Part 11: King of Skulls

Have I mentioned how much I love the Hag's Wraps?




Part 11 - King of Skulls (YouTube)

Mass Achievement unlock time! The game has quite a few achievements, but I hit some accomplishment-based achievement conditions during this run, so it's good to show them off.

Curses have been much somewhat of a nuisance, but the King of Skulls' dungeon ups the ante. The Hanged Man encounters can overwhelm you if you get some particularly nasty curses. I would have loved to remove Corrupted Soul if I had the opportunity. And as much as I talked up stacking the deck, I got slapped by the RNG gods by making slightly inferior equipment/gold decisions; I thought there would be more maces to grab. Oh well. The Rat Cleaver was a decent consolation prize thanks to its damage output and speed.

About the Nomad's Desert:The solution to every encounter is to go SEESS.

I don't get the decision behind making this Fate's special encounters this way. Maybe the solution is a reference to how the player sees the path forward, but I have no idea how you would figure it out. Were the developers hoping you would try and try again until you found the right solution? Please tell me if you actually know.

Like the Soldier's Training Fate, the encounter card we unlock is identical to the previous Nomad's Desert cards. Get through it in the same conditions, receive gold and equipment.


Mages

A special Suit. They have a force shield, and can attack in one of two ways: a burst of multiple homing projectiles (that can usually be partly reflected), and a "triple line" attack that will damage you if you cross them.

As mentioned in the video, having multiple mages on the field is a liability: they will line themselves up as the points of a triangle when doing their line attack, which makes the pattern more elaborate and thus more dangerous. Two mages is pretty bad, but three mages makes the full pattern. The saving grace is that they are locked in place during said attack.

Lava Golems

Another special Suit. Their attack patterns are extremely predictable and thus not too hard to dodge if you pay attention. Bear in mind their swings will track you somewhat, and don't get overwhelmed when they're in groups. Multiple lava golems can be overwhelming.

Minotaurs

Yet another special Suit. This one's a first for me, too! The minotaur will either charge at you if you're far enough away, or do a four-combo attack. You can't block anything it does, so stay close and do chip damage in between combo strikes.

Thankfully, special Suits never get upgrades, so the combat will remain the same.


The King of Skulls

The most fearsome undead warrior ever seen. He carries on one arm, a shield that would crush most men and the other, wields a two handed sword with deadly ease.

The king has a few attacks. He's got an unblockable swing, he can summon extra skeletons that will stick around a while, and he has a burst as well. His most devastating attack fires a beam from his shield, so you may want to stay behind him and let the beam damage his allies. Unfortunately the shield that unlocks from defeating him does not get the beam.

I remember this boss as being a bit more memorable, but he's not too difficult to deal with. The main thing to remember about Kings is that their specialties are designed to make you want to focus on them. They are the King, after all.