I really hope this is the case indeed, but not having the daily web page leaderboards available - I can’t confirm it… Motion Twin are silent the last month, so there’s a good chance that you’re right! ! I will have only few players to worry about until you start to push it to the top.
Thanks a lot buddy, but I’ve never even modded the game… I’m helpless against cheaters on my own I didn’t even moded skyrim when I played it. Don’t know what’s wrong with me - I love to experience vanilla issues in the games probably.
The biome is as easy as it can be… The most trouble I got was from ShieldBearers of course, but it’s overall really small and fast daily.
GEAR
Symmetrical Lance - It makes easy job out of everything so it’s good starter weapon/finisher for this.
Heavy Turret - It’s so close to the start you can’t pass on it - that’s for sure.
Sinew Slicer - It works far better than the Heavy Turret, because of the faster rate of fire.
Ice Bow - As bad as slow weapons go - this helped me in few cases to freeze my targets to get the most of the stars extra points as possible.
Fire Grenade - I find it to be better option compared to the Double Crossb-o-matic which you have to chose from the same piedestal. The 'nade provides faster certain killing for the price of longer cooldown - 16 vs 10 in benefit of the turret.
Punishment - Boss destroyer - nothing more in this run.
Extra options
Double Crossb-o-matic - I would have preferred to roll with this and the Fire Grenade compared to Sinew Slicer, but having to choose… RIP. You might find this turret to be better for your playstyle though, so give it a try anyway.
Impaler - Unfortunately it’s positioned in an area that has no skill scrolls, but 3 stars which means it was almost predefined I had to go there last when I had necessary gear to take advantage of all the extra score available. It has way more killing potential compared to the Symmetrical Lance though.
Area #1 - Getting cursed right off the bad + a free scroll isn’t that scary in this biome > go for it and hopefully you will get nice amulet from the elite as well for even more extra skill points.
Area #2 - No reason to skip it right now 'cuz it has less than 6 enemies in it … just grab the star and kill them all, but remember you still won’t be able to clear your curse.
Area #3 - Extra skill scroll + the Sinew Slicer and the Ice Bow should complete the gear set up for now.
Area #4 - 3 Stars and the option of Fire Grenade/Double Crossb-o-matic. I needed the 'nade as fast as possible so that’s why I went here first compared to Area #5 - better killing potential. If you go with the turret instead of the 'nade feel free to make this area penultimate.
Area #5 - Pretty simple - Star - Scroll - Punishment if you want to have easy time with the boss after few parries.
Area #6 - The score heaven. Be careful when you use your 'nades or turrets, because there are many clusters of enemies that will net you a lot of score with the 3 stars available here. Grab the Impaler if you find the Symmetrical Lance too slow like I do
Boss Fight - Meh… less than 7 seconds.
Currently #5 unfortunately… This run requires perfect execution and today I’m not feeling like giving it more tries.
Today the daily isn’t something spectacular and it isn’t hard at all, just I noticed that on lower Cells active there are far more differences than usually: Instead of the Grappling Hook there’s a Fire 'Nade and the first Elite drops insanely OP Wave of Denial on 0 cells/0 upgrades . Even the droppable second Scroll is from different enemy.
Spiked Boots - I feel they are the better starting option compared to the Symmetrical Lance and it was a lot easier to pass the “long corridor of DEATH” that’s in the upper right part of the map, but until than the Lance felt better. I won’t discuss the boots yet again - you can check some previous runs where I talked about them.
Grappling Hook - It’s really useless overall, but it can help on 2-3 occasions to pull a Thorny before it turns it’s back towards you. It’s better than nothing I suppose. In it’s place there’s a Fire Grenade on lower cells active which I would have loved to have, but… oh well…
Double Crossb-o-Matic - Like always it’s amazing yet again. You can pick between it and a Death Orb, but I never even considered it, because of how slow it is in comparison.
Hokuto’s Bow - Make use of it as much as possible. It will increase your damage by a lot and we of course have talked about it before.
Magnetic Grenade - Replaced the Grappling Hook of course, but it’s probably not there on lower cells, but don’t worry - if you checked the hidden screenshot below the map you will see you have far better options compared to this. About the 'nade itself - it did pretty good while most of the times it sucks - here it had decent damage and plenty of areas to be used properly. Check the Gear Showcase screenshot further below if you are interested in it’s stats for me to consider it useful in the first place.
Extra options
Symmetrical Lance - It does it’s job a lot better than the Spiked Boots up until the first long corridor above the very first Elite (which I marked still in **Area #1). There are so many enemies you will get in perpetual stun lock if you try to use this weapon to take advantage of the stars and this place is heaven for extra points - I call it the “corridor of death” and I dare yo to go check it out!
Spite Sword - It’s viable option and if you go with the Symmetrical Lance this is the replacement at least for the boss fight, but it won’t be better than the Spiked Boots for this task and the boots are for sure better for the run in general. It’s there… you might give it a try if you want a bit more range in the first couple of hits.
Death Orb - It might work, but I didn’t bothered to try it out, because of the Double Crossb-o-Matic turret instead. Should be viable though, but I doubt it will be the best.
Area #1 - It’s pretty self explanatory and contains for sure 3 Skill Scrolls for free + an Elite for an amulet with extra stat(s). I dare you to check out the “corridor of Death” in the top right part of this Area :). If you survive it and you can utilize the 2 stars - you are golden from now on.
Area #2 - The last free Skill Scroll and the Double Crossb-o-Matic/Death Orb pick up - nothing special, but it’s needed as early as possible.
Area #3 - If you don’t care so much for Hokuto’s Bow and you are playing on lower cells you can avoid this for now, but I really took advantage of the bow and the Magnetic Grenade on 4 Cells. You better stack those 2 stars here for +10 points on every kill.
Area #4 - Pretty simple and small so I mainly used it to clear my curse and grab some extra points, but Area #5 can do the same job.
Area #5 - If you don’t care about the Spite Sword it’s just another extra points area.
Area #6 - Nothing special here except the elite - it might give you even better amulet on top of the extra points.
Area #7 - It’s just the entrance for the boss fight, but the star is after all the enemies, so skip them and grab it before you kill them.
Boss Fight - Around 5 seconds fight with the Spiked Boots/Hokuto’s Bow or Spite Sword and twice as long with Symmetrical Lance.
Currently #3 in the Leaderboard in 15 tries > [Leaderboards 26.10.2018] It will probably get deleted again like the most of the previous days, so >
It’s gonna be really short one, because it’s really easy as well. I could have been #1 with only like 10 attempts but I kept repeating the same mistake 'cuz of lack of concentration.
GEAR
The only things I did used are the starter War Spear, Fire Grenade, Phaser (until I got the Oil Grenade) and the Lightning Bolt / Punishment Shield for the boss fight All those are viable and you can even go Shovel in the start… it’s as slow as the war spear so there’s not much of a difference except for what you feel more comfortable with. If there isn’t an Oil 'Nade in your cells active/upgrades - the Phaser will do just fine, don’t worry. The Grappling Hook doesn’t even deserve a mention - it can help you out before you replace it with the Phaser for maximun 2-3 enemies.
Areas #1 and 2 are pretty straight forward - get almost all the gear possible and the free scrolls, just don’t forget to activate the next portal before getting the 3rd scroll.
Areas #3 and 4 are the cursed chests mainl, while having a couple of stars in each of them.
Areas #5 and 6 are only score based with nothing except stars and area #5 has 3 of them and it’s better to double on the last 2 stars (one is when you use the teleportation rune) for +10 points on every kill.
It’s pretty extensive list of changes, so whoever is interested - better check it out, because this is probably to where the game is headed. As for me I will probably do some extensive testing in it so RIP the daily runs even more ;(
Just going through the patch notes it seems like totally different game… I don’t agree with more than 70% of the changes, but still testing will show if it’s better or way worse than before.
I never really liked that some people would only unlock what they felt like it was the best weapons, it’s cheap and really kills the intention of the game. But there you go, they got what they wanted and now they can customize it. I will probably never use this feature.
The changes are huge, a whole new game, what are they thinking? Changing the whole game after release, man. It feels like one of those cases where the developers will change whatever people complain about to make them happy and stray away from their original concept.
I can’t agree more. This is why up to this day I love to use my save slot that has everything unlocked when I play on 4 Cells… It makes re-rolling the shops risky and the item drops pretty interesting, and game changing when you go with certain build in mind only to get uncomfortable legendary that needs to be used completely differently (like whole different build) but still works because it scales with whatever you are maxing out. Pushing uncomfortable items on people is good thing, because that’s how I learned to play with like everything! Rip that…
Recently I’ve been trying to go for 4 cells completion on a new save file in less than 10 deaths right up from the start and it’s totally doable when you unlock only the items you are comfortable with. So far I’m like 13 deaths up until 4 cells, but those include major greed plays
From what I see this patch it’s huge dumbing down, so I really hope most things wont stick for long. Even on timed doors changes are retarded and what not.
My first video is here! It’s probably god damn awful, but I’m still new to this, so any help you can provide… of course is appreciated
Today’s run is cancer and yes of course I’m that unlucky to try to post something especially today… It’s Slumbering Sanctuary biome and it’s in the first phase. There seems to be Philosopher’s stone somewhere, but … not on 4 Cells of course ! Probably it’s on 0 Cells / 0 upgrades, but whatever, I rolled through it!
Actually let me rename this to something more fitting:
First Video Breakdown (with your help hopefully)
I thought my laptop won’t be able to record at all, because it’s from the early century - 2014, but it surprised me for sure.
Lenovo z580 ideapad Stats for Nerds
CPU: i7-3520M 2.9Ghz, max: 3.6 Ghz GPU: HD4000 / GeForce GT 640M (which is the reason I can’t use Shadow Play) RAM: 8 GB on 1600 Mhz SSD: KINGSTON SSDNOW UV500 120GB SUV500 (recent upgrade on the default sata 3 caddy) HDD: WESTERN DIGITAL WD10JPLX BLACK - 1TB / 7200 RPM (recent upgrade on the DVD sata 2 caddy) and this is to what I record the files to, so this might important for the bitrate and stuff. OS: Windows 10 Enterprise 64bit - latest update to this day Monitor: 1366x768 (16:10!) 60 Hz and external Asus 1440x900 (yet again 16:10!) 60 Hz on which I play. Controller: DS4 + DS4Windows Tool… of course - it’s the best controller ever!
Fortunately or unfortunately I can’t use Shadow Play and I hate GeForce Experience, so it’s probably for the best. I tested only OBS so far and I’ve been told it’s really more resource heavy, so this probably leads to my issues. I tested 2 or 3 days with tons of options and most of the time everything handles perfectly during the recording, but the videos not so much.
OBS Stats for Nerds
Latest version - 22.0.2 Video Recording Options:
Base (Canvas) and Output (Scaled) Resolutions: 1920x1080p
I first tested with the low as hell default 2500 bitrate… . I can go 50k too, but the video seems a bit more laggy and I suppose if it doesn’t look good I should consider recording at 720p only. It took me one full day to figure out how to play Dead Cells in fullscreen on my 16:10 monitor and to be able to record on 16:9 resolutions without black bars on the left and right, and for anyone wondering how to do this has to right click the particular game in the Sources tab > Properties and do this:
I haven’t tried to set it up as 720p and probably wouldn’t matter because the output video is set to 1080p
Well here goes nothing:
Any help is appreciated and I hope you like it for a first attempt and yes I know that even putting a simple Avatar and a profile Background, making Thumbnails etc. is for TRY HARDS only , but it is what it is now. I don’t even know what Tags to put in the damn youtube page…
To all the people that helped me so far THANK YOU!!! and you know who you are!
I really wanted to go with the Shovel, but unfortunately it was way under-performing compared to the War Spear
I won’t go into details like the usual stuff today, because I’m still trying to fine tune the videos and their quality so that’s the important thing again.
Dropped the output bitrate of OBS to 17 000 compared to the 50 000 in the previous video - Hopefully it’s smoother this time, but it doesn’t look like it actually is and I hope I didn’t lost a lot of the quality as well ! It’s yet again 1080p which might be the problem for my laptop, but being casual I forgot to switch to High Performance Power Plan for the maximum speed of the CPU .
You didn’t provided a lot of feedback for the first one, so I will keep experimenting until I can find the sweet spot how to record.
If you have any ideas and what you actually want to see in Dead Cells feel free to request and I will try to do it.
Also I’m experimenting with recording commentary, but there are few big problems in this scenario:
I don’t want to be casual and do post commentary - after the recordings…
In such fast paced game my brain is bound to freeze a lot and I don’t have a wingman for now. Having someone asking you questions while you play this will for sure make things a lot smoother and easier on the speaking department.
I’m not a native english speaker (like this doesn’t shows from my broken typing ) which kinda automatically leads to a bit of swearing here and there (actually constantly haha) and this is not exactly cool for gaming stuff where probably most of the viewers are underage.
Anyhow… all opinions are appreciated and welcomed!
I hope I can keep the #1 spot for today’s live version of the game and more importantly I hope the video doesn’t suck! This run is showcasing some of the Assault Shield shenanigans I’ve mentioned few times previously - now you get to see them and yeah there were some mistakes in the run
Have a good evening/morning or whatever else you are having and cheers!
Nice rank there! The video quality didn’t seem to be too different compared to the the previous. There were some frame drops in the beginning, but it’s not really that troublesome to watch, I just don’t know how your playing experience is. You can try to record in 720p since you are on a laptop and see, the heavy pixelation in the actual game itself shouldn’t really make that big of a difference, especially given how much flowing action there is. You are not really staying in one place for long enough for people to appreciate the difference in pixelation size and clarity, and if it means improving your frames while you are playing or with the resulting video, it may be worth a try. But looks like for Dead Cells, you definitely don’t need 50k bitrate.
I don’t think you should try to do commentary, during or after, it’s just not necessary, your actions are continuous and so few wasted motions. I am just mesmerized watching you play, I really don’t need to hear any more thoughts, because you should only focus on playing. Post-recording commentary take way too much time to do and you are better off to spend your time playing instead.
Anyway, I just wanted to give you a big thumbs up, you are the most skilled Dead Cells player I have seen on any YouTube channel.
This really means a lot for me buddy and thank you for the feedback and all the help!
I will give at least one more attempt at 1080p to record on my SSD (which I wasn’t really keen on doing) and if it doesn’t get any smoother I will go to 720 recordings.
Don’t worry at all for what I experience during my gameplay - it’s buttery smooth even if I record huge files so that’s only one of the reasons that Motion Twin should get the best developer award for this year . You are right about the fast placement transitions in the game… they seem to cause most of the drops so I should try to go slower . But the default ones that Motion Twin coded … like when you aggro elite or something - I’m so used to those while playing and when I watch the videos I’m always like - why the fuck the game is so choppy?! It’s really hard for me to just watch without having the controller in my hands and the game looks so unfamiliar and different… I even had to jump back in few times to compare if that’s really happening during live test and my recording.
I will do attempts with voice recording probably, but I doubt it will be possible for daily runs. I have few ideas of normal series to push the limits of the regular game even further.
Most skilled is pretty doubtful… but tomorrow we go for #1 again … this is the only thing that matters
Had the time to sit down and watch your movies now, didn’t realize they were only 6 minutes a piece, sorry I didn’t do so sooner.
At first I thought the footage must be sped up just a tiny little bit and at first glance at the in game timer it seemed to confirm that idea. But no it’s because in game timer pauses when you pick stuff up, enter chest rooms, while teleporting and at other points. So no, this is really the speed at which you play this game and now I understand how it is you get into the top scoring spots ever time you try and I might get in the top 100 if I play it at the start of a new ranked day. : )
The fact that you manage to some how keep the speed boost at almost all times is amazing and the speed at which you make decisions, almost always the correct ones, is incomprehensible to me. After every fight I take a second or two to get going again, every crossroad I take a second or two to make sure I go down the right path every time the wind changes you just keep sprinting through where I have to stop a moment and collect my thoughts. Even when I’m actually trying to be quick.
Quality wise I had no qualms with either of them, one of the test videos you showed me earlier had noticeable artifacting but if either of these two did I do not now recall it. I was rather busy trying to keep up with what was going on on screen but I can’t say I noticed any framedrops either.
My lawd I woke up today and I thought “the first thing I need to do once I boot my pc is seed my torrents (as always) and watch @onLooSe being a pro at Dead Cells.”
Done and done.
Dude this was so cooool!
I was smiling at the green things following you. Seems like you got yourself a hoard of fans! How does it feel to be so famous and adored that people want to bite a chunk of you out?
Also I’d love some commentary, personally. I don’t think you have to comment EVERYTHING, but a few things here and there would make your videos even better. Just my two cents.
I agree with this, there are a couple of points in these videos where I am wondering if you somehow managed to set it up and it was all planned or whether you just got super lucky with enemy placements in time and space.
If you’re indeed setting something up for when you need to pass a spot twice then it’d be kind of neat if you just mentioned that at the time and then again when you show the result of the setup or something along those lines.
The green grubs spawning out of those fish city folks slows me down because I tend to always clear them out before moving on. Of course watching your video I realize how pointless that is because they are quite literally not worth any points. They also helped you get the warspear crit bonus once or twice against otherwise solo enemies as they warped in, which was kind of cool too.
A lot of setting up is indeed the case. You can be surprised how much you can control in this game (mainly in the daily of course, because there’s not that much RNG) and that’s directly connected and tied to:
This can be really good topic for explanatory video, but I have to get lucky to get a daily where “forcing events” will be more obvious. I will try to explain it the best way I can, but I don’t think I can manage without tying it together to plenty of other stuff and probably the best way is to explain the routine I go through to make as much as possible in particular daily run. It’s also important to mention that in both of the videos probably less than the half of the set ups I was planning, actually worked. In both runs there are plenty of situations that went a lot different than expected and I was really close on going for the restart button and scrapping those attempts and here’s why:
Obviously I start the particular daily run with 2-3 runs that have only the purpose to give me the general layout of the map and it’s flow (I will explain the flow a bit later). This is everything you see on the maps I put up, except one thing which is enemy stats - types; particular number of them in a room; their position and what not. I just glimpse at it while I go through, but it’s still not that vital. The thing I have to go through first is to prioritize the order of the important things like scrolls, gear and than hopefully go for the stars when you are really stacked up.
The next 5-10 runs are the best part and they are what I love about the game - you put your plan in motion to actually see how bad it is. Here you have few main goals:
Check how much time you have on the clock and how much killing is possible in general. If you run out of time it’s obvious you have to sacrifice certain stuff and by certain stuff there’s only one thing - killing enemies, which might sound absurd, but I’m getting into that.
See if your gear is actually working of course and if there aren’t possibly better options for particular junctions.
Try to make use of every PAUSE place in the layout if possible. If you can lead enemies in those places it’s free score.
Check where you can activate or maintain your speed boost which is kinda the setting ups question you are asking about and it’s kinda something like advanced enemy management.
Enemy management / crowd control or whatever you want to name it is the main thing that matters when you test your Pathing/Routing ideas and the enemies tend to turn around every initial plan I have 180 degrees.
From how I understand the game mechanics and coding - enemies don’t start their simple walking animations depending on the clock… never! How they seems to work is that there’s an invisible border around particular area and when you touch that border they start to move (probably even spawn in the first place as well). This is where a lot of problems combine in one big funny clusterfuck
Different enemies with different walking speeds… different initial positions… health and what not means you have to do certain point of entry of that invisible border to activate them and the speed you go through will change how further they’ve moved when you reach them - which should be pretty obvious.
Few quick things to mention before I go further: It’s never a good or worthy idea to fight one on one in Dead Cells… being in regular runs or the daily - it’s just huge time waste and the idea is to make clusters of enemies as much as possible and hopefully deal with them all together with only one or 2 attacks. It’s pointless to chase like 5-6 enemies in a huge room to activate speed buff when it took you 10 seconds to kill them instead of just walking by for 3 seconds. Getting hit renders you useless when you try to go fast so it’s vital to understand that going one vs one and getting hit can only be a time waste for completely nothing except if you want to refresh your speed boost depending if engaging the enemy is worth it due to it’s health pool.
Aggro works in funny ways in Dead Cells… most ppl think that if you aggro an enemy you have to fight it right away which is always a bad idea. When you start to pray that enemies will chase you, so you can form a cluster of them and you lose them somewhere on the way, while not being able to take advantage anymore, can be really a run killer and this happens a lot with so simple AI. Jumping 1 CM / inch to the left or the right or dropping not to an exact spot on said platform might not trigger the enemies which can lead to a lot of pointless chasing instead of leading to nice and fast extra points. This was funny remark that’s really tied to the mechanic:
I tried to be really gentle with them and not to hurt them, because they were more useful than my cute Pink ones with ribbons on their heads in the end of the run
Refreshing the speed boost as well. They were really valuable and they chased me a lot less compared to the previous attempts.
After those side notes - back on the enemy management topic. Things start to really mater if you have 2 or 3 rooms close together. Sometimes might be possible to not activate the enemies in the adjacent ones of said room number 1, only if you go “more to the right” entry point which can turn out to be huge time boost when you get to said room 2 or 3. All depends on timing the enemy activation, their movement speed, and the walking length they can cover. All this can prove to be more important than going for said gear piece right away, because you can chain kills faster and win more time. The game is made to look like one single fluid motion and that’s the basic concept and this depends on how fast you can react to the surrounding.
Those 5 to 10 runs should give you the basic idea of the (previously mentioned) FLOW of the layout and they are practically enough to show you if your initial plan was good or bad in general and what you have to change depending on the enemies positions. Sometimes I can get in the top 10 while I’m still in my first attempt runs, but more often this isn’t the case. Some testing is necessary as well - leaving few monsters in a corridor to check which ones will be around the portal next time when you go through can’t be a bad choice.
When you start to care about timing you will see that your mind automatically starts to remember enemy positions.
When I see how things lay out during my attempts at smoothing my plan I start to push it for the best results possible and this is where enemy behavior starts to kick in. You for sure can force certain situations, but unless you do like 60 exactly the same runs (like playing on musical instrument note by note with the same tempo) - RNG is gonna happen. It’s possible to have the same encounters over and over, but this really means repeating almost pixel perfect the same things. In 15-20 runs in total I usually end up with plenty of encounters going exactly the same way over and over and you try to attempt different ways to deal with them even faster when you think there’s a better opportunity - this is when you change a minor little thing and everything around this thing is now unfamiliar out of the sudden. In 22.11.2018 (from 2 days ago) video where I hit number one, the second half of the run (after me killing the second elite) was something I haven’t experienced before in the previous attempts. I got so triggered by strange chains of events that I LEGIT missed / failed actually to break the secret which is +20 points and I completely forgot the last scroll before the boss fight. All this added on top of small fails before… can really throw you off.
I really appreciate this! It’s the only thing that 3 or 4 cells can teach you, because taking few hits kills you straight away and you don’t have much time to think about your options… you just learn how to adapt depending on what you have available to you - environment or gear. Even learning to know your damage is really important there if it’s worthy to engage. In the daily if I end up swinging more than necessary in every encounter this will add up to at least of 30 seconds time loss.
This is pretty much a bit of science when you start to notice how all of those things start to interact with each other, so it’s almost impossible to explain without seeing it for yourself and the daily run of course is the only place where you can repeat the same encounters multiple times (if you don’t want to mod the game and do seeded runs).
This will change after about 10 attempts, when you learn by heart what and where has to be done.
I will for sure try, but first I need to figure out how to split the voice over from the recording (because I don’t want if it’s shit to not have a no commentary version just in case) and than I need to find a software to merge the audio without having to rerender the video, because it will melt my laptop . And final, but not least … +18 notification for youtube is a must!!!
Only RAW footage is possible on my end! and I’m surprised I can possibly stream as well, which I found out with your help Fraggles (like this is surprise for you). Probably have to set up Twitch stuff in the near future .
I know this is long post and probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s really hard for me to explain it any better! I won’t get upset if no one reads it - seriously hahaha!!! Thank you guys! You are amazing and I’m glad if I’m able to show at least a tiny bit how I see the game.
I now have to tryhard through today’s daily, which is pretty sick Cheers and have a great day!
The fact that it’s Slumbering Sanctuary - second phase, probably played a huge role that I was able to do such a crappy run and yet get on top of the board . It’s pretty hard.
GEAR
Torch - Now you can actually see how I hit and forget with it in the video down below
Wolf Trap - It really helped a lot vs the Golems although I was a bit slow on deploying it few times.
Barnacle - Really good turret, because shoots verticly which allows it to cover platforms above and bellow you! It’s shame it didn’t had much of synergy though with the rest of my gear.
Double Crossb-O-Matic - I replaced the Wolf Trap with it and can’t complain. The game changer with insanely powerful and precise shots… It’s no surprise I love this turret.
Spiked Shield - I probably used it at least once before the boss fight… can’t remember
PATHING
Area #1 - Had to go there compared to going right, because +2 extra scrolls (the second one from the Cursed chest) was too good offer to pass up.
Area #2 - 2 major items here and unfortunately 2 stars pretty early on.
Area #3 - I had the speed boost so I decided it’s the best possible time to go for this Cursed Chest, because even on the map you can see actually how far away it is.
Area #4 - Again had to run half this corridor, but it is what it is for the last Skill Scroll and the Boss killer - the Spiked Shield.
Area #5 - Fully stacked - only one thing is missing - amulet!
Area #6 - Nothing special here except a Star and a Chest.
Area #7 - Worst possible place for this Star.
Boss Fight - Like 3 seconds - LUL
At time of posting #1 in the scoreboard in about 20 tries.
Recorded it on the SSD, so hopefully it’s kinda smooth - I upped the bitrate for comparison reasons towards my HDD - it’s 25 000 bitrate. Still Raw footage from OBS at 1080p / 60 FPS.
Cheers and have a great day / night… whatever you are having!
Thank you Maoski! It didn’t went as I was hoping, but it’s natural for this biome
I can’t really tell if it’s better framerate, though for me it kinda looks that it’s smoother during fights, but in between them - the running in the nothingness looks more choppy. I’ve watched so many recordings now that I went blind at this point
This time only top 3, but have to leave something for the others while I’m being lazy . Hopefully someone will enjoy my shameless act at the first Chest, but that had to be done.
It’s the starting Prisoners’ Quarters Biome and everyone that played this game at least ones is familiar with it. To get number 1 requires mainly the best usage of the 8 Stars spread out in this layout.
GEAR
Frantic Sword - I used it during half of the run (even a bit more) and you can see something really ugly I’ve done with it at the first chest… no shame at all. It’s how you have to play this to place as higher as possible. A little reminder - it does critical damage as long as you are below 50% HP.
Cluster Grenade - The most OP 'nade for now in the game… no reason not to use it when it’s layed on a platter in the very beginning.
Sinew Slicer - I wish it had piercing, but nope… It’s so bad that even can get destroyed by the starting enemies. Still better than nothing at the start.
Oil Grenade - No brainer to switch the Sinew Slicer with this, especially considering what item is coming next, but even if that wasn’t the case - it’s still far better, because of it’s lower cool down despite the not so high damage.
Pyrotechnics - Probably the best item in the game in the current Live version patch. No doubts about it, but yet I had more fun using the Frantic Sword a bit longer than I had to.
Blood Shield - Fitting position before the boss fight, because this is the only place it would have been useful in this run. Lucky placement.
PATHING
Area #1 - 2 Skill Scrolls and the Cluster Grenade is pretty good start. It’s unfortunate that you have to climb twice from the first teleporter though, but there’s no way avoiding this.
Area #2 - First 2 Stars in the run (unfortunately unavoidable) to get to the rest of the important gear and get 3rd Scroll in the form of a Cursed Chest. I know the Pyrotechnics won’t be there for everybody, but if you watch my run you will see you don’t actually need it and like I mentioned above - the Oil Grenade is far better than the Sinew Slicer (if it doesn’t have piercing) in every scenario.
Area #3 - Here you get double star effect after yet another Skill Scroll, which can net you tons of points.
Area #4 - The last DMG buff and there’s a shield if you want it or feel the need for it in the Prisoners’ Quarters .
Area #5 - The only place I was able to pick up an Amulet in this daily run. Usually there’s more than just one Elite laying around, but oh well… it is what it is.
Area #6 - Just a star and a chest.
Area #7 - The Blood Shield can be really devastating and useful in the boss fight if you don’t want to get interrupted by his attacks. I advice picking it up before the last Star in the run.
Boss Fight - Like 3-4 seconds again? It’s total massacre.
I decided to try recording in 720p this time (25 000 bitrate again) to see if the resolution matters at all… doesn’t seem to really change anything. Also I activated Limit the Captured Frames option in the source game recording options as well… which doesn’t seem to change anything. It’s probably if you have set up your Output to be like 140 fps and the game is capped at 60 - you will record 60. Welp, I’m both 60/60.
Upcoming shit and what I’m working on to improve this
These days I will try recording with some RAW commentary… which will be total disaster, but one has to start from somewhere. If it completely fails during the Daily runs I might try do some regular ones where there’s a lot more possibilities/time to explain what’s going on.
Secondly I started to work on some ART (which will probably take tons of time when I’m not satisfied with anything) and shit, because the looks sell after all . OMG when I think about that I even have to work on thumbnails… but might be useful when I get an actual PC to be able to record and actually render on highest possible quality.
Last, but not least there’s the possibility of even actual streaming when I play such low requirement games, but more testing has to be done .
It’s the well familiar already Ancient Sewers biome! If you aren’t familiar with it - I’ve made a breakdown of it and it’s enemies in the OP.
GEAR
Blood Sword - It’s our only viable option here - trust me! It does pretty decent job at landing few swings at the enemies and leaving them to bleed out in the early game.
Firebrands - Our first fire gear in the run and this run pretty much ends up being all about Fire. I wouldn’t have replaced it with the Assault Shield if I didn’t had this option in the late game. Pretty much toss and forget.
Double Crossb-o-mattic - The best turret in my book, but you already know this . I never replaced it.
Oiled Sword - It was purely amazing in this run with all the Fire Gear there’s available. It’s Fast 2 hit combo took care of everything really easily. The extra burning damage it provides on the ground and on the enemy combined was really devastating, but you can see this in the video down below.
Flamethrower Turret - It did pretty decent job before the Fire 'Nade, because everything in this biome is so low and health and of course the Oiled Sword.
Assault Shield - It’s unfortunate it’s so deep in the run, because I could have made a lot more use out of it to save plenty of time in the early parts, but still I had to pick it up.
Fire Grenade - It’s better than the Flamethrower Turret, actually far better so this is a must upgrade - no questions asked.
Extra Options
Corrupted Power - I pick it up only for 1 or 2 activations. The cooldown is so bad that’s it’s not worth it in whatever biome you are in (probably except the castle) and here the enemies’ health is so low that makes it only useful for it’s Oil in my case.
Tornado - I wish I could have picked it up to replace the Corrupted Power with it early on, but I had some trouble to lift the curse when I went to Area #7 earlier. It’s decent though when you activate it on a big open platform. It even renders the bombs from the Disgusting Worms harmless for you.
Blood Shield - Might be really good alternative for the boss fight (mainly), but only if it drops for you from the Cursed Chest. I still choose a bit of extra speed with the Assault Shield over it, being for only 2 areas.
ROUTING / PATHING
Area #1 - 2 Scrolls of Power - plenty of good reasoning this to be the first area you visit.
Area #2 - Here we start our Fire Gear path and pick up the 3rd scroll. For me on 4 cells - both gems I could find during this run are next to each other here.
Area #3 - The last free Scroll + an Elite that hopefully will give you decent amulet like for me to get even more stats and 2 really valuable gear items.
Area #4 - It had a tad bit better amulet from the Elite there - burning when you stomp the ground, so I decided it’s worth picking it up before I even go for the Assault Shield, but if in your cells active it’s not straight upgrade, you are better off coming to this place a bit later.
Area #5 - Nothing much to say here. Plenty of enemies with only one star, so when the star runs out your only task should be to maintain your Speed Boost and don’t waste much time here.
Area #6 - The only Secret I could find was here, but don’t forget it will be different for how many cells you have activated before started the daily run. Complete your gear with a shield (mainly for the boss fight) and the Fire Grenade before getting cursed with the last skill points available.
Area #7 - I use this place to start clearing my curse and unfortunately I lost too much time when I came here at first instead of Area #3 and bare in mind you can’t clear your curse by Area #8 alone!
Area #8 - Unfortunately not much use for this Star.
Boss Fight - The Fire + oil damage totally destroys him and if you grabbed a shield you probably won’t have enough time to do 3 parries .
Well, the audio for sure isn’t the best… There are plenty of options in OBS and filters to play with to set up my crappy mic and it took me tons of experiments during the week. The DS4 controller sounds like an actual mechanical keyboard . There’s no reason for me to upgrade in this point in time if I don’t get much interest in what I do. It’s no script, no preparation live commentary during gameplay, so I hope it’s at least a bit useful. I tend to forget plenty of things while I play so I bet it’s not the best possible material either. Probably some experience and practice (I love to practice as you probably know by now) will change that.
I will dare to summon the queen of Gremlins, Inc. @coralinecastell herself, cuz she mentioned commentary ;]
Feel free to give some feedback if you care about such things and everything previously said in my recent posts still applies.
! I will have only few players to worry about until you start to push it to the top.
I didn’t even moded skyrim when I played it. Don’t know what’s wrong with me - I love to experience vanilla issues in the games probably.
. Even the droppable second Scroll is from different enemy.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for everybody 
