Extreme East Spoiler and Discussion Thread

[Nurator]

[The Avatar]

All that's really to be said for The Grandmaster is keep at it. There's a ton of tiny decisions which will squeak out a few more damage or lose a few damage (the largest being potion timing with the tri-sword), so try changing exactly one thing at a time and seeing whether it brings the health total lower or not. This can be in the start (i.e. pick up tri-sword or not at level 1), or far later into the run (do you wait for tri-sword to hit +3/+2 base damage or just blow through your health potions as quickly as you can get full value off them to convert Pendant of Health sooner for +10%). Eventually you'll get him down if you repeat this process enough times.

[Nurator]

This game hates me...

https://ibb.co/mdR980

EDIT:

COME ON!!!!

https://ibb.co/nzrnvf

This is mathematically optimized. I cant go further. Are you sure its possible? Its freaking 1 HP, but I cant go further What the hell

[The Avatar]

Um, wow. I don't think I've ever gotten quite that close without winning. And yes I have won it, although I don't relish the thought of playing through it again to prove it. If that truly is mathematically optimized, then it means you've optimized the wrong branch which indicates a bad early move. I think. I can dedicate a bit of time to this later, so the puzzle might end up getting a 1 health if neither of us can solve it after bashing our heads against it for a fair bit longer.

[shade_of_ox]

http://prntscr.com/l7bxbn
This is the closest I've gotten so far. In this attempt I kept Pendant of Health all the way to the end which I don't think is optimal.

What I'm struggling with here is when to pick up Trisword - the inventory constraints seem to prevent picking it up early, but you're missing out on a lot of damage by not picking it up...

[shade_of_ox]

What I was considering with Rogue was a DP build with Namtar's Ward and CYDSTEPP, but I figured it would be too expensive manawise to handle Prototype 1. I kind of forgot how strong a Jehora Rogue was - I should play that build a bit more to remind myself how to play it. I've been playing so many tank-style builds that I've forgotten how to play damage spikers, and even in the Warlord run I was considering taking Elven Boots and Binlor for magic resistance before I remembered that the Warlord really doesn't need resists. I guess that's because the last major thing I did in the vanilla game was clear VGT with all classes.

I'm going to try the Rogue run in Curious FF just to see it in action, but I don't doubt that it works.

By the way, aside from the obvious gimmick in LT Curious, it would too much to hope that the bosses stay the same, right?

[Nurator]

The problem is, even if you reduce the boss by 1 health, my strategy will not work anymore... it is optimized on certain break points and I am fairly certain, no other branch will be better, but not 100% sure there...

But if you dont want to go through the trouble yourself, maybe just tell me your opening move. You said, you remember these steps by heart, right? I know why I did mine 1000 times to get to 1 HP...
@shade_of_ox: This puzzle is so crazily precise, you are not even close

[The Avatar]

[shade_of_ox]

I think the problem with Lekon's Table Curious is the horrible enemy pool. Curious in particular pretty much forces you to play a striker because of all the debuffs. So I think Rogue would actually be a good call there, as well.

Strategy aside, I'm assuming you haven't balanced this around Yendor? Because if the main gimmick is that leveling is very difficult, Yendor seems like a no-brainer prep that pretty much destroys this dungeon. This is the problem with dungeons where the main challenge is leveling - Yendor usually can just brute force them. I would say, make leveling a little easier, but in exchange make the bosses a little harder.

I think maybe what would be interesting would be to give the player some way to get mark of the Goat. Maybe by killing Cultists (who otherwise are horrible enemies that you would never want to fight). As it is, The One Horn actually seems to be a very solid prep here.

[shade_of_ox]

http://prntscr.com/l7pw9b

This is why I love Dracul. That's five, count em', FIVE stacks of life steal, thanks to a Draining Blade prep (I didn't find Vampiric Blade though).
The Jehora strat is very strong. No good spawns from shops or anything, aside from Troll Heart - only luck I had was Dracul. Once I found him, I decided to skip out on Chaos Avatar and the third Boost Health to get lifesteal instead. I ran out of corestones thanks to some unlucky island spawns (and Prototype 1 blinked to an island I couldn't reach without spending my last corestone) but that didn't matter as I could use all of the golems on the bottom as bloodcows. 1 fireball and one strike heals me 50 HP, so I think I could have taken down Lusory even if he had 1000 health or more.
If I had found Vampiric Blade in the shops, I think I could have used the Jealous Apprentice himself as a bloodcow.