Part 20: Fate roundup #2

Part 20, Bonus 5 - Fate roundup #2

Shadow Agent (YouTube)
Iron Hunger (YouTube)
Curse of the Lion Prince (YouTube)
Warlord (YouTube)

The last four fates I'm showing off are a bit longer. One is a bit easier and very suited for the start of the game, but the others definitely require more effort and late-game attention. It's up to you, but you might be at them for a while.


Shadow Agent

The adventurer's already a bastard, so why not make it official? You trade away a bit of offensive capability, but gain a small modifier to luck in chance events, which could increase the number of success cards or slow down the shuffling. And the encounters are all about chance events.

The Fate's helm is the only reward you get, and it will show you chance events on the map when you start a floor. This isn't the best of effects, but it's not useless, and the Fate's encounters are enough of a breeze that it's a proportionate reward.

The low combat ability is the only reason this Fate isn't outright easy mode, but it's one of the simpler ones to try out.


Iron Hunger

I will be showing off Iron Hunger a bit more before the LP is over, but it's good to get an understanding of how the Fate works.

• You don't eat food. Instead, the game gives you another resource to play with: Iron Ore. This is your new food.
  
• Food gain cards keep giving you food, food loss cards take food, but some things that will make you lose food will make you lose Iron Ore.
  
• The Metal Ore encounter gives you 75 Iron Ore outright. Any encounter that needs the Metal Ore will take 75 of your Iron Ore instead. This demonstrates that Iron Ore is a resource for every Fate in the game, but it's just hidden most times.
  
• When you gain Equipment that could replace an existing piece you have on, you have to "smelt" one of the two, turning it into Iron Ore. Higher equipment tiers are worth more (there's a chart).
  

Decoupling food from your needs creates some interesting scenarios in which food yields advantages you may not have had. That Helpful Priest? Basically free blessings. The Trader? Free equipment. Soul gem? Free uncurse. Just gotta have the food.

The helm you get gives you food for gaining equipment, which could have its uses. You also get a generic encounter that requires 50 ore to give you max health; it doesn't seem like a great deal, but it makes the Metal Ore even more useful in some runs.


Curse of the Lion Prince

I like the Fate, I hate the encounters.

You start at 40 health, and every kill nets you +2 health, no questions asked. This also works on reanimated skeletons. If you can get past the initial low health hump, this Fate can carry you a pretty long time; a somewhat upgrade from the default mode. The encounters, though... oof. The three Test of Pride encounters start a bit difficult but end downright awful.

Test of Pride 1: Requires you to have above 120 max health. There's different dialogue for having max health between 100 and 120, a kind of "nearly there."
Test of Pride 2: Also adds a condition that your current health shouldn't be too low (possibly lower than half), but it's bugged.
Test of Pride 3: Also adds a condition that you have no curses. This is insane. Any dungeon which is long enough to make 120+ max health easy will have curses, and the Dealer curses ain't cheap to remove. Which makes this about gold, too.

How do you deal with these encounters? You have a few options depending on which encounter you're trying to clear.

• Endless mode works well for encounters #1 and #2.
  
• In story dungeons, prioritize guaranteed health gain cards (such as ghost of the sea, soul gem, or others)
  
• Items like the Ring of Poverty, which gives you max health once in exchange for all your gold, will be useful. Stack it with helmets like Fate's Folly, which gives gold for chance events.
  
• If it's a story dungeon, pick one that has bad encounters with a chance to fight enemies. For example, the Queen of Scales has Lost in Swamp, which has a chance of fighting monsters. You also have ambushes in others.
  
• After you get the pentacle, Skeletons start respawning, which is good for you.
  
• The crucible has lots of enemies.
  
• Ratmen hunting has lots of enemies.
  

I'm sure there are a few other ways around these encounters... But by far my favorite way to grind this Fate is to fight The Kraken Unleashed. Until you kill the Kraken, it will keep spawning lizardmen that can take you all the way from 40 to 200 health if you're good. Getting the Kraken card first thing in the Jack of Skulls dungeon is one of the easier—albeit really tedious—ways of clearing the third encounter.

But remember how I said encounter #2 is bugged? If you look in the game files, you'll see the second encounter does have a low health check implemented... somewhere, but the encounter can never trigger it:



On top of that, encounters #2 and #3 have incorrect finish dialogue. Something didn't go quite right, and it wasn't caught.


Anyhow. The helmet you unlock is okay, though some people say it's bugged and has no effect. The generic Test of Pride encounter you get as well is just as hard as the last one the Fate had to do, so I will probably never, ever do it. Ever. If I managed, I'd get a sword that does greater damage against royal enemies (the Court), and that can do a blow that scales with my Max Health.

Ehhh. As I said, I like the Fate, I hate the encounters.


Warlord

The Warlord Fate consists of many encounters, though only a handful are needed to get the Achievement. The rest will be added to the additional Warlord cards when starting a run until they're completed, but can also be done as generic cards.

The quest line will be long, culminating in an encounter that suggests we're breaking all of reality itself.

Seriously, the encounters we unlock by completing Warlord are pretty nice, even if they're punishingly difficult. I'm grateful that there's so much variety; it makes Hard Mode a lot more intriguing. And did I mention hard? Just have a look.