#Curse you RNG

[ladymariayuri]

This was not worth it

[hydrachea]

(fearful, shaky voice) trick or treat....?

*wheel spinning sfx*

You got tricked. I'm sorry.

[pumpkin-bread]

I've had such bad luck today in like every way uugh

I am so tempted to just keep hatching eggs or scattering until I get something good but that's a bad mentality I think. It might never even turn out good anyway.

[iamthekarmapolice]

idk about you guys but ive been on tumblr for about 15 minutes now and have seen 2 blazed posts that are pictures of naked butts

[celestialeyeshine]

traveller x artifact farming 150k words tragic ending hurt no comfort

[desertdragon]

I never thought I would say this after so many years but AST looks like it's gonna start climbing out the trenches in DT

I might come out of AST retirement

[bootycallofcthulhu]

Oops accidentally discovered a way to cheese experience in fe engage on hard mode lmao

[tainbocuailnge]

my favourite metric for evaluating gacha games is the eizen scale. eizen is a character from the game tales of berseria who is essentially cursed to always lose the coinflip, which means that "can eizen play this game and not have a horrendous time" is a very easy way to determine how "generous" any given digital casino actually is and how robust its rng safety nets are. for purposes of the eizen scale this is how eizen's luck works:

1) eizen has the worst possible luck that statistics allow for. if he flips a coin a million times he will get tails a million times. if he has a 99.9% crit chance he will not crit. if resource gathering involves random drops he will always get the lowest possible amount of drops. he will roll the worst most useless possible result from the gacha every time. eizen's only path to obtaining anything useful in the game is through guarantees, handouts, and pity mechanics. going by his actual canon luck the game would crash repeatedly the moment he hits pity and then his account gets banned for suspicious activity before he gets to see the result but for purposes of the eizen scale we assume the game itself works properly.

2) eizen’s bad luck does not affect his friends’ luck, and he often relies on his friends to push through his bad luck. you can get caught in the fallout of eizen's bad luck if you throw your lot in with his (like going on a sea voyage with him and inevitably getting caught in a storm), but just having him around doesn’t keep you from getting heads on your own coin flip. this means ease of access to luckier friends’ resources is one of the metrics on the eizen scale. combined with point 1, if a game for example has a support unit system that shows you a random selection with no guarantee that at least one of those will be your friends, it's completely useless to him because it will only show him randos with trash units.

3) eizen’s bad luck does not affect the choices other people make. this means the game’s content release schedule will not contort itself into ridiculous patterns just to deny eizen the chance to obtain game resources, because its run by people who have other goals than making eizen specifically suck at their game.

some video games are fundamentally unplayable to eizen because the core gameplay premise is about performing and then working around feats of rng, like roguelikes for example, so a bad eizen score is not necessarily a bad game. but this man is the canary in the coalmine of exploitative monetisation, and if he can't play the game then maybe you shouldn't either

[gatheredfates]

SEA'S COMMUNITY COMPENDIUM UPDATE

We have a massive one today! Huge thanks to a close friend of mine who sent me every single bookmark of xiv resources she had. 💖

Additionally, a good handful of these resources were sourced from a list originally created by @rinhkitty, which you can find here. I have tried to include the more recent/active of the lot, so it's not a one-for-one. Thank them for a lot of the large scale resources you'll find below! ✨

As of 04/12, I have added the following resources (in no particular order) to Sea's Community Compendium for FFXIV Creatives:

LARGE SCALE

GARLAND TOOLS — Contains XIV resources such as Garland Data, everything database, crafting lists and equipment calculators; Garland Bell, gathering timers, collectable resources and hunt windows; and FFXIV Fisher, daily fishing windows, bait paths and catch checklist. Maintained by Clorifex Ezalor of Zalera.

TEAMCRAFT — Create crafting lists and collaborate with others, set gathering alarms, simulate crafting rotations, and more!

CAT BECAME HUNGRY - FFXIV ANGLER — Contains everything and anything to know about fishing including specific fish guides, location, baits, aquarium fish and more!

FFXIV - CRAFTING AS A SERVICE — Crafting information and planning for FFXIV!

FFXIV GARDENING — The FFXIV Gardening Database is a collection of everything related to gardening in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. It was created to organize and visualize the results obtained from crossbreeding.

SIGHTSEEING LOG HELPER — This tool will help those trying to complete their pesky Sightseeing Log by letting them know upcoming weather patterns for each zone!

EUREKA TRACKER — For everything and anything to do with Eureka mobs, tracking and weather patterns.

FFLOGOS — for tracking of items/actions related to Eureka.

FFXIVSQUADRON — A comprehensive tool that helps you assess the success rate of various squadron missions.

FFXIV CHOCOBO COLOUR CALCULATOR — Will calculate what chocobo feed you will need to get from your current colour to your desired colour. *rng not included.

FFXIV HOUSING — A site specialising in the documentation of all housing items available in game.

HOUSING SNAP — A compilation of player-made housing designs. Can be used for inspiration or places to visit!

MISC

NPC CHAT BUBBLES — Would you like more NPC chat bubbles for edits? Say no more! Created by @alexoisxiv.

OLD TUMBLR LAYOUT BY PIXIEL — While not XIV specific I know a lot of people aren't fans of the new Tumblr layout, so this is a fix that will revert it to an as close as possible approximation of the new one. I won't tag the creator as I don't think they're in the xiv community, but it's run by @/pixiel!

HOW TO CURSE LIKE AN ISHGARDIAN — Do you want to make the church blush? Do you want to incur the wrath of Halone? @stars-and-clouds has compiled a list of appropriate curses/swear words for you!

FINAL FANTASY XIV SIDEQUEST GUIDE - HEAVENSWARD EDITION — maintained by @chatty-moogle, this guide explores interesting sidequests in Heavensward that will give you more information about the lore, titbits about locals and other interesting information!

TRUST BANNERS FOR XIV — If you have ever wondered how people mimic the Trust banners used in XIV, look no further! @locke-rinannis has a template for you.

MAKING USE OF RECOMMENDATIONS — created by @autumnslance, this guide will help you make your recommendations tab useful rather than annoying.

BOTANICA EORZEA — A guide to the flora of Eitherys and her reflections, including fungi and seedkin. For reference in writing and roleplaying. Maintained by @tinolqa.

GPOSE TIPS — A tutorial on how to achieve clarity and detail in your XIV screenshots! Created by @aryalaenkha.

UI MACRO MENUS — A guide on how to use macros to create small UI menus for XIV. Written by @diskwrite-ffxiv.

TYPHON GATE RESEARCH — Created by @mcstronghuge, these are the statistically best places for your character to stand for the Typhon Gate!

CHANGELOG

HYDAELYN HEALTH HAVEN has been removed at the request of the owner.

Moved THE BALANCE higher on the list to reflect alphabetical sorting, excluding names that start with The.

Misc formatting as needed.

Added some additional clarification around large-scale discords/spaces; in particular: Large-scale community discords such as the XIV Reddit Discord, Hunts, GPOSE promotions and broad-space roleplay servers that harbour a large number of people and are publicly available to all. These may not have an RP focus but will assist in other aspects of the game. Also includes well-known tools/resources that are utilised by large groups of people and assist in gameplay elements.

Added a quick-jump menu to the bottom of each of the table of contents menus to assist in navigation.

Want to submit? You can either fill out the google form here, send me an ask with the relevant information contained on the Compendium, or join my Discord at SEAFLOOR (21+ only)!

I am sure there's probably a couple of things I have missed or links/formatting that might be broken. Please don't hesitate to let me know if anything is out of place. I'm going to take a break now. I'm pretty sure that's the biggest edit that's ever going to occur on this document!

[gray-thistleclan]

Question about the allegiance and hearts: Do the mentors in some way shape or form have influence on their apprentice's susceptibility to the Dark Forest curse? I noticed that with Gustspeckle and Bluecloud, their susceptibility had changed to match their mentors, ex: Gustspeckle had a blue heart before but it turned black similarly to Fieldfeather's and Bluecloud's heart previously being black has now turned purple like Anisetail's. Am I looking too hard into this, or is my theory valid? 🤔

I think in-game apprentices are influenced by their mentors personality, so once they graduate they might be similar based on how many patrols you send them on together/some rng, so it happened to be gust and blue got the same susceptibility as their old mentors

[kafus]

you guys are not gonna believe what i just beat red with LMFAO. set mode + no items in battle (held items ok) + i am like 30 levels underleveled on all of my guys. partially for my own amusement and pride, partially to spite people who talk about how much you "have to" grind in johto games

it took a few attempts since my strategy relies on some decent luck to happen but there's a few ways it could go and i could succeed! and it really didn't take that long!! explanation below the cut for anyone who wants to nerd about this with me

red leads with his pikachu, i lead with meganium. EQ isn't quite a one shot and i have to reset if he lands charm on me, but sometimes he chooses thunder and sometimes charm misses so it's not that bad. i just spam EQ and let him waste his full restores until pikachu goes down

next he sends out venusaur, and i set up light screen and then spam body slam until it paralyzes, which happens most of the time since i resist all his grass moves + am behind a light screen and i get a lot of chances for that 30% paralysis as a result

i let meganium go down for the clean swap into houndoom, who is able to take the venusaur out with one flamethrower after meganium chipped it a bunch (she outspeeds because the venusaur is paralyzed!!)

he sends out his blastoise next, depending on the state of light screen, sunny day from his venusaur, etc, i choose to go into politoed to resist surf or snorlax who can weather hits in general and stall the blastoise out. in my winning attempt i went to politoed, and land a hypnosis after missing it once, so now politoed is low

this is the one part that's particularly RNG heavy - i swap into magneton and use thunder twice for the KO. this requires blastoise to stay asleep long enough for thunder's shitty accuracy to actually land twice. i do have a quick claw which boosts the odds of it going well just a little bit. in this case it works out

red sends out espeon so i swap into houndoom, hopefully on a baited psychic but unfortunately he goes for reflect instead. my houndoom just barely misses out on the 2 shot and goes down to some swifts even from full HP smh. so i have to send out my snorlax who can take one psychic and take espeon's last remaining bits of HP with a body slam

now for the fun part. red sends out his snorlax. who for some reason only has normal attacking moves, snore and body slam. so i send out the gengar i trained up for catching the roamers (technically he is literally the only pokemon i ever grinded levels on in my entire playthrough because i decided i wanted him last minute and had already fought every trainer in the game, but it wasn't that bad + he's nearly 40 levels under red's team still lmfao) and well. since snorlax took a ton of unexpected damage from psychic, i first do some very careful slow ass switching to get him back to full HP... with leftovers recovery. and then once that's done i use curse with gengar

in a perfect world, i use hypnosis after curse, it lands, and his snorlax just stays asleep through all the curse damage, but unfortunately he wakes up and uses rest - this puts him in a cycle where if i'm just sitting there with gengar, he'll never die from curse damage since he rests on the turn he would faint from the damage and wakes up and uses rest again in a loop like that. SO to get him to faint from curse without having to literally PP stall him, on his second turn of rest i swap into politoed who is on low HP (this is safe because he's never going to choose a normal type attack against gengar), which baits body slam on his wake-up turn instead of using rest again, and then swap into gengar immediately to be immune to the body slam. gengar outspeeds and uses psychic to take out the singular HP point remaining

and at last all that's left is his charizard. i let gengar go down and swap into snorlax who's now at full HP again and use toxic, and now it's just a matter of a very iffy toxic stall. magneton and politoed being alive in the back means i can swap to them as sacrifices if i need a little more leftovers recovery, and in the end charizard goes down to toxic damage after rest + sleep talking him (in gen 2, if rest is called by sleep talk, even though the user is already asleep, they use rest again which resets the sleep counter and heals them again so yeah)

i'm unreasonably proud of this bullshit LMAO fuck level grinding man this is way more entertaining

[issak]

AHHHHH I did it, Nari almighty!

Praise the Lamb.

Seriously, every single follower is so NEEDY, It takes me like 3-4 days to set up a new crusade, otherwise the cult grounds are in shambles, Stop Killing each other just because you know I can bring you Back, Stop destroying the Bishop's statutes whenever you are drunk, Please eat some food the farmlands are right THERE!!!!

YOU WHINY , TRAUMATIZED , CHILDREN !!!!

I love them all.

Did I seriously play an entire game because of some FanFic I happen to pick at random.... Yes yes I did, you should too.

+Play Cult of the Lamb, It has a love of love into it, the art in the backgrounds, the multitude of weapons and curses, the bosses, it can be as short as you want it to be. May the RNG... I mean may THE ONE WHO WAITS smile upon ye.

+Read The Rehabilitation of Death By BamSara on AO3, I got curious due to the influx of fanart on Tumblr since Devolver announce the next update to be release on August 12, I didn't realized the severity of the undertaking I was about to embark into, It's Good, Post first ending with a What if story line when the lamb Challenges Narinder for the Red Crown, and If you like emotionally constipated Characters OHH BOY Nari is your Boy, that cat is 90% the root of all his problems, But he is addicted to that Denial Copeism, you get trauma And YOU get trauma, YOU ALL GET TRAUMA, they are also on Tumblr and they update a slightly more humorous version of TROD in comic format.

[ourlittleuluru]

Another dawnbreak event pictures under the cut~

These ones are more like last night's after my uh... Late night questionable decisions ಠ⁠◡⁠ಠ;;; also I'm missing two images which I will update accordingly~ have yet to do today's mission... 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

Him and MC enjoying the night breeze and looking out the window!!!! It's so precious 💕💕💕💕

This feels like from the starting conversation where MC was just feeling so left out 😂 the look on Xavier's face while MC is being so dramatic with the bird! Even the birb is in on this!

Is this why the cat was angry with Xav?? Xavier why u always say things like this to the cats! Even in that one tender moment, telling a cat it'll freeze to death if it eats the popsicle 💀 goodness...

I'm assuming it's MC in the corner looking like she's about to throw hands at someone while Xavier is trying to stop her... Good luck with that 😅 but that bunbun pillow!!!

And yes... To me, this "movie" is def very cursed. So cursed that even my rng is suffering 🫠🫠🫠

Also what??? Xavier! 😂😂😂😂 You sir! How did you even come up with that phrase???! Smoothluru huh... 🤣 Too much delulu in the soululu. Now everything is all lu and ru.

And onto scene 2~

Honestly... I have 0 context of this conversation, I was so confused when I got it 😂 guess I need to go brush up on my loreeeeee

And last image as I hit Tumblr's limit... Looks like MC is taking the poor cat away from Xavier 😆 like she's covering it's ears when Xavier is saying mean things to it. Stop looking so confused, Xav. You know what you said 🤣

[twstgameplay]

Mod Jeido's 12th NRC Exam Results

Another round of NRC Unified Exams have come and gone and I eked by the S5 threshold by the skin of my (very sharp moray) teeth.

I'll go into detail on my teams and strategies that helped me get to this score. Hopefully this can be of use for others who are looking for reaching the higher scores. I wouldn't have been able to make this happen without the crowdsharing of teams online and really good support cards.

Here are my individual scores for each test:

Before, in order to get a score of SSS (110k) you would need an average of 22k in each test. Now, in order to reach S5 (160k), you would need an average of 32k. Once again, I would be relying heavily on my defense test scores.

My teams will be placed below under the cut for length. All battles were done using the Extra tier difficulty.

I hope everyone did great in the 12th NRC Exams!

~🐬

FIRE ATTACK TEST - 30413

In order to cross the 30k threshold for the Attack tests, it's imperative to finish on Turn 5. I was stuck at 29k for most of the exam session, but at the urging of a few other exam takers, I tried this team (specifically double Lilia) to my success. The levels and magic chosen are shown as above. Each character has max magic and buddy levels.

A few key points about this team:

Jamil and the two Lilias needed to be activated by themselves. This is because Jamil's ATK UP L and Lilia's DMG UP L are on their M3s and only last one turn. If RNG is unhelpful and you cannot activate both Jamil's spells at the same time, then you would not get the boost. The same goes for Lilia 1 and Lilia 2.

Similarly, Epel's M1 has an ATK UP M for 3 turns. As long as it is activated before his M2, then his M2 DUO with Idia will be boosted.

Other teams I tried that still got me scores over 25k (All Lv. 100+): ―　Dorm Azul, Boa Epel, Masq Idia, Dorm Ortho, Support Dorm Azul ―　Dorm Kalim, Dorm Jamil, Masq Idia, Dorm Ortho, Support General Lilia

WATER BASIC TEST - 31279

Despite all the new cards that have appeared, this feels like an "old faithful" combination that still has not steered me wrong. The levels and magic chosen are shown as above. Each character has max magic and buddy levels.

A few key points about this team:

Since this is a basic test, the number of DUOs is key. Since these are heavy hitters, I found I had depending on which of the non-DUO cards that appear first, I would either have to finish on Turn 3 or Turn 4.

At first I was using a Lv. 110 Leona but found that I would have to end on Turn 3 in order to be able to use all 5 DUOs, and RNG was just not playing nice. So I found someone who hadn't leveled him up all the way and this helped me stretch it to T4, given that neither of the Leonas' M1s showed up.

My Vil/Support Leona DUO combo was hit by the foe Jack's ATK DOWN which sincerely helped me as well. Sometimes debuffs aren't terrible, especially when you need to try to stretch it to T4.

Other teams I tried that still got me scores over 25k (All Lv. 100+ unless stated): ―　Dorm Malleus, Dorm Silver, Dorm Sebek (Lv. 95), Dorm Lilia (Lv. 95), Support General Lilia ―　Bday Riddle (Lv. 85), Dorm Leona, Dorm Azul, Dorm Vil, Support Dorm Leona

FLORA DEFENSE TEST - 37031

Once again, Heartslabyul on a Defense test becomes the most frustrating out of all the tests. Three out of the five have Curse to block heals, and when you're running three cards that have continuous heals, this can be very detrimental. This score was the result of successfully activating every single heal except one turn of my Ortho's continuous heal. The levels and magic chosen are shown as above. Each character has max magic and buddy levels.

This team gave me a total HP of 77,757 with an additional 43,986 in healing. I was able to end this battle with 64,991 HP left.

A few key points about this team:

Whenever possible, I would make sure to activate Leona's continuous heal on T1. Depending on the magic I had available at the time, I either would have paired him with Idia's debuff removal (if it looked like the foe had Riddle, Cater, or Trey showing up first), or Silver's M2. For Extra, at least one DUO would be necessary for me to kill on Turn 5.

Ideally, both Cerberus Orthos should be activated at Turn 2. However, this is not always possible, nor is it practical. Each one of Ortho's heals does a 6k+ single heal (along with setting up a continuous heal) so if I hadn't taken more than 13k in damage, it would have been wasting some precious HP points.

In the case of this score, I activated the support Ortho on T2 and my Ortho on T3. I was hedging my bets that I may get a debuff on T2, so I could use Idia's M1 to help mitigate that.

Luckily, this score was successful (after many many many many many unsuccessful tries) because I was only hit with a debuff on T5, after all my heals had successfully activated. Only the last little bit from my Ortho's continuous heal that was activated on T3 was not counted.

COSMIC DEFENSE TEST - 31397

I was able to get a score surpassing 30k fairly quickly, so I didn't spend that much time on Cosmic this time around. Since there are no type advantages, I went with another "old faithful" team that I knew would produce results. The levels and magic chosen are shown as above. Each character has max magic and buddy levels.

This team gave me a total HP of 86,892 with an additional 23,889 in healing.

A few key points about this team:

This test had no Curse, so it was a rather leisurely Defense test. But, as always, I would always try to activate both Cerberus Orthos' M1 heals on T2. Since this was Cosmic and there were no advantages, I would have lost enough HP during T1 that I would not have lost any healing to maxing out my HP.

Because this was a Cosmic test, however, I would need to use all 4 DUOs that I had brought into the test in order to kill by T5 and getting a high score.

OMNI ATTACK TEST - 29898

While it stings a little that I was unable to get above 30k here, this test was my last ditch effort to get my score above the 160k threshold for S5. The levels and magic chosen are shown as above. Each character has max magic and buddy levels.

A few key points about this team:

Similar to Fire Attack Test, Jamil and both Lilias needed to be activated individually with both their spells at once. Unfortunately, this wasn't always possible, since Omni tests can hit you with something you're weak against when you're not expecting it.

Hitting a few neutral elements was unavoidable, but as long as I didn't hit any disadvantages, I knew I would be able to finish on T5.

Originally I had some heavy hitting DUOs on my team instead of Dorm Riddle and Dorm Leona. For example, at one point I was using Dorm Rook and Boa Epel. I was trying to leverage their M1 boosts, but to no avail.

One person on discord commented that they threw in Dorm Riddle and Dorm Leona into their team in order to just hit hard with four total double attacks and they were able to increase their score. So I tried the same thing here, and while I wasn't able to get over 30k like i was hoping for, it did get me the 926 points I needed to get over the 160k threshold.

[deadbaguette]

as i see ur a person who has copleted the hades game; i want to ask if u have any advice in weapons, keepsakes or techniques to get out of asphodel 😭😭 i have gotten to the hydra two times i think but i can't find a way to defeat it so i would appreciate any kind of advice to finally get to elysium and reunite patroclus nd achilles

Oooh! I’ll see what advice I can provide😭 I do have a lot of hours on the game, but I’m not particularly good LMAO

I’ll give what advice I can for each weapon (except the gun, I’m horrible at the gun), a build you can use, and some techniques (below the cut because this might get long)

Just a bit of an explanation of status effects because it’s relevant for a lot of the builds:

- Weak (Aphrodite), Doom (Ares), Hangover (Dionysus), Chill (Demeter) are all primary status effects. Meaning they’re a part a few of the base boons (attack/special/dash and the cast too in only Aphrodite’s case)

- Jolted (Zeus), Rupture (Poseidon), Exposed (Athena) are secondary status effects. Meaning you have to get a separate boon to apply this effect to things like the attack/special/cast/dash

Having two of any of these applied to an enemy can proc the mirror of night effect ‘Priviliged status’ which at its max upgrade gives a 40% damage bonus

The fists:

The fists are arguably the easiest weapon to use early game. And the aspect of zagreus works because of that dodge chance which is nice when you’re early game. But I recommend running this with the Demeter aspect if you can.

The most broken build I use on them? Athena Ares duo boon build.

Start off with an Athena keepsake (i’m not sure if you have this, but give nectar to her if you haven’t), this guarantees your first boon to be her. Pick the one that makes your special deflect/divine flourish. Athena boons are SO GOOD early game, absolutely abuse that deflect ability especially on the hydra.

If rng isn’t on your side, equip the Ares keepsake after the fight with Meg. When you get his boon, pick curse of agony/your attack inflicts doom.

Now you have to look for their duo boon, merciful end (your attacks that deflect trigger/activate doom immediately). You can get this in: charon’s shop and from the chambers but NOT in trial of the gods (when you have to pick).

Try avoid taking other gods in throughout Tartarus and Asphodel (except Artemis, crit is always good so try get the boon ‘pressure points’)! This fills up your pool of potential gods to get, and you really only want Ares or Athena.

If you get Athena, aside from the special here are boons you should pick:

Divine dash/your dash deflects (this one is a must get, but it does not open the option for duo with ares keep it in mind!)

Blinding flash/abilities that deflect also make foes exposed (then you can proc the mirror of the night buff ‘privileged status’)

Bronze skin/more resistant to damage which is always nice ESPECIALLY in Asphodel when the lava is alr causing you enough trouble lol

If you want a cast/call, it honestly doesn’t matter who you pick. I would suggest the Athena cast/call though if you’re having trouble with the Hydra because the cast deflects and the call makes you invulnerable.

The sword:

Okay some advice for the sword. The best attack combination imo on the sword is: dash strike 2x, and then special. This gets a lot of dps out of it, and if you have the mirror of the night ‘privileged status’ in use it’s really easy to trigger

An easy build that I don’t go wrong with is on the aspect of nemisis build (but tbh u could use Zagreus’ aspect I just like the extra crit). It’s an Ares oriented build which is uses duo boons.

You’re going to want to start off with the Ares keepsake, this guarantees your first boon to be him. When you get his boon, pick the one that applies doom when you use your special (boon: curse of pain).

If luck is on your side, let’s hope you can find an Aphrodite chamber or an Artemis chamber. If not, equip one of their keepsakes in the room after fighting Megaera. Then you’ll get their boon guaranteed in Asphodel

But if luck IS on your side and you get:

An aphrodite boon, then pick heartbreaker’s strike/the one that applies weak to your enemies on your attack. This is when you begin to apply a lot of consistent damage

An Artemis boon, then pick true shot/her cast. This opens the duo boon options for Artemis. Almost every Artemis boom is really fucking good BUT the ones you should look out for are the Aphrodite+Artmeis duo boon (increase crit damage against ‘weak’ foes) and pressure points (lets any damage crit which is really good)

If you happen to get Athena and not Aphrodite, you can choose to put her on the attack instead BUT you have to keep in mind that then you should look for her boon ‘blinding flash’ (all abilities that deflect also make foes exposed).

The bow:

Crush shot aspect of Hera is a really good and really easy build! Equip the aspect of Hera which means that you imbue the cast INTO the bow. And your next shot will have all the casts as well.

Really the only thing you need for this is Aphrodite’s cast (so equip her keep sake in the start). And just… put every pom into the cast LOL

Some extra boons to make your life easier:

divine dash (I cannot stress enough how good this boon is)

get a Poseidon boon, his attack/special/or call, and unlock the duo boon for +1 level for each Pom upgrade

Get an Artemis boon along with Poseidon if you have him, her attack/special/or call), and unlock their duo boon which makes each cast fire a secondary projectile that does less damage

The shield

This is maybe one of the best early game especially against the hydra. The ability to block when holding the attack/doing the bull rush is so useful. For this one I always run Zeus’ aspect. It’s the only one that allows you to attack while your special is out. I like running a hangover build with this, but I’m not entirely sure how optimal it is lmao.

Equip the Dionysus keepsake, pick drunken flourish/special inflicts hangover. Throw your special at the enemy, and it applies hangover per hit (this is why the Zeus aspect is good because you can still attack while you’re applying hangover).

This is arguably the easiest build I use because (maybe it’s ironic) but Dionysus gets along with so MANY gods. Ares, Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena… all their duo boons with him are 10/10.

So any of them come your way, here are imo the optimal boons you can pick to open the possibility for duo boons with Dionysus:

Athena: divine dash (again….) and you can get the duo boon with Dionysus which slows down projectiles IMMENSELY. Super good against the hydra

Ares: curse of vengeance (revenge damage, if you take damage inflict doom on the enemy) and you can get the duo boon which makes the hangover tick rate go from 0.5 seconds to 0.35 seconds. This basically doubles the amount of hangover dps you do, it’s so broken

Aphrodite: heartbreaker strike (the attack) and get the duo boon which increases the amount of hangover stacks you can do. So while the base is five (where you’ll do whatever amount of damage per tick x5 if you have 5 stacks applied), it adds 3 stacks (so now it’s like x8 damage per tick).

There is also Artemis, who you can choose true shot (your cast) to unlock the duo boons. Either Dionysus’ or Aphrodite’s are good options (increases crit chance to hangover foes per stack applied, increases crit damage to ‘weak’ foes)

Prioritize the Aphrodite and Ares duo boons they are the best.

The spear

The spear might be among the hardest for beginners? But it is my favorite weapon and the one I used the most in the beginning and throughout the game. I almost always run the Demeter cast build, but since you haven’t reached the surface I don’t think you’ve unlocked her (it’s been a while I’m not sure SGDGHSSGHS sorry). So uh I’m not able to help with the spear build until you’ve reached the surface 🙏

(You can check out this post based off a comic I drew where someone did the build!)

[captmickey]

I asked, ya'll voted: And it looks to be another year of Game Stream for Monkey Island Appreciation week!

Once again, no, I will not play Escape. Maybe next year when I'm feeling a bit more brave (and have more patience with its RNG nonsense). And Curse isn't on the list because I streamed that last year for appreciation week and I don't think ya'll want to see Curse. Again.

*=Because it’s Episodic, means I’ll play one or two of the chapters. Not the whole thing. If this gets voted, I’ll make a poll for which episode.

So pick your pirate!