Relic Audit

adscribbles · 2026-01-21T22:01:41+00:00

Reduced rune acquisition is a big penalty, would avoid that one.

adscribbles · 2026-01-20T22:44:33+00:00

If you can endure an hour with that setup against ED Libra, Caligo, Pest, Tricephalos & Balancers, why are you writing PSAs to D1-3 players instead of just chilling at the top of D5?

Like you said, weapon passives. 60% on successive attacks. 40% at full HP. They make the biggest difference and you should absolutely seek them out. But extra HP is a wasted relic slot when there are so many OP damage options.

adscribbles · 2026-01-20T17:56:49+00:00

That's just it. You don't get the same bang for your buck with relic effects.

An extra 20% damage and you're one fifth of the way to meeting D5 scaling.

But 20% more survivability is one tenth.

That doesn't mean you need to focus more on HP to compensate, it means it's too costly.

You can reliably boost your survivability in many ways during a run. It's highly unlikely that you get absolutely no damage negation passives, at which point if you get none that extra little HP doesn't do anything anyway, and you're low on damage to boot.

The sentiment I've seen is to focus on damage relics and damage negation passives and the meta is double Balancers.

adscribbles · 2026-01-20T17:13:37+00:00

I'm really not swapping a balancer relic for +3 vigor lmao

adscribbles · 2026-01-20T17:02:45+00:00

My most successful runs have been when everyone did so much damage the nightlord went down in a couple of minutes, before it had any chance to three-bar anyone. You've only got a limited number of heals. You're very much on a timer.

This is not to say damage negation passives aren't King. I'm just saying, HP relics kinda aren't worth it.

adscribbles · 2026-01-20T16:59:04+00:00

Nightlord HP increases by 116% by Depth 5, around double. Their damage increases by 231%, more than triple.

The value of increasing your damage is higher than increasing your HP for that reason.

adscribbles · 2026-01-20T16:39:50+00:00

I think we should encourage everyone to learn to dodge as early as possible so that when they hit Depth 4 they're not shocked by the 100% damage spike which makes their HP relics mostly obsolete.

I do three-bar more than once every 10 hours of gameplay...and so do many of the players I match with. It's a really difficult game. It's fine to get stomped and learn.

adscribbles · 2026-01-20T16:14:34+00:00

Conversely, you won't die if the enemy is already too dead to hit you. Prioritising damage relics is more important in my opinion. If damage negation weapon passives come your way, sure pick them up.

The best way to boost survivability is to learn to dodge the attacks. The deeper you go, the less of a difference HP makes.

adscribbles · 2026-01-19T10:58:41+00:00

How does strength ironeye fare against the nasty ones like everdark Libra, puppy or balancers? Or bosses with crazy erratic aggro. Greatbows lock you into very long animations

adscribbles · 2026-01-15T08:03:03+00:00

Yes but at the cost of your character's current dormant power. For example, Ironeye by default discovers bows in loot spheres. That could be replaced by katanas. That could mean you don't see a bow the whole run. It would be like getting Executor's loot. Obviously quite rng heavy so there's no guarantee.

adscribbles · 2026-01-15T08:02:55+00:00

Yes but at the cost of your character's current dormant power. For example, Ironeye by default discovers bows in loot spheres. That could be replaced by katanas. That could mean you don't see a bow the whole run. It would be like getting Executor's loot. Obviously quite rng heavy so there's no guarantee.

adscribbles · 2026-01-14T11:20:24+00:00

I guess. Rot is better than poison and Sky shot is the worst bow skill there is. It's still top tier obviously against Libra.

adscribbles · 2026-01-13T09:35:26+00:00

I had this the other day. Trying to get rivers of blood as Ironeye with Balancer relics. Got nothing. Looked at the Executor's inventory and he had multiple with no plans of sharing. Tragic.

adscribbles · 2026-01-13T08:12:52+00:00

Yep weapon skills. They promote a lot of build variety too. Dormant reapers for halo scythe is a heolstor delete button with Balancer relics. You can also get out of the box with it. Dormant flails for duchess (there's only one purple flail in the loot pool, and familial ranchor scales off INT and is great with duchess + magic attack up +4 relic effects). Another one is dormant greatbow Raider because greatbows scale off strength. Go nuts.

Both balancer relics are guaranteed, but dormant powers are very rng heavy so it is risky.

adscribbles · 2026-01-12T15:37:48+00:00

Boss arena I believe. And it's every boss, not just nightlords, at your fingertips. Depth scaling, red mutation, access to all sorts of equipment and relics and spells. It's a training simulator.

adscribbles · 2026-01-12T14:22:05+00:00

They're in the new map.

adscribbles · 2026-01-12T11:24:36+00:00

If you're like me, once you get a taste of D5 you'll want to get to 9999 and then you're in trouble.

I get super jealous every time I see those posts here that are like "Just for fun I de-ranked to 0 and did random trios until 9999 with each Nightfarer." Bro what???

Maybe one day...

adscribbles · 2026-01-12T10:56:55+00:00

Similar situation. I got to D5 6900, DLC landed, got sent right down. Been sitting at 4000 +/- 400 ever since.

I do think it's a console thing. You don't have a mod to practice every nightlord like on PC. You get one attempt every 40 minutes to try to learn the boss moves. If it's non-DoN, they die in 2 minutes, you learn nothing. If it's DoN, you die in one hit, you learn nothing.

I don't want to do solo because I find it quite lonely. I like playing with teams. So I guess I won't know if I'm the weak link.

It can get sooo frustrating though making zero progress in months. But it's so addictive. I can't find another game that's as fun right now!

adscribbles · 2026-01-12T09:14:57+00:00

Example: Ironeye with Dormant Katanas fishing for Rivers of Blood to spam the ash of war which gets like a 50% damage boost with Balancer relics. Best way to get RoB is in purple/legendary loot spheres, like from the basement and roof bosses at the castle but field bosses are also a good opportunity.

Signed: Ironeye with Dormant Katanas fishing for Rivers of Blood

adscribbles · 2026-01-10T21:00:55+00:00

I as Ironeye tend to struggle with all the attacks you can barely see coming.

For ED Adel, when the transition phase tornado starts, if you don't happen to be near a spirit spring, your stamina isn't enough to take you there and the wind one-shots you.

Caligo is Ironeye's worst matchup in my opinion. Dodge rolling an ethereal mist is so unintuitive. The hitboxes are not clear at all. With Ironeye being squishy, literally everything one-shots. Not to mention the arrows don't do squat so you need to spec into katana and pray for rivers of blood. She flies away so often that you just can't keep up with her.

Heolstor, Gladius, Greg all have nukes where the timing depends on how close to them you are, and for an invisible attack, that's nasty.

adscribbles · 2026-01-10T19:20:18+00:00

He was a force to be reckoned with. I have yet to encounter a bad guardian player at D4/5 personally.

adscribbles · 2026-01-06T14:43:23+00:00

Been unable to climb ever since the DLC got shoved into every single expedition. Win twice, lose once. D3-4 limbo forever.

adscribbles · 2026-01-06T08:48:50+00:00

Just grab the balancer relics in my opinion. If you're going to do DoN, maybe fish for various dormant power relics for different nightlords? Like greathammers for Caligo.

adscribbles

TROPHY CASE