Sweeet jeebus: finally got "The Ultimate" achievement

[thelee]

I don't know how many other people have done this (global Steam achievement rate is at 0%, and googling around I see one other mention as a reddit thread), but I felt like I had to share this accomplishment, because it was so brutal and is probably my proudest gaming accomplishment ever (beating out the time back in vanilla World of Warcraft when I PVP-ed to #7 on my server).

 

Pic proof:

 

Rest are too big to upload on the forums, so here's a dropbox link showing the ends of the big fights: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a6w697dnn7z8m3x/AABKWFRd2IZ9vtrPUxrumTKxa?dl=0 (as well as a gif of the last bounty, which involved desperately running around a lake for an hour). I also recorded the Llengrath fight because AFAICT there's like only one other video of someone pulling it off: 

(The first part of the fight is missing because I've never recorded something before so I forgot to turn it on; the only thing missing is me summoning Concelhaut to do Concelhaut's Crushing Doom on the Gaf the flyign dragon, only to do like 10 damage due to lots of misses.)

 

Obsidian: NEVER EVER EVER create an achievement like this ever again. I see Tyranny has a few similar ones, but frankly I don't see myself being as invested in Tyranny as I was in Pillars. Don't get me wrong, I am soooo super stoked that I got the achievement, but man was it absolutely brutal (and I feel sorry for all the other people who like to be 100% achievement completionists but don't want to devote so much of their time to getting The Ultimate).

 

Build strategy: I think being a paladin might the only viable choice for something like this, thanks to four reasons: faith and conviction (up to +5 deflection over a fighter, +20 other defenses), righteous soul (basically gives you immunity to lagufeths, and really helps out in fear aura fights e.g. dragons), zealous charge (though monks also have long stride, so maybe they can pull it off, but they don't have the crazy good defenses), and sacred immolation (more a sanity convenience than anything else). I got the idea for using a paladin from one of the soloing videos from the other Ultimate attempt, and basically once you build out a paladin there's a pretty clear optimal path for much of the game (so even though I didn't consult the other guy's build, I'm pretty sure we look pretty similar). For the harder fights, I re-specced aggressively just to focus on the biggest threats (for example, in Master Below fight I picked up Primal Bane, Savage Attack, Bloody Slaughter, just so I could aggressively take out the Adragans I knew would be there before they petrify me to death or perpetualy heal everyone with their infinite moonwells). Also, Drawn in Spring and Persistence are hands-down the best weapons in the game for soloing (possibly in general), because their wounding effect is raw damage and the 25% number is based off of your pre-DR damage. This means against tough, high-DR enemies most of your damage will come from the wounding effect.

 

On save-scumming: yes, I actually did this as bug insurance. Back before White March expansions when I was trying to get Triple Crown Solo, i finally succeeded on the 7th try, and two of those earlier failures were due *exclusively* to bugs. I didn't end up having to restore a save that much this time around, but it was almost exclusively because of two bugs that kept cropping up (the first has been around ever since they stopped making potions instant-use like they are in Tyranny):

1. whenever you use a potion, there is a non-trivial chance that your character will bug out their actions and a) do a drinking animation but no effect happens, b) do a drinking animation, consume a potion, but nothing happens, c) your character will just have the idle "..." in their action indicator and not do anything. this can really screw you over when you're desperately trying to drink a potion of endurance, for example. At least this is better than in the 1.x days where sometimes your character would get permanently stuck (to the point where even after all enemies are defeated--by other party members--combat would never end).

2. more severe: there's a buggy interaction with effects that reduce stun duration. if you get stunned (*cough* relentless storm *cough*) and for whatever reason you have a 0 or close to 0 stun duration from the effect, your character may get *locked* into a stun animation, even though they have no stun debuff. Sometimes you can get your character to snap out of it by hitting "x" to cancel any action, sometimes you're just screwed. This screwed me over in several fights involving adragans, actually (who love to use relentless storm).

 

Apart from that, I actually did get *really* close to death several times (this was my third attempt; I've been working on this since june). I barely ended Master Below with ~100 health (not endurance!) left, because of those damned adragans and their petrify. The final bounty I also barely ended up ~150 or so health, because fighting 3 ancient memory chanters solo means everyone basically has infinite endurance, so you basically have to whittle away their actual health (which is several times their endurance). Llengrath I got very close to death (and I actually thought I would fail after coming all this way), and you can see this in the video (me assessing my health periodically, bracing myself for major disappointment), because Gaf just did so much damage to me early on that he blew through most of my health (but fortunately everyone else had either easily dodgable attacks or were easy to kite, like the bigger dragon). Alpine Dragon I also got close to death, but I wasn't worried because once the dragon was taken out the rest of the foes were easily wiped out with a sacred immolation.

 

I really wish Steam provided more detailed specifics on global achievement rate. I'm really curious how many people have gotten The Ultimate. I actually expect that you could fit the total number of people who have done it into one room and feed them all with just a few pizzas.

 

This is kind of a self-congratulatory thread, but if anyone wants more detailed strategies for the dragon/archmage/bounty fights for their own attempts at The Ultimate or is just curious, let me know and I can post more.

[Tigranes]

Kudos to you, TCS is one thing but it's a whole different question to do all bounties, dragons, etc. It's been a long time since I touched POE, do none of the key enemies have endurance/health regeneration? Seems like pinging Llengrath for 3 damage with Persistence for an hour would have been impossible otherwise. And then you have enemies with more powerful at-range attacks like Master Below, but I guess in that case the defences numbers game is easier to overcome as a properly stacked Paladin, and as you say the real problem is petrify.

 

Did you scale up for WM/Endgame? How did Thaos go?

 

The potion bug really gets my goat because it just adds frustrating nonresponsivity and confusion to what is already one of POE's key weaknesses - visual / feedback confusion in combat. 

Edited December 4, 2016 by Tigranes

[Dr <3]

With a Chanter this is much easyer and faster to get. Build him full defensive and chant dragon trashed while you drink potions or cast scrolls. Good job anyway

[fiddlesticks]

Congrats. Going for The Ultimate is extremely annoying in parts, but the satisfying feeling you get when you finally pull it off makes it all worth it.

 

I really wish Steam provided more detailed specifics on global achievement rate. I'm really curious how many people have gotten The Ultimate. I actually expect that you could fit the total number of people who have done it into one room and feed them all with just a few pizzas.

 

The Achievement Showcase in your profile will show the five rarest achievements you've gotten. Hover over the picture of The Ultimate, and you'll see that 0.04% of all players have obtained it. For comparison, 0.16% have gotten Triple Crown Solo and 0.05% have Frozen Crown.

 

IIRC, Overmind did it with a Chanter, so Paladins aren't the only class that can pull it off, though I personally agree that they're the most reliable one.

[thelee]

Kudos to you, TCS is one thing but it's a whole different question to do all bounties, dragons, etc. It's been a long time since I touched POE, do none of the key enemies have endurance/health regeneration? Seems like pinging Llengrath for 3 damage with Persistence for an hour would have been impossible otherwise. And then you have enemies with more powerful at-range attacks like Master Below, but I guess in that case the defences numbers game is easier to overcome as a properly stacked Paladin, and as you say the real problem is petrify.

 

Did you scale up for WM/Endgame? How did Thaos go?

 

The potion bug really gets my goat because it just adds frustrating nonresponsivity and confusion to what is already one of POE's key weaknesses - visual / feedback confusion in combat. 

 

 

None of the main key enemies have endurance regeneration, and even if they did, they'll eventually run out of health That's actually what I meant about the ancient memory chanters; the final bounty (deadfire group) has three chanters with all the healing chant perks, and everyone has high defenses and DR, so I literally just had to work away the first two chanters' health before I could actually out-damage their collective regeneration to kill them the old fashioned way.

 

I didn't scale up for WM/Endgame because it was hard enough as it was Thaos turned out to be *ridiculously* easy because of St. Ydwen's Redeemer (25% chance of killing vessels on crit/hit); plus after the Master Below fight and Llengrath, anything would have been easy by comparison. I could take out his two guardians really fast with the redeemer and then Thaos by himself goes down super fast to drawn in spring. For a similar reason, Concelhaut was trivial. You can kite away his adds, and then I got lucky and the first hit I landed on him triggered the insta-kill, so he didn't even get off more than a single spell (his Arcane Veil). Interestingly, the "Fragments of xxx" dwarves at the end of White March part 1 are listed as vessels and trigger the 25% chance, but are immune to the effect. They are the only vessels in the entire game this applies to, as far as I can tell. (Thankfully I had a backup weapon to cope with this rude surprise.)

 

With a Chanter this is much easyer and faster to get. Build him full defensive and chant dragon trashed while you drink potions or cast scrolls. Good job anyway

 

My Triple Crown Solo was a chanter attempt, but this was back in 1.x before summons got a huge nerf. I deliberately stayed away from chanter this time because I was worried this was too fatal a nerf (before you get access to dragon thrashed). Glad to hear they are still viable.

Edited December 5, 2016 by thelee

[thelee]

Congrats. Going for The Ultimate is extremely annoying in parts, but the satisfying feeling you get when you finally pull it off makes it all worth it.

 

I really wish Steam provided more detailed specifics on global achievement rate. I'm really curious how many people have gotten The Ultimate. I actually expect that you could fit the total number of people who have done it into one room and feed them all with just a few pizzas.

 

The Achievement Showcase in your profile will show the five rarest achievements you've gotten. Hover over the picture of The Ultimate, and you'll see that 0.04% of all players have obtained it. For comparison, 0.16% have gotten Triple Crown Solo and 0.05% have Frozen Crown.

 

IIRC, Overmind did it with a Chanter, so Paladins aren't the only class that can pull it off, though I personally agree that they're the most reliable one.

 

Turns out I'm not high enough steam level to have an achievement showcase? But thanks for those numbers: ballparking pillars steam sales numbers at 600k, .04% is a bit too much to feed with a few pizzas, but you could still fit us in a big room. Maybe we should have a party!

Edited December 5, 2016 by thelee

[Guest Matt Sheets]

Congrats.

 

Always fun to read about people getting The Ultimate achievement.

[Messier-31]

Were you blindfolded?

No?

Ha! Thought so.