Crowntakers - Normal Victory Time Challenge Run - 5d 20h

Crowntakers Normal Victory Time Challenge Run 5d 20h

This is a victory of Crowntakers on Normal difficulty, with an emphasis on completing the game in as few in-game days as possible. The game normally expects you to be beat it around Day 20, at which point the end-game cinematic changes if you complete it before or after that point.

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Crowntakers is a roguelike with RPG elements that I find charming and addicting. I'm surprised it isn't more well-known, as it is cheap, easy to understand, and can offer tremendous challenge. It's a nice blend of RNG (items, some events, and which mercs you can recruit are random) and more predictable content, and the very lightweight but important crafting adds a nice touch of customization.

Some specifics on this run:
* Normal Difficulty
* 5d 20h in-game time
* Mercenaries used were Theogal, Halfarus, Malda, and Jeda
* Critical path only, no DLC areas or secret areas visited
* Hero build was Watch Out with Dodge focus
* Theogal build was Guardian Strike with Health focus
* Jeda build was Backstab with Critical focus
* Halfarus build was Multishot with Critical focus
* Malda build was Dark Pact with no real focus
* 1hr 40min run time

This is my fastest time by far in completing the game, and was very tricky at points. The game scales content up or down based on the in-game Day, with enemies becoming more difficult every game day. However, bosses seem static, and with each of them having a unique edge, it's easy to get wiped out if you try to push ahead too fast. Trying to get ahead of the curve means having to tailor your current loadout to best counter the specific boss you will target. The difficulty seems to peak when fighting Barka, as she has a lot of armor, multiple attacks per turn, and bypasses your defenses by teleporting behind your lines.

You'll see in this run that Wolf Lord and Shear went down pretty easy, but Barka was incredibly tough. Of all the remaining bosses, only the Barbarian King was particularly noteworthy, even the Duke went down like he was made of paper to the unholy fury that is Theogal's Guardian Strike. He was definitely MVP this run, and without his presence it would have been much more difficult.

Theogal's Guardian Strike is incredibly powerful, because it functionally lets him replace Strength with Health - making him both tougher and giving him insane DPS - but to really capitalize on it you'll need a cooldown rune on his weapon, otherwise his DPS is effectively cut in half. Malda is great for interference, able to absorb attacks without armor, and Halfraus is ideal for stacking critical. I'm not a fan of Halfraus or Jeda generally speaking, since straight up strength builds tend to come out on top. For Hero, Watch Out is interesting in that it lets you use a Defensive talent offensively, and can greatly increase your damage output at the cost of taking a lot more damage.