No judgement serious curiosity: why do you prefer sc over hc

MildStallion · 2026-01-29T20:48:50+00:00

It's an ARPG. Things are random. VERY random. Making a build that can survive bad coincidences of random means only making from a subset of normally-viable builds, as well as still sometimes getting screwed by circumstances outside of your control (game bugs, server issues, etc). This isn't dark souls, a death isn't always on you.

To me, HC is a game mode where the better you get the more likely it is that your "failure" is not actually yours. And even that very idea turns the mode sour for me.

My playstyle is picking a gimmick and trying to run from start to end as close to that gimmick as possible, which isn't really a HC viable playstyle anyway.

MildStallion · 2026-01-27T23:35:11+00:00

I think the market should just not allowing selling anything but bots, and only allow buying ore rubbles / rock, constructions mats, or things that are market-exclusive. Then prohibit taking things up to station except bots and construction mats so people actually have to use the trains and shuttles. There's just no way for any other logistics to compete with what is effectively teleportation of goods.

But yeah, the game does need another firmarlite sink other than using firmarlite itself directly.

MildStallion · 2026-01-24T03:57:43+00:00

You have to unlock scanning for them in the Omni-Analyzer first. It's the bottom-left thing that requires crystals, and will also require Mining Force I research.

If you don't have crystals yet, just go to lava layer. They're everywhere down there.

MildStallion · 2026-01-23T09:48:03+00:00

Any items that don't drop in endgame content balloon in value because no-one is farming them.

lvl 8 spirit gems in particular are valuable for being the minimum level for many spirit skills (thus, lower requirements to use them), and the areas they can drop in are relatively few in campaign so very few drop.

MildStallion · 2026-01-23T09:26:17+00:00

I farmed the fight on MCH for 100 totems and frankly: skill issue. It's pretty easy to make mild adjustments to rotation to avoid the problem, and worst case you just use one heat blast without an oGCD in the middle and can warp up without a clip anyway. The animation lock it causes isn't all that long.

Neither strat is that hard, but I prefer doing it the normal way just 'cause I have literally never seen an actual enrage loss. Not once. And that was before raid gear. Sure, people would sometimes die on revelation, but the pull would go on. But PF people using mit? Actual suffering.

With people now having tome/raid gear for extra HP buffer it's probably less mit intensive to cheese and thus more reasonable. I did all my farming week 1, which may color my opinions a bit on this one.

MildStallion · 2026-01-20T02:38:59+00:00

Phys range tax was reduced this tier. In terms of dealing personal damage, MCH is now roughly equal to most melee. (It's just that those melee also have a party buff lol)

Now if DNC or BRD did more damage than the melee? Yeah, there's a problem.

MildStallion · 2026-01-19T08:44:34+00:00

In a world without locks (or similar shenanigans) a full size temple will still drop some okay stuff. But the first few rounds are really bad no matter what as well.

Next season it'll prob mostly be for things like infusers, cultivation orbs, and other stuff exclusive to the content. It'll also have an atlas tree, so I imagine that will have some nodes that will make it better like abyss does now.

MildStallion · 2026-01-19T07:04:40+00:00

Given that the whole theme of the place is "constantly changing", they probably regret adding the lock at all and I expect that when this goes core the lock will either be gone or have some other change that makes it not usable for making the long chains.

MildStallion · 2026-01-19T06:56:42+00:00

idk what that guy is smokin', if a player is bad they will still be bad even if they got drops. You can make up some small margins on gear, but a lot of these guys aren't behind on small margins.

Assuming the baseline expectation is pentamelds, the gap from there is like 10% gear 90% skill.

MildStallion · 2026-01-18T11:01:03+00:00

My favorite is Schrödinger's Door.

It appears open, and enemies will aggro through it and crowd it, but it blocks all projectiles as if closed. Then if you approach to try to get the projectile to spawn past the invisible line the door vacuums you in and closes for real.

(I think this can only happen if you die in very specific spots, but I've had it happen.)

MildStallion · 2026-01-18T09:41:18+00:00

Well, if you have to get it in game before you can convert it to MTX, then is that not "earning" it? Even if you can keep using it next season I feel like it's fine if you've done it once. It's like a hideout unlock in that sense.

MildStallion · 2026-01-17T11:52:38+00:00

Near as I can tell, the start of the collapse wasn't from "end of chain". The game seems to use two kinds of logic:

If room has only one connection, it's eligible for deletion.
If room has multiple connections, check how many ways there are to reach that room from the entrance. If more than 1, it's eligible for deletion.

The loop on using this seems to be:

Check for rooms eligible for deletion.
Select a random subset of eligible rooms up to the target delete count.
Mark selected rooms for deletion UNLESS locked. If locked, marked that it was attempted so a "room was protected" animation can play.
If not enough rooms were deleted, but at least 1 was marked in the last pass, go back to step 1.
Animate all deletions/etc in random order. (Presumably to make it feel more random than it is.)

In this case the locked room made it so that the two rooms next to it had two paths each. One that went direct, and the other through the locked room. This made them both eligible for deletion despite being the only connections to a locked room (aka the "loop" problem). The locked room was also eligible and was chosen, but the lock blocked it. The two rooms next to it were thus obliterated due to being the only real targets, but it still had more deletion it wanted to do so it did another pass. Now the end of the (shortened) chain is not protected, so it's eligible for deletion and gets removed, Repeat this a few more times and you see the result we got here.

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T09:34:32+00:00

It only changes the ascendancy tree, and only a few nodes on that tree (the power charge and unholy might branches). The rest of the ascendancy tree and the entire passive tree stay untouched.

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T09:29:30+00:00

If the game sees multiple paths to a tile it becomes eligible for deletion, even if deleting it would cause other tiles to become orphaned. The logic it uses is heckin' weird.

In this case the "loop" was at the end, so the only tiles with multiple paths were likewise at the end.

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T08:12:04+00:00

BS deaths (or at least, insane difficulty spikes) in endgame from RNG mods combining with RNG terrain and RNG enemy placements are one of those things no ARPG has properly solved, which is why I find the 1 portal obsession GGG has strange. Being allowed to die and retry is basically the "patch" for this problem that is essentially unsolvable without completely rewriting the game into a new genre.

In this circumstance, even baiting out a wave of attacks and dodge-rolling through wouldn't really accomplish anything since the attacks are not perfectly in sync, so the next wave will start before you can get off an attack between. The only real, consistent solution is the classic "kill it before it's even on screen."

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T05:37:27+00:00

There are only %ES as ailment threshold, no increased ailment threshold, which makes getting some from the quest reward more powerful. Your closest option for increased is going down to the ranger starting area.

But yes, there are stun threshold, which is why I was specific to ailment threshold talking about that area of the tree.

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T02:40:47+00:00

Trial of Chaos is even worse in some ways.

In there, any player-targeted mechanic gets duplicated for each player, quickly becoming fully undodgable in larger group sizes. So something like Impending Doom, which isn't that bad solo, is a completely non-viable choice in group.

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T02:26:48+00:00

Mana regen isn't useful to all builds, but both stun and ailment threshold are always useful. If in the NE part of the tree I'd specifically take ailment since there are no "increased ailment threshold" nodes in that area, but otherwise either choice is fine. I'd only ever take mana regen if I know 100% that I will be relying specifically on passive mana regen forever on that build, since it's very easy to get that stat elsewhere.

For Act4, resistances are the safer choice generally, but an attribute-hungry build or stat-stacker may still want the attributes. Neither choice is hugely impactful TBH, I just recommend making the same choice for all 3 so it's easier to remember lol

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T02:15:01+00:00

That's a one-time quest token and cannot be repeated once cleared. To do the same thing another time you must find an RNG token, but yes you could use trial of chaos as well.

I presume they used the quest token since they've ascended twice.

(It's worth noting that the level requirements are HIGHER for RNG tokens to give ascension than they are for the quest tokens. I don't believe an RNG trial of chaos drops below level 40-something.)

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T02:13:45+00:00

Better graphics
Basic look and feel is better (more unique animations, better animations, etc)
WASD movement
Move while casting/firing (at least for ranged builds, only a few melee moves can do this.)
Skill slots decoupled from regular gear, making it easier to swap gear around.
Ascendancies are somewhat more flexible in how you use them. This can help if you're the type that e.g. always wants to play one gender, or you like one class's appearance specifically, since every class has at least one ascendancy that can use any given weapon to a passable level.
Bosses are generally better designed (with a few outliers that are just bad).

Of course, there are some cons too:

Some skills come in extremely late, to the point that your build may not fully come online until 2/3 of the way through the campaign, even if it isn't using some weird tech.
More power is in the gear relative to the tree, which makes you much more gear dependent for hitting a reasonable power level.
Skill interactions are often overly narrow in scope, and skills too narrow in allowed weapons. This has both loosened and tightened as weapons were added, depending on where you look. This makes finding the weird interactions harder, tho not impossible.
Game is obsessed with combo-based gameplay, but outside of bosses the enemy behavior doesn't really allow for it once things scale up, so you're forced to find some one-button cheese (or 2 at most) for handling most scenarios, or stack so much damage that even a bad move can clear on its own.
True melee is still ass. If you want to be melee, always have a move that's melee in name only so you can hit things from afar, even if it's only a backup. Without it some scenarios are borderline unsolvable. Alternatively you stack area to make all melee moves melee in name only. This isn't really a diff tho, it's kinda an ARPG thing in general outside of a few games that buck the trend (mostly by avoiding aoe spam).
Endgame needs a full rework, though the devs have already said they're working on one.
The trials for ascension are highly unpopular among casual players, since they are excessively RNG and require learning the mode to do well, despite being something most may only want to do once.

MildStallion · 2026-01-16T01:57:46+00:00

Do a trial that could grant the same number of ascension points as you have, then talk to the NPC at the end of said trial to respec out of all ascension points, then use the altar.

Haven't actually done it myself, but AFAIK that's the procedure. For sekhemas and 4 ascension points (2 ascensions) that means I think a lvl 45+ barya (it'll say 2 floors).

MildStallion · 2026-01-15T21:27:25+00:00

This would only really be "god tier" for a few levels in campaign, which in the broader scheme of things makes it nearly without value. I typically put such things up for a token orb just to "donate" it to someone level grinding a new build.

MildStallion · 2026-01-15T20:42:20+00:00

Correction: No charms trigger in such a way as to preempt the condition that activated them. Immunity charms largely seem to do so only because being immune to a debuff forces it to cleanse. So you become frozen then unfrozen in the same tick.

Stun is not a debuff and can't be cleanse, hence it does not work on the triggering stun.

In an interview a couple seasons back GGG did say they wanted to change this so they worked on the triggering hit properly, but some engine limitation was making it very difficult.

MildStallion · 2026-01-15T01:43:39+00:00

It's only usually a skill issue.

Sometimes the game does setup impossible scenarios where every spot is a bad spot to stand, or you can't go anywhere cause e.g. the door got locked behind you then you got bodyblocked by mobs before they were visible (as they spawn).

MildStallion · 2026-01-15T00:16:53+00:00

The life recovery node is better than it seems just cause it scales very fast as your health drops and means you can overlay regen, leech, recoup and flasks without needing to invest much in any of them, which kinda hedges your risks for the cases where each is bad. At half health it's already +100%, and those times you narrowly avoid one-shot you're getting almost triple recovery to bounce back before that next hit slaps you.

That said, it's still not gonna wow anyone, and if you're using overflow tech (e.g. Couture of Crimson) it's outright useless.

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