Arcade Survival Guide: Spin2Win

[Own]

This is a much simpler build and as such will have a much simpler guide. Refer to this guide if you want the intricacies of enemy attack patterns and other information, most of it you won't need: http://secretsofgrindea.com/forum/index.php?threads/arcade-survival-guide-shadow-assassin.3457/

Suggested Perks: Improved 2-handed sword, +Max HP, +Max HP%

Skill Requirements: Whirlslash. Um. I guess you have leftover points when Whirlslash hits Silver Charge, right? Maybe Protect? If you do pick Protect, ALWAYS charge and pre-cast it before moving into the next room. You will save a ton of damage over the course of the run.

Talent Options: +2% Attack Damage, +3% Crit Chance, +% Crit Damage, +EP.

Ideal Equipment: Same as Shadow Assassin, but now you want Smashlights, Slime Hammers and Axes.

Build order:

Spin. Spin spin spin. Spiiiiiiiin-spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin~.

Build talents in the order listed.

General Strategy:

For almost the entire run, all you want to do is wade into a group of enemies and quickly tap Whirlslash. You'll knock most of the enemies back and be able to completely control everything in the room, taking little to no damage and clearing rooms in record time. But there's something you probably want to practice: Attack-cancelling into Whirlslash. Attack and, immediately after doing damage, whirlslash. It'll increase your DPS significantly. Chickens make good practice dummies for this.

Ideally, though, you want to just mash Whirlslash until your EP empties near enemies, then run away or attack and chain into Whirlslash when you get enough EP back.

Remember - If you're playing this build, YOU control the room. With the tap of a button you either kill everything or send it flying, charge into a group of enemies and chew through them.

Enemy Survival Guide:

MOUNTAINS

Green Slime - Spin to win.

Rabby - You spinnin'? You winnin'.

Bee - Block with your shield, then shove it into the spincycle. If you wanna be fancy, go ahead and let a bunch of bees swipe at you, move down out of their range and spin them all in one go. Who needs shields?

Vilya - Hit-whirlslash, hit-whirlslash, shield. Boop. Hit-whirlslash, hit-whirlslash. Boop. Run away. Charge. Repeat until dead.

Helloweed - Same as Shadow Assassin, but run away if your shield is about to break since you attack slower. It does less damage when popping out of the ground than it does when swiping your shield.

Beehives - Casually win against the mobs with your spin, but if they don't die in one spin, ignore them and winspin all up in those beehives.

FORESTS

Red Slime - Combo a Spin into a Win.

Boar - Casually walk by in front of one and let it ram the air, then spin on it's head. If you can get it to self-stun against a wall? Even better.

Bloomo - Approach it with your shield up, then combo attack-whirlslashes until it dies.

Gigaslime - Again, combo attack-whirlslashes while avoiding being stepped on.It's HP will deplete rapidly. Any adds it spawns will die if they even get near you. Remember to shield when it tries to spin against you. Alas, it's spin doesn't come with a win and is therefore much less glorious than yours.

Black Ferrets - Easier than Shadow Assassin, you can spin Teddy and Freddy to death with ease. Then just fight Vilya normally, taking care to mostly attack her when she's self-stunned.

Zoo - Easiest fight around. You can charge up to Silver Whirlslash if you want, I think that knocks the boar back. Just avoid the White Rabby until it's RoidRage mode wears off.

HALLOWEEN WOODS

Jumpkins - You spin me round, right round. The more you can get in a single spin, the better.

Pumpkin Mages - Approach at an angle so they don't fireball you. Spin!

Scarecrows - A formidable foe against spinsters everywhere. They don't stun or get knocked back. Except maybe by tier 2? You should save them for last, or let them take a swing at the air like the boar and whirlslash them down.

Ghosts - Don't bother swiping at them, it's too slow. Spin them instead for instant damage.

Terrorweed - Surprisingly handy against this boss! Let the two scarecrows boop your shield and spinwin 'em down quick right after. Follow the Shadow Assassin guide as normal, but now you can spin down all the nearby thorns passively. Chaining hits and spins is a good idea.

Pumpkin King - His Jumpkin adds are pointless, you'll kill them all just by spinning on him. It's somewhat harder to avoid the bats here because attacking and spinning are slower than outright Shadowcloning, but just be more careful. Treat him like a scarecrow with a spell, that's all.

 

[Own]

FLYING FORTRESS

Summoning Crystal - Ignore everything and go stand by this, spam spin until it's dead or you're out of EP. Then just wail on it. Hopefully everything nearby has been cut to ribbons in your whirlwinding fury.

Brawler Bot - Bringing fists to a spinfight? Twirl 'em down.

Robo Eye- Still annoying, especially if you attack normally since they like to run. So don't attack. Shield their volley, mindful of the curve of it, then rush in to rock it like a hurricane.

Crystals - Every single one of these you can spin down easily.

Pecko - Actually dangerous. It cares not for your knockback or your stuns. In fact, does Silver Charge even phase it? Hrm. Good thing you can easily Perfect Guard it's triple-peck attack and get a free Silver Charge off on it. I wouldn't advise normally attacking and leaving yourself open.

Phaseman - Heavily scripted, fight as per Shadow Assassin.

Summoning Portal - Hilariously easy compared to Shadow Assassin. Smack the crystal and spin on it at your leisure. If Brawler Bots come nearby, they'll just keep dying. The Eyes are annoying, but if you're lucky you can get a perfect guard off of one with your shield. Free crit! Ignore the crystals unless they decide to shield the portal.

GUNDAM - See those two big fists? Ping-pong between them. Hit-spin one, run over, hit-spin the other, but be careful not to kill them before your EP regenerates to full. Smack one normally for the lasthit and hit-spin the head down. Don't jump off unless you can get it under 50%, even if it means getting hit. Repeat to win. You can knock it out of it's initial crazy-spam-mode by reducing the fists to 0% in the middle of it's volley, if you're lucky. Survive it's last stand as per Shadow Assassin.

WINTER

Welcome to Spin2Win domination. Everything here is vulnerable to knockback and stunning. Frolic through the icy meadows, tralalaling the woodland critters into pieces with your spinnage.

Ice Slimes - Spin it.

Snowball Frostlings - Shield the snowball if you can't dodge it, then move in for the spinning.

Thief Frostlings - How nice, they come right up to you and quick for their spin-death.

Gift - Still just a slime in disguise. Spin it.

Present - Trick it into firing it's bombs in one direction, then alley-oop around the side to spin it and hopefully a bunch of others around. Hopefully you can group them up.

Marino - I wouldn't advise normal attacking unless you have a 100% clear window, he's a nimble little bastard. If he gets one hit on you, he'll combo it into many more. Show him that all the training, elegance and swiftness in the world doesn't matter against a barbarian ballerina with a big stick twirling around him. Avoid his super attacks as per Shadow Assassin.

Toy Factory - Just get all the gifts and presents together and spin them down in one go. Ignore the machine, let the trains handle it. You can do extra damage while waiting for the train to come in.

SEASON TEMPLE

Knights - Don't bother normally attacking any of them, they'll put their shields up. We hate shields. Just casually spin them down while you're on your way to kill the real threats - the Wizards.

Wizards - They like to run and not stick together, which makes them smart. Or maybe they're just running because you've spun so much by now you're surely a little green in the cheeks and bound to send some 'projectiles' back their way. Ew. Chase them down, they'll do a little bit of damage to you while you take them down one by one.

Empowered Knights - For the most part, simple to deal with. Just rapidly spin them down, you don't want their shields up. Orange Knight can possibly out-spin you, so shield him back and give him a taste of real spinnage.

Empowered Wizards - Green is probably less dangerous here because, honestly, if you have a bunch of enemies with you inside of some thorns... you're not stuck in there with them. They're stuck in there with YOU. Plus you can passively swat the thorns down while spinnage. Orange Wizard might try to teach you how to spin better with some hurricanes. Reward him by showing him what you've learned. If someone has Blue Wizard icecubes on them, just spin them down from a safe distance.

Hydras - Same as Shadow Assassin.

Triple Hydras - Slower DPS than Shadow Assassin, but still follows the same strategy. Hope you packed your Frostling Boots, those socks from floor 1 are probably full of holes by now from all your pirouetting.

Summer and Autumn - As per Shadow Assassin, but this time you can kick down any thorns that pop up near you easily. You can charge up a Tier 2 Whirlslash if you're waiting for a fairy to come near you, which is nice.

Winter - Sooo. How good has your spinning been? You got about 5-6 HP potions saved up? 'Cause you're gonna need them. Run around like a chicken with it's head cut off following Winter, chugging a Gale, Energy or Attack potion whenever one runs out. You're just going to keep spinning and spinning as fast as you can while avoiding as much damage as you can, and casting Protect whenever you have a moment where you can't spin on Winter. If you're feeling cheeky you can try to cheat the ice maze using my strategy in Shadow Assassin, but otherwise navigate the ice maze. Yes, it's ridiculously hard without taking damage, but that's what your HP potions are for. With enough spinning to drill a hole into the center of the earth and a TON of luck maybe you can twirl your way to floor 13 and finally claim your 2Win, as promise in the build description.

 

[Teddy]

This is both helpful and hilarious

 

[Own]

This is both helpful and hilarious

Seriously, though, what happened to that ridiculous machinegun snowball boss battle? Did you guys pull it to rebalance it or something, or is it perma-gone?

Also, is it my imagination or are there no yetis in Winter outside of challenge rooms?

(Also-also, pls buff Summer Knight, he brings much shame upon his family.)

(Also-also-also if you wanna make Gifts not be Slimes-In-Disguise, you could make them occasionally spit gingerbread cookies or something at nearby wounded enemies to heal them. Or make it so that Elite Gifts spawn a random enemy from between Pillar Mountains to Flying Fortress when they die. Surprise! What a wonderful gift!

I feel so bad for them, they appear alongside Ice Slimes and they're so much weaker than Ice Slimes. ;_; Power up the chumps!)

 

[Teddy]

When I banned the Bossling from the realms of men, its final words were "I'll be back"...

I dun goofed and accidentally didn't add Yetis to the Winterland spawning pool! They should be roaming the tundra in the coming patch!

We agree that the Summer Knight is pretty damn lackluster compared to his brothers, and we're probably going to give him a boost at some point. Something akin to your suggestions in that other thread sounds pretty good, I think! We'll see how he restores his family's honor...

Haha, your elite gift "ability" is honestly pretty brilliant

There will be a few hopefully significant changes to the Winterland floors coming in the next patch, all of which should raise the difficulty of the floors a bit. We've got it on our radar to take a look at tweaking the Season Change floors before Steam Early Access as well, to have a more sensible difficulty scaling!

 

[Own]

I think adding yetis to the spawn pool will do enough to raise the difficulty level on it's own, yowch. 3-4 have their Boar, 5-6 has Helloweeds, 7-8 has Pecko, 9-10 has Yeti and 11-12 have hydras.

Big, beefy enemies who control the room and don't care about stunlocks, knockbacks or powerful hits. Yeti is probably the hardest of them by far. I hope you guys don't make it too painful. Imagining a slippery room with a yeti, ice spikes and blizzards in it alone makes me grimace.

 

[GarlicJelly]

I hope you guys don't make it too painful. Imagining a slippery room with a yeti, ice spikes and blizzards in it alone makes me grimace.

But if you follow the guide you will have kept your spike shoes so you won't be slipping around.

 

[Own]

But if you follow the guide you will have kept your spike shoes so you won't be slipping around.

You're usually guaranteed to get a pair by the time you leave Winter, like a 90% chance it seems. If you encounter a big, bad slippery room early on and have no shoes, well, ouch.

 

[GarlicJelly]

You're usually guaranteed to get a pair by the time you leave Winter, like a 90% chance it seems. If you encounter a big, bad slippery room early on and have no shoes, well, ouch.

Well wouldn't that mean that you have to focus the yetis first? I don't know how much damage the spin2win build does but I would bet that you wouldn't have a problem with yetis with this build. The shadow build on the other hand would have to kite and use the Spirit Slash to avoid death. Insect Swarm would do it's thing without a problem I think. Unless you take a challenge from the shady guy and get like 4 yetis you should be fine.

 

[Own]

When I said 'Blizzards' in my post, I meant the kind that Winter does in his boss battle. What I was dreading was being stuck in a small cube of non-blizzarding space, fighting off a yeti and other enemies. You haven't reached the Winterlands, so you don't know how dangerous a blizzarding room is if you don't clear it fast even without yetis.

I'm not saying I don't want yetis added, I'm just saying it will be extremely difficult to kill or survive a yeti or two in a heavily blizzarding room, especially if it has ice spikes and slippery floors.

Anyhow, back on topic, it looks like I was right.

Winter's Arcade Blizzard Maze can be cheated.



This is with Silver Charge Protect on. My shield survived with about 1/3 to 1/2 HP, allowing me to tank the blizzard and bypass the maze entirely. This made dealing with him SO much more tolerable, I never dipped near dying range. You only get to do about 1/5th to 1/6th of his HP by doing this with Spin2Win, but I imagine it's infinitely better using Shadow Assassin or Insect Swarm+Earth Spike.

The second time he did it, I didn't have a DEF Potion and could only cast a basic Protect before putting up by shield. My Shield was left with about 5% HP, leaving me with I think 117 HP. Cutting it close, there.

Y'know what? Go ahead and make Winter the final boss of Arcade mode if you want. It'll be fun.

 

[Teddy]

Y'know what? Go ahead and make Winter the final boss of Arcade mode if you want. It'll be fun.

Yes, especially since the maze summoning winds closest to him now have double the duration!

Sorry

 

[Teddy]

His window of vulnerability has also been increased by a ton, though, so you should get several seconds of good pounding after you've made it through his maze! If you're fast it should almost be comparable to skipping the maze using this DEF+Shield strat, even.

 

[Own]

Pfft, this is why figuring out sneaky speedrunny strats against bosses of games in development is pointless. The developers just patch over speedrun / sneaky strats, you gotta save that stuff for post-release.

Y'know what, though? That's fine. You can add all the duration you want. I will hoard enough spells, potions and equipment to have more DEF than god! Ahahahahaha! I'm crazy with min/maxing!

 

[Teddy]

Yeah, it's a tough life breaking the game when the builder's still around

It wasn't this particular thread that prompted the change, though, so you don't have to feel super-stalked!

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if you managed to run this strat anyway, at least partially, considering how healthy your shield was. Throw some perfect guarding in there and it will probably cost an acceptable amount of HP to be able to knock him down! Since his opening window has been increased, the reward for pulling this off has been increased as well, after all. With Daigo-level perfect guarding, maybe the shield will even survive the entire prolonged duration?

I'm a bit torn on the topic of patching exploits in general. I usually pick my stance depending on the level of skill or planning it would take to execute! These shield strats are kind of just on the wrong side of that line for me, in that they are a clever idea, but a bit too easy to execute well.

In a sense, I imagine myself having trouble with this boss, looking up strats and try to simulate if I'd go "dude, that's bullshit" or "man, that's awesome". I think that if you pull off this trick now, it will be so extreme and "hats off" that it crosses the line (for me, subjectively) of what's a cool strat instead of a cheesy gimmick.

Also, Winter will be the gatekeeper of Arcade Mode for quite some time to come, which heavily influences my stance on this! If you'd find a way to totally cheese Giga Slime... well, you don't have to worry about my patch hammer there

 

[GarlicJelly]

It wasn't this particular thread that prompted the change, though, so you don't have to feel super-stalked!

I'm guessing this is my doing.... Crap... Should have kept it a secret. :/

 

[Own]

I'm guessing this is my doing.... Crap... Should have kept it a secret. :/

I was already experimenting with it to write strategies about how to exploit it here. http://secretsofgrindea.com/forum/index.php?threads/gameplay-vine-teleport-buggery.4104/ Don't worry about it.

 

[GarlicJelly]

I was already experimenting with it to write strategies about how to exploit it here. http://secretsofgrindea.com/forum/index.php?threads/gameplay-vine-teleport-buggery.4104/ Don't worry about it.

When I found this about 2 days after they released the winter patch I should have just kept it to myself. I would have beaten everyone's speedrunning times with this trick up my sleeve. http://secretsofgrindea.com/forum/index.php?threads/version-0-599a.2687/page-2

 

[Own]

Thaaat'll learn me for not reading page 2 of a patch notes topic, agh. I could've been exploiting this all along!

 

[Own]

News from the Frontlines:

Teddy is a big jerk and he makes me sad.

In other news, I spent 4 HP potions and a ton of life figuring out the attack pattern of the Frostling Boss fight Arcade. I believe if you kill one of them the other turns into an Elite boss, so watch out. I don't know how the Elite Frostling behaves.

Frostling: Priority #1, ignore the Block. You have one good opening to damage him. Step 1: He runs after you to basic attack you. Step 2: He go into the middle of the room to Machinegun here. Circle the edge of the room to avoid this. Step 3: He'll lob a volley of large snowballs at you. Just run away from them, stop, immediately turn to face him and put your shield up. When you see the red circle around yourself, you'll know he's coming. After he bonks off your shield, you have a good opening for a charged Whirlslash. You can also try to sneak in some extra spins while he chases after you before going back to Phase 1.

Cube: Once he gets elite, he gets pissed. But when you figure out the window of opening, he's easy. Hop. Hop. Hop. There, that's your window to safely charge a whirlslash and then run away. He'll do a massive stomp after that, sending out shockwaves, then cycle back to three hops.

Marino: I thought when Teddy said Marino would be joined by blizzards, he meant like... I don't know. Two blizzards would cover the sides of the room, shrinking your ability to move. Or one would blow through at a time, aimed at you. The blizzards are EVERYWHERE, all the time and you have a small cube of space to work inside of. 90% of the damage I took from blizzards, 10% I took from Marino. Both times it was because I physically could not keep track of Marino and the blizzards at the same time. The origins of the blizzards are nearly impossibleto see with all the other blizzards blowing around on their own, mix in Marino trying to combo-wombo your face and this is a battle of ridiculous levels. I survived it with 17 HP.

The difficulty of this battle would be marginally improved if... I don't know. You have little red /!\ signs appearing on the sides of the battlefield, designating which way the blizzards were coming in from? Something you can keep track of out of the corner of your eye, instead of searching for blizzardy winds within a SCREEN of blizzardy winds.

Anyhow, the same strategy as before applies. Just... make much, much smaller, more careful moves. Up, down, up, down by 2 steps at a time to dodge Marino's ultimate move.



In more relieving news, you can still survive Winter's blizzard assault with Silver Charge Protect, a DEF potion and every defense item you can get your hands on. Who knew Protect was so handy? Most people ignore it outright, but dang, if you're running a solo-skill run and can afford to get it to Silver, you'll save a ton of HP and gold over the course of the run.



Of course, with so little HP and no HP pots, well... one too many of Winter's spikey assaults is hard to avoid. So hard to track where they're going when there's a screen of them and fists raining down on you.

 

[Teddy]

Maybe a blinking !-mark would be warranted! It's a bit tough to spot the initial gusts when keeping track of other things, for sure.

A tip in the meantime: when the storms are maxed out (giving you only a square to stand in), a spot opening up next to you always means that a storm is going to hit the place that was previously safe!

EDIT: Well, there you go! Apparently you can still cheese that old bastard with the shield, and as promised, I'm leaving it in

Regarding his ice tremors, we have in the "maybe"-pile to rework them a bit. Currently, two spikes appear in the general direction the rest are going to go, there's a short pause, and then the line appears. The rework suggestion would be to have an effect trail show exactly where the line is going to go, have a much shorter pause and then unleash the spike rows.

The internal discussion is in a bit of a stalemate (after prototyping the second option). In controlled circumstances, the old spikes are more interesting because you still need to react to them since you only know roughly where they are headed. During his chain-attack, though, it gets really tricky to spot the new ice spikes telegraphing the line direction. Sometimes it's probably borderline impossible with everything else going on at the same time.

Since you've whopped Winter's frozen bum more than most, what is your personal experience with the tremor-chain? Specifically the readability of the attack. Do you feel you get caught in impossible situations due to how the line of spikes appear?