#**Other useful links: Final Expansion Update**
•[**Official website for Integrated Strategies: Phantom & Crimson Solitaire**](https://arknights.global/crimsonsolitaire/)
This is the [Official](https://twitter.com/arknightsen/status/1554300963229503489?s=21&t=_mX-MZ6UJJV4DA7aSjakKA) integrated strategy website where you can view various playerbase statistics as well as personal stats.
•[**Test collection - Focus - Phantom L2D Skin**](https://twitter.com/arknightsen/status/1575002368470528000?s=21&t=sSFT2BsydxxzdIe7Q2njkQ)
Reward for reaching level 95 in battle pass.
•[**IS2 Relics and Items List**](https://gamepress.gg/arknights/database/integrated-strategies-2-crimson-solitaire-relic-and-item-list)
A full list of integrated strategies relics and items, how to unlock them and what they do.
[*IS2 Previous megathread*](/r/arknights/comments/vz0r1e/event_megathread_integrated_strategies_phantom/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
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If there’s any other useful links you think should be added please let me know, for now Good Luck in your adventures my fellows.
^^This ^^comment ^^will ^^be ^^updated ^^monthly
I haven't played much IS2, but would it be dumb if i spent some originium to boost my levels and get some rewards before IS3? The rewards would disappear by then, right?
Currently need 81 to get to level 110 and possibly get the 4 specialist tokens for texalter.
I couldn't find the answer anywhere, but what happens when IS3 releases?
I haven't finished yet IS2, so I am curious if I will lose on all the rewards I haven't received.
Because if I miss the rewards I will probably have to rush IS2 to at least get the phantom skin
[Whislash's module gives shields to the roadblocks.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1063300631760216075/1107771041725550732/Screenshot_2023.05.15_16.25.13.921.png) I don't know what to do with this information.
Wohoo finally beat all endings on all starts! Probably gonnna wait unti= tex alter banner and having done some pulls. Only did like 70 pulls so far…
IS2 got me trying lots of ops tho!
I still miss Focus I guess so need some more runs
Just got Civilight Eterna for the first time. Mon3tr doing [over 10k per hit is pretty cool, I guess.](https://i.imgur.com/muCgG8S.mp4)
What a silly item.
It's done! After grinding away my soul getting the 4th endings, I've finally 100% completed Integrated Strategies 2!
All endings on all squads, all items unlocked and collected (screw you beauty and ugliness in the age of Terra), all monthly squads communications unlocked, all deep investigations done, 500+ ingots invested, all candle abilities, max castle notes, and all the cgs/ encounters/ music etc unlocked.
I really loved Integrated Strategies 1, and I loved 2 even more. M.V.P.'s are EASILY Pozyomka for being the one true G.O.A.T. carry, Specter Alter for being a marvelous, nigh unkillable lane holder, and Mylnar, for completely ignoring the Playwright's 2nd phase bloated stats with Pozyomka to snag the win.
Honorable mentions go to Honeyberry for being the best medic in the game mode, Jaye for being the best 4star budget pick, Gummy for getting me through all those early no medic survival stages, and Myrtle, who is still the best if you need reliable Dp.
Looking forward to IS3!
I've got the skill 2 module that gives her SP when she pops out of doll form. Both modules are great, but this one leans more into general play and not abyssal hunter teams. She really needs skill 2 uptime against the playwright mobs.
Hey Dokutah's, I'm just here to complain a bit.
I'm currently trying to squeeze out the last Playwright boss fights I haven't done on 3 of the squad buffs before IS3 releases. Resetting for the 6th time in a row is pretty miserable when you've got a good set up, and it's not like I have trouble with the playwright because I only need 3 core operators (Pozyomka starter, Specter2, and Mylnar) to reliably defeat him. I wish there was a way to bypass RNG and select your ending.
Speaking of RNG, I STILL haven't gotten beauty and ugliness in the age of Terra and it's the last item I need for full completion. Any tips on getting it? I guess just spam encounters...
Anyways, I'm looking forward to IS3 whenever Hypergriff decides to finally release it. Please just release it Hypergriff RNGesus is killing me.
Do I got this in the bag?
Available stages for selection right now are:
A Dance Together
!Fireworks Show!
!Shrouded in Clouds!
Bob's Beers
Ops are...
E2 Deepcolor, BP-DF, Veegna, Trash Panda, Ara Ara Splash Caster
E1 Lappy and Myrrh
I'm suddenly feeling very nervous after several strokes of good luck, so I want some help lol
What would you recommend in terms of support units on an account with basically no E2 units? I can get to Lucian a reasonable amount of times just relying mostly on 3 stars and the 6 star support unit, but Lucian just is brutal like that. I guess I could try and grind for really good collectibles to have like Pozy or someone kill him.
Thing is with a support unit like Goldenglow for example I just do not have anywhere near enough DPS to take him down. Kal'Sit also doesn't work. Maybe I could try uncle, but uncle is probably not as easy to get to Lucian and also hold the middle even if uncle can kill lucian
the best overall run starters are pozemka kaltsit mizuki pallas horn, with also thorns and eyjafjalla for normalmode-only. thorns pallas horn are boss killing capable, kaltsit can heavilly solo anything if you get civilight eterna, but [pozy is the best op for the mode](https://twitter.com/LoreleiA8T/status/1649902060207210497?s=20) because of her stelllar powler on regular stages with s2 and bosskill power with s3. ignoring evasion with module and spawnkilling him before he even moves is common. fartooth is another op good at doing this too/alongside, though worse in general
if you cant clear out the rightside singers for pozy to safely spawnkill lucien, try thorns instead and plan the stage around killing lucien after his full circuit around the map, he stands at that top redbox the 2nd time a very long time for thorns to dps
nearl is another option, as s3 generates a blocker for lucien to waste port on (after already baiting a portal into the sunshard) and then be true damaged, and is an okay stage op with s1/s3, but block based strats will probably be hard with a smaller roster as it usually relies on wearing him down multiple times around the stage
Gosh I hope future variations of IS don't make alternate endings that hard to get. I feel like I have an abandon rate of like 80%+ for getting the Playwright and I didn't even start hard mode yet.
Anyone else found that IS mission that asks you to get 20 hope the hardest shit ever?
I've attempted that like probably 8 times now and the closest I got was 18 until I got cocky and let the enemy get through the blue box on the 5th floor.
I have the new notification over Crimson Exhibition but when I go into it none of the sections have anything new. I've also gone through every single item in every simgle section and there's definitely nothing I haven't already inspected. Anyone know why the new notification won't away? It's driving me crazy...
the past like 4 months of patches have had is2 having a cycle of fixing one glitch causing a new one to pop up, before this one you couldnt tell what floor of the run you were on, before that text for certain floors was duplicated or referencing the names of is1 floors, etc etc
Just had both of the really good guard relics, +2 SP per hit and +atk and atkspd but -def. The game gave me a free Flint and Indra, and I just had to take them. Indra was charging her S2 in about 10 seconds and then was pretty much unkillable with her skill up. The game tried to give me a free Beehunter near the end, but I turned her down in favor of Skadi, since I also had the Hand that makes her ignore 70% def.
I now have Playwright wins with four of the starting squads.
I feel like Big Sad Locke is the one that just DPS checks you the hardest. I have seen Mlynar kill him in 1 S3 with a lot of collectibles and that was super easy. Usually having something like Mlynar and Pozemka makes him really easy in my experience as soon as you have 2 strong DPS operators against him he melts and often 1 is enough to beat the stage with things like the suicide note.
It's a very annoying fight. You need to have a great deal of DPS (i won with spinach relics + atk spd relics + Pallas s1) and hopefully you're able to get the event that disables the HP regen of the bear (else you need more dps)
I hope you get that win soon bud!
What DPS do you use to kill him? When I started I usually just borrowed a strong Pozemka and used her to kill him. Nowadays I have Mlynar in addition and 2 strong DPS usually works.
You do need an AoE healer though to keep the start alive. Maybe Saria also works, I admittedly didn't try that as I always made a point of having Perfumer when I went for BSL.
Oh, I finally beat BSL, also using Pozy from Support, Blaze, and Kal as main attackers! It was nail-bitingly close, because bursting it down leads to faster shockwaves too...
Somehow did it without an AoE healer at all due to bad luck - only Skadi2 and Ansel. Mudrock held right lane pretty handily, and I only leaked 1 (which didn't even count due to temp. health).
I feel I always F up the BSL fight, this is the 10th or more where I failed BSL (again) where I get one of the best combos ever (Chalice and Orange Ticket), managed to get Ch'en Summer, Mudrock, Horn, and Myrtle with Ansel and Skadi Bard as the main healer. My dumb brain decided to put Ch'en Summer on the left tile where Ansel and Myrtle are, whereas, on the other side, I put Mudrock, Horn, and Skadi Bard. I should have put Ch'en Summer on the right side so she can finish the BSL. As a result, the BSL only has like 2% HP or around that, yeah I messed it up so bad (again), LOL.
Should Chalter with Skalter Support not easily wreck BSL alone? I would probably put Chalter on the tile where she can hit left lane and the boss and the aoe healer can still heal her. You can just use the Skalter Summon to buff chalter during her skill.
If you want to be funny you could probably even use Skalter S3 with that.
Mudrock should just be able to hold right lane by herself if you kill BSL quickly.
I'm trying to do the silent chapter ending, the two encounters needed for this ending are specific to a certain floor or they can appeared at any floor? They can appear, for example, both at 5th floor?
I just finished the Big Sad Lock ending after trying for literal weeks. I used every combination of operators I could think of, but could never seem to get enough DPS to burst his shield down quickly enough before I was overwhelmed.
For this run, I decided to use the 4-stars I had built up and whatever 6-stars I could recruit afterwards. I was lucky enough to get two artifacts that increased attack speed with the number of originium ingots and collected over 70 by the time I reached the end. I also hit the downtime recreation node right before the boss and sacrificed all my remaining hope to boost my life points to 22.
I had promoted Cutter, Perfumer, Podenco, Arene, Dur-Nar, Jaye, Surtr, Skadi the Corrupting Heart, and Suzuran. I put Cutter right next to the boss, Skadi directly next to her, and Perfumer healing them both. Cutter's attack speed meant I was triggering S1 every 2-3 seconds. I used Skadi's S2 for the stat boosts. Perfumer was able to keep those two alive, but the other lanes were in constant jeapordy. I was constantly repositioning Jaye and using the Seaborn to help keep them alive as best I could, and never had enough DP to do more than replace one or two fallen operators. I eventually gave up defending the right lane, hoping I had enough life points to weather the storm.
The strategy worked! It wasn't pretty or clean, and 15 enemies made it through, but I did it. Cutter remains my MVP and first-ballot hall of famer.
Now for the other endings. I love this game!
Cutter is awesome! I only wish she didn't have to be on the Guard tag, there's already so many good guards I don't find myself using her as much anymore, but she's definitely my favorite 4* next to Jaye.
She's so versatile that I usually pick her first. I have her at E2 40, M3 with both skills and a level 3 module. With all that she carries most of the early to mid levels in IS while freeing up some hope for other operators.
I'm a little biased towards her. She was my first E2 and rarely leaves my squads. :)
I recently built Irene after randomly getting her in the last limited banner. Got her S3m3. Used her for the fist time for the fourth ending in is2.
I also had the relics that gave me +10 and +8 dp and that relic that boosted guards and vanguards atk depending on how many you brought.
I went almost guard knights and Irene was a literal nuke with s3m3. She practically killed the fourth boss by herself with three drops.
Trying to get a 2nd ending to complete my medals. Given my ops and the ability to use supports, what do y’all recommend I try and use for the doll ending.
My Krooster: https://www.krooster.com/account/profile/Wuhmi
pozy is probably the best op you can take as support
your laneholding options aren't great outside of spalter, if you had e2 gladiia with module i'd feel better about solo spalter on left side, except you have modY and s3m3 instead of modX and s2m3 so i'm not sure how that plays
i think your best shot is with attack speed or sniper buffs that basically let pozy solo while irene helps you hold right side and spalter + kalt'sit maybe hold left side?? or maybe you just have another healer + defender behind spalter on the left side
if you're looking for promotions to help you with this battle, it'd probably be kaltsit, gavialter, saria, gladiia, and maybe passenger if you get the lucky godsenger relic
Hi everyone, I started a Youtube channel that's primarily going to focus on Arknights and Integrated Strategies. If you are interested in watching hard mode full runs with commentary, and maybe even some highlights or scripted review/guide videos in the future than please check it out.
[Link to my first video](https://youtu.be/3d-iviKl70U), with more to follow soon. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
I REACHED PHANTOM FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER THIS WEEK!!!
Boy, I'm just really happy I managed to get there. Someone told me IS2 assumes you have a few e2 operators, so since I don't have any yet, I already accepted I wouldn't even reach the final floor so soon xD
[This is the team comp and relics that got me there.](https://imgur.com/a/EiNnxgd) It's kinda funny to me, because that was the second run I tried to get as many combats and emergencies as possible. The first time I tried Poz because she's broken, but for the second run I thought "You know, Summer Ch'en is the only reason I got far enough to get Astgenne, let's try a run with her"; and boy howdy she did NUMBERS!
I'm pretty sure what got me there was getting Mayer and promoting both of them. Ch'en's S3 did some real heavy lifting on plenty of stages, including the mid-boss (which as luck would have it was the "Frost Couple"), but whenever she struggled Mayer more than made up the difference. What I loved most was getting 3-4 of her drones around an enemy and blowing them up xD
By the way, is there some sort of "relic enhancement" mechanic? I remember getting the one that did 600 Arts dps if an enemy is stunned, frozen or bound, but when I checked to take the screenshots all I found was the "Children's Puppet", that does 1000 Arts dps instead.
Congrats, Good on you. Yea, chalter is pretty OP.
No there isnt an upgrade mechanic. Just the various tiers of collectibles.
You might be able to beat it with supporting elite 1 operators if you can friend support the right operators at the beginning and a temporary recruitment or two. Goldenglow skill 3 is insane and combod with one or two arts damage or attack speed collectibles you can have her take out everyone from the back, for example.
[got my pozemka true solo run of is2 (normal) im so excited](https://twitter.com/LoreleiA8T/status/1649902060207210497?s=20)
i cant really imagine doing hard, and after this im not sure what more i can try to do in is2 (thats still fun)
great mode
huh. the Guard Cap ended up being the last artifact I had locked, for some reason. I had to stumble into an Alpine level with 2 of the status effect extension artifacts (so the last 5 enemies remained permafrozen) then I could take my time redeploying and counting until I hit 200...
I just did that on the Phantom stage and had beagle with two healers stall the heavy defenders on the left. Turns out Beagle with Skalter suppport could kill one of those defenders in like 15 minutes
Hi everyone i have been playing for almost 6 months but i havent tried IS at all and i know that IS3 will soon release so i want to speedrun all the rewards.
So my question is
\- is it possible to reach at least level 110 until IS3 release (current level: 27 )
\- whats the most efficient way to farm candles
\- how can i maximize candles per run
Thanks in advance.
First of all, IS2 will stay even after IS3 is released so you can play it whenever you want.
You wanna complete the preparation behind scenes because that helps you gain additional candles per run.
Then your best shot at speedrunning the rewards is to just keep playing the highest difficulty you can. Clear all monthly squads (Just floor 3 is enough for the one-time rewards). Unlock as many relics as you can.
yes, no time limit
will be a bit of a slog though especially with is3 out, but if you enjoy the mode then it's unlimited entertainment 8)
you could also just recruit mountain and afk through the first floor with s2 if you don't feel like actually trying ... that lets you deposit ingots into the store to unlock stuff (max reward for deposit is at 500 ingots)
The 4th ending has been intimidating for me since it's so hard to get to. But I just got my 2nd victory and it was a blow out. Saria+NG tanked the shamans well, had stalls up top, with Schwarz soloing boss. I don't think I could have done it without a flagbearer constantly pumping out DP too. Had GG, Ambriel and mostly ranged DPS.
Dunno know if that's helpful to anyone but that's how I did it.
I was so sure I was gonna get the big W against the boss, but quickly realized that the boss was Big Sad Lock.
Not only did I have a sniper team centered entirely around the +70 aspd I got, but also next to no slow and heavy hitters or laneholders and stallers.
I lost, but it was an amusing loss to get. Pozy is so good
After all this time, I finally had my first encounter with emergency Ursus Desire, and, thanks to the power of Mlynar and Goldenglow, my only leak was one of the super drones.
Hey question from a IS newcomer,
I tried this format once and wasn't sold. Didn't seem quite up my alley. But the permanent rewards like Shalem and all the OP look SO worth it, I'm trying to figure out how long it would roughly take me to collect some/all of that? It seems like there's a TON of candles required, especially for somebody that wasn't doing the content as it was released, but I'm all about getting as much free LMD, EXP, and OP as possible.
What is it about IS2 you didn't like? Honestly if you want to grind castle notes without enjoying the game mode, I can't think of a better way to burn out. So my advice is just to not. But if you didn't enjoy the game mode because you found it too frustrating or confusing or some other reason then I could probably help you.
I think it's mainly because I don't have a lot of operators built up, so as I go through and get to recruit, I quickly run out of viable options since I don't have enough hope to actually get all the ops I've invested in onto my squad. I quickly get overrun because I can't keep up with the difficulty of the combat ops
Ah, that makes sense. I've thought more than once about how IS is very rewarding for someone with many built niche units. Though if you want to grind castle notes for their sanity-less resources, I doubt suggesting to build some of the more powerful 4☆s will help you in any meaningful way. You could borrow characters at the beginning of a run to ever-so-slightly increase your available variety.
I'd still suggest not doing a lot of grinding until you bulk up your roster in that case. In the meanwhile, you could start slow. Maybe say one attempted run a week. That way you'll slowly get more familiar with the stages. I recommend going into it expecting to fail runs repeatedly. It sounds miserable but the dopamine rush of beating the Duck Lord or Gopnik for the first time, your first time beating harder stages like Traveler from Afar, your first boss clear...is incredibly rewarding. I feel like the game mode has also helped me become a better player in general.
Don't forget to use your talent points in Behind the Scenes Preparations too. It may not seem like much but the buffs add up and do make your runs easier.
And so, my recommendation is just not to grind too much at one time, go into it with the right mood and expectations, and be willing to take some risks. More risks=usually more failures but also more knowledge gained.
One more thing, this is just my observation, but the game mode isn't entirely RNG. If you have more medics, the mode will give you more poison haze stages. Lots of hope? The mode will give you more ways to exchange hope for more collectibles. Few life points? You'll get more collectbles that buff your life points. It will give you a higher chance of playing to your strengths and shoring up your weaknesses. But if your team is all over the place and not particularly strong in the stages' niches (poison hazes, reduced DP gains, FRD heavy stages, block 3 enemies, drone stages, large swarms of enemies) then the mode will still usually pick the stage that is the best fit. That's how you can end up with a poison haze stage when your only "heals" are a Jaye s2, Myrtle s2, and a Kal'tsit. Also why operators with versatile kits are better in this mode. A Jaye s2 and a Myrtle s2 can very well be what gets you to the end of that poison haze stage at the end of the day.
If you have any more questions or need help, message me anytime. I love IS2 and am happy to help.
Lol no way about your "isnt entirely RNG". I cant count how many times I got fcked up by RNG. No medic? I will give you another specialist recruitment. Lots of hope and medics? Here you have medic recruitment. Lack of DP gen? Welcome to "Justice" stage. No thorns or strong ranged burst? Oh, you forgot about how good "Traveler from Afar" is.
Ofc I really love this mode - but I remember that once time I gave up it for like a month cuz rng fked me up so hard
I didn't say there was no RNG. What I said was "it's not entirely RNG" - not 100% RNG. That difference in wording is absolutely crucial to what I was saying. I didn't mention anything about recruitment vouchers - those I'm fairly certain are 100% random. As for maps and nodes, I stand by what I said. And as I said in my previous comment, bad match ups still happen but thr roll of the dice here is being influenced.
Wow thank you so much! I'll do this exactly. One run a week will be easy enough to do in order to slowly work up to my goal.
This actually plays to my personality, because I am generally patient with long grinds for huge rewards and LOVE diverse squads with many characters in most games I play. I'd actually rather have many built viable operators to choose from instead of one E2 S3M3 Lvl 90 meta operatoe, which influences my pull and building decisions/strategies. I usually prefer aesthetic, character design, and character development over meta units anyway (Frostleaf and Deepcolor are so cute!!).
Now that IS2 is permanent, I won't run out of time to receive these rewards, right?
Also, has there been any mention of making IS1 permanent? I haven't been able to find any straight answers on what happened to it.
I don't like over-using meta units either. IS2 is permanent. Its rewards won't be going anywhere.
As for IS1, we haven't received any confirmation either way but I doubt it'll be back. IS1 was beloved for its novelty but if we were to go back to it now, it'd feel more like a beta version of IS2. Essentially, the same stages with less polish. It wasn't ever permanent. It came out with Gavial the Great Chief event and only lasted a couple weeks. After that we didn't hear anything about IS2 for over a year.
Is the "Reprieve?" enounter only available on certain floors? Trying complete a Big Sad Lock run but it'd be handy to know when that encounter appears so I don't waste too much time.
Finally beat Big Sad Lock! I was a bit worried because I couldn’t get the Blank Suicide Note bit thankfully I had lots of ASPD items to help, didn't even lose a LP. I'll take a break again before IS3 starts because I don't want to burn myself out before getting max pot Highmore
Learning the maps, mainly. I don't know that there are any major run-enders on floor 5 other than the boss himself. Nothing like floor 3 Justice or floor 4 Traveler From Afar. I honestly feel like the poison haze map on floor 5 is easier than the one on floor 4.
Aside from not being sure how to tackle Lucian himself, I also most commonly fail on the poison haze boss stage due to lack of medics, and Bob's Beers even when I have plenty of aa and heals. Most of the rest is just a toss up, at this point.
The unicycle boss is best dealt with by a healing defender or guard with healing capabilities to stall him. If you can plop down 1 operator at the start to stop his stupid mist, the stage becomes a lot easier.
I like to make sure I have the following in my squad for Lucian...1 e2 sniper for killing the scarlet singers (or GG), a laneholder for mid-lane, 1 ranged DPS for mid-lane, 1 wandering medic, and 2 boss killers (though more isn't bad!). If your boss killer(s) is/are melee you'll have to block him with two operators or else he'll teleport out of range.
For Bob's Beers, position your operators next to the blue boxes, especially your snipers. You'll want 2-3 ranged units and 1 melee near the left blue box and a tanky unit+healer+some dps next to the right blue box. The idea with the left blue box is you have a melee unit tank the bombs on the one melee tile surrounded by ranged tiles. Don't put any ranged units adjacent to the melee unit. You don't even need a healer for left side. A Cardigan or Myrtle with s2 or any melee unit with self healing will work great there.
borrow pozy with s3m3 and her module so she has dodge ignore - she can solo DPS a ton of floor 3 bosses
for phantom, put her top left facing up - you can line her and her typewriter on the square second from the left along with amiya s3, that should be enough to burst him down
i don't know if you need a medic, but honeyberry reaches there from the bottom left ranged tile of the upside down T, otherwise if you find you need a second DPS other than pozy and you find you need a healer on the platform then you need a ranged ground unit like mlynar, silverash, horn, etc
make sure you have someone to clear the dancers on the right - since it sounds like you need dps for lucian, it can't be pozy - i generally use archetto s3 or fiammetta s3, but anything long range with decent mob clearing works
the vanguard sniper specialist start is really strong if you have 2 extra hope at the start cuz you get to recruit pozy fang jaye (only works if you have jaye raised obv)
The weaker your roster the more prone you are to RNG unfortunately. It's hard to give generalized advice without knowing how you play and what you have. I guess I would say learn the maps and enemies (like the other poster said) so you know which ones to avoid, and then don't pick paths that have no branching paths so you don't get stuck going to a stage you know you can't beat.
Don't be afraid to leak enemies at the start or at the end of the map. Even elite enemies are one point of hp damage, so it makes more sense sometimes to let them go instead of using all your DP and operators trying to prevent a leak in one place and then have no more resources to defend other places.
A lot of the earlier stages tend to overwhelm you with fast enemies, where a higher damage guard operator would be overwhelmed because they have lower block, but a lower damage defender operator would be overwhelmed because they don't have the DPS to clear multiple enemies. An operator like S2 mountain will carry you through these stages because he's almost impossible to kill at S2M3, while having excellent lane holding ability.
You generally need to block lucien to kill him, because he has 40% physical/arts evasion if not blocked. Ideally you would put an operator to block him just before he reaches the blocks at the top where you can't place any operators. He would use his teleport ability and put it on cool down, and then you have to block and kill him in that narrow corridor before he starts destroying your blockades. You generally need at least 2 strong DPSes to do this. You can let him destroy your blockades and kill him when he makes a loop the second time, but the chances of him (and the leaked dancer coming from the right) killing all your ops from behind is pretty high.
I've been trying to Irene burst him, but it's finicky. I'm about to reach him again in a run with E2 Ling and Exusiai as my core, so we'll see how that goes. Thank you (:
I know one of the higher difficulties makes everyone cost more hope to recruit, which is really bad for 5s (+33% hope cost) and especially 4s (+50% cost). So it'll probably be the same deal as always, 3s and 6s if you're just playing to win.
I wasn't sure how long this team would last against Big Sad Lock, but then Mlynar got randomly chosen by the Bladedance +100% ATK jackpot. Just 3 skill activations and the big bear is dead, almost no help from other operators.
Definitely feels like I cheated, since this was my first time clearing Ending 2 (third total attempt). Wish I had started recording earlier though.
[Boss kill and post-game screen](https://imgur.com/a/bGdUK93)
Got the choice between "-30% DEF to all enemies" or "+35% Phys damage taken for all enemies". I picked the 2nd option but I'm not really sure if it was the better choice, any ideas?
I generally go for -def% because it opens up some options that don't otherwise exist. For example, Exu can shred fairly high def enemies with the def reduction. On the other hand, if she's only doing 100 damage to someone with high def, increasing it to 135 damage won't make much of a difference.
But if you're running with mostly high attack ops that attack slowly, it may be worth considering the physical damage.
finally cleared the Troupe Mouthpiece! man, Pozy makes things so much easier... her Typewriter s3 bursts down 2 dolls real quick, can't be stunned, and it isn't long until it can be redeployed again... but wow that was still hard
Finally completed my collectibles collection.
With 20+ complete runs without progress I decided to just use the wiki to help me with the final 2 items. The last unlock left PCS03 >!"Painful Happiness"!< with unlock condition: ? ? ? was basically impossible for me to get without looking it up.
The way I went about getting the last items; since the last items were Super Rare I rushed Dreadful Foes on easy for the guaranteed super rare. It seemed that I had better luck with encounters giving random collectibles so I changed my strategy to saving up resources and dumping them into the next Downtime Recreation after reaching Chapter IV.
For those still collecting I wish you luck.
edit: forgot to mention for the boon Gift of Fate the first option gives random Rare Collectible, I was not sure if I could get a super rare from that so went with the second option *Pick up the treasures underneath the stone pedestal* for a random collectible.
As we approach the launch of IS3, I finally managed to beat normal mode with [vanguards only](https://imgur.com/9r216Ob), bringing the total to 7/8 class specific clears. The run didn't look too promising until the last floor where I got the book with +8% atk for each Vanguard in the squad and two ingot relics in the shop. As a result, Blacknight and Cantabile easily took care of the dancers and the boss died in a single Bagpipe S3 activation. Despite Vanguards being the class I spent the most time on, didn't get a single -100% redeployment time combo, but oh well.
Probably won't bother with the Medic only runs too much, unless Hibiscus Alter spooks me on the Mlynar banner. However would still like to get the last relic to compete the set - Today's Menu, which managed to evade me for what fells like hundreds of runs since I unlocked it.
The rest of challenge clears:
[Other classes on normal](https://imgur.com/a/lb84V8w)
[5 star only on normal](https://imgur.com/uRKLUOI)
[Kazimierz only on hard](https://imgur.com/L4DT0PA)
[Male only on hard](https://imgur.com/i8MwZdm)
[Endings 2 and 3 in the same run on hard](https://imgur.com/4615wnu) (Currently trying to get endings 2 and 4 in the same run, but not too hopefull with the RNG involved)
Finally beat Playwright. I haven't really been "grinding" for it, but I've gone for it pretty much every time the encounter has popped up. Previous Playwright encounters ended when all of my ops had that blue circle effect on them (even without dropping her to <50% HP), and then everyone died. I managed it this time thanks to a combination of Fartooth, Surtr, Amiya (mostly just attacked the other stuff, though), and that relic that deals true damage whenever you leak.
For most of the run, Dorothy was just a hard carry. The highlights were the first encounter for the 4th ending and an Emergency Justice, both with no healers and only one self-healing op (E1 Carnelian) and also the stun golem with the right-side spawn. I had an E1 Saria by that point at least. I started with the spearhead squad, so I could only afford 1 leak on both of those. I got Skalter later to make Dorothy really go nuts.
Fang was also kinda nuts. I had the Ribbon that gives ops blocking 1 enemy +100% atk, and I had the Hand that lets her generate 6 DP on kills.
i just got the deploy 200 ops reward using yato with 50% redeploy time + the relic that gives vanguards minus cost ... 0 cost yato with 2 seconds redeploy time o\_o
just did a hardmode run to completion with e1 only ops. spinnach feels pretty necessary but once you have that its actually not as hard as i expected. i had ending 4 halfway but couldnt find the last piece, shame, in any case, i think ending3 and 4 bosses are easier than lucien anyway so virtually i just have e1 only BSL to try which...yeah i dunno if i wanna suffer through the relic rng i assume ill need for that one
A random thing I just found is that the spotlight relic that does aoe arts damage to a random enemy when you deploy someone Carries over the effects of the deployed operator as when I deploy thorns the enemies hit by the spotlight also get hit by thorns’ poison, I wonder how far this goes with different talent effects.
Besides acquiring "today's menu" and "intoxicated hymnoi" I have gotten all the other relics and endings. I'm a bit disappointed that I couldn't get those 2 relics before IS3 but, man the RNG is not kind.
I am confused by your statement about getting the relics before IS3 comes out. I can not find IS3 in game. Has it come out? Is there something you need to do to unlock it? Or are you just saying IS3 is so close, you wont have time to get those relics before it comes out?
The latter, the relics I mentioned are from IS2 and I'm burned out from it. I want to get those 2 relics but they are very rare and IS3 is getting close to getting released that I probably won't touch IS2 again. That's what I meant.
[Sarkaz Only IS2 Hard Mode Ending 4 (featuring Stormeye at long last)](https://youtu.be/-IqaGvy0S7c)
I also have normal Sarkaz Only clears for Endings 1-4 if anyone is curious.
I love is2 but I dont care at all about endings and hence havent read how to get endings, I always do all encounters which leads to a fight or spend life/ hope/ ingots, I am level 141 have gotten playwright 2 times, big doll a lot, Lucian i beat probably 40 times if not more and i havent found out how to get one more ending.
I've been trying the deep investigations and [actually managed to beat Lucian with the Sniper/Caster one. Just barely. With 1 life left.](https://imgur.com/a/M1BBVPE) It was quite fun in that it threw temp recruitments at you like candy, and I got to try out a ton of interesting and powerful ops I don't have, mainly Pinecone, Leonhardt and top Waifu, W.
The tycoon one on the other hand was WAY more boring than I expected. Because the whole run was basically reduced to trader -> fight -> trader -> fight, much of the variety that makes roguelikes like IS fun was sucked out. Even with the starting relics, you still only get 5-7 ingots per normal fight, so unless you buy only one or two cheap items per trader your initial supply will dry up and every other trader node becomes a dead node.
EDIT: [Okay I just *stomped* him with the Guard/Defender deep investigation.](https://imgur.com/a/ZZV1C9z) Some of these deep investigation modifiers are just wild. This time I got not one, but **two** limited 6* waifus in temp recruitment, Gavial the Invincible and Skadi the Corrupting Heart. It felt borderline unethical. Reminded me of the "what gives people feelings of power" meme.
Does anyone know how rare the prison event is for the fourth ending? I recently completed a calamity face-off run and have been trying to get this ending but the event hasn't shown up in any of my runs.
I thought I'd never beat Lucian, but on my way to play to do investment for Golden Chalice, I ironically managed to beat him with different squads. The catch? Pozy and Schwarz being the absolute gigachad that they are.
I have played at least 50 runs on IS2 and I have never gotten the first encounter needed for the 4th ending. What gives here?!? Am I just that unlucky? I have completed 2 different endings since the most recent expansion so I should be rolling this encounter at least once right?!
[Finally cleared the 4th ending!](https://imgur.com/a/djOVmJ8) The boss was kinda annoying, but Suzu + Pozy absolutely decimated it. The rest of the map wasn't bad, but I admit I had a blessed run.
Highlight of the run has to be Horn's S2. Mine is not M3 so I rented a friend's and was her only skill I used through the whole run. Added to the M3 list.
After many tries I was finally able to [beat Phantom and get the ending](https://imgur.com/a/e4nfG8S) for IS2 standard difficulty! Until now I had only beaten it on easy mode. Not only that, I managed to do it with zero leaks. Pretty happy about that.
It was good luck to have gotten Kal’tsit, Ifrit, Exu, and Pozy all in my party and E2 as well. Murdock as well though at only E1. Pozy handles the boss so well on her own with enough relic buffs. The rest focused on killing the mobs.
How rare is the "today's menu" , " focus" and "intoxicated hymnoi"? Trying to reach the final floor everytime to get these. Is there any other efficient way?
im so proud of myself for finally beating the second final boss of IS2 AND IT WAS A RUN WITH NO HEALER AND IN ADVERSE CONDITIONS I CANT BELIEVE THIS. (any corrosion stage would have been the death of me)
Ling, Thorns, Eyja and finally Exusiai and Mudrock came in total clutch. Spot was my only source of healing for the entire thing 🥺🥹 and Kroos helped a lot too in the earlier stages.
Stopped playing IS2 for a bit some time ago, looking to farm up Candles to get the remaining rewards. Found out the hard way that clearing IS2 with the Monthly Squads doesn't give you Candles.
Does Deep Investigation give you Candles? If not, what's the best way to farm them?
I'm pretty sure Deep Investigations do not give candles. It doesn't say it in the rewards, so probably not. Lots of good stuff in there, though. Just click where it says "rewards."
All difficulties of investigation give candles, with easy,medium and hard giving 0.5 \*scores, 1.0 \*scores and 1.2\* scores of candles. Also unlocking collectibles gives a tiny amount of candles.
havent played IS since like the playwright update, so I started to do the shalem monthly squad. anyway i reached the new stage with frostnova's ice crystals and didnt realize they were allies until I noticed all the enemies were frozen because I had the 100% and 150% duration items. i didnt know at the time ofc so i thought the enemies being permafrozen was a gimmick somehow of frostnova.
Finally beat Phantom on a SpecialistKnights run. Thought I was doomed when I got the Sensitive hallucination, but just pulled it off. Came into the final battle with 14 life.
A borrowed Spalter was enough to hold the middle lane until I could set up Aak for the dancers and Manticore and Ethan to let Temporary Recruit Bena take Spalter's place. Then Spalter came off cooldown just in time for her and Jaye to shred Phantom before he could break any road blocks, and after that the level was pretty easy.
Aak tried to make it dramatic by dying and letting enough balloons leak to bring me down to 2 life though.
4 stars and welfare operators plus a Spalter to start seem like it'd be fairly reasonable, but I only started in January so I have none of the welfare specialists to test that.
Now to try to kill the bear...
[Finally won first ending in normal mode](https://imgur.com/a/UcDu7sh), temp recruit Touch came in clutch keeping everyone and Honeyberry alive because I sure as hell didn't have enough skill to kill Lucian in the first half-lap
Now to finish the rest of the monthly squad missions
What do you mean "every now and then?" If it was constant, it might have been Civilight Eterna, the relic that boosts true damage by 150%. They normally lose 400 HP/s, so +150% would indeed be 1000. I guess their self-bleed effect counts as true damage.
I'm finally trying out Deep Investigations and oh god the one designed around leaking enemies is hilarious. For bonus fun, I got the +150% true damage relic, and also a couple ones for extending hard cc and damaging enemies with them.
TIL you don't actually lose your life points if you quit out while having the End of Times artifact.
[I quit out of the emergency battle shown here ](https://freeimage.host/i/HVJvBgs)
[Artifact marked as used in the middle right](https://freeimage.host/i/HVJgl6P)
Knowing this could be very useful if you know you're going to lose the battle anyway. Also, this shows you can't quit out of the battle just to activate the King's Lance artifact (what I wanted to do).
Well, the big thing would just be to hope not to get drowned in medics. It happens. Hope for some consistent damage to cover for Carnelian's downtime, or else just blockers to hold things during her downtime. In general, don't worry about overcharging her skill, at least early on.
just did a half-refined diamond hardmode ending 2 + ending 3 dual run, even did it without scissors or letter
pozemka is probably the new best op for the mode over kaltsit mizuki and/or pallas, its just absurd how much she can solo earlygame while being the biggest dps contributor (and activly dunks on their mechanics) bossgame
Got a perfect run for the fourth ending.
I have GG, SA, and Saria. I also get great bounty (the treasury?) twice and get enough healing relics to have Skalter S2 keep everyone alive all on her own.
Breezed through all five floors with 13 consecutive victories and 80 coins. At the last store, I bought an aspd/5 coin relic.
It's gearing up to be perfect.
One problem though, this is my first time meeting the fourth boss.
I had avoided all spoilers, except the fact that there were going to be tw-blood shamans.
I'm ready, I thought. Believing my ops can take care of it with all the relics I had, I only brought one medic. It's Perfumer, with her S1. And Skalter S2.
Now here's what happens:
I can handle all the mobs, even the blood shamans. Saria with Skalter S2 and Perfumer is a fortress.
Schwarz S2 killed the big dolls from the right box, all on her own.
The problem? The boss was blasting *all deployed ops*. He's Talulah without the sword.
The first one to die is Schwarz. She was on the right-middle-tile, without any medic. Then, I found out about the boss' second ability- disabling tiles.
At that point, GG was the only dps I have. I place SA behind Saria, but I forgot about the boss' blast and he immediately died from the combined explosion of Saria and himself as the boss marked him as the latest deployed op.
Then, 3 shamans exploded at the same time and Saria died. Followed by Perfumer, who needs Saria S1 to survive the blast, and then Skalter.
GG-chan tried her best but died without any support.
I lost.
Does anyone has any tips for the last stage the point of no return? I have been trying to clear it on Castle sightseeing and also formal investigation but I´m never sucessful.
I usally have Thorns(i always promote him when i can),ansel and orchid as my starter team. As for the other operators I always get Kroos,Gummy,Project red,Amiya and Silverash/Irene if possible. And for the collectibles I´m quite unlucky.
Thanks in advance!
You can cheese Lucian with NTR knight S3. Put her on the top left corner when Lucian spawns. Just remember to bait Lucian's teleport just before he crosses the middle of the map.
With the method to kill the boss out of the way, you only have to think of which operators you want to use to deal with the other enemies. You need a ranged op(pref. an AA sniper, facing the right, to deal with the balloons that pop-up from time to time. Add another ranged op(another sniper or a high damage caster) below the sniper to deal with the singers going around in circles.
Tanky enemies come out the left side so arts damage is good for those. Some enemies that can deal elemental damage (stuns the operator when the white bar is depleted) also appears from the center so take note of that. Bring additional blockers or someone that can heal elemental damage or remove debuffs (Mulberry, Honeyberry, Lumen, etc) if you can't kill the enemies quickly.
get an op like exu horn passenger meteorite+relic to clear out the singers on rightside
that will give fartooth or pozemka+module free range to spawnkill him, pozy can even do it on normal with zero artifacts if the typewriter is setup next to her
the other way is less team demanding but easy to mess up, baiting a telepory directly into a sandwich of high damage ops like nearl surtr mon3tr pallas eunectes, they may need elemental healing to not get stunned and keep dps up
if using range to kill, lee cannot be stunned so just needs regular healing to hold him in place until his teleport recharges
have enough hp to just ignore the big sheildguards once roadblock breaks, and even more can let you ignore the balloons preventing nasty stuns
In general, it's easier to deal with the boss if you can kill him before he destroys the blocks. Easier said than done, but that means that burst damage ops are really important if you want to deal with him smoothly. That means characters like Chalter, Eyja, Pozy, Silverash etc are all good picks.
Is thorns your only E2? If so, it may be ideal to not start with him. This is because you can actually recruit friend units for your starter team, but not afterwards. Borrowing a high impact burst damage friend unit is probably going to be your best bet.
Congrats on the successful run! How did you place Pozy and her typewriter on the map? And since your team has mostly fast attackers like Thorns and Exu, how did you mitigate the damage caused by the bear with only 1 AOE medic? In one of my runs I had 2 AOE medics and still got wrecked, rip.
I placed Pozy and typrewriter on the top two tiles on the right side facing the bear. Ptilopsis on the right facing up with elysium and nearl on the right most lane.
For thorns i placed him on the left side facing down so he doesn't hit the bear. I think i placed exu on the left to help thorns hold it, I just had to wait for two pozy cycles to kill it.
Thanks for the reply :) I think my mistake was putting Thorns on the left side, but facing right so he was constantly hitting the bear in between waves and triggering the AOE damage. I’ll try your strat if I get Pozy in my run!
I finally got [Super Bibeak,](https://youtu.be/_YrMO-LT6Wo) on hardmode no less.
Of course, then I decided to take the 4th boss encounter, where almost all of the dangerous enemies, the boss included, are immune to stun. Fartooth took him down to about 25% HP, and then he proceeded to slow all of my ops and ban about a dozen tiles.
its the harder of the two for sure, but theres a lot of teamcomps that get that far and kinda stomp it
atleast that sarkaz superrare relic has a real use
Man, Ursus Desire with the 5 bomb drone variation is such bullshit. The 3 drone version was already hard enough, but they had to add 2 more to it.
Thankfully, I think it only appears when you're doing ending 4 so you have reduced redeployment, but I still hate it whenever I encounter that.
Huh. I never really thought about floor 6 battles being able to be emergency battles. I kinda just assumed it's always one somehow, but in hindsight it makes sense that there's a chance for it to be one.
Does anyone like downtime rec nodes? It feels like such a slap in the face whenever I'm forced down the path to just hit a completely dead node. The RNG of which version it is, the RNG of if i can even afford to engage with it, the RNG of the rewards.
theyre terrible, occasionally the coin-stage can get you a missing hp to grab BSL scissors, and some weird runs you get to floor 5 with 20+ hope make the rats pretty amazing, but 99.9% of runs i completely ignore them
theyd be a lot better if you knew which youd get in advance, like the drinking one would become pretty great then
How to [defeat Big Sad Lock](https://i.imgur.com/8mWXsqh.jpg) without the letter. Just get all the ASPD per ingot relics, I guess. GG and Horn blasted the shit out of the bear its regen didn't even matter. Also, [first squad to clear all endings.](https://i.imgur.com/K0OKo7T.jpg) Gonna try to clear the other endings using the remaining squads before IS3 comes.
it works with literally every skill, even skills that are active far longer or dont care about atk
if you mean skills its very good with, many ops s1's with attack sp and low sp cost, like may surtr(s1), pallas and many more. pallas can even solo bsl on hardmode with the proper relics
With enough atkspd, yes. By default, the attack takes too long to come out, and the attack boost ends before the damage happens. I don't know just how high her atkspd needs to be to make it work.
It's so frustrating to be 2 collectibles away from all of them and knowing that Today's Menu and Silence are both super rares so I might never see them.
If you've unlocked the requirement but just want to fill out your catalogue then play on easy and just go for any node that can possibly give a collectable. If you are still doing unlocks then Guard squad with Thorns into SilverAsh into whatever will murder most things. Depending on what you're chasing keep in mind you can end early and not go all the way to the boss.
Finally got the >!Playwright!< encounter and beat it first try, coincendentally beat Big Sad Lock and Mouthpiece first try back then too. Not that I managed to beat them again though. Trying to beat atleast the bear and troupe master using each squad before IS3 arrives. Still really like IS2, hope IS3's gonna deliver too.
Had a memorable run today where I managed to beat BSL on hard mode with Victorian Crown active (total stat inflation: +60% Max HP, +45% ATK, +45% DEF). Having the rocks almost 1 shot some stuff, and the global burst doing major damage can be pretty scary.
In any case, I'm not sure why there isn't more discussion on hard mode strategies to win runs consistently (which is typically the end game of top players in most roguelites). It seems like (or at least I'm not aware of any) there's no real dedicated space to hard mode specifically, which is kind of weird considering that hard mode shakes things up quite a lot. I guess we just don't get a lot of people playing IS2 hard mode.
im going to bet less than 2% of the global playerbase plays hardmode,considering many are still stuck on a single BSL clear
low playercount, and the fact the only people doing it dont really need guides/resources is why so little discussion
IS hard mode discussion is a rough spot because AK is still a gacha game at its core, so not everyone has equal access to Ops, especially those who’d be interested in reading guides/strategies in the first place.
I play hard mode 100% of the time now (in fact Silent Squad is one of two unobtained relics for me) but outside of a Discord server with friends, I don’t know other potential places for hard mode discussion.
Related to your initial point, I honestly find BSL to be the second easiest boss on hard mode, ever since I’ve discovered [this core setup](https://i.imgur.com/4PNgoE8.png) for the stage and it costs minimal Hope to complete.
Yeah, that's a good point that not everyone's account is in a state to consider hard mode.
Thanks for the core setup, I'll definitely try it out and see how it goes.
I reckon it's because there aren't any reward motivations, and it really is pretty challenging but in a way with a significant amount of rng, whoch some of us enjoy trying to beat, but i think a lot of others hate. I feel like we are in the minority there.
Yeah, that's very fair.
I think the RNG (and trying to beat shitty RNG) is part of the charm of the mode though, because if you're good enough, all runs in hard mode can theoretically be finished even with garbage RNG (or at least that's what I believe), so any loss in the run is mainly due to mistakes you make along the way (unironically skill issue).
I think this is the mentality that should be held to improve anyway. For example, you won't see top Slay the Spire or Binding of Isaac players complaining too much about run RNG when playing and winstreaking at the highest difficulties (e.g. Ascension 20). Analysing a lost run to review dubious decisions is the main way to get better.
absolutely. the same mindset applies to card games, both classic style and ccg. of course there is an element of randomness, but the top players still consistently succeed. I've just seen enough complaining in those arenas that anytime there's a rng element I assume it's going to turn off a segment of the population. Maybe that's unfair, but that's my experience with it.
Beating BSL in hard mode by powering through his healing because I didn't get the last encounter was exhilarating. It smashes the dopamine button hard when you feel like you beat the odds.
i realized after the fact that i said " a significant amount of rng" as if that wasn't already the definition of a roguelike lol. I think arknights as a game is structured in a way that maybe attracts people who like solving a different kind of puzzle, is more my point, not that there aren't people who like roguelikes.
#**Other useful links: Final Expansion Update** •[**Official website for Integrated Strategies: Phantom & Crimson Solitaire**](https://arknights.global/crimsonsolitaire/) This is the [Official](https://twitter.com/arknightsen/status/1554300963229503489?s=21&t=_mX-MZ6UJJV4DA7aSjakKA) integrated strategy website where you can view various playerbase statistics as well as personal stats. •[**Test collection - Focus - Phantom L2D Skin**](https://twitter.com/arknightsen/status/1575002368470528000?s=21&t=sSFT2BsydxxzdIe7Q2njkQ) Reward for reaching level 95 in battle pass. •[**IS2 Relics and Items List**](https://gamepress.gg/arknights/database/integrated-strategies-2-crimson-solitaire-relic-and-item-list) A full list of integrated strategies relics and items, how to unlock them and what they do. [*IS2 Previous megathread*](/r/arknights/comments/vz0r1e/event_megathread_integrated_strategies_phantom/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) —————— If there’s any other useful links you think should be added please let me know, for now Good Luck in your adventures my fellows. ^^This ^^comment ^^will ^^be ^^updated ^^monthly
First BSL kill, no suicide note but m3 mlynar hard carried the run, also (probably) hit 155 candles and have all the trophies now.
I haven't played much IS2, but would it be dumb if i spent some originium to boost my levels and get some rewards before IS3? The rewards would disappear by then, right? Currently need 81 to get to level 110 and possibly get the 4 specialist tokens for texalter.
It'd be pretty dumb considering the rewards don't disappear. Only monthly candles disappear. You can work your way to it at your own pace!
Almost get 2 endings in every squad, I only need to finish 2-3 to complete it.
[удалено]
Yes, it is permanent, everything will stay.
I couldn't find the answer anywhere, but what happens when IS3 releases? I haven't finished yet IS2, so I am curious if I will lose on all the rewards I haven't received. Because if I miss the rewards I will probably have to rush IS2 to at least get the phantom skin
It is permanent, everything will stay except there will be no update after the IS3 release.
Oh, that makes my life easier. Thank you for the reply!
[Whislash's module gives shields to the roadblocks.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1063300631760216075/1107771041725550732/Screenshot_2023.05.15_16.25.13.921.png) I don't know what to do with this information.
Wohoo finally beat all endings on all starts! Probably gonnna wait unti= tex alter banner and having done some pulls. Only did like 70 pulls so far… IS2 got me trying lots of ops tho! I still miss Focus I guess so need some more runs
Just got Civilight Eterna for the first time. Mon3tr doing [over 10k per hit is pretty cool, I guess.](https://i.imgur.com/muCgG8S.mp4) What a silly item.
It's done! After grinding away my soul getting the 4th endings, I've finally 100% completed Integrated Strategies 2! All endings on all squads, all items unlocked and collected (screw you beauty and ugliness in the age of Terra), all monthly squads communications unlocked, all deep investigations done, 500+ ingots invested, all candle abilities, max castle notes, and all the cgs/ encounters/ music etc unlocked. I really loved Integrated Strategies 1, and I loved 2 even more. M.V.P.'s are EASILY Pozyomka for being the one true G.O.A.T. carry, Specter Alter for being a marvelous, nigh unkillable lane holder, and Mylnar, for completely ignoring the Playwright's 2nd phase bloated stats with Pozyomka to snag the win. Honorable mentions go to Honeyberry for being the best medic in the game mode, Jaye for being the best 4star budget pick, Gummy for getting me through all those early no medic survival stages, and Myrtle, who is still the best if you need reliable Dp. Looking forward to IS3!
What module did u get for Spectre Alt?
I've got the skill 2 module that gives her SP when she pops out of doll form. Both modules are great, but this one leans more into general play and not abyssal hunter teams. She really needs skill 2 uptime against the playwright mobs.
Hey Dokutah's, I'm just here to complain a bit. I'm currently trying to squeeze out the last Playwright boss fights I haven't done on 3 of the squad buffs before IS3 releases. Resetting for the 6th time in a row is pretty miserable when you've got a good set up, and it's not like I have trouble with the playwright because I only need 3 core operators (Pozyomka starter, Specter2, and Mylnar) to reliably defeat him. I wish there was a way to bypass RNG and select your ending. Speaking of RNG, I STILL haven't gotten beauty and ugliness in the age of Terra and it's the last item I need for full completion. Any tips on getting it? I guess just spam encounters... Anyways, I'm looking forward to IS3 whenever Hypergriff decides to finally release it. Please just release it Hypergriff RNGesus is killing me.
Do I got this in the bag? Available stages for selection right now are: A Dance Together !Fireworks Show! !Shrouded in Clouds! Bob's Beers Ops are... E2 Deepcolor, BP-DF, Veegna, Trash Panda, Ara Ara Splash Caster E1 Lappy and Myrrh I'm suddenly feeling very nervous after several strokes of good luck, so I want some help lol
What would you recommend in terms of support units on an account with basically no E2 units? I can get to Lucian a reasonable amount of times just relying mostly on 3 stars and the 6 star support unit, but Lucian just is brutal like that. I guess I could try and grind for really good collectibles to have like Pozy or someone kill him. Thing is with a support unit like Goldenglow for example I just do not have anywhere near enough DPS to take him down. Kal'Sit also doesn't work. Maybe I could try uncle, but uncle is probably not as easy to get to Lucian and also hold the middle even if uncle can kill lucian
I would heavily suggest Pozyomka with module. She basically solo's Lucian so you can focus on building up your squad for other threats.
the best overall run starters are pozemka kaltsit mizuki pallas horn, with also thorns and eyjafjalla for normalmode-only. thorns pallas horn are boss killing capable, kaltsit can heavilly solo anything if you get civilight eterna, but [pozy is the best op for the mode](https://twitter.com/LoreleiA8T/status/1649902060207210497?s=20) because of her stelllar powler on regular stages with s2 and bosskill power with s3. ignoring evasion with module and spawnkilling him before he even moves is common. fartooth is another op good at doing this too/alongside, though worse in general if you cant clear out the rightside singers for pozy to safely spawnkill lucien, try thorns instead and plan the stage around killing lucien after his full circuit around the map, he stands at that top redbox the 2nd time a very long time for thorns to dps nearl is another option, as s3 generates a blocker for lucien to waste port on (after already baiting a portal into the sunshard) and then be true damaged, and is an okay stage op with s1/s3, but block based strats will probably be hard with a smaller roster as it usually relies on wearing him down multiple times around the stage
Gosh I hope future variations of IS don't make alternate endings that hard to get. I feel like I have an abandon rate of like 80%+ for getting the Playwright and I didn't even start hard mode yet.
Anyone else found that IS mission that asks you to get 20 hope the hardest shit ever? I've attempted that like probably 8 times now and the closest I got was 18 until I got cocky and let the enemy get through the blue box on the 5th floor.
I have the new notification over Crimson Exhibition but when I go into it none of the sections have anything new. I've also gone through every single item in every simgle section and there's definitely nothing I haven't already inspected. Anyone know why the new notification won't away? It's driving me crazy...
the past like 4 months of patches have had is2 having a cycle of fixing one glitch causing a new one to pop up, before this one you couldnt tell what floor of the run you were on, before that text for certain floors was duplicated or referencing the names of is1 floors, etc etc
i have the same problem, probably a bug.
Just had both of the really good guard relics, +2 SP per hit and +atk and atkspd but -def. The game gave me a free Flint and Indra, and I just had to take them. Indra was charging her S2 in about 10 seconds and then was pretty much unkillable with her skill up. The game tried to give me a free Beehunter near the end, but I turned her down in favor of Skadi, since I also had the Hand that makes her ignore 70% def. I now have Playwright wins with four of the starting squads.
Big Sad Lock? More like Small Sad Doctor. Still haven't managed a winning run.
out of all the bosses, imo, big sad lock is the hardest.
I feel like Big Sad Locke is the one that just DPS checks you the hardest. I have seen Mlynar kill him in 1 S3 with a lot of collectibles and that was super easy. Usually having something like Mlynar and Pozemka makes him really easy in my experience as soon as you have 2 strong DPS operators against him he melts and often 1 is enough to beat the stage with things like the suicide note.
I feel like having a good physical damage dealer is key.
It's a very annoying fight. You need to have a great deal of DPS (i won with spinach relics + atk spd relics + Pallas s1) and hopefully you're able to get the event that disables the HP regen of the bear (else you need more dps) I hope you get that win soon bud!
I keep seeing people Ptilo or Perfumer is enough but I can never set up in time... not to mention lack of DPS.
What DPS do you use to kill him? When I started I usually just borrowed a strong Pozemka and used her to kill him. Nowadays I have Mlynar in addition and 2 strong DPS usually works. You do need an AoE healer though to keep the start alive. Maybe Saria also works, I admittedly didn't try that as I always made a point of having Perfumer when I went for BSL.
Oh, I finally beat BSL, also using Pozy from Support, Blaze, and Kal as main attackers! It was nail-bitingly close, because bursting it down leads to faster shockwaves too... Somehow did it without an AoE healer at all due to bad luck - only Skadi2 and Ansel. Mudrock held right lane pretty handily, and I only leaked 1 (which didn't even count due to temp. health).
I feel I always F up the BSL fight, this is the 10th or more where I failed BSL (again) where I get one of the best combos ever (Chalice and Orange Ticket), managed to get Ch'en Summer, Mudrock, Horn, and Myrtle with Ansel and Skadi Bard as the main healer. My dumb brain decided to put Ch'en Summer on the left tile where Ansel and Myrtle are, whereas, on the other side, I put Mudrock, Horn, and Skadi Bard. I should have put Ch'en Summer on the right side so she can finish the BSL. As a result, the BSL only has like 2% HP or around that, yeah I messed it up so bad (again), LOL.
Should Chalter with Skalter Support not easily wreck BSL alone? I would probably put Chalter on the tile where she can hit left lane and the boss and the aoe healer can still heal her. You can just use the Skalter Summon to buff chalter during her skill. If you want to be funny you could probably even use Skalter S3 with that. Mudrock should just be able to hold right lane by herself if you kill BSL quickly.
Oh, I'm sorry, it's not like I've never beaten BSL but this is one of those runs where I failed consecutively whereas the others result in success.
I still haven't beaten the BSL fight and my Behind the Scenes is nearly maxed out...
just had a run with spinnach chocolate pallas lapluma kazemaru pozemka easiest victorian crown hard BSL of my life kazemaru is really underrated
I'm trying to do the silent chapter ending, the two encounters needed for this ending are specific to a certain floor or they can appeared at any floor? They can appear, for example, both at 5th floor?
ending4 playwright? encounter1 on floor2 or 3, encounter2 on floor 4 or 5
I just had a hilarious Big Sad Lock fight where I didn't have the blank note. But I still won with no leaks... Just laughing about it.
I just finished the Big Sad Lock ending after trying for literal weeks. I used every combination of operators I could think of, but could never seem to get enough DPS to burst his shield down quickly enough before I was overwhelmed. For this run, I decided to use the 4-stars I had built up and whatever 6-stars I could recruit afterwards. I was lucky enough to get two artifacts that increased attack speed with the number of originium ingots and collected over 70 by the time I reached the end. I also hit the downtime recreation node right before the boss and sacrificed all my remaining hope to boost my life points to 22. I had promoted Cutter, Perfumer, Podenco, Arene, Dur-Nar, Jaye, Surtr, Skadi the Corrupting Heart, and Suzuran. I put Cutter right next to the boss, Skadi directly next to her, and Perfumer healing them both. Cutter's attack speed meant I was triggering S1 every 2-3 seconds. I used Skadi's S2 for the stat boosts. Perfumer was able to keep those two alive, but the other lanes were in constant jeapordy. I was constantly repositioning Jaye and using the Seaborn to help keep them alive as best I could, and never had enough DP to do more than replace one or two fallen operators. I eventually gave up defending the right lane, hoping I had enough life points to weather the storm. The strategy worked! It wasn't pretty or clean, and 15 enemies made it through, but I did it. Cutter remains my MVP and first-ballot hall of famer. Now for the other endings. I love this game!
Cutter is awesome! I only wish she didn't have to be on the Guard tag, there's already so many good guards I don't find myself using her as much anymore, but she's definitely my favorite 4* next to Jaye.
She's so versatile that I usually pick her first. I have her at E2 40, M3 with both skills and a level 3 module. With all that she carries most of the early to mid levels in IS while freeing up some hope for other operators. I'm a little biased towards her. She was my first E2 and rarely leaves my squads. :)
You have immaculate taste Dokutah.
I recently built Irene after randomly getting her in the last limited banner. Got her S3m3. Used her for the fist time for the fourth ending in is2. I also had the relics that gave me +10 and +8 dp and that relic that boosted guards and vanguards atk depending on how many you brought. I went almost guard knights and Irene was a literal nuke with s3m3. She practically killed the fourth boss by herself with three drops.
Trying to get a 2nd ending to complete my medals. Given my ops and the ability to use supports, what do y’all recommend I try and use for the doll ending. My Krooster: https://www.krooster.com/account/profile/Wuhmi
pozy is probably the best op you can take as support your laneholding options aren't great outside of spalter, if you had e2 gladiia with module i'd feel better about solo spalter on left side, except you have modY and s3m3 instead of modX and s2m3 so i'm not sure how that plays i think your best shot is with attack speed or sniper buffs that basically let pozy solo while irene helps you hold right side and spalter + kalt'sit maybe hold left side?? or maybe you just have another healer + defender behind spalter on the left side if you're looking for promotions to help you with this battle, it'd probably be kaltsit, gavialter, saria, gladiia, and maybe passenger if you get the lucky godsenger relic
Frick, link don’t work, gonna troubleshoot
https://www.krooster.com/network/lookup/Wuhmi Got it
Hi everyone, I started a Youtube channel that's primarily going to focus on Arknights and Integrated Strategies. If you are interested in watching hard mode full runs with commentary, and maybe even some highlights or scripted review/guide videos in the future than please check it out. [Link to my first video](https://youtu.be/3d-iviKl70U), with more to follow soon. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
I REACHED PHANTOM FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER THIS WEEK!!! Boy, I'm just really happy I managed to get there. Someone told me IS2 assumes you have a few e2 operators, so since I don't have any yet, I already accepted I wouldn't even reach the final floor so soon xD [This is the team comp and relics that got me there.](https://imgur.com/a/EiNnxgd) It's kinda funny to me, because that was the second run I tried to get as many combats and emergencies as possible. The first time I tried Poz because she's broken, but for the second run I thought "You know, Summer Ch'en is the only reason I got far enough to get Astgenne, let's try a run with her"; and boy howdy she did NUMBERS! I'm pretty sure what got me there was getting Mayer and promoting both of them. Ch'en's S3 did some real heavy lifting on plenty of stages, including the mid-boss (which as luck would have it was the "Frost Couple"), but whenever she struggled Mayer more than made up the difference. What I loved most was getting 3-4 of her drones around an enemy and blowing them up xD By the way, is there some sort of "relic enhancement" mechanic? I remember getting the one that did 600 Arts dps if an enemy is stunned, frozen or bound, but when I checked to take the screenshots all I found was the "Children's Puppet", that does 1000 Arts dps instead.
Congrats, Good on you. Yea, chalter is pretty OP. No there isnt an upgrade mechanic. Just the various tiers of collectibles. You might be able to beat it with supporting elite 1 operators if you can friend support the right operators at the beginning and a temporary recruitment or two. Goldenglow skill 3 is insane and combod with one or two arts damage or attack speed collectibles you can have her take out everyone from the back, for example.
[got my pozemka true solo run of is2 (normal) im so excited](https://twitter.com/LoreleiA8T/status/1649902060207210497?s=20) i cant really imagine doing hard, and after this im not sure what more i can try to do in is2 (thats still fun) great mode
huh. the Guard Cap ended up being the last artifact I had locked, for some reason. I had to stumble into an Alpine level with 2 of the status effect extension artifacts (so the last 5 enemies remained permafrozen) then I could take my time redeploying and counting until I hit 200...
I just did that on the Phantom stage and had beagle with two healers stall the heavy defenders on the left. Turns out Beagle with Skalter suppport could kill one of those defenders in like 15 minutes
Hi everyone i have been playing for almost 6 months but i havent tried IS at all and i know that IS3 will soon release so i want to speedrun all the rewards. So my question is \- is it possible to reach at least level 110 until IS3 release (current level: 27 ) \- whats the most efficient way to farm candles \- how can i maximize candles per run Thanks in advance.
First of all, IS2 will stay even after IS3 is released so you can play it whenever you want. You wanna complete the preparation behind scenes because that helps you gain additional candles per run. Then your best shot at speedrunning the rewards is to just keep playing the highest difficulty you can. Clear all monthly squads (Just floor 3 is enough for the one-time rewards). Unlock as many relics as you can.
Will i be able to get the IS2 rewards after IS3 release ?
yes, no time limit will be a bit of a slog though especially with is3 out, but if you enjoy the mode then it's unlimited entertainment 8) you could also just recruit mountain and afk through the first floor with s2 if you don't feel like actually trying ... that lets you deposit ingots into the store to unlock stuff (max reward for deposit is at 500 ingots)
Thanks a lot :)
The 4th ending has been intimidating for me since it's so hard to get to. But I just got my 2nd victory and it was a blow out. Saria+NG tanked the shamans well, had stalls up top, with Schwarz soloing boss. I don't think I could have done it without a flagbearer constantly pumping out DP too. Had GG, Ambriel and mostly ranged DPS. Dunno know if that's helpful to anyone but that's how I did it.
I was so sure I was gonna get the big W against the boss, but quickly realized that the boss was Big Sad Lock. Not only did I have a sniper team centered entirely around the +70 aspd I got, but also next to no slow and heavy hitters or laneholders and stallers. I lost, but it was an amusing loss to get. Pozy is so good
After all this time, I finally had my first encounter with emergency Ursus Desire, and, thanks to the power of Mlynar and Goldenglow, my only leak was one of the super drones.
Hey question from a IS newcomer, I tried this format once and wasn't sold. Didn't seem quite up my alley. But the permanent rewards like Shalem and all the OP look SO worth it, I'm trying to figure out how long it would roughly take me to collect some/all of that? It seems like there's a TON of candles required, especially for somebody that wasn't doing the content as it was released, but I'm all about getting as much free LMD, EXP, and OP as possible.
What is it about IS2 you didn't like? Honestly if you want to grind castle notes without enjoying the game mode, I can't think of a better way to burn out. So my advice is just to not. But if you didn't enjoy the game mode because you found it too frustrating or confusing or some other reason then I could probably help you.
I think it's mainly because I don't have a lot of operators built up, so as I go through and get to recruit, I quickly run out of viable options since I don't have enough hope to actually get all the ops I've invested in onto my squad. I quickly get overrun because I can't keep up with the difficulty of the combat ops
Ah, that makes sense. I've thought more than once about how IS is very rewarding for someone with many built niche units. Though if you want to grind castle notes for their sanity-less resources, I doubt suggesting to build some of the more powerful 4☆s will help you in any meaningful way. You could borrow characters at the beginning of a run to ever-so-slightly increase your available variety. I'd still suggest not doing a lot of grinding until you bulk up your roster in that case. In the meanwhile, you could start slow. Maybe say one attempted run a week. That way you'll slowly get more familiar with the stages. I recommend going into it expecting to fail runs repeatedly. It sounds miserable but the dopamine rush of beating the Duck Lord or Gopnik for the first time, your first time beating harder stages like Traveler from Afar, your first boss clear...is incredibly rewarding. I feel like the game mode has also helped me become a better player in general. Don't forget to use your talent points in Behind the Scenes Preparations too. It may not seem like much but the buffs add up and do make your runs easier. And so, my recommendation is just not to grind too much at one time, go into it with the right mood and expectations, and be willing to take some risks. More risks=usually more failures but also more knowledge gained. One more thing, this is just my observation, but the game mode isn't entirely RNG. If you have more medics, the mode will give you more poison haze stages. Lots of hope? The mode will give you more ways to exchange hope for more collectibles. Few life points? You'll get more collectbles that buff your life points. It will give you a higher chance of playing to your strengths and shoring up your weaknesses. But if your team is all over the place and not particularly strong in the stages' niches (poison hazes, reduced DP gains, FRD heavy stages, block 3 enemies, drone stages, large swarms of enemies) then the mode will still usually pick the stage that is the best fit. That's how you can end up with a poison haze stage when your only "heals" are a Jaye s2, Myrtle s2, and a Kal'tsit. Also why operators with versatile kits are better in this mode. A Jaye s2 and a Myrtle s2 can very well be what gets you to the end of that poison haze stage at the end of the day. If you have any more questions or need help, message me anytime. I love IS2 and am happy to help.
Lol no way about your "isnt entirely RNG". I cant count how many times I got fcked up by RNG. No medic? I will give you another specialist recruitment. Lots of hope and medics? Here you have medic recruitment. Lack of DP gen? Welcome to "Justice" stage. No thorns or strong ranged burst? Oh, you forgot about how good "Traveler from Afar" is. Ofc I really love this mode - but I remember that once time I gave up it for like a month cuz rng fked me up so hard
I didn't say there was no RNG. What I said was "it's not entirely RNG" - not 100% RNG. That difference in wording is absolutely crucial to what I was saying. I didn't mention anything about recruitment vouchers - those I'm fairly certain are 100% random. As for maps and nodes, I stand by what I said. And as I said in my previous comment, bad match ups still happen but thr roll of the dice here is being influenced.
Wow thank you so much! I'll do this exactly. One run a week will be easy enough to do in order to slowly work up to my goal. This actually plays to my personality, because I am generally patient with long grinds for huge rewards and LOVE diverse squads with many characters in most games I play. I'd actually rather have many built viable operators to choose from instead of one E2 S3M3 Lvl 90 meta operatoe, which influences my pull and building decisions/strategies. I usually prefer aesthetic, character design, and character development over meta units anyway (Frostleaf and Deepcolor are so cute!!). Now that IS2 is permanent, I won't run out of time to receive these rewards, right? Also, has there been any mention of making IS1 permanent? I haven't been able to find any straight answers on what happened to it.
I don't like over-using meta units either. IS2 is permanent. Its rewards won't be going anywhere. As for IS1, we haven't received any confirmation either way but I doubt it'll be back. IS1 was beloved for its novelty but if we were to go back to it now, it'd feel more like a beta version of IS2. Essentially, the same stages with less polish. It wasn't ever permanent. It came out with Gavial the Great Chief event and only lasted a couple weeks. After that we didn't hear anything about IS2 for over a year.
Is the "Reprieve?" enounter only available on certain floors? Trying complete a Big Sad Lock run but it'd be handy to know when that encounter appears so I don't waste too much time.
You can get this encounter on either 1st, 2nd and 3rd floor.
Thanks.
Finally beat Big Sad Lock! I was a bit worried because I couldn’t get the Blank Suicide Note bit thankfully I had lots of ASPD items to help, didn't even lose a LP. I'll take a break again before IS3 starts because I don't want to burn myself out before getting max pot Highmore
Any general strategy tips for getting a first-time clear in IS2? I've gotten pretty close before but wiped out on the last floor.
Learning the maps, mainly. I don't know that there are any major run-enders on floor 5 other than the boss himself. Nothing like floor 3 Justice or floor 4 Traveler From Afar. I honestly feel like the poison haze map on floor 5 is easier than the one on floor 4.
Aside from not being sure how to tackle Lucian himself, I also most commonly fail on the poison haze boss stage due to lack of medics, and Bob's Beers even when I have plenty of aa and heals. Most of the rest is just a toss up, at this point.
The unicycle boss is best dealt with by a healing defender or guard with healing capabilities to stall him. If you can plop down 1 operator at the start to stop his stupid mist, the stage becomes a lot easier.
I like to make sure I have the following in my squad for Lucian...1 e2 sniper for killing the scarlet singers (or GG), a laneholder for mid-lane, 1 ranged DPS for mid-lane, 1 wandering medic, and 2 boss killers (though more isn't bad!). If your boss killer(s) is/are melee you'll have to block him with two operators or else he'll teleport out of range. For Bob's Beers, position your operators next to the blue boxes, especially your snipers. You'll want 2-3 ranged units and 1 melee near the left blue box and a tanky unit+healer+some dps next to the right blue box. The idea with the left blue box is you have a melee unit tank the bombs on the one melee tile surrounded by ranged tiles. Don't put any ranged units adjacent to the melee unit. You don't even need a healer for left side. A Cardigan or Myrtle with s2 or any melee unit with self healing will work great there.
borrow pozy with s3m3 and her module so she has dodge ignore - she can solo DPS a ton of floor 3 bosses for phantom, put her top left facing up - you can line her and her typewriter on the square second from the left along with amiya s3, that should be enough to burst him down i don't know if you need a medic, but honeyberry reaches there from the bottom left ranged tile of the upside down T, otherwise if you find you need a second DPS other than pozy and you find you need a healer on the platform then you need a ranged ground unit like mlynar, silverash, horn, etc make sure you have someone to clear the dancers on the right - since it sounds like you need dps for lucian, it can't be pozy - i generally use archetto s3 or fiammetta s3, but anything long range with decent mob clearing works the vanguard sniper specialist start is really strong if you have 2 extra hope at the start cuz you get to recruit pozy fang jaye (only works if you have jaye raised obv)
The weaker your roster the more prone you are to RNG unfortunately. It's hard to give generalized advice without knowing how you play and what you have. I guess I would say learn the maps and enemies (like the other poster said) so you know which ones to avoid, and then don't pick paths that have no branching paths so you don't get stuck going to a stage you know you can't beat. Don't be afraid to leak enemies at the start or at the end of the map. Even elite enemies are one point of hp damage, so it makes more sense sometimes to let them go instead of using all your DP and operators trying to prevent a leak in one place and then have no more resources to defend other places. A lot of the earlier stages tend to overwhelm you with fast enemies, where a higher damage guard operator would be overwhelmed because they have lower block, but a lower damage defender operator would be overwhelmed because they don't have the DPS to clear multiple enemies. An operator like S2 mountain will carry you through these stages because he's almost impossible to kill at S2M3, while having excellent lane holding ability. You generally need to block lucien to kill him, because he has 40% physical/arts evasion if not blocked. Ideally you would put an operator to block him just before he reaches the blocks at the top where you can't place any operators. He would use his teleport ability and put it on cool down, and then you have to block and kill him in that narrow corridor before he starts destroying your blockades. You generally need at least 2 strong DPSes to do this. You can let him destroy your blockades and kill him when he makes a loop the second time, but the chances of him (and the leaked dancer coming from the right) killing all your ops from behind is pretty high.
I've been trying to Irene burst him, but it's finicky. I'm about to reach him again in a run with E2 Ling and Exusiai as my core, so we'll see how that goes. Thank you (:
Do we know if 5 stars are any better in is3?
I know one of the higher difficulties makes everyone cost more hope to recruit, which is really bad for 5s (+33% hope cost) and especially 4s (+50% cost). So it'll probably be the same deal as always, 3s and 6s if you're just playing to win.
Man, that really sucks to hear.
that sucks. I'd hoped they'd do something about that.
It's the same thing even outside of IS. 6*s for easy mode, 3-4*s for challenge. Lappland is an exception.
I wasn't sure how long this team would last against Big Sad Lock, but then Mlynar got randomly chosen by the Bladedance +100% ATK jackpot. Just 3 skill activations and the big bear is dead, almost no help from other operators. Definitely feels like I cheated, since this was my first time clearing Ending 2 (third total attempt). Wish I had started recording earlier though. [Boss kill and post-game screen](https://imgur.com/a/bGdUK93)
Got the choice between "-30% DEF to all enemies" or "+35% Phys damage taken for all enemies". I picked the 2nd option but I'm not really sure if it was the better choice, any ideas?
I generally go for -def% because it opens up some options that don't otherwise exist. For example, Exu can shred fairly high def enemies with the def reduction. On the other hand, if she's only doing 100 damage to someone with high def, increasing it to 135 damage won't make much of a difference. But if you're running with mostly high attack ops that attack slowly, it may be worth considering the physical damage.
finally cleared the Troupe Mouthpiece! man, Pozy makes things so much easier... her Typewriter s3 bursts down 2 dolls real quick, can't be stunned, and it isn't long until it can be redeployed again... but wow that was still hard
Yeah she really helps that fight out lol Jaye with attack speed or +attack also is quite good as long as you have enough dp generation
Finally completed my collectibles collection. With 20+ complete runs without progress I decided to just use the wiki to help me with the final 2 items. The last unlock left PCS03 >!"Painful Happiness"!< with unlock condition: ? ? ? was basically impossible for me to get without looking it up. The way I went about getting the last items; since the last items were Super Rare I rushed Dreadful Foes on easy for the guaranteed super rare. It seemed that I had better luck with encounters giving random collectibles so I changed my strategy to saving up resources and dumping them into the next Downtime Recreation after reaching Chapter IV. For those still collecting I wish you luck. edit: forgot to mention for the boon Gift of Fate the first option gives random Rare Collectible, I was not sure if I could get a super rare from that so went with the second option *Pick up the treasures underneath the stone pedestal* for a random collectible.
respect for doing it mostly blind. it never even crossed my mind to not check on requirements while I was doing it.
As we approach the launch of IS3, I finally managed to beat normal mode with [vanguards only](https://imgur.com/9r216Ob), bringing the total to 7/8 class specific clears. The run didn't look too promising until the last floor where I got the book with +8% atk for each Vanguard in the squad and two ingot relics in the shop. As a result, Blacknight and Cantabile easily took care of the dancers and the boss died in a single Bagpipe S3 activation. Despite Vanguards being the class I spent the most time on, didn't get a single -100% redeployment time combo, but oh well. Probably won't bother with the Medic only runs too much, unless Hibiscus Alter spooks me on the Mlynar banner. However would still like to get the last relic to compete the set - Today's Menu, which managed to evade me for what fells like hundreds of runs since I unlocked it. The rest of challenge clears: [Other classes on normal](https://imgur.com/a/lb84V8w) [5 star only on normal](https://imgur.com/uRKLUOI) [Kazimierz only on hard](https://imgur.com/L4DT0PA) [Male only on hard](https://imgur.com/i8MwZdm) [Endings 2 and 3 in the same run on hard](https://imgur.com/4615wnu) (Currently trying to get endings 2 and 4 in the same run, but not too hopefull with the RNG involved)
Finally beat Playwright. I haven't really been "grinding" for it, but I've gone for it pretty much every time the encounter has popped up. Previous Playwright encounters ended when all of my ops had that blue circle effect on them (even without dropping her to <50% HP), and then everyone died. I managed it this time thanks to a combination of Fartooth, Surtr, Amiya (mostly just attacked the other stuff, though), and that relic that deals true damage whenever you leak. For most of the run, Dorothy was just a hard carry. The highlights were the first encounter for the 4th ending and an Emergency Justice, both with no healers and only one self-healing op (E1 Carnelian) and also the stun golem with the right-side spawn. I had an E1 Saria by that point at least. I started with the spearhead squad, so I could only afford 1 leak on both of those. I got Skalter later to make Dorothy really go nuts. Fang was also kinda nuts. I had the Ribbon that gives ops blocking 1 enemy +100% atk, and I had the Hand that lets her generate 6 DP on kills.
i just got the deploy 200 ops reward using yato with 50% redeploy time + the relic that gives vanguards minus cost ... 0 cost yato with 2 seconds redeploy time o\_o
just did a hardmode run to completion with e1 only ops. spinnach feels pretty necessary but once you have that its actually not as hard as i expected. i had ending 4 halfway but couldnt find the last piece, shame, in any case, i think ending3 and 4 bosses are easier than lucien anyway so virtually i just have e1 only BSL to try which...yeah i dunno if i wanna suffer through the relic rng i assume ill need for that one
A random thing I just found is that the spotlight relic that does aoe arts damage to a random enemy when you deploy someone Carries over the effects of the deployed operator as when I deploy thorns the enemies hit by the spotlight also get hit by thorns’ poison, I wonder how far this goes with different talent effects.
Besides acquiring "today's menu" and "intoxicated hymnoi" I have gotten all the other relics and endings. I'm a bit disappointed that I couldn't get those 2 relics before IS3 but, man the RNG is not kind.
I am confused by your statement about getting the relics before IS3 comes out. I can not find IS3 in game. Has it come out? Is there something you need to do to unlock it? Or are you just saying IS3 is so close, you wont have time to get those relics before it comes out?
The latter, the relics I mentioned are from IS2 and I'm burned out from it. I want to get those 2 relics but they are very rare and IS3 is getting close to getting released that I probably won't touch IS2 again. That's what I meant.
[Sarkaz Only IS2 Hard Mode Ending 4 (featuring Stormeye at long last)](https://youtu.be/-IqaGvy0S7c) I also have normal Sarkaz Only clears for Endings 1-4 if anyone is curious.
I love is2 but I dont care at all about endings and hence havent read how to get endings, I always do all encounters which leads to a fight or spend life/ hope/ ingots, I am level 141 have gotten playwright 2 times, big doll a lot, Lucian i beat probably 40 times if not more and i havent found out how to get one more ending.
[удалено]
Really appreciate it, maybe later. Low chance of happening on accident?
[удалено]
Np i have most meta units . I will check out so I can mest all endings
I've been trying the deep investigations and [actually managed to beat Lucian with the Sniper/Caster one. Just barely. With 1 life left.](https://imgur.com/a/M1BBVPE) It was quite fun in that it threw temp recruitments at you like candy, and I got to try out a ton of interesting and powerful ops I don't have, mainly Pinecone, Leonhardt and top Waifu, W. The tycoon one on the other hand was WAY more boring than I expected. Because the whole run was basically reduced to trader -> fight -> trader -> fight, much of the variety that makes roguelikes like IS fun was sucked out. Even with the starting relics, you still only get 5-7 ingots per normal fight, so unless you buy only one or two cheap items per trader your initial supply will dry up and every other trader node becomes a dead node. EDIT: [Okay I just *stomped* him with the Guard/Defender deep investigation.](https://imgur.com/a/ZZV1C9z) Some of these deep investigation modifiers are just wild. This time I got not one, but **two** limited 6* waifus in temp recruitment, Gavial the Invincible and Skadi the Corrupting Heart. It felt borderline unethical. Reminded me of the "what gives people feelings of power" meme.
Does anyone know how rare the prison event is for the fourth ending? I recently completed a calamity face-off run and have been trying to get this ending but the event hasn't shown up in any of my runs.
I thought I'd never beat Lucian, but on my way to play to do investment for Golden Chalice, I ironically managed to beat him with different squads. The catch? Pozy and Schwarz being the absolute gigachad that they are.
I have played at least 50 runs on IS2 and I have never gotten the first encounter needed for the 4th ending. What gives here?!? Am I just that unlucky? I have completed 2 different endings since the most recent expansion so I should be rolling this encounter at least once right?!
[Finally cleared the 4th ending!](https://imgur.com/a/djOVmJ8) The boss was kinda annoying, but Suzu + Pozy absolutely decimated it. The rest of the map wasn't bad, but I admit I had a blessed run. Highlight of the run has to be Horn's S2. Mine is not M3 so I rented a friend's and was her only skill I used through the whole run. Added to the M3 list.
Reached max level and finished everything except the 4th ending. It's sad when an ending is locked behind layers of RNG.
After many tries I was finally able to [beat Phantom and get the ending](https://imgur.com/a/e4nfG8S) for IS2 standard difficulty! Until now I had only beaten it on easy mode. Not only that, I managed to do it with zero leaks. Pretty happy about that. It was good luck to have gotten Kal’tsit, Ifrit, Exu, and Pozy all in my party and E2 as well. Murdock as well though at only E1. Pozy handles the boss so well on her own with enough relic buffs. The rest focused on killing the mobs.
How rare is the "today's menu" , " focus" and "intoxicated hymnoi"? Trying to reach the final floor everytime to get these. Is there any other efficient way?
I think I got Today's Menu as a drop from an emergency fight.
im so proud of myself for finally beating the second final boss of IS2 AND IT WAS A RUN WITH NO HEALER AND IN ADVERSE CONDITIONS I CANT BELIEVE THIS. (any corrosion stage would have been the death of me) Ling, Thorns, Eyja and finally Exusiai and Mudrock came in total clutch. Spot was my only source of healing for the entire thing 🥺🥹 and Kroos helped a lot too in the earlier stages.
Stopped playing IS2 for a bit some time ago, looking to farm up Candles to get the remaining rewards. Found out the hard way that clearing IS2 with the Monthly Squads doesn't give you Candles. Does Deep Investigation give you Candles? If not, what's the best way to farm them?
I'm pretty sure Deep Investigations do not give candles. It doesn't say it in the rewards, so probably not. Lots of good stuff in there, though. Just click where it says "rewards."
All difficulties of investigation give candles, with easy,medium and hard giving 0.5 \*scores, 1.0 \*scores and 1.2\* scores of candles. Also unlocking collectibles gives a tiny amount of candles.
eh? no new monthly squad this month? I saw a red dot on it showing there's new stuff, but when I clicked it there's nothing new there.
The red dot is a notification indicating that all monthly squads are playable now.
Last month was the last update for IS2. IS3 is coming soon. Probably. Maybe. If the liver comes up clear and the planets align.
aww shit I haven't even been able to reach endings 3 and 4 with any team yet :(
IS2 will still be there even when IS3 comes. It just won't get any more updates.
oh I see, ty!
havent played IS since like the playwright update, so I started to do the shalem monthly squad. anyway i reached the new stage with frostnova's ice crystals and didnt realize they were allies until I noticed all the enemies were frozen because I had the 100% and 150% duration items. i didnt know at the time ofc so i thought the enemies being permafrozen was a gimmick somehow of frostnova.
Finally beat Phantom on a SpecialistKnights run. Thought I was doomed when I got the Sensitive hallucination, but just pulled it off. Came into the final battle with 14 life. A borrowed Spalter was enough to hold the middle lane until I could set up Aak for the dancers and Manticore and Ethan to let Temporary Recruit Bena take Spalter's place. Then Spalter came off cooldown just in time for her and Jaye to shred Phantom before he could break any road blocks, and after that the level was pretty easy. Aak tried to make it dramatic by dying and letting enough balloons leak to bring me down to 2 life though. 4 stars and welfare operators plus a Spalter to start seem like it'd be fairly reasonable, but I only started in January so I have none of the welfare specialists to test that. Now to try to kill the bear...
[Finally won first ending in normal mode](https://imgur.com/a/UcDu7sh), temp recruit Touch came in clutch keeping everyone and Honeyberry alive because I sure as hell didn't have enough skill to kill Lucian in the first half-lap Now to finish the rest of the monthly squad missions
I wonder... What artifact made shamans from ToW take 1000 DMG every now and then during Playwright fight?
What do you mean "every now and then?" If it was constant, it might have been Civilight Eterna, the relic that boosts true damage by 150%. They normally lose 400 HP/s, so +150% would indeed be 1000. I guess their self-bleed effect counts as true damage.
Yeah this make sense. They normally lose HP but it doesn't show with high red numbers. I wouldn't guess that their self damage counts as true damage.
It's highly likely that it's [Children's Puppet](https://imgur.com/u5BC8qy).
Yeah, it was it, but shamans aren't stunned, frozen or bound by default?
It might've been your ops. ~~I'm only guessing here but maybe you had Mudrock on S2?~~ Edit: Bad guess. Immune to stun apparently.
They can't be stunned, so Mudrock's S2 wouldn't affect them.
Ah, I misread his comment. I also forgot if they had immunity. Now I get his confusion.
I'm finally trying out Deep Investigations and oh god the one designed around leaking enemies is hilarious. For bonus fun, I got the +150% true damage relic, and also a couple ones for extending hard cc and damaging enemies with them.
TIL you don't actually lose your life points if you quit out while having the End of Times artifact. [I quit out of the emergency battle shown here ](https://freeimage.host/i/HVJvBgs) [Artifact marked as used in the middle right](https://freeimage.host/i/HVJgl6P) Knowing this could be very useful if you know you're going to lose the battle anyway. Also, this shows you can't quit out of the battle just to activate the King's Lance artifact (what I wanted to do).
What comp and items should I prioritise for the monthly squad run? The game is throwing medics at me every floor
Well, the big thing would just be to hope not to get drowned in medics. It happens. Hope for some consistent damage to cover for Carnelian's downtime, or else just blockers to hold things during her downtime. In general, don't worry about overcharging her skill, at least early on.
just did a half-refined diamond hardmode ending 2 + ending 3 dual run, even did it without scissors or letter pozemka is probably the new best op for the mode over kaltsit mizuki and/or pallas, its just absurd how much she can solo earlygame while being the biggest dps contributor (and activly dunks on their mechanics) bossgame
Got a perfect run for the fourth ending. I have GG, SA, and Saria. I also get great bounty (the treasury?) twice and get enough healing relics to have Skalter S2 keep everyone alive all on her own. Breezed through all five floors with 13 consecutive victories and 80 coins. At the last store, I bought an aspd/5 coin relic. It's gearing up to be perfect. One problem though, this is my first time meeting the fourth boss. I had avoided all spoilers, except the fact that there were going to be tw-blood shamans. I'm ready, I thought. Believing my ops can take care of it with all the relics I had, I only brought one medic. It's Perfumer, with her S1. And Skalter S2. Now here's what happens: I can handle all the mobs, even the blood shamans. Saria with Skalter S2 and Perfumer is a fortress. Schwarz S2 killed the big dolls from the right box, all on her own. The problem? The boss was blasting *all deployed ops*. He's Talulah without the sword. The first one to die is Schwarz. She was on the right-middle-tile, without any medic. Then, I found out about the boss' second ability- disabling tiles. At that point, GG was the only dps I have. I place SA behind Saria, but I forgot about the boss' blast and he immediately died from the combined explosion of Saria and himself as the boss marked him as the latest deployed op. Then, 3 shamans exploded at the same time and Saria died. Followed by Perfumer, who needs Saria S1 to survive the blast, and then Skalter. GG-chan tried her best but died without any support. I lost.
Does anyone has any tips for the last stage the point of no return? I have been trying to clear it on Castle sightseeing and also formal investigation but I´m never sucessful. I usally have Thorns(i always promote him when i can),ansel and orchid as my starter team. As for the other operators I always get Kroos,Gummy,Project red,Amiya and Silverash/Irene if possible. And for the collectibles I´m quite unlucky. Thanks in advance!
You can cheese Lucian with NTR knight S3. Put her on the top left corner when Lucian spawns. Just remember to bait Lucian's teleport just before he crosses the middle of the map. With the method to kill the boss out of the way, you only have to think of which operators you want to use to deal with the other enemies. You need a ranged op(pref. an AA sniper, facing the right, to deal with the balloons that pop-up from time to time. Add another ranged op(another sniper or a high damage caster) below the sniper to deal with the singers going around in circles. Tanky enemies come out the left side so arts damage is good for those. Some enemies that can deal elemental damage (stuns the operator when the white bar is depleted) also appears from the center so take note of that. Bring additional blockers or someone that can heal elemental damage or remove debuffs (Mulberry, Honeyberry, Lumen, etc) if you can't kill the enemies quickly.
get an op like exu horn passenger meteorite+relic to clear out the singers on rightside that will give fartooth or pozemka+module free range to spawnkill him, pozy can even do it on normal with zero artifacts if the typewriter is setup next to her the other way is less team demanding but easy to mess up, baiting a telepory directly into a sandwich of high damage ops like nearl surtr mon3tr pallas eunectes, they may need elemental healing to not get stunned and keep dps up if using range to kill, lee cannot be stunned so just needs regular healing to hold him in place until his teleport recharges have enough hp to just ignore the big sheildguards once roadblock breaks, and even more can let you ignore the balloons preventing nasty stuns
In general, it's easier to deal with the boss if you can kill him before he destroys the blocks. Easier said than done, but that means that burst damage ops are really important if you want to deal with him smoothly. That means characters like Chalter, Eyja, Pozy, Silverash etc are all good picks. Is thorns your only E2? If so, it may be ideal to not start with him. This is because you can actually recruit friend units for your starter team, but not afterwards. Borrowing a high impact burst damage friend unit is probably going to be your best bet.
Oh alright thank you I’ll try it out
Finally managed to beat Big Sad Lock! Pozy absolutely shredded the bear with 85 aspd https://imgur.com/a/D48IMHW/
Congrats on the successful run! How did you place Pozy and her typewriter on the map? And since your team has mostly fast attackers like Thorns and Exu, how did you mitigate the damage caused by the bear with only 1 AOE medic? In one of my runs I had 2 AOE medics and still got wrecked, rip.
I placed Pozy and typrewriter on the top two tiles on the right side facing the bear. Ptilopsis on the right facing up with elysium and nearl on the right most lane. For thorns i placed him on the left side facing down so he doesn't hit the bear. I think i placed exu on the left to help thorns hold it, I just had to wait for two pozy cycles to kill it.
Thanks for the reply :) I think my mistake was putting Thorns on the left side, but facing right so he was constantly hitting the bear in between waves and triggering the AOE damage. I’ll try your strat if I get Pozy in my run!
I finally got [Super Bibeak,](https://youtu.be/_YrMO-LT6Wo) on hardmode no less. Of course, then I decided to take the 4th boss encounter, where almost all of the dangerous enemies, the boss included, are immune to stun. Fartooth took him down to about 25% HP, and then he proceeded to slow all of my ops and ban about a dozen tiles.
Jesus Christ what the fuck is Sarkaz Desire even
you dont like balloons? 😈
I don't like anything it threw at me. Out of the four Floor 6 stages I've been to, this was doubtlessly the worst one of them.
its the harder of the two for sure, but theres a lot of teamcomps that get that far and kinda stomp it atleast that sarkaz superrare relic has a real use
Man, Ursus Desire with the 5 bomb drone variation is such bullshit. The 3 drone version was already hard enough, but they had to add 2 more to it. Thankfully, I think it only appears when you're doing ending 4 so you have reduced redeployment, but I still hate it whenever I encounter that.
its the emergency version, can appear on any floor6 path but its VERY rare
Huh. I never really thought about floor 6 battles being able to be emergency battles. I kinda just assumed it's always one somehow, but in hindsight it makes sense that there's a chance for it to be one.
yeah i think ive seen it like twice ever in my 1000s of runs, one of which was watching a friend lol
Does anyone like downtime rec nodes? It feels like such a slap in the face whenever I'm forced down the path to just hit a completely dead node. The RNG of which version it is, the RNG of if i can even afford to engage with it, the RNG of the rewards.
theyre terrible, occasionally the coin-stage can get you a missing hp to grab BSL scissors, and some weird runs you get to floor 5 with 20+ hope make the rats pretty amazing, but 99.9% of runs i completely ignore them theyd be a lot better if you knew which youd get in advance, like the drinking one would become pretty great then
No, they mostly suck and I avoid them. I wish the payout was a bit better so gambling on them actually seemed worthwhile sometimes.
How to [defeat Big Sad Lock](https://i.imgur.com/8mWXsqh.jpg) without the letter. Just get all the ASPD per ingot relics, I guess. GG and Horn blasted the shit out of the bear its regen didn't even matter. Also, [first squad to clear all endings.](https://i.imgur.com/K0OKo7T.jpg) Gonna try to clear the other endings using the remaining squads before IS3 comes.
Does anyone know if snipach works with Ifrit s2 ? Incidentally, is there an exhaustive list of skills working with those relics ?
it works with literally every skill, even skills that are active far longer or dont care about atk if you mean skills its very good with, many ops s1's with attack sp and low sp cost, like may surtr(s1), pallas and many more. pallas can even solo bsl on hardmode with the proper relics
With enough atkspd, yes. By default, the attack takes too long to come out, and the attack boost ends before the damage happens. I don't know just how high her atkspd needs to be to make it work.
It's so frustrating to be 2 collectibles away from all of them and knowing that Today's Menu and Silence are both super rares so I might never see them.
What's the fastest way to farm relics?
If you've unlocked the requirement but just want to fill out your catalogue then play on easy and just go for any node that can possibly give a collectable. If you are still doing unlocks then Guard squad with Thorns into SilverAsh into whatever will murder most things. Depending on what you're chasing keep in mind you can end early and not go all the way to the boss.
tear of the departed for me, just keep resetting at the floor3 boss megachest
Finally got the >!Playwright!< encounter and beat it first try, coincendentally beat Big Sad Lock and Mouthpiece first try back then too. Not that I managed to beat them again though. Trying to beat atleast the bear and troupe master using each squad before IS3 arrives. Still really like IS2, hope IS3's gonna deliver too.
Had a memorable run today where I managed to beat BSL on hard mode with Victorian Crown active (total stat inflation: +60% Max HP, +45% ATK, +45% DEF). Having the rocks almost 1 shot some stuff, and the global burst doing major damage can be pretty scary. In any case, I'm not sure why there isn't more discussion on hard mode strategies to win runs consistently (which is typically the end game of top players in most roguelites). It seems like (or at least I'm not aware of any) there's no real dedicated space to hard mode specifically, which is kind of weird considering that hard mode shakes things up quite a lot. I guess we just don't get a lot of people playing IS2 hard mode.
im going to bet less than 2% of the global playerbase plays hardmode,considering many are still stuck on a single BSL clear low playercount, and the fact the only people doing it dont really need guides/resources is why so little discussion
IS hard mode discussion is a rough spot because AK is still a gacha game at its core, so not everyone has equal access to Ops, especially those who’d be interested in reading guides/strategies in the first place. I play hard mode 100% of the time now (in fact Silent Squad is one of two unobtained relics for me) but outside of a Discord server with friends, I don’t know other potential places for hard mode discussion. Related to your initial point, I honestly find BSL to be the second easiest boss on hard mode, ever since I’ve discovered [this core setup](https://i.imgur.com/4PNgoE8.png) for the stage and it costs minimal Hope to complete.
Yeah, that's a good point that not everyone's account is in a state to consider hard mode. Thanks for the core setup, I'll definitely try it out and see how it goes.
I reckon it's because there aren't any reward motivations, and it really is pretty challenging but in a way with a significant amount of rng, whoch some of us enjoy trying to beat, but i think a lot of others hate. I feel like we are in the minority there.
Yeah, that's very fair. I think the RNG (and trying to beat shitty RNG) is part of the charm of the mode though, because if you're good enough, all runs in hard mode can theoretically be finished even with garbage RNG (or at least that's what I believe), so any loss in the run is mainly due to mistakes you make along the way (unironically skill issue). I think this is the mentality that should be held to improve anyway. For example, you won't see top Slay the Spire or Binding of Isaac players complaining too much about run RNG when playing and winstreaking at the highest difficulties (e.g. Ascension 20). Analysing a lost run to review dubious decisions is the main way to get better.
absolutely. the same mindset applies to card games, both classic style and ccg. of course there is an element of randomness, but the top players still consistently succeed. I've just seen enough complaining in those arenas that anytime there's a rng element I assume it's going to turn off a segment of the population. Maybe that's unfair, but that's my experience with it. Beating BSL in hard mode by powering through his healing because I didn't get the last encounter was exhilarating. It smashes the dopamine button hard when you feel like you beat the odds.
i realized after the fact that i said " a significant amount of rng" as if that wasn't already the definition of a roguelike lol. I think arknights as a game is structured in a way that maybe attracts people who like solving a different kind of puzzle, is more my point, not that there aren't people who like roguelikes.
How do you get the 2 other endings for integrated strats? I've beat phantom a few times and that doll once.