One other question - is there any reliable way to make it more likely to encounter NPCs like Patroclus?
I’m in the middle of a really good run with tons of amazing powerups and squandered four Death Defiances by doing some dumb things (three + one from a keepsake).
As luck would have it, I ran into Patroclus in Elysium so I was able to replinish all of those Death Defiances.
It almost seemed like the game was giving me a mulligan because of the circumstances, but I can’t tell if that’s the case or if I just got super lucky.
Would not using the mirror upgrade that gives more frequent gold, hammers, etc, more often affect Patroclus? I’m not clear if those increased odds are applied to just resource rooms, or any other kind of room.
I’ve had so many runs where I’m spending all my dice trying to pull Death Defiance out of purple bowls in the Satyr rooms (and desperately hoping for more bowls), that I don’t think the game is giving me a break when I die too many times in Elysium.
I do the exact opposite, which is part of what makes this game so much fun, the variety of tactics.
Once you’ve done them once or twice I find the miniboss chambers far easier than the final chamber in the other paths. And since the rewards for the miniboss chambers are double health/gold/pom or better boons I feel it’s better to do both minibosses first unless you specifically want the reward for one of the other chambers.
I do the minibosses first just because I want to heal up after them. Ideally the third or fourth has the snack (if the fifth, there’s too great a chance I’ll lose a life.)
If you skip a Hammer in Tartarus, it’s pretty safe to say you’ll get another chance at it in Asphodel at the latest. Occasionally, one will also get two Hammer rooms in Elysium. Once in a while, you’ll also get a Hammer chamber in the Temple of Styx. So, it’s possible, although not super-likely to get two Hammers even if you skip them in the first two levels.
I think you might be guaranteed two even if you have none entering Elysium. It only happens once-in-a-while because you usually have at least one by then. I haven’t tested this, though
The game will pretty much try to force-feed you two hammers (all the way to having them show up as a satyr reward in Styx if you still don’t have two), and will never get three except with the anvil. It makes sense to pick the hammers early just so that they stop taking up the boon slot in shops.
I just finished a Demeter cast run a few minutes ago, with Achilles, which makes it even nuttier. If you haven’t yet, try to grab the Artemis Duo next time. It makes that cast track much faster
Demeter’s Cast was a bit underwhelming when it got added to the game way back, but they turned them into a viable force of nature over time. If you combine it with Glacial Glare and Arctic Blast (see Kolbex’s screenshot) and then also upgrade the frequency in which you can drop your Cast as well as the number of Casts you can drop, you can basically just spam them and focus on dodging otherwise. If an enemy gets hit by two of them simultanously, it’s basically a cascade of Arctic Blasts on top of the base damage.
Does Demeter not follow the same rules as other gods? I’ve been digging for a specific boon the last two runs and got no Demeter boons in the Temple. In fact, in the most recent run, I had boons in the shop from Ares and Zeus (and a Zeus door!) when I had not seen them during the entire run, but no Demeter. First time I have ever seen boons in the temple from a good I’d had no contact with I can think of.
Had a goofy as hell run last night. I discovered that with Gilgamesh, if you hold down dash and attack, you dash strike much more quickly than you could attack normally. Add in blade rift on dash, Demeter cast with Aphrodite duo that aims casts at you, and Hermes sturdy on dash and dash-strike to victory.
