I don’t think so, there’s a lot of downsides, and the stats aren’t overwhelming.
First you have to get both parts, which is a gamble or using up your rerolls/skip/banishes to get them.
Then you have to get max level on both, and then more levels for the evolution.
And for all that it does meh damage and no knock back and is limited range. It’s definitely not useless, but has it’s weaknesses.
It’s hard to say one weapon is just the best, imo.
ISTM that Phieraggi is the “best” weapon.
Who’s the best character at this point do we think? Unfortunately I think that answer is tied into what weapons you want to use.
I’m starting to rethink Genaro with the knife and extra projectiles. I don’t love knife, and not all the abilities I want get much benefit from an extra projectile.
Bible evolved for sure.
Whip evolved for the healing feels like you skip it at your peril, so for now I’ll slot that #2.
Runetracer evolved seems like excellent dps, better than axe but can’t be aimed.
I’m starting to become on the fence about garlic. In fact, the biggest point in garlic’s favor for me now is that I don’t have to evolve it because its evolution sucks, meaning I could take wings or some other passive buff I like better.
Axe is nice but doesn’t feel like a strict requirement. I haven’t seen all the weapons so I guess I would earmark axe as the first one to drop.
I tried a couple runs last night to combine the two birds but I kept dying. It’s kind of a relief to hear that birds aren’t worth it.
So let’s see, that’s Bible, whip, Runetracer, then for now I guess axe, garlic, and…Santa water? With the last three on deck for replacement when better weapons become available. How does that sound?
As for passives, I’m thinking evolve everything except garlic, and take wings as my 6th passive instead of garlic’s passive.
And for the character, that leaves me the whip guy and the runetracer lady. She’s who I was using last night. I think I might go back to whip guy.
There are a couple later characters who get +1 projectile every 20 levels, up to a max of +3. I think they’re all at the top tier.
Oo yeah that does sound nice. Also, looking back over my pencilled-in list of six, I think five of them do get benefit from extra projectile. But of course I’m not including knife so I can’t use knife guy.
I guess maybe for now, knife instead of Santa water? I have evolved Santa water and used it for a decent amount of time and didn’t hate it. I don’t know how much I loved it though.
I don’t love the knife because even fully upgraded it only passes through a couple enemies. In the late game it doesn’t do a great job holding back the hordes. But it is a decent starting weapon since it’s the only weapon you can actively aim, but overall I prefer weapons with consistent area damage.
My absolute favorites currently are weapons you probably haven’t unlocked yet. But if you’ve unlocked both flavors of bird by now:
The pigeons don’t actually require a support item to evolve. When you have them both at level 7 and get a chest, they’ll combine into a single weapon that you can continue to upgrade. It not only does massive damage, but since it’s two weapons combined it frees up a slot for a new one! But since both birds are pretty crappy early on, it’s difficult to get. A bit of a risky/reward strategy.
Yep, that was my experience exactly trying for the birds.
I favorite load-out is:
Fire Wand
Axe
Santa Water
Song Of Mana
And the items required to evolve them. The fifth is variable depending on what character I’m using. I’m not a big fan of the “double weapon” evolve items, because I feel like i spend too long without the fifth slot filled waiting to find the season weapon.
Also, I’m not sure if anyone else here has unlocked the “Arcana” feature yet. That adds a whole new level of strategy.
I don’t find the arcana adds too much, besides some variation. Two of them seem unhelpful or wasted and then there’s only three others currently, so I just get them.
@EllisDee , I would just pick from what you like mostly, but try everything and see how things combo for you. And things can also change as you slowly powerup and unlock things too, imo
I assume there’s a lot more coming but:
The one that ups your stats every time you use a revive is pretty huge, since with the right combo of character and power-ups you can get up to 8 revivals. Then if you kill yourself 8 times (which is harder then it looks) you’re massively strong. I saw someone do with with Santa Water and the entire screen is blue.
I only have the freebie arcana so far. I need to spend some runs focusing on experience generation to unlock the others.
I read through this thread last night, and then got the game but haven’t played it yet.
I did, however, have a pretty vivid dream about it last night. It was in 1st person though. Lots of bats.
Slowly but surely making progress, now up to 37k coins.
I had settled on the whip guy, with evolved whip, axe, bible and santa water, non-evolved garlic, and then finally evolved runetracer for some general DPS.
But then I discovered the bone guy, who gets an extra projectile every 20 levels. So I switched to him and replaced runetracer with bone, freeing up a second passive. So my two elective passives are duplicator and ideally the shield thing (Laurel?) but really any final passive is fine.
Now at 64k and starting to fade. My winning combination is down to three evolved abilities, leaving the other three abilities and passives up for grabs depending on whatever the character’s main weapon is or what the RNG grants me.
All I need for wanton destruction are bible, axe and santa water, all evolved. Anything else is gravy. On one run I combined the two birds and then ran that up to level 8. It was fine, but I would have rather had the 25 coin bags than spend that many extra levels on upgrades.
So I came up with that combo on the first map, where in the last 90 seconds where the wave of shielded bats comes out. They get softened up by water and then cleaned up with Bible. Any momentum they can generate gets taken out by axe. Thanks to attractor and the equivalent upgrades, I collect any xp from the Bible perimeter without having to move. Shielded bats drop those high XP dots, and they die so fast I gain a level every 4 seconds or so for the last 90 seconds of the map. That’s like 500 coins.
So armed with this strategy I tried the second map for the very first time. Roflstomped it. Second run is when I did the birds, again trivially easy. Third one I tried the bird dude with the cherry bombs, even easier. I just walked non-stop weaving up and down to gather all the dots, got to level 101 or something ridiculous.
No whip-healing or garlic needed at all. I guess I should move on to the third map. Surely it does get harder, yes? Right at this moment it’s feeling kind of repetitive and pointless.
(The first map is almost more challenging than the second because of the slower start and four directions instead of two.)
The first two maps are very easy. I hit a wall with the third map until I bought the duplicator upgrade and then it became manageable (looking at the upgrade meu I probably did map 3 with ~15k-20k coins so you should do it easily). IIRC a main difficulty is that the last waves don’t get knocked back nearly as much (at all?) so you’ll need to move more and maybe plan out saving a stopwatch for the end. The 4th and 5th levels aren’t hard either if you can beat the 3rd.
Kind of up to you. Have you done hyper mode? Used the upgrades that increase difficulty? Used more difficult characters or more challenging builds?
Roguelites don’t really have an “end game.” The game is over when you don’t care to increase the difficulty any further and are bored, or when you’ve increased the difficulty in every conceivable way and still find it trivial and boring.
Imo the third map is the hardest, since you’re blocked by a lot of terrain, but the monsters often walk through it. On other maps, they often will respect obstacles and terrain features. Plus the mobs near the end get a lot stronger than earlier maps it seemed.
Have you unlocked everything? And past the unlocks are the real secrets. But this game is often one that people pick up and play a bunch before tapering off, and do a run or two a day/session/etc. The game does get updated often, and they plan to add more stuff. (Modes and mechanics, not just weapons and characters.)
I’m hoping they change the RNG to be more game-like. Seems like most runs I only get offered non-evolvable weapons and passives until they’re all maxed before it will offer evolve-able weapon upgrades. Like 30 levels in I’ll finally get Axe to level 3. It’s ridiculous.
Case in point, I just finished trying level 3 for the first time. FIFTY EIGHT fucking levels without ONCE offering me bible. I rerolled, I banished, nope, no bible for me. At level 58 I was forced to take some shitty weapon or shield, so I took the shield.
Then of course at the end with the final crush from all directions, without bible (just flat-out missing a weapon, replaced with defense only) I couldn’t hold the line. Died at 29:57. I don’t really care about not getting the win – I still got to level 108 and earned over 4k coins in the loss – but failing a roll 58 fucking times in a row is NOT FUN.
Fix the goddamn RNG to be more game-like. Right now it’s some seriously not-fun bullshit.
What do you mean by game-like?
The more a possibility fails to occur, the more likely it becomes.