High Peak Castle is the last level (before the final boss), and yes, it’s a good difficulty bump. Eventually you will grok it, and learn what to do against every type of enemy, but the first 3-4 times it’s pretty hard.
Yeah, castle enemies are much scarier than any previous. I still haven’t beaten it, heh. Only played a couple runs since the latest patch on a new save though.
Motherf… I just made it to the Hand of the King for the first time and died with him at like 10%. I’m sure there’s another phase or something, but damn if traps just aren’t the best things ever.
No, he doesn’t have a new health bar or anything like that. You almost kill him in your first try!
That’s my second quite-successful run with primarily using a Multiple-Nocks Bow, a ranged trap (Double Crossbow-Matic works well) and Explosive Decoy. This time I pretty much spammed Tactics with whichever of Brutality/Survival gave more health, and focusing on one color seemed much more effective – Timekeeper got absolutely crushed before she could do much to me, and all those elite fights in Castle were /shrug. First time through Forgotten Sepulchre too, that was neat.
The thing that burns my ass about this run is how I picked up Necromancy (stupidly) to check it out and see how I felt about it. It wasn’t awful, but man, Dead Inside or whatever (bonus health, no food heal) would very possibly have gotten me through Hand of the King. Next time!!
Dead Cells was the rare case where I almost beat the boss the first time, and then beat it on the second try. Usually you get super close the first time, then screw it up another 5 or 6 times in a row for various reasons.
Well damn, apparently you can get stuck in the Ossuary. That was a fun run I had going too and a rare blueprint I hadn’t banked yet.
I’ve found so many rare blueprints.
I’ve only ever managed to bank two or three of them so far. Most of the time if I find a blueprint, it means I’m going to die in that level. The game seems to maliciously make sure of it.
Hah! Victory is mine, freaking finally. Ice Shards is incredible. Got a ridiculous Infantry Bow from perfecting Concierge that carried me through the whole game.
Seriously though, Ice Shards.
I do love Ice Shards, but only if I keep finding improved versions of it. Every once in a while I’ll try to stick with it from the beginning, and never find an improvement. If that happens, it turns out, I really should have switched over to something better.
Ice Shards isn’t even about murdering everything.
It’s about letting your other weapon murder everything.
So after Adam’s endorsement, I had to unlock Ice Shards. It turns out what I thought he was talking about was actually Frost something, not Ice Shards.
Ice Shards is… okay. It’s not as good as Frost something, since it doesn’t freeze enemies.
Some combinations of weapons and abilities I’ve been randomly getting have just been so deliciously fun lately. It’s so amazing how different each run feels now thanks to more and more randomness getting unlocked the more you play the game. When I first started playing, I only had access to a small fraction of these possibilities.
Nonono, Ice Shards is amazing. It hits decently hard with a Brutality build and your combo up, and takes like no time to throw. The slow is more than enough; you don’t need the freeze.
Frost Blast is awful IMO. Takes forever to cast. Gimme Ice Xbow, Ice Shards, or Ice Bow any day.
Alright, once I’m done unlocking what I’m currently spending points on, I’ll unlock Ice Bow next.
What’s really well done in this game is all the stuff you pick up that you end up dropping when you die. Like last night alone I dropped something called vampirism before I could bank it. And something called Fastblade or something like that. And a whole bunch of other stuff. Once you see that name, you start wondering “I wonder what those do?” Vampirism seems like an obvious one. I want that so bad!
Vampirism is so disappointing.
It isn’t very good, but it has a niche in hard difficulty modes where health is hard to come by, to be used against elite enemies.
At least the most recent update makes health skills recharge every time a health potion is used. They’re still mostly bad but they might help people having trouble keeping their health up get a bit farther.
Whoo-eee, finally made it to the Slumbering Sanctuary and it was baller as hell. Got my Spider Rune, finally! The new enemy type there sure beat my ass, though :(
The big golems, right? Pain in the ass.
Yeah. I might have been okay if I’d been using a sword or daggers or something instead of the dumb Symmetrical Lance. I’m just no good with slow weapons.