Overview
Rating all of Crown Prince’s Ascensions, along with miscellaneous gameplay tips.This guide is focused on Reincarnation+7 difficulty and Solo Play.Occult scrolls are not factored, as this is a general guide and you cannot rely on getting specific scrolls.
Impact of Talent 2.0 and Reincarnation changes
*Added new sections to the guide, and updated the ascension ratings and descriptions.
-Crown Prince now has a near infinite amount of smoke grenades with the new talent tree (spending weapon ammo generates secondary ammo at a specific rate). You can basically throw them at every enemy without concern for ammo.
-Every character has 3 unique Spiritual Blessings available from a special vendor in reincarnation mode. Crown Prince’s set is great, all 3 are very powerful.
-Reincarnation mode heavily favours elemental fusions, especially Miasma because it scales up with the increased enemy HP due to being percentage damage. Crown Prince having the easiest access to it guarantees his damage output will always be sufficient regardless of bad rng.
-Gemini Inscriptions are now relatively accessible in Area 2 thanks to ‘etching’. (see the ‘etching’ section in the guide for details).
Overall Crown Prince benefited very heavily from these changes and is a top choice for playing Reincarnation+7.
Why to play Crown Prince (or why not to play)
+Best secondary grenade of all characters with 100% elemental effect chance.
+Easiest access to damaging elemental fusions (explosion and miasma).
+Good amount of base shields and regeneration.
+Extremely strong set of Spiritual Blessings
-Terrible base movement speed causes him to get hit more often while strafing around enemies.
-‘Energy Orb’ skill is not great without ascensions that improve it.
Elements 101
If you are new and unfamiliar with elements, all elements have a unique status effect they can apply as well as an ‘hp type’ they do 50% additional damage to. However they have a 25% damage penalty to the other two ‘hp types’. The chance to apply an elemental effect is the ‘elemental effect chance’ and varies depending on the weapon.
-Fire element deals bonus damage to ‘red hp’ (enemies without shields or armor) and applies ‘burning’, a small damage over time effect based on your weapon’s damage (deals 20% of the triggering shot’s damage once per second, wears off after 5 ticks if not refreshed).
-Corrosive element deals bonus damage to ‘yellow hp’ (armor) and applies ‘decay’, halving the movement speed of the target,
-Lightning element deals bonus damage to ‘blue hp’ (shields) and applies ‘shock’, dealing 50% of the damage from the hit to nearby enemies, and causes the primary target to take an additional 10% damage for a short duration.
When an elemental effect is applied to an enemy with a different elemental effect on them already, it triggers powerful ‘elemental fusions’ depending on which effects are on the target. These are covered in the next section, they are very important to Crown Prince’s playstyle.
Elemental fusions, which to use?
Crown Prince should generally be using either a Fire or Lightning elemental weapon as his primary weapon (and the other as his secondary weapon). This is because Smoke Grenades can easily apply decay regardless of which weapon you have out, so to take full advantage of elemental fusions your weapon should be applying one of the other elements. Ideally you will be able to activate all 3 fusion effects at once.
Fire + Corrosive elements cause Explosion, which causes a small area damage burst based off the damage of the attack that triggered it (specifically, it does double the damage of the hit that triggered it). This works best with weapons with already good damage output; grenades triggering explosion fusions will not result in very good damage without a lot of investment in grenade damage ascensions, so usually you will want to apply decay from the grenade before applying burning from your weapon. Fire weapons are the most plentiful elemental weapons so it’s relatively easy to find a good one. Fire is also the most effective damage type against bosses (not necessarily elites though) because all bosses have plenty of ‘red hp’, which fire deals extra damage to.
Lightning + Corrosive elements cause Miasma, which causes a stackable ‘damage over time’ effect that deals bonus damage to enemies without shield or armor. The damage from this has no relation to damage of the hit that applied it, only the rate of application matters. Multiple stacks of this effect absolutely obliterate standard enemies. If an enemy has been shocked already, following up with a single smoke grenade can apply enough miasma to kill them. This is a very powerful fusion for clearing rooms using grenades along with a good lightning weapon. Especially keep an eye out for the weapon affix that spreads elemental effects to nearby enemies, that benefits this fusion heavily. However, strong lightning weapons tend to be less common than fire weapons.
Fire + Lightning elements cause Manipulation, which causes the enemy to immediately stop attacking you and target other enemies instead. This is a very strong defensive effect though, it has the side-effect of making it difficult to target enemy weak point sometimes, as their movement can be pretty erratic when they aren’t targeting you. Also has no effect on elites/bosses for obvious reasons.
Spiritual Blessings (new)
(These buffs are available from a vendor unique to reincarnation mode. They cost 150 soul essence each and are not permanent, so players without a maxed talent tree may want to pass on taking them.)
Elemental Maestro “Every 10s, gain a buff lasting 4s that increases Elemental DMG by +100% and sets Elemental Effect chance to 100%.”
Extremely useful, this would still be worthwhile if it only had the guaranteed elemental effect chance but it has a significant +100% DMG bonus on top of that. The uptime of this buff is 40% so it’s quite easy to manage, attacking while the buff is active will provide massive damage output with miasma or explosive fusions.
Smogbound Zone “Smoke Grenade radius increases by 40%, duration increases by 5s, and allies standing within the radius gain -20% damage reduction.”
All around excellent utility bonuses. Every Crown Prince build greatly appreciates the radius and duration increases, the damage reduction is just icing on top. This has very strong interactions with ‘Hex Smoke’ (as well as grenade DMG ascensions), the key defensive ascension. I would personally take this over the previous blessing if given the choice, but they are both very strong options.
Splinter Orb “When you cast Energy Orb, 2 adjacent orbs are casted at the same time to the left and right side of the main orb.”
While probably the weakest of the 3 blessings, it’s still a strong effect that makes it a lot easier to disable groups of enemies. It has good synergy with ‘Energy Echo’ and ‘Blinding Sphere’ ascensions, allowing it to easily apply elemental effects across a wide area. It also has the side-benefit of restoring more shields, since Energy Orb restores 5% of your total shield for every hit done.
Gemini Etching (new)
This is the new core strategy for basically every character at higher reincarnation levels. It let’s you setup endgame gemini weapons as early as area 2, before enemy HP starts to scale to a silly degree.
Gemini inscriptions can be etched onto any weapon for a fee at the craftsman if either one of two conditions is fulfilled:
1. The weapon already has 4 inscriptions before etching (every naturally dropped weapon starting in Area 2 qualifies for this).
2. The weapon is enhanced to +5 (This lets you bring a weapon from the first area, but is more expensive as you have to spend money to upgrade it first. Usually used for bringing a secondary weapon, though if sometimes you may have a good primary you want to bring instead).
As Crown Prince, the Gemini to aim for is the ‘share damage type’ Gemini. You will have one Fire/Lightning weapon you use as a primary weapon. This is the weapon that inscriptions matter on (elemental effect spread is extremely useful) and it should have a fast hit rate (an automatic or an elemental shotgun).
The secondary weapon (the ‘gemini fodder’) should have the element your primary does not have, and will rarely be used in combat, the only stat that matters on it is ‘elemental effect chance’. This stat is directly applied to the first weapon on top of its existing elemental effect chance. As such Melee weapons are very good candidates for fodder as they have very high elemental effect chances. (ex. Lightning Blast gemini’d with Fire Tower results in Lightning Blast having a 20% chance to inflict shock AND a 50% chance to inflict burning with every bullet).
Most of your money should be reserved for etching and reforging the gemini’s until they match. Do not waste money upgrading weapons you don’t intend to use for gemini etching as the process can be expensive and the sooner you get it done the better off you will be.
Ascension Tier List
This list covers Ascensions in a vacuum. Specific ratings will shift as your build progresses in a run. Use your own judgement. (ex. defensive Ascensions may have more value if you have only found offensive occult scrolls)
Some Ascensions are also rated differently depending on how many points you have in them already.
(ex. lv3 rating assumes you already have 2 points invested).
The Tiers are divided as follows:
S: Excellent Ascension. Almost always pick if it doesn’t conflict with your build,
A: Great Ascension. Can’t usually go wrong with these.
B: Good Ascension. Good to have, just not as high priority.
C: Mediocre Ascension. Not necessarily ‘bad’ but you probably shouldn’t pick these over other ones.
Element
You get a pretty reasonable rate of fire buff at with one point of investment, though having to kill targets means you’ll probably not be able to maintain this all the time against elites/bosses (without the lv3 bonus). Increased ammo consumption and time spent reloading can be an issue, though if your weapon can handle it then the effect is quite powerful. The RoF bonus has very good interactions with the Miasma fusion, as applying it faster is the only way to increase its damage output. Also the ascension basically doesn’t improve at level 2, so it can be a bit wasteful if you never get offered the lv3 version later.
A 100% elemental effect of your choice is very powerful for Lightning weapons; cast this at a group and throw a grenade and most affected normal enemies will just die to Miasma damage. This is also good for Fire weapons if you have already invested in grenade damage ascensions; if you haven’t though, the Explosion effects won’t do any significant damage, so this won’t be particularly useful in that case.
The standard Lightning damage booster. The damage increase is strong, and the level 3 effect is a solid overall damage boost (especially against elites/bosses since Miasma doesn’t kill them as fast as normal enemies). The downside is that you’re restricted to Lightning weapons to use it. This can cause awkward situations if you take this early, but end up switching to a Fire primary weapon if you were offered a better one. If you have already invested in this ascension, try to avoid taking the ascension ‘Pyrodominance’, since you can’t use them both at the same time. Note that a weapon will only benefit from this if its original element is Lightning, giving it the Lightning element through the damage share gemini does not count.
The only generic damage boost for Crown Prince, requires an elemental effect on the target but with Crown Prince that condition is trivial to fulfill. There is no special level 3 effect and the damage scaling is a little slower than the ‘Dominance’ line of ascensions but taking it early on won’t penalize you for switching your weapon elements later either unlike the ‘Dominance’ ascensions. Also has the bonus of boosting Smoke Grenade damage, if your build benefits from that.
The standard Fire damage booster. The damage increase is strong, and the level 3 effect is a solid overall damage boost (it makes Explosion fusions deal an additional 4 times the triggered hits damage instead of 2 times). The downside is that you’re restricted to Fire weapons to use it. This can cause awkward situations if you take this early, but end up switching to a Lightning primary weapon if you were offered a better one. If you have already invested in this ascension, try to avoid taking the ascension ‘Electrodominance’ if possible, since you can’t use them both at the same time. Note that a weapon will only benefit from this if its original element is Fire, giving it the Fire element through the damage share gemini does not count.
Crown Prince should not be using corrosive weapons, since they can’t trigger fusion effects in tandem with Smoke Grenades. As a result this is basically just a grenade damage boost. The damage boost Smoke Grenades get from this is not base damage, so it’s also not as effective as the specialized grenade damage ascensions, or ‘Elemental Rage’ which boosts your weapon damage as well. The level 3 effect is nice to have but Crown Prince has plenty of grenades already, and the risk of being unable to hit lv3 makes this ascension just not worthwhile most of the time.
Smoke
With the new talent 2.0 change, Crown Prince has a massive supply of Smoke Grenades that will not run out in any realistic scenario. As a result this ascension is pretty useless.
A minor increase to maximum shields. The shield increase maintains the percentage of your missing shields, so if you were out of shields and tried to use this, you would still be at 0 shield afterwards. It’s not a lot of shields per level, and you have use a lot of grenades to maintain this effect (though Crown Prince will be using a lot of grenades anyways), but if you already have enough offensive ability then this is a defensive option. Since it’s possible to finish runs relying entirely on miasma damage, any form of defence can be helpful even if it’s not particularly significant. It’s still not nearly as strong as ‘Hex Smoke’ though.
The damage from the explosion is corrosive element, and is based off the total damage of every tick of the grenade (so 600 base damage). This has quite high potential damage, especially because if the explosion from this ascension hits a burning enemy, it will trigger an Explosion fusion for additional damage. The caveat to this is that the blast radius is not very big, so enemies need to be pretty close together for you to hit stuff with this, and it requires a lot of ascension and soul-talent support to really be worthwhile. There is also a funny interaction with enemies that spawn destructible projectiles (specifically Kappas and the Ichthyosaurus boss) where this triggers off of every projectile destroyed by a smoke grenade, causing massive burst damage.
The primary defensive option for Crown Prince. Of note is that this effect is a damage multiplier, not an additive damage bonus, so it will provide a higher effective damage increase the more existing +DMG modifiers you already have. Having at least 1 level of this ascension will give you much more leeway when it comes to taking damage on higher difficulties, and since it also provides a solid offensive bonus there’s little reason to not take this. While very good on bosses and elites, it’s not really possible to apply this effect to every threat in a room. Long range enemies especially will usually be able to shoot you unimpaired, so you need to stay aware of enemies that are outside of your grenade range.
This ascension directly increases Smoke Grenade’s base damage, so if you want to make use of the ‘Acidic Explosion’ ascension or take advantage of Explosion fusions with grenade damage, 1 level of this is mandatory. After the first level though, the ‘Smoke Genius’ ascension will start to scale grenade damage better and should always be prioritized afterwards. If you aren’t taking grenade Soul-talents, grenade DMG won’t scale high enough to be worthwhile at higher difficulties so you can ignore this then.
This modifier indirectly increase Smoke grenade’s base damage, by improving the ‘tick rate’ and increasing the duration. This effect benefits Lightning weapons most because the only way to boost Miasma damage is by applying it faster; it improves the potential of the ‘shock’ into grenade combo and lets it more reliably kill targets. Naturally it’s also core for grenade DMG builds, If you already have the ‘Toxic Smoke’ ascension at level 1, then this starts to scale grenade base damage more than additional levels in ‘Toxic Smoke’. Again, if you aren’t taking grenade-soul talents the damage of grenades builds will not reliably scale on higher difficulties, but the extended duration and faster tick rate is still quite handy for any build.
Orb
This massively improves the usability of Energy Orb. By default Energy Orb freezes enemies for 2 seconds, but because it has a laggy cast animation you only have around 1 second to actually shoot the frozen enemy before it wears off. Just 1 level of this gives you enough time to kill most enemies (outside of elites/bosses) safely. At higher levels, you have enough time to shave off major chunks of elite/boss healthbars, and enough duration to be able to cast it effectively a second time on the same target (despite the duration penalty for using it multiple times on the same target). Just make sure you have enough damage output to properly leverage this. The level 3 effect is also nice, though pretty self explanatory.
Additional Energy Orb charges are nice, but only if you’ve already invested in other ascensions to improve it (an un-upgraded Energy Orb isn’t really that useful). Specifically, this becomes useful if you have either of the ascensions ‘Energy Echo’ or ‘Enhancement Lasts’. More than 1 level of this tends to be overkill though, and it’s not very impactful on elites/bosses since Energy Orbs have reduced durations when hitting the same target multiple times.
An interesting ascension, unfortunately completely at odds with the rest of Crown Prince’s gameplan. Crown Prince benefits most from elemental weapons with good elemental effect application, but those weapons usually have high RoF and low single hit damage, making them unsuitable for ‘Energy Blade’ that can only boost a single hit. The strongest single hit weapons are launchers and snipers (and the new Fire Tower sword). The big hit launchers aren’t naturally elemental so it’s difficult to find a good one (and even if they are, their elemental effect chance is terrible). While elemental snipers tend to have better elemental effect chances, there is another big problem for them. The area damage from this ascension cannot critically hit. Meaning that if you have this ascension at level 3 (with 100% damage to adjacent targets) and land a critical shot for 10,000 damage (with a 4.0 critx value) the damage to adjacent targets will use a 1.0 critx value, so it will only do 2,500 damage, or a quarter of the original shot. There are just too many problems with this ascension for it to be consistently worthwhile.
The weird wording of the second effect of this ascension means that the explosion of the Energy Orb can now hit through physical objects like walls. This ascension is actually not bad for being able to hit a group of enemies at once with an Energy Orb. This is best used with a Lightning weapon if you have the ‘Energy Echo’ ascension. You can freeze a group of enemies and apply shock to them at once, then a single Smoke Grenade will trigger enough Miasma to kill them all. You can also get some benefit out of this with the ascension ‘Enhancement Lasts’ just to be able to freeze a larger group at once. The level 3 effect of this ascension is worthless though since Energy Orb barely does damage anyways.
Energy Orb does an abysmal 600 base damage so this ascension is pretty terrible as a result. The chance to multicast is also terribly inconsistent. The only way to get use out of this is to also have ‘Energy Echo’ to switch Energy Orb to Fire element and have it trigger an Explosion fusion. It’s not the worst idea but it requires way too much investment for the result you get out of it and basically anything else is a higher priority to invest in.
A defensive ascension that doesn’t help protect you from burst damage is not very good, it’s the worst of the 3 defensive ascension options. Shield recharge is more useful now since with talent 2.0 everyone has burst damage protection when they regain full shield. The main issue with this is the poor uptime, you have to actively use Energy Orb after you get hit or this probably won’t get much use out of it. The level 3 bonus is actually noticeably better; It fixes the uptime on this skill to be basically permanent instead of 6s, and the uninterrupted recharge effect let’s you actually get value out of it in the middle of battle. It’s not very likely you’ll end up getting this to lv3 though.
General Tips
About Smoke Grenades
-Don’t be conservative with your grenades. Crown Prince should use them pretty frequently, remember you get more grenades from spending weapon ammo as well as breaking pots/barrels.
-You get a free grenade refill after every boss at the save point well. You can also fully restock grenades from the merchant before a boss and randomly in the level. It’s pretty inexpensive so don’t feel bad about spending the money on it if you need to.
About your Weapons
-Your primary weapon should be a Fire or Lightning weapon, preferably with good elemental effect application to combo with Smoke Grenades.
-Your secondary weapon should be the element your primary weapon is not (ex. fire primary weapons should have lightning secondary weapons). This gives you more versatility and opens up ‘damage type sharing’ with gemini inscriptions.
-When sharing elements through gemini, the only stat that matters on the secondary weapon is ‘elemental effect chance’. High elemental effect weapons (like melee weapons) make for very good targets for damage sharing even if you never actually end up using them in combat.
-At very early stages, don’t feel forced to take a bad elemental weapon over a solid non-elemental one.
About Enemies
-Some enemies have attacks where they become immune to the freezing effect of Energy Orb (ex. charging Dark-Faced Bandits or floating Kappas), try not to waste your Orb if you think they’re about to start their animation.
-Crown Prince usually can’t be too aggressive because of his terrible mobility. When you enter a room spend a moment to identify the current enemy layout and how to safely engage.
-Energy Orb and Smoke Grenades impair enemy movement and make it easier to land critical hits if the enemy is evasive.
Closing Words
Check out my other guides here:
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Other guides are currently in the process of being updated for the summer patch. Tao guide will come afterwards.
Credits to the Wiki contributors for providing the skill icons.
If you have a different perspective on something in this guide, feel free to leave a comment.