La-Mulana 2 - fish. it is a fish. it's true.

[Voltgloss]

I actually kinda like raocow's "throw chakrams like a wild person" strat for Ladon, I still have trouble defeating it before it pushes me off the ledge so focusing on DPS I think is reasonable there. That said, I also absolutely agree with skipping Ladon until after both Phaia and Karkinos (the crab) are defeated.

Fun fact: those spikes in the drop-down shaft leading to Ladon? They were added in a patch. Without them, you could cling to that wall just as you're dropping into the room and let Ladon pass you as it heads left, then drop behind it. And watch it merrily phase through the wall on the far left as it just floats offscreen. (I forget if you could also attack the snakes from behind Ladon, thus completely trivializing the fight.)

[kitikami]

I like how the weapon fairy is probably just too strong for the crab, so rather than let you let her handle it, they just have the crab shoot out bubbles constantly to distract her.

[BobisOnlyBob]

Deceased (by) Crab

[Kilgamayan]

It looks like discussion has moved on since, which is good, but just as a heads-up, the next time anyone in this thread feels the urge to argue politics and/or economics with someone else, please do it somewhere more appropriate than this thread.

No one needs to publicly acknowledge this post (and, in fact, I'd prefer the thread not get hijacked by reigniting that discussion), so please do not do so. I will be able to rest secure in the assumption that people have read this notice, understand it, and intend to follow it without anyone outright saying so.

Apologies for the delay in saying something.

[raocow]

it's friday, so expect double the video amount again
I don't know why it always ends up lining up this way

[Crow]

it's friday, so expect double the video amount again
I don't know why it always ends up lining up this way

oh no. how awful. not more la-mulana than usual. how ever will we survive this tragedy.

[Crow]

Instadeath trap count: 51 (+2 today)

wow it's been like twenty years since i got a chance to update this!
it looks like you somehow got crushed under surtr's arm in at least one of those attempts and i'm counting it

glad to see the v1 surtr frustration experience still exists in hard mode, albeit in a different way

[helucard]

... I'll be real, this boss made me miserable in Normal mode. But it was largely the same experience. I think the only major differences in Hard mode, at least from this video, are

• he can reel his head back if you hit him too fast - This is a critical addition given that you want to do as much damage as you can, it throws a spanner straight in the works.
• he can repeatedly hit the wall, wasting time and causing a colossal amount of rockfall - I don't have anything, I suppose, "professional" to say about this addition, so I shouldn't say anything.

I uhh... I'm glad I never went to hard mode.

What I will say though is congratulations for smackin' the guy in the face enough for him to phase out of reality despite all the adversity. The big flaming metal swine deserved his flail-propelled ejection from existence.
How long did that take? We only saw a 20 minute snippet but the pain was palpable.

[raocow]

I'm not sure. total recording time was 2 hours 50 minutes (ish) but that includes video a

[Donut]

Wow, hard mode turns a janky but relatively painless fight into an abject nightmare. My condolences for your suffering.

For non-cows:

There is a sad irony to the fact that raocow started this session with the mindset of improving his power, but doesn't know Fobos gives hints on where to find optional powerups, so he missed out on some items that would have really helped with this boss. The spaulder probably would have worked wonders for getting rid of the rocks, to say nothing of the item that increases your attack speed.

[helucard]

After seeing this, I got curious and went back to see when I beat Surtr.
Here's a nicely cropped image that isn't showing any of my frothing rage, which is honestly a little embarassing.


Two weeks ago.
... wow, it feels so long ago.

Keep in mind, I only managed to even get the feather because this series picked up on the Beherit changing the direction of the blood corridor? Thanks for that :D Like, I'd managed to get a decent amount done, but the feather and the underworld were just beyond me because I happened to miss that one image on a tablet. There was plenty telling me that the corridor was important, but I just couldn't figure out how to do anything with it. "Search the blood corridor" is not a helpful statement yet it's the one I recorded since the other basically said "don't go in, it's a bad idea" hahaha.

Either way, as soon as that happened, I suddenly got my motivation back after a 2 year pause... and it made me get my act together and actually pay attention to the images this time.

[Alice]

Looks like Surtr is still a complete nightmare to fight. The addition of poison lava instead of pits actually doesn't look to help all that much really. I had a lot less trouble with Surtr than other people did but that was sheer luck. I forget exactly what I did was but I quickly managed to zero in on a strategy that had him doing the left/right punches very frequently so I had ample opportunities to actually hit him. Still took like a dozen freaking tries to survive long enough to defeat him despite that though. Though I also definitely beat Surtr earlier than raocow did so I wasn't as well-equipped as he currently is.

[Duker]

I uhh... I'm glad I never went to hard mode.

Something I want to clear up, even if rao was playing on normal mode he would in all likelihood still meet "hardmode" Surtr. The internal difficulty you can reach (which he likely has reached at this point) is just enough to trigger the altered boss patterns you always get in hardmode due to starting the internal difficulty at that of normal mode's maximum.

He does have higher stats on health and damage than those you can get in normal mode but as far as his pattern goes it's all the same.

[helucard]

Interesting, I am curious as to what events actually trigger the upscaling of the difficulty modifier and exactly how high that can go... I think it bears mentioning that in normal mode, at no point did I ever see some of the general monster appearances that rao's got recorded, such as

the asps and redcaps chilling in the immortal battlefield. It appears there does seem to be hardmode exclusive setups, but if what you're saying is accurate, then that'll be entirely unrelated to the bosses abilities beyond their stats, and only applicable to the map population... which itself is a wild thought...

Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be seeing this kind of indepth statistical info without literally decompiling the game, so that dream will have to continue to exist in the untouched subconscious.

[Zummorr]

How long did that take? We only saw a 20 minute snippet but the pain was palpable.

According to LM2's game timer (which is retained on boss deaths) about two and half hours.
Game Time at the Start of LM2 Epidosde 48a: 34:33:47
Game time at the start of the Surtr Fight: 34:55:36
Game time after defeating Surtr: 37:21:23

La-Mulana 2


Also La-Mulana 2

[Alice]

Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be seeing this kind of indepth statistical info without literally decompiling the game, so that dream will have to continue to exist in the untouched subconscious.

Considering the game was made in Unity instead of their own game engine, unlike the first game, I don't think it's impossible for someone to do that. Unity is C# and to my understanding C# is quite easy to disassemble compared to most languages. Question is if there's someone around who actually knows what they're doing enough to do so.

[helucard]

Unity is C# and to my understanding C# is quite easy to disassemble compared to most languages.

As a person who's seen the result of decompiling a small program created in Visual Basic back in my first job, I sincerely hope C# is easier - If it was anything like that, I wouldn't wish it on my enemies. It's not fun trying to understand all the weird twists that decompiling had on it, like for-loops becoming enums and such.

Long story short, a program's source code was deleted at some point before I was hired (apparently the guy had a habit of deleting by a shortcut key which completely bypassed recycle bin, and deleted the wrong folder), and I was tasked with the application's recreation. I was handed the decompiled code and had to sift through it to slowly figure out what piece of the jigsaw did what. In the end, I did it. I reconstructed the program's code in a readable format so we could update it.

If anyone does end up decompiling it and figuring out how the difficulty scales, props to you, because maaaan...

[Alice]

As a person who's seen the result of decompiling a small program created in Visual Basic back in my first job, I sincerely hope C# is easier - If it was anything like that, I wouldn't wish it on my enemies. It's not fun trying to understand all the weird twists that decompiling had on it, like for-loops becoming enums and such.

I'm not an expert on the subject (I have little personal experience with C# actually) but I'm almost certain it should decompile better than Visual Basic. To my knowledge C# in particular decompiles a lot better than almost any other language due to the way the programs get compiled. You can still get quirks like loops getting unrolled due to optimizations by the compiler but it's supposed to be a lot more readable from my understanding.

Long story short, a program's source code was deleted at some point before I was hired (apparently the guy had a habit of deleting by a shortcut key which completely bypassed recycle bin, and deleted the wrong folder), and I was tasked with the application's recreation. I was handed the decompiled code and had to sift through it to slowly figure out what piece of the jigsaw did what. In the end, I did it. I reconstructed the program's code in a readable format so we could update it.

Shift+delete instead of just delete. Though there's also an option in Windows' settings that makes delete automatically permanently delete things. I learned the hard way that that's not a great idea combined with the option to skip confirmations when I ran into some weird bug several years ago where I went to delete something from my downloads folder but somehow targeted the downloads folder itself (from within the downloads folder, something I didn't know was even possible) and lost something like 120+gb of downloads.

[Voltgloss]

There is a *slight* bit of reason to the madness of Surtr's "pound on the wall and make all the blocks fall" move, and that is the vast majority of the blocks fall on the side where he actually pounds on the wall - with less (but still a lot) in the center, and much less on the opposite side. The example Zummorr posted demonstrates this - compare number of blocks on the left vs. the center vs. the right. Essentially, the move is a signal to get to the side opposite where Surtr is wailing on the wall, and play defensive until the fit passes.

[Zummorr]

I think there were things raocow could've done to make the fight against Surtr easier.

Bringing a Fairy is pretty obvious.
Flares could have been used to destroy falling rocks, with much less risk than relying on an upward whip swing.
The Icefire treetops hotsprings minimizing lava damage.

Although, I understand the mentality of just bashing your face into the boss until you get good enough to win.

There are a couple other items, but these are just what raocow knows about.

[Grounder]

seems like this would have been easier with time stop

like, a lot easier

am i not remembering it failing on either boss, or...?

[Crow]

Instadeath trap count: 52 (+1 today)
Chipmunk count: 2 (+1 today)

after the worst boss in the game, it's time for the worst sub-boss today!
fenrir sucks! he used to be way worse, much like surtr! this game is sometimes very unfun!

two more hours, huh. dang.

[raocow]

time stop is just one of those things I never remember

[ano0maly]

I think you missed a somewhat subtle hint from a couple days ago

[helucard]

I wouldn't worry about the lamp in this instance, I tried time stop, there was no benefit. Apparently there are in fact enemies that straight up deny the lamp's ability.

That said, I'm glad you managed to beat Fenrir in one sitting, I most certainly did not. That was my *most hated sub-boss* in this game, bar none. It is just... Not fun to fight. I'd usually have positive things to say about how a thing is developed, but I can't think of a single thing. The best I can say is "I'm glad it's not as bad as it Was." - This is after having been nerfed. Standing inside the open jaw hurt you originally. Can you imagine jumping in, smacking it mid-hop, and then double jumping back out between rotations while trying to avoid hitting the top jaw and the projectile? With this game's jump physics? That must've been hell for the early players. I do not envy them. That was an objectively bad design decision and I'm glad it was removed, but that doesn't make the current iteration good.