Opinions needed on which to upgrade for NG+ No-Recruits

#1

Basically I’m going for the 180 Star achievement and have saved all my Magic Skulls up to this point, I’m nearing 180 but its starting to get hard, and will need to start upgrading my weapons/armor to hit the 180 mark, but since there is a limit on how many Stone, Bronze, and Obsidian (even possible?) Skulls one can get with the no recruits limitation and I want to avoid redundancies, in your guy’s opinion, in what order and which equipments should take priorities.

#2

Off the top of my head - the staff that does 3x damage to worms and splitters (the beast’s weapon) is a GREAT thing to give wrenna if she’s damage-oriented (max blizzard, ice sleet, ice shard and ice spear).
The next two obvious candidates are crit-booster sword (Honor’s vindication) and bow (Gilded Death), although Blood Feud Kopal (+5% chance to bleed) might be nice as it’s actually 50% boost as the base chance is 10%. But then, zerks attack very fast, so I’d go for it only if there are dense waves and you have trouble with them otherwise.
The poison bow also gives +10% attack, which further boosts the poison, but I’d consider it an alternative only if I’d want to really rely on poisoning enemies and using other defenders to clean up (and I typically have it the other way round, with ranger being the one that finishes off survivors of the Markos+Slak combo)

After that, nothing really crucial comes to mind - altough Eye of the Flame (burn AND light) could be quite useful for Slak in dark-heavy battles. For Markos, either stun or knockback improver isn’t bad, but I’d go for raw damage. For Bakal, Kozoman’s scepter is the obvious choice…

Light armors - poison hitback and evade physical are both sensible choices.

Heavy armors - the 60% physical dmg resist is good for Wrenna. For Markos, I’d go for bleed hitback.

#3

Thanks for that little write up, for some reason until your post I never realized that the Beast’s Staff (worms/splitters 3x damage) was such a good weapon, over for example the 25% increase attack staff.

#4

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Thanks for that little write up, for some reason until your post I never realized that the Beast’s Staff (worms/splitters 3x damage) was such a good weapon, over for example the 25% increase attack staff.

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Yea - if you give it to properly skilled Wrenna, it does miracles, especially coupled with the Slow Start book (which affects all creatures when and where they spawn, including all payload creatures). I cannot imagine some of the late NG+ levels without it.