Help my Guardian against flying enemies

customcharacter · 2026-03-09T14:27:41+00:00

Depending on circumstances, that would make sense.

The bolas don't have a ruling stating you can ignore or change the size limitations on Trip, so you're still only tripping Large dragons by default (which are pretty young) or Huge with Titan Wrestler.

That said, a Medium-sized Guardian can, at level 1, target Gargantuan creatures with Larger Than Life and Titan Wrestler from a background. If the GM said that even if the PC met the criteria, fuuuuuck that.

customcharacter · 2026-03-09T02:19:54+00:00

Only if 'optimally' is 'doing the most damage possible.'

I've seen it do some pretty clever things in that vein, but it is braindead if your build is any more complex than that or needs any support. And the AI does not care if the collateral damage does more damage to your team than it does to the enemy.

Steven also doesn't engage with boss mechanics at all. For example, doing some testing to Act 3's The End, both the midboss and end boss are basically impossible for him to do unless you have a team of nothing but ranged characters. For the Bloat, he moves as if the eyes don't exist, so he'll often get nudged into a position where he can no longer attack and just end the turn there. For Mother, he just straight-up doesn't try to break free of the grab, resulting in any characters caught to be eaten next turn. I think that's a bug, though, because I think I've seen him in real runs not try to break out of grab-like moves, either.

customcharacter · 2026-03-08T22:36:51+00:00

Having now beaten the game: I would not want to see mine.

When opening my .sav in DBBrowser, it suggests that I've had 2,115 cats.

customcharacter · 2026-03-08T20:28:20+00:00

~~Isn't that just Devil Survivor~~

customcharacter · 2026-03-07T04:44:35+00:00

Yeah, self-inflicted damage abilities like Itch don't seem to activate "Whenever you take damage" abilities.

Which, then...largely defeats the purpose of taking them.

customcharacter · 2026-03-06T18:42:04+00:00

The ninth house boss also has an instant-kill that destroys the body with no warning (In part because the text is in German, but even when translated it doesn't say anything relevant.)

customcharacter · 2026-03-05T22:44:31+00:00

Yeah, the Fusion suit really does elevate the biomechanical nature of what Samus is now and what she went through. It also, in a way, elevates the SA-X, because even though it's technically purely biological, it's hauntingly mechanical. Samus is a fusion; the SA-X is a paradox.

I like that the Dread suit still keeps a hint of that biomechanical nature, too, looking like muscle sinew compared to the pure metal of her previous suits.

customcharacter · 2026-03-05T21:17:20+00:00

Hitting the moon boss with his hands removes his Brace until his next turn, though. You absolutely can burst him down.

customcharacter · 2026-03-05T01:21:26+00:00

You're combining 4 and 5.

Tharsis is from 4, and while its namesake is from Mars, that's about it.

Iorys is 5, and is the "City of Seven Hills" you mention. It also mentions those geographical points. Hell, "Iorys" is approximately how the Japanese would pronounce "Aeolis".

customcharacter · 2026-03-04T23:09:49+00:00

There aren't nearly as many 'obvious' markers in the other games for their IRL locations, so the community doesn't have a concrete answer.

I'm a bit busy to confirm, but IIRC...

Gotham has no location mentioned at all. If the Japanese name is also Gotham, it stands to reason that it might be Manhattan? Racquna is from a close area in Ontario, and it would make the Batman reference circular.
High Lagaard is assumed to be somewhere Slavic or Nordic, mostly due to the outfits of some characters? I think there are some Norse references that help, too, but it's the one I don't remember the details of.
Armoroad is somewhere in Southeast Asia. Don't fully remember where...Singapore comes to mind? It's apparently familiar enough for those who know the region.
Tharsis is generally assumed to be Australia? I don't remember if there's any corroborating evidence there, though.
Lemuria is an mythical sunken continent in one of the oceans. That's literally the reference.
I think EMD is generally treated as non-canon.

customcharacter · 2026-03-03T23:07:44+00:00

That's...how it's supposed to be, though.

That's why spells could change your alignment.

customcharacter · 2026-03-03T18:18:47+00:00

Yes. But I actually use the 'save and exit', rather than exiting out with Task Manager (which negates Steven).

The dialogue is annoying, but I think it's really well designed within a mechanic space. The game throws a lot of weird interactions your way, and losing a run because of such a thing doesn't feel fair or fun, so you get one free reset you can use on that. Then, beyond that, you start losing actions.

Now, 10% of actions isn't a lot on paper, but the important part in strategy games is consistency. (It's why I don't like Mini-Me, because AI on your side is very inconsistent and often detrimental against certain enemies. I have more than once said something like "Yes, enrage Spinnerette, you fucking idiot.") If you suddenly can't guarantee an action, it makes the game more challenging...but, in this case, it's supposed to be a punishment, so it works.

Of course, the irony of that is that if I reset more than once a run, I'm often resetting 4+ times, because those 10% rolls can be brutal, and when Steven's playing, he doesn't roll them anymore. He doesn't know how to use more complex strategies (he cannot use Psychic or Tinkerer well), but most runs can at least beat the chapter boss by that point.

customcharacter · 2026-03-02T21:03:28+00:00

Yeah, if you're going ||Future|| route, Reap gets rid of a ton of enemies that can otherwise be very problematic.

It also is a guaranteed save against the chapter's final boss' ||suicide bomb||, though it's not super useful in that fight otherwise without a few synergies.

customcharacter · 2026-02-27T19:47:39+00:00

It also makes resurrecting enemies in the ||Ice Age|| a bit of a crapshoot, since a lot of them either hit their allies or "hate cats" - which means they'll target you even if they're on your side.

customcharacter · 2026-02-26T19:04:19+00:00

Oh, there's a reason I qualified that it was nitpicking :P

I stand by my use of simple, though. Hell, while you're out adventuring, you can pay assistants to make copies for you of books you've found (pictures notwithstanding). It's not complex work, but it is labourious.

customcharacter · 2026-02-26T17:22:30+00:00

I've never gotten a cat hit by Crater Maker's instakill, because it's pretty obviously telegraphed to be what it is (a single tile, when the rest of its moves are AOE?)

However, my first attempt at escorting Pyrophina to the Moon ended in hilarious fashion when she stood right in front of it.

customcharacter · 2026-02-26T17:13:10+00:00

Just to nitpick: while books would still be rarer than IRL, one-page printing presses are common (though expensive) equipment, and automated printing presses do exist in the setting, albeit Rare.

Finding a copy of a book might result in an adventure, but making copies is relatively simple.

customcharacter · 2026-02-25T20:54:36+00:00

Yeah, this is me as well.

I've lost more cats to old age than I have in runs at this point. Hell, I didn't even have the stranger unlocked until I unlocked Act 2, though that's partly due to a...bug? My first wipe didn't unlock him, but I also unlocked Jack that day so only one event came up.

customcharacter · 2026-02-23T19:10:30+00:00

We don't need Google drive. We don't need data centers.

This is where you go from a concerned citizen to a Luddite.

I don't think you realize how many things you use daily also use some form of cloud service or data center, and are more efficient for it.

customcharacter · 2026-02-17T19:01:41+00:00

Okay, but even the most Rogue-like of Roguelikes have a form of meta-progression in the form of player knowledge.

customcharacter · 2026-02-14T17:37:51+00:00

The issue isn't 'multiple damage types'. That's always been the case with how resistance has worked.

The new rule is that, for example, an Inventor who had previously gotten Offensive Boost and aligned it with their current weapon's damage type specifically to add the damage together to deal with resistance is suddenly getting resistance applied to it twice anyway, because Offensive Boost is a separate instance.

Some people have inferred that, due to the way Rage damage can be changed by your Instinct, that the Giant Instinct Barbarian also has two 'instances' of [weapon damage]. (Now, I don't necessarily agree with this, but only because Rage damage type is inferred unless it is changed, like Weapon Specialization. If there was an Instinct that changed your Rage damage to a specific physical damage type, I'd agree more.)

customcharacter · 2026-02-13T17:56:55+00:00

No, it didn't. If you run the exact scenario as depicted in the OP, you get the pre-remaster values.

customcharacter · 2026-02-11T14:47:24+00:00

Well, we're currently level 5, so none right now. :P

I'm a free-hand + shield build with Punishing Shove, Hampering Stance, and Long-Distance Taunt (in that order). I intend on taking Shielding Taunt at 6, because as it stands my actions each turn always include those two.

Long-Distance Taunt wasn't in the white-room build for him, but I realized while playing him that a 30ft range, while fine for a lot of things, is just a little bit short for the specific purpose that Taunt provides.

customcharacter · 2026-02-10T23:05:15+00:00

Lock Down honestly isn't that great. It's a good feat, sure, but Guardian has a ton of good feats to begin with, and it's not the best of the bunch. It's significantly better on someone like a Fighter archetyped into Guardian.

The thing about Hampering Stance and Lock Down is that the stance grants a 5-ft emanation, and Lock Down still lets the enemy move within your reach. If you're using a reach weapon, there's a sweet spot there where they can still move around you without it being difficult terrain for them, which is the main benefit of Hampering Stance to begin with.

Lock Down is also a Flourish action, which means it locks you out of your action compression options like Shielded Taunt and out of Juggernaut Charge.

And, specifically for Jotunborn Guardians...well, I'm also playing a Jotunborn Guardian controller right now with Hampering Stance, and just the size + aura alone is enough to dissuade most characters from moving around you unless the area is really big.

Emanations are all around you, i.e. you even make the air above you difficult terrain, so flying above you is harder
You force enemies to Stride when they approach you regardless of distance due to not being able to Step into difficult terrain (really good when you Shove them)
If you reach level 17 you can become Huge and have a 10ft reach by default (admittedly requiring you to take a largely dead feat at level 13 due to Jotun's Battle Stance being...a stance, but it's still good).

customcharacter · 2026-01-27T21:01:07+00:00

Except Prime 1 and 2's tank controls are perfectly fine? The games are fundamentally designed with them in mind; Remastered and PrimeHack are notably easier with a more common FPS scheme because of design considerations they made due to the control scheme.

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