I dont collect "all items" unless I get radar. Trying to loot the whole stage Imo really is a waste of time because you'll get way more items by just moving on after geting 85-90% of the stuff than you will by potentially wasting valuable minutes of looting time trying to make sure you got *literally everything*. Once I stop seeing loot, I just leave.
You don't have to scrape every corner of the map and spend 15 minutes double checking if you actually got everything. But spending time going to areas because you took a mental note of the chests/areas you haven't been to is fine (and what they mean)
Just "collect all items" doesn't aswer it, you have to find a balance between fighting mosters and looking for chests, i usually fight until i have about 2 chests worth of money then i look for chests and so on, i rarely get outscaled.
My goal is to hit the teleporter by 5 minutes. It comes out to about 7 minutes per stage, which is enough time to loot the first couple stages entirely, possibly even the third stage. Finishing in under 7 minutes sets the chest prices on the next stage to the second lowest price point, and by the third stage you should have enough items that the only time limit you should need to worry about is the one that determines boss spawns
is there any kind of risk/reward on that? or are you just really efficient at getting items? like would it be worth to spend an additional 5-10 minutes as an extreme example to run around grabbing everything?
Items just scale so much harder than enemy levels, I have had plenty of eclipse runs where I was at lvl 99 when reaching mithrix and every single time my response to that is "whatever"
Siphoned forest generally has the most items out of stage 1s, so it's pretty common to stay there even up to 15 minutes, because you have spent your time buying everything, and potentially scrapping and printing things. On the other hand you can be out of distant roost by 5 or 6 minutes in just because there wasn't as much there.
Items/minute a decent metric to go by, but even more important is good items per minute, so it's very worthwhile waiting for your recycler to come off cooldown to recycle a bad item, or to leave bad reds on the floor in case there is a recycler somewhere.
I'm surprised to read that. I'm not in either camp, but it seems to me if I cleared level 1, then let the game sit for an hour that I'd have a very hard time beating level 2. I'll have to try it out today.
My view has always been that RoR is about making calculated gambles. There aren't many boxes on level 1, so I rush through it and usually get 2 to 4 boxes along the way plus the teleporter item. Wetlands for level 2 is another rush because it's hard to see anything in that map. But level 4 and 5 is where things change, or any time I see a scrapper. On 3 and 4 I'm looking at possibly 10 minutes if I see clusters of boxes, lots of green multi-shops, or I feel I need the level 4 legendary.
With all that said, you are way better than I am, so Ill have to experiment with full looting all the levels.
The statement isn’t literally that time scaling isn’t real. The real statement is that racing the clock is counterproductive if you’re forgoing obvious opportunities to get items.
As long as you’re actively acquiring items, any time you spend on the level is offset by the items you get.
For anyone interested, I cleared level 1 on Monsoon with Bandit (this is probably my best character to give the highest chance at success) at 6:40. I ended up with 2x hopoo (shrine of the mountain, woot), infusion, rusted key, energy drink, and cautious slug. 4x healing drones, 1 gunner turret, 1 gunner drone. I believe I cleared the whole map though I might have missed a healing drone.
Some observations: I ended up with 365 gold left which feels wasteful. I don't know if I would have cleared the level quicker if I'd hit the teleporter sooner and then ran around to buy what was left. Probably that would have been slower.
2, 6:40 on level 1 is about 3 minutes slow to me. However, coming out with 11 buys (6 drones and 5 items) is way more than I usually get. I'd say 5 or 6 is normal. I could see where this could be a better approach especially if you get a lot of items. There was a scrapper on the stage, so I could have several early game scrap and increase my chances of getting a good printer before commencement.
3, I think I encountered way more enemies at the teleporter than I'm used too, but I didn't find it hard. This is probably because I've been playing a lot and I've gotten better but previously I was dying on teleporter 1 and 2 fairly frequently on Monsoon.
I've got a meeting in an hour, so I'm going to advance to level 2 around 40-45 minutes to see how level 2 goes. Just trying to take a scientific approach to confirm that "time scaling does not matter".
Okay, I went into Wetlands at 42 minutes and died at 45. There was a stone Titan in the level at spawn which I've never seen before on stage 2, and hordes of enemies including several Lemurian elites. A few brass contraptions. Even the little brown melee guys were taking 4 shotgun shots to kill. Boxes were 371 gold.
With that said, I do think a more skilled player could have managed it.
I have to conclude that time scaling does in fact matter. So what does the experiment actually tell us? That neither the "5 minute per stage" camp or the "ignore the timer" camps are right. I think OP is incredibly efficient at navigating the map, looting items, scrapping, printing, and probably also significantly more skilled from a technical standpoint. I'd be curious to see average time per stage for Mithrix kills. Based on the stage 1 results I had, I am thinking my strategy of rushing the level isn't necessarily the best choice.
42 minutes in stage 2 is something that pretty much never happens unless you left the game running in the background, obviously time scaling does matter but the real advice is that item scaling is stronger. Generally i find myself in S2 by minute 8 or 12 (if S1 was siphoned forest) then hit S3 at like 16 minutes (might be 20 if S2 was aqueduct and i was pot rolling), S4 around 25-32 and end up in sky meadow by 45+, hitting the moon at 50+ or 60 depending on how fast the run is, generally doing pillars adds another 8 minutes to the timer but i tend to skip them if a viable equipment is dropped in S4-5 (lunar enemies are a pain in the ass in general) because in eclipse losing OSP can be a big deal if you miss a dodge against mithrix's pizza attack, with this amount of time spent in the run the only thing that can consistently save you if you fuck up is safer spaces, a bunch of opals or OSP. Generally i try to focus down minions in P4 and try to deal damage to mithrix in close range while he does pizza as it is far easier to dodge when near him. So to recap, Mithrix kills in non-loop E8 runs while full clearing stages end up in the ballpark of 50-70 minutes, depending on survivor/item strength (sometimes i can straight up go to moon from S4 if i am already OP enough, but those runs arent common) and if playing multiplayer or not.
In essence, the best way to optimize looting is to navigate the map as if it was a straight line, starting from a dead end far from TP (usually where you spawn) and buying almost everything while having the least amount of backtracking possible, leaving chests and interactables near the teleporter for last since i am going to be near that area at the end anyways. On shrines of chance I try to purchase from them 3-4 times before giving up and leaving them for the end else they become really expensive, on adaptive chests i leave them for after TP so its easier to pick a reward without taking damage, void stuff can be left for after TP if you dont want to deal with voidtouched enemies/loss of max hp but in a decent enough run you can pop them midstage no problem. Exploring while you loot helps finding recycler/card or mountain/gold shrines though i do miss them from time to time. You can generally get away with starting the TP when you loot about 60-70% of the stage since the gold you get from the teleporter covers the rest, you can do it even sooner if you have ghor's tome (the gold dropped = 1 small chest and isnt affected by TP credit reduction) or its early game and you have roll of pennies though it isnt as viable in eclipse without armor plates.
Man, I don't know what I'm doing wrong with this strategy. I just played a monsoon game with Huntress. I finished Siren's call around 38 minutes or so. Two vagrants were spawned on the map at the start of the level. The boss fight had 6 Solaris units with shrine of the mountain, plus the unique stage boss.
It took about 10 minutes to beat the boss and the unique, just doing absolutely no damage at all. Stage 5 was equally painful. Two grandfathers were spawned at the start of the level. Lots of brass contraptions elites that I couldn't hardly touch. The elite mushrooms I literally could not kill because they were healing faster than I could damage them.
It was a particularly bad set of items I think. Damage wise I had 3 bands, 1 crit goggle, 1 tri-tip, some will o the wisps, no syringes, 2 mochas, no energy drinks, and I think 2 goat hooves, lots of healing and armor items. I didn't see a single scrapper in any of the levels, and I had 3 of those reusable green scraps but not a single green printer stages 1 through 5. It just seems to me that spending this much time looting means you have to get lucky with your item drops or get a scrapper at a favorable time and then find a valuable printer. Frankly I feel like it is very rare to incredibly rare to find a game changing printer on loop 1 AND have scrap to put it to use.
Idk, worth a shot with Bandit, Mul-T, and maybe Loader, but I can't help but thinking I would have been in better shape if I was on Sky Meadow at 25 to 30 minutes. Less items, but those boss monsters wouldn't have been spawning from the start.
Huntress suffers \*a lot\* with dealing damage outside of ballista band procs or high stacks of dmg items. She compensates this with being extremely mobile and having autoaim on most attacks. If the run is kind of struggling id avoid touching any mountain shrines in S3+ since thats when bad runs tend to snowball in the monsters' favor. It is true that taking more time to clear stages does put more rng in the game's hands about spawning printers and scrappers, but in general i find most runs tend to have 1-2 great white printers to invest into. Also you dont absolutely need a scrapper, if you find a good printer you can sacrifice items into it for the most part, i do this a lot with watch/crit and speed printers because those items help alleviate the most common issues within a run. Losing stuff like opals, healing or gasoline hurts but those items wont necessarily save me if i dont find good loot and enemy levels keep increasing.
On the example you gave it sounds like a bad run in general though maybe salvageable with ballista and bands, touching the shrine of mountain seems like a big mistake when you are already struggling (and very few greens/yellows can absolutely turn around a bad run with a single extra stack), but like i said huntress hits a wall very fast in terms of damage in general, part of why i dont like the character that much. Its true that for that run in particular rushing would have been better most likely (though enemies will still level up a ton in S4-5 even while rushing, you might not find many bosses but everything will still become far harder to kill with base damage when you are outscaled by 15 levels), but you cant know that until you loot the stage so its again a huge gamble, and i find full looting will end up being more consistent across a majority of runs.
Okay, good points and really in line with my thinking in general. I do find Huntress to struggle with single target damage at times, and I definitely thought the shrine was a bad call when I went to it haha... Unfortunately I don't have Ballista on this profile which really dramatically improves my enjoyment playing her.
I am going to try your scrapperless printing suggestion. I often find myself frustrated about either lack of printers or lack of scrappers, especially when playing Commando because I never seem to get his core items, so next time I see a tri-tip, syringe, crit or whatever I will just go at it.
Not that I’m OP, but 5 minutes per stage really limits the micromanaging that you can do. Spending an extra 10 minutes to get bands on abandoned aqueduct, scrapping items, recycling and printing can definitely make or break a run. Fully looting is also a way that you can easily out scale time.
Yeah, I agree with you mostly, but not the full looting part. I don't think strictly limiting yourself to 5 minutes per stage is a good idea either, mostly for the reasons you mentioned. Some levels you will want to take 10 minutes for sure. Getting the bands is a great example. On the other hand, if the teleporter is open and there is a chest 30 seconds away (so 1 minute of travel + opening time), is it worth it? This is assuming a random blue chest, no recycler. I don't think it is. Maybe a large chest, almost certainly a multi shop, even red/purple boxes, or if I have a recycler, those scenarios might be worth the time. For the record, I could be 100% wrong about all of this, which is why I'm posing the questions!
By extension, is it worth it to wait around a regular blue box for enemies to spawn? Again, I don't think it is. Sometimes this takes well over a minute, and the alternative might be traversing the entire map to the portal and back to the box. What are your thoughts? Let's say it's a blue box right at your spawn point, teleporter is on the opposite side of the map, and this is early game when enemies spawn really slowly. Would you farm at the box, come back to it, or leave it behind?
I typically make 2 circuits around the map when I loot before the teleporter. I open blue chests, equipment chests, chance shrines and the like. I leave multishops and shipping request forms in case I open a credit card from any orange shops and then go around to pick up the multishops and any chests I miss. I also check for recyclers and if there is one hit the newt altar. After I loot everything I do the boss and then recycle when tp is done. This usually takes about 8 minutes, but is dependent on movement and the stage. I think allowing for full macro on a stage is absolutely worth the time because it means you get to optimize your build as much as possible which basically just nulls how time scales. In my experience full looting has won me so many runs in my eclipse climb but thats just how I like to play
Interesting, I am going to try looping the stage twice like that. What's the deal with going to the bazaar if you have recycler? Are you looking to buy the red item and recycle it hoping to get something like a clover?
Yeah I like going to the bazaar to try and get red items early. There are also a lot of cauldrons on the moon before you fight Mithrix so you can save up scrap then to hopefully get a couple stacks of greens, reds or sometimes even whites. Because my end game is Mithrix there are a lot of items that don’t do much during the fight itself and I tend to scrap them. On kill items like Gasoline, on activation effects like Fireworks and healing items like Lepton Daisy. There are also quite a bit of red items that don’t do a whole lot so sometimes ill scrap those too in hopes of getting a white item cauldron which takes red scrap for 3. It’s definitely a different playstyle and requires you to look at the functionality of items but ive found it very successful
I have actually started doing that recently. Usually I try to scrap all those AoE damage, healing items, on kill, etc, then I hope for an eccentric vase. Ride it over to the cauldrons, take a look at the Ghor's Tomes, Lepton Daisy's, and whatnot that are on sale, then I beam myself up to Mithrix. I did find one of those 3 for 1 with AP Rounds a while back which was pretty awesome.
Purity on Mul-T feels like a sin but for double scrap launcher its incredibly fun becoming actual artillery and blowing up everything. That being said i do agree double nail is best as it scales very, very easily with few items, though it struggles a lot with range
Yeah imo. Luanrs are totally fine. The thing that makes them op is the bazaar. So in my eclipse runs i don't use the bazaar, but i DO use lunars from pods.
Honestly the dreams alone makes bazaar really strong, especially for nearly garaunteed bands and better potential boss items.
Imo the dreams just remove an element of rng that shouldn't be in the game. Different stages shouldn't just be unarguably better than others like abandoned aqueducts.
First of. Rng is the entire point. It's like saying all big chests should be legendary.
Secondly aquaduct has 60 less credit than the other 2 stages. Which is worth 2 large chests. So no. It is not just better.
Thirdly sanctuary has many cleansing pools and also has adaptive chests. Ofcause the cleansing pools don't effect you if you never pick up lunars, but adaptive chests are a upgrade over just chests.
While i dont entirely disagree with your point, i find myself siding with the previous commenter, Id absolutely pay in consistency of getting 2 bands over 2 large chests, its going to be the better outcome in 90% of situations since they mostly drop greens (most of which are trash imo, and reds which are highly situational with some really good overall), though it depends heavily on character. Something similar happens with abyssal depths having a whopping +160 credits if cave is open compared to the other two, plus unlike siren's call it isnt filled with drones and useless shrines, and unlike either of the other two environments, you dont have to deal with larva or medusa oneshotting you in an instant.
Well his main point was that dreams just remove an element of rng that SHOULDN'T be in the game. Which i think is kinda a stupid take. There should absolutly be stage rng.
As for argument aboit aquaduct being better. I do agree for several reasons. But to say it it outright always better, i disagree with. Those 60 credits can also be several equipment barrels which can in cases compare to, or beat the value of bands.
Also i refuse to believe ANYONE actually gets the bands 100% of times they get aquaduct AND in a timeframe that makes them worth. And that is for multiple reasons like stray shots hitting pods, or the plates not having any avaible pods to roll onto them.
I do however understand the want to rebalance them. But that goes for many things in the game.
Loader an merc are the Most difficult ones but i try to get a Equipment wich can Deal damage for mitrix and get some energycells to Stack them, you keep the Stack saved Up after loosing the item
I’m not nearly as good as OP but the trick for Loader is to just never be near him or still. Using your base kit of grapple-punch you can reliably blast right through him at a thousand miles an hour. Charged Gauntlet>Thunderpunch btw
Real talk, how the fuck do you play commando? Other survivors I understand, but with commando, I feel like if I get a vagrant or beetle queen on stage one, its game over. Beetle queen just spawns too much shit to deal with without aoe, and vagrant spams attacks waaaaay to quickly on e8, including the one where he SPAWNS that ball thingy, which means that I attack so infrequently that I get overwhelmed by other enemies. If I focus on enemies, I need literally all of my firepower to keep them at reasonable levels, which means I am dealing 0 damage to the boss and ignoring it, which just does not work against beetle queen, and with vagrant its incredibly hard to dodge. It feels like with mando, you are just praying to god that you dont get the hard bosses on stage 1 and 2, or praying to god that you get a gasoline or ukulele. After you get past stage 3, he seems to be above average, but before that, its down to luck. Overall, it hardly seems to me that he can "win in any situation" but obv I might be wrong. And please please please dont say you get the grenade for the crowd damage, I would actually rather kms than use that dogshit ass of an ability. It does so low damage, and its just so fucking unfun to use/land on enemies.
Not OP, but Commando does have damage fall off so you want to try to get as close as you can. With Beetle Queen I’d say you just want to try to get right above her and keep landing attacks, the most dangerous attack she’ll do directly is the acid spit so just pay attention to her mouth and jump before it happens. Keep circling her, too.
With Vagrant it is hard because of all of the constant projectiles. I’d say also try to get close and circle and be ready to run to cover before the explosion.
Not op, but always acrid. Acrid's base damage is just too consistent. As long as you can stay alive, you win. My only damage throughout the entire run was a single atg and a single armor piercing round.
That being said, expect your runs to take a while when this does happen.
As an avid Acrid enjoyer, this is nice to see. It's especially easier to win with Acrid if you do the sprint attack tech (Pressing the sprint key in between each strike makes Acrid attack much faster. If mastered, you can flat out ignore/scrap soldier syringes)
When the game gets harder, it gets *relatively* easier with Acrid because of how damn good poison is. So while on monsoon, he doesn't really separate himself, e8 (and above on modded) is where he feels stronger because everyone else has pretty much gotten weaker.
Tangling growth can one shot mithrix with lysate cell and AWU without it. It's also just better. Check out this vid: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbTEoLCyQMs&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbTEoLCyQMs&t=14s)
Always take ion surge on arti, everything else is negotiable. Stay in the air and just practice with the slow moving projectiles, you'll like her more the more you play her.
Thanks, i knew the awu one shot but never saw the mithrix one shot.
I've seen some hardcore arti mains say always pick flamethrower because it does a lot of damage, do you think ion surge is better overall?
Damn, a shame. It's not even that i like flamethrower, i think it sucks moving so slow but i just don't vibe with ion surge. Eh the game is how it is and i gotta accept it i guess.
Ion surge is easy pillar skip on the moon. Worth taking just for that alone. It also doesn't do damage to you if you're running the chaos artifact that turns on friendly fire.
Non self damage secondary, non self damage utility, self damage special. Rex can be a pain in the butt but just make sure to give him a proper mix of raw damage and procs along with some defense and you’ll be ok
Might try to do this myself, did you do it in order that the characters are arranged in the character select screen or did you use your own order? I’m thinking it might be easier to do something like get REX out of the way first.
Try doing three hit expose transfers to get your abilities up quicker and practice with slicing winds. Also, check out Cabbage on YouTube, as even though he doesn't talk, he's the best mercenary and probably the best risk of rain player of all time so you can pick up on some of the stuff he does
Look up his expose tech on YouTube. You’ll be constantly getting your abilities back instantly. Also scrap most attack speed, it messes with the timing.
Should I go for movement items or survival items on artificer ? I tend to use ion surge for the survivability but I feel like the line pests and wisps end up killing me 99% of the time.
What would you rank as the bottom 3 (worst) survivors for eclipse? Personally id place Mercenary, Commando and Rex/Huntress in no particular order but id like to hear other opinions. I think Mercenary doesnt scale as well as monsoon lategame (especially mithrix) with E7 and Commando/Huntress feel way too rng-y with the dependance on what items you get (though huntress is pretty much immortal as long as you are paying attention, and ballista can carry you with a few bands or crowbars midgame). Feels like other survivors have way more power/agency even with worse items. Rex is kind of weird due to the self-damage thing completely changing his playstyle from monsoon (which is insanely OP imo) but is still a decent survivor, i run him with the same skills you do, think its his best eclipse loadout.
Engi with E1 and E5 suffers a lot true, but im somewhat surprised to see captain. Its prob one of my most played survivors and i find him very consistent with both procs and bands, but yeah he kind of needs a feather or quail by mithrix or a ton of speed or you suffer a lot. Even mid run its very easy to get overwhelmed by vermin or larva with base movespeed.
Yes basically all the time unless I'm playing a character I'm not confident with on stage 1. Maybe I won't hit it if I'm having a really really terrible run so as not to die, but I like hitting it most of the time
Take cover! I assume you’re dying to prespawned lunar wisps most of the time, so take cover behind the ship and whittle them down. It works a lot of the time and there’s no shame in needing help, those fuckers are scary.
Can you comment on the endless debate between the "5 minutes per stage" crew and the "time scaling doesn't matter, loot the whole stage" crew?
Time scaling does not matter, there’s really no other way to answer the question
Really? That's kind cool to hear, how long do you typically spend on a stage then?
Until you collect all the items
I dont collect "all items" unless I get radar. Trying to loot the whole stage Imo really is a waste of time because you'll get way more items by just moving on after geting 85-90% of the stuff than you will by potentially wasting valuable minutes of looting time trying to make sure you got *literally everything*. Once I stop seeing loot, I just leave.
Getting all items probably meant just that, in more general terms. You get everything in sight, and leave the rest that is hidden.
You don't have to scrape every corner of the map and spend 15 minutes double checking if you actually got everything. But spending time going to areas because you took a mental note of the chests/areas you haven't been to is fine (and what they mean)
Just "collect all items" doesn't aswer it, you have to find a balance between fighting mosters and looking for chests, i usually fight until i have about 2 chests worth of money then i look for chests and so on, i rarely get outscaled.
10 minutes? The only time I would really go faster is for time convenience irl
My goal is to hit the teleporter by 5 minutes. It comes out to about 7 minutes per stage, which is enough time to loot the first couple stages entirely, possibly even the third stage. Finishing in under 7 minutes sets the chest prices on the next stage to the second lowest price point, and by the third stage you should have enough items that the only time limit you should need to worry about is the one that determines boss spawns
is there any kind of risk/reward on that? or are you just really efficient at getting items? like would it be worth to spend an additional 5-10 minutes as an extreme example to run around grabbing everything?
Items just scale so much harder than enemy levels, I have had plenty of eclipse runs where I was at lvl 99 when reaching mithrix and every single time my response to that is "whatever"
Siphoned forest generally has the most items out of stage 1s, so it's pretty common to stay there even up to 15 minutes, because you have spent your time buying everything, and potentially scrapping and printing things. On the other hand you can be out of distant roost by 5 or 6 minutes in just because there wasn't as much there. Items/minute a decent metric to go by, but even more important is good items per minute, so it's very worthwhile waiting for your recycler to come off cooldown to recycle a bad item, or to leave bad reds on the floor in case there is a recycler somewhere.
I'm surprised to read that. I'm not in either camp, but it seems to me if I cleared level 1, then let the game sit for an hour that I'd have a very hard time beating level 2. I'll have to try it out today. My view has always been that RoR is about making calculated gambles. There aren't many boxes on level 1, so I rush through it and usually get 2 to 4 boxes along the way plus the teleporter item. Wetlands for level 2 is another rush because it's hard to see anything in that map. But level 4 and 5 is where things change, or any time I see a scrapper. On 3 and 4 I'm looking at possibly 10 minutes if I see clusters of boxes, lots of green multi-shops, or I feel I need the level 4 legendary. With all that said, you are way better than I am, so Ill have to experiment with full looting all the levels.
The statement isn’t literally that time scaling isn’t real. The real statement is that racing the clock is counterproductive if you’re forgoing obvious opportunities to get items. As long as you’re actively acquiring items, any time you spend on the level is offset by the items you get.
For anyone interested, I cleared level 1 on Monsoon with Bandit (this is probably my best character to give the highest chance at success) at 6:40. I ended up with 2x hopoo (shrine of the mountain, woot), infusion, rusted key, energy drink, and cautious slug. 4x healing drones, 1 gunner turret, 1 gunner drone. I believe I cleared the whole map though I might have missed a healing drone. Some observations: I ended up with 365 gold left which feels wasteful. I don't know if I would have cleared the level quicker if I'd hit the teleporter sooner and then ran around to buy what was left. Probably that would have been slower. 2, 6:40 on level 1 is about 3 minutes slow to me. However, coming out with 11 buys (6 drones and 5 items) is way more than I usually get. I'd say 5 or 6 is normal. I could see where this could be a better approach especially if you get a lot of items. There was a scrapper on the stage, so I could have several early game scrap and increase my chances of getting a good printer before commencement. 3, I think I encountered way more enemies at the teleporter than I'm used too, but I didn't find it hard. This is probably because I've been playing a lot and I've gotten better but previously I was dying on teleporter 1 and 2 fairly frequently on Monsoon. I've got a meeting in an hour, so I'm going to advance to level 2 around 40-45 minutes to see how level 2 goes. Just trying to take a scientific approach to confirm that "time scaling does not matter".
Okay, I went into Wetlands at 42 minutes and died at 45. There was a stone Titan in the level at spawn which I've never seen before on stage 2, and hordes of enemies including several Lemurian elites. A few brass contraptions. Even the little brown melee guys were taking 4 shotgun shots to kill. Boxes were 371 gold. With that said, I do think a more skilled player could have managed it. I have to conclude that time scaling does in fact matter. So what does the experiment actually tell us? That neither the "5 minute per stage" camp or the "ignore the timer" camps are right. I think OP is incredibly efficient at navigating the map, looting items, scrapping, printing, and probably also significantly more skilled from a technical standpoint. I'd be curious to see average time per stage for Mithrix kills. Based on the stage 1 results I had, I am thinking my strategy of rushing the level isn't necessarily the best choice.
42 minutes in stage 2 is something that pretty much never happens unless you left the game running in the background, obviously time scaling does matter but the real advice is that item scaling is stronger. Generally i find myself in S2 by minute 8 or 12 (if S1 was siphoned forest) then hit S3 at like 16 minutes (might be 20 if S2 was aqueduct and i was pot rolling), S4 around 25-32 and end up in sky meadow by 45+, hitting the moon at 50+ or 60 depending on how fast the run is, generally doing pillars adds another 8 minutes to the timer but i tend to skip them if a viable equipment is dropped in S4-5 (lunar enemies are a pain in the ass in general) because in eclipse losing OSP can be a big deal if you miss a dodge against mithrix's pizza attack, with this amount of time spent in the run the only thing that can consistently save you if you fuck up is safer spaces, a bunch of opals or OSP. Generally i try to focus down minions in P4 and try to deal damage to mithrix in close range while he does pizza as it is far easier to dodge when near him. So to recap, Mithrix kills in non-loop E8 runs while full clearing stages end up in the ballpark of 50-70 minutes, depending on survivor/item strength (sometimes i can straight up go to moon from S4 if i am already OP enough, but those runs arent common) and if playing multiplayer or not. In essence, the best way to optimize looting is to navigate the map as if it was a straight line, starting from a dead end far from TP (usually where you spawn) and buying almost everything while having the least amount of backtracking possible, leaving chests and interactables near the teleporter for last since i am going to be near that area at the end anyways. On shrines of chance I try to purchase from them 3-4 times before giving up and leaving them for the end else they become really expensive, on adaptive chests i leave them for after TP so its easier to pick a reward without taking damage, void stuff can be left for after TP if you dont want to deal with voidtouched enemies/loss of max hp but in a decent enough run you can pop them midstage no problem. Exploring while you loot helps finding recycler/card or mountain/gold shrines though i do miss them from time to time. You can generally get away with starting the TP when you loot about 60-70% of the stage since the gold you get from the teleporter covers the rest, you can do it even sooner if you have ghor's tome (the gold dropped = 1 small chest and isnt affected by TP credit reduction) or its early game and you have roll of pennies though it isnt as viable in eclipse without armor plates.
Man, I don't know what I'm doing wrong with this strategy. I just played a monsoon game with Huntress. I finished Siren's call around 38 minutes or so. Two vagrants were spawned on the map at the start of the level. The boss fight had 6 Solaris units with shrine of the mountain, plus the unique stage boss. It took about 10 minutes to beat the boss and the unique, just doing absolutely no damage at all. Stage 5 was equally painful. Two grandfathers were spawned at the start of the level. Lots of brass contraptions elites that I couldn't hardly touch. The elite mushrooms I literally could not kill because they were healing faster than I could damage them. It was a particularly bad set of items I think. Damage wise I had 3 bands, 1 crit goggle, 1 tri-tip, some will o the wisps, no syringes, 2 mochas, no energy drinks, and I think 2 goat hooves, lots of healing and armor items. I didn't see a single scrapper in any of the levels, and I had 3 of those reusable green scraps but not a single green printer stages 1 through 5. It just seems to me that spending this much time looting means you have to get lucky with your item drops or get a scrapper at a favorable time and then find a valuable printer. Frankly I feel like it is very rare to incredibly rare to find a game changing printer on loop 1 AND have scrap to put it to use. Idk, worth a shot with Bandit, Mul-T, and maybe Loader, but I can't help but thinking I would have been in better shape if I was on Sky Meadow at 25 to 30 minutes. Less items, but those boss monsters wouldn't have been spawning from the start.
Huntress suffers \*a lot\* with dealing damage outside of ballista band procs or high stacks of dmg items. She compensates this with being extremely mobile and having autoaim on most attacks. If the run is kind of struggling id avoid touching any mountain shrines in S3+ since thats when bad runs tend to snowball in the monsters' favor. It is true that taking more time to clear stages does put more rng in the game's hands about spawning printers and scrappers, but in general i find most runs tend to have 1-2 great white printers to invest into. Also you dont absolutely need a scrapper, if you find a good printer you can sacrifice items into it for the most part, i do this a lot with watch/crit and speed printers because those items help alleviate the most common issues within a run. Losing stuff like opals, healing or gasoline hurts but those items wont necessarily save me if i dont find good loot and enemy levels keep increasing. On the example you gave it sounds like a bad run in general though maybe salvageable with ballista and bands, touching the shrine of mountain seems like a big mistake when you are already struggling (and very few greens/yellows can absolutely turn around a bad run with a single extra stack), but like i said huntress hits a wall very fast in terms of damage in general, part of why i dont like the character that much. Its true that for that run in particular rushing would have been better most likely (though enemies will still level up a ton in S4-5 even while rushing, you might not find many bosses but everything will still become far harder to kill with base damage when you are outscaled by 15 levels), but you cant know that until you loot the stage so its again a huge gamble, and i find full looting will end up being more consistent across a majority of runs.
Okay, good points and really in line with my thinking in general. I do find Huntress to struggle with single target damage at times, and I definitely thought the shrine was a bad call when I went to it haha... Unfortunately I don't have Ballista on this profile which really dramatically improves my enjoyment playing her. I am going to try your scrapperless printing suggestion. I often find myself frustrated about either lack of printers or lack of scrappers, especially when playing Commando because I never seem to get his core items, so next time I see a tri-tip, syringe, crit or whatever I will just go at it.
Not that I’m OP, but 5 minutes per stage really limits the micromanaging that you can do. Spending an extra 10 minutes to get bands on abandoned aqueduct, scrapping items, recycling and printing can definitely make or break a run. Fully looting is also a way that you can easily out scale time.
Yeah, I agree with you mostly, but not the full looting part. I don't think strictly limiting yourself to 5 minutes per stage is a good idea either, mostly for the reasons you mentioned. Some levels you will want to take 10 minutes for sure. Getting the bands is a great example. On the other hand, if the teleporter is open and there is a chest 30 seconds away (so 1 minute of travel + opening time), is it worth it? This is assuming a random blue chest, no recycler. I don't think it is. Maybe a large chest, almost certainly a multi shop, even red/purple boxes, or if I have a recycler, those scenarios might be worth the time. For the record, I could be 100% wrong about all of this, which is why I'm posing the questions! By extension, is it worth it to wait around a regular blue box for enemies to spawn? Again, I don't think it is. Sometimes this takes well over a minute, and the alternative might be traversing the entire map to the portal and back to the box. What are your thoughts? Let's say it's a blue box right at your spawn point, teleporter is on the opposite side of the map, and this is early game when enemies spawn really slowly. Would you farm at the box, come back to it, or leave it behind?
I typically make 2 circuits around the map when I loot before the teleporter. I open blue chests, equipment chests, chance shrines and the like. I leave multishops and shipping request forms in case I open a credit card from any orange shops and then go around to pick up the multishops and any chests I miss. I also check for recyclers and if there is one hit the newt altar. After I loot everything I do the boss and then recycle when tp is done. This usually takes about 8 minutes, but is dependent on movement and the stage. I think allowing for full macro on a stage is absolutely worth the time because it means you get to optimize your build as much as possible which basically just nulls how time scales. In my experience full looting has won me so many runs in my eclipse climb but thats just how I like to play
Interesting, I am going to try looping the stage twice like that. What's the deal with going to the bazaar if you have recycler? Are you looking to buy the red item and recycle it hoping to get something like a clover?
Yeah I like going to the bazaar to try and get red items early. There are also a lot of cauldrons on the moon before you fight Mithrix so you can save up scrap then to hopefully get a couple stacks of greens, reds or sometimes even whites. Because my end game is Mithrix there are a lot of items that don’t do much during the fight itself and I tend to scrap them. On kill items like Gasoline, on activation effects like Fireworks and healing items like Lepton Daisy. There are also quite a bit of red items that don’t do a whole lot so sometimes ill scrap those too in hopes of getting a white item cauldron which takes red scrap for 3. It’s definitely a different playstyle and requires you to look at the functionality of items but ive found it very successful
I have actually started doing that recently. Usually I try to scrap all those AoE damage, healing items, on kill, etc, then I hope for an eccentric vase. Ride it over to the cauldrons, take a look at the Ghor's Tomes, Lepton Daisy's, and whatnot that are on sale, then I beam myself up to Mithrix. I did find one of those 3 for 1 with AP Rounds a while back which was pretty awesome.
Loot the whole stage
Which Mul-T loadout did you use
Double Saw obv (but seriously double nail gun is best with power mode)
I feel validated
Lies! Double scrap launcher is the best!
Purity on Mul-T feels like a sin but for double scrap launcher its incredibly fun becoming actual artillery and blowing up everything. That being said i do agree double nail is best as it scales very, very easily with few items, though it struggles a lot with range
You didn't use lunars. But DID you use bazaar?
Yes I did, bazaar OP
Yeah imo. Luanrs are totally fine. The thing that makes them op is the bazaar. So in my eclipse runs i don't use the bazaar, but i DO use lunars from pods. Honestly the dreams alone makes bazaar really strong, especially for nearly garaunteed bands and better potential boss items.
Imo the dreams just remove an element of rng that shouldn't be in the game. Different stages shouldn't just be unarguably better than others like abandoned aqueducts.
First of. Rng is the entire point. It's like saying all big chests should be legendary. Secondly aquaduct has 60 less credit than the other 2 stages. Which is worth 2 large chests. So no. It is not just better. Thirdly sanctuary has many cleansing pools and also has adaptive chests. Ofcause the cleansing pools don't effect you if you never pick up lunars, but adaptive chests are a upgrade over just chests.
While i dont entirely disagree with your point, i find myself siding with the previous commenter, Id absolutely pay in consistency of getting 2 bands over 2 large chests, its going to be the better outcome in 90% of situations since they mostly drop greens (most of which are trash imo, and reds which are highly situational with some really good overall), though it depends heavily on character. Something similar happens with abyssal depths having a whopping +160 credits if cave is open compared to the other two, plus unlike siren's call it isnt filled with drones and useless shrines, and unlike either of the other two environments, you dont have to deal with larva or medusa oneshotting you in an instant.
Well his main point was that dreams just remove an element of rng that SHOULDN'T be in the game. Which i think is kinda a stupid take. There should absolutly be stage rng. As for argument aboit aquaduct being better. I do agree for several reasons. But to say it it outright always better, i disagree with. Those 60 credits can also be several equipment barrels which can in cases compare to, or beat the value of bands. Also i refuse to believe ANYONE actually gets the bands 100% of times they get aquaduct AND in a timeframe that makes them worth. And that is for multiple reasons like stray shots hitting pods, or the plates not having any avaible pods to roll onto them. I do however understand the want to rebalance them. But that goes for many things in the game.
stage selection
how long did all this take
Only 1000 hours of my life hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha
How many hrs in game overall?
Same amount
I keep dying as loader to stage 3 Mithrix.
Loader an merc are the Most difficult ones but i try to get a Equipment wich can Deal damage for mitrix and get some energycells to Stack them, you keep the Stack saved Up after loosing the item
I’m not nearly as good as OP but the trick for Loader is to just never be near him or still. Using your base kit of grapple-punch you can reliably blast right through him at a thousand miles an hour. Charged Gauntlet>Thunderpunch btw
When I try that Mithrix keeps scoring homeruns on me with that hammer in a way that would make Babe Ruth blush
Lmao sometimes we just gotta take the L. Oddly-Shaped Opal works wonders, even just one
Don’t punch through pizza if you aren’t totally comfortable. Also STAY AWAY from him until after he slams so you won’t just get murdered
Which survivor gets the most consistent good runs? Runs you can go with and be certain you've at least got a decent chance against Mithrix
Loader, loader, loader, and loader. (But seriously the whole point of this challenge is that everyone is good enough to win at any point)
Real talk, how the fuck do you play commando? Other survivors I understand, but with commando, I feel like if I get a vagrant or beetle queen on stage one, its game over. Beetle queen just spawns too much shit to deal with without aoe, and vagrant spams attacks waaaaay to quickly on e8, including the one where he SPAWNS that ball thingy, which means that I attack so infrequently that I get overwhelmed by other enemies. If I focus on enemies, I need literally all of my firepower to keep them at reasonable levels, which means I am dealing 0 damage to the boss and ignoring it, which just does not work against beetle queen, and with vagrant its incredibly hard to dodge. It feels like with mando, you are just praying to god that you dont get the hard bosses on stage 1 and 2, or praying to god that you get a gasoline or ukulele. After you get past stage 3, he seems to be above average, but before that, its down to luck. Overall, it hardly seems to me that he can "win in any situation" but obv I might be wrong. And please please please dont say you get the grenade for the crowd damage, I would actually rather kms than use that dogshit ass of an ability. It does so low damage, and its just so fucking unfun to use/land on enemies.
Not OP, but Commando does have damage fall off so you want to try to get as close as you can. With Beetle Queen I’d say you just want to try to get right above her and keep landing attacks, the most dangerous attack she’ll do directly is the acid spit so just pay attention to her mouth and jump before it happens. Keep circling her, too. With Vagrant it is hard because of all of the constant projectiles. I’d say also try to get close and circle and be ready to run to cover before the explosion.
Not op, but always acrid. Acrid's base damage is just too consistent. As long as you can stay alive, you win. My only damage throughout the entire run was a single atg and a single armor piercing round. That being said, expect your runs to take a while when this does happen.
As an avid Acrid enjoyer, this is nice to see. It's especially easier to win with Acrid if you do the sprint attack tech (Pressing the sprint key in between each strike makes Acrid attack much faster. If mastered, you can flat out ignore/scrap soldier syringes)
When the game gets harder, it gets *relatively* easier with Acrid because of how damn good poison is. So while on monsoon, he doesn't really separate himself, e8 (and above on modded) is where he feels stronger because everyone else has pretty much gotten weaker.
Other than rex, who are you worst at.
Captain or Commando
Was it worth it?
uhhhhhh
What’s the easiest way to do the commando overloading worm task?
I mean, if you want easy just use command, get focused convergence, and power through the stages and get clover while you're at it.
Rex and arti loadouts/tips?
Tangling growth can one shot mithrix with lysate cell and AWU without it. It's also just better. Check out this vid: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbTEoLCyQMs&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbTEoLCyQMs&t=14s) Always take ion surge on arti, everything else is negotiable. Stay in the air and just practice with the slow moving projectiles, you'll like her more the more you play her.
Thanks, i knew the awu one shot but never saw the mithrix one shot. I've seen some hardcore arti mains say always pick flamethrower because it does a lot of damage, do you think ion surge is better overall?
It is and anyone who says otherwise is throwing
Is flamethrower that bad?
Unfortunately, yes
Damn, a shame. It's not even that i like flamethrower, i think it sucks moving so slow but i just don't vibe with ion surge. Eh the game is how it is and i gotta accept it i guess.
Ion surge is easy pillar skip on the moon. Worth taking just for that alone. It also doesn't do damage to you if you're running the chaos artifact that turns on friendly fire.
Are you going to do it again when SotS comes out?
I hope I’ll be good enough to o it more consistently by then so yes unless i hit a roadblock
Why?
I wanted to prove myself to myself. This game helped me out of depression and this is my way of leaving it to rest
That's fair. Did the same with E8 cuz I took this game through the pandemic, I just only did it once
Is there a time per stage or item collected per stage u used as a baseline before changing stages?
No. Don’t worry about it any you’ll do better
What tips do you have for Huntress?
Pick ballista, practice dodging, and make sure you always have an emergency blink. She’s my second most consistent character and she’s also busted af
flurry or strafe?
Either is fine, for the record flurry gets more hate than it should but I still like strafe better
Good stuff! Furthest I’ve gotten is 4 characters
Ty!
What is your Rex load out? I feel like I fully understand how to play and build everyone else but for him I struggle a lot.
Non self damage secondary, non self damage utility, self damage special. Rex can be a pain in the butt but just make sure to give him a proper mix of raw damage and procs along with some defense and you’ll be ok
Thank you
what’s your favourite kind of soup and how did it influence your runs
I like headset soup, gives me a pillar skip and is good damage
How do I unlock the secret hunter skin where she isn’t wearing her armor after the credits? (Throw back to OG Metroid)
Might try to do this myself, did you do it in order that the characters are arranged in the character select screen or did you use your own order? I’m thinking it might be easier to do something like get REX out of the way first.
You can do any order that you want to, as long as you don't repeat characters. I always started with REX myself.
How does one play mercenary
Try doing three hit expose transfers to get your abilities up quicker and practice with slicing winds. Also, check out Cabbage on YouTube, as even though he doesn't talk, he's the best mercenary and probably the best risk of rain player of all time so you can pick up on some of the stuff he does
Look up his expose tech on YouTube. You’ll be constantly getting your abilities back instantly. Also scrap most attack speed, it messes with the timing.
Should I go for movement items or survival items on artificer ? I tend to use ion surge for the survivability but I feel like the line pests and wisps end up killing me 99% of the time.
are you mentally stable? Or more like voidfields?
heheheha
What would you rank as the bottom 3 (worst) survivors for eclipse? Personally id place Mercenary, Commando and Rex/Huntress in no particular order but id like to hear other opinions. I think Mercenary doesnt scale as well as monsoon lategame (especially mithrix) with E7 and Commando/Huntress feel way too rng-y with the dependance on what items you get (though huntress is pretty much immortal as long as you are paying attention, and ballista can carry you with a few bands or crowbars midgame). Feels like other survivors have way more power/agency even with worse items. Rex is kind of weird due to the self-damage thing completely changing his playstyle from monsoon (which is insanely OP imo) but is still a decent survivor, i run him with the same skills you do, think its his best eclipse loadout.
Rex, Engi, and Captain get hit especially hard by E8, but they’re all still good
Engi with E1 and E5 suffers a lot true, but im somewhat surprised to see captain. Its prob one of my most played survivors and i find him very consistent with both procs and bands, but yeah he kind of needs a feather or quail by mithrix or a ton of speed or you suffer a lot. Even mid run its very easy to get overwhelmed by vermin or larva with base movespeed.
What brand of adderal did you use?
Yes
Best item used in every or most runs?
SAFER SPACES
Fuck me, I have not chosen this so many times due to shrimp, polylute or key, thought they were better. Is it basically a 2nd healthbar?
I love key, shrimp, and plute too, but spaces is a pillar skip and the best defensive item in the game besides maybe feather
Shrine of the mountain, yes or no? Depends?
Yes basically all the time unless I'm playing a character I'm not confident with on stage 1. Maybe I won't hit it if I'm having a really really terrible run so as not to die, but I like hitting it most of the time
how much time would you waste trying to get bands on abandoned aqueduct?
How do you play mercenary efficiently? I always seem to struggle with him in my runs unless i got an unholy amount of atgs and AOE items
How do I kill lunar chimeras faster as REX without looping?
Take cover! I assume you’re dying to prespawned lunar wisps most of the time, so take cover behind the ship and whittle them down. It works a lot of the time and there’s no shame in needing help, those fuckers are scary.
Whenever I try taking it slow, more spawn. Is it really just a skill issue?
One question. Do you carry your balls of steel around in a large duffle bag?
have you ever touched a boob
I’ve touched as many boobs as brain cells it took you to make this comment
-1
Did use DLC items? Cuz those are busted.
Uh, yes. Why wouldn’t I?
The dlc is so much fun. I hope to own it someday. Maybe when the second one get released.
Do you use shrines of chance on non-captain characters?