Granted, it's only "base" difficulty. The build worked out, I had so many items and abilities that shat out minions, plus Doom from attacks and such, nothing could really stand against me. Probably works with other gods, too, but I was going for MAX SUMMONS.
Some advice since I feel like I have the game figured out now:
- Line of sight shenanigans are totally possible! Lure enemies around corners, or place yourself so only one guy can even see you at a time. Be smart about positioning.
- A source of healing is very important for most builds, you can get healing from certain items but most likely from abilities like Fire Healing and Dread Flesh. Picking one of those is generally a good idea for any build.
- The entire point of the system is to stack effects, so go hard for a few of them. Stack extra attacks that trigger more extra physical damage. Get items that apply debuffs on hits. You really want to put out as many actions as possible
- Items are surprisingly balanced, something you find early on might remain relevant all the way to the King of Many Colors!
- As with healing, it's a good idea to invest in HP. Leveling Vigor serves as a full heal and debuff remover for a reason!
- I find a lot of builds will want at least 10 Strength, so a full set of light items won't encumber you needlessly
- Read the ability descriptions carefully, some of them are rather involved and might not work as you expect them
- I believe diversity of skill is better than quality in the early game. Get your skills filled out is what I'm saying.
- Remember to sacrifice your unneeded items to gain max health/stats
To have more fun, you really should be upping the dificulty every time you unlock a new circle. It will keep things fresh longer, and you'll keep finding yourself in a spot where what worked for you in the past now gets you killed, so you have to adjust your strategies and put more thinking into it. I went up to the eigth circle by the time I've had my fill of Achra for the time being. But I intend to keep going at it later when the mental cooldown passes. Would recommend.
(Altho after going up a few circles pretty quick, I kept getting rekt so I dropped the difficulty back down to learn the game better. So there's definitely a balance to be had between upping the difficulty and practice.)
Some higher difficulty adjustments to your advice:
"Line of sight shenanigans are totally possible! Lure enemies around corners, or place yourself so only one guy can even see you at a time. Be smart about positioning."
This one's a big one. But what's more, holding the right button to autoresolve is all fine and cool on the early floors but for later and especially for glass cannon builds, manual movement and using LoS/chokepoints is curcial for long term survival.
"As with healing, it's a good idea to invest in HP. Leveling Vigor serves as a full heal and debuff remover for a reason!"
This one, I feel you should never see Vigor as a stat. Leveling it up early will screw you later. What it is tho, is an emergency heal. When things are bad and you level up, going Vigor for the full heal can save your whole run. With how high the damage scales, you can't keep up with it by raising your HP, especially when it comes at the cost of encumbrance/damage. You should instead build your survivability around block/dodge/armor (preferrably one of them per run), and some situational stuff like skills that negate a hit or having too many meat shields to ever get hit.
"I believe diversity of skill is better than quality in the early game. Get your skills filled out is what I'm saying."
This was my go to for the early circles, but later on I tended to focus on just a couple skills and pumping them up as much as possible. Most of the runs I didn't even have all 9 skill slots occupied by the time a run was over. At the same time, don't neglect single value points of certain skills that will enable some synergy or turn an item you have from decent to run-winning.
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