triple Launch
as your first option, then pump boons into your special:
aphrodite is a nice big punch of damage, and gives weak status effect
combos nice with dionysus on main attack, and the dual status effect combo is very powerful
or go with artemis crit% on bombs, and then try and get status effects on cast and attack
if you ever get the option to do rocket + 5 bombs as your second hammer upgrade, do that and get the best weapon combo in the game
if you get gun attacks, I enjoy getting the +6 ammo fast shooting hammer, and the explosive fire or chain shot upgrades
then you'd want chain lightning with jolted, or doom with doom stacks and delay, and a special boon that adds a status effect to multiply the damage
the rail is my favorite weapon, there's a lot of variation with how you can put builds together
I only really use hangover as a way to get the second debuff on a dude so I can wail em
Yah, that just feels like a real rough strategy in the whole last stage and the final boss fight.
I could imagine hangover + festive fog with those synergies working pretty well, since you can alternate between spamming out the casts and putting down the hangover damage and it all amplifies pretty well. But I've never managed it.
With certain setups on your alternate attack or cast you can still do something useful, but honestly just hiding while the poison gets shit done for you is a fair call too in my book
More like I was trying to save face because I feel like a dumbass for not realizing this after 50+ clears, beating extreme measures Hades twice, and reaching heat 14.
I just had a run where I had the triple special + hangover on cast + chill on the special + extra damage on hangover enemies + ticking damage on chill
Yeah that was a lot of damage
Then I got the triple bomb and it was downright silly
As for the story stuff
Edit: And second clear couple hours later. Though how I don't know. I had a Spear and got Long Range Attack + Triple Spear. My boons were Doom on Attack, Demeter Call, Festive Fog on Cast, Wavedash with Razor Shoals, Fountain = Full HP + 3% damage stacking, 14% damage reduction in Festive Fog, 20% damage reduction below 40% health, +22% damage after Death Defiance, and an extra Dash. No Deflection, no nutty combos, no healing, nothing that clicked together in a way that I can look at it and say "Yes this is how I won." I didn't even lose a Death Defiance until the final boss himself. As far as I could tell I just wavedashed around and stayed at reach stabbing shit while throwing hangover bombs at stuff.
Ares doom on the secret aspect fucking wrecks shit. I haven’t played in a bit but I’m up to 14 heat on that weapon.
Mix ares with either Artemis or Aphrodite (ares/Aphrodite makes dooms continuously hit) and get the Daedalus upgrade that gives infinite ammo. You will melt people.
The ideal build takes the doom delay boon and the boon that allows you to stack damage before the doom hits. With infinite ammo you can make the doom hit very large, and if you are running Artemis you can take the all damage crits boon and the mark debuff and have your dooms suddenly hitting for thousands
Basically, if a buff doesn’t help me or just helps tangentially in a boss fight I don’t take it.
In fact I think its only irrelevant in Elysium, ironically (2 if we count some variations in biome 1)
Let enemies attack them or dash through them or place them next to each other so they hurt themselves
Eris Rail: You want a stacking debuff of some kind on your main attack - Dio is king, Demeter is also very good here, Ares is also worth mentioning. Special you want somethign that hits hard. Artemis or Aphordite are your best bets, Athena is good too.
Eris Rail mostly invovles ignoring your cast to a degree, and just sending bombs into the air as much as possible. Hot take: Rocket upgrades are pretty fucking weak, as they throw off the timing on when you can fire a new bomb. You always want to have a new bomb in the air. Carpet bom that shit. In between carpet bombs, use your dash attack cosntantly to reposting and blow things up.
Best upgrades for the rail are anything that makes your shot more powerful, and anything that makes your bomb more powerful - 5x bomb and or super-bomb but now it self damages are the highlights here.
Athena dash is real good, obviously. But mostly, it's just amazing to be able to bomb yourself, kill most things with the bombs (they hit HARD), and get a big arse damage bonus, which in turn lets you blow things apart with your main gun. I hope that helps.
I can record and post some gunplay tomorrow or somehting.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
And then I kinda just...went all the way for my third clear. Weapon upgrades were triple Special and piercing Attack. Boons were a mix of Artemis and Demeter powering up my Special and Cast, Zeus adding Chain Lightning + Jolted to my Attack, and Dionysus with the ever lovely full heal plus damage boost with every fountain. I had no Deflect or extra Dashes or anything else with some utility. Just straight damage with lots of explosions and lightning. Theseus got absolutely destroyed and Hades didn't fare much better.
Now it is way late and I am absolutely going to regret not pausing the run midway through to go to bed. If that's even possible.
idk, i've never had any trouble with armored enemies. The only time armored enemies annoy me are when the elysium warriors turn into also armored little blobs but otherwise I barely notice.
you can generally quit out of any room after you've cleared the enemies.
But I also think being able to make enemies susceptible to hit stun as fast as possible is absolutely critical, if I'm running with a build that just isn't coming together being able to bust armor makes a big difference
Eris rail or one of the shields is my fave so far
Chiron bow, try for Aphrodite special and chaos special boons.
I've also seen Chaos shield with zeus special do naughty things.
Here's where I posted my first 32 heat win: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/42936540#Comment_42936540