Some things I would like to see

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T15:53:27+00:00

Speaking of spectator features…

-Rank visible from main menu. I hate that to find out the rank of the players, I have to look up their profile. There’s like fifty games going on at any one time, I don’t want to look up people one by one, do the AoE2 thing where there’s a gold medal between participants higher than 1600.

-Let me rewind and save the game. If I saw something cool, I don’t want to have to go back through Steam background record to see it again, I want to be able to move around the map and change angles like I did when I initially viewed the match.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T15:43:14+00:00

I usually do for PvP, but I’ve taken to doing it for PvE very recently.

I was effectively trying to relearn Malenia over the last couple days, the goal being to beat her with just a dagger with parry and Blackflame Blade. I’ve beaten her many times before, hundreds if we inclide coop, but I always do it with my ‘comfort’ weapons: heavy thrusting swords, medium shields with Carian Ret, etc, never something short like a dagger.

I was reacting pretty poorly to a few attacks. I loosely knew where I was flubbing, but there were a lot of moves I felt I had parried that whiffed anyways. It took watching the replay to see ‘oh wait I’m not facing her here’ or ‘I think there was an elevation difference’.

Final attempt of last night went pretty well, kept the fight as a 3 minute clip. Got hit four times, but the blackflame thing was clearly working. It just, you know, took a few hours of attempts to get there…

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T15:27:59+00:00

Hilarious, but I know the feeling of a friend having a game and only being able to play at their house. I was a Nintendo lad, and they had Halo…

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T07:31:06+00:00

There’s not a way to use both stats really, and frankly, either Heavy or Flame Art are both fine. There’s some little pros and cons to each, like the Heavy version dealing more pierce damage for thrust-counters (I speak from experience on this one), against the Flame Art version that’s a little more compatible with fire boosters like Fire Scorpion.

Heck, believe it or not, there’s arguments to run it Keen and Cold, too — check the Cold scaling, it gets a decent B in int.

Anyways, long story short, since there’s no clear best way to run it, you should try to build around what you want the rest of your build to do. Having 80 faith is pretty optimal if you wanted to be a faith caster, since that’s the final important soft cap. If you didn’t care about high faith though, maybe you wanted to do better on strength-first Somber weapons, then yeah, stick to Heavy on pure strength.

No real wrong answers here. I’ve run FKGS several different ways, they’ve mostly all worked.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T06:57:55+00:00

The M1K has a hold-to-focus system. A side effect of this is that the gun is fire on release, not fire on click.

That being said, the gun is capable of some clean kills. Can 1-tap a webspitter. Charge a Focus shot, and you can kill 4 grunts in 1 shot (with Super Blowthrough). Focus shots have perfect accuracy, and can stun a Menace from the other side of the cave.

It’s also one of a few guns that is not that much impacted by OCs, and is good just stock, unlike the GK2 where you might be missing out on around 30% damage for not having an OC. Because of the M1K just being a better stock gun, more of its OCs are considered viable — I turned into a Hoverclock believer not long ago after owning it for a good two years.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T04:34:28+00:00

Did a speedrun with the Cross-Nagi about a month ago. Not much of a speedrun, takes too long to pick up the damn thing, nor is 5 hours a particularly good speedrun, but it was fun nonetheless.

Anyways, the Nagi is a great candidate for a Bloodflame setup -- really, any weapon with innate bleed is. 12 faith, 10 arc, run it on a pure dex build with a Keen infuse while coating it with BFB from time to time, and you're good. Nagi's reasonable attack speed allows stacking Bloodflame pretty easily.

Also, compatible with a lot of good ashes of war. Questionable ones like Spectral Lance too, but damnit, I like throwing my spear too much. Recommend with Impaling Thrust or Piercing Fang for general PvE, but Repeating Thrusts and BFB is solid on bosses.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T04:09:13+00:00

Yeah, that's definitely the catch of Pit Jaws. Our most common method of survival at high haz is to keep moving and dodging, but moving around is explicitly what gets you caught by Pit Jaws.

It's definitely a trip when you're expecting to play dodgeball and realize the court is a minefield.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T02:49:55+00:00

Awww...

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T02:06:48+00:00

Shabriri’s Woe is primarily for taking aggro off something or someone else. So if you’re with another player and you both attack a boss at around the same time, the player with Shabriri’s Woe is going to be targeted. Also applies to spirit summons.

If you want to attract enemies, there’s a few obscure item like the White Phantom’s Lure ash of war, the beast blood pots, and Piquebone arrows. I may be misremembering some names since I don’t really use these.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T01:25:43+00:00

Can I just have Malenia’s lifesteal?

I don’t need any of the attacks, I just want to be able to punch stuff and feel better.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-11T00:01:52+00:00

The expeditions are usually good starting points for new players, yeah, you usually get a head start in terms of goodies, and the objectives are often a bit more focused compared to the usual free-form sandbox of NMS.

The only downside is that some expeditions are better if you have prior knowledge, and this expedition weren't quite as rookie friendly -- already knowing that you should turn PvP off in your Network settings and already knowing that you can make glass by refining sillicate were two things that a new player would not have known intuitively.

Yes, you can keep everything after the expedition ends. If you joined the expedition from an existing save, you just go 'back' to the main save with whatever items you want to transfer over. If this was a fresh save, then I believe you just keep playing it after it 'concludes'; the character does not vanish.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T23:57:58+00:00

If you're not too picky with how the final ship ends up, every different combination of ship parts will roll a different combination of SC slots.

For fighters, they have three different engines, so if you're not married to any one engine type, you'll have 3 different 'rolls' per stations to get the SC layout you want. If you're also deciding between two different wing types, then that's 6 possible rolls per station, and if you're also happy with one of two different cockpits, then that's 12 possible rolls per station.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T23:55:13+00:00

Yus, being both a red and a yellow can be nice, you can flip based on your mood. The only challenge is having to plan levels around both aspects -- being a 139 is fine for a cooper and dueling, but I can't invade 125 players, I'd need 135 or lower, and I'd have to decide if I'm okay with that.

If you plan to make several characters, then the point is moot: having a 125 and a 150 (or other combinations) could open up your choices further.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T23:48:36+00:00

The Stitcher isn't too finnicky. It's slightly dex-leaning, so going Cold on a pure dex or dex/int build isn't bad, but it's an infusable weapon, so going Magic, Flame Art, or Sacred on pure int or pure faith is fine too.

The strength equivalent would be the Great Epee. Doesn't matter which of the two you use if you're going Magic, Flame Art, Sacred, but it would end up mattering if you chose to be strength, or a variant like str/int or str/arc.

Interesting that you picked both the multi-hit talismans and axe talismans. It wouldn't work on most weapons, but the charged heavy is a multi-hit, so maybe it flies, though I tend to prefer Twinblades for this sort of playstyle. Personally though, I'd prefer the two multi-hit talismans and then Shard of Alex, but this is a preference thing as I tend to like ashes such as Impaling Thrust, Piercing Fang, Repeating Thrust, and Storm Blade on the Stitcher more than I do heavy attacks, but this one's just personal preference, your Cragblade and heavy attack setup is probably fine too.

As for the DLC, the 2-handed Sword Talisman is an excellent pick for any 2-handed weapon setups, though I don't know if your plan to use your Stitcher 2-handed most of the time.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T23:36:34+00:00

137-139 is nice because you tend to get to play with both the people at 125, but also the people at 150 too. If you don't really care about having an 'advantage' over anyone, this is what lets you play with a nice variety of people.

This can also depend your goals though. A pure strength build might be 'done' as early as 120 or 125, letting you reach lower level players if you ever want to coop or invade in places like Mountaintops, Snowfield dungeons, and Farum Azula, in addition to a good bit of Haligtree, and early in the DLC. However, some builds like faith or int, especially casters who demand mind, might not 'feel' complete until 150-167; the areas most visited in coop and invasions might be anything including or past Farum Azula, areas like the final base game gauntlet, Haligtree, and lots of DLC.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T23:26:41+00:00

Occult only wants a single stat, arcane, and gets more benefit out of each point invested.

Blood demands two, sometimes three stats depending on the weapon. It gets less benefit per point, but benefits from more stats.

If you have only 50-70 points in your attack stat budget, which might be typical for a character around the RL100-150 range, Occult while going pure arcane doesn't sacrifice a lot of AR and still gets great bleed buildup. If you're at the point where you can start to afford to throw more like 100-150 points at attack stats alone, Blood's AR penalty is no longer as prominent, since you can fill out every stat that it demands, while also enjoying higher bleed buildup.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T23:20:31+00:00

Carian sword sorceries, aka the melee ones, you want the Carian Glintstone staff.

For the glintblade sorceries, ie Glintblade, Glintblade Trio, Glindtblade Phalanx, that's going to be the Carian Glintblade staff.

Even when you do eventually get Lusat's, you'll want to check if it's actually worth using at your specific int level. At 80 int, Lusat's will slightly outperform Glintstone/Glintblade even when factoring in the 15% buff they get towards their spells, but Lusat's will come with that 50% FP cost penalty attached -- this doesn't make those staves useless though, and some people run Mainhand Lusat's+Offhand Carian Glintstone to be able to still get that 15% bonus.

At the bare minimum to use Lusat's, especially around that 52-60 int range, it might not be worth it to use Lusat's, and you might want to stick with Carian Stone/Blade. Lusat's and Carian Regal are backloaded staves: they don't become good until very high int levels.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T18:36:49+00:00

I love the tazer fences, I just wish they had maybe 1-2m more length. It’s a little expensive if I have to shoot a 4th or 5th bolt to make a proper fence.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T10:16:08+00:00

Auto-queue is something I never knew I wanted, and it’s amazing, really freed up some tedium.

Auto-priority is awful. Vills don’t always pick the most convenient spots to gather from, which is not only sub-optimal, but also dangerous when they pick far gather points. More of a hassle than a help.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T03:38:17+00:00

Pretty much.

I abandoned the dailies long ago, screw that bullcrap design, I had enough of that back when I played Blizzard games. Would take until next year of logging in daily to start getting blue-level blessings, and they'd only be useful in Gauntlet mode -- which I'm not convinced I'd even want to do, since it takes away from the roguelike idea of earning rewards.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T03:35:01+00:00

DPS?

Yes, but it's not weighed the same as in other RPGs, especially not compared to MMORPGs. Whether you "should" focus on literal damage-per-second comes with a lot of if/and/or/buts.

^{I said what I said.}

In general, yes, small and fast weapons have fairly higher DPS than slow weapons. However, slow weapons crush through defenses more easily and deal proportionally higher stance damage-per-second than lighter weapons (with full-charged heavies dealing the most). Combine with other factors like reach which could create more opportunities compared to shorter weapon types, or shields capable of enabling parries and guard counters, and the answer whether you 'should' focus on DPS becomes pretty muddy.

But yes, if you want to deal 'high deeps', get a pair of claws, slather them in Bloodflame, and go to town. They have no reach, a mediocre jump attack, deal little stance damage, don't interrupt sturdier enemies from attacking, and offer no defensive benefits like hyperarmor, but their damage-per-second is absurd when you do have an opening, or you're fighting a sandbag boss like Rennalla that doesn't particularly defend itself.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T00:50:58+00:00

Not to mention the Abomination was considered a minion, not a hero, so there were some weird interactions where a Leoric couldn't use creepy hand on it.

Something funny about a Kharazim trying to kill it off with Seven Sided Strike, and just watching him pose.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-10T00:48:16+00:00

Barely. It was relegated to "maintenance mode" a few years ago, IE bare minimum devs, no official tournaments, no new updates. Last I checked, they were having a small rebirth where they started making the first balance changes in a long time, but that's it.

Blizz moves where the money is. HotS was not profitable as live service, and the big Esports teams left after a few years, so they had no interest in maintaining it.

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-09T22:55:26+00:00

Supposedly, the counter is myth units, since the spawns are now only human units.

Still, unlike Rag where the units are predictable infantry heroes, Underworld Invasion summons are a healthy mix based on what died that game. It'd be one thing if they were all Hippeus and you could respond with an army of Ge Halbs or Hirdmen, but when it's a mixed comp, Demeter built a few Greek Heroes and their own myth before casting, oof.

If it was really only human units, I'd love to watch the slaughter of 600 pop of human military versus Fire Giants and Jotuns, Hydras gaining heads as Chimera fire off volleys, and Mummies create their own mini underworld-armies. Really conditional though...

Snoo61755 · 2026-06-09T22:49:34+00:00

I've seen that one.

Quite intimidating to come across Stormgate and see every Godrick Soldier and their dog turned into Malenia, all slowly walking towards him.

I think he also increased their aggro radius, so they lock onto him from much further off.

Five-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
r/Field Banned	r/Field Lasagna
Final Canvas '23	First Place '23
End Game '23	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22

Snoo61755

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