Extreme East Spoiler and Discussion Thread

[srid]

Thanks for the video! I'll watch it in full when I get the time!

It did not occurred to me until you mentioned it, but indeed the amount of blackspace you get with Troll Brain combined
with the free DP (and knockback for self-cannon in certain specific cases) makes Apheelsick a very powerful glyph for the Troll... Especially when you have double mana thanks to Shado Heart.

Since Troll Brain trigger as soon as you take strictly more damage than what you regen, I'm wondering if it couldn't be possible to get an infinite amount of blackspace by regenerating X per tile, and getting hit by an enemy that deals X+1.
That way, for each 1 health spent, you get one blackspace. If you combine that with Halpmeh you can compensate that health loss.
The main difficulty becomes finding enemies that deals X+1, and having enough of them so that they can regenerate sufficiently to fuel the loop.
It couldn't be used for much else than piety farming though, since as soon as you level up, you need to find a new X+1 enemy.

Anyway, my best strat with the Troll so far allowed me to do this :

Let's see if you can guess how I did

[shade_of_ox]

Yeah, that was actually something I was considering with HALPMEH, but like you say it can't be used for much more than piety farming, which the Troll already is very good at. It's really just too tedious for me to attempt it.

As for that screenshot, I think I have an idea. Took some time to figure it out as the no EXP enemies aren't shown on the event log. I didn't figure out until late in my scouting run, so I didn't quite have the resources to pull it off. Am I heading in the right direction?
http://prntscr.com/lfsny9

[srid]

Yes, you got the right idea
But it's not exactly the same strategy as me.
Did you run Curious or regular Troll Lab?

I ran Curious and didn't kill any NoXP enemy, if that might help.

[shade_of_ox]

Ah, I see, you probably used the Mouth instead, didn't you? My plan was just to get Trollenstein's damage to around 20 thousand, at which point he will deal about 1000 damage in knockback to all of the no EXP enemies, killing them in short order (and leaving him at 1 HP). But your method using the Mouth allows you to just get him down that low just as fast, and the Mouth has a higher Essence Drain, so that will take much less time, I think.

[srid]

Indeed
I also did a strategy with Martyr Wraps where I used Trollenstein as a deluxe cueball to wipe everyone else. But it's much less original.

I haven't finished watching your video yet, but I noted a few potential points of improvement:

- When fighting the Tower of Goo, you missed a level catapult that could have saved you some blackspace, it's made very obvious by the fact that you kill a lvl 4 just after leveling up, while you could have killed it before for a catapult.
- You seem to spend lots of mana on WEYTWUT to move around enemies, I wonder if it wouldn't have been more efficient to simply kill them on the spot and spend the mana on Burndayraz instead.
- I believe that you wasted some blackspace after killing Aequitas too, just to find the next boss. I would have used blackspace in the monster party sub sooner to make sure I always had the next boss revealed
- I would also have explored the smugglers den sooner, at least to get that extra Attack booster.
- I'm not sure about that, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been worth to buy the Shield to be able to tank a hit from the bosses. More generally I would have spent my gold sooner for more CP, I guess.

Anyway, it's always easier to point the minor mistakes when you sit and watch. I apologize if I made too many remarks, I'm a perfectionist. Congrats again forward the win, I wouldn't even have dared trying such a challenge in the first place.
I hope I'll find time to finish watching the video soon!

EDIT: I have also been wondering if the Labyrinth really were the best dungeon for the stunt, as the Labyrinth layout regularly forced you to waste some blackspace or to spend mana for WEYTWUT. I believe that it could be feasible in another dungeon. No idea which one, though.

[Nurator]

Hooray, I finished all non vicious curious dungeons and all silver challenges
As you said that the vicious dungeons get an overhaul in curious, I think I have to tackle Heretic Gold now... I am a little bit scared I will post my attempt in the next days

[shade_of_ox]

You're definitely right about there being room for improvement in this run. I definitely didn't play it perfectly.

The thing about Tower Shield is that it doesn't help against magic attackers, particularly the Firstborn, so I believe the extra conversion threshold was worth more. As for killing the enemies, you have to remember that this is VT and killing even a level 6 would cost me black spaces, not to mention that the bottom passage had 3 high level enemies in a row. That's a fault of the Labyrinth itself more than it is a fault of my play, I think.

I think I forgot about the Smuggler's Den until late, because usually I explore it at level 1 in order to be able to reshroud it, but here I wanted BURNDAYRAZ and didn't find it right away.

To Tower of Goo, you're right! I wasn't really in the mindset of setting up catapults because the Troll usually barely benefits from them (they don't give back the DP after all) but here that would have been a good play.

As for the Labyrinth itself, the key is that even with VT, Troll completely trivialized the bosses here and can kill them more efficiently than any other bosses. The Labyrinth layout is worth it for that, because other dungeons aren't as cheesable, so to speak. For instance I tried Dragon Isles, but even if you find LEMMISI the bosses there are too strong to leave any resources for the boss parade itself.

[shade_of_ox]

http://prntscr.com/lg7m6r
Damn, what a weird strat. By no means as clean a victory as yours, srid, but it would have been much simpler if I had found the Mouth earlier. Subdungeons were Glenrick and Paan Labyrinth (!) which really helped. Pretty interesting to see exactly how much Troll can squeeze out of a map - I only got the boss down to around 3000 HP before I ran out of blackspace, and then clever use of Troll Brain allowed me to sustain myself for a ridiculous amount of DPs. Very fun!

[srid]

Wow.



Anyway, congrats for finding out, and I hope you had fun with this strat

[shade_of_ox]

By the way, you might want to take a look at polishing Bag o' Tricks a little more. At the moment the interactions with dragging it around the inventory are wonky. In the video I was considering converting it, then changed my mind and put it back, which caused it to activate and cast LEMMISI.