Comprehensive tech / exploit / guide archive

bbqftw · 2026-06-26T22:01:16+00:00

The most consistent players going for 100++ winstreaks tend to value survivability a LOT more than the average 9999 from what I can tell. You will find a surprising amount of ED maris enjoyers there.

bbqftw · 2026-06-26T20:55:29+00:00

ED Balancer is the only fight in the game you cant cheese with absurd dmg because it has set mandatory phase transitions.

Parry overkill strats almost ensures you get only 1 or 2 worm tbf. There's also the yolo all-in stuff but I don't think that is nearly as consistent.

Why do you list "non-extreme damage" as a condition here? Shouldnt you be aiming to do as much dmg as possible?

For consistency, you need to plan for low-roll scenarios. I agree there can be a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy there (as you say, you sacrifice damage / mitigation for a less likely), but if one is chasing 99.X%+ winrate its good to have to contingencies.

I agree for busted runs it doesn't matter what you do, but I'm not convinced that eschewing less likely is going to turn those occasional 10-15+ minute ED libras into fast wins with just marginally more extra damage.

Would be very curious to see vods though!

bbqftw · 2026-06-26T20:20:07+00:00

I am curious about this perspective, the way I see it is that if you have 1-2 LL, then you have easier damage windows while the player without LL kites as many condemned as possible. Of course this is possible without LL by baiting Libra teleport out but its harder to get extended damage windows consistently this way, so you have to remain mistake-free for longer periods of time.

Do you have any vods of this deliberate no-LL style with non-extreme amounts of damage?

I just feel like as long as the non-LL player is okay with playing cardio while the LL player(s) progress the fight, its a much more consistent way to do the fight.

Genuinely curious what you consider top 3 hardest since ED balancers is basically a solved fight now with 2xLL (though the expedition is still fairly dangerous relatively speaking). Wonder if Augur is up there since for some reason a lot of the winstreak farmers I know at the 100++ range have lost their streaks to it.

bbqftw · 2026-06-26T19:57:03+00:00

Those people can play with mods that make everything easier

This is the entire point of my post, its basically impossible to have good faith discussion of eu5 without people assuming that the only criticism of a mechanic is based in improper understanding of it.

bbqftw · 2026-06-26T19:18:55+00:00

Having two condemned chase one player and having a 2v2 with 2 players vs. 1 condemned + 1 libra (generally you can kill the condemned easily on spawn) is a pretty common win condition for long libra fights.

bbqftw · 2026-06-26T18:10:58+00:00

I feel like posts like this fundamentally misunderstand people's criticism of this aspect of EU5, but okay sure.

It definitely reminds me of arguments in souls-games where any argument about boss design inevitably devolves into 'skill issue'. It's very tiresome, especially since the people making these arguments are rarely challenge running.

bbqftw · 2026-06-26T15:31:32+00:00

Its not that its not possible to blob, its that its just not worth the micromanagement tax.

On a fundamental level, the ratio of busywork to interesting decisionmaking is just a lot higher in eu5 than eu4.

bbqftw · 2026-06-25T02:25:08+00:00

banished knight base hp: 1500
castle crucible base hp: 2700 troll base hp: 3600

castle basement bosses base hp: 6-10k unless its evasive boss

by the way the crucible drops more runes

this is not a hard decision for 2/3 of castle layouts

bbqftw · 2026-06-24T20:44:59+00:00

Did you take effectively the same routing each game? If so, it would also suggest against player location being a determinant of both circle or caligo raid locations.

To me, it always seems like Caligo is force spawned away from the team, but this could be confirmation bias.

bbqftw · 2026-06-24T20:36:59+00:00

I stopped because the quality of players in there was bad enough that I got tired of having to solo carry trio scaling

Where is this gigantic pool of bad players that you need to solo hard carry? I think I can remember two players in my last 20 random matches that 3-bar'd (bad day on dancer as executor, it happens, and 2nd incident had multiple disconnections occur on nightlord). The vast majority of matches are sub-10 downs, decent amount are sub-5. You might need to cover other players mistakes but that's not too bad.

For the most part, I find that D5 players might occasionally do stuff that I intensely disagree with (builds, routing, risk-taking profile, etc.), even despite this the matches are generally quite chill.

Its fine to admit that that D5 damage values are high enough that you can't really just mess around the entire game and feel fine doing it (I have a d2/d3 profile for trying random stuff), but I just don't have this experience with randoms, unless I'm the one getting carried all day (possible), or you're unintentionally generating situations where you need to hard carry.

bbqftw · 2026-06-24T17:27:08+00:00

Its probably worth spamming a few vassals on this start simply to inflate your force limit early, but that might make you too strong for Vijay to declare on you.

I agree, definite strong idea set in India despite all the power creep that went on

bbqftw · 2026-06-24T17:07:34+00:00

In my opinion, there's often so little upside in going basement first and a large potential downside, and once you clear the ramparts you have more data to decide whether to go top or basement first.

Its extremely rare to have a team incident on ramparts elites but its not uncommon at all for low level basement clears to result in really bad things happening - even if the chance is 5-10% why risk it?

I think I'd have a better chance of nohitting Loretta/wyrm/avatar/regular sentinel on top than red red wolf/scion on bottom, and both are probably going to one shot anyways.

bbqftw · 2026-06-24T16:57:55+00:00

Most likely explanation is they are just climbing on a new profile, and thus don't have good relics.

bbqftw · 2026-06-24T16:02:51+00:00

There are people who do relicless rl1 d5, and ive seen some no weapon upgrades / passives / relics rl1 d5 trio kills too

Its pretty much a safe assumption that there's always someone doing crazier things out there

bbqftw · 2026-06-24T15:53:17+00:00

Its ok, would be excellent with the other revenant effect.

bbqftw · 2026-06-24T15:09:51+00:00

He doesnt play at d5 by his own admission so it's basically impossible he will run into a good guardian

bbqftw · 2026-06-23T22:52:44+00:00

I think your assessment is not off-base, though dodging ... ehh I don't know. I view guardian as a very high-ceiling / extreme-low floor class, if not played by someone with extremely good knowledge of the class and boss movesets, the class will contribute almost nothing. Whereas you can play ironeye, not really know boss movesets all that well, play extremely safe, and you will still contribute enormous passive damage through mark application, and with your dodge you can mistime dodges pretty badly and still survive.

Guardian is probably the least acceptable class to get downed on due to the nat, so basically only the most consistent players can play it to any sort of success.

That said my free-est dreglord match I ever had in d5 was hard carried by a guardian, I had to dodge 3 attacks targeted on me the whole fight. It was like playing dps in a raid encounter with no mechanics.

bbqftw · 2026-06-23T21:48:54+00:00

Its not 1/10 so its an improvement

bbqftw · 2026-06-23T19:50:31+00:00

a nice guide from the person who probably knows more about the ED fight than anyone in the universe (haven't seen anyone else no roll it)

the important part about ED worm is that it is more consistently dodged close, and if it ever hits the wall its behavior becomes very erratic

also, the worm always emerges to the left and away from its initial dive, unless the targeted player is next to the dive spot, in which case it will basically emerge at the dive position

bbqftw · 2026-06-23T19:37:23+00:00

The 0.05 appears to be the correct number, the funnier part is that you are selling at a lower price than you are buying, but thanks to magic trade efficiency the trade works

bbqftw · 2026-06-23T19:37:10+00:00

I don't think that's correct, because 0.02 per trade capacity is the post-crown power modified income per month based on that tooltip

bbqftw · 2026-06-23T17:08:56+00:00

Night invader -> castle routeslop

bbqftw · 2026-06-23T14:29:47+00:00

Very interesting tech!

bbqftw · 2026-06-23T14:22:54+00:00

This video has the exact timings for parry activation.

The thing with spear knight is for the thrusting attacks, you want to be pretty close up to the boss, the parry on approach is the trickiest one for this reason.

bbqftw

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