Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kagus]

While the week's modifiers by and large weren't awful, they also weren't particularly good/synergistic to a particular strategy... And one of the downsides was Curse of Comradeship, which brilliantly discourages you from playing with other people in a multiplayer game, since the wrong person joining (or even the right one at the wrong time) can straight up lose the entire run for you, as demonstrated on my first two attempts.

Eventually I settled into setting it to Private and just doing a bots-only run, because even though they're complete morons and can't upgrade over the course of a game type where upgrading is essential to survival, they're at least not affected by the curse. Figured I could get them to tag along until I unlocked my career's wombo combo by buying the megabomb at a shrine of strife.


...so, first off, the shrine of strife didn't spawn. Not "it spawned on a map branch I couldn't access", it just straight up didn't spawn at all. No game-winning bomb for me.

Then we made it to the final arena, struggled through the first section with some pretty hairy encounters, then dropped down into the second area below where I... Got stuck. Full-on wedged between a couple rocks, just as the next wave got started. I was so pissed that I was going to lose an entire hour-ish run to nonsense geometry.

...and that's when the Rampart Cursed minotaur spawned and made his way over to me. It was over, I couldn't dodge, I couldn't use my actually damaging attacks against him, all I could do is just sit there and block mindlessly waiting for him to obliterate my stamina while the bots tried to kiss flamethrowers.

Except... That didn't happen. Somehow, and I legitimately don't know how they pulled this off, the bots actually managed to stay alive and in relatively good health for a while. I got my guard broken and was battered a bit, but then the warrior priest shielded me and I could recover my defenses a bit in the face of the onslaught. They were holding their own pretty solidly, but I knew that eventually they would crumble if I couldn't do anything.

And then, salvation from the strangest of places... A bannergoat spawned in, did not get immediately sniped by the mercbot, and ran right up to me before planting his flag. The knockback managed to jostle me loose just enough that I squirmed my way out of there and could actually join the fight again.


...so anyways, I started blasting. A smoke-fuelled barrage of pistol shots into the encroaching elite mass helped take the pressure off the bots, and a couple incendiary bombs softened everything else up enough that we could recover properly and take down the big boy. Helped in good part by my "stagger on crits" gun that was firing quickly enough to just bully (hah) him into a wall while everyone slapped away at him.

And there it was... "Impressive! But can you do it again?" rang down from the heavens as the final door was blasted away, and we could make our way down to claim victory. I suppose this is more of an "own" for the bots considering their truly surprising performance on that last section, but I'm still just relieved I didn't have to go through all that nonsense over again for the sake of a tiny pinch of red dust.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Vermintide 2, Chaos Wastes weekly expedition

[Duuvian]

The screenshots aren't in order but it's pretty close.

Spoiler: STONKS-9800: Stock Market Simulator (click to show/hide)

Demagogue powers activate!


Yes! People are dressing like my henchmen now!

Time to celebrate!

Here is why the company stock jumped like that:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1539140/discussions/0/598518216964219355/
If I buy or sell anything the price goes up. I guess it's to prevent my pumping and shorting cycle (in this game at least shorting is where you borrow money against the current price of a stock and if it goes down you owe the new price for the loan and pocket the difference minus interest on the loan and fees) but it also means I can profit from selling easily because the stock price actually goes up when I sell, I think to prevent me from laying shorts and then selling a pile of shares to devalue a stock. I'm not sure how this game works to be honest. Look at the cool thing it did to stop my pump and shorts:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That is me trying to offload the company stock while holding some number of shorts on it while the market pushed it to be more valuable after the sale of my stock.

I'm going to sell all this other stock I was buying to try to drive the price of my company's stock down so I could purchase it, and throw it all at the company stock so it goes up, and when I run out of money short it with one day's worth of shorts I can clear on the first day I can sell the shares again (it should decrease while I wait due to it's inflated value, probably enough to make a single day short possible since it should go up after the first day is used to clear the one day's worth of shorts) and then sell it all so it goes up again. presumably until the market can't keep raising it or I run out of shares. If I buy all the shares of the company on the market, I can forget about the short but that's probably not going to make much compared to the sales if it works like these other stocks I've been inflating up towards 10million.

[SQman]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ugh, I've tried to finish the ground mono-type run, but it REALLY wasn't easy. I went through so many runs that I could fully upgrade my Sandy Shock, which in turn allowed me to also take Ting-Lu. In all previous attempt I assumed that Gliscor was an essential team member, but in the end I managed to win without it. Other pokemon I considered for the team were Flygon, Torterra, and Krookodile.
Interestingly, while it was supposed to be a test run for Ting-Lu, it ended up being one of the best runs - without save scumming I managed to defeat Cyrus, the entire Sinnoh Elite Four, Cynthia, Ivy's final team (including her Mega Rayquaza), and Eternatus.

Swampert saw a lot of use at certain points of the run, but I kept him in the side lines most of the times. He was used to defeat Eternatus' first stage, which he did singlehandedly. Caught him as a Marshtomp in the swamp. While I already had a Palpitoad, I was glad to get something that could mega evolve. Shame he never got to learn any physical water moves.

Combining Seismitoad and Mudsdale resulted in Seile.
Seismitoad by itself was basically Swampert lite without the ability to mega evolve; I kept it for Drain Punch, but frankly most things weak to fighting are also weak to other types that were abundant on that team. I caught Seismitoad when it was just a Tympole. It was the first semi-usable catch.
Mudsdale was a great physical defender due to its Stamina, but up until it learned Iron Head, it only had dirt-type moves.
I believe I found the DNA Splicer only after the final fight against Cyrus, meaning that I went to the 180s (which include the Elite 4 and the champion) with an incomplete team just so I could create a toad-horse hybrid. Palpitoad and Mudsdale don't really synergize all that well. It was kinda garbage.

Sandy Shocks was the foundation upon which the entire team was built. A powerful special attacker, very fast, and also quite tough. Without it, the crippling weakness to water and grass that ground types suffer from would have been a massive hurdle. Thunder Wave slowed Eternatus down, probably granting me the victory.

Excadrill was an extremely late catch. I got him in the wave 181, right after creating Seile, and just before encountering Aaron of Sinnoh Elite 4. It caught up quickly level-wise, and also proved itself useful. During the fight with Ivy, Excadrill was the last one standing against Mega Rayquaza and a two other enemies. It managed to finish off the dragon and beat the rest of Ivy's team, basically saving me from a full team wipe.

Ting-Lu's Vessel of Ruin lowers every pokemon's special attack, and that affects even allies. Fortunately majority of my team specialized in physical attacks, so it was only a nuisance for the opponents. During the second phase of the Eternatus battle, Ting-Lu's ability, combined with its impressive physical defense, kept it on the battlefield where it could delete Eternatus' shields one after another with Ruination.

My Ursaluna might not have been Bloodmoon this time, but it was still worth carrying a useless Ursaring around for over 100 encounters before the game graciously granted me a block of peat to get it. Ursaluna's best quality is its ridiculous strength. The strategy with this guy was just bashing things with Headlong Rush or Hammer Arm, whichever was more effective, and hoping that it's good enough. It was holding a Flame Orb to make use of Guts.

[AlStar]

Persona 4 Golden has an achievement - Hardcore Risette Fan - which requires you to hear 250 unique lines from the teammate who acts as your guide. Unfortunately, the achievement doesn't give any kind of progress meter, so all you can do is fight as many different enemies with a rotating cast of teammates to get her to say different things.

Anyway, all that to say: on the very last secret final boss; on that bosses final attack

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

which causes each of your teammates to sacrifice themselves for you, one-by-one

Risette says a unique line. On literally the very final part of that attack, right before the game officially ended and I was treated to a roughly hour long ending, Steam goes "ping!" and pops the achievement.

So yeah, beating the final boss was amazing, but also getting the achievement - and at the last possible moment, to boot? Perfection.

[Duuvian]

I figured out that I could purchase the company stock in smaller allotments of 14x99 without arousing the market. After I had regained about 70% of the shares at around 15million per share I spiked the price by purchasing three full day allotments (the market started selling faster than I could raise it after three days) I sold all the company stock and ended up with 20.2trillion yen in total worth. It hit 32trillion at one point but the stock went down to 90million while I waited for the recent purchase risk to dissipate so the character wouldn't take the risk of losing the gradual Ethics stat increases from not having a scandal or going to jail for market manipulation. Selling it did raise the price back towards 130million a share towards the final days of sales.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I could probably get the Monopolist achievement now, where you own a majority share in every company on the stock market.

Spoiler: Time to celebrate (click to show/hide)

[SQman]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ah rock, you'd think it would be a good defensive type with it being hard and all that but IT'S NOT! It's weak to pretty much every type that matters, and in a mono-type run there's no using other pokemon. Still, through a lot of trial and error, I've assembled a team of experts that got all the to Eternatus and rolled over it like a boulder.
Oh, and the V-day event moved the DNA splicer from master ball tier to great ball tier, so the strategy was a bit different; I could actually count on them appearing.

Aeronflame is a fusion of Aerodactyl and Talonflame. Aerodactyl carried through the first few areas, and then I weakened it considerably by fusing it with a Fletchling. After it evolved, it was still weaker than a pure Aerodactyl, but at least it had Flame Body and Flare Blitz. Flare Blitz synergizes well with Orichalcum Pulse (Koraidon's signature ability that creates Sunny Day and inceases attack during Sunny Day), but I didn't use it very much; recoil from Flare Blitz is nasty, and I always use it sparingly. Then, after Aeronflame mega evolved, its Talonflame half started to hinder it even more. Still, it remained the MVP of this team due to its speed.

Nihilego was the token special attacker. Its Earth Power was essential early on when it was just it, Aerodactyl, and a useless Chewtle. Levitate removes Nihilego's greatest weakness. It served as a counter to rock and poison types, but not its fellow Nihilego's, no sir. Lusamine's Nihilego also had Levitate.

Dreadnaw began as a Chewtle that couldn't be used. Then it evolved into a Dreadnaw that wasn't worth using until it learned Liquidation. Well, Ice Fang was useful. Then, when I found a G-Max Mushroom, Dreadnaw turned into a monster that would tank any hit that wasn't grass type. For some reason Eternatus kept blasting him with Cross Poison, and that gave me a lot of time to deal damage.

Magcargo was a piece of semi-solid crap.

The unusual fusion of Shiftry and Garganacl, Shinacl, wasn't used extensively either. I thought having a grass pokemon would be poggers, but I never found many opportunities to use it. I had it beat up Dewgongs in the ice caves, but turns out rock doesn't resist ice after all. I've used worse pokemon.

Now, Steelith was a bit more useful than I anticipated. The Gigalith admixture gave it a little more strength, but in the end it mostly just lowered Mega Steelix's defense. Sand Stream didn't hurt, but didn't help much either. Frankly, without the mega form, Steelix wouldn't even be considered in a normal run.

Edit:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bug run didn't take long, compared to the rock and dirt type. There were some catastrophically bad attempts, but I figured out that I should prioritize quantity over quality this time, and at the same time remember that I'd have to fight Eternatus in the end. So instead of taking Slither Wing or Pheromosa, I picked one mid-tier bug (Heracross), and a bunch of cheap crap with decent unlocks. Eternatus died at a record pace.

Weedle, being a quintessential early-game bug, might not have been an obvious choice, however its egg moves are amazing, its final form can mega evolve, and it's only 0.5 point. Beedrill could hit even levitating steel-type pokemon with its Thousand Arrows, which happened exactly once. Toxic Spikes also went mostly unused. I used Beedrill caveman style, but it worked.

Vikavolt was caught just before my battle with champion Geeta. I spent a lot of money to teach it good moves, then ended up using it only once - deleting a shield on Ivy's Noctowl, not even defeating it.

Blipbug is another one of those shitty larvae, and just like Weedle it has the potential to become a being of incredible power. Orbeetle could straight up erase enemies with Luster Purge, the drawback being that I had to buy ethers ever so often. That being said, Revelation Dance and Energy Ball also took down many pokemon. It's worth noting that Pokerogue changes how G-Max works, turning the forms into glorified megas.

Duradueye was a fusion of Durant and Decidueye. I think taking away Durant's steel type ruined it, and the increased special defense did nothing. As a Durant, it saw minimal use, but after fusing, I never used it again.

Herapom was the heavy lifter. Even as a Heracross it carried the run, but then I found an Aipom with the hidden ability Skill Link, which synergizes perfectly with Heracross' passive Technician. Yeah, it's Toucannon all over again except strong. I know Ivy's Mega Rayquaza would have been unbeatable without it.

Venodam was supposed to put Leech Seed on Eternatus as a part of the long term strategy, but Heracross and Orbeetle handled the space tapeworm before I remembered I had a strategy. Even so, this guy was useful in some places due to its wide array of special attacks. Fiery Dance would increase its special attack by two stages thanks to Simple.