The Ultimate discussion thread Pt 2

[Amentep]

Last Thread:

 

[Waski]

@wildeyn00700 from previous thread,  yeah,  put boots and cloak on,  pick 2 blunderbusses and you can reload your bonds for ranger(you can trigger the cloak out of combat,  with decent INT you should pick up two bonds)   Or rush into battle with priest and start with  SoT. 

[wildeyn00700]

28 minutes ago, Waski said:

@wildeyn00700 from previous thread,  yeah,  put boots and cloak on,  pick 2 blunderbusses and you can reload your bonds for ranger(you can trigger the cloak out of combat,  with decent INT you should pick up two bonds)   Or rush into battle with priest and start with  SoT. 

ok, thanks.  I'll understand better when I see the boots.  The wiki must not describe what they do.  The boots from skipping ahead?

Do you know if the Guardian of Ukaizo has any infinite healing as he starts getting more hurt?  I have the sentinels dead and he's at "hurt" and I have him unless he has infinite healing.  Does he do something at like near death?

[fuzelogic]

@waski:

Nope, not related with brilliant, in fact i dont need the cloack at all but sadly Berkarnas is still mandatory for the Concelhault killing.

Besides, to get Rakhan boots you need to talk to Director Castol and you wont following an optimal path...

Edited July 16, 2019 by fuzelogic

[wildeyn00700]

Nope, the Guardian of Ukaizo ran out of tricks.  No infinite robust, which was the main thing I was worried about.  I couldn't remember if he had it, or something similar.  And then, the last fight isn't actually an ambush, by the faction on the Promenade.  So, auto-win there.  Just finished the ending, all clear.  I'll double-check the Sigilmaster, and then I will have done 100% of the path and fights to win Ultimate with a ranger/chanter, in 2 test games.  And there aren't any low-% fights, as far as I can tell.  Once I figured each fight out, I won it the first time.  There are a few fights (Water Dragon, Beast of Winter, maybe the SS spiders and Dragonslayer SSS championship fight) that are a bit scary, since Vela comes out of stealth in those, that aren't necessarily 100%, but they can probably be practiced so that they are very close to 100%, or perhaps even fully 100%.

[Waski]

2 hours ago, fuzelogic said:

@waski:

Nope, not related with brilliant, in fact i dont need the cloack at all but sadly Berkarnas is still mandatory for the Concelhault killing.

Besides, to get Rakhan boots you need to talk to Director Castol and you wont following an optimal path...

You got me courius I tip my hat off for such a nice finding. 

Edit.  I suspect a lot of attempts gonna be doomed (or at least hard to salvage) but maybe I  am wrong.  I'll check... 

edit.

nope, my suspicious were wrong

Edited July 16, 2019 by Waski

[fuzelogic]

36 minutes ago, Waski said:

You got me courius I tip my hat off for such a nice finding. 

Edit.  I suspect a lot of attempts gonna be doomed (or at least hard to salvage) but maybe I  am wrong.  I'll check... 

Edit2. I am pretty sure thelee is safe

 

it was pure luck, no theorycrafting, nothing to be really be proud of, im a total noob compared with many of the people who roams these forums.

 

Its gonna be really fun and interesting to see the different solutions people has found out to solve the different problems they face with the challenge, just hope the first ones dont make it public so it turns from a competition of cunning into a competition of copy-cats who can play 24/7.

Edited July 16, 2019 by fuzelogic

[Wotcha]

I look at it differently, Fuze.  This entire forum is built around collaboration, sharing ideas, and building on each other's ideas. I am rooting for everybody who has shared their ideas on this thread, and if it's any of them who claim the first title, I have little doubt that they will acknowledge the tremendous support and credit they received from their fellow players.

Anybody who's read through the ideas here, but chooses to withhold their own, doesn't sound like much of a team player, particularly if they then also refuse to credit the community's shared research towards their own efforts.

[wildeyn00700]

1 hour ago, Wotcha said:

I look at it differently, Fuze.  This entire forum is built around collaboration, sharing ideas, and building on each other's ideas. I am rooting for everybody who has shared their ideas on this thread, and if it's any of them who claim the first title, I have little doubt that they will acknowledge the tremendous support and credit they received from their fellow players.

Anybody who's read through the ideas here, but chooses to withhold their own, doesn't sound like much of a team player, particularly if they then also refuse to credit the community's shared research towards their own efforts.

yeah, I agree with Wotcha - much of the fun of Ultimate is in collaborating.  It is so hard, there is no real point to trying to sit alone and try to beat the rest of the world to be the first to do it.  Being 1st will mostly only prove that you spent more time, more immediately after Ultimate came out, and had spent more time learning Pillars 2 and its DLC last year as well.

and I'm 99% certain that no trick is going to make Ultimate easy, only possible.

And I can now announce it officially; I've proven (to myself and any who believe me or have specific questions) that Ranger/Chanter(troubador) can do Ultimate.  I've tested all God challenges and every fight and the path to lvl 20.  Today I finished the Guardian and the Sigilmaster (and the "ambush" after the Guardian) and won each of the fights 1st try after orienting myself to how the fight was set up.

[Wotcha]

You yourself are a case in point, Wildey.  You showed up out of nowhere with a completely unorthodox build that might just take the cake for first place, and you've been more than willing to swap ideas about it.  Personally I'm rooting for you specifically, although it's a competitive field out there.

What I'm hoping that you (or whoever delivers the first practical win) determine is how much spare time exists.  Until that's known, everybody's approach is on figuring out how to do it with as few rests as possible.  Once the completion time for a particular pathing is known, then the number of rests you can afford on that path becones a variable you can optimize around, and you can start using that rest budget quite early in the progression (basically, as soon as you finish the digsite).

For instance, it's very easy to get a long-duration Brilliant as an on-rest ability via making the correct dialog choices at the digsite, Hasongo, and Ashen Maw.  That's still a tough bar to clear under Ultimate conditions, but at that point some other strategies might become viable if you're not leaning on specific resting bonuses, if for a limited number of fights you can spare 8 hours to refresh your Brilliant-rank Wit of Death's Herald.  At the very least it could be a player-time saver, by eliminating the tedious wrangling of cloak triggers.

[wildeyn00700]

4 minutes ago, Wotcha said:

You yourself are a case in point, Wildey.  You showed up out of nowhere with a completely unorthodox build that might just take the cake for first place, and you've been more than willing to swap ideas about it.  Personally I'm rooting for you specifically, although it's a competitive field out there.

What I'm hoping that you (or whoever delivers the first practical win) determine is how much spare time exists.  Until that's known, everybody's approach is on figuring out how to do it with as few rests as possible.  Once the completion time for a particular pathing is known, then the number of rests you can afford on that path becones a variable you can optimize around, and you can start using that rest budget quite early in the progression (basically, as soon as you finish the digsite).

For instance, it's very easy to get a long-duration Brilliant as an on-rest ability via making the correct dialog choices at the digsite, Hasongo, and Ashen Maw.  That's still a tough bar to clear under Ultimate conditions, but at that point some other strategies might become viable if you're not leaning on specific resting bonuses, if for a limited number of fights you can spare 8 hours to refresh your Brilliant-rank Wit of Death's Herald.  At the very least it could be a player-time saver, by eliminating the tedious wrangling of cloak triggers.

Decadency is going to have 10 or more days to spare this time; it looks like he may complete this run he's on.  He certainly deserves it, as well.  Thank you for the kind words, however

It is an interesting thought you bring up, about whether there may be a different sort of path, where you rest 5-10 or even more, times.  You'd still have the abydon's challenge and vela issue to deal with, both of which seem (but maybe there is a way around) to limit so many builds out of ultimate. 

It is kind of funny, but, while the per-encounter-->per-rest challenge seems quite defining, it may not really be.  With my build, as one example, being able to refresh bond wouldn't do much.  I could maybe add a bit of damage in fights better, like with acc wounding shot and marked prey, but that would be a small difference, and I'd run into the Abydon challenge problem.

Still, it is a very interesting idea, to open back up the idea of being able to rest plenty of times if you want to.  I'll be thinking about it, for sure.

[fuzelogic]

@Wotcha: you missunderstood my words,  im not against collaboration, what i was saying is that the day after somebody uploads to youtube the whole run for bragging rigths you gonna have 100 nobrainer clones with more spare time than you...

Edited July 16, 2019 by fuzelogic

[Wotcha]

I dunno, I did read your claim that you had some amazeballs unstoppable tricks that you weren’t going to tell anybody. Perhaps you even do! I also noted your mentioning that you’re watching some of the guys stream, and you did apparently have some good suggestions to make.

In any event, if you do have some kind of trick that greatly reduces the difficulty of the run, that kind of devalues the effort of the challenge, doesn’t it? Maybe you should keep quiet about it until the players good enough to do it without such cheese get their victories in.

[fuzelogic]

8 hours ago, Wotcha said:

I dunno, I did read your claim that you had some amazeballs unstoppable tricks that you weren’t going to tell anybody. Perhaps you even do! I also noted your mentioning that you’re watching some of the guys stream, and you did apparently have some good suggestions to make.

In any event, if you do have some kind of trick that greatly reduces the difficulty of the run, that kind of devalues the effort of the challenge, doesn’t it? Maybe you should keep quiet about it until the players good enough to do it without such cheese get their victories in.

Thats what i was saying, too masive to be shared, would be not fair with the many people who has put time and effort.

Discovered by accident during Ashen Maw.

Sitting now at Neketaka myself, lvl 20, my timing a bit worse than Decadency, 37 days left for Dlcs, Huani, Dorodugan, Sigil Master and guardian, probably because the way i faced stuff in the begining and different class.

Good thing i may be able to complete SSS without losing temp bonuses but they are not important at all now, they just speed up things a bit.

Bad thing i can only test or play 2/3 hours a day, althougth i can theorycraft or read a plenty at wotk.

 

[Waski]

@fuzelogic what class are you playing?? 

[fuzelogic]

Tactician/Skaen and to answer some previous question if its class dependant, yes its class dependant but having not tested i suspect it can be replicated with atleast other 3 classes.

[wildeyn00700]

Heh, just tested against the Oracle; glad I did.  (Previously I had just seen a video that showed I could begin combat in stealth.)

It is definitely a pretty easy fight with my character (ranger/chanter), but it isn't fully cheesable, as twice duing the fight, adds spawn in a place too close to Vela and she becomes terrified and therefore visible and theoretically vulnerable.  It is only dangerous two times, when you get the Oracle to 3/4 health, and again when you get him to 2/4 health.  And it is pretty easy to keep monsters off her.  Mostly you just make sure to have 1 weapon over to the left where the adds spawn, so they have something close to target intead of Vela.  And if they target her, 1 withdraw scroll should keep her safe for that whole add spawn.  So, max 2 scrolls, which isn't bad.  First I fought him once to see how the fight went, then I won the next try, using 1 scroll.  You also have to be careful never to let the oracle move more than a few inches from his starting point, but that isn't hard once you know it matters.

That is now fully officially every fight tested, and all won either 1st try, or 1st try after me knowing what was going on.  So, a very solid class to do Ultimate, and 100% certain it is possible.  I think it takes more real life time than priest multiclasses, as you have to play in turn-based.  The advantage to my build is that it doesn't take much timing-based skill in real time.  You don't need to use stealth to get past fights, and the fights are turn-based (except inside of Nekataka b/c of the guard spawn bug, and against Dorudugan where you have to switch your brand of cheese to a new brand just for him) so that allow for a bit more precision.  You do have the 10 second time limit, but I haven't found that to be much of an issue, and of course the more a person practices, the easier that 10 sec limit is.

Edited July 17, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Kaylon]

Anyone tried SC monk for the Ultimate? It looks like the only melee class able to deal with Abydon's challenge...

[Waski]

1 hour ago, Kaylon said:

Anyone tried SC monk for the Ultimate? It looks like the only melee class able to deal with Abydon's challenge...

Yeah,  someone on Victor 's twitch chat mention doing it.  He(she?)  was "killing" barrels with Xoti lantern equipped  to regain mortification or something like that. 

[wildeyn00700]

2 hours ago, Kaylon said:

Anyone tried SC monk for the Ultimate? It looks like the only melee class able to deal with Abydon's challenge...

One way to find out would be to ask Decadency when it was critical to be a mage, in the mage/priest combo, and then figure out if a monk could handle those issues as well, or better.  Mages like to level up from 10-16 partly with sending clones into battle while stealthed.  Tacticians can get brilliant early for doing fights.  I'm not sure that Monks have something similarly powerful for that, but maybe if you get good at pulling monsters one at a time, you can do it that way.

At the point where you have brilliant, salvation, and barring death's door, I'm not sure it matters if you are a monk or some other multiclass (but it may).  And before you have that, a monk had better have insane offense to deal with the fact that his armor will get destroyed pretty fast.

I'm not very knowledgeable about how to abuse monks, but It seems impossible, off the top of my head, to use them with anything but a priest for Ultimate.  That is why comparing monk with mage as the other class would be helpful in figuring out which might be better.  One thing, you'd need to make sure you have a plan for the Ooze (since for that Decadency used Concelhaut's Hammer and Slicken).  Is that crazy monk way to kill the Ooze in a couple of minutes, still valid?

Edited July 17, 2019 by wildeyn00700

[Raven Darkholme]

5 hours ago, fuzelogic said:

Thats what i was saying, too masive to be shared, would be not fair with the many people who has put time and effort.

Discovered by accident during Ashen Maw.

Sitting now at Neketaka myself, lvl 20, my timing a bit worse than Decadency, 37 days left for Dlcs, Huani, Dorodugan, Sigil Master and guardian, probably because the way i faced stuff in the begining and different class.

Good thing i may be able to complete SSS without losing temp bonuses but they are not important at all now, they just speed up things a bit.

Bad thing i can only test or play 2/3 hours a day, althougth i can theorycraft or read a plenty at wotk.

 

I just find it a somewhat interesting choice to announce it here on the forums if you don't want to share it anyway.

[Kaylon]

1 hour ago, wildeyn00700 said:

One way to find out would be to ask Decadency when it was critical to be a mage, in the mage/priest combo, and then figure out if a monk could handle those issues as well, or better.  Mages like to level up from 10-16 partly with sending clones into battle while stealthed.  Tacticians can get brilliant early for doing fights.  I'm not sure that Monks have something similarly powerful for that, but maybe if you get good at pulling monsters one at a time, you can do it that way.

At the point where you have brilliant, salvation, and barring death's door, I'm not sure it matters if you are a monk or some other multiclass (but it may).  And before you have that, a monk had better have insane offense to deal with the fact that his armor will get destroyed pretty fast.

I'm not very knowledgeable about how to abuse monks, but It seems impossible, off the top of my head, to use them with anything but a priest for Ultimate.  That is why comparing monk with mage as the other class would be helpful in figuring out which might be better.  One thing, you'd need to make sure you have a plan for the Ooze (since for that Decadency used Concelhaut's Hammer and Slicken).  Is that crazy monk way to kill the Ooze in a couple of minutes, still valid?

With the SCmonk  you need first to reach lv13 without combat. At lvl13 you get unlimited Dichotomous Soul which are stronger than the Substantial Phantom (they also duplicates your items) and IMO can carry you until lvl19 when you get Whispers of the Wind. From there most of the fights can be done just by spamming WotW (Voidwheel/Keeper of the Flame can be used to generate wounds,  while health on kill/regen items will heal you back) - using WotW won't degrade your weapons and being invisible most of the time means you won't be hit very often either. 

Of course the monk is less cheesy and has probably a harder time keeping Vela alive (he needs scrolls), but I think it's still a solid choice unless I'm missing something...

Edited July 17, 2019 by Kaylon

[Decadency]

Btw ) I've got a funny question. Do you need to kill the Oracle of Wael 2 times?

[fuzelogic]

3 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

I just find it a somewhat interesting choice to announce it here on the forums if you don't want to share it anyway.

Consider it a probe to see if it was common knowlege maybe?

Dude, i have asked nothing from you and have give you something, im a helpfull person, but that i cant share for respect to the rest of players untill competition is over.

 

See, i cant play much and id like to get the badge for my effort, dont care about beeing world first and dont even care about having my characters name in a metal panel, in fact, in the rare event that i could be among the 12 first ones id ask Obsidian to have the name of that player i think has been more helpfull, althougth not very lucky yet, because i feel he is the one who deserves it the most.

I dont mind helping other players with small tricks here and there but that you must understand that can not be shared yet.

 

[fuzelogic]

Yes, you can compete the challenge with SC monk, at some point, any class can make vela stay where ever they choose to.

Custom Poe1 background where you sacrificed Vela didnt work btw, or maybe shes a doppleganger in disguise...

@Kaylon

Edited July 17, 2019 by fuzelogic