I have 2 tests tomorrow but I'm still reeling over my last attempt which made it to floor 193.
All little mistakes aside, I thought of some things that I can do to help optimize my items for the next run.
- Alteration on 187-189. The amount of unkillable mobs here are quite high and this would probably be better. However, mimics DO take around 2 minutes to kill and can be risky if double-crit. It really depends on the situation and how many poms I have, though.
- SAVE LUSTS. I recently started collecting some Pomander drop rate data out of curiosity (separated by floor sets), and I noticed that past 150, I only logged 3 lusts in 5 sets (around 140 gold chests). The last boss I will use lust on freely will be on 150. After that, I will save Lust ONLY for if I'm short on time (e.g. <7 minutes for 180 boss). Why? Because I compared 1:45 (Lust stacking up and then 1:30 of DPS) damage windows for similar phases (starting from the double sap cast), and I dealt around 27% of the boss's HP with Lust and only 19% without. What exactly does this mean? With one Lust, in the same time I would normally do 100% of the boss's HP, I will do 108% instead. 100/108 = 0.926 - a 7.4% increase in speed. My recent 190 boss kill took 8:45, including 8 seconds of buffing and moving before the fight actually began (this was with 1 Lust). So let's assume without Lust the time is 8:45 * 1.08 = 9:27. If we used three Lusts, then we would do 124% of the boss's HP. 100/124 = 0.806, roughly less than a 19% increase in speed. That would lead to the kill time being 7 minutes and 53 seconds - meaning you can get by with one steel instead of 2! I know I'm probably overcomplicating it with math and this might be cutting it super close, but... you know... why not?
Or, a better option is to, instead of using steel to clear earlier 187-189 floors, use it to clear the last one (rage one or more of the previous ones), and get at least a 1-minute carry-over into 190.
I really should get back to studying. But I can't wait to try again and get to the 190s again. There's something exciting about getting there, probably just to see how lucky I'll end up. Honestly, I need it to rain steels. From my logged data, 181-190 yields around 3 steels per run (only with a 2-run sample size, though). Assuming one steel lasts one floor in the 190s, you should receive enough to last 3 floors. Meaning, if I didn't die in 193, I could have used alteration + rages to clear at least two more floors and maybe get some steels to go through the final 3. For now, though, let's see if I can make it past 190 again! ...after I finish studying.
Best of luck ! Another good strategy I would use for 187-189 (very situational, though) is, if you have two rooms of 3+ monsters each, one of which contains the Cairn of Passage, use rage to clear them both out, and instead of leaving rage to pick up chests, just go to the next floor and you might be able to clear another set with the same rage. Again, it's really situational - like, if you're good on time and see like 3 gold chests, then by all means...!
