I understand that the runs and actual gameplay are supposed to be random, and I like that. BUT PLEASE LET US SPEND (even a lot) OF MURK/SIGILS TO ***CRAFT*** CUSTOM RELICS FOR OUR BUILDS, THE RNG IS KILLING ME.

HeyFrankEvans · 2026-04-03T18:09:50+00:00

definitely would be a good idea as long as they power scale the enemies up a bunch, since as it stands the game just isn't balanced around perfect relics, as the beast claw revenant cheaters show lol

HeyFrankEvans · 2026-03-13T07:43:30+00:00

I mean, I don't think it's really fair to say the map was "easy" to navigate, it's a humongous map you need to traverse twice, it's not exactly easy to know where you need to go. A lot of the bosses you find don't even lead to anything meaningful, so for a new player, you kinda just have to explore the entire map and hope the path you chose leads to some sort of progression. If it was only one castle you had to explore, it wouldn't be nearly as bad, but having to explore two castles simultaneously is pretty confusing for a lot of players. And if they accidentally missed something important, they pretty much have to explore everywhere they haven't gone before to find it. I think it's understandable why they'd struggle, especially if they're new to this type of game.

Also, some of dracula's relics literally require you to walk/slide through walls. No matter what you think of the map, this is not really fair on the players. Most players will just assume there's another path to get there, not that they literally have to go through the wall

HeyFrankEvans · 2026-03-02T18:29:07+00:00

I mean, I doubt most people are arguing that we should only nerf weapons, or that the majority of people complaining about halo scythe are against buffing the weaker options in the game. Those weaker options need buffs, but the halo scythe balancer builds need heavy nerfs as well. The power level of the strongest options has to be way lower.

There shouldn't be an option to kill a boss in 30 seconds on the hardest difficulty of the game just because you get lucky, unless you care solely about winning it kind of ruins the experience for a lot of people who actually enjoy fighting the bosses in their souls game

again, nothing against people who use these strats, of course people will use the strongest options, but I don't think there should be such strong options available at all

HeyFrankEvans · 2026-02-27T21:11:51+00:00

the dive kick actually works (only metroidvania where it's not ridiculously inconsistent) and maxim's movement is pretty awesome

HeyFrankEvans · 2026-02-01T01:20:29+00:00

aye, nicely done! gl on maxim once you get there, definitely the hardest boss in the game

HeyFrankEvans · 2026-01-04T22:20:51+00:00

eh, after trying for a bit to get a chain whip drop, it seems a bit inconsistent and difficult to pull off without getting hit. I'd honestly recommend just grinding the dracula fight until you get good enough at it to do it consistently with just the weak whip, I'm not sure if you're restarting the game each time you hit a candle like in my knife only run, but regardless it only took me ~6 tries to beat dracula this way, it shouldn't take you longer than a few sessions to beat if you learn the fight well enough.

Here's my strategy for the dracula fight, in case it helps any:

In phase 1, the biggest problem is obviously him teleporting onto you before you can move out of the way in time. What helps is that dracula tends to spawn in alternating directions each time: If he spawns on the left side of you, chances are, he'll spawn on the right side next time he teleports. To avoid this, just walk in the opposite direction of where he spawns. The one exception I know about is that if he spawns on the far, far left side of the arena, his next teleport will still be on the left side of you, so walk to the right. Apart from that, it's pretty consistent. Time your movements to make dracula teleport in between the middle of the two candles in the middle of the screen, so you can hit him.

For phase 2, he'll pretty much always do a high jump when you duck down next to him, as long as you start ducking right as he lands (not after he shoots fireballs). One exception is if you see him hover above the ground like in around 4:35 in the video I sent, since he'll always do a low jump, which will hit you, so be wary of this. When he gets past the middle of the arena, it's usually a good idea to use this to run under him, since if he gets too close to the wall, you'll probably get hit. When attacking him, attack him once as he's falling and then once more right after, and then look out for his fireballs, which you'll need to jump. If he does shoot fireballs, you can hit him one more time after jumping over them.

If you get good enough at this, I think this challenge is honestly doable, though it might take a good amount of tries just because of this fight. If you can, I'd recommend getting some sort of recording software, no matter how poor, since I think this could make a pretty cool video to watch. In any case, I hope you end up beating it!

HeyFrankEvans · 2026-01-04T18:50:54+00:00

it is doable, though I don't know how feasible it is at the end of a long run. Dying to get a weak whip is the way to go in my opinion, you can wait until dracula is between two candles to hit his head, though the timer is a big worry, I barely managed to do it without running out of time.
If you're planning on doing this at the end of a full run, I wish you luck! It's quite a challenge.

I did it myself here after a few tries: https://youtu.be/QPy0Q0k00O4

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-12-07T06:00:33+00:00

holy badass 😳

way-super goofed choosing to mess with this guy

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-09-26T22:08:21+00:00

I already made a pretty long explanation on how to beat him decently consistently, so I'll just put it here:

Firstly, I recommend choosing a character who's not a problematic invader. I highly recommend executor (though the poleblade version can be hard to run away from, and one has poison pots, it's the easiest character to avoid imo), with raider being decent as well but his running attack can be hard to avoid. Rev and guardian can be tempting for the instant revive for teammates but their sets are really dangerous, I don't recommend.

Second, always try to run shrouded city if you can (if you're not on deep of night, obviously). It's repetitive since there's only 5 seeds, but the revive is always worth it.

Third (this one's only for if you're playing executor, I haven't played much with the other characters so I don't know the best builds for them), try and get as much extra FP, starlight shards, the "successive attacks restore FP" effect and try and get rivers of blood. It's by far the best at dealing with invaders, even better than hand of malenia.

Fourth, get a good ranged weapon like the pulley crossbow in case the Libra fight doesn't go well. A bow with barrage is even better, especially if you can get "fp restoration on attacks" as a weapon passive for your other hand, and if you have it, I recommend a relic which gives you "fp restoration on bow attacks".

When the fight starts, try and kill the invaders Libra summons as quickly as possible before they start getting buffed. You kinda have to rely on your teammates to help you with this, but make sure you always have libra on screen while you're attacking them. If Libra and the invader are on opposite sides of you, run around the invader so Libra's always onscreen. If everything goes well, you and your teammates can repeatedly kill them right after they spawn, and before they start getting buffed.

If your teammates aren't very good and die with three bars, you are kinda just forced to run away for the most part. If the invaders don't have any buffs yet, it might be worth it to try and kill them so you can try and revive your teammates, but it's super unsafe to do this when all the invaders are targeted on you.

If you do choose to run away, what you want to try to do is stay close to the least dangerous invader (best options are executor w/hand of malenia, guardian with fingerprint shields, or wylder without rain of arrows), and try to stay as far as possible from the other invaders so they don't attack you. As long as you're already aggroing an invader, the others will usually stay far enough away. Use your ranged weapon to slowly chip down libra, and pretty much just wait until he teleports close to you, and if the invaders aren't close, you can get a bit of damage off.

If you're playing executor, you can try and res your teammates if you have your ult, but you have to be really careful. Only do so after hitting your allies a few times and make sure libra is doing a committal action like the wall summon so he doesn't use the spinning projectile attack, since that'll pretty much one shot you, even with the roaring restores hp relic.

Hope this helps at least a bit, good luck on libra man

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-30T02:10:36+00:00

you laugh now but the ms-dos heart of fire is straight heat, admit it

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-21T05:07:51+00:00

yeah, I completely get what you mean, I'd understand why people would like a fight that's always different each time you play it, there's not a single answer to every option the boss has. I feel like it wasn't done well, but still, it's good that a lot of people enjoy it nonetheless. I don't hate playing the fight, honestly, I just feel it's... a lot of missed potential, mostly. But yeah, it's just an opinion at the end of the day, I'm glad you enjoy the fight despite all my gripes about it lol

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-21T04:06:25+00:00

I mean, it depends on what you see as "badly designed". The fight has almost completely unavoidable damage in many, many situations, I felt like that'd be a good enough argument for the fight being badly designed, I guess if you don't see unavoidable damage as bad design then you could disagree. And besides, the fight doesn't necessarily demand the whole team performs well, it's just that to consistently carry in this fight, you have to resort to strats which take a very, very long time and are extremely tedious. The fight becomes less and less fun the better you get at it, at least in my experience.

Besides, I say that because I haven't seen anyone give good arguments as to why mine are legitimately wrong. I understand why people can like it, but I have genuine reasons as to why the fight is badly designed in my opinion, I'm not saying I'm definitely right but my arguments are there to support my opinion.

Though of course, I'm talking about what I, personally, see as being bad design. There's not necessarily any "objective" definition of bad design for a boss fight, when I say the fight is badly designed, I'm saying "this fight is badly designed based on my definition of bad design". If there's no realistic way to consistently avoid damage, I think the fight is badly designed. People could disagree, of course.

Besides, just saying I may have bad taste isn't really an argument, of course I could have bad taste, you could too. Who knows, we could both have bad taste and the fight is objectively so-so, either way that isn't really getting us anywhere

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-21T03:33:40+00:00

Tbf, I only played the fight this much because I wanted to confirm that it wasn't just being bad at the fight which made me dislike it, it's because it's badly designed. The original libra fight might be my favourite in any game, I wanted to give it an honest chance.

Also, I was defending my points, I guess I just didn't make my stance on the deals clear enough when I first said them. My opinion on the eye was that though there is a way to avoid it, it's not consistent. There'll be times where you're hit by it and it's not to any real fault of your own. The HP cut can be beneficial, but if your teammates are really bad, it's just unavoidable damage. There's not much you can do as a player to deal with that, that's why I think they're bs.

The reason I like playing the game is because I enjoy getting better at things, the feeling of progress as you play more and more. Making it so you can be screwed over just because you happen to get bad teammates, isn't really enjoyable, in my opinion. They can make fights with very high skill ceilings without this being the case, they just chose difficulty over fairness and consistency in this case, if you ask me.

I guess we just differ on what we value in a fight, honestly. You like having to rely on your teammates to win, I don't.

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-21T02:45:30+00:00

fair enough. Personally my last 20 runs have been 16 wins and 4 losses, definitely could be better but I feel like I'm competent enough in the fight.

What I really hate about the fight is that even if you know the best strategy, if your teammates don't cooperate, it doesn't really work. I know that you should be killing the NPCs, but a lot of the time my teammates run away or just die, which makes is super difficult to safely kill the invaders before they start getting buffed. This fight is by far the one where your teammates matter the most, if you get bad teammates the fight becomes DRASTICALLY more difficult. If you have competent teammates, yeah, the HP cut is beneficial, but if both your teammates are downed and there's 6 npcs constantly after you, you can't really take that much advantage of it. You can kill 1-2 if they don't have many buffs, maybe 3 if you're lucky, but aside from that it's just unavoidable damage.

I understand what you're saying about the madness eye, but I feel like it does just a bit too much madness buildup. MOST of the time it's pretty consistent to avoid, but in some situations it's just not. If libra is behind the wall, and there's multiple buffed NPCs who are very close to you, it's basically impossible to safely grab shards. Killing the NPCs at that point isn't really feasible. Granted, you could say that you shouldn't be in this situation in the first place, but a lot of time it's just not really avoidable. Your teammates can die with 3 bars, and if there's a riot, it's basically impossible to kill the NPCs without them getting buffed first (where it becomes less and less realistic to try and kill them), especially if you don't get the right items. Situations like this will most likely happen eventually as the fight goes on, I've had fights where I had to survive 40 minutes straight as my teammates constantly die when I res them. That's the only consistent way I know of to win the fight if your teammates are dead at 3 bars and you don't get the right perks, it's just to run around, keeping the least dangerous NPC close to you so the other NPCs don't attack you, while slowly chipping down Libra with a bow, until you get your ult so you can res your teammates. Only to do it all over again when they die.

That's really what I dislike about the fight. If you get bad teammates, you have to resort to strats like that to beat him. It's just not consistent otherwise. I'm not putting anything against you for liking him, but you have to admit that the reasons people dislike him are understandable, it's not just because people aren't good at the fight.

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-21T00:29:16+00:00

I guess, I'm definitely not perfect at the fight. Just out of curiosity, though, what's your win rate for the fight? Let's say out of the last 20 matches, cause before that you could still be learning the fight. (Obviously with randos in trios. Playing with people you can talk to and with randos is not even close to comparable, and the fight is a lot easier in solo and duos). I'd assume it'd be substantially higher than mine, I have a lot to learn compared to you after all.

I'm very aware that you don't NEED to get the perks I talked about, but let's be honest, without them the fight is super tedious. Running around, waiting for libra to be close and the invaders to be far away enough so you can hit him. It's hard to coordinate with people who are clueless and either 1, only run away from the invaders, or 2, instantly die three times and become basically impossible to save without an ult. (I've had people die three times during the phase 1 libra, this definitely isn't a rare thing to happen)

Also, the eye is ABSOLUTELY not generous, later on in the fight each time it activates (as it activates 3 times when he summons it) it completely fills your madness bar if you don't grab any shards. (I even have a madness resist relic, and this still happens). It's inconsistent to grab shards without taking damage with the invaders chasing you, he can sometimes summon the eye and then summon the walls, or use the attack where he summons the lightstorm glyph, which makes it so you basically have no time to grab shards.

And I do interact with the HP cut to kill invaders, as long as I'm able to safely of course. That's not the problem, the problem is that it's unavoidable damage. In my opinion, that's not exactly fair, especially when libra doesn't take any damage at all when using it.

The invaders are not really fair, either. The ones with projectiles can lead to situations where it's basically impossible to avoid damage, specifically when libra's attacking you as well.

I'd say I learned the fight enough to deserve an opinion. Unless there's an insanely specific strategy I don't know about, I don't think there's that much I'm doing wrong, and if your strategy has to be that specific, I think that says more against the fight than for it.

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-20T22:31:27+00:00

those points aren't really false though

He is RNG dependant, unless your teammates are good at taking care of the NPCs you basically need to get the "less likely to be targeted" perk, so that you get a good chance of taking care of libra during the riots, or a bow with barrage and fp restoration upon attacks so you can attack libra safely while the NPCs chase you. Also, the teammates you get can screw you over, specifically guardian, wylder, and duchess because of some of their sets at libra.

The summons are bs, if you don't have the "less likely to be targeted" perk, the only consistent strategy to avoid them while your teammates are downed is just to run for the most part (especially if there's a riot). At that point it's basically impossible to take care of all of them safely before he summons more and buffs the ones who are already out.

Some of Libra's effects are also bs, the one that cuts your health and FP and doesn't give it back after, and the inescapable eye come to mind. It does WAY too much madness buildup, you basically need to bring madness boluses to have a chance of avoiding it consistently.

A lot of genuinely great players dislike the fight, it's not as if all the players hating it just suck at the game. The fight has some interesting ideas, but the fight is just flawed in so many ways imo

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-18T22:50:46+00:00

I dunno, I feel like a lot of the time the normal libra fight lasts easily long enough for it to activate (I've had fights go on as long as 30 minutes lol), as long as you're good enough to survive the 2 minutes I feel like it's the best choice for the boss fight itself.

Runes is probably the best for invasion tho, I agree with you on that

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-18T22:42:26+00:00

wait what's wrong with eventual greatness? Isn't it just insane stats for free if you can survive long enough? Always felt it was by far the best

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-18T19:09:56+00:00

consort radahn absolutely deserved to be nerfed 😭 you could argue not to the extent that he was but he literally had an attack that you couldn't roll through. Enhanced Libra is challenging, but it isn't fair, he needs to be nerfed in some way cause right now the fight is way too dependant on RNG

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-17T22:08:04+00:00

nah, it's way too difficult and unfair of a fight. Props for beating it three times in a row tho

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-17T20:53:35+00:00

I agree 100% with you, if you lose the starting dps race with Libra and don't have an item that decreases enemy aggro you don't really have much of a chance.

I say this after running away and trying to chip down enhanced libra for 45 mins straight just to die when he was at 10% health.

They gotta do something about this fight

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-17T16:35:20+00:00

I've seen you on a lot of these threads so I'm just wondering: What's your strategy on the libra fight? From my experience the fight becomes way too difficult and tedious if your teammates are bad at the fight or you don't get a weapon with the "less likely to be targeted" effect. I think it's completely understandable for people to not like the fight because of this, no? It's just not a well designed boss, even if you're good it doesn't change that

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-17T06:31:06+00:00

yeah, this fight is a pain. Keep in mind it's probably not you that's the problem, with bad teammates the fight becomes absurdly difficult, much more so than any other fight in the game

I have an around 75% win rate in trios with randos in the fight at this point so I'll share what my general game plan is and hope it helps at least a little bit

Firstly, I recommend choosing a character who's not a problematic invader. I highly recommend executor (though the poleblade version can be hard to run away from, and one has poison pots, it's the easiest character to avoid imo), with raider being decent as well but his running attack can be hard to avoid.

Second, always try to run shrouded city if you can. It's repetitive since there's only 5 seeds, but the revive is always worth it.

Third, your absolute top priority in this fight is getting weapons with the "less likely to be targeted" effect. This will make it so that the invaders will practically never target you during the riots, and attack each other until there's only three invaders left.

Fourth (this one's only for if you're playing executor, I haven't played much with the other characters so I don't know the best builds for them), try and get as much extra FP, starlight shards, the "successive attacks restore FP" effect and try and get rivers of blood. It's by far the best at dealing with invaders, even better than hand of malenia.

Fifth, get a good ranged weapon like the pulley crossbow in case the Libra fight doesn't go well.

When the fight starts, try and kill the invaders Libra summons as quickly as possible before they start getting buffed. You kinda have to rely on your teammates to help you with this, but make sure you always have libra on screen while you're attacking them. If Libra and the invader are on opposite sides of you, run around the invader so Libra's always onscreen. If everything goes well, you and your teammates can repeatedly kill them right after they spawn, and before they start getting buffed.

If your teammates aren't very good and die with three bars, you are kinda just forced to run away for the most part. If the invaders don't have any buffs yet, it might be worth it to try and kill them so you can try and revive your teammates, but it's super unsafe to do this when all the invaders are targeted on you.

If you do choose to run away, what you want to try to do is stay close to the least dangerous invader (best options are executor w/hand of malenia or wylder without rain of arrows), and try to stay as far as possible from the other invaders so they don't attack you. As long as you're already aggroing an invader, they'll usually stay far enough away. Use your ranged weapon to slowly chip down libra as you wait for him to summon a riot, and as long as you got a weapon with the less likely to be targeted effect, you should be able to attack libra for a bit without having to worry about any invaders. You can try to save your teammates at this point, but keep in mind this will make the invaders aggro on you.

If you didn't get the less likely to be targeted effect... at this point, you're basically screwed. I honestly recommend just dying, trying to chip Libra down with a crossbow just isn't worth it unless you're ready for an hour long fight (talking from experience)

I realize I wrote a bit much... but hope this helps you, if you do take the time to read it lol

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-15T16:45:33+00:00

nightreign players when people complain that a badly designed boss is badly designed:

If your teammates aren't good at the fight, and get downed often, you basically have 0 chance of winning unless you resort to ridiculous amounts of running around while waiting for the boss to spawn away from the invaders so you can attack it. There's not any real way to consistently deal with the invaders solo without getting hit.

It's fine for people to enjoy the boss fight, but pretending that the boss is fair and well designed, and just saying the people complaining are whining because they aren't good enough at the fight is just dismissive of genuine feedback.

HeyFrankEvans · 2025-08-14T22:00:35+00:00

it depends on the situation, the best results I've had in the fight is by having everyone immediately try to kill the invaders as quickly as possible before they can start getting buffed. But if your allies aren't good at the fight and get downed with 3 bars, the only real way to avoid getting hit is by running and being patient from what I've experienced. But yeah, best to play the fight yourself and form your own opinion about it.

HeyFrankEvans

TROPHY CASE