Shoutout to Melio Scutum for blocking the Jiang Shi's electric ball. I didn't know about it until recently. Makes farming for the Lv.3 Fidelis Mortus a lot less of a pain.
I should note that vol scutum also takes care of them if you should do something dumb like do large cavern as soon as possible. Can't imagine anyone do that though, not at all.
@@unknownuser494 normal scutum yes because of the fire attack however Vol Scutum is only effective with Globus, which that's more of a thing that you should absorb
Good list! As someone who just recently completed a lvl1 hard mode run I thought i'd add my two cents: - You can actually get Cubus on your very first visit to the monastery (only on hard mode) by using 2 mid-air axe unions and 1 bow union and then quickly absorbing it. Honestly there's so many very scary enemies weak to petrify I'd rate it even higher - Even though it costs too much MP to use as a main weapon, Axe is just so good for those hard to hit enemies (like in Ruvas forest as you mentioned, arguably the hardest area on a LVL 1 run) I found myself switching to it even on full mage setups. Deserves to be a little higher imo - Hatred Gang rise up
I think you forget something. - In hard mode axe armor and archer skeleton will also appear in monastery and in ruvas forest flying skeleton and Medusa head also appear. - torpor can also freeze enemies like automaton which cubus can't. - Axe is pretty useful against bitterfly and numioen because they pretty hard to defeat. Also hatred pretty useful against white former and Albus.
I think many people don't know that when shanoa transform into robot automaton enemies will fall in love with you. Cat transformation is also useful because other cat lady will help you and you can talk to cats in village. Umbra is pretty useful in man- eater boss battle because it doesn't resist dark. Globus can be useful in eligor battle. Vol Ignis is useful Blackmore battle. Also vol fulgur is a safest option to defeat sea enemies and rusalka. Also I think electric and knife are nerfed because they are overpowered in portrait of ruin.
Nitesco+Dominus Agony was vital to my finally completing level 1 hard mode. I'd discovered Nitesco was great during my first hard mode run but I didn't discover that Agony was so useful until my level 1 run and I'm glad I did. Experimented a lot in that run and discovered quite a few that I hadn't used before such as Torpor and Luminatio. Never actually made use of Cubus though which seems unfortunate since you made it sound fairly useful.
You seem to be rating the accessible axis based on "how early can you get this from a fresh start", it'd be better if you placed each area at the bottom, that way you'd get it pretty more accurate. "Shield is really good" yet you place it the same as the swords. The amount of stuff those glyphs can block is staggering, it's pretty much required that you learn to use it if you want to get all boss medals. "Bat drops a little bit earlier" you're confusing things here, bat is available on misty forest road, meanwhile cat is only available on dracula's castle. Same for the robot transformation, it's only available in dracula's castle. Nitesco is more accessible than lapiste, they're available in the same area, but nitesco you can just grab with not much fuzz, meanwhile lapiste is further in the area with a little obstacle course you gotta do. Grando hits twice if you use it as a sword. It's a pretty strong glyph, ice doesn't come up in play much on resistances so it ends up forgotten. I'm a casual player of this castlevania, so doing stuff like 100% at my own pace, getting every boss medal, maybe 2 of every accessory. If you take time to grind out the attributes the game becomes dead easy with pretty much any weapon, usually only really viable to do after getting the master ring which requires having completed both the training hall and caverns. Rapidus should have gotten a mention, it's far more friendly to use than redire, I also do not like doing things like backdash cancel so that's probably more on personal preference. My favorite setup is rapidus with either melio falcis or melio macir. Only the robots can really tank hits from these 2 glyphs. Dual death ring and you're hitting 1000's which make for really fast boss battles on a new game+.
Okay so I double-checked again and you're correct: there are Panther / Robot variants found in Giant's Dwelling, but neither drop the transformation glyphs. Thanks for letting me know! Those should be further left on the chart.
RU-vid didn't notify me wtf. been looking forward to this, good stuff man! really enjoy these but don't burn yourself out making them, do what you wanna do. would much rather you do stuff you enjoy doing.
I like using Vol Fulgur for the early water areas on hard mode. More for a campy playstyle tho, and the damage is not great. Funny how you get Fulgur later than Vol, and Fulgur is probably a bit better, it's like they switched em on accident
Didn't know any of these backdash cancels exclusive to certain glyphs. Very nice to know! That was an amazing tier list, hoping for Circle and Harmony next!
I recently tried a (mostly)magic-only run. I think you rated Ignis abit too low. It was literally my main combat magic for a good chunk of the game(I wanted to make it Vol Fulgur, but as you said, the damage is a bit low, and it's expensive. At the very least, it was my secondary attack.). The run kinda stalled, but it lasted me well into Dracula's Castle as well.
Yes most people don't realize how broken Ignis is, it's super easy to obtain relatively and it's potential damage output is only topped by nitesco, also good for nuisance flying enemies
Mostly agree with your list but I'm surprised Fidelis Medusa didn't get a mention tbh, it's an underrated favorite of mine if you level it up. Like you mentioned, lots of enemies are weak to petrification, and I found it useful for blocking flying enemies and fireballs while playing hard mode. The drawbacks are obviously that it requires levelling up to max to get really good, and is kinda late game? But in New Game+ hard mode I found myself using it a ton. Maybe that's a bit niche though lol Also... Have you considered making a tierlist for the alternate character modes?
Aside from the obvious ones, I really like Arma Felix. After going through hard level 1, I wanted to brake the game going through the ng cycles, picking a build and then maxing the attributes for it, for example, picking up hammers and maxing up the strike attribute. I did that for the cat, maxed out slash and it was glorious. Multi-hit combo shredded through bosses and I've got medals for a lot of them, even Dracula. Super fun to use. Next, I'm going to try bat transform.
Not rating Pneuma a 10 outta 10? PREDICTABLE! With that obvious joke out of the way I really can't add something constructive to this video since OoE is my least played DSVania (also behind many other Castlevania games). That said I would rate Ignis way higher. That thing just shredds bosses and enemies for a very long time and costs nothing. Was also a rather big fan of Luminatio. Solid video, enjoyed it. Also: will you ever dabble with PoR's skills/spells or do you need more experience with them?
Portait will happen down the road, but at the moment I have more experience with Portrait's extra modes than with the main game. I'm planning to stream a 100% playthrough pretty soon (maybe before the end of the year?), which will hopefully be a nice learning experience.
Confodore is the GOAT slash melee Glyph. In my days as a wee tyke I'd gravitate toward Sickles because bigger number therefore it must be better, but with decent rhythm you can just go nuts. Special mention goes to Vol Cultur as being pointless since Melio Cultur is just sitting around in a statue not too long after you find the guy who drops Vol Cultur and you don't need to fight a low drop rate to get it. You actually can get Cubus during your first pass through the Monastery on Hard Mode due to the extra enemy types. I believe the trick is Axe/Sword Union (whichever) into Bow Union then absorb. Umbra's main niche is getting rid of Decarabia. Also, Ice is the most obtuse Element to grind out if you're interested in that sort of thing due to it being the only element that sucks really bad against the mega Bone Tower in Skeleton Cave Hard. It's not there, but Volactius makes for the safest way to deal with Double Hammer and Weapon Master. The trick is that while using Volactius you can't turn around while attacking, so you can face Double Hammer, fly backwards, but keep wailing on it with Lapiste (insert Jojoke here) or Melio Macir while it chases you, with Lapiste being faster if you have enough MP/damage to bring it down before you run out of MP. For Weapon Master you gotta bait it into throwing its weapons, then get behind it and attack. In this case, Volactius letting you move and attack simultaneously still helps since that allows you to ensure that its motions don't cause it to bump you (aiming more or less for its head helps with this). I use the Death Ring in Large Cavern because the less time spent dealing with these chuckleheads, the better, and before you get strong enough to lay waste to Weapon Master before it changes its stance, it's not a terrible idea to switch to mashing it flat with the Mace Union once it starts to do that. If you're into meaningless level grinding, Arma Custos is better than Dominus Agony for doing that on the Jiang Shi since it won't kill you. You can use Dominus Agony and Refectio to get yourself to exactly 1 HP and then just do silly damage. A notable detail is that if you seal the Jiang Shi when it's trying to do its energy ball, it'll always immediately attempt to do it again, and if you can seal it again before it actually completes the attack, this'll allow you to get it into an infinite loop with no risk of it deciding to bump you. Its Glyph is Fidelis Mortus by the by. Even in Level 1 Hard, I find the Hammer Union completely satisfactory for getting the Strength Ring.
I remember the trick to passing that Double Hammer in the...Large Cavern I used was Volaticus + Globus. As Jupiter said, the bounce due to the tiny room can rack up quite a bit of damage.
"You can backdash cancel with the robot." Oh god… Also, I wish I knew you could backdash cancel with Magnes as well, like, I feel like I've been living a lie now XD
The knife is a bit of a "scales great, but does nothing at low levels". With the way the series works with damage types and base damage, the knife gets the literal short end at low levels, but once you get high enough, the knife actually does a lot more and was crucial during my first level 1 hard mode run for being able to go the full screen and one shot enemies (not a challenge run).
The only use I could find for Morbus is to hit the ballista in the Eligor fight. Especially when beneath his legs. But a mace union is obviously better.
Second comment, but don't the scythe glyphs have the highest damage output from the slash glyphs? Melio Falcis also hits above and below Shanoa, giving it arguably the best vertical hitbox out of all slash glyphs, making it very convenient to use, even if it's a tad slow.
In my opinion during the first half of the game especially Falcis scales much better than Macir. You can get Melio Falcis much faster than Melio Macir, and most bosses are vulnerable to it as well. However, during the later game especially the last portion of Dracula's Castle and the Dracula fight itself Macir, paired with Vis Fio, is much faster and stronger than Falcis. Also, Nitesco is usually my go to magic weapon as it deals a lot of damage to a lot of mechanical enemies and is super useful especially in the Mechanical Tower. Nitesco with Volaticus also DESTROYS the Large Cavern and makes the whole area a joke.
disagree with vol fulgur and culter, i wouldn't say they're good but they helped me out in my current hard mode run and for that i think they're not the worst glyphs in the game
Use arkus instead of culter and vol fulgur is only useful in early game when the damage scaling still allows you to kill things. By the time you get to Skeleton Cave that glyph is 100% useless because it does like 12 damage at best
Even if you don't want to grind it's a one star drop, you won't waste longer than two minutes grinding for it. Hell 90% of the time I kill every skeleton and end up getting it
Poor Fulgur. It's a fine glyph with a lot of potential usage because nearly every underwater enemy and every mechanical enemy is vulnerable to it. However, Acerbatus eliminates nearly all potential Fulgur usage because of the glyph sleeve reset exploit. Vol Fulgur is the ultimate case of "way too late to matter" in any nearly any game. It starts out extremely overpriced and underpowered because it's designed to abuse the element experience system, especially after multiple playthroughs wherein Shanoa has consumed gobs of Drops items to boost the base damage of her Electric element. Once you've breached 60k or so Electric experience, Vol Fulgur becomes pretty dangerous; able to one-shot vs a LOT of early enemies that it barely tickled on your first playthough. It fries everything underwater with no effort whatsoever and puts in good work against anything that doesn't resist Electricity. I've done "Empress Palpatine Shanoa" on my master save, and oh boy is she absurd on Normal. (can't make it work in Hard mode, sadly. Not enough INT gains.)
