Talk:Avatar of Boris/Strategy

It seems that only one Boris song can be active at any given time. (At the very least, Glorious Lunch & Accompaniment are mutually exclusive...casting one will dump any remaining turns of the other!)--Jambosque 01:44, 18 February 2012 (CET)

And this was already known...disregard.--Jambosque 01:47, 18 February 2012 (CET)

Anyone have a feel for or has spaded the effect of levels on Clancy? Specifically, since you can only have one song on at a time is +25% items or +3 levels of Clancy with a Lute better? --Uzziah 01:28, 21 February 2012 (CET)

Avatar of Boris skills

All right, we should be filling this section soon, and before someone starts filling this section and starts a crapstorm in the discussion board, let's talk about it some.

Here are a few skills that I consider important:

• Demand Sandwich: 3 good-great quality foods, absolutely necessary
• Song of the Glorious Lunch: Free Got Milk, also necessary for speed runs
• Legendary Appetite: Free Steel Lasagna is always good, but not sure when it's the most optimal to get
• Heroic Belch: Strong combat skill, 1-shots w/30 fullness until Giant's Castle
• Barrel-Chested: Makes Level 12 boss and NS much easier
• Legendary Bravado: Makes first few levels a cinch
• Big Lungs: Would make HP upkeep easier for the non-pros who don't know how to not get hit with +20 ML, since your two main sources of heals is either weak (Laugh) or expensive (Galaktik)
• Song of Solitude: Your only real source of +non-combat, and it's huge

The order of skill build is pretty important too, and some skills would be more desirable with banked skill points than a 1st Boriscore run. Just discuss them.

I went 0/2/1->0/2/6->0/4/6->0/4/9 in my first HC run.--JohnAnon 19:03, 26 February 2012 (CET)

I think that's exactly what I did, as well. Legendary Bravado is awesome at the start, Legendary Girth came just in time for the Bat Hole stench resistance, and the fighting tree... not really necessary. No Song of Solitude for me, since it would keep me from getting Barrel Chested by level 13. --timrem 20:59, 26 February 2012 (CET)

Right, didn't get Solitude because I wanted Barrel-Chested by 13. I did get Big Lungs because Laughing wasn't going to heal much at that point. I'm sure there are more optimal ways to keep your HP up, though. Song of Solitude may be more desirable after banking a few skill points, since hey, you can can do levels 1-12 with Barrel-Chested, I'm sure you can do it before 1-10. Gourmand kicks in too late to be any useful unless you have +5-6 extra points or so.

I think the only thing that we need to know is how useful the rest of the skills are, and how soon you should get certain skills.

• Should I pick up Heroic Belch right after Legendary Appetite?
• At what level should I be getting Barrel-Chested?
• After your first run, when should you pick up Song of Solitude, if ever?
• If you have points to spare, is anything in the Combat tree useful? (Other than speed runs for the +ML)
• What about Singing 6-10? How good are those skills?
• Should I pick up Gourmand if I have enough points banked?

And also, how do you kill Baron von Ratsworth early?--JohnAnon 22:00, 26 February 2012 (CET)

• The general order I tell people to go at least to begin with is to invest in Feasting then sink points into Yelling. There really aren't any bad/borderline useless skills in the Feasting tree.

As for Fighting: Cleave is kind of useful but Heroic Belch/Barrel Chested will eventually do what Cleave does. Broadside is worth it, but not stick 3 points in before getting Barrel-Chested worth it. Pep Talk/Song of Cockiness are good, but you'll basically need Legendary Impatience to get any semblance of a jump. Bifurcate/Throw Trusty are bad. So in short, hold off on investing deep in Fighting unless you're able to afford Legendary Impatience early on. Feasting can take care of your combat needs until then.

Yelling is just basically a dump stat. Unlike Fighting, you're not really tied to going deep into it. Unlike Feasting, not every skill upgrade is particularly great. The 4 songs are good and each can help negate some area that Boris normally lacks (item drops, combat rate modifier, and 3 Clancy levels which is ~15 lbs of familiar). Bellow isn't worth using unless it's improved...and the improvement is not wait 6 levels later good. bravado is good, but long term Barrel-Chested is much better.

So to answer, it's Yes, as soon as possible when you're still building up points, if you can schedule it before level 9 or 10 go for it, otherwise picking it up later won't do much. No, not really. Saves MP, good, not good at spot 7, what you should probably be running against bosses, and excellent but you won't see this one's benefit for 5 or 6 runs so don't even think about it. Yes. I've been doing SC runs so I haven't needed to kill the Baron with my loadout.--Toffile 23:51, 26 February 2012 (CET)

Skill Analysis

I wrote this up a bit earlier, based mostly on my experience and some conjecture since I honestly have not really tried out the Fighting skills.

• Fighting:
  • Cleave - A poor man's Heroic Belch. High to-hit, but not auto-hit.
  • Ferocity - Raises your crit chance to 14%. Great with something like monster pants.
  • Broadside - Stuns. Pretty good but its hard to justify 3 ranks in Fighting. Will save you a ton in HP, though maybe not MP.
  • Sick Pythons - Weapon Damage +20 - You can kill things faster, but not all that important
  • Pep Talk - +30 ML. Doubling what you can normally get in run, but without an init bonus you're going to get rocked.
  • Throw Trusty - This gives you a ranged attack as Boris. This is to prevent some melee-retaliatory status effects (Apathy, Corroded Weapon, Cunctatitis) but basically worthless
  • Legendary Luck - Not entirely sure what it does other than probably making crits deal more damage or something along those lines. Not really worth it.
  • Song of Cockiness - +30 ML good for squeezing out a bit more bleeding edge of stat gains
  • Legendary Impatience - Basically the best skill in the tree
  • Bifurcating Blow - 1 hit kill normal enemies, 20 turn cooldown, sucks.

• Shouting:
  • Intimidating Bellow - Default it's a 15% delevel. Alright, but you can get your muscle high enough anyway.
  • Legendary Bravado - +10 to all attributes. A great skill, but only after you complete feasting.
  • Song of Accompaniment - +3 levels of Clancy. This is equivalent to +15 lbs of a familiar.
  • Big Lungs - Helps relieve HP restore needs.
  • Song of Solitude - Drops combat rate by 20%. Great for the quests Level 10 and on. Also really good for powerleveling.
  • Good Singing Voice - Doubles duration of songs. Pretty nice.
  • Song of Fortune - Basically a super version of the Ballad of Richie Thingfinder. Also auto-crits an enemy, so you can close to one hit KO every time.
  • Louder Bellows - Improves Intimidating Bellow to 30% delvel and stuns. Should not be Rank #8, its far too high for making the Rank 1 skill usable.
  • Song of Battle - Increases combat rate by 20%, doubles damage, never miss a hit. Good song to turn on for bosses.
  • Banishing Shout - Banishes enemies. Great skill but only if you can get it early in a run.

• Feasting:
  • Demand Sandwich - basically free 9 fullness. Helps with turngen screw in HC. Worth it.
  • Legendary Girth - Helps beat the Boss Bat and Mt MclargeHuge quest, plus Daily Dungeon tests and dropping elemental damage attacks. Worth it so much.
  • Song of the Glorious Lunch - Ode to Milk. Basically 30 adventures a day for MP. Wooooooorth it.
  • Big Boned - HP increased by 30%. Not the greatest skill in the world, but you can easily get some insane amounts towards the end and shrug off 10 or 15 rounds of damage.
  • Legendary Appetite - Free 5 fullness, very very very much worth it.
  • Heroic Belch - Autohit stench damage that at 30 full deals between 95-160. Wide range, sure, but against fire or spooky elementals it's a one-hit kill, and against anything else, it's a 2 hit kill. Except hippies.
  • Hungry Eyes - The secret is that increasing food drops works not only on consumables, but cooking ingredients. Makes getting wet stunt nut stew easier, and generally just getting food.
  • More To Love - Intrinsic +3 levels to Clancy. This is again equivalent to +15 lbs of familiar weight.
  • Barrel Chested - +50% muscle. You know that really bad trend that starts around Level 7 or 8 where monster defense starts to severely outpace your muscle growth? This completely and utterly destroys it and you can run around with like 250 muscle at level 11. For the record, the highest ML in the game of any non-gimmick/boss enemy is about 190.
  • Gourmand - Passive Got Milk. This is absolutely a wonderful skill, it's worth +30 adventures a day.

This is by no means perfect, but I think it's at least a fairly good starting point.--Toffile 00:07, 27 February 2012 (CET)

You exaggerate the usefulness of Song of Glorious Lunch and Gourmand, you gain 1 advs per fullness used. So with just Song of Glorious Lunch you get upto 20 advs, with legendary appetite you gain another 5, with Gourmand you get 25, and with stomach you gain 5 from glorious lunch and 5 from gourmand. So total if you get the stomach of steel you can gain 60 advs/day with 10 skills spent.

Song of Accompaniment is better than Song of Fortune for +items until Clancy is level 4+, which is quest level 8 when you get the icy peak open, then it becomes useful only when you are running crumhorn. Remember a fairy from 20 lbs to 35 lbs only gains 25.7% +items so at level 4 clancy is 0.7% +items better with accompaniment in lieu of fortune.

Song of Cockiness is always better for stat gains than Song of Accompaniment with Clancy and the Crumhorn, provided you can handle the extra +ML.

Song of Solitude for speed is one of the better skills you can get, even from the get go, remember several quests are quicker with +NC, opening the hidden temple, opening the knob area (you can short circuit some of the NC for time in zone with no advs) opening the manor, the friars, and Tavern (if you have enough +element damage), don't forget the NC area of the crypt, as well as later with the quests you mentioned and speed leveling, also a good skill to use for getting the GMoB's setup for the hippy war if you go that way.

--Uzziah 00:47, 28 February 2012 (CET)

OK, I filled the section in. Feel free to debate about it. --JohnAnon 03:05, 4 March 2012 (CET)

The food farming section misses out what is one of the more obvious routes to farming limes (and cherries for that matter), namely that you can just banish the other two monsters in menagerie level 1 for 100% fruit golems. Negates the need for olfaction, but does mean you have to get your MP up to 50 which can be a bit of a challenge in HC. Also, don't forget you can always take the friars buff after the level 6 quest for extra +food%

Secondly, the banishing skill really comes into its own against the gremlins where you can just banish the non-tool carrying version of the gremlin (once you get the appropriate message, of course), which simplifies things very nicely there.

--Bigquack 17:17, 11 April 2012 (CEST)

Can the Camp Scout backpack drop items in HC AoB? I ask because the Mr. Store-based goodies doesn't mention it, so I assume not. --Clubbing Heart-Shaped Spade of Diamond 21:31, 5 December 2012 (CET)

• It should work fine. AoB ended in May. The backpack got introduced in July. Most players stop paying attention to special challenge paths, once they're replaced. --Yatsufusa 21:43, 5 December 2012 (CET)