Hello all,
As I know it, the next SK event will be the Apocrean event, a lovely time of year when you are chased around by a harvester bent on collecting your soul while you try to avoid him and collect apocrean sigils as you go. I am curious to know the best way to get the most sigils in the least amount of time. I plan on using my blitz needle and my voltedge but I don't know if that is the best option. I heard that a Rockethammer is good too so should I look into those or should the voltedge cover it? I plan on charging my blitz before i smash a grave and letting whatever is in the grave have it. Then I would switch to my voltedge and kill the survivors. Is this a good plan? Should I go in a group? Solo? Different strategy? Lastly, is it hard to get enough sigils to get all three 5 star weapons in one event? Thank you all for your answers!
-Gus
P.S. This is by far my FAVORITE event.
Tips and Tricks for Apocrea
There are definitely other strategies to Apocrea but as Veridian said, a full party is a fairly common strategy.
If you're pretty good and once you're versed in how the Apocrea graveyards work, it's very possible to duo or even solo the levels. In a duo, typically one person distracts primarily and the other gets tokens. It's a little easier to free the souls when duoing, they take a lot less hits to go down. When soloing, dashing becomes your best friend. Dashing causes the harvester to despawn. Every time, without fail. So, you'd be dashing constantly, about as soon as it cools down, but 8 seconds is plenty of time to break gravestones and get sigils.
I personally, when soloing, run combuster, divine avenger, electron vortex and AP, though I may swap out that AP with my arcana next time and perhaps the DA for a blitz. It works very well but only try duoing/soloing once you have some experience with the levels under your belt. It isn't too hard to clear an entire graveyard by yourself that way with one emergency revive. c: If you can, also bring a maskeraith so if you do somehow get caught, you can just cloak and avoid the damage. Also, when destroying gravestones, kill all the scarabs. They can and will build up and become a major threat.
run big circles around harvester for ~20min while all your party members do the hard work
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profit
Look up your exact thread title, someone already wrote a guide
Alright, heres some advice for most sigils in least amount of time
1) Go solo, because you are in full control of the pace of the party, and when you dash while solo, the harvester won't attack you until he respawns again
2) Hammer is good, I would go for max damage gun for best coverage (AP/Alchemer/Valiance). I don't recommend pulsar lines (only good for fighting off the scarabs, which alchemers do better). Blitz is only good if the souls have not spawned yet and you are attacking the tombstone.
3) Again, use max damage.
4) Follow a distinct pattern around the area for best coverage for your time (like you are mowing a lawn) instead of moving around randomly.
Thats what I did the first time apocrea was released, and it worked. Regarding point 1, I would only get at most 1 other mamber who REALLY knows what they are doing. Duos are the best for speed and reliability. Have fun farming your time away
Recently I did a duo run with a random person. He taught me a strategy which works like this:
1) Charge a Vortex bomb and place it between two tombstones.
2) Charge a Brandish/Blitz and kill whatever is spawned by the tombstones.
3) Repeat.
By far I think this is the best duo strategy for this mission.
Apocrea is a great place to own a DBB. Everyone should own a DBB but extra much so for Apocrea. Both for the graveyards and the and arenas before them.
As Snarby-Slasher #6 said, vortex+brandish charge combo is the most viable strategy, and the safest. But is it really worth the time it requires? a big no, at least for advanced players.
From my experience, the most optimal way to run it would be in a Tag team ( 2 players that know what they're doing of course). Following a certain pattern, eg from west to east, and going down 6 or 7 blocks once you reach the map limit, then east to west again..Player A would just spam voltaic tempest, and Player B would break all the tombstones within the bomb perimeter with a quick firing gun (valiance/antigua)-all this while maintaining a fast pace- and dash through the souls with a Hammer. Needless to say what Hammer does to shocked enemies. Ignore the scarabs, as they won't get to you if you keep following the same pattern.
PS: I suggest bringing Seraphynx for its shield, which the two players can take turns using, halfing its cooldown to 20 seconds.
A more advanced and the simplest perspective, would require the two players covering each their own half of the map, without the use of any bomb, but following the same pattern as mentioned earlier.
To stay alive:
- Kill the scarabs. They will add up quickly and ruin your day. Additionally they will lag the game for everyone if too many get out.
- The apocrean tentacles are pretty simple to dodge. They move like a tier 2 rocket puppy rocket. Run away from the harvester, make a sharp turn, and run back towards it to easily dodge the tentacles.
- Use your sprite! Maskeraith cloak helps when you get hit, and angelic aura from a seraphynx protects you from tentacles should you activate it before they hit you. Drakon's speed boost can help you as well if you chose backfire barrier, but is the trickiest to get working.
- If you have a seraphynx, use heart attack on the bombies. They don't drop health normally, but you can enchant them to drop health, even if it still is rare. Nice for recovering from a scarab hit.
- Remember to dash! Dashing helps you avoid all the things, and if you're solo, it will actively despawn the harvester.
I'll just link to my blog on this one:
http://spiral.onyxbits.de/archives/surviving-the-grasping-plateau/00453/
Excellent tips and tricks, everyone! Though it seems to me that one of the patches has really changed the soul RNG. As someone who solos Apocrea, I cleared two plateaus today (would've done more 'cept my internet keeps crapping out, it's impossible to evade the harvester/get souls when I'm DCing for 30 seconds at a time), the first net me a little over 220 sigils, the 2nd net me 330ish. Prior to that, I was consistently getting 400-450 per cleared plateau.
Its not that hard to get enough tokens and materials out of this event. Cuz you can constantly and surely gain more and more.
I'd suggest to not play it on solo. Imo its best to be in a full party, cuz you guys can collect tokens and materials for each others, and distract the Slendy. If someone wants then can play the constant bait and decoy by running around him, while others farm them tokens. Thats a pretty basic strat for this event.
Mostly elemental weapons and of course Blitz is advised. Shiv or Vortex might be handy also. Brandish and Hammer are OP as always :)
Good luck for us, and hope to see the event real soon ! T_T
Edit: oh yeah, i forgot a really important thing. As Sciger said below: always kill the scarabs.