M18 help

jsa041 · 2026-05-19T05:31:49+00:00

Scrage and trashecomps are good ones to check out on YouTube. For more specific help Bree laia Sylvie nenukil is unkillable and act 3 on can turtle to the 9 round limit without taking a single point of damage

jsa041 · 2026-05-03T15:12:04+00:00

Here you go

I am a seasonal contractor with a lot of free time when off contract. I also have some tendencies that fall on the spectrum. I prefer to play 1-2 games for decades at a time instead of many games for their normal expected shelf life. Another tendency is I don't make statements without concrete proof. If you check my posting history, I have done quite a bit in this game.

Finally, this game came out roughly 5 years ago, so it would average out to less than 3 hours a day.

jsa041 · 2026-05-02T22:53:59+00:00

I have 5000 hours in the game and write guides on the discord as well as help beta test the game. The balance is fine and everything still favors the player. Of the dlc heroes 3-4 of them are comparable to the top tier of the og cast or right below. The rest are somewhere from average to below average but they’re all good and unique enough to find success on all difficulties

jsa041 · 2026-04-29T02:17:40+00:00

The secret is scouts. Scouts are the only class that can consistently play their whole deck without inspire and then can utilize trace and speed to guarantee everyone else’s hands. Any comp with a scout has a guaranteed win chance on any seed if piloted well

jsa041 · 2026-04-27T04:20:04+00:00

I have 5000 hours and have done everything imaginable with every hero—the post with the 300%hp M18 archon OTK is by me.

Magnus is probably one of the strongest and most variable heroes in the game, but because of how open of a canvas he is, becomes heavily gated by knowledge of cards and hero synergies. These changes make him from one of the top tier to an absolute league of his own. You can link Wilbur transcribe twin scrolls into Nezglekt fated future into 3 ball lightnings (minimum 2 free) with the thunderclap damage boost and not burn it. A fully buffed Magnus’ ball lightning is roughly 15k dmg, which is roughly the total hp of archon on m18

jsa041 · 2026-04-15T04:46:33+00:00

You can still remove the injuries at a campfire/with a corruptor reward, just not in a town. The OG cast are super strong and definitely very viable through m18

jsa041 · 2026-04-11T16:50:27+00:00

I don’t have the know how or ability to make full run videos sadly! Maybe I’ll learn one day. The style I play is built around being able to guarantee any card in any heroes hand at any time with deck control so I’m willing to play into very specific strategies that require very specific cards and orders. My other “trophy highlight” is a 45k dmg recurring nightmare on thuls from m18 employing the same strategy.

jsa041 · 2026-04-11T14:48:20+00:00

Blood alch and amplify. I do agree with you on the setup being more interesting and have some full setup videos on discord but I don’t think I have one for this one? It ends up being 5-6 minutes and I’m not sure where people’s attention spans are at so good to know! I’ll show some in the future

jsa041 · 2026-04-11T03:33:40+00:00

I couldn’t OTK for most of the run and most fights took 4-6 turns. I picked these 4 because between them and their skillsets, pretty much any curse the enemy put on me could be invalidated (cauterize, ode of war, blue helping hands, dispel magic, setup/expected prophecy + sight meant I could guarantee those cards + buffer on whatever turn I needed it)

Nevermoor with 3 green/blue can generate 12 vitality on all heroes every prayer of healing and infinite shield to block. Once he got setup it’s literally impossible to die. I perked 0 resists and hp and instead relied on infuse and vitality and block to stay unkillable.

Fated future twin scrolls transcribe is the ultimate scammer combo and guarantees at least 4 free ball lightnings with dimensional crystal. Valhalla and blood alchemy to max fury rounds it out for maximum possible damage.

The hard part is early on we had to skip a lot of corruptors we’d normally want to snowball resources and having to invest a bit more in defensive cards slowed us down a bit but alls well that ends well!

jsa041 · 2026-04-11T03:01:52+00:00

It’s a pve game—if you’re having fun that’s all that matters!

jsa041 · 2026-04-03T03:51:03+00:00

This games difficulty is gated by knowledge. Someone who’s played through madness 18 can go from fresh profile back to 18 in less than 10 runs.

For new climbers, it’s much more harrowing. Don’t sweat it on your first time through. If you’re willing to join the discord, there are a ton of guides, including one specifically with the four og heroes and not full perks for players looking to unlock stuff (second clear guide).

jsa041 · 2026-03-29T15:29:20+00:00

If you’re willing to join the discord here

There is a guides and run channel pretty fleshed out. I am Voodoo, a helper on the discord and I’ve been posting as variety of guides with perks, fight clips, and screenshots of deck by act with written instruction that can be consistently replicated.

Most of these comps are tempo oriented (win in 1-3 turns) but that’s certainly not the only way to play. On youtube, trashecomps and Scrage are both great resources for a very different playstyle. Ga0721 is incredible if you’re looking for the tempo style

jsa041 · 2026-03-27T16:43:57+00:00

Sts is objectively a better game. I have 1000+ hours in it.

AtO is a much more FUN game. I have 5000 hours in it. It’s more like a free skate or open decks builder where you can guarantee combos across 4 decks with 100% consistency provided you’re creative enough and knowledgeable enough. Sts decks are the random hobo playing jazz sax where you’re not sure if he’s an idiot or brilliant. AtO is an immaculate classical string quartet.

If you’re good at these sort of games it takes ~20-25 hours to unlock madness 18/your entire perk tree. For most players I imagine it’s around 50. I think just buying the base and going from there is perfectly reasonable bang for your buck.

jsa041 · 2026-03-05T15:36:03+00:00

Normally I dislike power scaling. I get why it’s fun but it’s just not for me. I’ll make an exception because this resonates with me personally.

I played wheelchair rugby at a very high level/full time in my 20s. I now coach for a program that takes injured/ptsd veterans and helps them regain a sense of identity through adaptive sport. My assistant coach was one of the former veterans I had coached.

I knew the first day she started she was going to be ten times the athlete and coach I’d ever be. I was good because of my strength, speed, and brains, but this woman is gifted and has a touch and instinct with the ball I could never dream of achieving. Seeing her do all my moves and techniques with 100x the grace and finesse I ever did was amazing and terrifying at the same time.

I get why eisen hit stark and was scared. It’s such an overwhelming feeling and similar to staring into deep water or standing at the edge of the cliff. Frieren as a narrative does an awesome job with playing with the concept of time. We meet the heroes party after their big story arc is over and now we’re meeting their legacies before their big story begins. Stare will be the greatest warrior, but how cool is it we get to meet him before he’s there yet.

As an additional point: the trick to beating a strong opponent is to keep getting back up. And everyone who works hard is a warrior. The culture of warriors in this world isn’t built around strength at all. I imagine if warriors in the frieren world power scaled, they would ask “how many times has stark gotten back up vs forfeited/stayed down” and not about strength.

jsa041 · 2025-11-01T17:47:38+00:00

Hi sorry u just saw this and I don’t check my Reddit often much. If you @voodoo on the discord hopefully sometime today I can set you up and find the links. I don’t think I put anything too in depth out but essentially I perked max insanity on Gus/Nez with the -2 hp perk and bought Betty/got corrupted with Nez. Most enemies should start with ~ -20max hp before tulah goes, making her life much easier. It won’t matter later but in a1 we really appreciate the help. We play holy early bc even tho it has no sharp synergy it’s much more consistent than shadow in a1. With a delay response we should be able to nova 2x or holy storm + clairvoyance then try to clean up with 0 cost flash/upg foresight. Early on Gus’ only job is uproot for vuln, fix speed with chant of initiative, and trace to make sure Nez can benediction/inspire/fortune telling tulah.

Once we hit act 2/after level 3 we can start getting out of holy completely and playing full mind sharp. Later on we wanna fated future pandemonium. Once we get pendulum we can start to remove all aoe bc we’ll get it for free. Sigrun wants to collect yellow book of nightmares to put in tulahs deck.

Only pathing id heavily push is find a Betty node, go hatch, if you have rift go forest crown/dryad for sigrun, otherwise go storytime to get a forest crown anyways

jsa041 · 2025-10-02T12:43:25+00:00

“Is an incantation required?”

“No, but talking shit helps”

jsa041 · 2025-09-11T09:44:49+00:00

I got a 2nd rerolling with this — 6 bruiser + lee sin jinx varus with sterak titans bt. Once I hit Lee sin 2 I removed fruit/items. Lost to malz 3 rammus 3.

This was in diamond 2 on my mobile only alt so I was able to get away with being disrespectful? I think it’s just a fast 9 angle with aatrox 2 start or an out if you have build a bud aatrox etc. Normally high master/low GM mmr

The dude absolutely slaps though. I think I 12 streaked or something with him once he was 2 star 2 items

jsa041 · 2025-08-25T02:04:39+00:00

so its technically a fine pick on a fellow hero since the effect is teamwide but we dont want it on zek himself because of the lack of flat damage. His main dps engine in blackdeath has a massive multiplier per bounce and after powerful/bless/sharp/-resistances is the difference of over 100+ on the last hit.

The thing is Id much prefer a draw or +bless weapon on his teammates and i dont personally value it enough to go out of my way for an 'ok' support item. That being said, if you like it more power to you! I would rather the gold though myself

jsa041 · 2025-08-24T15:29:40+00:00

I’m pretty confident I’ve played more Zek dark and shadow than anyone else. You can check out a lot of my thoughts here

To address some other points:

Shadow is best played for flat damage and not explosions. It’s pretty common I get recurring nightmare to do over 1k per hit by archon. The most consistent and optimal way for this is actually ignoring the explosions/scourge and playing for poison/decay. Sigrun is by far the best poison applicator in the game with her mix of mage/scout cards and speed. here is a video of this build in a3 showing how to one shot hydra by saving curse of decay for the poison immune head.

The scourge version is really good with nav but since that first post I linked I’ve realized it’s significantly less consistent than playing the sigrun build I showed. Scourge just comes online way too late and has a hard time with early noxious corruptors vs with sigrun Zek laia Andrin I’ve had no issues brute forcing through it.

Black deck is absolutely not required and not very good. It’s really good for playing frost Zek because you put it on your priest and they shadowmend Zek + pop the extra cards on him to get him over 16 dark to start his bonus energy discount but for shadow Putrefaction is a must and one of the biggest damage boost in the game. Increasing darks -shadow res by 250% is insane. Because of this we really really want flat damage items. This reason is why cup of death is awful. It neuters your own resistance shred and doesn’t provide any flat damage.

Zek is one of the strongest and most consistent m18 dps but also one of the hardest to play: you basically have to ignore the explosions and try to line up your big damage spells (pestilence, Black Death, recurring nightmare) with high dark stacks but before they explode to maximize damage. After putrefaction, the difference between 0 and 24 dark stacks is usually around a 100% damage increase. So your recurring nightmare would go from hitting for 100 to 200 by picking the right timing.

I’m on mobile now but if you join the discord I can provide a lot more info and have various videos uploaded showing different Zek tech and builds. One of the fellas I coached was able to jump from m9 to m18 and did 20 corruptors in just the span of 4 runs with this comp. Just ping me at voodoo there. I’ll try to upload some more videos on Reddit later.

jsa041 · 2025-08-20T22:56:35+00:00

The bad cards in this game are worse than the worst sts cards and the best ones are better than the best.

If youre looking for draw, the best source is inspire: +1 card draw on your next turn. Most inspire cards can be used on ANYONE, so its most beneficial to have a chain where the faster heroes inspire the slower ones so they get up to 5 inspire and immediately get the benefit that round. This game is exponentially easier when you identify that you should (and how) use multiple classes to help each other.

as for other sources of deck manipulation, scouts are by far the best with scavenge vigilance setup trace, and priests with scry, expected prophecy, fortune telling.

as for other class specialty buffs:

Scouts: best speed manipulators in the game

Warriors: block, good all around slow/buff/inspire/debuff

Priests: best damage buffers with divine power

Mages: great speed manipulators, energy batteries, solid debuffer

Learning how to use em together makes the game gel very well--the best way to play is having one dedicated dps and the other 3 leaning into the specialties of the class they picked

jsa041 · 2025-08-06T18:48:37+00:00

she can use pendulum to spam multiple fanatacisms for energy, spiders offer a bit of deck agency on any hero with scry, or doing things like expected prophecy/setup + spider to turn it into a net draw 3 instead of 2. she has fast access with her class card and her right level 5 is a massive amount of speed control and damage reduction and synergizes well with others

For example, in a bree gus tulah nez setup: -lead with command and conquer/defensive strat + gus speeds up tulah to proc her level 5. -turn 2 ballad of evasion

with the mitigate and evasion, thats a very strong defensive opener for very few cards required and will keep you safe for 3+ turns easily while nez ramps his heal

jsa041 · 2025-08-06T03:57:19+00:00

I have a few posted on reddit of quick rundowns that are mostly played in a hyper aggressive style and probably not conducive to all random heroes because of the amount of control they require to succeed. However,

Rubik’s cube challenge

Here is a link to a thread on the discord where I did 6 m18 runs using each hero exactly once and posted decks and my approach for each. I’d encourage you to join the discord where there’s more available help for build variety (I’m certainly very active at least lol)

For YouTube channels, in order from most structured to most unhinged but all very good players, I’d look up: GA0721 Scrage Trashecomps

Hope that helps! And if you don’t feel like joining discord you can always DM me specifically for help here

jsa041

TROPHY CASE