#niche knights

[leithanienwnt]

This is a big one. My very first time niching a CC, and I pushed it to the absolute limit. I'll break it down below:

So this is only 510, but it's way harder than the 620 I did with my full roster (and the 500 I did with the niche before this, but I'll go over that later). That's a common thing with niching because it just doesn't give you as many options (and honestly, that's kind of the point), but it's actually not just my operators that are different. The thing about niching this cc is that your niche can easily just lock you out of a huge number of tags. Without a vanguard, I can't take any dp related risks; without enough guards or casters to be able to just rely on one or the other, I can't take the class bans; without more than one unit that has offensive recovery, and relying on ranged units who have their non reed tiles banned, I can't take the sp down tags; etc. Add the fact that those things break set bonuses and lock me out of a number of other tags that my niche might be able to do, and I'm very limited in what I can take. Because of this, the only way I can maximise my score is by pumping as many points as possible into making the enemies as strong as possible. I took all the drone tags and all the car tags (though I took the non-invis option for them, since blocking them was a non-option, locking me out of another set bonus). I took the enemy caster buff tag, I added the extra evocators, and on top of all of that, I maxed out all enemies' attack, minimised my units' HP, and reduced my units' attack substantially. With all of this, there's little to no room for error throughout. But let's get to what I'm doing here.

So the opener is Bassline and Eyjaberry. Bassline cannot survive there on his own, with either skill, as the burn burst, the melee mobs, and the caster together all provide just too much pressure for him to heal through, requiring Eyjaberry. Then Lessing sets the tone for how tight the rest of the clear will be, by taking out the first enemy in the blue box. He goes really hard on this map, particularly on S2. Reducing the damage from the seeds, casters, and evocators lets him live things that no one else would manage. After that I activate Eyjaberry S3 to make sure Bassline is at max HP before I retreat her (and to leave him with some lingering heals from her talent), and I swap in regular Eyja to clear out the enemies that Bassline is blocking before I retreat him and place Vivi. (I can't open with Eyja, as she'll use all her S2 charges on the caster that's there, meaning she'll leak the melee mobs that open the map. Managing her charges is very important throughout the map, but I'll touch on that more as we go).

When I M9ed Viviana, I had no intention of using her S1 seriously. I just wanted to finish her M9 before I got to any of the more practical ones because she's my favourite character, and if I was going to invest those kinds of mats into any character, it was going to be her. I did not expect to then use it to AFK more or less an entire lane in a CC, especially not with the -30% attack that I took. It just happens that it works perfectly for taking each enemy out before they enter the reeds and turn invisible. The only exceptions are the first enemy that spawns before I can place her and the two that enter the map together. Her being able to do all of that is huge, as it lets me focus my five unit deployment limit to taking out the map's big threats, and means that I don't have to block/heal on that side beyond those two enemies that come together.

Next come Eben and Diamante. Diamante is my main option for dealing with the seeds in this map, and that first deployment is half to clear them out so that they don't expend Eyja's S2 charges, and half to deal extra damage to the rush. Meanwhile Eben uses his delta mod for extra damage to take out the rover, and Lessing takes out one evocator and more than enough of the next one for Eyja to deal with it later (again, I cannot stress enough how massive his damage reduction is on his S2. The fact that he survives for his full skill duration there is nuts). His placement is also really, really tight, as I want him to get hit by the second evocator right before he takes out the first. This means that he'll take that damage while blocking, reducing it massively, and giving him as much time as possible before its next attack so that he can maximise his damage. Though while I'm managing that timing, I miss something and make the one mistake in this run.

I was supposed to retreat Diamante the second that caster fell, so that I'd have DP to deploy Carnelian ASAP. I missed that by a few seconds, meaning Carnelian was just slightly too late. This almost cost me the run. A second or two later, and it actually prevents her from taking out the evocators and doing extra damage to the rover, meaning that it would move far enough to reveal Eyja, letting the caster that's walking down the middle take her out. In my desperation to let her get as much damage in as possible, I end up missing retreating her, costing me some valuable dp as the caster and seeds take her out. This ultimately works out still, but it makes everything else even tighter. One more missed retreat and I won't have enough for later.

After that is just setting up for the leak. Lessing and Eyja thin out the enemies on the left, leaving just the one that Bassline needs to block for the eventual invis drone leak. But I can't talk about the drone leak without talking about the 500 point clear I got before this. The difference was that I swapped the -20% ally attack for the -30%. That doesn't sound like much! But wow did it mess things up.

So most of my units do just fine with the reduction. I was a bit worried about Lessing and Eben, since they both scale so hard off of attack, meaning any decrease to that base attack gets magnified, but they were actually totally fine. The problem unit, however, is also the one that I lean on heavily to deal with all the seeds: Diamante. Without him dealing with the seeds, this is not possible. His +90 ASPD and hit-two from his S2 is desperately needed. With -20% attack, he two shots them, letting him deal with them efficiently and making the painful process of baiting out the last few seeds (including the ones that spawn INSIDE the blue box) doable. But with -30%, he needs three hits. This extra hit is the difference between him clearing them out and him getting overwhelmed. But I can't let that happen. Having only four ground units, baiting the seeds is really hard, and with all the attack up and HP down that I stacked, no one can live getting hit with three or more. Enter Earthspirit and Czerny.

Earthspirit was the only unit that didn't actually get used in my 500, and she isn't out for long here, but she is VITAL. She slows down the seeds, keeping them away from my ground units, and crucially gives Diamante the third hit that he needs to take them out, easing the pressure while he's off skill. But still, that can only last until they start spawning outside of her range.

Czerny, on the other hand, was used in my 500, but mostly just as a body. He still needed to do that first deployment to block the enemies in the reeds, and then I'd use him again at the end to bait some seeds. But here the margins are so much tighter that I actually need him to bait two rounds of seeds. The timing on this is incredibly tight, but with placing him at the right point, and activating Bassline's S2 at the right moment to get him up again in the moment between two seeds hitting him, he can live long enough to activate his S2, giving him +100% HP, and making him the only unit in my niche that, with Eyjaberry's S3 also giving him +30% HP, can tank more than one round of the seeds. However, the other thing complicating that is that his S2 blast going off would destroy the stall that I need for the seeds that spawn in the blue box, so the timing on it all is unbelievably tight. Actually, yeah, speaking of the stall, let's talk about that.

So leaking the drones is possible, but it's a major pain. I fully believe that HG did not intend for us to be able to leak them, as it's difficult enough to let them get to the blue box in the first place, but then they both spawn seeds INSIDE the blue box. Now, there are some units that, with some work, can attack/destroy them before they leak, but that wasn't really an option for me. Instead, I have to bait them, but the ones that spawn deepest in the box only have one tile in their range. And that tile is the bottom left, in the reeds. You know, where your unit is invisible. This means that to make the leak work, you need to stall an enemy on a blocker there to the end. But you also need to keep that blocker alive, so they can't actually bait a wave of seeds themselves until the ones that come from the blue box. This requires a lot of bodies. My niche, however, does not have a lot of bodies. That meant that there was no margin for error here, and that each and every seed had to be individually accounted for, especially to manage leaking both of the invis drones.

The second drone was much easier to leak in my 500. There, because Diamante handled the seeds just fine, I was able to save Eyja to deploy her where I have Carnelian here, and the splash damage from her S2 would take out the seeds that spawn in the blue box that time (though they would have been out of her range for the first one, and even if they were in her range, they spawn too close to the leak point itself for her projectile travel time to let her take them out before they leak, so I did still need to have Bassline stall up until the first drone leaked). (Also, no, Carnelian isn't doing anything here. She's just kind of an emergency button in case the seeds end up taking out Bassline and I suddenly need to get rid of the enemy he was blocking). But here I need her to replace Diamante, as even with skill, he won't be able to stop enough of the seeds from hitting my ground units. Because of this, I need to keep the stall going for EVEN LONGER, so that Bassline can bait the seeds from that one too. It's all so tight, and you can see that based on how much I keep the operator select bullet time going, as well as in me going back and forth on whether to place a unit or not at various points. Fun fact, this clear's recording is about two minutes longer than the 500 point clear, because of just how long I kept the bullet time going. Even after it works, I still place Eben and activate Carnelian out of paranoia for a potential extra seed spawn. But ultimately, it works out. All the things that I'd planned and theorised would work finally did. And Vivi even gets the final kill.

[towerofrabble]

So, uh, you may notice something wrong with this screenshot. Basically I was playing through the new stages with the Rim Billiton team because I play them as a niche, they can clear all the stages but the challenge modes are generally too hard for them, but i give it a try anyway. So I get to CV-EX-5 and am able to clear it without too much worry however, the challenge mode is pretty damn hard and the added vents really make overload a threat. Queue above, a screenshot of a level 90, s3m3, mod x lvl3 Schwarz doing fuck all to a bombardier in overload. I sent it to @leithanienwnt because we had been talking about the event and she did a little math.

We need you to understand how fucking funny it is that this random ass enemy just gets over 4k defense when in overload, like this is just a ridiculous amount for what is basically an average enemy otherwise. Schwarz also does over 10x this amount of damage without module to h7-4 patriot.

additional meme

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[lilybug-02]

Dewi's Adventures in Hollow Knight

A Buggy Beggining ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9 ... 10 ... 11 ... 12 ... 13 ... 14 ... 15 ... 16 ... 17 ... 18 ... 19 ... 20 ... 21 ... 22 ... 23 ...

24 ... 25 ... 26 ... 27 ... 28 ... 29 ... 30 ... 31 … 32 ... 33 … 34 … 35 … 36 … 37 ... 38 ... 39 ... 40 ... 41 ... 42 ... 43 ... 44 ... 45 ... 46 ... 47 ... 48 ... 49 ... 50 ... 51 ... 52 ... 53 ... 54 ... 55 ... END

Non-Cannon Adventures: Bug Dewi // Crossover // Moth Dust // Ugly // City of Tears // Sam's Adventures // The Hunter // Swordplay // Dewi's Dad in Dirtmouth

All other tagged posts

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"A curious young boy has stumbled across the most unusual bug in his backyard. He soon finds himself in an adventure spanning much more than he could have ever imagined."

This fancomic is based within the Hollow Knight Games, where Humans and Bugs collide!

[zehecatl]

holds your face so fucking gently please leave reviews for indie games. please. every single review legit counts, especially if the game is small enough, and you don't even gotta say much if that's the problem!!

like, anything from a long ramble to a simple 'it was good' matters, because steam (and probably also the Other Ones) uses an algorithm. so the more reviews, the more exposure, the more money the dev team gets. like, please. please. leave a review. throw your small indie dev team a bone

[kappaology]

the lovers of roncevaux / inspired by the lovers of valdaro

[notsomeloncholy]

Met the nailmasters and was struck by the thought that they'd get along ✨️

[rainbluealoekitten]

LISTEN. I know "cunte" means "compte" so "tale/story" and the last 2 lines basically translate to "between those who tell stories / and speak of the tale of Tristan" BUT you cannot tell me this doesn't read like "and they talk of cunty tristan"

[femaleboysblog]

"you should name your kids after something you love" goodnight dmc 5 mod where nero is dressed like arkham knight/jason todd from the batman arkham series mommy loves you

[sickfreaksirkay]

from A Wedding Knight (1966)

[necrotic-nephilim]

PLEASE MAKE A MASTERPOST I watched titans Just for the gay shit and it delighted me. and then Hush and Titans Tower and then the GK game.....there's so much

THE WORST PART IS MY TAGS GOT CUT OFF ON THAT POST. i had other tags talking how absolutely gay JayTim comes across in Titans, in the clips i've seen. having Jason save Tim and then go on to train him is... an interesting direction to go with them but the clip was so gay i had to send it to my partner so they could witness it. had the classic "let's go a few rounds" shit and *everything*. like it was baffling and if it wasn't "batcest" i do think it would've taken the fandom by storm as a ship. i have stopped and started that show at least three times bc i always get too frustrated to get past s1, but for JayTim, i think i gotta.

making a masterpost of every significant JayTim relationship throughout DC media wouldn't be *too* hard, i feel like. i've done one focusing just on the New-52, and i've covered all the pre-Flashpoint ground through various posts here. ironically the hardest thing would be Rebirth, because i can't think of many Rebirth era comics i've read with them significantly interacting outside of Robin: Knight Terrors. and i'd have to actually get through Titans.

also for the sake of completion, Wayne Family Adventures would probably get its own section. which is the real torture for me bc i have beef with WFA.

but. i *could* do it. and it would take me like a month, it'd be such a fun pet project. i think exploring what seems to be a recurring consistent theme across every universe could be incredibly fascinating. what similarities and differences exist and what tends to cause those similarities and differences. it'd be a magnum opus. but more chaotic. and gay.

anyway you're right. now i gotta. it'll take me three business weeks to catalog all of it and also add meaningful commentary. but i can and i will.

[leithanienwnt]

CanadaKnights takes on CCB#2! I have a full breakdown of the clear in the video description, but there were a few things that didn't really fit in the run down but that I still wanted to mention:

1) I cannot stress enough just how anxious I was to roll for that Frost potential. I'd only gotten two copies in the 120 pulls before that, and I couldn't spare another 60 pulls to get the last potential. I'm not a whale, so it was either get her quickly or this doesn't work. Fortunately things finally turned around for me and I got her in 10.

2) I also had to E2 Texas for this (goodbye 18 T3 rocks…). I had her at E1 for dp pot sims, and when that wasn't enough I'd just borrow someone else's E2, but I needed to borrow Passenger here and desperately needed the last DP potential, so I finally bit the bullet. She's still on SL1 though lol.

3) It's wild that the extra brandguider is only 10 points. I get that it's kind of there just as a prereq to the rest of the brandguider tags, but the whole thing with increasing the points for CC was that it lets them actually differentiate tags and give them points based on the actual challenge they provide. It feels like a weird step between making it actually required and making it optional. It also means that I can't really give up any tags (like the redeploy tag or the tile ban) to make the kill work, since that would actually be a net loss in points.

4) Technically, Frost could handle the other brandguider too, as three crit mines would be enough to take it out. However, 1) the odds of getting those three plus the one I need for the first brandguider in a row is something like 0.16%, and 2) with the redeploy tag, I can't place the mines for that one and the first one quickly enough to actually get all the hits in that I need. I'm genuinely disappointed that I couldn't get the second reefbreaker working. This clear is already a lot, but it would've been so cool. Ngl, with Fang alter and Coldshot mod, I think it'd be doable, as it'd probably let me optimise out the second mine for the first brandguider. However, those aren't here until Ch14 and Path of Life… But oh well, I'm still quite proud of this, so it is what it is.

5) This event really sold me on Frost. I was used to using Dorothy and had started using Ela as well, but the single target mines for the five stars really made them feel awful to use in comparison. However, the fact that she did so much to carry this niche in a CC has really reminded me that trapmasters are just a busted subclass, and even if there's a big gap between her and the six stars, she's still really solid in her own right.

And that's it! I might still take on the last daily map with LeithanienKnights, but that depends on whether or not I feel like subjecting myself to the POO map again lol

Also here's Frost soloing the other brandguider: https://youtu.be/FUZ2iAteYkY?si=SKLe0O1FriyW8Obm

[wanderinggoddess]

bbc gwen but what if Green Knight costume

[onatera]

Just think it's somewhat cool and poetic that Waterparks met and toured with iDKHOW around the Entertainment era. Because the lore of iDKHOW is that the band was supposedly re-discovered when someone found old VHS tapes containing footage of the band, and Waterparks' Entertainment era focused on VHS tapes in music videos and on the album art.

[fronomeeps]

the localization of old man emmet....

ok out of seriousness- for fun i made old man emmet an oc counterpart! his sole purpose is to be the protag of a lil rpg game id like to make. he doesn't have a name yet and have just been calling him the conductor/star conductor, he's the conductor of a space train! ill post about him mostly on my new game blog @fronosgamerchair

[ohkamimineko]

I was inspired by a tiktok