Solomon's Keep Guide to the Gauntlet Specifics (WIP)... & Hi :P

edited February 2016 in Solomon's Games
This is a Work In Progress or for short, a WIP.

I would also like to put forward at the top here that if anything here is wrong, incorrect or there is any alternatives or better ideas, I will gladly accept any of it and edit it in for as long as I keep this going provided we can all be friendly about it. :)

I'm a big fan of the Solomon games. I've been playing them since around 2010 and I still go back to it often. I've spent a lot of time and money on the series and I intend to spend more (I'm too lazy to farm gold ok? Lol. Plus it helps the dev :D ) and I have been looking forward to the next Solomon game for a long time. Recently I've again gone back to these games and have decided to tackle two hurdles across SB and SK which I never could before: Reaching Wave 36 in Boneyard and having the 'Perfect' character setup for the gauntlet in Keep. At this stage I've reached wave 45 with Wazoo at about 217K kills in SB where only the capabilities of my own device maintaining the literal thousands of imps on the screen has crippled my progress, so I'm quite happy about that, so right now I'm building my 'Perfect' gauntlet character and I'm only after 1 or 2 more epic items to pretty much complete it.

But anyways, enough of the backstory. Like I've said already this is a WIP and I haven't validated anything beyond loot drops which I will cover in this post.



THE GUIDE TO THE GAUNTLET SPECIFICS


This guide is based off of the website http://solomonskeep.webs.com/ and all credit where it is due goes to the owner's ideas and approach on their setup. I would like to call that more of the model of the build rather than working up to it though, as that's what I want to cover here, the grinding. It is talked about on that website but there are specifics that I feel could save a lot of time and effort.


First off, we have 9 items on the list to get, as well as to make sure the amazing cabinet is unlocked. Three XP items, one gold drop item, 2 damage prevention items and the hardest to obtain of all of these, three +All stats items. It says to grind a few characters through to Archmage difficulty to contribute these items for the 'Perfect' character but I have managed to cut it down to 1 or 2 characters instead.

The XP items are actually super easy to get. These are:
- 2x 100% More XP Boost (Rare Ring)
- 1x 50% More XP Boost (Rare Staff?)

I got these in an hour or so by simply creating seperate new characters and grinding a little gold, instead of spending a long time hunting for these on bosses. These items often spawn on the item vendor at the beginning (The guy who sells all the potions and such) for 1-2K gold. I never went further than level 4 of the keep to buy them all, and that was when two of the three items were in the shop. It may take a couple attempts to get them by creating a new character, check shop, not there? Delete that character, make another. Rinse and repeat. Once it's there, it's short work.

Before I continue You will want to use a seperate save from all of this to do the same with another character to spawn the skills you want to upgrade at the wisdom vendor (The other guy who lets you upgrade skills and levels for gold). Follow the skills that are listed on http://solomonskeep.webs.com/ for the wisdom vendor to have at the start and in my opinion, aim for 2 of them being the simple lightning and fireball skills, while the other two being Flash freeze and maybe magic shield. If the other two are flash freeze and another skill with 6+ levels to max that is on the list, it's perfect, but I wouldn't go any further than say if they were battle mage and chaining or something like that. This will take a little while, but it will save you so many levels for later (And with gold, it's definitely easier). LEAVE THIS CHARACTER SAVED AND ALONE ONCE DONE. Use separate characters on separate saves for getting the other gear. Otherwise if you run ahead you may miss out on finishing the wisdom upgrades or proper skills that all the time was spent preparing.

Next up we have the damage prevention items. http://solomonskeep.webs.com/ writes that they have only the rings for their setup. Maybe that's the best possible? I don't know yet, but I do know it never hurts to be well prepared. I have collected three damage prevention items instead:
2x 45% Damage Resistance, 25% Mana Regen (Rare Ring)
1x 45% Damage Resistance, +7 Damage (Epic Staff)

It helps to have the extra staff (Though only 5% more damage resistance), but bare in mind I only collected this extra staff as my only Archmage character so far could only get two of the +All stat items and the gold boost staff before the loot drops had nothing else left that may help. The idea of 95% resistance was considered on http://solomonskeep.webs.com/ but they said it would cost stats, so it's more of an insurance for the Gauntlet.

Putting aside why I did this for now, I need to cover bosses first. Bosses on the wizard difficulty will drop the two damage resistance rings needed. You will want to use this method along with the telekenesis skill on your archmage characters for letting yourself reroll the loot over and over which was covered by the website I'm basing this off:
1. Save 1 room on the same level as the boss as an unsearched room. This will give you monsters to allow yourself to die.
2. Save the game by using the magic key and going through the door and back out again before you face the boss just in case you make a mistake. After this, both quitting and the magic key will save so avoid this as much as possible for the moment.
3. Fight the boss down to the smallest amount of health left. Show it who's the real boss. Lol. Leave it so that literally a poke from your magic will kill it, then, run away. Get as far away as possible so you can safely activate the magic key and save again. Make sure the boss STAYS ALIVE. This will make the loot drops much much quicker.
4. Now activate the magic key again but don't walk into it yet. Lead the boss over to be right next to the door, without hitting him. Walk through the door.
5. Now you are set up to kill the boss instantly and take the staff or ring instantly the moment you walk out the door, and it's saved. If you set this up next to the room full of monsters, then if it's one item you don't want? You can let yourself die in there and try again very quickly. DO NOT QUIT, FORCE CLOSE THE APP OR USE THE MAGIC KEY AT ANY POINT AFTER THE BOSS IS DEAD, YOU WILL SAVE AND LOSE YOUR CHANCE TO GET YOUR BEST ITEMS. Once you have one of any of the 9-10 items that you need from the boss, I would then go ahead and save, but before that, you will jeopardise getting a good item.

You will die hundreds of times, I almost guarantee it. Took me 300 deaths for the +3 All stats staff to drop. But it was quite quick to do this way.

The last 4 items to get are:
1x 1000% More gold drops (Epic Staff)
2x +2 All Stats (Epic Ring)
1x +3 All Stats (Epic Staff)

All of these drop on Archmage difficulty along with the formerly mentioned 45% damage resistance staff. I would try for all these first instead of a staff that may not be needed or be useful (Remember, I haven't done the gauntlet either as of yet, but I have just about finished all the preparations for it).


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Comments

  • >>>>

    Now before I mentioned that there was no more items I wanted in the loot drops, even though I'm short on the +All stats items by only one as of this writing. Here is something I think I discovered about loot drops which seems to be consistent.

    Loot drops are FINITE.

    After going through hundreds of deaths on Archmage difficulty I feel I have noticed a pattern. I don't know if these loot drops are totally random in what each new character gets to be able to pick up off bosses on each difficulty, but I do know that the epic drops are limited to specifics. For example sake let's call this an assortment. For each time you go through the keep, there will be an assortment of drops to pick from and these also vary via the difficulty. If you get one of the best epic items from this assortment, such as the +3 All Stats staff, you can't get it twice. Once you have it, it won't show up again unless there's another one in the assortment. It's a limited supply. Not only that, but for the remaining duration of that run through the dungeon, regardless of what boss it is, this stays consistent. My observation of this was supported by the consistent epic drops always looking the same as they were when I got them any other time instead of being something random and different. This has little to do with the guide, but I feel it's still helpful taking note so to save people from wasting tons of time trying to get their items off a boss when the loot drops won't give it.


    ------------------------


    This is as far as I've gotten with this guide. I hope I explained myself well for a first post and if I have done or written anything wrong, by all means please let me know. I wanted to share this to help people who may still be playing the game because I couldn't see a lot of this info written anywhere. Again, credit to the owner of http://solomonskeep.webs.com/ for their setup and guide. So far if not for the direct skills I've at least learnt a lot about how to set my character up much smarter than before.

    I will likely update this more as I dive further into my perfect character, so at least for now until my character is either perfect or lost to the gauntlet, I will be watching this thread.
  • I need a better title for this discussion methinks. It sounds like it's a standalone thing when it's really more of a guide to a guide with me saying hi, lol.

    Now I have to ask since I'm still not up to the actual gauntlet yet, but I'm getting very close. Is there a maximum level cap? Like level 50? 60? 70? I haven't read anywhere about there being one but I just want to be sure so I don't mess my levels up. I may have been playing the game a long time, but I'm still learning new things every time I go back to it. :P
  • There IS a level cap in Solomon's Keep, but know what?  Between doing Solomon Dark and the new Solomon's Keep with all new level caps, I don't remember what it was.  I *think* it's 72 or 75, but it might be 99.
  • That's all good then. The most this build will go to is about 70 so it's below all of those numbers. Thanks mate :D
  • edited February 2016
    72 sounds familiar to me, but I don't remember for sure either. I always played boneyard more. Level like ~30 was the "cap" where all skills were maxed because of all the skill books off of the 4th and 5th unholy ha
  • Ok so I've been a little busy but now I'm back and I have all the gear I need. I can confirm you only need to go through the game with a maximum 1 extra character save to get everything you need, as well as my Gauntlet setup progressing properly, which is good.

    But I seem to have run into a big virtual hurdle. Level 51+ requires an immense amount of gold (Even if I buy a lot to cover for it) and I need to go to 55 to finally weld the spells. This has made me retrace a few of my steps and evaluate the skills I have on my character, which leads me to my question:

    When a skill hits it's limit, then if I put on all my +All skills items (Adding a total +7), making fireball go from 20-25, immolation from 5-8, battle mage from 6-11 etc; Does it make a difference if I instead use the bare minimum skills to reach those numbers using items? Or do they all need to be maxed regardless because the skills still go beyond these apparent caps with the +All skills items?

    So for example if I took the fireball to 18 which will go to 25 with my +7 skill up from my items, would this be the same as going to fireball 20 even though it still says it's capping at 25 with the same items? Would spell welding also be affected by this change even though they'll still both be at their supposed max with those items on?

    I hope I explained it well. If it is the same then I've been wasting a LOT of levels (More than 10) on my character for the welded spell :S . I will restart then and change this guide around to accomodate that though as it's yet another big help to save people time and effort.
  • This is a bit of a bump. Lol. Still hoping someone knows the answer, so I can save myself spending all that time gathering all the required gear again to find out myself lol.

    I've reworded the question 'cos I confused even myself in the last comment lolololol. Should sound much better now:

    If I'm wearing all my +all skills items on my wizard giving me a total of +7 to all skills, would this take fireball from say 20 to 27, despite it saying it's only at 25 in the skills section of the game? Or is it limited to 25? Does this limit still apply when you fuse two spells together?
  • I don't know if this directly translates from Solomon's Boneyard or not, but when you reach a certain level of a skill, it actually sets your damage back to the level 1 damage, and you can never get it back. So I would definitely test this out.
  • why dont you try puting just the staff and one ring for a total of +5 yo get an effectif level of 25 on fireball, then check your stats in the inventory menu and check it again but with the full +7 instead and compare the damage that you deal
  • You're gonna hate me.
    I just got the +3 to all skills after my fifth or sixth death on Demigod difficulty from Charles the Hammer. Figured I'd let you all know. Maybe the staff has an increased chance to drop with these conditions - or maybe I'm just insanely lucky.
  • Sorry logrowe, but I have you beat. First time killing Charles the Hammer on Gauntlet, and I get a second copy of that staff. I didn’t believe that you had gotten the staff from that mini boss when I forst read your comment. Now, though, I’ll believe darn near anything. Charles the Hammer.... pfffft. And I thought he was only useful for grabbing the weaker rare/epic items.
  • If anyone is still grinding the epic items for their perfect mage...

    Felix says above that there is a finite "assortment" of items in a run of a particular difficulty, and evidence of this can be seen easily after about 50 resets on the same boss -- it seems that you get a random draw from only about 15 items, a very limited set. 

    HOWEVER, once you have gone through those ~50 deaths on a boss and you're pretty confident you won't get the item you need, exit the app and close it (on iPhone, swipe up on the home screen and then swipe up again on the app). Go back into the game to continue your boss death farming, and you should start seeing a new set of items! This worked for me today and I was able to get the +2 all skills ring on Charles the Hammer on Archmage.

    As for whether there is a finite assortment of items on an entire RUN of a particular difficulty, I can't say whether I've noticed that before.
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