The Idiot Usurper Challenge

[Frashaw27]

The Idiot Usurper Challenge:

The Idiot Usurper challenge is basically the cave man challenge but you have to to kill every boss (except Misery Toadstool, Antlion, and Malbatross due to needing crafting items to kill them). Rules of the challenge:

Rule #1: You can't use any machine or normal blueprints that allows you to craft new items, Rare/Boss Blueprints and the Codex Umbra are acceptable. The main draw of this challenge is that you basically don't have anything to work with for anything. You don't have armor, weapons, tools, food, structures or anything besides grass suits and axes. The reason why boss blueprints are acceptable are because while they are powerful, some boss rewards are just the blueprint and the point of the challenge is too survive off drops, boss items, and basic items. It also should be noted that most of these help not as much as others like the fun cap and the end table. The codex is because without it, Max would basically have nothing to really differ him from Wilson.

Rule #2: Wickerbottom is banned. Due to her knowledge of every science machine recipe, I'm banning her because the challenge would just be relatively normal play through with a few challenges here and there.

Rule #3: Any Special Tabs a character starts with are apart of their starting crafts, and are thus allowed.

Rule #4: You can only cheese up to 3 Bosses, but you can cheese those 3 as many times as you want. I count cheesing as where you don't really have to do much in the grand scheme of things, and that is boring, so I limited it to 3. I put it at 3 because I know how difficult some bosses can be without that leg up and thus can allow you to actually kill a boss without having to pick a character to deal with their shenanigans.

And that's basically all the rules. It doesn't have many but the ones I've layed out should be enough to be supplementary.

For a Quick Clarifications:

1) There is no time limit, so take your time to grind up materials

2) Any drops are valid, even if they are normally crafted items (like the dark sword the 3rd level shadow clockwork drops).

3) Mobs are allowed, and don't count as cheesing, but good luck transporting them/keeping them alive

4) Here is the bosses you have to kill:

-Deerclops

-Goose/Moose

-Bearger

-Dragonfly

-Klaus (Normal)

-Shadow Clockworks

-Toadstool (Normal)

-Bee Queen

-Ancient Guardian

-Ancient Fuelweaver

5) For here on info will be in spoilers.

The 4 Main Challenges:

1) Food/Hunger, Sanity, & Health: 

Health: 

Spoiler

Health is actually one of the most simple stats to manage, since the materials for it are easily farm able. Some of the most easiest ways to get it is to kill some bees for honey, kill butterflies for their wings, kill spiders for glands, and kill kohlaphants for their trunks. The problem is that most of these aren't very potent or spoil too quickly. It's also more important to get these because the armor quality/quanity is much lower and thus requires more for the screw ups you do.  

Hunger: 

Spoiler

Hunger is somewhat easy to get but needs alot more attention. Farms are basically not existent as many of them require materials to make them, like the structures the mobs come out of. The other ways to get hunger are just to survive strictly on lichen, but that requires to use a lot of torches for picking and will make you insane very quickly. Bunnymen might also be useful, but they are very risky and are also in the caves. M. Meat is also usable but requires you to have a lot of healing/be Webber or Wormwood and have sanity on hand. Hunger doesn't have straight answer but it is sort of easy to maintain if you focus on it early on to set up bases near farmable places like Bunny Villages.

Sanity: 

Spoiler

Sanity isn't usually a real problem for people who have played for a while, but in this challenge, it becomes much more of a undesirable threat. The problem is that the shadows are hard, its that they require precious weapon durability to kill. There also isn't any sort of incentive for kill the anyway, except for the bone armor after the Fuelwaver fight, but at that point most bosses would be dead so it would be used less as you really don't want to refight bosses (Klaus and Bee Queen excepted). In short sanity is a issue that requires you to deal with as little as possible for the best chances of success. Ways to regain sanity include eating Cooked Cactus, wearing a Tam, and being near allied Pigs or Bunnies.

2) Weapons & Armor:

Armor:

Spoiler

 Armor is actually isn't as bad as Weapons. Unlike weapons, there are a lot armors available to the player. There is the simple grass suit, it isn't the best but 40% damage is better then 100% damage. Next, we have The Shelmet and Snurtle Shell Armor. The Shelmet has 90% damage reduction and has a fair amount of durability. Its best used for actual armor as the higher reduction allows you to not grind as much health and can just be useful in general. Snurtle Shell Armor has the same damage reduction as the grass suit but has a much higher durability and can be used to hide in (if timed right) to negate all damage done by an attack. There is also the Bee Queen Crown that has 70% damage reduction along with the sanity inverse. Finally there is the Bone Armor that just negate a attack every few seconds and can refueled, needless to say that this will be your primary armor once you get it. The labyrinth also holds some Football Helmets and Log Suits.

Weapons: 

Spoiler

Weapons are a major turning point of this challenge at they are basically reqiured unless you want to spend a few hours hacking at Toadstool with axes. The few weapons you can obtain are the Tentacle Spike which are the best boss weapon you will get but they also depend on chance for you to get your supply so they are better used on raid bosses like Ancient Fueweaver and Toadstool. A Single Dark Sword from the Shadow Clockworks. There might be a few spears and bat bats in the Labyrinth. That's about it. There is such a severe lack of weapons that naturally drops and thus creates the "Durability Economy". The Durability Economy is basically carefully budgeting every weapon strike so that you can conserve them for boss fights. It should be noted that Axes should be used as weapons while not fighting bosses.

3) Lighting: 

Spoiler

Your lighting options have been severely restricted without the recipes. The only true options you have are torches and campfires/fire pits. This heavily restricts you as any fight that's in the caves are heavily disadvantaged by you not being able to see anything and force you to re apply wood every minute. There is, however, one source that is really good for mobile lighting, the Slurper. When attached to your head, your sanity and hunger will rapidly drop but will cause you to illuminate the area around her, making it much easier to traverse the Labyrinth/caves in general, Just make sure that you get plenty of food before hand.

4) Thermal Control:

Spoiler

 So there are 2 seasons you need to look out for when doing your run, Winter and Summer. Winter requires you to constantly deal with the cold, Summer does allow to retreat to the caves to ignore the heat. Winter requires you to get the Tam as Insulation is needed to allow you to go anywhere during Winter and besides character insulation, this is the only thing that can heat you

.

The 6 Most Useful Characters (others in a spoiler):

1) Wigfrid: 

Spoiler

With Wigfrid, Her helmets and Spear really become absurdly useful as they allow you to not budget armor and weapons as you can make them from the get go. Her Modifiers and Life Steal also come in handy for fights as they allow her to do the same amount of work with less equipment needed. The 2 main problems are that She can only eat meat, which restricts her diet to M. Meat, Morsels, and Meat which doesn't have the most diverse range of uses for sanity and health (Trunk excluded). The other problem is that she can't easily drain or get back just her sanity. In the Fuelweaver Fight, you have to constantly have to swap between high and low sanity to kill him, the problem is that the options for her just aren't fast enough for the fight. All the other bosses don't have to consider this though so that's more of a single boss problem.

2) Warly:

Spoiler

 Warly is a easy high tier character for this challenge as he easily can accomplish a majority of the things we need. The health and hunger can easily be negated as he has a crock pot. The damage can be boosted with his Volt Goat Chaud-Froid. He can be Luminescent with his Glowberry Puree. He also has a back pack that also slowly spoil rates. The problem we have is that A) We need to have divesity where our food choice has been even more limited and B) He also faces the same problem that Wigfrid does with the Fuelweaver so there is that.

3) Webber:

Spoiler

 Webber is easily of of the better character for this challenge because of spider wars. The sheer amount of food and glands you can get it staggering and can have you survive with relative ease.  You also lose nothing from eating M. Meat and can grow a beard which can help in winter. While he might not be the best of the best, he is still a really good choice.

4) Wortox:

Spoiler

 Wortox has a relative east time and can easily be the best character to use for this challenge. His souls give him easily healing and food and he also loses sanity 1/2 as fast around monsters, but he also only gains 1/2 benefit of all foods so it evens out. His best perk is that he can easily teleport with one soul which help him escape or get into situations. This teleport can also be used as a form of kiting as you are invincible during it. The problem is that with the limited light, you won't get the most out of it when you can't see very far. Wortox can easily be the best for this challenge, but requires a certain amount of skill to pull off.

5) Woodie: 

Spoiler

Woodie is really good for this challenge because his forms are simply designed for stuff like this, being able to do their functions without any  equipment necessary. The beaver is useful for fire wood and allows you to actually relocate plants, the goose can help you scout out and find the tenapillers and map out the Labyrinth, and the Moose is the most useful. Its power and and durability is very useful when you basically have nothing to fight them with. The ability to work on timers and not durability are very useful for this challenge as we have time but not stuff, so anything to help us connect the 2 for the best result should be sought after. The forms also help in the dark and winter and summer, as the night vision and natural weather resistance can help a lot with farming and scouting. 

6) Wormwood: 

Spoiler

Wormwood is only here because of his craftables. The bramble trap can quite easily be used to grind entire fields of mobs with a small amount of traps. The husks allow him to make better grass suits and to increase his damage output slightly. His compost wrap allows him to heal large Hp chunks while outside of combat. His ability to plant seeds also helps him grow more food so that he can eat more. His speed boost in the spring also helps kite bosses in place of a magiluminessence (that's only at the growth peak though). His ability to eat M. Meat with no penalty. He just has so many perks wrapped up to make very useful for the challenge.

Others:
 

Spoiler

 

Wilson: He ain't got the skills to pay the bills.

Willow: Her perks don't really amount to anything major and the lack of sowing kits means your going to be disposing of Bernie's like Big Macs at a McDonalds.

Wolfgang: The Hunger drain ontop of another drain boost doesn't seem like the best idea. It just requires him to be more laser focused on getting food and making the most of it. A solid 7th place.

Wendy: Great on non-bosses, but the 10 year old doesn't kill bosses that well

Wx-78: Really good, but require taking a constant damage where health is limited and rationed, also most gears require you to kill robots which would lessen the amount of weapons you have.

Wickerbottom: Readus Deletus

Wes: ...

Maxwell: Squishwell wouldn't do well in a actual gauntlet and his harvest abilityies aren't that great when there is nothing you really need a large amount of to make.

Winona: Fine, just requires a lot more farming for her inventions

 

And that's it. Hopefully you were entertained by manic ramblings and derived something from it. Have a good night/day/afternoon.

[Canis]

I might do a science-less run because of this. Boss-rush, nah, mainly because I cant run caves, but scienceless sounds like a brand new challenge that im willing to take up.

[Swanky Psammead]

Antlion doesn't need to be exempt from this list, it's quite easy to kill her even without crafting Desert Goggles. Toadstool is a much bigger challenge to beat without crafting any science items IMHO.

Fuelweaver is going to be a mandatory pick for one of the 3 cheese bosses if not playing as Wortox, since Klei patched the edge exploit to cancel his snare.

[ShyRo-Zyerenzy]

So , with a video as proof then? 
I like it

[loopuleasa]

There is caveman 2 mod for this

 

No science machines, and recipes have a chance to drop by mobs

[kiwikenobi]

51 minutes ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Antlion doesn't need to be exempt from this list, it's quite easy to kill her even without crafting Desert Goggles.

I'm pretty sure that you have to use a thermal stone to start the fight with the Antlion. I've tried attacking it without giving it a thermal stone first, and there was no option to attack it at all.

[Swanky Psammead]

1 minute ago, kiwikenobi said:

I'm pretty sure that you have to use a thermal stone to start the fight with the Antlion. I've tried attacking it without giving it a thermal stone first, and there was no option to attack it at all.

Ahh, of course, how silly of me to forget. So she could only be fought in a world with a thermal stone boon, and even then, only once.

[Frashaw27]

1 hour ago, Swanky Psammead said:

Ahh, of course, how silly of me to forget. So she could only be fought in a world with a thermal stone boon, and even then, only once.

It's like how you can't fight the clockworks more then once, as you can't make more statues to fight them. I also didn't include the boon because A) I didn't know about it, and B) There is already enough randomness in the challenge and we don't need more of it by this specific boon.

2 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

There is caveman 2 mod for this

 

No science machines, and recipes have a chance to drop by mobs

That's nice but the problem is that this challenge differs from the actual caveman challenge by it not having normal blueprints being available. I worded it like that so you couldn't just sit around in the desert and gradually get recipes as it sort of feels like a cop out, you just sitting at base just waiting to get the recipes to get the ball rolling. It's also very boring.

2 hours ago, ShyRo-Zyerenzy said:

So , with a video as proof then? 
I like it

I mean like I could record it but I would need someone to tell me how to properly record DST/a link where that has already been done. There is also the problem of me needing to actually be good at this game to pull this off but I could manage.