kyubone
Senior Squid
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- Jan 31, 2024
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- the writhing primordial chaos
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hey y'all, haven't seen a thread like this go up yet so i'm making myself the center of attention seeing who else out there has been as obsessed with crafting 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓹𝓮𝓻𝓯𝓮𝓬𝓽 𝓻𝓾𝓷 as i have! so far i've cleared the spire at least once with each palette and more than once with a few of them, and my goal here is to compile some thoughts and strategies to help people lower their times and clear their runs more efficiently. my pb is 16:45 igt with the charger palette, but even i know there's a LOT of time left to save and i'm hoping some of you are willing to share your perspectives while i dive into preliminary run optimization.
if you have not yet finished the dlc and are wanting to go in blind, consider this your final warning for any (very light) spoilers that may follow. this thread is strictly focused on gameplay, so story spoilers should be avoided wherever possible. however, some discussion of palettes, color chips, floor layouts, and bosses will naturally be required. safe browsing, kids!
all good? great. let's do this.
1. Palette + Color Chip Selection
first thing's first: the charger palette is kinda broken. not only does it boast high damage and piercing at full charge with no prior upgrades, it also packs a very impactful special in triple inkstrike. you get access to good damage, good range, and a reasonable amount of crowd control with charge pierce/ink mine/tristrike, making it not only adept at deleting important objectives but also well-rounded enough to handle almost any floor layout. (as a splatling player, seeing a charger be THIS good disgusts me, but i digress.) it also gets access to a slew of fantastic color chips, some of which it shares with heavy splatling, which can turn the base charger from a just alright main weapon into the second coming of grizzco charger. depending on your rng, you can blow up portals with a few long-range shots at full charge and still have half of your ink tank in reserve if you need to make a clean getaway. this thing is not okay. it's incredible.
before i get into my thought process on color chip choices, i'm gonna set up a good ol'-fashioned color grading system for all the options i wanna talk about! iykyk. the color grades are simple:
my general priorities go something like this:
to be continued in the next post!
if you have not yet finished the dlc and are wanting to go in blind, consider this your final warning for any (very light) spoilers that may follow. this thread is strictly focused on gameplay, so story spoilers should be avoided wherever possible. however, some discussion of palettes, color chips, floor layouts, and bosses will naturally be required. safe browsing, kids!
all good? great. let's do this.
1. Palette + Color Chip Selection
first thing's first: the charger palette is kinda broken. not only does it boast high damage and piercing at full charge with no prior upgrades, it also packs a very impactful special in triple inkstrike. you get access to good damage, good range, and a reasonable amount of crowd control with charge pierce/ink mine/tristrike, making it not only adept at deleting important objectives but also well-rounded enough to handle almost any floor layout. (as a splatling player, seeing a charger be THIS good disgusts me, but i digress.) it also gets access to a slew of fantastic color chips, some of which it shares with heavy splatling, which can turn the base charger from a just alright main weapon into the second coming of grizzco charger. depending on your rng, you can blow up portals with a few long-range shots at full charge and still have half of your ink tank in reserve if you need to make a clean getaway. this thing is not okay. it's incredible.
before i get into my thought process on color chip choices, i'm gonna set up a good ol'-fashioned color grading system for all the options i wanna talk about! iykyk. the color grades are simple:
- gold options are universally great. when presented with a choice between one of these and most other color chips in the game currently, i'll be taking these. i consider color chips with these ratings to be run makers and run winners to the point where i will reset floors and vending machines multiple times just to have a shot at acquiring them early.
- blue options are excellent and usually round out my builds to help them be more versatile in certain mission types or encounters. they're powerful when stacked and useful tools to have, making them very high-priority options that will benefit just about any kind of run.
- green options are good, but i find their usage is either somewhat situational compared to other options or they lack the immediate value of other color chips. i certainly don't feel penalized for picking these, but i'm always taking them after i have other, more significant upgrades since they're much more dependent on having other color chips first anyway.
- red options are bad for some reason or another. these feel like a trap and will almost never get picked since side order has a veritable cornucopia of more useful color chips to pick from. hard pass on these, thanks.
my general priorities go something like this:
- quick charge is god and that's all there is to it. every single level of quick charge i can get in a run is guaranteed value for charger. less time charging means more dps, which means faster room clears, boss fights, and overall runs. i often reroll pretty aggressively early on if i'm not finding quick charge chips, but it's so good that i'm willing to run slower rooms like zones and turbine escort just to get this upgrade. use it, love it, cherish it. like most other fire-rate upgrades, this does eat into your ink tank pretty fast, so you'll need some kind of ink efficiency chips to make sure you're not constantly sitting in ink waiting to recharge, but MAN is this worth it. even if this is the only main upgrade i'm able to farm in a run, it's still a good run to me.
- lucky bomb drop feels like one of the best chips in the game to me right now. with very little investment, i can get squid game's version of will-o-the-wisp/ceremonial dagger from ror2, setting off massive chain reactions after splatting 1-3 enemies and keeping floors clear of mobs so i can focus on completing objectives faster. pierce on full charge is already pretty solid for dealing with crowds, but this pushes crowd control to new heights. i almost never reroll floors/machines just to buy it, but when it's an available option, i'm always going with this. after reaching rank 2 for 30% lucky bomb spawn rate, this goes down to a blue option for me - still amazing, just more of a bonus than a priority (especially if i'm still missing other key chips that i want).
- main range is particularly notable on charger, as i believe one chip gives you a 40% range increase over base charger and it continues to stack very well with more investment. this is a huge boon for runaway enemies in particular, as they don't start running away unless you (a) approach them, (b) aim at them within your effective range, or (c) shoot/throw something/pop a special in their general direction. with a bit of main range investment, i can put myself behind cover or at a distance, charge a shot, and then flick them from a position that lets me quickly move to the next enemy. it's also quite useful in boss fights, especially the pinging marciale/ball boss, since i can easily take advantage of the absurd range to do safe, reliable damage and wrap the fight up faster. if i've already gotten some main damage (distant) chips, this becomes a gold option for me, at least until i've invested 1-2 ranks.
- main damage (distant) is probably the more worthwhile of the 2 range-based damage buffs for charger. i try to position a bit further away since charger can often find spots near the center of a given floor to hit multiple objectives anyway, and this is just an additional reward for doing so. it feels extra-useful against stationary bosses like asynchronous rondo/layer boss (charger can continue sniping the rotating weak points from underneath its body) and overlorder (charger can delete the spawner tentacles and annihilate the boss without having to move too much). it's always useful since the main benefit of playing charger is being able to handle objectives the moment they enter your effective range, which other, closer-range weapons can't do nearly as well without investing heavily into their subs or specials. if i've already gotten some main range chips, this becomes a gold option for me.
- ink saver (main) is an excellent choice to offset charger's UNQUENCHABLE THIRST for your ink tank. quick charge is an insane dps boost at the cost of absolutely gutting your ink efficiency, and this is one of the most straightforward ways to mitigate that tradeoff. a couple ranks in ink saver (main) go a long way toward faster objective completion on normal floors and drastically reducing downtime in boss fights. it's a simple, practical bonus that reduces the effective cost of using charger's strongest upgrades, making this a solid priority in most runs for me - but i'm also not devastated if i can't get much of it either.
- ink attack size might just be fooling me into rating it higher, but since charger already has pierce on full charge and struggles to paint, this upgrade is pulling double duty by helping with both of those traits. bigger projectiles means more enemies are getting hit behind your initial target, and the wider shots paint a little better as well (though that's hardly the main consideration here). this can make the tight aim required on some runaway enemy floors more forgiving, which is a nice bonus. i don't normally take more than 2 ranks in this to get to 235% size, but i've never regretted taking it or felt like it was a good idea to skip out on entirely. i'll keep testing it just to be sure, though.
- poison ink would normally be rated much higher for me since it does fantastic damage to crowds, but given how effective charger is at dealing with those anyway (especially with some of the other color chips mentioned above), i feel comfortable rating this lower. the additional chip damage to enemies is less valuable since charger's paint is pretty subpar, so i have a harder time setting up to use this than other weapons do without investing heavily into better turf coverage... and that takes away from other, better options. if i've already gotten close to finishing my build in a given run, this is a good option, but i'm not going to pick it early on when i have much higher priorities to worry about. if i'm able to swap ink mine for sprinkler at a vending machine, though, this becomes a much more attractive option since sprinkler remedies a lot of charger's paint problems. then again, i could just be shooting things instead of throwing my sub weapon...
- sticky ink occupies the same spot as poison ink for me. it's a good option even when i don't necessarily want it, but less good on charger due to other options being so much better. no need to type all that out twice. like poison ink, this also becomes significantly better with sprinkler since the sub paints a lot better than charger normally can, enabling you to actually benefit from this chip's crowd control.
- hindrance damage is the third of the three stooges of paint control. it's good, but better on weapons that can actually paint. i will say, however, that it lacks the appeal on sprinkler that the other two crowd-control options above have since it's just a damage increase to enemies on your own ink - and charger doesn't really struggle with that anyway. it's not passively splatting them like poison ink or slowing them down like stinky ink, so even though it's not a bad option by any means, it's not putting in much work for me either. good synergy with the other two chips listed above, but still generally skippable.
- ink-bottle drop is one of the easiest ways to mitigate quick charge's heavy ink consumption, provided rng decides to cooperate. the only reason i've rated this lower than ink saver (main) is the randomness involved, but since i've never had an issue building up lucky chains during my charger runs and usually end up taking 1 or 2 luck chips anyway, playing around items has never felt unreliable or gimmicky to me. in fact, item-based runs have been some of my most successful runs ever! expect to see a lot of free ink refills dropping when paired with other luck chips. pairs very well with lucky bomb drop but is still worth investing in on its own. becomes even better next to other luck-based upgrades.
- disc-piece drop is exceptionally powerful in floors with longer, time-gated objectives like zones and turbine escort. the problem is that i try to avoid those when possible, so i'll rarely get much mileage out of this chip as a result. it's still potent and the step-off song is really good at clearing rooms and buying time to focus on other objectives, though i wouldn't rate it super high on charger in particular since it's already so good at wave clear with piercing shots. gains much more value when paired with other lucky upgrades if you can find them.
- max lucky chain seems to give more up-front value than lucky chain window on charger. when one piercing shot can take down an entire swarm of enemies, i'm much less concerned with fitting multiple splats into a small window of time. by comparison, max lucky chain enables charger to reach staggering chain numbers with its piercing shots and push the bounds of absurdity if i can squeeze in other upgrades that facilitate chain-reaction wave clear. has great synergy with lucky bomb drop and the other options in this section; on its own, this is still valuable but much less so if i'm not trying to farm specific lucky drops.
- drone splat bomb isn't a terribly high priority for me, but it's nice supplemental damage even in the worst-case scenario of only getting 1 rank in it. the bomb detonates on contact with portals and boss weak points, plus it's a net positive in the early game if i can't find other, better crowd control options since it never stops being useful later in the run. out of all the drone options, i'm most likely to take this one since it's easier to pick up and use than something like drone wail or inkstrike. (i am interested in testing drone inkstrike further, though, so take this with a grain of salt.) also a great way to get reliable access to splat bombs with a few ranks in it, assuming the vending machines aren't being kind with their secondary options.
- homing shots is one of the few upgrades that, in my opinion, make charger strictly worse. why do i want my shots to suddenly swerve and hit an enemy 2 feet to the left of the portal or boss weak point i was aiming at? i don't! thanks a lot, game! homing shots can absolutely be good on other weapons with higher fire rates, but this is a guaranteed skip from me in every charger run.
to be continued in the next post!