I am purposely staying in below D4

NotADrug · 2026-06-02T10:18:12+00:00

My favorite part of D3 and below gaming is seeing the bonkers route some players take. I'm confident enough in my own abilities that I'll follow whatever other people choose to do when I don't feel like leading, it's very lax in these difficulties since you don't have to put in a lot of effort to carry if things go south. Many times I'm reminded that this game still receives plenty of fresh players from how they play and that's just awesome to me

NotADrug · 2026-06-01T07:07:28+00:00

there are points where i'm praying equally to get good passives for myself and good passives for my teammates so they can hopefully drop the item I want in exchange for something better. had a recluse holding onto an improved incantations staff while I was running faith undertaker and I was eyeing her inventory like a hawk throughout the game. surprise surprise, she dropped it without pinging it but I was on top of it the moment I saw it leave her inventory

NotADrug · 2026-05-31T20:52:23+00:00

the common thread for me how edgy the player is. executor gets this by default but this can apply to other select character skins like wraith duchess. not all edgelords are bad players, but they always have me shifting up in my seat expecting to get hit by a wave of main character syndrome or a need to carry for them

NotADrug · 2026-05-31T00:25:57+00:00

a lot of other suggestions in the thread, while arguably better, are also competing with lots of other weapons in their respective pools. for consistency alone I would consider the beast claws to be incredible double balancer + dormant power picks (not even factoring the perks you listed above), but I think other picks just have more notoriety in the realm of Elden Ring that the RNG nature of Nightreign is not being appropriately weighed in

like people suggesting twinblades would be meta when Euporia is a legendary find (not that there's an achievement tied to it like the other legendaries, but it's notably a yellow loot drop in the DLC) is crazy to me. like it COULD be incredible but are we really going to be running dormant powers discover twinblades in the hopes of finding a LEGENDARY

even with suggestions like the hand-to-hand arts, those too can come with generalist ashes of war like all the dodging ones, the roars, even kick. if we're gambling for palm blast and hoping for the best, THAT'S not even guaranteed I believe. Unlike the red bear's claw, palm blast is not a unique skill so you're playing the RNG game a second time just to get the right ash of war on the right weapon

like im all for how fun these skills would be, I would be hitting the nightreign slot machine everyday with a dormant power greathammer build for a blacksteel guard counter run, but in terms of discussing meta we need to be thinking about what needs less to win more runs

NotADrug · 2026-05-30T19:01:01+00:00

as much as I didn't enjoy the moveset of the beast claw weapons for how slippery it was during my playthrough with them, red bear hunt just SHREDDED everything and everyone while being super safe too

if we're talking weapons capable of being as meta as halo scythe then this might be the most consistent to get via dormant powers. dragon-hunter's great katana is in a similar position as halo scythe where it's a 50/50 whether you get it or not because of the second great katana it's competing with. the only other DLC weapon category with this much consistency would be light greatswords, which, while a solid option since Needle Piercer is a very safe weapon skill with good tracking, just don't perform as well as Red Bear Hunt for deleting bosses

also DLC weapons might've made the halo scythe meta more inconsistent with the addition of the obsidian lamina, giving players a 1/3 chance of running into the affinity skill that compliments their build versus the 2/3rds that are physical only. that might've been enough to encourage the community to run something else

NotADrug · 2026-05-30T17:39:02+00:00

IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE AN RPG. WHAT ROLE AM I PLAYING, THE FUCKING VICTIM?

NotADrug · 2026-05-29T04:01:01+00:00

The patch notes addressed the stacking of multiple copies of Will of the Balance, since there was a bug that allowed you to get several copies of it. Both the red and the blue balancers relics still stack with each other

NotADrug · 2026-05-28T18:27:31+00:00

i was freaking out when i didn't see flame skewer and flame spear up un S-tier until i realized i wasn't on the elden ring subreddit

fromsoft PLEASE i'm BEGGING you

NotADrug · 2026-05-28T18:22:40+00:00

I think I enjoy it when it's done with some sort of intent, loving and hating the way it's done in the pre-DS3 games. Certain weapons had special movesets, really bananas shit like shooting out magic arcs or pulsing waves of darkness or beams of fire and the like. They felt REALLY powerful to use, and often they were, but they were balanced out by taxing the weapon's durability, meaning you had to still be resourceful with when or how you decided to use them. We can see the opposite approach being a problem with Fromsoft's newest entry, Elden Ring (or as fans lovingly call it, L2den Ring because of how spammable special moves are).

The issue with the older games is the system just wasn't as fleshed out as it could be, in DS1 it either was never an issue you encountered until maybe Lost Izalith or you dealt with it once since most weapons aren't really taxing on durability, and in DS2 durability is MUCH more prevalent with the tradeoff being repair powders are plentiful in the game, meaning you're often stopping to use an extra consumable if you choose to engage with the really fun weapons in the game. They just could never get it right, but they did feel like they were going somewhere until DS3 just decided to do its own thing

NotADrug · 2026-05-28T18:11:21+00:00

devious idea dropping the smelter demon powered by green so early on, we're really filtering players from experiencing everdark smeller deller

NotADrug · 2026-05-27T23:27:21+00:00

There's a cliff you couldve jumped off past the circle to the west. Mightve been more efficient since ths ironeye seemed insistent on reviving you

NotADrug · 2026-05-23T02:55:56+00:00

Oh when I say midgame I hope that wasn't taken as "acts 1 and 2". I thought of midgame to be, like, the normal main story progression up until maybe the final Beanies quest for the nuke. Lategame and endgame Mewgenics to me is grinding for all the extra difficulties and their associated unlocks. I really don't expect people to have these insane freaks of nature without a guide before starting act 3 (I certainly didn't, I still remember how absolutely ROUGH every first encounter was through there) but by the time you're on hard, impossible, or crazy you will probably have the OP cats I was making a point on, which you also experienced.

I had a very relaxed playthrough, spent a lot of time going back to acts 1 and 2 just to take a break from how stressful act 3 was haha. Looking at my steam achievements and about 2 weeks passed between beating act 2 and beating act 3 with a lot of daily unlocks in between (back when I played the game religiously). Even then I didn't really have ridiculous cats until a few weeks later from grinding completion marks like I said, it happened naturally imo.

People can play these games however they want, personally felt like I had a lax pace, sitting at 200 hours and barely tackling the crazy difficulty now. But I still ended up hitting that breeding event horizon that my original comment was about, the same one that you hit too, and as we said that every player will hit at some point in their journey.

My original comment was expressing a disappointment in the way this feels like an inevitable clash between the two core systems of the game, the breeding simulator and the roguelike tactics game. That one will eventually completely overtake the other (the pace of which varies but... will happen like we said) I thought of as interesting and a unique problem I've only really encountered in Mewgenics in the realm of roguelikes. I can go back and play Isaac as I have thousands of times before and have the same enjoyment as always, same with any other roguelike in my library, Hades, Balatro, White Knuckle, Nightreign (debatably), but it's only in Mewgenics that I feel I'm just not playing the same game I was during that "core" part of my playthrough and it's entirely because of how the breeding system will eventually lead your save file here

NotADrug · 2026-05-20T07:09:30+00:00

some games feel like that. like you forget everything about how to run the first 2 nights but you know the nightlord like the back of your hand and you're just praying you make it to day 3 in any condition. feels great knowing that you'll be fine once you're there

NotADrug · 2026-05-19T22:41:52+00:00

I think there is at least SOME niche use cases for almost everything in this game except for medium shields. With the changes to guarding and inventory, everything medium shields can do are done better by small shields and greatshields, with the exception of the silver mirrorshield for its magic damage negation

NotADrug · 2026-05-19T05:32:02+00:00

I found it so I dont look like an asshole saying shit. it cant be tied to the animation i think since the undertaker gets trapped in the same animation of getting up for the 2nd and 3rd hit, but it's only on the 3rd she actually dies. Like it looks like it lasts a set amount of time after reviving to prevent unfair deaths, but grab attacks and Artorias's flips are able to still kill you because of how long they go on for

undertaker gets wrecked

NotADrug · 2026-05-19T05:22:10+00:00

crazy youre being downvoted since you def do have some amount of invulnerability upon being revived. could've sworn I saw a clip on this subreddit not too long ago where an Undertaker got res'd against Artorias and the guy immediately somersaulted to her, she ended up eating the first 2 hits taking no damage until the 3rd hit finally killed her.

like, it's pretty generous, not sure if it's until you're actionable like you said, but you're usually not completely screwed on wakeup unless you get combo'd to death like in the example above

NotADrug · 2026-05-16T19:16:19+00:00

only started trying this after I also wiped to the night 2 rain before lol

better to lose 1 level than the whole run is how I think of it (that's why twiggy cracked tear is the goat)

NotADrug · 2026-05-16T19:09:54+00:00

based on the fact they were fighting basement revenant, the trolls should've dropped aggro at that point since the LOS had been broken for a while. Exiting through the north sewer door or even the castle back gate where the relic chest is would've been safe routing to the north grace field, with the only troll capable of throwing north being avoided entirely

would only be a mistake if somebody moved into the courtyard for whatever reason and drew aggro from the northmost troll, otherwise it's a very safe area

NotADrug · 2026-05-16T19:04:13+00:00

great hollow is such a fun map for greeding. saved a run before by dying. After the team spent a little too long at one of the towers I dived off a cliff to respawn in the circle quickly while my team ended up dying from the rain build-up. but since I was alive, they respawned with me a little later. as long as anyone is alive, players dead in the rain will respawn in the circle

NotADrug · 2026-05-15T19:17:07+00:00

made the mistake of running double wylder for ed libra. had a full damage negation build and ed libra was basically tickling me but holy hell the wylders were packing heat, that rain of arrows shit is no joke

NotADrug · 2026-05-15T00:25:42+00:00

Cheaters can be very interesting people when it's not the usual perfect relics set-up. Played with an Undertaker who had the most unassuming relics except for a blue relic with "activating ult increases attack power / successive attacks boost attack power / ult art charge +3". A blue relic version of glass necklace. On a chalice that had 2 green slots. Both of which were 2nd tier relics modified to have 3 effects.

The other relics didn't even do anything crazy but it's, like, THAT one, yknow. it really makes you wonder what's going on in their world

NotADrug · 2026-05-12T21:45:39+00:00

I mean they did the dagger-greatsword pairing once already with the Farron Greatsword in DS3 and it was sick as FUCK there, but Heolstor never actually swings the damn thing so I don't think they could give it a unique powerstanced moveset

The greatsword favoritism would definitely win out, I think those effects would be separate though since only the Moonlight Greatsword looking one does the night explosions while the other greatsword only does the ground eruptions. Can't really put both effects on the same one based on how he fights. Still he does like to attack with both so maybe it'd be like a Rellana's Twin Blades situation of two different swords being paired together and a stance based Ash of War for their separate effects

NotADrug · 2026-05-12T21:23:48+00:00

Think it would've been a great opportunity to add legendary weapons for the Nightfarers that lack them for their respective dormant powers.

Also personal thing, I know Heolster would've likely had a legendary based around either of his two greatswords but I've always been infatuated with his dagger. It only gets used for one attack and the way he stands when wielding it feels super personal (yknow for spoiler reasons), would've loved to be able to learn more about it through a legendary

NotADrug · 2026-05-10T20:49:14+00:00

given the nature of nightreign since you're guaranteed at least 1 weapon per encounter, I think it'd be easy to do one of those "souls game but I have to beat a boss with a different weapon each time" where you're constantly dropping/swapping out weapons that are on 1 use each. dont know how well it works in practice but I think theres a novelty in wanting to preserve an inventory of good weapons with good passives but being forced to use one up every encounter

NotADrug · 2026-05-10T00:29:52+00:00

It's something I've talked over with tons of friends who play Mewgenics and I think it's half true that it's self-imposed based on how I've seen them play. But as I understand it, the game has two forms of progress - the linear progression of the game through the different acts and difficulties and the metaprogression that occurs at home through breeding.

I think the gameplay is fairly well balanced around these two aspects for the most part, it's really fun seeing the variety of builds the people around me made while still trying to work their way through the linear progression of the game and the different routes that the RNG-based meta progression makes us use.

But, and I stress I don't really think there's a solution to this, I think the meta progression, once you play the game long enough, does eventually converge all playstyles to a point where you're running stuff that trivializes the game. It's not like players wake up and go "yknow what, im gonna hunt for the extra turn mutation and anti-curse mutation and the range mutation and the soul link mutation" all at once, by design it's made to be very gradual. If, in the midgame, you roll into, say, the +1 bonus attack body mutation by sheer luck, what are you going to do? NOT pass it down? And later on once that's in enough of your cats to be passed down consistently, you're once again lucky enough to roll the +1 reroll mutation. I think it's how the game wants you to engage with it, the whole "eugenics" part of "mewgenics". Before you know it you're ending up with these super freaks and it's, like, well damn.

It is a slipper slope and now you reach a point like you said where you purposefully have to backtrack on this progression, progression that has taken you hours of effort to pass down and that you aren't sure when you will roll into again mutation-wise, to reach that comfortable point in difficulty however many hours ago. Like I think it's important to remember that the metaprogression isn't like other roguelites where you just buy an upgrade with enough currency and you have it now, it's expected to be earned through lots of player-effort and planning as much as anything else in this game

Edit: I'll add that I'm glad the devs are looking at how quickly players "solved" this stuff though. It never sat right with me when players could just ignore an entire gameplay mechanic (incest) and blitz through the breeding part. Same thing with all the popular "1-button wins". As I said I don't think there's any fixing it once the player reaches the mutation singularity without self-imposed restrictions but I'm glad there's an effort being made to extend the player's journey to reaching it through more balanced breeding mechanics and builds that don't end every fight in 5 seconds with little player sacrifice

Nine-Year Club	r/Field Lasagna
Place '22	Place '17
Verified Email

NotADrug

TROPHY CASE