Ok, I replayed the hold again and I'm fine with how the first 5 levels are balanced; I started a new game because now the bomb is no longer useful on level 4. I also didn't kill the rattlesnake on level 3 because I'd have to use the altar, and I decided not to use any until the very last. This allowed me to choose between full ATK route and DEF route, but DEF route is absolutely not balanced, I managed to kill the slayer with no damage and beat the archivist without optimizing and by leaving lots of health and keys. The ATK route was harder but definitely balanced. Here's full comments and stats on various levels:
Level 1:
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× I took health and 5 DEF.
Level 2:
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× Final stats: HP 1191, ATK 32, DEF 27, GR 65, REP 165 keys 1/1; Wooden blade.
Level 3:
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× Final stats: HP 206, ATK 64, DEF 52, GR 423, REP 823 keys 6/2; Short sword, Wooden shield.
Level 4:
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× Final stats: HP 3794, ATK 114, DEF 102, GR 1517, REP 487 keys 10/5/1; Claymore, Bronze shield, Speed potion.
I tried to balance ATK and DEF here.
Level 5:
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× Final stats: HP 62, ATK 233, DEF 181, GR 6477, REP 2987 keys 12/5/2; Long Sword, Steel shield.
I immediately took the VIP card and used an ATK route here, I used the speed potion on 1N and invisibility potion against aumtlich master.
Level 6:
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× The beginning was very tricky, I immediately took the Hook and I used an ATK route for the first part, so that I could kill gel babies in one shot (after that I took Knight shield) and Roach empress in 3. Then I unlocked the final altar, I had more than 11.000 GR, so I used it 12 times. Here I decided to try both ATK route and DEF route. ATK route was ok, I had to optimize to survive and still have good status, I used invisibility potion on 3E to grab everything for free. I took lucky greckle and then I transformed almost all DEF gems in ATK gems, these were my stats before fighting the archivist:
HP 13863, ATK 703, DEF 343, GR 5193, REP 101 keys 4/1; Wyrm smiter, Knight shield, Lucky greckle. Expected damage 1828.
For DEF route the altar gave me 240 DEF, after that it was almost trivial, I also used the altar two more times but for ATK upgrades and as I said, I left health and keys so I didn't optimize at all (I used invisibility potion for Potato rotator). Stats before archivist:
HP 8672, ATK 563, DEF 567, GR 1687, REP 1451 no keys; Wyrm smiter, Knight shield, Lucky greckle. Expected damage 3495.
All in all, the final level is nice and once again, there are many choices. But if you manage to use the final altar without ever using the others, then DEF route is a lot more effective than ATK route.
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There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be okay.
There's just this one, just this rock.
-33th Skywatcher
[Last edited by Red-XIII at 11-06-2016 07:49 PM]