Spiral Knights - Set for Darkfire Vanaduke

Set for Darkfire Vanaduke

13 replies [Last post]

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 10:57

Dimbreath

So, I heard, Darkfire Vanaduke isn't easy. I'm thinking about getting a set that goes fine on the Darkfire Vana Shadow Lair. So I was thinking about, Piercing and Curse resistance.

So I was thinking... (5 star...)

-Weapon 1: Warmaster Rocket Hammer
-Weapon 2: Blitz Needle
-Weapon 3: Shivermist Buster
-Weapon 4: Electron Vortex (Need recipes!)
-Trinket 1: Elite Quick Strike Module
-Trinket 2: Elite Sword Focus Module
-Shield: ?
-Armor: ?
-Helm: ?

But I'm not sure what Shield, Armor and Helm should I get. Need my Maximum attack damage increase for the Warmaster, but also need Curse and Piercing Resistance.

Any idea?

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 11:10

Orbwanter

UFSC is the second easiest shadow lair, IMO. Curse resistance isn't necessary as long as you aren't using the Black Kat Cowl - If the weapon you want to use is cursed, just stand in curse breath until it resets in a more favorable way.

Bringinging someone with a blast bomb along can help, as there are a few spots where Carnavons can get stuck in a corner within a totem's radius. While Electron Vortex can deal with this, it occasionally shoots them back into the corner.

Also, keep in mind that while Darkfire Vanaduke himself is immune to Shivermist and Stagger Storm, they can be useful in the stages preceeding him.

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 11:27

Little-Juances

Whatever works on regular Vana should work on it's SL. Altought the SL has more shadow than elemental due to howlitzer.

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 14:03

Bopp

piercing?!

I agree with Zeddy that curse protection is not really that important, compared to the other protections (normal, shadow, fire). Your weapons look good to me. But why would you want piercing protection? Have you read the wiki articles "Shadow Lair" and "Darkfire Vanaduke"?

Edit: As Eclaium points out below, Orbwanter is not Zeddy. Well...this is awkward...

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 11:54

Dimbreath

Well, aren't there

Well, aren't there Trojans?

Whatever, Well, the issue is then the Coat and Helm. Chaos is pretty good, but like we've seen, it makes me more vulnerable to Fire, although that can be fixed with the Grey Owlite Shield.

So what about Chaos Cowl, Chaos Cloak and Grey Owlite Shield?

But if I change the Barbarous Thorn Shield for the Grey Owlite Shield, I'd lose the "Maximum" Damage Bonus. But since, Chaos give me Medium CTR (x2), I could switch the Elite Sword Focus Module for a Elite Quickslash Module.

But also, Howlitzer.

Hmp... It'll take a whole day of Vana... Lol.

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 12:14

Bopp

trojans

Trojans deal normal and shadow (and stun and shock), as you can read at the Trojan wiki page. And this makes sense because trojans are fiends and fiends deal shadow.

Chaos is obviously very offensively powerful, but I'm worried about your having no shadow protection, and negative fire and curse resistances. As Little-Juances points out, shadow damage is a bigger worry than it is in regular FSC. Whether Chaos will work for you depends on your skill, teammates, lag, maybe network latency, etc.

It's been a while since I've done SFSC, but I think I'd do it in a mixture of Vog Cub and Deadshot/Snarbolax. And probably Crest of Almire. That was long before the Chaos buff, and you probably don't have Deadshot, and I'm not saying that you should craft Deadshot just for SFSC. I'm just trying to give you an idea of the level of defense that I aimed for.

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 12:19

Flowchart

Full Chaos isn't going to be that great since if you get cursed all your weapons will be shut down.
Chaos/Deadshot will help and still give you a damage bonus towards undead.
I'd also go with Crest of Almire over Grey Owlite here due to howlitzer bullets.

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 12:35

Dimbreath

Well, like you said, I

Well, like you said, I shouldn't worry about Curse, since as long I stay outside of their breath... Yeah, the Negative Fire is the issue. As for Shadow Resistance, I have the Snarbolax Coat & Helm.

However, seems like Crest of Almire would be more useful, it gives me sort of Shadow Defense and Fire Defense.

So I'll switch the Grey Owlite for the Crest of Almire.

I could also do a mix of Chaos and Snarbolax.

I need to do 9 kill vana. :( But with that I'll collect the CE & cr for the Crest of Almire. (Recipe ftw)

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 12:53

Eclaium

Response

WRH is absolutely fine. It is very useful to knock Zombies out of the totem range as shield cancelling your 1st attack and is also very useful to kill big slags and trojans without taking the risk of Blitz charge by shield cancelling your 2nd attack.
Blitz Needle is obviously good.
Shivermist Buster and Electron Vortex? I wouldn't take Shiver with EV as freeze cancels any knock back and the sucking motion of EV. Since there are more reviving totems than FSC, knock back is even more important in UFSC than FSC. Also as Orb mentioned, Darkfire Vanaduke is immune to shiver. So there won't be much use of Shiver but I don't say you shouldn't take it, it still is somewhat useful.

A problem is that Chaos set gives you MAX Curse penalty which makes you unable to use ALL vials (you can't even use remedy lol) and ALL weapons. You will have to sit in the corner and watch friends suffering...for 1 minute. You don't need curse protection but you wouldn't want a penalty.
Here is a thread about Curse and Chaos Set
Since the zombies breath is curse, you would catch fire less than normal FSC apart from the throne room (lava appears in the first phase too) so you don't have to worry too much about having a lot of Fire resistance once you get a 21 vitapod. However unless you get Curse medium or higher UV on Chaos set, I wouldn't recommend you to take full Chaos set. I'd say to combine with Vog Cub (ASI is useful on Hammer), Snarbolax, Shadowsun, Volcanic Demo etc. The CTR will help EV and Blitz.
If you're going to equip full Chaos, or a piece of Chaos with another elemental gear, there's another choice take Crest of Almire instead of Grey Owlite in order to protect yourself from shadow damage; Howlitzer, Zombies and Trojans. If you don't care about defence, then Barbarous Thorn Shield or Swiftstrike Buckler (a bit too risky for the first time UFSC)

Shield's status resistance and Armour's status resistance are completely different. Shield's status resistance do not reduce the time of status effect you get.
And the charge of WRH is horrible, very party unfriendly. Once a random guy in my FSC party spammed WRH charge and kept moving ME into a crowd of zombies (nope, I was NOT AFK). Unless you take a Brandish or Divine Avenger, forget about taking CTR Sword Trinket and take damage/ASI or gun/bomb trinkets.

It sounds like you thought that Trojan deals piercing damage? Only piercing damage source in UFSC is Oilers, which only appear in a part of Depth 24 and a room in Depth 25, and Spike Traps which you won't get on unless you lag into it, or trojan/slags push you into it.

@Bopp
I understand that Orbwanter's Forum Avatar is the same avatar - Cyclops Cap and Ash Tail - as Zeddy's, but he's not Zeddy as far as I know. Well you might know the Zeddy's secret...Orbwanter is an alt of Zeddy...
...Hell, no, he's not Zeddy lol

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 13:44

Dimbreath

I know you'll laugh, but most

I know you'll laugh, but most of the times I lag, so I end up either on Fire or Spikes... (3/4 of deaths were because of that)

So, you said I should take either Shivermist Buster or Electron Vortex? Well, both haves it good things, Shivermist is like a "wall", cancels knockback, but if something is blocking the zombie it'll do more damage, but as you said, there are more totems, so there would be almost no point in a Shivermist since if we're under totem range it'll revive.

So then, Chaos isn't useful, unless I use charged attack (Which I don't), and I get the same bonuses from the Snarbolax Set... Then what about...

-Weapon 1: Warmaster Rocket Hammer
-Weapon 2: Blitz Needle
-Weapon 3: ? (Still deciding)
-Weapon 4: ? (Still deciding)
-Trinket 1: Elite Quick Strike Module
-Trinket 2: Elite Slash Module
-Shield: Crest of Almire
-Coat: Snarbolax Coat
-Helm: Vog Cub Cap

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 16:04

#10

Eclaium

I didn't say Chaos is

I didn't say Chaos is useless, it is VERY useful ANYWHERE. Just a problem is the curse penalty.
I said a piece of Chaos and something else would be nice. Bombs and Blitz are good with some CTR. The seed on the floor increases Vana's defence so DMG bonus, which chaos has, on Blitz may be useful. CTR Sword thing was trinket, I didn't say that you shouldn't wear chaos when using WRH. I wear full chaos and WRH in normal FSC but I just don't use charge, I even failed rolling and got CTR VH UV'd WRH lol.
(To ensure you, Chaos has universal CTR Medium and DMG Medium bonus in exchange to some status penalties)

Comparing EV and Shiver, EV certainly is more useful bomb overall, but there are some occasions that Shiver is more useful than EV such as in purpose to freeze slags and trojans, and charge Blitz then strike. Even with no damage bonus, you are able to kill trojan in a charge and in 4-man party, with DMG Max (or Ultra idk) you can kill the big slag guards in a charge.

WRH, Blitz, Shiver, EV set is actually fine. I'm kinda denying what I said earlier but it works fine, I personally dislike freeze status that's why x) In this case, you should consider some Sword ASI, Bomb CTR at least which can be achieved by combining Chaos and Vog Cub, Vog Cub and Volcanic Demo or something else with trinkets.
Well if you're not sure whether or not you should take two bombs, another choice is to take an elemental gun as sidearm, a brandish to mass-kill zombies or Fang of Vog to kill slag guards. (assuming you're a sword man)

For example, if this is useful to think about your loadout...
in FSC I use
-Chaos set
-SSB
-Voltedge ASI Med
-WRH
-Blitz needle
-EV
-Elite Slash Module
-Elite Trueshot Module

But in UFSC I use
-Vog set
-BTS
-Voltedge CTR Med
-AP
-Blitz needle
-WRH
-Elite Sword Focus Module (for voltedge)
-Elite Quick Slash Module

I focus on farming faster in FSC but in UFSC I focus on safety - Swinging WRH fast and shield cancel defensive action and faster kills of slag guards which revive zombies. And I got 3 damage weapons in UFSC loadout for the case 2 of my damage weapons get cursed, I can still kill some stuff.

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 19:02

#11

Theirillusion

Think of all the shadow lairs as a "strata 6 slightly harder set of levels with higher payout"-version of the normal boss run.

UFSC differs the least from its original run because both are T3.

I recommend taking the same gear you pick for FSC, with the exception of negative curse resistance. It's not funny to be completely useless for 1 minute.

Tue, 05/07/2013 - 02:00

#12

Infernoburner

Derpuraptor strikes back

IMO, take this:

WRH - good knockback and fairly valuable damage (just don't use the dash up close but rather a distance from your enemy)
Polaris - Useful for the Howlitzers, team mate killer if used incorrectly (i.e shooting at enemies your teammates focus on, or getting
Voltedge/the freeze brandish I forgot the name of - Totally sword-like charge that causes a big pain to enemies and makes you kinda safe for a few seconds.
Blitz - Trojan and vanaduke
Volcanic Plate Shield - The most resistant of all shields for the fire status and elemental damage, the good part is unlike the plate helm and armor it does NOT give a downgrade.
About the helm, do you have Black Kat Cowl? Try that + an armor that negates it's curse weakness while still resisting shadow and fire (don't worry your head about fire too much if you take heart pendants or something with overly huge hp bonus)

Trinkies:
Penta-Heart Pendant, extra pips of HP.
Either one more Penta-Heart Pendant, Blessed Silver Amulet (I'm assuming that's what the 5* curse trink is called), or Gun/Sword ASI trink. Don't take CTR for blitz, just don't charge it when there's an obvious hazard of sorts in your way (If a Trojan rotates before you shoot, try to orbit him a bit. Slowly)

Tue, 05/07/2013 - 14:41

#13

Eclaium

Agree with WRH and blitz part and brandish part but not with Polaris and other gears.
I just dislike Polaris lol
And, Vps does NOT have elemental defence, it has normal fire and stun
Kat cowl gives you MAX curse penalty which I mentioned before and to cancel out it, he said to take curse resist armour but most of the curse resist armour...Almirian, dead shot, silver mail aren't very worthy to make. You won't use them often other than UFSC and silver mail doesn't have normal defence which is bad.

Offence is defence, don't listen to the trinkets part that burner mentioned. Heart pendants are only more worthy in lockdown than offensive trinkets, offensive trinkets are better in PvE most of the time apart from some event grinding like winter fest.
Don't waste your tokens and trinket slots for curse resist trinket it's a waste of money. Trade the tokens to trinkets if you like, but sell them to vendors for 1k crown.

That's all

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Set for Darkfire Vanaduke