by General_Milky on Sat Apr 07, 2018 5:29 am
Oh, I know HOW to beat it, it's just a big pain in the ass. It's one of those dungeons where RNG can really screw you. My reasoning is this:
Labyrinth layout. Miserable. Labyrinth has, for years, been considered one of the hardest vanilla dungeons and a frequent Daily run-killer not only because Rex boxes you in, but just because the layout itself drives you to was immense popcorn, blackspace, can keep resources from you for an obscene amount of time, and it doesn't really allow you to pick your battles. Now, there's a lot of things you can prep and find to mitigate this, but you may not always have access to them. When you don't... you're in for trouble. You may just HAVE to fight a 2+ level higher demon like a Frostblade or Soul Sucker that you can't possibly take a hit from. That's got 50% resistances from priestesses behind it you can't reach yet.
Next up, monster selection is evil. Difficulty can vary WILDLY depending on how many frostblades clutter up the halls. Kinsman are usually easy, but they can unexpectedly bar a hallway as you explore for health and until you find a way to top off, you're NOT getting through. Soul Suckers deal massive damage unless you're lucky when you cover them, and even though swampsouls are the one merciful monster type that are easy to take on, they still cause a ton of problems if they're not the LAST fight of your current level.
Bosses are also no joke. While not as hard as something like Hidden Workshop's bosses, they're still QUITE a resource sink where you need a staggering amount of health to bounce between them wearing both down and losing health from most moves you do. Preparing Memory of the East before the fight proper is a good idea, except for the part where it's not always easy or even practical to do so because of the aforementioned ways the dungeon can throw a half dozen different varieties of curveballs and leave you without sufficient blackspace, popcorn to have a midfight level for both the setup AND the fight, or even access to all the tools you need because a lvl9 freezing wraith is blocking off a fifth of the map and you need that last remaining Kinsman to burn off MotE's frostbite.
In other words, yeah, Frigid Battlefield can be countered and measures can be taken to make specific problem pieces easier, but in a casual, purist environment the place has a ton of tricks to totally ruin your day. Most vicious dungeons aren't quite so cramped and stuffed with a monster selection that work with each other to ruin your day. All EE vicious so far except maybe Lekon's Table are generally open and you have a lot more agency to choose where you go, who you fight, and pick up what you need.