Insane Difficulty – Tactics I’ve come up with so far

Overview

Disregarding the poorly-written title, this is meant to document my findings so people have an easier time not suffering as much while trying to survive. This can be shown to people who haven’t started a new save with this difficulty, so they know roughly what to expect.Tag’ht’ysh wgylw’l veh ae kht’aelw’lw’ehng’eh, shli ht’lilw’ct’ ling’. . .

Introduction

Just a heads up, I’ve decided to do the Resist path. So if you want to go full Embrace or somewhere between, by all means do it. However, there are some things that need to be said for those who haven’t experienced or unlocked it yet, just in case :

Simply beat the game for the first time, and it should unlock. The difficulty on which you complete it doesn’t matter ; I did mine on Easy and now I’m kicking myself in the everywhere by doing this, so. . .

Basic Principles

You probably know how important shards are for the skill tree : Up until the point you come across the first miniboss you’ll have enough to upgrade decently before the fight.
Not here, however, unless you wait for hordes to spawn. Speaking of which, the horde spawn rate and monster count gets boosted by a wee bit.

This ain’t even a horde spawn, just eight Wurms, waiting. This is easy when compared to later.

Rough Strategy for Beginning Hours – Shards

• Try to get abilities quickly, likely evading everything that breathes and/or moves on your way.
• Destroy breakable objects, as these are the easiest way to get more shards.
• Save up yer shards.
• Get Negotiator quickly. It will save you 20% on shard insurance.
• Y kaeng’ ng’litag’ shaeyeh’ ytag’ ehng’liuiglht’, shaewyng’gl shaer’lct’sh.

The photo consists of me being overly perplexed about a strange situation regarding a lone shard that managed to break the laws of physics.
Just a note, as of 5th Nov, 2019, I have not completed the last step.
EDIT : As of 29th Dec, 2019, I have.
I recorded the time I completed it. It’s about three minutes long and since my recording software makes every video take up a megabyte per second, I can not show you the raw footage. If I upload it to Vlare, I’ll share the link thereafter.

Strategies for the Mini-Bosses Thus Far, pairt amhain

I thought it would be a decent idea to take a look at the mini-bosses and how I went about it, even though I don’t play very well in comparison to others.

I fought it like usual, but with slightly more running away. Somehow made through without upgrading!

Same cheap tactic I’ve used since my second play-through, where I go to the edge of his arena and camp for him in the room just beyond his reach. Had a bit of trouble, but got it second try.

I tried the boss twice and failed quite quickly. I then bought the upgrade that allows me to destroy projectiles, and proceeded to wipe the floor with him.

Lost to them around five times, I think? The time I did was when I was running around and waiting for their tentacle-drill-attack to end before wailing on them and fleeing like a little bltch when they started attacking again. Just like JonTron said whilst drunk, “Juss touch ’em real quick an’ go!”

I’ve got two Elder Shards at my disposal so far, but I wanted to see if there was any special things said when incinerating all seven of them at once.

Dominion

On the first of January, 2020 (which will be another bad year, if I may look into the future), I beat

Before that, I had thrown myself at him like a F2P “Scout Main” with a couple of different strategies with varying success in each. I must’ve lost between 20-30 times.

The first strategy I employed was “get the hard-to-reach (topmost) shard done before anything else,” and this made the fight slightly easier.
The second, which I scrapped, was “use the gun when all the Chaos Gates are around.” This made it harder, since more of Dominion’s minions were teleporting around the field. When I tried this, however, I was knocked prone or didn’t have enough energy to dodge out away from his previously-instant-shield-break attacks, which of course killed me as quickly as you can imagine.
The third strategy was to use me ♥♥♥♥♥♥’ eyeballs. Those destructive attacks don’t come without telegraphing, ya know.
Fourth comes the JonTron, but worded differently. “Touch ’em and go real quick.” Some tries worked, others failed atrociously.
The fifth strategy was to wait until my computer had the ability to record again, since I stopped being able to use the GeForce Experience’s built-in recording capabilities until a day after the fight I realised I needed to update the Driver. We all know how well that plan went.
Speedrunner’s Rule – “no vid, no did”
Ｔｉｍｅ　ｔｏ　ｄｏ　ｉｔ　ａｇａｉｎ，　ｔｈｅｎ．．．

Techniques, Tricks, or whatever you call them

First thing to note in this section is the Rebirth perk.
There is a glitch where if Rebirth activates while within a waterfall, or “liquid-eldritch-energy-fall” in the case of the Holy City of Eschaton, the physics alter to where you jump like normal in them, and practically moon-jump everywhere else. This allows you to get the Warlord and Negator masks much easier, so get them if you wish. It also makes Dominion’s fight easier and thus creating a new place to grind for shards if the need arises.
As far as I know, the easiest way to get out of this effect is to have Rebirth activate again outside of the ‘falls.

Another glitch I’ve found requires the heavy attack to be uncorrupted (to my knowledge, have not tested with corruption). While on the ground and in the middle of a forward-facing heavy-attack, dash in either direction to be flung decently farther than a regular dash. The Cathedral might be the only place where it truly shines, however.

Strategies for the Mini-Bosses Thus Far, deuxieme partie

Took me twelve times to defeat, running around and praying I don’t get hit. Only go if you can destroy projectiles and you have a good enough shield, lest you want one helluva challenge.

It’s already easy and gets even easier when you can destroy projectiles. Defeated them first try without much strategy above “run away for a bit when your shield breaks”.

A decently difficult fight, but still first try. As small as it is during the first minutes of the fight, it’s hard to break the ever-replenishing shield unless you put it in a corner. After about an eighth of its health is gone, it’ll be much easier to hit (as it grows in size). At about 3/4 of its health, it will activate two blasts of energy instead of one. From 1/2 health it becomes four, and at 1/4 health it becomes six.

I think I got lucky with me eighth fight. That is all I have to credit. With said luck of having them* in a corner, I wiped the floor with them as well.
*I can not for the life of me remember if Nyarlathotep stated Yi-Bot’s gender or not. . .

I hate the Grappling things so much.

Even though I got him on my second try, I came up with something interesting :
If he’s anywhere around the bottom of the arena (or anywhere you deem unsafe), just hit him once, haul yo 455 towards the centre of the field, and wait for him to do his illusion-magic-shadow-clone thing. It’s not damage-based, but time-based. Why do this, you may ask?
There are Grapple spots within the instant-kill border, and enough momentum to launch you into it. I recorded myself on those two fights and I remember almost dying to the border itself twelve times. Neither Hiram’s attacks nor the thorns dealt anything but shield damage.
He dropped the Gunslinger Mark 3 perk when I defeated him, which describes him pretty well.

And thus leaves two true bosses before I burn all seven shards at once.

Hysteria

Before I fought him, I activated Rebirth under an energy-fall. On the Seventh of January, 2020, I defeated

on my second try.
First thing to note is that the slam attack will damage your shield the most out of any attack I’ve recorded thus far, a two-hit-kill the first go-around, disregarding the fact that my shield regenerated fully after the first hit. So, don’t be stupid like me and don’t have the reaction time of a sloth, I guess?

I went in with the Rebirth glitch and took out the elder shard fragments from top to bottom, dodging every single melee attack of his. Not much else to say, since I took out the “platforming” of the feud.
I have this fight recorded as well, ya darned speedrunners.

Hanosha Ischott – Magnate of the Gong

On the Seventh of January, 2020, I beat the super-boss that is Hanosha Ischott. This one fight took over an hour with the moon-jump glitch and the Harvester perk to allow for recovery during the fight because he hits like a hurricane. Cheapest tactic I’ve ever used, but also the most brilliant one.

It was far from perfect, however, and I have to commend the developers on this one reason :
He learns your fighting style pretty quickly and will adapt to it just as fast. Unless you can change your strategy on the fly, be prepared for counters that hit harder than Shulk’s with the Buster Art.

I would like to say before I get on to a tangent that despite having Rebirth equipped and having half the normal shard reward, I still got 20,000 shards from that fight. Onto the tangent!

While I was as high up in the air as I possibly could be, I used the downward thrust directly onto Ischott decently often to do chip damage and retreat promptly thereafter. It was around the fifth time I did this when he started to jump and attack right when I was in range, so I stopped that to use heavy attacks for about half a minute, I’d say, before he started leapin’ out of the way of the move and counterattacking.

By this point I only got decent damage in (like 5-10% of their health or something) and I had to fly up and fight Nox’ Screamers again to recover my shield and my health. It wasn’t enough, so I used a downward thrust to grab some more health from below and WHAP. One aerial attack knocked me to the floor and another stomped what little shield I had left in two seconds. So apparently he can combo!? Hanosha Ischott confermd 4 Smash Ultimate in 2022, m9001s

Within 15 to 25 minutes I somehow got him down to half of his health, when he decided to use some sort of explosion-like attack that I’ve never seen before. He seemed to have delayed the move imperfectly for when I dropped down to see just what in the heII he was doing and barely dodged out of the way. And according to the recording this was the point where the sound started to cut out and fade back in for some reason.
[Aside, to self] I swear, this game is cursed. First the function key getting “pressed” when not being touched, then chromatic aberrations at random, now this. What’s next?

This was also where he started to hit the gong and summon more Nox’ monsters, and I just wanted to note here that if you get to close to said gong strike, it will stun you and slow your movement down enough to get combo’d to oblivion. I learned this the hard way.
So, I said that the fight took over an hour, and we’ve filled up between 15 to 25 minutes of that time slot for the first (est.) half of the health bar. The other 35+ minutes took up the other half.

This was the only image I got from the ordeal.

Rivalry

Took three times, but beaten on Seventh of January, 2020.
First death made me realise that there’s a kill-plane at the top.
Second was due to lack of skill.
If you go into this fight, I recommend you have Rebirth equipped. The glitch for it is not necessary.
According to just about everyone I’ve seen fight against these two, they always disable Waters. I am one of the few who prefers to disable Ishaela. Do what you want here, just know that this fight revolves around dodging and destroying projectiles the most out of the three bosses.
The finishing attempt was almost a death as well.

Nyarlathotep and The Shining Trapezohedron

Before I fought the final boss of the Resist path, I burned all seven Elder Shards in one sitting. Nothing special happens when you do this.

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Seventh January, 2020. Went in with Stand Firm, Bullet Transfabricator, Rebirth, and Harvest, all at Rank 4.

Using the Purifier, I tore through ht’ymg’ like ytag’ was nothing.

________________________________________________________________________________

Same aesh above.

I am almost certain that this guide will not help you go through your Insane Difficulty playthrough, but I’m glad I put this challenge upon myself. My heart rate tripled from its usual 54 bpm (active) during the fights against Dominion, Rivalry, and the Magnate of the Gong, so it was well good I dare say.

And now that I’ve done everything this experience has to offer, I don’t quite know what to do next. . .
Or I didn’t, until I was halfway through typing that last sentence. I still have to beat the Eradicator versions of each of the four main bosses on my route, and possibly Nemesis Eradicator. I’m really not up for either right now, though.

I shall update this for when I finish the Embrace side

For now, all I have is my Vlare account to upload my Resist play-through. I can’t upload the final two parts right now, as that function has stopped being worked on for the moment.
It was under maintenance but something personal happened, so I understand and can wait.

I also wanted to get this “Guide” out either just before I finished uploading those, or right after, but since I can’t do either, here this shoddy piece of work is.