Sipho
Patashu 25 Nov, 2018 @ 4:04am
Thoughts and opinions on each of the breeds / A guide
So, I have been defeating Frakir over and over again with each of the four species, using exclusively parts innate to their breed. No unnatural parts, ex: all parts not seen on any species, having spikes on a Cra'Than, etc.

Rather than making a unique build, the game is more about understanding what makes each of the species great so that you can adapt for your fights properly as well as adapt based on the situation and overcome the limitations of the classes.

From best to worst in my opinion, with "defeating Frakir" being the most important criteria but not to the point of excluding other criteria.

1) Advena. (The species you start with)

Advena comes first as the easiest class to beat Frakir with. Mostly because of poison. Because of how big Frakir is, he'll get damaged in a lot of places by poison, counteracting his ability to heal with his Cra'Than structures... In fact, it's so effective that even if you hug him and fight him like a melee, you can still win the damage race via poison. Poison can attack any side of him as well... Spikes are no slouch either. They should be able to tear through his claw-side and leech-side.

I find that Advena's fully flexible movement allows it to adapt to any fighting style, keep its build compact and regardless of movement positioning, maintain an astounding turning speed and handling. Since radials provide movement in all directions, you almost never have a weak spot in your mobility or handling, unless you don't use a lot of them. The only drawback is that you need a lot to go fast, but that's compensated by letting you place them absolutely anywhere.

It makes sense that Advena is this strong. All new players experience Advena first and you only encounter the race in the final area before Frakir.

Advena, but with spikes and no poison?

Yes, you just need a decent amount of spikes and you'll melt through his claw side. Spikes can be placed very close together in a number of ways due to their narrow size. Don't let the small cut down in speed scare you, ranged attackers rely on speed but as a melee, you don't need as much.

2) Buginis. (The pink one associated with plants and projectiles)

Buginis is the second easiest. Two long ranged playstyles, poison again! Structures being a bit frailer discourages meleeing him, but Buginis has no melee options to begin with and if using the other attack option, may lack the energy regen to stay in contact with him and fight him the same way melees can. Because of this, I prefer the poison mines for their regen and slight knock back.

You can pile up the poison mines in large clusters, 'then' lead Frakir through them.

Slightly less flexible movement, which is compensated by the fact that it's cheaper, offsetting the need to create a T-shaped structure in order to have some of them pointing backwards.

3) Cra'than. (Meat robot)

Sudden jump in difficulty. Instead of having a choice or being locked into long ranged, you're instead locked into melee... A straight up melee with Frakir and friends can lose a fair amount of points, or even be deadly.

There are redeeming qualities though as this game does its best to balance melee only races, some qualities are a little less obvious than others.

Firstly, being able to heal in two different ways allows it to wear down Frakir's allies without dying in the process.

The movement is restrictive but powerful enough so that you only need four at minimum. I usually use it to optimise forwards and backwards movement. Though I won without it, using some for rotation could help against Frakir's attempts to spin around, then again, leeches have a light grappling effect.

Then there are problems:

The utility, sizzler, seems great, but it isn't consistent enough because it doesn't stun everything in its range, it's one more part to lose which can lose you growth points faster and it may take up a spot on your weapons. Sizzlers are still necessary to keep your energy regen up, though.

Claws and spikes out-DPS leeches, Frakir's projectile side has pushers to keep you away and Frakir's leech side wins by disrupting your healing through poison.

The answer is to attack his claw side anyway. The twist is that leeches have surprisingly good range, they can stretch a lot. This can let you disarm enough claws and sizzlers to then ram right in and attempt to severe the rest of him so you don't have to fight the rest of him. You don't even need sizzlers to do this to him.

The only other option I can think of is stunning his leech side so that you can hit and run against it without getting damaged as much and countering the heal he would get from leeching.

4) Saenus Beefuorus (The one from the first area)

Melee only again, no healing, most limited movement, utility is pretty weak when it can't be paired with weapons from other classes or used in hit-n-run.

Being melee only brings obvious problems again. You have to melee Frakir and his potentially spike wielding friends with a shorter ranged weapon, ugh.

But this time, you have no healing and if you don't form a certain T-shape to place backwards facing jets, all of your movements against faster foes enforce commitment.

The redeeming qualities? High DPS from a reliable melee weapon that can damage race Frakir's leech side, shutting down his healing and keeping the poison damage from accumulating over too much time... Kinda funny how Saenus and Cra'Than counter each other depending on which one is the AI and which one is the player. And the powerful movement lets you lodge into Frakir if you infiltrate one of his sides.

And the structure's ability is better than nothing. It can be used whilst poisoned to interrupt a single poison damage tick and compared to the other structure ability, it is consistent and evenly distributed, ensuring that a weak part doesn't get neglected then lost. Though I still see it as the weaker structure ability.

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Closing thoughts: Even though I think that the classes are not equal, I think this is fair. Rogue likes tend to have characters of not only different playstyles, but also different overall strength levels, like binding of isaac's azazel and the lost.

Advena has to be strong because it's the first race and Buginis exists to ensure that the player has tried a long ranged playstyle, in case they chose spikes on Advena, while the other two exist as the game's challenging characters.

Frakir is still beatable on all of the classes, possibly consistently with better strategy and execution, even though his allies could potentially mess up your Saenus and Cra'Than runs by stabbing you with spikes, landing good hits or blowing mines at you with pushers.
Last edited by Patashu; 26 Nov, 2018 @ 10:52pm
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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
Dominas  [developer] 25 Nov, 2018 @ 4:20am 
Awesome write-up. Thank you for playing and learning this much about Sipho. This brings us a lot of joy!
Patashu 25 Nov, 2018 @ 2:28pm 
I hope that others do the same and explore the game thoroughly by beating Frakir multiple times on each breed with only innate parts.

It's great that you balanced the game enough such that Frakir is beatable on all breeds, but at different difficulties and playstyles, while making sure that the enemies using the better parts of the game. ex: Spikes and Cra'than structures, are not unbeatable.

Were these the skills that you expected players to obtain?
Last edited by Patashu; 26 Nov, 2018 @ 12:56am
Patashu 26 Nov, 2018 @ 10:53pm 
I just beat Frakir with Advena, true parts only, but no poison.

This has been added to the guide. There is a very interesting arrangement of spikes that I would suggest using that lets you fit five spikes together in three columns without collision and you can add two more spikes relatively nearby, again without collision or adding more structure zooids.
Last edited by Patashu; 26 Nov, 2018 @ 11:16pm
Brioche 4 Dec, 2018 @ 7:38pm 
I'd say Frakir is easiest with Cra'than. That's the class I beat him with most cleanly. Latching on the part between the projectile and leach side works well. Poison can be negated by healing and before I knew it, I was leeching his core and he died. I've beaten him with Advena too, but Frakir's healing negates a simple hit and run strategy, so I went in spikes blazing and only just beat him, reduced to a single spike. Close with Buginis, but Buginis has poorer mobility making hit and run harder. Still yet to beat him with Saenus Beeforous. Beeforous is shut down hard by his minions's spikes. Innate parts only.
Patashu 4 Dec, 2018 @ 10:16pm 
Cra'than has some trouble with spiked "Frakir friends" as well, since spikes have more range and they damage fast enough to destroy leeches. I suppose I could try to exploit his blindspots even more, but keep in mind that half or more of my deaths in Lair of Frakir was to his allies - Or his allies weakened me enough in order to then die to Frakir, not having enough spare growth points to regrow lost weapons if I lose any, or movement in order to stay engaged with him properly.

Blindspots are not always easy to aim at either. Sometimes the ideal blindspot is rotated in a weird location, like behind him. It's possible to win often with more practice, but I don't think it's good for long win streaks.

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His healing is quick because he has so much energy regen, but his healing isn't fast enough to outheal damage from pretty much any attack in the game and any destroyed parts cannot be recovered by Crathan structure healing... It's why it's possible to hit and run against him with just about anything, provided that you can get away from him to complete the "running" part and you don't attack him too infrequently if you use poison. It's also important to use a *lot* of poison if you do so, as you need to poison him a lot to offset his healing, cause it to fault and ultimately lose parts which gradually wins you the battle. Slowly, but absolutely.

And of course, if he loses that energy regen and/or loses the crathan parts of him directly, he loses his healing in boat loads.

Same applies to everything else. As long as he loses parts, you're winning. Don't be too fast because that takes from your weapons and if you're too slow, you might as well melee him.

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Try more practice with Advena. I promise and guarantee that it is possible to win 100% of the time and never lose, even if you use only true parts and leave out either poison or spikes. So reliable that you could win streak Advena.

For spikes, I found that being fast with a few spikes didn't work against Frakir and many other parts of the game, but being slow-ish with a lot of spikes melts through him like butter, even if you don't attack between two major parts of him: https://imgur.com/a/HWwi2PQ - I did this multiple times in a row and the last time I did it, I basically took nothing in terms of damage.

It looks like it would collide, but the spikes actually don't. Their hitboxes are not at the same place at the same time and even so, they always have a hit box.

For poison, make sure you have at least 4 poison shooters. This allows you to regenerate energy faster than you can attack and cover him in poison, especially if he spins... I still remember my first run, where I melee'd him with poison and won, and that was also my first run of the game. It helps that utilities have less combined mass+drag than weapons.

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Buginis' mobility is cheap and it is slightly stronger in the direction it is pointed in, like a jet. Just form a "T-shape" so you can point them backwards. At least four of them should point backwards.

Further more, poison mines have slight knock back. You can pile up poison mines in large amounts then lead him through it... Just make sure that again, you have a lot of poison mine layers for energy regen, so that you can constantly deploy mines to achieve this tactic and boost at the same time. Being able to boost off of this energy regen makes up for their combined drag and mass, even though they already have less than weapons.

After all, I rate Buginis' utility higher than its weapon.

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Beeforous... Kinda hard to explain how exactly how to get through spikes. Either you wait for an enemy's energy regen to pipe down and try to carefully bite them off with the edge of the claw's hitbox. Or you try a careful arrangement of multiple jets and try to bite them to death at angles where there are no spikes.

He's pretty much guaranteed to lose a part or two, so the least he can do is reduce damage as much as possible and recover off of those spare resources in the corners.
Last edited by Patashu; 4 Dec, 2018 @ 10:42pm
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