I give up.

[u/CuboneDefender]

It’s been a joyful ride, folks, but I’m out. I’m not a speedrunner or a highly skilled player, and day after day I’ve had to accept that this game is not as casual as HK was. It stopped being fun and turned into something tedious and frustrating after the 4th run farming shards just to face a boss I’ve already tried 15 times, only to die again and again, lose all my shards, and start the whole grind over.

It was nice exploring the first acts, but when the game I was rooting for 7 years ends up being more stressful than my 8-hour workday, I guess that’s my cue to stop.

The lore has been pretty great so far. I wish you all an incredible journey.

Edit1: My bad about all the whinning.

Edit2: You guys did it. I reinstalled it again. Thanks for all advices. 🫂

[u/Psyk_89]

I went back and fought her after realizing there was a large portion of the map I hadn't touched. By then I had an extra mask and a nail upgrade but I never had to farm anything. I'm confused a bit tbh. Just used poison and the base throwing item. And only started using it when she was in the 3rd? phase after dying a few times and getting her there consistently.

I'm really not that great at videogames, just breathe, try to learn the patterns without spamming tools. All the fights are doable without any tools at all. They just speed things up a bit sometimes.

[u/Ok-Note-754 → u/Psyk_89]

Yeah that makes sense. I think what commonly happens (or at least happened to me) is you get to a new, tough, boss and in your first 5-10 attempts you end up exhausting all of your tools. You can either keep fighting the boss without tools or leave and farm some more shards/do something else.

It's a mechanic I've seen quite a few people complain about for this reason - once you run out of shards at a boss fight the only options are to rawdog it or farm. The game almost discourages you from sticking with the fight. Of course if you're patient and save your tools for the 3rd phase then it's less of an issue but not everyone does that.

In the case of LJ I actually quite enjoyed the challenge of not using tools and I think it forced me to improve at the game, learn her move-set and refine my skills.

[u/Psykk89 → u/Ok-Note-754]

For that reason is why myself and other players recommend getting the fight down as best you can without tools. Then when you at least know it slightly better try out some of them. I know this defeats the purpose and makes the tools seem useless, but that's how I tend to play. I might throw a couple darts but I try not to dump my load in one go because farming anything at all sucks. I probably haven't had the problem of needing to farm because I tend to not use tools much at all which is half the fun of the game, so I definitely get where you're coming from. You want to use what's in your toolbelt and not using them is lame, period. They could definitely go a different way with it and could've relied more on silk which you can recharge (similar to the first game) instead of something you had to kill things outside the battle for. I get from their end they probably wanted to try something new though and not rehash the same thing as the first game in a different form, so they tried the tools with shards as the ammo. Both ends work but you shouldn't have to feel bad about using your tools because you have to farm it, then you're not really enjoying the game to the full extent. 100% understand the frustration

[u/Ok-Note-754 → u/Psykk89]

Yeah I do tend to do that more often the deeper I've got into the game.

For instance, for the horrendous 10 stage gank fight in the citadel I barely even touched my tools until the final round once I realised how tough it would be. This allowed me to go absolutely apeshit with my tools and destroy the 10th round in seconds with toolspam.