Guides

It's the most wonderful time of the (coli!) year!!
Happy Night of the Nocturne, everyone! I'm gonna be spending an absurd amount of time fighting things, so I should have both the Portal Patrol and Ruin Runner up within a few days so you can all join me in celebrating by smashing mimics.

And as always: make sure to take breaks and stretch your arms. Strain injuries are no joke.

Well. Things didn't quite go to plan. Between a tank in my mental health and several migraines, I wasn't able to get the builds done in time for NotN.
I'm going to be working on those throughout the day (hopefully) and barring more interruptions, Portal Patrol should be up by tonight.

@CaliCa1 @daniil @AWB @Evirin @Jorybear @jotunn @evidence

Hey everyone, the Portal Patrol is done! You can check it out here.
Apologies that I couldn't get it done in time for NotN.
Let me know if anything's off about it, I'm sure I missed some stuff given lingering migraine effects.

The Ruin Runner will hopefully be up soon too, provided I don't have another spike in migraines. The build's done, I just have to do the writeup. ^^

And as always, feel free to ask to be removed from the pinglist!

@kingcrown
Just wanna say thank you so much for taking the time to research and write up these builds! I'm really interested in running the Portal Patrol on a pair of my dragons. Best wishes about your migraines, though ;u;

Quick question, would you recommend running the Portal Patrol build in the Workshop? I notice that the brawler has less QCK --- is it that big of an issue? Or would the issue be more about the bulkiness of the mage, defense-wise?

@Aeranautics
Aw, no problem! I'm doing these builds for myself, why not just do a quick writeup for other people too!
And thanks, they're not the worst but that sure doesn't make them fun!

I actually haven't tested that out! I think, if there are any problems, it'd probably come from the mage being too frail. I'll keep that in mind and if I do some tests I'll let you know the results!

@kingcrown
Thank you for making Portal Patrol! I don't have the dragons yet but I am looking forward to trying it out. I would also like to suggest having a part where it has steps for setting up on the first battle and on other battles as well as bosses since other coil build guides use that and it could help out people who don't know when it is best to use meditate or contuse or aren't sure how to do the first battle.

@evidence
Unfortunately I simply do not have the energy for that. Writing the posts, simple as they may be, already takes a ton of effort. Between my mental health and unpredictable migraines, I likely wouldn't update the guide again if I tried to add setup and turn instructions.
This guide is supposed to be a relatively straightforward and fun way of sharing the information I'm gathering, and this is about all I can do to that end.

@evidence
I can't be too thorough because of weird turn-flipping shenanigans, but I'll do my best.
To minimize damage, start on a pack with at least 2 mages (force of habit — I use a solo Mire flyer and a GLR flyer).

ROUND 1

1. (mage) Meditate
2. (mage) Rally brawler - you ALWAYS want to do this turn 2 (Future Aera here; you can use Rally turn 1, just make sure it happens during one of the mage's two Ambush turns.)
3. (brawler) Scratch monster 1
4. (brawler) Scratch monster 1 — some mage monsters are faster than both dragons and will take their turns after this.
5. (mage) Contuse if there is a melee attacker present; Meditate otherwise.

After that, it really is just waiting for your brawler to build enough breath to use Eliminate, which happens after 6 turns. The mage can do whatever it wants. I like to use Meditate to build breath, or Contuse to make killing monsters faster (since it deals about the same as a rallied scratch). Rally runs out after 5 brawler turns, so be sure to have your mage Rally the brawler one more time before it happens.

ROUND 2+

1. (mage) Do anything needed. Have breath? Contuse a monster. Need more breath? Meditate. Have breath and need healing? Regenerate.
2. (mage) Rally the brawler
3. (brawler) Scratch monster 1 — if you used Contuse turn 1, Eliminate monster 1
4. (brawler) Elim monster 1 — if you contuse/elim Monster 1 already, Scratch monster 2.

If you miss an Eliminate and have to rebuild breath on your brawler, chances are you are going to be fine if you play it smart. The only time I lost a battle was when I had amazingly bad luck against 3 melee monsters when both dragons were low health (i had no fodder). I only had time to Regenerate one dragon before someone would fall and at that point it was just a lost cause. Other than that, I haven't needed to reload basically at all. So big thanks to @kingcrown for the awesome build!

Some things to keep in mind:
– the turn order. Several mages are faster than your brawler but not your mage, so you'll often find the turn order going mage/mage/brawler/brawler (ambush turns), then mage/monster/monster/brawler/mage.
– the time at which you use Regenerate. It costs 40 breath and restores health over time. Do not use it if you will kill the final monster on the field with your brawler the next turn. It's a waste of breath!

@Aeranautics
I'm just glad the build works for its intended purpose, and thanks a ton for the breakdown! Do you mind if I link to this post in the main post so people can check it out if they want?

Hopefully it's helpful, evidence! Aeranautics did a great job.

@kingcrown
I don't mind at all; please go right ahead!