C64: Chalice Dungeon Speedrun challenge
4/28/26 (before I forget again)
The next few chapters will be for the chalice dungeons so prepare yourself for lots of info dumps about loot and monsters. Ill try to keep it interesting if anything fun takes my notice as I manually explore said dungeons to ensure accuracy of loot.
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My return to the dream was fairly uneventful. I talked to the Doll all about the lecture hall and the Nightmare frontier while laying in her lap. I then went to the workshop and chiseled both the Great Deep Sea rune which increase my resistance to all status effects as well as the basic Deep Sea rune which helps with frenzy.
This gives me two extra barriers against frenzy, even if they thin, it's still something since I cant find other runes of the same type but higher level except the slow poison resistance which is all but useless since unlike the game, I have access to all my antidotes that I find.
Since I barely use them anyways, I still have about 30 of them in total. I could also easily buy more if I ever ran out.
"Hmm, what else is available to me? The other nightmare dream thingy of death which I can most certainly clear in my current state and gear. Though I do have to say, I am curious to see what the end of the chalices is. Oh-kay. Let's do that."
[Side Quest (repeatable) has been made available.]
"Ooooh repeatable? Tell me" I say in intrigue as it's rare for the system to give prompts on its own like this without me goading it.
[At the start of every floor. A timer shall be activated, if the floor is cleared, ie. boss cleared of that floor, the rewards of that floor will be provided should the host reach or stay under certain time limits. Gold and Silver grade times provide system based rewards too]
"Shut up and take my money indeed" i reference an old meme as I accept the proposal. I first finish up the Lower Pthumeru chalice from where I left off in Rom's arena. I go through the passageway that is at the very back middle of the room which was hidden before during the boss fight. Though it wasn't much of a fight since spider seppuku is a thing.
As such i take the elevator down and get hit with the prompt.
[Time sensitive challenge available: Clear Floor four of Lower Pthumeru. Bronze: 1 minute. Silver: 50 seconds. Gold: 30 seconds.
Bronze: obtain all rewards for this floor from all enemies and chests along with loose items on the floor.
Silver: previous rewards and 3 lesser skill shards.
Gold: previous rewards and 1 greater skill shard.]
"Hmmmmmmm. Yea that seems reasonable. Though I do hope this means the gate switch is nearby. I stretch a bit before a countdown begins.
[3…. 2….1…GO] I use SoP to the best of my abilities though I soon face my first obstacle, doors. Even with my enhanced stats, it still takes me a full second to lift the doors and there are two in a row. Im already down to just 27 seconds to get gold.
I begin to use my wind manipulation to the best I can as I expand my search radius to quickly find that there are only two actual paths before me. One is to the right which is the barred gate to the boss while the other is straight ahead, a tunnel. Technically there is a third on the left but it's stuck from the other end.
I get a strange idea in my head and choose to implement it. I go left.
Standing before the stuck door, I grab the small opening in the middle top that allows me to see through it and i lift that which does nudge the door open and I then hop it up a bit and release so I can grab the bottom and prop it all the way to the top.
"Whoo, yup, that works, saved me plenty of time" I say as I then jump up to the upper floor as it's one of the simple rooms that has a U shaped pathway on the upper floor. I take a half second to observe the closest room to the ladder and find a long room of overgrown trees and tendril like roots seeping from the ceiling. At the very end is a lone Tomb Guardian stands in front of a light blue switch. I lock onto my two targets and dash a few times, I only use Overwhelming to gauge how much I do with my upgraded gear.
I find that he survives on a tiny sliver of health and so I simply use the air to cut at his leg which he barely notices as he is quite slow except when attacking. As such, too slow to block a blade of air from hitting his ankle and thus killing him.
I waste no time in moving the switch. I've already used up about 13 seconds of my 30 second Golden Goal. Hearing the click, I rush back to the other room, jump down and then dash across to lift the previously locked gate to the boss.
After that, it's another straight line to the boss as I pass by a side passage. I push open the doors to reveal a Abhorrent Beast within.
Sniffing the air in the room, I recognize the creature as the same as the 'beggar' I met back in Forbidden woods who is safely stored away in old yharnam, not bothering beasts and they not bothering him either. I'm not sure if that man met Djura but they should both be fine in their own degrees.
"Fuck, I wasted two seconds thinking. KILL KILL KILL" I curse before entering a frenzy sparked by Berserker Rage as I pull off all the stops. Overwhelming, Shatter Echo, Weapon Echo. and for good measure, I take out my new signature weapon.
Null
While it's still a late prototype, it is more than worthy of the title as I pull out it's heavy state and activate the bolt engine as I easily dash just to the side of the boss. My serrated blades meet his flesh in a gruesome exchange as long black hair is violently torn off, acting as minor armor before my blade meets flesh and begins to ravage the beast's body.
The awe-inspiring physical strength of my body boosted by overwhelming truly lives up to its name as soon enough, multiple echoes of the attack I just pulled off land in the same spot, grinding away with me while with the occasional weapon echo that simply act like simple swords as they slash at the same area but barely 'tear' with the serrated blades. Regardless, the weapon echoes pile on raw damage while me and the attack echoes thrive on Damage over time.
Within seconds, only 5 seconds left on the timer that the beast boss falls to his knees in riposte but is immediately knocked out of it only to fall over quickly. A great weight displaced from it's body as two collisions crash onto the ground. The first being the abhorrent beast's body and then its head.
[Congrats on Clearing the floor in a record: 28 seconds. Gold Grade rewards are being provided. The whole 4th floors rewards including echoes, 3 lesser skill shards and 1 greater skill shard are in your inventory now]
I feel a flow of echoes pass through me but it is far more miniscule compared to the actual ocean of blood echoes in my body. Don't get me wrong, 100k+ echoes is great, it's just less impressive when i got a fifth of that from the default Amygdala and hundreds times more from multiple other bosses before it.
As for the items, there is a strong lack of it with most of it being some ritual blood and sages wrists along with a flurry of tempering gemstones of various levels but mostly two or three. This is of course in combination with tons of blood vials, bullets and even some bone marrow ash. Not that I even use that stuff. Mostly because im not a bloodtinge build cuz of game limitations that I keep forgetting im not a part of so I totally could rock it so strong.
With all the floors gear, that also includes the 'Defiled Chalice' and blood stone chunk from the boss itself. For now though, I light the lamp here and return victorious to the Dream. The Doll was surprised that I had returned so soon. I simply responded in a positively dumb way,
"A happy surprise awaited me in the dungeon and I also couldn't bear to remain long from you. So I beat them all up quickly so that I could return to you" I pulled out as much cheesy stuff as I could from who knows where in my ass. She does not seem to mind my verbose phrasing as she seems happy just that I'm safe, happy and healthy ... .is she my mom?
I spend some more time with her, getting the motherly image out of my head as I soon move to the workshop and fix up my gear. Even changing out of the gemstones on them.
It's only my saw cleaver and Evelyn that got these upgrades though as I had nothing good for the other two, gascoignes hunter axe and my Tontritus. For the Evelynn, it got a big boost as I had previously found a bloodtinge gemstone (3) in the nightmare frontier and while I do lose the S grade grading that my previous gem gave the gun, I did not lose any damage as the new gem was just that good. Shame guns cant have more gems ... .WaitaMoment.
There is nothing saying I can't… I inspect the Evelyn and quickly find that I can attach at least two more gems if I properly chisel it in. If this was not long before then I wouldn't have confidence but with crafting having evolved, things change. I could technically make feasible rocket launchers and simply decimate the entire beast population that way.
For now I get to work on making the appropriate groves, I had already made necessary smithing and chiseling tools when I had forged my prototype weapons. Taking those out, I make the appropriate grooves along with branding a few Caryll runes along the barrel of the weapon. I don't sense any sort of ethereal feeling in it, even as I try to channel my elemental manipulation skills onto it in hopes that I somehow create a runic gun but maybe it has to do with the rune. Thinking this, I do not cover the whole barrel in my chiseling as maybe in the future I would gain additional runes that would have an effect.
For now though I reattach my previous gemstone to return the S grade along with the first basic bloodtinge gem that I got back from upper floors of the building where I got the hunting rifle and had hidden from Djura's turret-fire.
It's a basic gem but suitable enough for it's current purpose as the damage of my newfound pistol reaches +103 due to all these factors. It effectively doubled what it was before I started working since I was at +47 before and the new gem brought me up to +58 but with the two new slots that I imparted myself that are compatible with all gems akin to droplets slots.
Moving onto my cleaver, I replace two gems, the first was one of my tempering with a better one of a (4) variety. As for the other gem replaced, it was the red gem droplet which I replaced with a gemstone that boosted my power quite a bit, specifically a cursed gem that boosts physical at the cost of 1.6% more stamina lost when attacking.
I nearly burst into laughter at such a condition as it's the best physical one I could get. Though I wish the bonus was higher so that I wouldn't have to change the gem again. I then replace these gems as I check if the ones I took out are compatible with my other two weapons but the results are not in my favor this time.
So I make my way to the tombstones lining the rising steps as I check out the defiled chalice and which is the next path in the Pthumeru sequence yet the results disappoint me as I am missing a few things to even do the ritual. The first being something called Bastards of Loran along with Arcane haze.
Since I already have the Haze extractor, I just go back inside an break down some extra tomb mold which I had the most to get the necessary haze but I don't know where to find Bastards of Loran.
I do realize that I have just gotten something called the Ailing Loran chalice from Amygdala so it's safe to assume I get the necessary materials from there but im in no hurry.
As such I set up the hintertomb chalice ritual. 1.8k echoes, 3 of my 4 ritual blood (2) along with 3 of my 7 bloodshot eyeballs.
Easy enough as I crush the material together and infuse the echoes that the sigils on the hintertomb chalice shine bright and act as a conduit to the chalice dungeon.
I travel to the first floor and receive similar messages about the speed challenge runs, the first floor was only 15 seconds this time around for Gold which I just barely made in the last second. The boss was the Maneater Boar, the giant pig that I farmed back in Yahar'gul. Since this was the first of the hintertomb chalices, it was beyond easy with all the enemies as I barely even touched them and they died.
I got quite a few basic items like coldblood dew (3), bloodvials and quicksilver bullets. There was also plenty of gemstones since the drop rate is set to max because of the challenge. That means there was dozens of tempering blood gems and even a few murky gems too. From the Pig, I got the Radiant damp blood gem as well as twin blood stones.
Oh right, there was also a bunch of damp bloodgems too and they were of high quality, ie. (4). But I'll have to check later how good they actually are and if I should replace my gems again. Amongst them was an odd damp bloodtinge gemstone (4) which im very curious about since it's one of the runnerups for a potential replacement on the first grade bloodtinge gemstone which I only put in since I had no other options.
Since I beat the challenge again and even got a level into SoP, which means it reaches level 3 now. My speed in it's dashes is even faster and while the stamina cost did grow quite a bit. The power equally grew which means my dash attacks are far stronger now too. It's a very pleasant feeling as I went about the next two levels of the dungeon.
One thing I did notice along the way is that in this chalice dungeon, there a tons of pretunnels and post tunnels. What I mean by that is the extra paths that between sections like the initial spawning location and the true beginning just before the locked gate as well as the side tunnels between the now unlocked gate and the boss arena.
As a result my gains for the subsequent floors was much higher too. Plenty of bloodshot eyes, murky gems, ritual blood (2) & (3) and an actual crap ton of Tomb Mold (2). 17 tomb mold to be exact, which if the next few chalice dungeons don't provide me any trouble, I could likely sell if I was desperate or just convert into a bunch of arcane haze if needed. From what I could tell, it's the rats in this dungeon level that dropped a bunch of these molds.
As for the boss for the second floor was another Undead Giant yet this one had a cannon for it's left arm and a giant axe for it's left. It was also missing the chain balls stuck to its back and the weakness on its leg like a pulsating mass of blood. Regardless, I didn't have much time to analyze him as I went for the quick kill with all enemies I encountered.
The end result was that I got the hintertomb root chalice, an adept damp gem (4) and more twin stones. Though just as I was leaving, I found another note that held information for a community chalice dungeon code.
This code was, up6tgug5, for the Sinister Lower Loran Root chalice. Another dungeon which I don't have access to but I am intrigued as the note mentions multiple high grade ritual materials as well as modified hunter weapons based on 'uncanny' and 'lost' typings.
Essentially these are weapons with variant bloodgem slots but since I can modify those myself, I'm less worried. Though the final piece of info was that there was a tier three anti-clockwise metamorphosis rune. That is the stamina rune, while half useless to me. Is still a good rune to have anyways.
The third floor of the hintertomb provided a bunch of bloodshot eyes, tomb mold and a bunch of ritual blood (3) again and the basic rewards are less varied or plentiful but i think that is due to the higher quality of actual items, especially the temp gems which are beginning to reach (4) but even then there is only a few of them.
As for the final boss of this dungeon, it's a blood starved beast. Yet it immediately dies upon me entering it's arena, and no it did not kill itself like the previous two. It was corpse was just there in the middle of the arena, surrounded by chunky poison water pools.
I try to figure out whats going on but the system simply states that it's related to Gerald, so i just accept my free win and high grade skill shards since I easily beat this floor by a few seconds. The reward was the lower Hintertomb chalice, my second bloodtinge gemstone (3) and more twin shards.
Though I do have to say that the main path to even unlock the door to the boss sucked balls, as I had to wade past a giant poison swamp. Since I was trying to be fancy and not bother going around on the elevated wooden platform, I got my foot stuck on some poison swamp mud and it made me very unhappy as my socks got soggy again. Combined with the large swarms of enemy including another undead giant in the middle of said swamp. I had to waste a bunch of time killing them all myself but since I had more than a minute for the whole floor, and the boss had already died, I still ended up being lucky and getting my reward.
Lighting the lamp, I return to the dream and rest a bit and even check out the material cost for the lower hintertomb chalice. It seems to be 3.2k blood echoes, 6 of my grade 3 ritual blood which I had 15 of by this point and 6 bloodshot eyes which is alot but I had 10 by this point so it was no big deal.
Kind of sad that my enormous amount of tomb mold is left unused but maybe the Loran chalices will use those more. For now though, I rest in the Doll's care as rushing around like that is a bit repetitive though the xp and loot is nice for me.
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