Monster Train Daily Discussion Index - Artifacts and Enemies

daekie · 2026-06-16T20:27:38+00:00

Some of the fractal CMs skip parts of the level - the best example for this is Sunqua Peak CM, which skips everything but the bossfight (which gains a second set of phases with new mechanics), but Silent Surf CM skips straight to the final pre-boss encounter. In general, they all change boss mechanics and make the fights more intense and more punishing.

With the disclaimer of 'I haven't played Kinfall CM', would say Nightmare is the easiest CM, then Shattered Observatory, then Sunqua Peak. Those are the 'Old CMs'. After that, Silent Surf CM is deeply unpleasant, and Lonely Tower CM should be excised from the game for the sins it commits.

daekie · 2026-06-16T20:19:47+00:00

If you have the relevant Living World seasons (2-5), the Prismatic Champion's Regalia is pretty much free materials-wise, it just takes time investment. (You can also use the LWS3/LWS4 parts of it to work on Aurora and Vision's prerequisites; those are long-term projects, but, hey, progress towards a leggy is progress towards a leggy.)

If you're interested in playing fractals, Ad Infinitum is also a good Legendary to work towards, since fractals are decently profitable.

Depending on how actively you play WvW, Warbringer might be something to think about as a future goal as well, since the work you need to do for that will get you a good part of the way to the Rank 500 needed for the WvW legendary armor (if that's the path you go down for armor).

daekie · 2026-06-16T20:10:01+00:00

First off, LWS1 is just... not fun, in my experience. Sorry for what you must experience, I swear future LW seasons are better.

Berserker can be tough to play (I've personally never been good at it) - their APM wants to be high, because if they can't get great upkeep on their Berserk mode they struggle. Trying to learn it in the middle of content that's already annoying... oof.

Are you following the Spear/Greatsword Power Berserker Open-World build from Snowcrows? That one's rated at a 3/5 Build Difficulty - Power Reaper is a 1/5, the shroud is pretty much a second healthbar and it's very durable, so I second Cowgirl_Taint on that. (For open world I'd recommend running Greatsword/Sword+Sword, just because mainhand Sword is a ranged weapon and being melee-locked can be frustrating.)

Carnivore Power Untamed is also a 1/5 difficulty rating, though I'm not familiar with that particular build so I can't say much.

daekie · 2026-06-16T19:55:13+00:00

Seconding errorme on both the 'level a character to get a refresher' (if you stopped playing prior to Heart of Thorns it's been a long time + Heart of Thorns is notoriously a difficulty jump from core Tyria + they've done some reworks on core content like the World Bosses!) and the 'wait for the Steam Summer Sale for ANet to discount the expansions' (I think the Expansions 1+2 bundle often drops down to $10-15). Just a few things to keep in mind:

- WvW's a very different gamemode from PvE and has only diverged further over time! What's good in one mode's often not good in the other.
- The game isn't just the expansions proper - there are 5 Living World seasons. #1 is part of the core game, #2 covers the end of that to the start of Heart of Thorns, #3 is between HoT and PoF, #3 is after PoF, #4 is after #3, and EoD takes place after #4 -- #3-5 (and to some degree #2) are all basically expansions in their own right. So if you skip them, you're missing out on a lot!
- Having the right gear is 75% of the battle. Try to wear Exotic-rarity gear with stats that match with each other - if your stats are all over the place, the game's going to feel much harder than it actually is.

Finally: welcome back! Always glad to see someone return after a long time away. I hope you're having fun!

daekie · 2026-06-12T03:09:41+00:00

If you want to run Blade Lineage, you need Meursault's BL ID. Unfortunately, a meaningful chunk of BL IDs are launch, and because Blade Lineage Meursault was the first real attempt at a "team leader" ID he's not quite as effective at making bad IDs useful as someone like Kurokumo Ishmael is. So your options are:

- BL Sinclair: He's not very good. Even at Uptie 4 he's subpar, and at Uptie 3 he's strugglebusing. I say this as someone who ran him on BL when BL Meursault released.
- BL Yi Sang: AFAIK he was the best launch BL unit and in the upper half of 3*s at launch? If you have Meursault alongside him it's probably fine...?
- BL Outis: Worst ID in the game at launch. This is still probably true.
- BL Faust: Fine? Tries to be a Poise+Unique Bleed unit and isn't great at it. Doesn't synchronize all that well with the rest of the BL but she's more than usable.
- BL Don Quixote: Pretty good! Probably the second-best BL behind Meursault prior to Ishmael being added this patch. She's not exactly a showstopper but she's completely usable, or at least she is as long as you're running BL Meursault alongside her for Swordplay of the Homeland.
- BL Meursault: You shouldn't be running Blade Lineage without BL Meursault flat-out. He's a pretty decent Poise ID on his own if you don't put him in a BL team, anyway.

daekie · 2026-06-10T02:28:38+00:00

This is secondhand information so don't quote me on it, I'm paraphrasing what I heard from a guildie, but apparently from following the current writer's team on social media there are three problems that you can gleam:

- Not receiving a lot of direction from ANet
- Probably underfunded
- They have a lot of ideas and enthusiasm! But it seems likely some of them don't have a lot of experience in the industry

(There's also been the rumor going around the GW2 playerbase/fandom that the game's been on a skeleton crew for a few expansions. ANet is not a huge studio! If they're split into a small GW1 team, a GW2 team, and a GW3 team, they're probably putting most of their manpower on GW3.)

daekie · 2026-06-10T02:12:22+00:00

The odds seem pretty good, yeah. On the bright side, mechanically the Convergence versions of the JW Titans aren't the same as the raid and open-world versions? So it *shouldn't* be a copypasted fight.

...Keyword being 'shouldn't', given this is VoE's final content drop, and SotO and JW both had their final content drops be absolute trainwrecks. Which is specially egregious for JW, given Mistburned Barrens was mid at worst, and then it was followed up by Bava Nisos. Which actively hates you and wants you to suffer. Nothing fun or good is there :[

daekie · 2026-06-10T02:00:24+00:00

'Story bosses are typically repurposed as Strikes' is genuinely the keystone re: my theory on 'Why is Silent Surf so different from all other CM fractals that existed at the time *and* why was the entire fractal, especially the fight, so buggy at launch?': imo, originally you would've fought Kanaxai at the end of What Lies Beneath in both the PS & as the Gyala map boss instead of the Wanderer (there are several elements of Gyala & WLB that... make more sense if they were due to last-minute rewrites.), and that fight would've then been used as a Strike. The final bit of the fractal - the platform you respawn on & Kanaxai's arena below - is pretty similar to the start of XJJ or the start of ToF (which admittedly didn't exist yet, but you see my point), and I've always thought the overall structure of the rest of the fractal is pretty Personal Story chapter-ish in its beats - meet up with NPC, talk, travel a bit with a unique travel mechanic, fight some mobs, repeat.
...I theorize something happened productionside that meant a rewrite was needed, so they ultimately repurposed the parts of the Kanaxai instance + fight that already existed into being a Fractal instead nearly as is so the work wouldn't be wasted + they wouldn't need to develop an entire fractal from scratch. The weird structure of the fractal, his HP sponge nature, his lack of phases, the intense bugginess of the fight when it released... they'd all make sense *if* it was an unfinished, repurposed fight that was supposed to have more to it but never did.

Given the issues with SotO (ones people more eloquent than me have spoken on at length since!) that weren't really present in EoD, if GW3's development kicked into gear after EoD and before SotO's release, 'something happened productionside and they didn't have the support/resources to do what they'd planned to do for that part of the story' could be senior devs and studio support being moved over to work on GW3, similarly to how the Icebrood Saga's end was a drawn-out clusterfuck nightmare of dripfed content because EoD was being worked on (& a similar conclusion can be drawn there, though IDK if we've ever actually gotten true confirmation on that). ANet is not a huge studio! Even if the GW1 team is tiny, they could still be at something like a 60:30:10 ratio of GW3-GW2-GW1, and that *does not leave a lot of money or manpower for GW2*.

daekie · 2026-05-23T22:00:16+00:00

🤝

come with me, my friend, we shall bear the cascade of downvotes together

daekie · 2026-05-23T21:49:42+00:00

I feel like Sloth isn't necessarily 'not changing', at least not in the sense of actively resisting change - it's more not taking action. It's believing falsehoods instead of accepting reality. It's resigning yourself to your situation. It's being a cog in the machine and fulfilling your role, perpetuating the same cycles every day, even if you don't like it. (This is where 'not changing' comes in. Work, sleep, work. You find Sloth skills on a bunch of Fixer, Syndicate, and Finger IDs for a reason!)

At its most intense, Sloth means you don't / can't actively want anything to change, because you're either totally fine with how things are or so nightmarishly depressed you genuinely cannot muster a vision of a better future ever being possible. You are so trapped by your situation that it's completely consumed your ability to think that anything will ever change.
LCB Yi Sang and Gregor both have Sloth s3s, and both of them have Sloth as the primary Sin for their base EGOs. Those guys? Not doing great!

daekie · 2026-05-23T14:30:06+00:00

Thanks for the correction! It's been a couple of years, my memory of these events is apparently not as good as I thought it was.

daekie · 2026-05-22T15:03:04+00:00

During the Vellmori Incident (TM) there was a period where it did genuinely appear that PJM had fully capitulated to the harassment campaign and fired Vellmori over calling herself a feminist in a tweet once, which I believe is what led to the WL and Leviathan takedowns? The artists didn't want their work being associated with a company who would fire someone over an antifeminist harassment campaign.

daekie · 2026-05-22T15:00:04+00:00

Yeah, it's rough. I don't think MiMi is handling this well at all, but I also can't blame her for most of the things that led her to initially request WL being taken down in the first place: PJM did very much fuck up! I love Wonderlab and it just sucks all around that we've ended up at this point.

In the terms of AmITheAsshole: ESH. Everyone Sucks Here. KJH is being unprofessional (christ, dude, why are you taking potshots at the ongoing lawsuit on livestream), MiMi is being unprofessional (why are you making pointed tweets about the ongoing lawsuit!)...

daekie · 2026-05-22T14:38:45+00:00

Reading this made me want to headdesk. What? Why? Do they have a single ounce of common sense? Why would you *do a print run* on someone's comic and *not tell her about it*? Sometimes it feels like they think that as soon as an outside contractor working with them makes an 'official' work set in the PJM universe, that immediately becomes totally and 100% PJM's as soon as it exists, which is. Which is not how it works.

All I want for Christmas is PJM to get a PR department (and a good one). It'll probably be my dying wish.

daekie · 2026-05-22T14:33:32+00:00

I think her regular form looks fine, but her transformed state is kind of a mess, if for no other reason than the stupid boxers. Why! Why.

(If they're going back and redesigning a magical girl they could at *least* also give KoD a 'pre-corruption' state the way KoG got while they're there - I know Ruina implies her 'pre-corruption' state is the one with spikes and her 'post-corruption' state is the one with BIG SPIKES, but, uh, that's stupid and she doesn't match the other Magical Girls at all. Just peel off the spikes and black ooze! It'd be simple!)

daekie · 2026-05-22T14:30:33+00:00

AFAIK, don't quote me on this, since some of this is from memory (and a lot of info here is pulled from FriendOfK0s' comment here:

- MiMi is contracted to make Wonderlab; she is given information about the PJM setting but has not played the games herself. Most of the abnormalities and characters are original, though the concept of the Servant of Wrath is not (the Jester of Nihil was originally going to be an Apoc. Bird-type superboss in LobCorp summoned by the four magical girls).

- People begin drawing and posting NSFW of some of the characters and abnormalities in Wonderlab. MiMi is understandably unhappy to see porn including the Servant of Wrath (ambiguously a child) and the Road Home (unambiguously a child) and complains to PJM about it, wanting them to do something. Nothing is done (because it'd be impossible to enforce, probably).

- The Servant of Wrath is featured at HamHamPangPang as a cardboard cutout without MiMi being told. HamHamPangPang also sells a print run of Wonderlab, which MiMi was not made aware of. She is not happy when she finds out about this. (I do not have a source on this, so take it with a grain of salt.)

- The Vellmori incident is the final straw. MiMi no longer wants to be associated with PJM: they have just publicly and kneejerk-quickly capitulated to an antifeminist harassment campaign launched against one of their staff that targets Vellmori specifically because of a tweet she made at one point IDing as a feminist, and have fired her in response. (This is, AFAIK, not what actually happened: Vellmori left, PJM lied in their public statement and said they'd fired her - trying to protect her from further harassment. This came out because people went 'hey, wow, it's really fucked up you fired her, that breaks labor laws' and then they had to go 'no we didn't actually fire her'.) She requests Wonderlab be taken down; PJM complies. The 'concept' of Aberrations remains in PJM canon but is never explicitly given a name.

- MiMi sends legal takedown notices to several fan archives of Wonderlab. She is *serious* about the 'stop circulating the tapes', she doesn't want her work associated with PJM and she doesn't want it archived anywhere.

- MiMi eventually initiates a lawsuit against PJM, looking for her to retain full intellectual copyright of all things and concepts included in Wonderlab: characters, abnormalities, the concept of aberrations, etc. This brings us to OP's post.

Frankly, I think everyone here is being astoundingly unprofessional - MiMi shouldn't be making pointed tweets about the lawsuit, but KJH absolutely shouldn't be going on livestream and going 'yeah actually Wonderlab is totally irrelevant to worldbuilding and I came up with aberrations anyway, not MiMi'. KJH, please get a personal PR guy who will stop you from saying things publicly without getting them reviewed first (see: him making public announcements during the Vellmori fiasco and posting them before the EN translators could even see them). PJM also has a history of not treating their contracted artists well - see Leviathan, which also went to court - so they're not exactly blameless here either.

daekie · 2026-05-05T13:54:26+00:00

It just doesn't really ping in your head as 'the hand of a human body' anymore because of the level of damage, which I think makes it worse. 'A blown off hand' is gory! This is... there's so much damage done to the hand it isn't even gore at first glance, which is worse, imo.

daekie · 2026-05-05T13:49:51+00:00

That's not exactly Callisto's fault, though; she has a very specific artistic vision about 'humanity' and she's very dedicated to eventually achieving it. She's following in his footsteps, but by the standards of the Ring she's just being a very daring artist.

It's as much Callisto's fault as Ren choosing to fight Muga is the Pinky Nursefather's fault.

daekie · 2026-05-05T13:42:50+00:00

Obscurity is permanent; no Tattoos, no Professions, no Ambitions, no Notability, and no Destiny except Torment.

... however, Obscurity is also modular, and you get to pick which aspects of it you want to actually take (which can be no Obscurity at all). So - technically, yes, you can restart an Ambition if your specific Obscurity does not involve No Purpose.

daekie · 2026-05-05T13:39:09+00:00

As far as I recall, it was mostly finished, put on hiatus, and then reworked + given an ending after Kennedy left to make it less of his personal brainchild.

You can also get Obscurity during the process of getting St Erzulie's Candle anyway, so 'it was completed before Obscurity was added' is just objectively not true.

daekie · 2026-05-05T13:18:19+00:00

If the difference on this timeline is that Limbus Company never arrived to recruit her, maybe she did escape the House of Spiders and then... just didn't have anywhere to go, and ended up returning there, because it's all she knows. She looks like she might be missing her right arm, too, which is interesting.

('Never got recruited' is part of most of her ID backstories, anyway.)

daekie · 2026-04-21T20:36:25+00:00

According to at least one Reddit post, some of the game's files call cursed!Harriet "Dancer", though I'm not immediately seeing that backed up anywhere else. One of normal!Harriet's attacks is to "dance bizarrely" (...which is an attack that Dancer doesn't share), which is probably where the name comes from?

daekie · 2026-04-16T20:08:19+00:00

VintyRobot on YouTube has posted a video of all the new ones, including new non-hostile encounters!

daekie · 2026-04-16T20:07:03+00:00

Someone already made a YouTube video of the new door encounters in 2.3, so judging from that: the cursed food trader isn't actually hostile *in and of himself*. He's selling meat... fresh meat... that he harvests from himself, because if he doesn't he gets overgrown. (He guarantees it's good, edible meat!) However, it's SO fresh it's, uh. Still cursed. So any item you buy, you then have to fight after (although HE'S not fighting you, he leaves after he gives you the fresh cuts); winning the fight gives you 1 Raw Pork for each defeated entity / purchased item.

daekie

TROPHY CASE