I told you, bro! I warned you!
The first two biomes I think its definitely better to take it slow, clear them out, take what you can (give nothin’ back). A couple of the later biomes are best (in my humble opinion, scooted through rather quickly, so these first two are going to be the foundation of your run.
I don’t want to pick a knit, but you warned of electrical wands arcing in/near water.
You did not warn of giant vats of whiskey, with a side-chamber battery, that triggered as soon as you lifted the wand off the pedestal…
That, my friend, is a fucking nasty trap! ;)
After dying (how did i die? What just happened?), i was like…how did i not see that channel below the obvious trap? Even funnier, was it didn’t trigger until i actually took the wand. I landed.looked at it. clicked E and looked at it some more. And then when i decided that, eh, it’s a mediocre wand, but maybe a 4th wand that teleports me will be useful at some point, i put it in the 4th slot, and when i closed the window…I was dead. lol
Ohh, yeah, those. Yep. Good times.
There are many traps. Even one where you grab a wand under water and it sends an electrical charge through the water. You can get away if you’re quick.
So, all jokes about the font aside, i’m having so much more fun with this now that i can easily parse this…
And it just leaves me with lots of questions:
so is kicking just a mostly limited situational thing then? I’ve found a few times where i might ‘kick that barrel over there first’, but it seems a really niche thing…
I’m starting to get into the mindset that a wand is just a spell chassis - and that i might just find a wand i keep only because i intend to replace the junk that’s in it with better/more appropriate stuff. If this is the case, then i can see why you’d almost always want shuffle off - why risk the wrong effect going off when you can plan the correct one?
So could this be a good wand to build off?
Other than the always casts personal flamethrower, which seems iffy, casting everything all at once seems like it would be a pretty good thing, right? As it is now, it casts a pair of flamebolts, with gunpowder between them, which feels to me more like a really bad thing.
Of course, saying that, right now the best thing i’m liking in this run is this kinda dumb bubble-spark wand, which by itself is…kinda dumb…but when paired with my homing shots, actually works better than my other wands
Kicking is useful for getting stuff out of your way…sometimes.
That wand has a very cool cast delay, yet…three seconds recharge time might not sound like much, but it can be almost an eternity in this game. There are tricks to lowering it with certain spell combos, but I would probably not look at that wand.
Ok, i think i just tipped the ‘wow, wtf?’ moment. Normally, you can’t go too far to the right when the game starts. This one instance, i could. It was tough, but i slogged it over the hill, and so, i’m like, fuckit, i’ll keep going. Then i hit a biome i’ve never seen before desert then another pyramid…and then, things got interesting…but then i died. And so the next one, i decided to go the other way, and found…a cursed item?! Suffice it to say, that run was also short, but changing the ground i walked on as i walked on it was really cool.
So, what’s good wand theory? I’ve been kind of focused on ‘fast/low mana’, and thats great until like the third biome. Any tips for what to help me get there and beyond?
Snowy Depths is a harsh place no matter what your wand. It’s more important to go slow and try to get the drop on things there, which is easier said than done with the large open spaces.
As for wands, there are some tricks making them shoot faster but it largely depends on what spells you find, of course. I love the lightning bolt but it is definitely not without it’s dangers! The zap spell can also carry you for a bit. Trigger spells can do some fun things for filling space with themselves, and there is the lightsaber you can make with the little green bar whose name escapes me of your wand shoots fast enough and fills with mana at a great enough rate.
The wiki has more info than you could possibly want, of course, and Reddit has had some interesting stuff, too, when I’ve searched. Things I never would have thought of on my own.
The map layout / world has a Terraria feel to it. Many different and hidden biomes. Some secret areas, items, etc. Of course this is all well outside of the main goal…progressing down due to the “roguelike” structure, unlike Terraria.
Also I think the location of each biome is fixed, but the layout, enemies, items, etc are random.
There are also from what I can tell rare events that can occur.
The locations of the map pieces relative to each other are fixed, yes, and their internal layouts are random, also yes.
In addition, it’s quite right to say that most of the game lies outside the critical path of “pressing down,” but I still think that should be your first objective. I am proof that basically just doing that can last a large number of hours!
Is this just like the Souls games in that you just quit, which autosaves everything, and then next time you play, you continue from there?
Correct.
I have been finding some really cool things.
I have also been dying in really cool ways…
I don’t even use that spell anymore. I consider it a trap!
I’m more like, “the shield, it does nothing!”.
Funny thing about that was I didn’t have an explosive spell anywhere, and i really wanted to take a look at that wand - so i thought, maybe this saw cuts wood? Well, it doesnt…
The drill will, though. And it’s safe! Although I think it will make sparks from metal, which is probably bad if you’re covered in oil.
The permanent shield will only absorb so much damage, and since it’s pretty close to your body, it won’t always protect from large hitbox projectiles (which I’m pretty sure those stupid saw blades qualify as). I don’t even touch those sawblades anymore in normal play, although I’ll bet there’s something you can do with them to make them worthwhile.
I wish there was more information when you mouseover spells. I just had a run end because i picked up a new spell: plasma torch (i think? Something plasma). SO i load it up in a wand, and i go to test it. I was levitating a bit, with a little bit of forward momentum and…the torch appeared directly in front of me, and i pathed through it, taking 130+ hp damage. It’d be funny if it wasnt so sad.
It’s still funny.
I know your pain, though:
lol, i know that one! I died to it a little while back - i was playing around with something and I think it was on a trigger - these bolts would fire and where they landed, they cast plasma beams. Just fucking nuts, and the crazy part was i was thinking…hmm, this is weird, but i think i can manage it. Except like 3 cast later and it got a little hairy, and i spammed a bunch of shots and there were plasma beams all over the place…
There is both plasma beam and plasma cutter, though I can’t remember the difference between them. Someone on Reddit a couple of years ago put got the homing perk (or maybe a wand with homing, they don’t really say), but combined with plasma beam(or cutter?)…
Noita’d.
