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Karina can do many things. Items that can crit are likely to work nicely with her. I do play parties featuring heroes and their combinations you mentioned. The natural combo of Zogg and Jalen can be hard to resist. It is a lot of mana regen on the table and with a little bit of attack damage bonus from Jalen too. If you can also keep buffing health across the party, Crimson Heart can do it up 5000 extra health on all heroes, your party will quite tanky. I used to pick the Thunder Dagger more often in the past, but not anymore. This item has been power crept by too many items. Unless you can sneak in a lot of attacks with Psychic Dagger or something, the scaling on the Thunder Dagger is more on the slower side. I am hoping it gets a buff to reduce the number of attack required from 5 to 4. 4 is more reasonable for a such a slow effect.

The moment I saw the Lockbox, I decided to embrace it and go for the memes. It worked better than I expected, but probably not something I would try again. If the same XZ had a party, he could sit back and enjoy being a glass cannon archer and avoid wasting slots for non standard healing items.

Indeed. This run was very dry for that sweet attack damage. I did not even notice until much later, that the Dark Lamp Relic stopped working. That was such a basic level mistake. The good news is that in the next future runs I was a bit more careful with things like keeping check on the stats.

That ring is almost always good in OMA. It essentially solves the first two Acts. You can however die in Act 2 and onward with it, if you also did not pick up any spellsteal. No matter how low spellsteal is, it always opens up more paths. Most heroes can easily benefit either from ethereal or spell damage. Infused Attacks are also worth picking up, so that Lifesteal works with it too. Fully agreed. I am happy whenever I get to pick up Atreos. It is a versatile tank pick who also shines when you do not have all the proper equipment yet. He can be a bad pick if you value the Lockbox Relic. The negative synergy between these two is very bad. You could end up with negative armor value.

I have not got used to the new model yet. If you are talking about Rash, the goblin, he can be very nasty in OMA. Whenever he shows up, you need to overbuild your health/defense, grab aoe if possible, tons of attack damage & decent speed to kill him before his summons swarm you to death.

@@Shropling Honestly same, when I first saw the new model I thought "Look How They Massacred My Boy", but it's starting to grow on me, partially because Against the Storm, one of my favorite games, recently released a DLC with frogmen.

Too early to tell, at least for me. The previous one was almost iconic. It burned in my brain ;p I have been pondering numerous times about Against the Storm. I even played the demo for a few hours last year and enjoyed it, but I was still on the fence about playing it for prolonged periods of time. As much as I like some degree of city planning, creating efficient routes & taking care of workers is something I loathe. Maybe I am overthinking it, haha. All the power to you and the Frogmen :)

Haha, you are the second person who made this joke about the drill, during the last 24h. It makes me smile :) Weebery must prevail! :) Vinrak's ultimate is one giant Ethereal damage % multiplier. It can truly shreds everything in seconds, especially if the Speedruner's Toy Relic is present. In comparison, Alaric has no inherit Ethereal synergy. I suppose he can still use the Darkbow (Spell power into Ethereal), but I would not call it a strong build. The reason I picked Ethereal here early was because I needed any extra damage to get through the first Act 1. I also needed something to fuel surge, even if was not the perfect fit. Double Drill gives limited sources of repeated auto attacks. They can come in handy when Alaric is mid casting his ultimate ability, due to it's long casting time. Overall, any character stacked with enough sources of Ethereal damage and Ethereal % multiplier will achieve similar results. Maybe some will work a little better with mana regen or spell power, but the difference is usually not that big. You will see what I mean in the upcoming OMA videos :)

Agreed. It quickly became my favorite challenge mode. It will take a while before I resume my regular Flame Master runs on the 1.0 patch. I need to clear my 0.9 FM backlog first :)

This armor piece is called Chainmail of Speed. It has permanent Haste on it. It can be worn at the same time as Boots of the Sun Soul +5. All that extra Dexterity is still being used with Range weapons. I could swear I tried the Darkmoon Robes & Boots of the Sun Soul +5 earlier and the total Armor Rating was lower, assuming you get dispelled in combat.

Yeah, I like this challenge a lot. Heroes that are natural damage dealers tend to work best here. The only thing to worry about is how to deal with Vizera, the spider in Act 4. It's stuns can be back breaking for standard builds, that do not cheat in attacks like mine did. Having an access to a strong repeatable source of stuns yourself can help a lot too. Edit: After playing OMA a bit more, I reached a slightly different conclusion than I had earlier. Vizera is false threat. Sure it is capable of screwing glass cannon builds. However, you also have a lot of time to mitigate this threat. Rash in Act 1 is the real threat. If your single target damage is a little off, you can get overwhelmed by his summons who can taunt over and over again. If you see Rash as the boss, you should put an increased priority on items/skills that deals damage in a radius. This will reduce the risk of dying to the boss.

I have played this game for over 1200 hours, across, the beta, the demo and the current version. There are still many gaps remaining though. It takes me longer to add new items/heroes/skills etc to the list of reliable strategies I am using. The game is balanced up to the Flame Master difficulty. Most heroes can be used successfully at the FM. With the increased difficulties featured in the challenges/custom mode, everything becomes much tighter, which limits the option available. When in doubt, a good Ethereal build with sustain on all heroes and basic defenses can cut through everything :)

Yup, it was one of the hardest I have done so far. The run I lost was winnable, had I done my research earlier and if had made less greedy decisions. You can see the vast difference during my second attempt, where essentially steamrolled it :) Good luck!

Well said :) Damage scaling with debuffs alone can be tricky. Self healing Enemies like the Corruptors can withstand a lot before going down from debuffs. This is why it is often recommended to combine these debuff generation items with something else. It could be the general fitting strategy, such as Bleeds for a physical damage oriented party or anything that 'converts' the debuffs to direct damage (usually ethereal in nature). Sustain on at least 4 out of 5 heroes is usually the way to go as well. Act 3 and 4 can severely punish teams without heals and/or shields. The better the sustain, the more time for ramping up anything that scales.

It basically means how much I used something and/or how impactful it was. For example, if I have a hero like Leuko or Shrop with ~100% chance to critical hit, it would count as 3 already. On a rare occasion, I might raise it to '9001' as meme if the amount of that something is truly absurd. 1 of something, say 1 of Bleed, would a low amount of bleeding, up to 50 from a fight or a single Bleed Orb relic. 2 of bleed would be up to 100. Somewhere between 100-200 it would count as 3. I have done voice recording of the demo, just to see how feasible it would be. The mic quality was below average, sadly. I am not sure I can afford a better mic any time soon. However, the written guide is still a WIP. I hope I can finish it at last before X-mass. I am behind with how to evaluate many of the new items and heroes. I will probably have to side them aside for now or ask other veterans for their input.

See that blue spiky circle surrounding my character? Any mantle spell can absorb Implosion. Eltoora in Port Last has an unlimited stock of the Lesser Spell Mantle spell. Another thing, which I noticed over several runs, is that many monster enemies are seemingly highly discouraged from casting spells, if you are both in melee range already. You can test this by approaching a Zombie Lord with an invisible character and start attacking it straight away. More often than not, these monsters who can also cast spells will avoid doing so, due to the melee range. The same is usually the case when fighting Balors.

@@Shropling - I thought it was lesser spell mantle, but wasn't sure that was enough to stop implosion, since it is an L9 spell. I guess you can cast it a few times on yourself to get L9 protection, but I can never tell how well it works.

Apparently Lesser Spell Mantle has 50% chance to roll enough protection levels. Still better than no protection if nothing better is available. High leveled Wizard and Sorcerer can hard cast the empowered Lesser Spell Mantle and that would have been enough. Maybe one day I will play as one as my main class in the Wailing Death campaign. I have also recorded another two Belial fights. I just made one of them public, but I could link to another if you are interested. Both of them feature the prebuffing phase, which includes the Greater Mantle spell. Due to the way I play the main campaign in chapter 2, by delaying looting until I hit level 17 first, I am almost guaranteed to find at least few Greater Mantle scrolls. Better be safe than sorry, in case the enemy decides to cast Implosion. Aribeth in chapter 4 seems to have very high priority to start fight with this spell.

@@Shropling - Sounds good. Still learning the ins and outs of the game beyond the casual level, so I'll check out your other vids for how to do it.

:) Th NWNEE videos I am posting here are mostly about what is possible to do in the main campaign. Shorter sections like the Belial Fights are just there to showcase what kind of gear you can expect, if you are using similar classes as I do. Cleric 5/Bard 4/main class here is my standard shell. It provides enough experience to reach level 12 in chapter 1, level 18 in chapter 2, level 21 in chapter 3 and just barely miss/reach level 22 by the end of chapter 4. Granted, in order to get such high levels, some optimizations are required, such as finishing the Prologue at level 4, killing civilians at some point of the runs, henchmen quests, killing henchmen in each act 1-3, killing golems when possible (even when the game tells you to grab a key or destroy generators nearby instead) and so on. With each new run I find new ways to get more exp. My only self limitation is that I never use infinite respawning enemies or summons/henchmen for spawning more enemies in general. Your own rules might vary and that is fine. Here is the Cleric 5/Bard 4/Red Dragon Disciple 8 with Scytche: ruclips.net/video/2sYTA1uYagc/видео.html And here is the most recent one with my experimental Monk build. There are quite a few mistakes here: ruclips.net/video/3RZVPthQD-s/видео.html

Not yet, I am afraid. There is a link to full recording of the Helm's Hold part, in the original description. There is no commentary yet. I have been thinking about getting a new headset for quite some time. My current one has poor mic quality. I am still learning many of things, while playing this amazing game. I am currently testing a Cleric 5/Bard4/Fighter 2. He already reached level 11, while still in chapter 1, before the Helm's Hold. I will record that part the same way I did here. If my character ends up dying, due to my mistakes, so be it. He has all the tools to survive the encounter without reloading, but a character is only as good as the pilot behind him and I can get sloppy at times...

Pacifist challenge can be approached 2-3 ways. You could focus on sustain items. Anything that provides increased max health, followed by heal received and shield received bonuses are welcome here. Someone like Ruhn could just keep getting bigger and bigger, with the right items/relics/skill and tank for 60 seconds. It also a good idea to have high and scaling spellpower on support heroes, such as Jalen, Rose or Elios. The more you have heroes like that, the longer you stay and tank. Another way is to get a lot of damage, usually ethereal in nature. There are quite a few ethereal comps that can scale forever and eventually kill the enemies before the timer, while with physical damage is way harder to do (unless you have the new shrop hero). It could be stacking ethereal through debuffs, such as burns or shocks (Zanmar), followed by a lot of attacks (psychic dagger with 30+ mana regen) or just ramping ethereal amplification directly. For example, if you can provide a lot scaling spellpower on your party, the Spectral Origin can provide ungodly amount of extra damage. A hybrid approach is to use a mix of the above approaches, but the damage part would just be there as healing, rather than being able to kill enemies before the timer hits.

Aye, some time ago I noticed that I reduced the time drastically, over the last 100+ runs. I used to frequently have 1h runs on average, but nowadays it is more like 45 min, maybe a little less. Usually when a run takes longer it means one or more of the following: I messed up my party somewhere (often by neglecting sustain), very tough choices (usually when a shop is very difficult to navigate through, without considering a lot of options available) or when I am experimenting. I cannot play the same builds forever. I am slowly expanding the pool of viable builds, but winning is still the main priority :)

Thanks, it means a lot to me, especially now. As far as the recorded games go, newer patch is just around the corner. You will find plenty of craziness there. I have been putting way too many things to do for later. I still want to do another commentary run (I have done one test with commentary using the demo), although my headset is literally falling apart :( I guess I new to find a suitable replacement first and/or consider getting a separate mic.

Spell power Emily tends to work best. Max mana spell power heirlooms can work nicely with her, while those that lower her attack speed should be avoided. Add a bit of ethereal amplification for more ethereal damage and one source of spellsteal for sustain. You can cast her ultimate ability through other means, such as any item/skill that refills mana or through the Speedrunner's Toy relic. The latte makes for some spicy games. In general, you do want relics/origins that will give huge boosts to all heroes, be it ethereal amplification, more spell power or spell steal. Higher attack speed and omni crit (higher crit chance required) can also be nice. I need to explore whether mana regen on Emily is viable, but probably not in most circumstances.

@@Shropling very thorough and well explained answer! Thanks :)

Spoiler: the newer version will debut within the next few days here. I finally I almost caught up with my most recent runs. I have played a lot of runs before, this year, which pushed the schedule back. I do keep all the runs played so far, from the current winstreak, as a separate playlist. The main difference is that the last ~20 runs on it do not have correct time stamps and the list of packages is not filled yet either. I tend to add them once or twice a day, sometimes with an extra comment on top. You can find the full playlist here, including the most recent runs, which are currently set to 'unlisted' due to the reasons mentioned above: ruclips.net/p/PLKZclPq6sY8EiI2c2P6D2rjDU_zX1mD6L

Hi :) I indeed have all the steam achievements, since 26th of January. I posted all the challenges earlier this year and some in the year before (repeats from the beta branch of the game). I might also revisit some of them in future, if my Flamemaster Ascension winstreak ends. Feel free to ask and can drop a link below, in reply Cheers

I am glad to see you back :)

Indeed. Now that the pressure of reaching 100 winstreak is gone, each new run is one meme after another and/or tests more unusual builds ;)

Thanks, although I did mine for the achievement only. I don't enjoy endless gameplay in most games I play. That Azura was slightly different from the current one. The old used to scale with attack speed, which was an unintended interaction. This has been recently removed on her. Have fun with the game :D

@@Shropling oh i see , i havent had the chance to try a proper azura scaling yet. i did beat my record and reached floor 20 but so far if i dont have rose as healer i wont go far . i personally enjoy endless because when i have a good team and it pops off then the run is alrdy over so i like to push my limits with endless.

I can see the appeal. It is just that I can pretty much tell in advance what I can expect out of my party and when it will die. Seeing how far they can go, over and over again, until they die to enraging enemies or if the scaling overflows back to negative values. A long endless run also takes time of 3+ normal ascension runs. In other words, endless is not for me, but all the power to those who enjoy playing it :)

You bet it does :D

Well put. I was in a similar situation before, in the previous winstreak. Back then, my last hero standing was 1 hit away from death. Here it was not as bad, but it still looked horrible. The health bars are bit deceptive, when you have the Ruby Heart Relic. It increases max health periodically, but you still need to heal back to profit from it.

I am afraid I cannot agree with that. He has much more tools available to him, ever since the Mammoth update last year. While he does need a bit of gear to get started, his base stats are quite solid. Sadly, his base attack of 65 will get nerfed to 40 next patch. He was getting online a bit too fast. In general, Act 1 is rarely an issue. You can cruise through Act 1 with Attack Damage, Extra health and a little bit defense every time, including the impossible difficulty. The biggest worry is always the Bandits Event, which is very likely to appear as your first event. This is a feast or famine type of a fight. Savos is very consistent mid to late game. He can be built in so many ways. The core of the build is about getting as many mini bots active as possible. Mana regen and lower max mana take priority, followed by healing your own minions. Attack damage Savos is the easiest to build, especially with the Windcaller legendary. Suddenly, you start buff your party for 100+ per one mini bot. Spell damage seems to be favored by many, but I rarely pick enough SP heroes for it to be worth it. It can still do wonder with Origins though. Attack speed is the hardest one to build, due to what the game considers as the highest stats. Nevertheless, with enough attack speed bonuses, he will turn everyone into machines of destruction. I do feature Savos runs every now and then :)

I do have some 20+ summons comps waiting to be seen, hihi ;p

Indeed. It was another reminder for me to stop playing greedy. There are times when greed is warranted, such as fishing for an exponential growth item, in order to survive late game, but this was not needed here. I really should have gone to shop over the 1 more Elite. Jalen was not fully online, thus more of a bait. I kind of needed another off-tank, as Nox was ever so slightly lacking in his defense and health department. It makes getting one-two shoted by the boss more likely to occur, especially when you go for the trading blows gameplan.

You are correct. I do have an idea how to address it and test the waters. I believe there can be a middle ground between both silent runs and making a commentary every now and then (essentially posting both, but not necessarily for the same video).

The Surge unlock gives you access to Surge heroes, items and two challenges: Relic Squad and Impossible.

Hello there :) I used google translate, which was surprisingly good at getting your message across to me. Lets see if it can work the other way around: Le défi Hardcore peut être difficile, jusqu'à ce que vous vous familiarisiez avec le jeu. Je recommanderais de rendre vos héros aussi solides que possible. Ils auront besoin d’un renforcement de leurs défenses, de leur protection et de leurs soins. Vous aurez toujours besoin de juste assez de dégâts pour tuer l'ennemi à temps. Bonne chance! :-)

@@Shropling Hello, Since then I passed the flame master on the first try and had difficulty with the hardcore challenge but I just passed :) Enjoy!

Hi again, Well done! Flame Master on the first try is a big deal :) Hardcore can be tough, when you are not used to have your guys hard to kill. In a good run when everyone is protected, you might realize that not a single hero died. Hardcore has lowered difficulty level, meaning you can get away with more too :) Keep it up :)

Hello :) You need 3 different tablets, similar to how keys work in the Slay the Spire. In the Last Flame, you get to choose which fights can give you tablets upon winning the fight. You can find the tablet button on the right side of the menu, close to the button that starts combat. Tablets are available at all difficulties above the NOVICE one. Selecting a tablet boosts health of all enemies by 25%, for that fight only. First tablet can be obtained from any normal fight (the first three fights cannot be selected). Second tablet can be obtained from any Elite fight of your choice. Third tablet can be obtained from any Boss of the Act fight.

Soon there will be a commentary, in one of the future runs. Perhaps I can get it done this week. Thanks <3

Eagar still has decent stats... by the standards of Act 1. His scaling and itemization is awkward and his passive rarely provides much on him, other than consuming your Frosts. Apparently, Eagar is not auto attacking, while his ultimate axe is midair. I never cared much about his ulti, since I am replacing him with someone better anyway. In other words, you will always find someone who fills Eagar job better.