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 Skul: the Hero Slayer is an action roguelite developed by Southpaw Games and released in January 2021, after being in early access for a while prior. Since that initial release, they’ve updated the game many times, with the most recent update being the Dark Mirror update, introducing a hard mode to Skul. Even though the game is already kinda hard.  You play through the game as the titular Skul, a skeleton child who was only recently reanimated. The Demon King has been captured, and you need to head into Carleon to rescue him. As you proceed through Carleon, you will encounter and rescue several NPCs, some of which return to the Demon King’s Castle, while others you will need to rescue repeatedly for small benefits in your attempts to rescue the king. As implied by the name, Skul can do many things with his skull. He can throw it at enemies, teleport to it, and most importantly, replace it. By picking up skulls that you find on your path, you can change your abilities, becoming one of dozens of playable characters. If you find a skull that you don’t want for whatever reason (maybe it doesn’t fit your build), you can always break it for one of the two run currencies, bone fragments, which can be used to upgrade your skull into more powerful, higher rarity versions of that skull.  The Dark Mirror In early January, 2023, SouthPaw updated the game with the Dark Mirror update, which provides a Dead Cells style progressive hard mode. The Dark Mirror provides eleven additional difficulties, with new enemies, new level geometry, and changes to the bosses. In order to help combat these new challenges, Skul gets access to Quartz Tech and Dark Powers, which provide a significant boost to your build consistency and power. I adore this game, and would have kept playing it even if they didn’t add the new hard mode. Steam Page Playstation Store Nintendo eShop Xbox Store (it's on Game Pass!) Official Discord King of Solomon fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Feb 13, 2023 |
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Feb 13, 2023 00:58
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Information and Tips Included in spoiler tags in case people would rather not see it. There's nothing particularly spoilery in there, but this is an action roguelike, I totally understand if people might want to figure this out for yourself. Dark Quartz - Metaprogression and Other Uses  Dark Quartz is one of the three currencies that you will accumulate when you play the game. This is primarily your metaprogression currency. Spend this at the Witch to gain permanent increases to your stats, and to unlock useful bonuses like an extra life and the ability to sell items. Of these, while I would recommend eventually getting all of them, I strongly recommend getting Ancient Alchemy ASAP. Being able to sell items you find is a huge increase to the amount of gold you will accumulate over the course of a single run, which will increase your ability to get the build you want and help you get further into individual runs, which in turn will help you get more Dark Quartz. Dark Quartz can also be spent to get a second skull from the Fox NPC and a second item from the Ogre NPC. It can be spent to unlock items and skulls at the Black Market, and can also be spent to rebuild the Dark Castle (this is just a cosmetic thing, I would recommend avoiding this until you’ve unlocked everything.) The Dark Mirror has additional ways to spend Dark Quartz. Inscriptions and Damage Types  As is common in action roguelites, over the course of a given run you’ll stock up on items. In a lot of them, you can have as many items as you find, but that is not the case in Skul. In Skul, you have 9 item slots to use, so using them wisely is very important. This is where inscriptions and damage types come into play.  In this image, you can see the legendary Sword skull using two of its skills, Double Slash and Sawblade Slash. When the skull hits the enemy, orange numbers pop out of the enemy, which represents physical damage. Whenever this is referenced in the UI, it will be orange. By contrast, magic damage is a light blue, as seen in the legendary Frost skull’s skill damage below.   Inscriptions are a passive bonus that you get for collecting items with similar themes. For example, as you pick up a lot of weapons, you will see a lot of the Arms inscription. Outside of making sure your damage items improve the right damage type, this is the most important part of creating a build in Skul. If you’re trying to stack up on pure damage, Courage and Wisdom are the inscriptions to seek out, but Arms and Artifact will also increase your damage output at level 2. Generally speaking, pay attention to your inscriptions and build around the ones that synergize with the skull you’re using. Dark Mirror Progression Every time you complete a new level of the Dark Mirror (which goes from 0 to 10), you will get a new cutscene in the Dark Mirror with the Witch introducing a new piece of Quartz Tech. Quartz tech will power up your Dark Mirror runs, by adding to the shop, giving you new things to spend quartz on, giving you new Dark Powers to give to Skul, and so on and so forth. Once the Quartz Tech is unlocked, it can be used in any difficulty.
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Feb 13, 2023 01:05
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King of Solomon posted:
Just to drill down on a point King of Solomon already made, this is a huge part of why getting the upgrade that lets you sell items makes such a big difference. It might not be as pronounced if you're still struggling to make it past the first couple of areas, but as soon as you're semi-consistently getting far enough to fill all your item slots, it becomes incredibly helpful.
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Feb 13, 2023 15:35
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It's astonishing how easy the main game feels after getting super deep into the dark mirror. I just did a Water skull run, and it basically felt like I was walking through the game. Before the Dark Mirror, I struggled to beat the game at all.Angry Diplomat posted:Just to drill down on a point King of Solomon already made, this is a huge part of why getting the upgrade that lets you sell items makes such a big difference. It might not be as pronounced if you're still struggling to make it past the first couple of areas, but as soon as you're semi-consistently getting far enough to fill all your item slots, it becomes incredibly helpful. Yeah, this is absolutely part of it. Being able to recur value when you need to clear up inventory space is so critical.
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Feb 14, 2023 02:53
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Spoiler, but god loving drat this was a huge leap in difficulty from everything else in The Dark Mirror. The dude's move list is like a million miles long, and some of them have unexpected or remarkably long invincibility periods. I played as the Samurai skull and lost two Full Moon Slashes to i-frames.  Add to that the one where instead of grabbing and stunning you, he instead restores about 3,550 (?) life off of you and it's one heck of a fight.Cool as gently caress even though I lost, but wow it was hard out of nowhere. It felt weird to breeze through the entire rest of Dark Mirror 0 and then just get wrecked against this guy. Also, agreed on the core game suddenly feeling easy after trying this a few times.
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Feb 18, 2023 06:30
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I recently beat Dark Mirror 8 with a Hunter run, and it just blows my mind that I was able to get that far! I really don't think I'm that good at Skul, and most of my efforts in trying to advance within the Mirror are to unlock Quartz Tech so I can do powerful DM0 runs. Still, I'm so deep into the mirror, I'm astonished.Sundae posted:Spoiler, but god loving drat this was a huge leap in difficulty from everything else in The Dark Mirror. Yeah, the Dark Hero is really hard, and he doesn't get easier on later DM levels. For the lifesteal attack, the main advice I have is to keep your distance if he has 50% or less HP and near the center of the room. The difference between the lifesteal grab and his other ones is he'll stand still and try to suck you in. Power skull dashes are really good at getting away from his suction, but your best bet is to just be far away before he starts the attack.
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Feb 18, 2023 06:37
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Love Skul, if you're on the fence about this game it's fantastic and they've really polished it up since 1.0. Now every skull can be good, inscriptions matter, tons of new items etc. plus this free dlc update. Game is super fun once you start figuring it out and its the best kind of roguelike, the kind that you can beat normal mode on a brand new save file without any progression traits, though a new player isn't gonna do this unless you are some kind of gaming god. Got 558 hours in since 1.0 over the past two years, easily one of my favorite games. Though I took a break and just this week came back for the hard mode update the update is amazing. Kinda shocked to see more people here don't play it. If you have questions the official discord is also a good place to ask. Hard mode clear screen and discussion loving absolutely steamrolled DM 7 with this, crazy amount of bones for spider (2x yaksha, 2x reaper, 1x lich, 1xgambler, 1xdavy jones all dropped this run), 9.5k bomber crits going into gambler swaps amped 35% with 4 mutant and a ton of 25% collection desire, absolutely godlike. But I should have maybe dropped reckless posture for short hand. Bomber with kaboom always been one of my favorite skulls, really like pairing him with DP, Frost, Gambler, Reaper.   So far each DM after 0 has only taken one go, but its definitely getting more shaky without godlike stuff. Dark Hero isn't super terrible he's alot more choreographed than normal mode phase 2 hero. Everything he does is in the same sequence for the most part, though its gonna be a bitch to get no hit on him for the achievement. Destro fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Mar 11, 2023 |
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Mar 11, 2023 04:41
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DM 10 clear screen I did it!! Still sad to see no one playing this game. Little bone is loving amazing this is the first time I tried him on dark mirror mode. You need to get silent cries and go getter for major damage and with silent cries his two skills have 0 cooldown so you just spam left and right skill (as well as attack cause for some reason if you dont attack its a little slower) and a million mage's neck fireballs appear. Absolutely need mages neck, and try to get mana bone as well. This made DM 10 crazy easy as long as you play a little careful and I expect them to nerf it at some point. Still have two achievements the 4 cursed abilities which will be easy and the no hit hero on dark mirror mode which I'm gonna need to get alot better at dodging hero, but this can be done on Mirror 0. So if you are struggling to get wins in dark mirror keep little bone for a while and if you get mages neck or bone start a go-getter and silent cries build. I'd say mage's neck is more important cause you can do quite a bit of cheese standing where things cant hit you but your fireballs can hit them. Those two dark abilities take the same build that works in normal mode and times its effectiveness by 1000% Destro fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 03:14
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Destro posted:DM 10 clear screen I did it!! Still sad to see no one playing this game. drat, congrats on the DM10 clear! I've reached DM10, but only really dipped my toes into it. After the past few Dark Mirror levels I'm a bit worried about the difficulty spike I know is coming. Still, worst case scenario, I've unlocked all of the functional Quartz Tech, so I'm at least good to go on that front. And yeah, getting additional visibility into this awesome game was part of why I made the thread.
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Mar 13, 2023 03:46
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Also chiming in this game is great. Im currently, trying to get a DM10 wins with every Skul but some uniques and legendaries just do not want to show up when I am building their damage type >=( Also if you want to mess around with overpowered runs or just want a little more variety in your starting skul/item, there is a mod for the PC version by Mr.Bacanudo that lets you start with any item or Skul you want.He has a youtube channel with a video explaining how to install it.
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Mar 13, 2023 22:01
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Vise the Stompy posted:Also chiming in this game is great. Im currently, trying to get a DM10 wins with every Skul but some uniques and legendaries just do not want to show up when I am building their damage type >=( Yeah seen that mod its pretty cool, but for now I'm just trying to get better at DM10 without using it. Once I feel like I have a solid handle on it gonna start messing around.
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Mar 14, 2023 02:11
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New patch just dropped. Some spicy changes to skuls and items. Warlock got the Warrior treatment regarding concentration. Yaksha got a neat stun effect. A lot of damage buffs to item/skuls
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Mar 17, 2023 18:42
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I'm really interested in seeing what Demonomicon is like now. There's a lot of cool changes in there, but that's probably the biggest.
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Mar 17, 2023 19:24
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I should probably just actually buy this game, it was really fun when it was on game pass but I hate spending money
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Mar 17, 2023 19:26
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Losing this run made me excessively angry, I think I've cleared mirror 10 now like 4 times but I just cannot get consistent at it and there was no reason I should have lost this.
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Mar 24, 2023 00:15
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That's rough, Destro. I haven't beaten DM10, but I've had some really close calls and serious heartbreaker losses, usually to the HeroWarEternal posted:I should probably just actually buy this game, it was really fun when it was on game pass but I hate spending money You should, this game rules.
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Mar 24, 2023 00:24
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WarEternal posted:I should probably just actually buy this game, it was really fun when it was on game pass but I hate spending money I agree with Solomon you should, your first wall might be the second boss, but after that the game for me clicked and I was hooked. It truly is a full game right now. Just a note when you play on controller though the recent patch messed up the Y button on xbox controller I think thats Triangle on PS controllers. So when you want to change your two skill orders from the screen I have to use the keyboard button to do that and when you want to sell or drop an item from your inventory I have to also use the keyboard, Hopefully there is a hotfix for it soon. Outside of the character screen the button functions normally though.
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Mar 24, 2023 15:56
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Posting to show you guys how dumb I can be. Over 100% crit rate at 40 stacks of the dagger, Rockstar and Aqua are superb skulls for invisible knife simply because of the amount of hits they can cause, aqua with the waves and rockstar with his multi hit skills and now the improved rockstar basic where you can just hold the button down to attack, and on top of that dwarf always multi hitting. Then at the last quartz change I took cotton bat DISABLING crit hit but amplifying damage by 1% per critical hit stat. Forgetting that this would break my invisible knife which doesnt work without critical hits and so I chunked my damage way down. Like I said I can be pretty dumb, but even so final fight was not too bad, I still always have more success with magic skulls than physical and I'm still not consistent at mirror 10. Destro fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Mar 25, 2023 |
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Mar 25, 2023 23:36
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Destro posted:Posting to show you guys how dumb I can be. I love to accidentally make myself weaker, it's something I do all the time while playing the game. Never intentionally of course. It's interesting that you have more luck with magical skulls than physical, right now I definitely have more success with physical skulls. I've been trying to get better with magical skulls since the patch, but oof. Admittedly, there are some magical skulls (like Water) that I'm better with than others, but that's almost entirely on the strength of the skull itself. I suck rear end at Archlich, for example.
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Mar 25, 2023 23:46
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King of Solomon posted:I love to accidentally make myself weaker, it's something I do all the time while playing the game. Never intentionally of course. Judging by the win screens posted in the Skul discord both are equally viable so I guess it comes down mostly to personal preference, but right after my last post I got an OP run. Spoilering it cause the character is pretty neat.    Love getting both phalanx and crossbowmatic on him, they are my two favorites and the synergy from thieves and gunpowder with crossbow constantly proccing it. 2.2k phys with the courage proc up. And now in dark mirror mode you can almost always get him to legendary in act 2 if you get him in act 1 Courage 4 almost always seems to be worth shooting for on phys. Also what helped me with my first dm 10 clear was definitely 4 antique and high hp if you get decent rng you can put together builds that dont suffer too much damage wise when you go for it, plus you can also lock in one antique at the black market. Don't go wild sacrificing damage for it though cause final boss has alot of hp on DM 10. Antiques I like to see are pot of greed, hand of glory, magic pocket watch, trainee's neck, wheel, stone mask and gold incense, though the last two aren't gonna give you damage they still give gold and the burner gives 35 hp. Demononmicon used to be in that last but it got changed this patch so its no longer an antique. Oh and early Put Pocket is good for a beginning dark ability if you dont have a skul before act 2 that's good at dealing with alot of enemies, it really helps balance out a lack of AOE, but I almost always end up replacing it around act 3 or 4 once my build is up and running and my skulls are upgraded, so give that a try and see if it helps too. And the coward curse is absolutely amazing for defense and offense. Destro fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Mar 26, 2023 |
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Mar 26, 2023 01:32
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Destro posted:Courage 4 almost always seems to be worth shooting for on phys. Also what helped me with my first dm 10 clear was definitely 4 antique and high hp if you get decent rng you can put together builds that dont suffer too much damage wise when you go for it, plus you can also lock in one antique at the black market. Don't go wild sacrificing damage for it though cause final boss has alot of hp on DM 10. Antiques I like to see are pot of greed, hand of glory, magic pocket watch, trainee's neck, wheel, stone mask and gold incense, though the last two aren't gonna give you damage they still give gold and the burner gives 35 hp. Demononmicon used to be in that last but it got changed this patch so its no longer an antique. Yeah, full agree on basically all of this. I've had really strong builds - both offensively and defensively - going into the Hero on DM10, I basically know what I'm doing. I just need to execute, and with the Hero, especially on DM10, that's always gonna be a tall order. I think I'll get there, though.
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Mar 26, 2023 01:49
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Every time I start with pike and think im gonna do a masterwork build something else comes along. Namely the blood drunk sword and sword skull in the first act. Ambition is pretty good on DM10 where dark quartz is abundant and managed to pick shyness up on last quartz shop, at one point had 4 rapidity but dropped it cause sword skull just doesnt do enough damage on his basic for the amp to matter, and pain and despair gives him enough attack speed to get alot of bleeds in. Shyness 40% amp damage if no one around was a fantastic pick up on the last quartz shop as all thats left is the hero fight, plus it freed up more dark quartz for ambition bonuses. No idea why I bumped clown to unique should have left him at rare as it was a sword show.
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Mar 26, 2023 18:51
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Update today fixed the menu bugs
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Mar 27, 2023 15:42
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Destro posted:Update today fixed the menu bugs I'm really glad they addressed those quickly. The KB/M stuff seemed rough to deal with, from what I've heard.
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Mar 27, 2023 18:21
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Finally got the masterpiece pike I wanted, though rip no mithril armor Looking forward to what they do with the next update as it's supposed to be a physical update. And I hope they make mummy's basic auto attack when the button is held down like they did with rockstar Destro fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 19:41
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