That is true, but keep in mind that your damage starts increasing a lot slower (by %) once you already have the best skills maxed and are left trying for basic training. I feel like the boss health curve doesn't really account for the slowdown in damage increase. Also, Keep in Balance is the most annoying boss ever. Tick Tock is close, but before the boss health curve goes completely nuts.
Agreed! I think I've convinced myself that taking the 'normal' rewards on the Balance floor just to make it less annoying is worth it.
I suspected that about the bosses and am glad to hear that confirmed. And very good point ArtNJafter day 800-900 you're pretty topped out. I've added these notes into the guide. Do you guys have any thoughts about indicators that you are ready to move to the next difficulty level, and still be able to make it to day 1000? I'm on hell 7 right now and am finishing my last x3 run, and wondering...The rate of mutation seems to be increasingly an issue? In hell 6 I could make it to day 1200 left overnight, and now I can only get to about 1100.
Hey guys. Here to share a quick observation. Ring MK-2 when maxed gives these attributes: +65% gold earned +20% damage I compared my earnings with and without the ring on for two runs. This ring only affects the gold earned in battle. It doesn't affect bank and statue earnings. The difference in gold earned in battle with and without it was about 21%. Still worth to put on, but the extra gold isn't as high as you'd think.
It's not much, however when you combine it with a bounty hunter, and 5 of those rings, it gets to be a big boost. In the first few days, for example, getting 25K from a battle, and around day 900, ~35 million. There's also two other necklaces, the exp and the research ones that give you goldsounds like you might have been wearing those too? Unfortunately bounty hunters are so weak, imo, that you want to sub them out around day 800 (before the merc only tower fights).
yeah I know - but I only have two of those rings so far so the benefit for me is far less. Which merc do you swap living sword with?
After a while I went with skeleton, because he has only has 20 skills vs 22, and can level up bounty hunter more quickly, and I only used blacksmith at the before reincarnating anyway. One thing too is that there is no ricochet bonus in the hell store, only penetrations. So as far as party member benefits go, that's a better bet. That said, I wish I had not awakened one of them. They level up bounty hunter much faster with fewer skills. I was using Blade, Orc, Wraith, and EyeWraith and Orc were the only ones that could benefit from the bounty hunter's party skills (penetration/ricochet). And I would sub skeleton out with Ogre. Ogre and Orc together both benefit from huge weapons, and make the water dungeon fierce because of their stuns. If you give them 2-3 asps they'll stun even more. I'd consider putting more asps on Ogre since his huge weapons can penetrate indefinitely with his legendary. But now I'm running a spirit party. Skeleton can use my old bows once I have better one's for light. I do however, keep him unequipped for the first 500 days or so. (I can special enchant his weapon so it is ready when I want) This saves some money and helps me get to max enhance level more quickly in the first 200 days. One tip from the G+ communities about using Blade: give him 2 or 3 asps so his prey skill can max quickly will increase your parties damage 200%! That will hurt his overall damage some, so maybe Eye would work better as a main going that route. If he is your main, you can look at his ammo and see how many hits he is gettingif he is getting 86% crit or whatever, see how long it takes you to get to 200 crits and if you would benefit from speeding that up.
I've been meaning to ask you how the spirit party was going. You ran Mr Blade before that, right? How do they compare? Which spirit ends up being your main?
I'm very happy with the spirits. I've been running with Fire as my main, because I figure his photoelectricity bonus (100% to crit damage) would be maximized that way, but I'm wondering if Nature would be better, because I think the bash skill ends up more useful than eagle eyebosses don't hang out at the edge of the screen! I've given water a rend mod, since she has the only anti-armor weapon, and I've also given dark an anti-magic mod...I figure its a little diversification. Fire spirit's haste is sweet, and I love it when nature mutates bosses into weaker trees. So they are pretty fun. I am going to try a party that was recommended on the G+ forums and compare notes, but it will be a day or two. That party is: Love main (dmg×3,rend,magic,asp mod), blade (cri, Aspx5 mod), ogre (axe, aspx6 mod), wraith (wand, duplicate love mod), goblin (dagger, dmgx5, ASP mod). For late days, 600+ I swap wraith with snake Special mod (dagger, dmgx5, ASP mod) (thanks, Wesley L., G+ community) And I'll see how it compares...One thing of note is that I realized your main does the damage of 2 mercsthe formula was adjusted in one of the updates, so the merc's damage reduction is lower. Your main ends up doing most of the damage because of this, but when things start getting hard that's when having strong mercs makes a real difference.
Newbie Questions Hello started playing this game a few days ago and have a couple questions regarding strategy. I've read the entire thread and got some great information regarding team composition and most important items. I'm on my 2nd run in the game my 1st I did normal to 500 then reincarnated because I needed some speed ups from the reincarnation store. I'm doing hell for my second run and currently at day 200 everything seems very easy so far in clearing towers 20-40 days before the hard limit and day battles I don't get hit. 1st ) Should I continue all the way to day 1000 or reincarnated after 500? I would like to get some of the auto functionalities from the ruby store. 2nd.) At what point do you guys focus on getting relaxation room for +exp. I'm mainly spending all gold on bank/statue and leftovers go to relaxation
1) Even though I can clear day 1000, I reincarnate at day 500-600 just because the game lags at day 800-1000 and the amount you earn from Endless Waves on day 500 and day 1000 isn't that wide enough to be worthwhile. 2) I always go for Lab first and then Relaxation room. The EXP is invaluable
Regarding 2 at how much do you prioritize the relaxation room over say banks/statues? I also go lab first but I'm trying to figure out if there is a good ratio between doing relaxation and banks/statues. Or do you go full lab and full relaxation before doing statues/banks?
I usually do a mixture of bank/statue/relax until relax is at like levels 100-150, then I focus entirely on relax. I can usually get it maxed by day 190 w/o the Nature reduced cost attribute. A rule of thumb I use to measure this is - can I get 1-2 levels of Relax per day? If the answer is no - focus on bank/statue.
So the third boss is out of whack yeah? If you are pushing a new difficulty, doing it by day 60 can be impossible, but then you can hit the next few well ahead of schedule. I did 3 at day 65, five days late, best I could do, and just got through 7 at day 101, 39 days ahead of schedule.
There's the potential for a lot of powerful research to be unlocked during the first 60ish days; maybe that explains it? I don't tend to have any problem with any of the bosses until the twins on floor 13...of course, I'm trying to do that one on day 120ish sometimes...but I'll actually have to change from money to legendary ring on my main sometimes. The 2nd twin is a little harder to kill. As for relaxation, if I am doing it manually I tend to keep the price of statues and relaxation even, and banks about half the cost of statues. Once that ratio is achieved, I'll go all out and buy a bunch of relaxation. If I'm on ai build, my ratio is 1 relax, 2 statue, 3 bank, 2x. I don't get any training until it is either dirt cheap for me or I've finished upgrading relaxation. Before I had nature reduction, I usually had relaxation fully stocked by day 150ish—but bear in mind, the first 20 days I would cloud reload if I didn't get any economic skills improved, and I would also cloud reload the first 5-6 days to get level 3 potential off the bat. I think spending the extra few minutes to get potential off the bat is always a good idea, but as far as the reload for economic skills, I wouldn't suggest it in unless you are at a new difficulty level—it's going to be a tough slog ahead!
Hey Solar, how's your experimental team doing? I've hit a plateau at Hell 5 and am looking for suggestions to accelerate the game. Did Dark then Nature, so won't be getting a new dungeon for a while. My mods for all weapons are each of everything, but an extra DMG to replace Ammo.
Hm, experimental team...before I hopped on the spirit train I was running blade, eye, orc, wraith, and skeleton sub ogre. That was pretty good, but I found the spirits were stronger, and more fun once I had them. One interesting possibility is Orc + Ogre + mage + snake + wraith/sub goblin after tower level 29 You'd lose bounty hunter, but bank is more important. So with this, you make the most out of hell store skills—focus on huge weapons, then assassinate, and fireball...Or lance. I don't know, maybe the money is more important the research late game, but slime single-handedly saves you from all the trouble with reload mutations and has better AoE damage. I might try this team soon, because they take 1/5 the medals to promote as the spirits...I could get them all to level 100+ now, which is a huge milestone! Also, this works really well with the water dungeon because of orc and ogre's smite and stun abilities...couple that with assassination...Maybe give one of each a rend/anti-magic mod too. I might play with that one, but I need some more weapons first since I just upgraded quality by 4%. There's some more party configurations in the linked guide UPDATE: Tried this party out...Winning streak must cap out at something, though it doesn't say in the skill details. Snake is a beast!!!! Especially when at level 180. Easily the biggest damage dealer in that group. But overall, not too impressive. For the same amount of medals, I can get spirits to level 80 (they are tier 5) and the starting characters (tier 1, 120 medals for first promotion) to level 120. And the spirits are stronger at level 80...I was wondering if it would be good to switch it up because of that sweet 50% character damage on level 100...but it's definitely not. And once you get used to playing with haste (fire spirit) it's hard to go back to normal speed!
Wow, fantastic guide! Thanks for making it, and to all who contributed. # It's going to be an incredible help for me.
I'm noticing that Living Sword's slow seems to add to Nameless' slow. Living Sword does no damage, but I do think he offers more team-benefits than skeleton as a way to get bounty hunter. Purely as a side benefit, you can much later switch him to blacksmith without sacrificing the bounty hunter. I dunno, neither is great, but I think I'll go back to Living Sword since slowing boss speed is kind of a big thing until your run is going strong.
Do people get the enchant = 2 levels before going far down the money-side? I haven't really done a cost-benefit analysis, but its pretty clear to me that if you are pushing on a new difficulty you'll need to pay out some extra gold if you don't get the enchant doubler or you wont have the damage to do the early bosses. I guess this may not matter for patient people that don't rush to new difficulties -- but I'm not one of them lol. The money-side achievement that really costs a lot of research points (and thus days) is the % bank income per achievement. So this run I picked up the enchant doubler just before doing that.
