SPOILER culpit liveblogs fruma (complete)

Okay I'm still dying constantly. I'll buy a bad Stardew. 15 LE 48 EB; there were a bunch of Stardews up for exactly 63000, but this one was a little more expensive. Seemed to have marginally better rolls.

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Oh, what? This one came with Thunder Powders on it! Fives...

...Kill Streak is completely useless against bosses.

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Okay, I'm doing substantially better. Swapping Dawnbreak for Stardew seems to have significantly upped my DPS (although I also swapped some useless party Lightbender abilities for the Riftwalker stuff from the build).

...Still dying. Not having good MR is killing me. Stardew is probably responsible for that.

 

Wow. This build... can't do caves. What? Why not? Why can't it do caves?

 

Well, bossfights give my build less trouble than caves.

 

Got to 2.6m on Tasim... on Morph. I think that Lament build sucks. Maybe Shattershard was somehow key to the whole thing, or I needed better rolls. Whatever. It didn't work.

 

As boring as it may be, sustain is probably the best way to go about this.

 

The thing is, the build I got is supposed to be sustain. But there wasn't any sort of instruction manual included in it, and it doesn't seem to work well. A stack... wasted? I guess??

There wasn't really an explanation as to what the build was exactly doing. The person who made it didn't seem to know either. It had crippling movespeed drawbacks, low mana regen (bad for sustain), negative health regen (also bad for sustain). What was going on there? Morph may be weak and not intended to be used at this level, but it's reliable. You know what it does.

 

Alright, let me make you an ACTUAL sustain build.

okay so this hasn't been field tested BUT. It is an adaptation of a build that I KNOW works (uhh the build was originally for a grimtrap trickster, ewf slap very slow very sustain.) Since earth damage is less important I swapped some items out. It shouldn't be super expensive, as you've previously mentioned you've bought a lament (if you got rid of it since I'm very sorry) Uh if antidote is super expensive don't bother it's not very essential.

-Firemoss Veil (sustain in the form of hpr and max mana, also skill points)
-Drenched Igneous (damage, health and mana sustain)
-Ophiuchus (damage, sustain)
-Carcinization (damage, health regen, max mana)
-Olive (skill points and damage)
-Olive
-Firemoss Band (health regen, set bonus gives max mana)
-Antidote (water damage, heal effectiveness)
-Lament[w7w7w7] (self-explanatory)

Worse mana regen than morph cascade, higher higher max mana, higher mana steal, high enough health regen that it probably will balance -life steal, walk speed is much lower, hp is much higher, ehp is slightly higher, much higher heal to health ratio
if this isn't good enough let me know

 

Died at 1.8m. I ran out of mana. Argh.

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I have a Lament but I haven't powdered it because I'm not sure if it's good.

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Died at 4.1m. Thought he was staggered. He wasn't.

 

Fair

Mana potions aren't bad as a sustain supplement when running low.

 

That reminds me that I've started collecting stat potions and have a broad suite in my charbank. I don't collect mana potions but I could, maybe while out running for a Cistern Circlet again.

The thing is, basically, it's already hard enough to keep track of what I'm doing and what spells I'm casting during the fight. If I was having to watch my mana and drink potions when it was getting low I probably wouldn't be able to mentally handle it. Like, I have to be teleporting to escape Tasim, but I also have to be teleporting to hit him for Distortion, and I have to be healing constantly because any random attack will knock off 1/2 of my health, and I have to be keeping a distance so he doesn't hit me at melee, but I also have to be attacking him with Ophanim, and I have to be throwing Ice Snakes at him to trigger Crystallised.

And the boss arena sucks so bad. It's so small! It's so weird shaped! All of its walls are easy to get caught on because they prioritised aesthetics over functionality here!

 

Took a look at Off the Rails wiki page out of curiosity. Seems that there are no alternate murderers; also that the cooking minigame wasn't finished; also that not acquiring my locker key (somehow? I got all the dialogue from everyone and checked the train like three times) didn't cause me to lose anything because the items in my locker weren't implemented; also that there was a fourth piece of evidence, but realistically I wouldn't have cared because it's just 'they smuggled the knife in with a book'.

Kind of disappointing.

Even with the Beta being lengthened, I don't think Fruma should have released when it did. It's not cripplingly unfinished, but there's still missing pieces everywhere (except, really, in The Missing Piece). It wasn't ready.

 

The murderer guy from Off the Rails was "Toxic Thistle" of the Blossoming Blades, which is interesting because the Blades don't do anything. This guy had no plan and was completely ineffectual, but he still. Did something. Strange.

 

He goes rogue, they mention it during one of the meetings.

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I really wish they'd made it that way, the replayability.

 

Eh. I think it'd be ultimately detrimental if who the Real Murderer was depended on who you accused. Detracts from the mystery. If there's multiple people with strong cases, and any one of them will be revealed to be the True Murderer if you accuse them, then you weren't really solving a mystery.

It's very well set-up, though!

 

They changed Tasim's portrait. And the new one sucks.

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3.7m.

 

Anyone have a side-by-side comparison?
On a related note, I saw that Jiro had portraits added, but after I completed the quests they were in, anyone have those?

 

I ended up going to the wiki to figure out what the requirements were on that Hyloch NPC who offers blue dye. Apparently, she just straight up does not work and is not needed! Why is Fruma like this! They did not finish it!

 

Huh. That SD description is. Boring.

"Once, the Sovereign of the Highlands cared. But Majin... DOESN'T!"

This doesn't add any new information. It's worse than the discovery in the Canopy trunk, since that would theoretically give you new info if you didn't do First Wicker's Spark first. It's characterisation for Rieke, someone who, as far as I know, doesn't matter and has barely, if ever, been brought up before. And it's not like Rieke was that caring. They denied "fence the rivers so that people don't drown", and another suggestion was rejected because they personally didn't like it. The accepting fishing suggestion is just basic stewardship, you can't give people points for doing their job unless all the other people are insanely incompetent, and the Sovereigns... aren't, really. They're all mentally ill, but none of them are incompetent. It doesn't tell us anything substantial about Majin because we know he's egocentric already, and the Highlands aren't even doing that bad.

Bad SD. Its cues are bad (you aren't adequately hinted to go up to the top floor, an NPC outside is half-programmed, the ladder to the upper floors is broken if you break the nearby pot), and its lore is uninteresting.

 

Finally beat Tasim. I used skill pots and that worked.

Rex was lorewise fighting alongside us here, but she didn't appear in the boss fight at all. That's dissonant. Some excuse should have been contrived for why she couldn't fight Tasim.

Rex kills Tasim with an Arrow Bomb. Fun, but... 7.7 million health and all we got credit for was progressing a scene? She seems to be using a modified Arrow Storm as her nock-multiple-arrows technique. Not sure what the hyper Bomb was that pierced the Queen's star-shard-shield, but given the green particles it's possible that it's meant to be something akin to Twain's Arc. Zeph's a Shadestepper, seemingly... well, I guess using Vanish is common to Assassins.

Without a walk period we're immediately teleported to the Queen's arena to fight her. I knew a Queen fight was going to happen, but I'd thought it was in the Raid. A third boss in this quest would be just... so annoying. The floor is red, seemingly Corrupted; the walls are a mixture of dirt and water, indicating that she's made a bubble on the floor of Lake Rieke, is probably Corrupting the ground, and bored it in somewhat.

To be honest. The Queen might be the climax of the quest. I don't care. She has more health than Majin, another rainbow defense, and I already spent days, and dozens of attempts, fighting Tasim. I'm tired. My hands have been aching with every single boss fight in this questline because of how much I have to click. I'm not going to bother fighting her normally, I'm putting up a party. I am skipping this.

The flow here is just wrong. These bosses always take a ton of time to fight. We're chaining them? I don't think a boss rush works narratively. It only makes sense if you're expecting people to beat each one first try, which obviously isn't the case.

The Queen's boss subtitle doesn't make much sense anyway. It showed up in the ARG, sure, but what is that supposed to mean? 'Metamorphosis of the Stage' isn't, like, a person. You're calling the Queen 'Metamorphosis', as a title, but that's at best a noun referring to an action.

 

Same applies with Syndra for Zhiraok one and Sui for Zhiraok.

He's not really any... Just generally an assassin.