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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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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 03:15 |
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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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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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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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Add to that the one where
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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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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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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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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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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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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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