The Ultimate discussion thread

[Kaylon]

1 hour ago, Decadency said:

I can't. I died before. It was so stupid.

Here: 

 

That's really stupid, I thought the game was paused during dialogues...

[wildeyn00700]

7 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

That's really stupid, I thought the game was paused during dialogues...

you think it was the lack of pause?  I interpret it as Decadency clicked on dialogue option 3.  I'm checking to make sure I don't run into an issue.

By the way, thanks for your videos; they have been helpful for figuring out some things for my Ultimate testing (even though your videos aren't for Ultimate, they still contain lots of great info and demonstration).

Edited July 9, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Kaylon]

4 minutes ago, wildeyn00700 said:

you think it was the lack of pause?  I interpret it as Decadency clicked on dialogue option 3.  By the way, thanks for your videos; they have been helpful for figuring out some things for my Ultimate testing (even though your videos aren't for Ultimate, they still contain lots of great info and demonstration).

Yes, I didn't pay attention to the choices on my phone - it looked like he died during the dialogue...

PS. I'm glad my videos were helpful. 

[Decadency]

50 minutes ago, Kaylon said:

Yes, I didn't pay attention to the choices on my phone - it looked like he died during the dialogue...

Yeah. Rymrgand took my soul to the entropy.

[Raven Darkholme]

Either way the game isn't paused during normal dialogues and it might not be paused during those dialogues either.

[wildeyn00700]

4 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Either way the game isn't paused during normal dialogues and it might not be paused during those dialogues either.

Thanks, didn't realize that and may have screwed up a game for not knowing.

[Decadency]

4 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Either way the game isn't paused during normal dialogues and it might not be paused during those dialogues either.

I saw the "Game Paused" message when I interracted with the adra stone before the dialogue

[wildeyn00700]

On 7/5/2019 at 2:40 AM, Decadency said:

This is how I almost failed my run with a stupid mistake but got lucky 

Hey, I was just watching this video (the one your post on page 18 of this thread)  to learn how you do fights, and I noticed something else I have a question about.  The spiderlings were "exalted" by Galawain's challenge.  Is there info somewhere about what the various Galawain buffs do?  I've encountered them all at this point, and many can be figured out by observation (like bullish, prowling, vampiric, and some others), but I am wondering if there is any place that they are explained.  The spiderlings were apparently "energized" which interrupts on crits, which was a big problem for you in that fight, it seemed (amazing you won while getting interrupted that much, actually).  Are they getting that from the exalted Galawain buff?  I don't recall their base stats including being energized, but maybe they have some other ability which does that for them.

When you refer to getting lucky in that fight, do you mean by Brilliant proc'ing off the cloak?

Exalted seems to give alternating buffs to the spiderlings, sometimes robust, sometimes brilliant, so probably sometimes energized as well.  Maybe it alternates between all 6 of the highest level stat buffs.

Edited July 9, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Waski]

3 hours ago, Decadency said:

Actually I did some tests and I think I had a chance to finish the game with 10 days left ><

S**t,  that's quite unfortunate.  So it is faster then it seems. 

[Decadency]

8 minutes ago, wildeyn00700 said:

When you refer to getting lucky in that fight, do you mean by Brilliant proc'ing off the cloak?

Yeah I started the fight with Vela next to me but I just wanted to place a trap. And Brilliant proced cause of the spiderling poison. Also if Vela would've got 1 more hit before I BDD her - she could die.

I had no time to think. I was shoked and did what I could.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Decadency

[wildeyn00700]

8 minutes ago, Decadency said:

Yeah I started the fight with Vela next to me but I just wanted to place a trap. And Brilliant proced cause of the spiderling poison. Also if Vela would've got 1 more hit before I BDD her - she could die.

I had no time to think. I was shoked and did what I could.

Hey - you won.  It was amazing to watch.  I spent something like 2 hours on that fight before realizing that Wurms (chanter) crush the Dire Weavers because they are immune to their powerful web and also they don't trigger tunneling.  I was scared to try summoning Wurms earlier in the fight because Vela becomes visible (not enough room to get her far enough away for her to stay in stealth) and I didn't want to be left with dead summons before I could make new ones, and Wurms are pretty squishy.

Is storm of holy fire the main way you kill monsters once you are high level, after you buff up and protect yourself?

Edited July 9, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Decadency]

13 minutes ago, wildeyn00700 said:

Is storm of holy fire the main way you kill monsters once you are high level, after you buff up and protect yourself?

Not really. But I like how it looks : ) and spiders don't really like fire

Edited July 9, 2019 by Decadency

[wildeyn00700]

Edit: I re-read blade cascade and now I get it.  the 5% chance happens, has a duration, and during that time, which is extended, you have instant recovery on all attacks. 

Edited July 9, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Enoch]

30 minutes ago, wildeyn00700 said:

Hey, I was just watching this video (the one your post on page 18 of this thread)  to learn how you do fights, and I noticed something else I have a question about.  The spiderlings were "exalted" by Galawain's challenge.  Is there info somewhere about what the various Galawain buffs do?  I've encountered them all at this point, and many can be figured out by observation (like bullish, prowling, vampiric, and some others), but I am wondering if there is any place that they are explained.  The spiderlings were apparently "energized" which interrupts on crits, which was a big problem for you in that fight, it seemed (amazing you won while getting interrupted that much, actually).  Are they getting that from the exalted Galawain buff?  I don't recall their base stats including being energized, but maybe they have some other ability which does that for them.

When you refer to getting lucky in that fight, do you mean by Brilliant proc'ing off the cloak?

Exalted seems to give alternating buffs to the spiderlings, sometimes robust, sometimes brilliant, so probably sometimes energized as well.  Maybe it alternates between all 6 of the highest level stat buffs.

@thelee has the details on Galawain's Challenge in his FAQ. 

[Decadency]

42 minutes ago, wildeyn00700 said:

Edit: I re-read blade cascade and now I get it.  the 5% chance happens, has a duration, and during that time, which is extended, you have instant recovery on all attacks. 

I need that buff only for 2 bosses actually. Hauani and Dorudugan. 

[Decadency]

Btw. I've realized that if you don't use anything and you're invis (Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure) and Vela is not in stealth and not terrified than she'll just follow you and enemies will ignore her. Maybe helpful for positioning.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Decadency

[wildeyn00700]

18 minutes ago, Decadency said:

Btw. I've realized that if you don't use anything and you're invis (Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure) and Vela is not in stealth and not terrified than she'll just follow you and enemies will ignore her.

You mean out of combat, from salvation of time stacking from a previous combat, and then you are walking around out of combat and you can invis past other enemies and not worry that Vela will interfere with doing that?  Good to know.

[wildeyn00700]

I just had a thought, while watching Victor's 2 month old theorycrafting/testing vids for Ultimate.  In case anybody forgot or forgets sometimes, if you do manage to initiate a combat while still in stealth, such as via traps as Watcha was talking about, then your recovery time while you maintain stealth gets a huge bonus (-85% I believe), which may help cut down on buffing time and stacking Salvation of Time and things like that.  You can't attack with Scordeo's and keep stealth, but if you were doing non-attack buffing, it may save time in some cases.

Edited July 9, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Decadency]

27 minutes ago, wildeyn00700 said:

You mean out of combat, from salvation of time stacking from a previous combat, and then you are walking around out of combat and you can invis past other enemies and not worry that Vela will interfere with doing that?  Good to know.

No... In Combat. You hold Vela, trigger the fight, go invis, come back to Vela (she's still calm), do your buffs, go invis. You come to enemies and DON'T use anything with Vela (you're invis) and she's still calm but enemies will notice her and she'll become terrified even if you'll stay invis but use Salvation of Time for example.

[thelee]

18 hours ago, wildeyn00700 said:

Which Ashen Maw fights?  Wasn't it you who made the video showing how to stealth past the bridge?  If not, a person showed how to do it.  The other fights other than the beginning of the dragon cave, and the dragon itself, are all avoidable, as far as I saw.  Are you running into some other fight that you aren't seeing how to avoid, or did I misunderstand your post?

it was me, but that was to the cave. it's effectively impossible to stealth back from the cave. so the stealth ends up being moot with my current critical pathing (the stealthing was important before when I wasn't already level 16 in ashen maw so I could hit level 16 after fighting the dragon and then clear it on the way out, but in practice galawain + fire dragon is a bit too tedious/rough at level 15 so i had to re-path it). but yes, what i'm talking about are just those three fights, before the cave and the two you mentioned.

all the fights are eminently doable at level 16, it's just a matter of breaking through the tedium of buffing for huge amounts of time before hand. also, eothas challenge means you really can't spend too much time buffing, because you can end up burning a significant amount of in-game time just buffing, and all that ship travel for all the megabosses is going to be expensive. so this means having to be relatively precise with the amount of time spent buffing, with cushion in case of bad galawain's rolls (since it varies between my practice and real run). it's really my fault, because the way i'm doing this challenge is doing a section with my practice character, rehearsing until it's perfect, and then doing it with my real character, and that translates into (for a combat-dense section like ashen maw) a mind-numbing amount of time just leaving the game running with a stopwatch going for a minimal amount of progress when I could be doing more fun things (including a different deadfire game, not to mention steam summer sale happened).

at least with megabosses or with DLC like FS i can break up the combat with extended sections of stealthing/traveling so it mentally feels like a lot more progress than crawling forward a screen at a time. and all other fights before now have been more interactive and didn't require nearly as much buffing. so it's purely a psychological hurdle, not a mechanical one. some day soon i'll just have to man-up and get 'ir done.

Edited July 9, 2019 by thelee

[wildeyn00700]

A further update: this is very real now.  I figured out the last real issue, which was how to beat Dorudugan with my ranger/chanter.  Previously I beat him, but probably would have broken my weapons from the Abydon challenge (which I have turned off in this test game, but Dorudugan is the only time throughout the game it would have mattered). 

Ultimately, the secret to ultimate is to find the right cheese for each moment.  lol.  Fight cheese (the difficulty and design-laziness of Ultimate) with cheese!  I say to Josh Sawyer, "My cheese is greater than your cheese!"

Just some cleanup testing is left, but that was likely the only real challenge left to figure out, and it was a big one.  However, I can definitely win that fight now, in Ultimate.  Until tonight, I was still somewhat skeptical of my build, but now I am very confident.  There may be about 4 fights that are not quite 100% assured (but each of those fights I won the first time I tried them after I figured them out), and the rest of the game should be close enough to 100%.  Of course, anything can go wrong in Trial of Iron.  I can say with a lot of certainty that it is possible to do Ultimate with this build, possibly after a few (or maybe several) tries.  Possibly a particularly bad Galawain buff might cause a problem somewhere, like maybe on the Water Dragon.  However, with enough mirror-practice, I think that it is realistic to succeed the first time (assuming practicing hard situations in a mirror right before doing it for real).  The 4-ish hard fights can probably get to about a 90% probability of success or so, maybe higher.

On the other hand, with the help of a friend, I realized that the upgraded armor breaking (-2 AR) invocation is really good when appropriate.  It stays on an enemy for the entire fight after just 1 cast, if you have summons hitting.  Very good for dragon fights and for killing various bosses, and even some non-bosses that are slow to kill, like fire nagas.  I didn't realize that on my first playthrough, and it should make the next playthrough easier and faster.

One man's cheese is another man's strategy!

Edited July 10, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[thelee]

5 hours ago, wildeyn00700 said:

A further update: this is very real now.  I figured out the last real issue, which was how to beat Dorudugan with my ranger/chanter.  Previously I beat him, but probably would have broken my weapons from the Abydon challenge (which I have turned off in this test game, but Dorudugan is the only time throughout the game it would have mattered). 

Ultimately, the secret to ultimate is to find the right cheese for each moment.  lol.  Fight cheese (the difficulty and design-laziness of Ultimate) with cheese!  I say to Josh Sawyer, "My cheese is greater than your cheese!"

Just some cleanup testing is left, but that was likely the only real challenge left to figure out, and it was a big one.  However, I can definitely win that fight now, in Ultimate.  Until tonight, I was still somewhat skeptical of my build, but now I am very confident.  There may be about 4 fights that are not quite 100% assured (but each of those fights I won the first time I tried them after I figured them out), and the rest of the game should be close enough to 100%.  Of course, anything can go wrong in Trial of Iron.  I can say with a lot of certainty that it is possible to do Ultimate with this build, possibly after a few (or maybe several) tries.  Possibly a particularly bad Galawain buff might cause a problem somewhere, like maybe on the Water Dragon.  However, with enough mirror-practice, I think that it is realistic to succeed the first time (assuming practicing hard situations in a mirror right before doing it for real).  The 4-ish hard fights can probably get to about a 90% probability of success or so, maybe higher.

On the other hand, with the help of a friend, I realized that the upgraded armor breaking (-2 AR) invocation is really good when appropriate.  It stays on an enemy for the entire fight after just 1 cast, if you have summons hitting.  Very good for dragon fights and for killing various bosses, and even some non-bosses that are slow to kill, like fire nagas.  I didn't realize that on my first playthrough, and it should make the next playthrough easier and faster.

One man's cheese is another man's strategy!

i would love for you to share your current build (stats/race/subclasses). it's really exciting that a non-withdraw-based strategy is going to be viable.

[Decadency]

3 hours ago, thelee said:

i would love for you to share your current build (stats/race/subclasses). it's really exciting that a non-withdraw-based strategy is going to be viable.

Actually I don't use withdraw a lot. Salvation of time and BDD are my main priest skills. Could do that with only scrolls of withdraw.

[wildeyn00700]

12 hours ago, thelee said:

i would love for you to share your current build (stats/race/subclasses). it's really exciting that a non-withdraw-based strategy is going to be viable.

Oddly simple.  The idea is that most fights are auto-win from the start, combined with Vela staying still in turn-based combat.  Plus, she stays in stealth as well, if you are in stealth and if the enemies aren't close.  Even without stealth, of course if she is very far away, she is generally safe anyway.

That narrows the game down to figuring out which fights are more difficult, and doing a combination of finding the right approach and apportioning resources (mostly withdraw scrolls).  For example, the two most extreme fights are probably Beast of Winter and the Water Dragon.  For the Beast, you need to withdraw Vela each time he gets a new 1/4 down in health, as the Souls spawn right near her (and she is fixed in one place because the fight is conversation-teleported-and-forced). The Water Dragon can 1-shot her with Tidal Wave, so you need to withdraw her and/or interrupt him (so better if he isn't Galaway-challenge Unstoppable).  Also, sometimes if a boss is Vampiric, it can change things because your damage is somewhat limited by summons plus perhaps what you can do with your weapon or scrolls.

For Dorudugan and the Ooze, you have to get a bit more creative.  For them, Vela isn't really the problem; their healing is.

So, stats can be pretty much anything as long as you have high perception and int.  I'd probably keep the other stats around 10.  Dex may matter for a few fights where you want intiative, such as in SSS on the little pedestal against the Dragonslayers.  I don't have that figured out exactly.  I won that fight the first time with maybe 12 dex or so, not sure if a lower dex might have been an issue or if a higher dex would have helped (14 dex also helps at the bridge in SSS).  Regarding might, con, and resolve, resolve is probably least important.  Con would just be for fights like spiders (SSS) or the risen dragon, where you will draw some fire.  Might may help heal Vela a bit more with Ancient Memory sometimes, so I wouldn't ditch either one. 

Race is weirdly unimportant also.  You have those dex-infliction-immune slippers from the Deck of Many things merchant for a couple of later fights (Beast and SSS spiders), and the hard fights don't typically involve issues with afflictions.  I went pale elf, but I rarely used their armor ability either.  In theory, you could be a human and take advantage of the no-regen aspect of the God challenges and stay halfway dead (or halfway alive if you are an optimist...) and use that for certain times when you want to jump into a fight but aren't going to be in much danger. 

I picked stalker archetype for ranger for my test run, but I will do a vanilla ranger instead.  Use a boar for its regen, which is really cool to counteract the God challenge (Magran's maybe?).  And of course Troubador for faster re-summoning.  Getting to 20 int is critical; 25 is the next cutoff for another round for your summons, but that doesn't matter much.

Next I'll be plotting a good route through the game and having a re-test of a run-through with everything but Wael on.

Edited July 11, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Nail]

I hope to invest some time into this in near future!

Read the entire thread and I must admit - you've done really impressive job so far.

As I understand the main issue is Eothas challenge and some time management should occur.