too bad everything else about that stage is absolute torture, from the enemy types to the low ammount of credits to the random shit interactibles like wood shrines and cleansing pools that take up your credits. I've left a full-looted siren's with less than 5 chest items before lmfao
Preon is so funny to me, you have to go fast to get a guaranteed one, and you're rewarded with having to wait 2 minutes before use. What a time efficient item!
Besides the annoying enemies, I honestly think Sundered grove is one of the best stages. I love the lore behind it, with the dialogue between mythrix and providence about triangles and trees and stuff. also the sound track is pretty good
Having its own soundtrack was a complete game changer for Sundered Grove. Ever since the dlc it’s become one of my favourite maps. It can still be excruciatingly difficult at times though, but it’s almost part of the charm at this point
It should be noted that sirens call is the best multiplayer option for stage 4. The alloy unit drops a red for each person vs. the other maps have 1 chest.
So 17:50 Prince never changed his name to "The artists formerly known as Prince", but rather he changed his artist name to an impossible to pronounce symbol, which made most media start calling him "the artist formerly known as Prince".
My only issue with void locus is that if you have any kind of ally based build it totally annihilates them and there's not much you can do about it. Why they thought to leave out drones from void fields but not void locus is beyond me.
Once I was doing a engineer with the empath drones i think they are called and a bunch of drones cuz it was funny Them I enter that cursed purple portal 😢
My main issue with void locus is the jailers. Their attack is like elder lemurian spreadshot if the elder was on crack, and the stage lasts a bit too long for it to not get on my nerves every time.
it's the worst stage 4 by far, way less items and a harder to obtain legendary item the only redeeming qualities are it has magma worms so you can get a molten perforator and in multiplayer you get a legendary each, but it still doesn't feel worth it since you get less items overall
@@a_cats Multiplayer duplicates are a pretty huge deal, I do go out of my way to pick Sirens when I MP. Spawning AWU gives you a constant map presence you can wail on as you run around looting, which is way more engaging than Abyssal where I sit twiddling my thumbs to farm spawns before I start the teleporter, and having rng on tunnel spawn is kinda dumb. Thematic wise it's just more interesting having a unique boss with instakilling strategies attached as well as a color scheme that isn't 50 shades of lucifer. I'd wager why it's placed where it is on the list is due to AWU being a PITA on Eclipse, where he barriers every other attack and is definitely too much hassle for the reward.
@@a_cats you can rush the boss for the red in single player and then by the time your done you should have plenty of money to run around the stage to get all the chests. Vs in other maps its often a choice between saving money for the legendary chest or buy a lot of smaller items
@@a_cats It depends, if you have an good damage dealer type of run, you can speedrun that stage, making the next stages easier, Sundered Grove however always spawns terrible enemies, items are very difficult to find or require good mobility to get around at all, the map is massive and dosent have an decent sightline to scope where to go, At least finding the chest is kind of easy.
Commencement is my most argued stage in the game. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will ever beat the first time I ever got to the original final stage, was walking through that hallway and soaking up the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard in my life. Easily one of my most beloved moments in anything entertainment related. You could tell the devs put all their faith in Chris' music, and made that combined with the emotions and buildup the focus of the stage. The barrenness of the map tells us so much about the moon and Mithrix. It fits his title as King of Nothing. Once he was banished to the moon, he lost everything, including any will to build and create things. But on the other hand, the new Commencement is such a cool stage. It also fits for Mithrix, as all the unique creations he's made tells us he's been here for a while. I love the easter eggs, exploring the map is fun, and I love how he made a replica of Providence's sword. Adds to how Mithrix will cry out for his brother before dying, showing that even though he was banished by him, he misses Providence. But man do I hate the Pillars. They are not fun. Standing in a tiny sphere as they slowly charge up isn't interesting. And on top of that you have the brutal constructs that spawn ready to ram your ass. The enemies alone are a good challenge, and will show you if you came prepared or are not strong enough. The Pillars are boring and suck. What if instead of Pillars you have to fight Perfected mini-bosses, or go through a gauntlet, just anything really would have been better. I really wish they made a way for you to be able to still get to the original Commencement stage. Maybe it's only accessible through the Artifact Portal, where you input a code, but you don't take the portal, instead you get a message where it says "a nostalgic orb circles the teleporter." Meaning now once you load the teleporter in Sky Meadows, it teleports you to the original stage.
17:48 Yeah, the tracks in this game have such incredible attention to detail, even outside of how the music itself sounds. For example, the title of every single music track has some kind of connection to rain or weather. "Thermodynamic Equilibrium", "Hydrophobia", even less obvious ones like "Prelude in D Flat Major" which is a rearrangement of Chopin's "Raindrop" prelude. Each of the SotV tracks have titles alluding to some sort of quote, such as "Once in a Lullaby" being taken from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" or "Out of Whose Womb Came the Ice?" being taken from the Bible. If you go to the tracks on Chris Christodoulou's channel, there's a brief segment at the beginning of each video showing the excerpts where the titles are taken from as the music starts to play. Speaking of Chris's channel, I highly recommend listening to the album commentaries if you're interested and have the time to spare. He goes in-depth on the compositions of the tracks, explaining the thought processes behind them and talking about the musical techniques used when creating them. My personal favorite track is "The Raindrop that Fell to the Sky" purely because of the story and emotions behind it, but you'll have to listen to Chris explain it himself in the album commentary if you want to know the specifics. Needless to say, I think the soundtracks he's created for Risk of Rain are fantastic in every way and they have genuinely changed the way I view video game soundtracks. If you've read all the way to this point, thank you!
I like Sulfur Pools, personally. It's got a quirky color scheme and I think the weird elevated bits are really neat. It might seem weird, but it's probably my favorite stage variant added in the DLC.
You know, making Void Locus an alternate Stage 5 like you suggested would be a cool idea. It'd open up access to the boss in the next stage so people don't have to work as hard as they do currently to get to it, and it'll make people who want to fight Mithrix specifically think twice about their run if Void Locus shows up instead while they've got some good items.
The only stage I really dislike is siphoned forest, as it's the only stage where I can actually get kinda lost. Everything looks the same, from the two trees in the middle, to the edges of the map and the geography. The only things that stand out to me are the trunk, the bridge, and sometimes the cave. It's just too big, too boring, and there's not enough elements. Minues even more points for being on stage 1 where I'm at my slowest.
I dig Siphoned Forest for it's scenery and atmosphere, but dear god getting it stage 1 is a nightmare. All because of the blind pests. On release people said they're basically stormtroopers because they miss every shot, but I swear these guys hit my jukes every time. It doesn't matter if I'm zig zagging, circle straffing or flying at the speed of light, I will get hit and it'll do half my health. And blind pests cost like nothing so you get swarmed all the time.
bro really slept on Aphelian Sanctuary. That's my favorite location from DLC, the music, atmosphere and cleansing pools (lol). Enemies are kinda wacky for stage 2, but it compensates by amount of loot, that I think there is pretty much. Bosses are debatable, but I like them. I'm very surprised it wasn't on the top
I didn't even know about the Planetarium was different layouts. I guess that makes sense why sometimes I get teleported to the wrong map, i always thought it was some kind of weird thing left over by the devs for testing.
sirens calling should be on here, ur first stage 4 on that map gets you so much loot, all the chests + the red from worship unit is so much when something like abyssal depths on stage 4 you kinda have to choose between the big chest and small ones because of ur budget
it actually has less loot than the other stage 4s usually since it prioritises drones also time doesn't matter as much as you think it does, you can always farm for the regular items and the legendary chest
I remember once during rally point that the teleporter spawn in the crate soft locking on a high stage loop that took 2 hours just for that risk of rain is a perfect game
Aquaduct is my favorite map as a loader main who loves newt alters, then siren's call follows close behind for it's atmosphere free red items and loader unlock.
Honestly the worst part of Planetarium being the Voidling itself, partly reflects how item scaling can hugely nullify the best parts the fight has to offer. From Stage 2-4 void Fields, it's a nerveracking battle against a ever-approaching looming aĺl-seeing titan, that has endurance to spare and the power to reduce you to ash in seconds of a mistake you make. From Stage 5+, you more than likely have the mobility to not even need to learn how to dodge the thing's attacks, like handling the anti-air spray, using cover for the railgun shots, and jumping over the deathray when it sweeps down low enough to jump over rather than into it.
I love Void Locus and Sky Meadows the most. I'm surprised Siren's Call is not here, it has a unique boss, it looks great, and the map layout is also great, you can always tell where you are
Sundered grove got completely saved by the soundtrack. Either that or the song for sanctuary are my favorite songs from the dlc. Chris really doesn’t miss.
I think I’m weird, because my favorite stage is unironically Sulfur Pools. The environment is really small and enclosed, which makes it easy to traverse, and I don’t really mind the sulfur pods or enemies, but the main reason I love it so much is because of the aesthetics and music. It’s such a noxious-looking environment yet absolutely gorgeous in a way I never thought putrid yellow could be. The music is an arrangement of a Chopin piece, which isn’t my favorite stage theme in the game but perfectly fits the atmosphere and is such a cool creative choice. It’s also the only stage with a wholly-unique teleporter theme apart from Sky Meadows, and it’s an absolute banger at that. Sulfur Pools is honestly not that bad and I am tired of all the hate it gets.
had the community not had such a loathing sigh at either "finding pillarskip equipment or.. waste five minutes to do pillars." we wouldn't have found like 0 speed basekit skips on weird geometry on the tree (RG, Merc, Acrid, Viend,) diablosskip, or that, what was it, h0stskip? stuff like artiskip were obvious, but a lot of them took like, legitimate ingenuity? that we sorta take for granted since we pretty much all know them nowadays. like some dude literally threw themselves at a treeclimb until they made it work, and shared it w the rest of us lmao they climbed so we could walk I also love that Hopoo just gave a simple goal of "reach boss room" with multiple ways of going about such commencement goated as a map frfr, shoulda been #1 for what it brought out of the community alone lol
Here’s my suggestion for some added stage exclusive interactions, though it is not exclusive: a simple ish approach would be to make it so every stage 2 has an unlockable item, and every stage 3 has an unlockable equipment. Stages 4 already have guaranteed rares, and stages 1 can be left bare as they are starting stages. Stage 5 is a tossup, as it has several unique attributes already As for the specifics, on the refinery stage my suggestion is to put the item high up on one of the tower structures, where it is only reachable by characters with mobility. Consider placing some parkour path to it, and perhaps it has a unique miniboss you have to knock off the tower..? Mainly the placement is important. For the wetlands nothing too special. Using the n’kuhana shrine already, make it so approaching the shrine does increasing damage, so you can only reach it by having defense or healing of some kind. Then simply have a special item there. Weird to have it unlock two items but it’s funner when there’s something there at all, and you should only be able to get it by falling. As for the equipments for stages 3 I am less full of ideas. Perhaps sulfur pools grants an equipment that lets you leave a trail of toxic sludge which deals hefty damage and slows, but is largely useless on flying opponents. And the condition to unlock it is having taken no damage before reaching the chest equivalent (it could display how much you have in real time, as a clue). Or more easily not having received any healing For scorched acres, perhaps the equipment could be a return of the lantern, creating ghosts of enemies on stage (or perhaps of those that have died, getting stronger as the stage progresses?) and the means of unlocking it is leaving every stage barren of enemies, perhaps including this one Other ideas are: opening every single chest on each stage prior, perhaps also including this one, to unlock an equipment chest (not shrines or other things, but yes cloaked); carrying an item of every color to unlock the equipment (besides orange probably); an equipment that fills your barrier over 3 seconds, overcoming barrier decay at the same time; an equipment that summons pirates that you get by repairing a mechanical spider; other stuff
Watching this has made me realize I really wish the hopoo team focused on verticality more than just making huge open areas. In a game with such great movement its sad that it's often just used to run around large open spaces. I'd like to see more maps that are layered like a cake than big expanses.
Honestly I find Sundered Grove as one of my favorite maps, I really love the style and music and I really don't have too much of a problem with tankier enemies (maybe because I like acrid who doesnt necessarily care about high hp enemies because of poison), but I'm incredibly surprised you didn't talk about the HELLSPAWN that are larvae and probably the only reason I consider skipping this map at times when given the choice.
Did you go to void fields? On PC void fields used to increase the stage count so sky meadows would count as stage 6, letting T2 elites and scavengers spawn. Maybe that's still how it works on console?
Some minor swaps for me but sky meadows at 1 is a big fat W. One of the best songs, a beautiful environment, no real annoying enemies, hella loot, and like 4 different options to leave it whether it's looping, artifact portal, newt or going to comensment. S tier video
I always wondered what was inside that time-locked chest, I always take my time looting the first two stages so I never got to it in time. Oh, it's a Preon? ....Eh, I'm not missing much.
interesting points on Distant, i'll never not hate it. I think theres still a loot issue, the verticality manages to make it more annoying to traverse as a stage one, and still the only stage where you can get no altar. If these have changed, someone let me know.
Hmmmm my favourite map is probably Sky Meadow. Like everything about that map is just awesome. Atmosphere, music, loot, enemies etc. it just all comes together. I really like Siphoned but it’s just awful to get around unfortunately. But it really hits as a snow map and I like it more than Rally
Voidling fight is genuinely good only because of the song you get. Just turn music settings to a 100 and effects to 0 and the map is a 10/10. Fkn love the face of the deep.
The upside of the old commencement is that it goes much better with the soundtrack, ngl I feel that maybe the old one should be kept, we don't need a 2nd contact light when it doesn't provide any proper chests
I just wish the devs had some fun with the game. There's so many opportunities to do something weird and have the players figure it out. It feels like they're trying to cater to a much wider audience than the game actually has.
