The settling

The settling
Scenery 23 of 31 · Halvnar, the Outer Hold. Alone · Nightmare · Engineer.

This is a long fight for the Engineer: every test run took between 7½ and 17 minutes. Let your summons do the damage while you stay out of the boss's reach. Up close the hero fell to about half health; at range, never below 93%.

What you hold

You hold 12 spells: your two starting spells plus one draft from each of the ten earlier bosses (ordinary sceneries give none). Taking an upgrade ranks a spell up instead of adding one; one tested draft order took painter twice and held 11. You have 22 talent points.

• The Fixture: the tap spell, a Summon. The second press places it where you aim, and it never moves.
• Slowmatch: held fire Beam; you cannot move, and its damage is a burn that lands after you let go.

A draft deals four cards: the first is always your own spell (one your talent tree pays for), from the third draft one is an upgrade, the rest random. The rule: At each boss draft take, in this order: a new damage, control or summon spell; if none is offered, an upgrade of a damage, control or summon spell you hold; if neither, any new spell. Between two equal cards, take the Engineer's own.

The build we used: nine of ten picks were the own first card, all summons: mirror, brief one, at your shoulder, digger, relay, carrier, loud one, hedge and bleeder. At draft six the first card was an upgrade (mirror), so the pick was a random card: overburden.

If you are dealt something else: at your shoulder was in eight builds, brief one in seven, and first to arrive, long one, relay and digger in six. Every draft order cleared. Averages across draft orders ranged from about 9 to 14 minutes.

Talents

Your choice; this is what was tested: all 22 points in Emplacement (Engineer talents), in order. Rule: buy in the deepest row the tree has opened, new talents before second ranks. Rows open at 5, 10 and 15 points, the ultimate at 20.

1. What It Puts Out ×2: Summons deal 3% more damage per point.
2. Bought by the Charge ×2: Heavy spells (the 1-charge ones) deal 3% more damage per point.
3. The Part That Is Not Bolted Down ×1: Take 2% less damage from everything per point.
4. His Stamp From Over There ×2: Hitting a body with a second element deals 3% more combo damage per point.
5. What the Room Is Throwing ×2: Take 4% less damage of the element that has hurt you most this fight per point.
6. What It Is Looking at ×1: Your gadget's beats deal 4% more damage per point to enemies in the arc it faces.
7. A Clean Lane ×2: Your gadget's beats deal 4% more damage per point while nothing stands between it and its target.
8. It Has Not Turned ×2: Your gadget's beats deal 4% more damage per point to an enemy it also fired at on its last beat.
9. It Goes Up ×1: A gadget destroyed early has a 5% chance per point to burst for one beat of fire across its 2 m footprint.
10. How Long It Stands ×2: Your summons last 3% longer per point.
11. Bolted Deeper ×2: Your summons have 2% more health per point.
12. Fewer and Heavier ×2: Per point, your gadget beats 10% slower and each beat deals 15% more.
13. Everything It Has Left ×1: When three enemies are within your gadget's reach it fires every 0.25 s for 3 s, then is spent (30 s cooldown).

The fight

1. Alone you face the settling and one course-warden.
2. The draw (answer: walk out) marks the floor under you. If it catches you, you are carried about 12 m along the court's length; a wall stops you short.
3. Set down (answer: blink, Shift / East). In all 60 runs the hero blinked out of it and it never hit.
4. Below 55% health the second phase adds Register line (answer: jump, Space / North).
5. Strafe off the line of Loose course and Counterweight run. Standing ground (answer: kite) hits whatever stands next to the boss. Downhill is listed in the bestiary, but in the shipped game it neither moves nor hurts you.
6. Place summons, then hold cast (left mouse / South) on Slowmatch between tells; a blink or jump ends the channel. Cycle spells with Q/E / L1/R1.
7. Kill everything in the court and the room clears.

What goes wrong

• Standing close. The close style fell to 53–57% health in five of the ten draft orders. The loose-distance style never dropped below 93%, and the wide-berth style never below 98%.
• The draw. It caught the hero 666 times across 60 runs for 99 health in total. Jump and blink tells never landed.
• Nightmare has no pause, and the boss ignores control. Alone, going down is Defeated: nobody can revive you. Retry the room.

Tested

60 automated fights on the shipped rules: ten random draft orders, each in three styles (up close, loose distance, wide berth) at two skill levels. All 60 cleared with no downs. Fastest 7 min 32 s, slowest 16 min 40 s, lowest health 53%. The build above fell to 56% once (up close) and otherwise stayed above 93%. These were automated test runs, not human play.

Screenshots

One complete fight in the current build, played by an automated test player with the game's normal controls: the Engineer alone on Nightmare, holding the build used above. The fight took 11 min 40 s of game time.