Playing (and winning) with Rook.

[Flipside1]

So, completed a first full Rook run for the first time and have some questions on how you're running our favorite mustachioed backstabber.

1. Has anyone kept the Kick cards? Even with 8 damage, a 2-cost attack card seems steep to me?

2. What's your favorite build/card so far? I ran over basically everything in combat using Visionary Fan the Hammer that let you draw a card for each charge spent and then using cards that are free\stronger if empty. Overcharge and focus help. Not killing things was a challenge.

3. I'll post it in the approriate part of the forum, but still - how do I install the Experimental Build? Do I need to unistall the regular Alpha?

Cheers and may the quarantine be behind us,

Alex 

 

[pacovf]

Main use of Kick is killing Erchins in the very early game. They’re pretty bad otherwise, although they’re  more action efficient than Blast (low bar to set). They’d be marginally better at 3xp to upgrade, instead of 5xp.

Fan the hammer is very strong, Visionary Fan the hammer is borderline broken. I’ve stopped picking it up because of it.

Rook’s deckbuilding is more about managing your charge levels to maximise the benefits from your grafts, rather than building specific synergies between cards, compared to Sal. I usually try to take cards that get better with empty charge (for the free defense), and a few cards that consume charge to stay there. If I have a lot of support, I try to get cards that produce charge quickly, and cards that consume all charge at once. There are a lot of grafts that reward you handsomely for it. Overcharge decks are a bit harder to pull off and will often make you miss out on the free defense from empty charge, but there’s some nice cards there too. Armor plating and Perpetual charger are both excellent common grafts that you should always pick up if you have the chance.

For experimental, it appears as a different game altogether in your epic launcher library. You will have to install that. By default you will have an empty save file, maybe other people can help with transferring your main game file there.

[RageLeague]

If you really want to transfer your save file, you can go to "[user]\AppData\Roaming\Klei\Griftlands\" and copy everything in there to "[user]\AppData\Roaming\Klei\Griftlands_testing\". It will probably work.

Empty charge can be good, but having full charges can sometimes be good too. If you have many bogger clobber friends, you gain more defend this way. You also naturally gain a bunch of overcharges and deal extra damages this way.

[Wumpus the 19th]

i'm a hoarder, through and through. i cannot stop taking cards nor can i ever get rid of cards in my deck. i started off basically playing like the card draft mutator because i couldn't learn how to keep a deck lean and mean

plus you got points for upgraded cards, so getting more cards=more upgraded cards=more points by the end of the game.

[Flipside1]

39 minutes ago, Wumpus the 19th said:

i'm a hoarder, through and through.

I do have a problem with other games with this - looking at you, Slay the Spire. Even in this winning run, I had waaay too many items I should have scapped, as they were often not as good as my regular upgraded cards. However, card draw can mitigate many, many sins!

1 hour ago, RageLeague said:

If you really want to transfer your save file, you can go to "[user]\AppData\Roaming\Klei\Griftlands\" and copy everything in there to "[user]\AppData\Roaming\Klei\Griftlands_testing\". It will probably work.

I'll definitely try this. I mostly want to check out Smith in the Experimental build.

[Maniafig]

My Rook builds are very dependent on the Grafts I'm offered, some Grafts give powerful bonuses for gaining/spending charge, most notably the extra defense per charge gained and the draw cards when you become Empty, while other Grafts make meeting conditions for combo cards really easy. Getting the 3 Concentration at the start of combat Graft makes Telegraph very powerful and together with Posture it can mitigate tons of damage, whereas the 1 Overcharge at the start of each turn makes a lot of Overcharge cards always live.

Overcharge and Concentrate also pair together very well, stack enough Concentrate and your damage output can soar. These two also pair well with Threshold cards, since both make you likelier to hit that Threshold. 

I generally default to an empty charge build unless good opportunities come by to play a full charge deck. Both have some excellent grafts to pair with, but the former has the advantage of the empty cell defense gain being an innate quality of playing as Rook whereas the latter has a higher power ceiling due to the Bogger Clobber Boon that gives defense for every charge being stackable. A lot of spending charge cards are also just really good, so I really like the Graft that applies Mark to a random enemy every turn which really enables you to control your charge using powerhouse cards like Fan The Hammer and Gun Smoke.

When given the event to modify your gun, I almost always choose to extend my amount of chambers since way more cards benefit from that than from having fewer chambers, fewer chambers is only really good for turboing the requirements of fully charged/overcharge cards in my experience. Extra chambers lets you get +2 defense from empty cells or the Bogger Clobber Boon, and it also gives +2 on the incredibly powerful Wounding Shot.

I'd say the only builds I've not really got working well are Burn and Ricochet builds, the latter mostly seems like a fun novelty whereas the former is like a weird version of Bleed. Scorch especially has me scratching my head, it all seems very unwieldy compared to the other archetypes Rook can use.

Also agreed that Kick's just not worthwhile. Rook wants to play low cost cards that hit many times to get the optimal use out of damage bonuses from Wound/Overcharge/Grafts, not spend multiple actions on a single attack, especially when you're also trying to hatch Deep Bog Secrets. I'm always happy to see a Kick of Clarity upgrade, just so I can remove it from my deck.

[Flipside1]

5 minutes ago, Maniafig said:

These two also pair well with Threshold cards, since both make you likelier to hit that Threshold.  

I generally default to an empty charge build unless good opportunities come by to play a full charge deck.

That was my build last time - reduce the number of Charge Cells, get overcharge, make sure that cards hit the Threshold, used Counters given by the cards.

As for the Burn and, especially, Ricochet - I think it's a good way to accidently kill people and get a lot of haters. But I will try it, at some point.

[pacovf]

Ricochet is ridiculously powerful. It doesn't have a lot of support cards or grafts because it doesn't need it. It's not a strategy, it's something you add one or two cards to your deck because it literally doubles your damage output. But yeah, you have to be a bit careful not to murder everyone. If you are, it's not too hard to make sure it's only your allies dealing the killing blow(s).

[Flipside1]

7 minutes ago, pacovf said:

it's not too hard to make sure it's only your allies dealing the killing blow(s).

I was not aware that you don't get hated on if the allies are doing the killing! What about a charachter receiving a Burn\Bleed condition and dying next turn? Does that count as your kill?

[pacovf]

If a condition kills an NPC, whoever applied the condition is considered the murderer.

[SpicyNiceCream]

If an ally kills an enemy via ricochet it won't generate hate as it seems, need more testing.

[Gr1m-]

I was playing some Ricochet the last 2 games, really strong!

Scattershot + Glancer for grafts and you're good to go.

Then add Pulse, Tremor & Resonator and you'll have perma Ricochet applied normally

With Offset card and Boosted Scattershot your cards are doing +5 extra damage.

I'll post someother builds that I like later on.

[Maniafig]

I played with Ricochet in my last Rook run and yeah, people were right about it, it's really good.

I had some Ricochet cards as well as the 6 Ricochet at the start of combat and +3 damage vs targets with Ricochet Grafts, so it really upped my damage output by a drastic margin. I didn't wind up killing anyone by accident either, and I do think that enemies killed by a Ricocheted attack from an ally don't generate hatred or status cards. 

I can also confirm Ricochet does trigger when using AoE attacks like RPG!

[Gr1m-]

I've experimented a lot with Empty Builds aswell. This build is really flexible and synergizes well with Ability cards since you're cycling alot between Empty and Fully Charged and most of them work around normal Charge anyway. It's flexible in that you can nearly use all the cards that aren't related to Overcharge. In this kind of deck I just ignore Overcharge entirely personally. There's also a lot of options available for Grafts and you can mix Burn/Scorched/Ricochet/(Debuffing) with this kind of deck too. I'd personally keep the Concentration minimal, since alot of your cards will scale with Empty cells anyway. Also if you get upto a certain amount of Concentration it doesn't do anything for you anymore except if you went Burn (ahem Brain Burn)

So yes, a lot of options and I just kinda go with the flow and see where the game takes me/what I'm feeling in terms of drafting/graft options in the early stages atleast.

Graft setup; Clicker (this gets procced a shitton), Fumes (THE damage graft for this deck obviously), Armor Plating (insane graft, it gets activated so many times since you're constantly cycling your normal Charge). Other good/viable alternatives; Spare Battery, Power Sink, Splintershot, Trench Knife, Dynamo.

So because you'll be cycling between Empty and Fully Charged for the most part, you need some Charge generation, I mainly prioritze Induction Crank and Fistful and you can get some of the Basic ones aswell just search for "Induct" in the Compendium, or you could invest abit into Mark.

Then this part is really important, you really want the cards that immediately let you spend ALL your charge to go to Empty again. Blowout, Fan the Hammer, Firestorm, Loader, Shill Shot, Spurs & Vent should be all of them. While doing all that you'll be proccing Armor Plating, Ability cards, Clicker, Fumes and the whole lot.

You can also be on 1 Charge then go Empty (this is probably the ideal way of playing this deck) with; Lucky Shot, Hair Trigger, Quick Fire, cards from Ammo Pouch,...) -> (proc Clicker/Fumes), go back to 1 Charge with Clean Open for example, back to Empty, rinse repeat, you get it by now I guess

Cards that go well with Empty: Cheap Shot, Clean Open, Clear Shot, Focused Strike, Lifeline, Pistol Whip, Sucker Punch, Take Cover, Wounding Shot

Ability cards (haven't thoroughly tested these but should be fine in theory): Backfire, Blinders, Loader, Readied (maybe), Scatterphase, Tank

Fully Charged cards mesh in pretty well here too I feel, To really amp up the damage besides Fumes, you should be looking at investing abit into debuff most likely, Wounding Shot is god-tier in this deck.

Some stuff that might work here too is a mini-sub Counter deck with; Fully loaded, Trench knife, Backfire, Spurs, Tank.

If you manage to get Spare Battery & Loader you could set up a turn with some huge burst, that's why I was mentioning Dynamo aswell earlier on, because this deck can offer a ton of a card draw (Clicker graft procs, Shill Shot, Lifeline & Fistful,...) -> potential for more shuffling if deck is on the smaller side? Would be nice to see someone pull this off but I havent personally gotten a lot of value out of Dynamo afaik.

Since you'll be having Empty cells often you'll use your passive (1Def/empty cell) very frequently.

Talking about Defense options a lot of the time you'll be relying on Armor Plating (+Induction Crank) to do the tanking, Take Cover, Fully Loaded, Induction Hunker Down are all good aswell!

I didn't mention every card and possible upgrade obviously, but to summarize everything what you need I would do it like this:

Cards that let you:

-Spend all your Charge
-Spend some Charge
-Charge regeneration
-Empty cards
-Ability cards
-Fully Charged
-Add some debuffing