I think that helps if you want the bonus burning damage, but it’s not required.
Is there a way to aim?
not sure if you want tips so i’m spoiling it: iirc magic archer has the funniest strategy against that guy: set yourself on fire with immolation then cling to his eye spamming thousand kisses
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Perfect, I will try later.
I killed the offline Urdragon. But I might kill it again later because he gave me a special sword that I cannot use, and I want the dagger or staff.
i love how magic archer offers exactly two solutions to any problem: “gracefully dash in and out of combat to place the right arrows at the right time to disable monsters” or “become Florida Man”
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I nuked the gazer with your advice.
Actually, after your advice, I have started using immolation quite frequently on foes that I can’t damage otherwise.
Now I have reached the forgotten hall, I am a bit over level 70 and it’s become pretty hard.
Problem is I cannot damage almost anyone with my magick archer, and I end up relying only on my sorcerer main pawn.
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MA strategy infodump since that's how i went thru bitterblack and ran into similar 'wtf i'm not doing any damage now?' walls
are you using ricochet arrow? it’s not the most useful skill in the rest of the game but in bitterblack’s confined hallways it really really shines. each bolt can bounce like 15-20 times, gains damage with each bounce, and the upgraded version fires 3 bolts per cast. the big tanky “miniboss” monsters you run into from time to time are usually vulnerable to and/or stunnable with lightning. there are even some open arena-ish encounters where you can bait dangerous mobs into chasing you into a hallway then shred them with ricochet spam
similarly, actually fighting with daggers as an MA is only situationally useful but they give you a few great buffs. magic rebalancer is absurdly good skill in BBI: it applies a (stacking!) magic attack + defense buff to you and any pawns that step into its area of effect and any undead mobs get their magic defense debuffed by it (less useful than the buff but really helpful in those rooms full of tanky zombies and certain bosses.) the attack buff applies to all your bow skills, immolation damage, staff spells, certain dagger skills, and will boost magic damage from any enchanted weapons. its duration isn’t long enough to keep up all the time but it can help a lot in tougher encounters. also, even though your staff magic is pretty basic, a buffed high comestion can hit fire-weak enemies really hard and can stunlock some monsters, so sometimes it pays off to equip a staff.
speaking of undead! magical gleam is another MA bow skill that’s underrated in the normal game but really useful in BBI: it damages and stuns undead in its radius (including doing sneak attack damage to those zombies laying on the floor you see sometimes) but it’s most invaluable for keeping those rooms full of standing water illuminated without having to stop and re-light your lantern all the time.
gear wise you basically want to equip as much magic damage armor + rings as you can, while keeping an eye out for good daggers. your bow is pure magic and physical dagger damage really only matters for normal attacks and thousand kisses. full physical daggers could wind up doing more damage for you with the right enchant from a pawn tho, so ymmv.
you will eventually start finding lv2 BBI gear (the ones you have to identify outside the dungeon) that are wildly better than anything you can find outside (lv3 stuff even more so, but it doesn’t start showing up til the lower strata iirc.) you’ll also start finding rings that can unlock a third tier for your skills, so keep an eye out for them, they can make a big difference on skills like your homing shot (adding more seekers) and ricochet arrow.
there’s also a pretty decent jump in difficulty between each strata (the game doesn’t call these out specifically, but basically assume each time you unlock a shortcut from the main area, you’re in a new strata) so you’re probably running right into one after beating the gazer. each dip into bitterblack should get easier as you pick up gear that wasn’t available in the previous strata.
also, one last tip sorta related to the last one: sometimes you just gotta run away! one of the reasons i like bitterblack so much is how it loves throwing you into situations that any one build or party setup can’t fully conquer, especially without prior knowledge. it’s tempting to grit it out because the rest of the game doesn’t really put you in those situations, but getting the hell out and coming back later when you’ve had a chance to prep (rework skills, hire new pawns) is often the best idea. there’s also a lot more optional paths than may be apparent at first, so if you’re getting fucked up it might be a sign to back off and try to find a path better suited to your current party and gear situation. you can often stumble on gear upgrades this way, there’s tons of cursed gear chests hidden in diversionary paths off the main route
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Bitterblack is so much better than the base game. A full game with the challenge design, tone, music of bitterblack would be very cool.
Thanks for the guide, by the way. I will toy around with ricochet hunter; in the overworld I never found it useful but it seems it will be, in the tunnels.
Another key to BBI is learning to appreciate upgraded rusted weapons and torpor. It makes a lot of the monsters, particularly the necrophages such as the elder ogres way easier to deal with.
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I have upgraded the rusted dagger and rusted staff.
Which one is better to induce torpor?
What kind of dangerous enemies can I stagger on BBI? Only the mob or also huge monsters?
Other question: I want to dragonforge some stuff. How can I farm the Cursed Dragon? So far, I have only seen it with the Bishop.
And how strong is one, compared to, say, the OFFLINE Ur-Dragon?
Last… is there a way to kill Death as a magick archer?
my method, which physics probably described, is to stack 4 periapts (damage boosters), get death in a tight spot, and ricochet stagger him to… death.
rusted arrows with tenfold flurry were my preferred way of quick torpor.
i don’t remember the cursed dragoon being too troublesome, but silence that bishop quickly or you’re in for a bad time.
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Torpor is induced when it accumulates through multiple hits so stuff that hits a lot works, for a magick archer best bet is probably the dagger, especially if you can climb on something and use some of those really fast slash attacks, but also because then you can just use your bow for dealing real damage instead of having to change equipment back and forth.
As for the cursed dragon, there should have been one you encountered before the Dark Bishop, and they can show up there, but maybe that’s a side path? Either way they’re necrophages and it’s actually pretty easy, just drop rancid bait meat in the Bluemoon Tower, that early place where you first met Barroch. Be aware that solo cursed dragons are stronger than the one that hangs with the bishop though, and make sure you have stuff that cures possession. It’s also gonna be bad day for those deer and rabbits.
And killing Death is actually only hard in that he has a fuckton of HP and runs, plus pawns are really bad at avoiding that insta kill attack. If you have room to maneuver and not much else around to bother you it’s mainly just a matter of patience. The best place I find for it is the sewers at the bottom of the Bloodless Stockade, specifically the area near the exit door. It’s fairly open so avoiding his scythe and his sleep attacks is easy even if he teleports beside you, also note that lighting a beacon he’s around does a fair bit of damage to him too. And more importantly he spawns there a lot, so if he runs just use the exit door and then come back and he’s probably hanging around again. Though make sure you’ve got the actual job board quest for it too (the final Wages of Death quest I think), so you get all the reward you can for going to the trouble. This also might affect his spawning, as I didn’t bother with him until I got the quest.
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I finished this game. I kept liking it more and more as time passed. I stayed Magick Archer all the time for my main character, as I didn’t have enough mental buffer to keep experimenting.
The level of detail of the game is astonishing (number of weapons that can be upgraded, upgrade materials, the aforementioned rotting of food, and so on…)
It’s a great game. The B side, as I call Bitterblack Island, is the best bit of the game. It plays like the best kind of roguelike. It’s one of the few games that triggers my compulsion to dragonforge and rarify some weapons.
The second form of Daimon is fantastic, and some of is moves make me think of 80s coin op games.
To beat it I had to buff my character with tons of Demon’s periapt.
Bitterblack is the crown jewel of the game, but as Diplo wrote somewhere else, the overwolrd becomes “memorable” overtime as it has a layout you can attach some memories to.
The everfall is poetic: as a pawn said a few times, it becomes unclear if the characters were falling or ascending.
Finally, while not totally unexpected nor originaln the ending is super clever… and as I am not capable of putting spoilers, I will leave it at that.
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i felt the same way about bitterblack, though my one complaint about bitterblack was that it did make me miss the overworld.
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I fell off this really quickly the first time I tried to play it some years back. I’m playing as a fighter right now and enjoying it so much more than when I played strider last time. I’m thinking I’ll build up to a Warrior build, which seems less complex than most other classes… but those big giant sword swings look really satisfying.
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I’m totally dogma-pilled now, lol. My first attempt at this game failed due to frustration with its weird early game damage scaling (like, having to shoot each bandit with 50 arrows to kill it) and the ridiculous inventory system requiring constant maintenance.
But this time, going from fighter to warrior offered a much smoother combat onboarding, which hooked me for long enough to figure out how to manage inventory with the least frustration possible (though I still think it’s the worst part of the game).
The great exploration and combat has won me over. And I love the janky b-game vibes, including the totally weird writing. The dialogue and voice acting is so awkward but in this very specific and consistent way that grows on you. The game has a real voice of its own.
I think the excellent open world action RPG Outward (shout out to @Tulpa for recommending it back in the day) is the closest thing I’ve played to this. I bet they took some inspiration. Outward has incredible world building and exploration, but its combat really pales in comparison to this.
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I did NOT expect all this wild stuff that’s happening now that I’ve beaten the dragon! This is pretty cool.
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Wow! The whole ending bit where you become a sad, lonely, invisible god who pines for death and then just infinitely wander around the two cities unable to do anything but kill people until you finally figure out how to kill yourself is the headiest closing sequence since the walk home in Earthbound. Why isn’t there a canonical New Games Journalism piece about that??
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tell me about it!! that and the whole post-dragon twist of the world being more fucked up until you complete the cycle is such a wild subversive turn at the end of a 90% heroic fantasy story
the part where ghosts of all the people you’ve met and befriended try to stop you from fulfilling your destiny, and you have to cut them down while the beautiful wistful Cassardis theme plays, and your childhood friend laments that all she ever wanted was for you to be safe and happy… i was shocked that this game could squeeze tears out of me like that
i suspect this stuffs not talked about much because the actual post game questing in the Everfall is blatantly “oops we ran out of budget” and kind of a damp thud after the climactic dragon fight
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damn maybe i should go back and actually finish this, and be a ranger the whole time instead of switching between a bunch of less satisfying classes and losing all momentum
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