Death Must Die: How to Beat the Difficulty 30 with Dash Only

This challenge is an attempt to tackle the game at it’s highest difficult without attacking and dash as your only source of damage

The rules are simple: No damage sources allowed (Except Reprisal’s tiny angelic tickles) other than Ball Lightning dash.

Why? Because it was a lot of fun and I found the meta chasing and nerf rage posts annoying so I did it to make a point. Also to cause death from zoom zoom.

Took about a dozen attempts. Necro shotgunning was an issue and dashing into sheid boys was an issue. Dracula was pretty long fight, but otherwise a little easier than the necro section. This run I got First Strike fairly early on and it was a huge help. It is not necessary as it really just helps get xp from small mobs. It was helpful on shield boys box. Despite the challenge, this was really fun to do. I did it in normal difficulty and it worked so well I tried it out at max difficulty.

This was done on Nixi.
The most important mandatory thing is Sign of Grasshopper and +1 Dash boots.
 
You also are required to have some passive exp gain to avoid attacking, but the more you have the smoother and faster you go online.
In most cases you will [[u]b]need enough banish[/b][/u] dice to remove the perks with damage or get stuck choosing one and void the rules and alteration to get out of banned gods.

Highly highly recommend stacking as novice lightning dash (And yes I did attempt several runs with it) vs strong enemies falls behind and you end up swarmed at bad times. Mainly the bosses (Necromancer making it to shield section and was super annoying)

• Master % Stacking – Highly highly recommend stacking as novice lightning dash (And yes I did attempt several runs with it) vs strong enemies falls behind and you end up swarmed at bad times. Mainly the bosses (Necromancer making it to shield section and was super annoying)
• Spell Crit – Not required and I ended up getting 12% from 3 Mjolnir shrines
• Exp Gain % – Just faster and more levels. As you can see in screenshot I ended 36
• Revival – A nice way to recover from a bad mistake and dying
• High move speed – Makes dash go zoom zoom.
• – Dash Cooldown – More frequent zoom zoom.
• Damage Striking Undamaged Foes – This is great for the same reason first strike is. Our high end damage gets pretty good especially with spell crit.
• Dash Range – Not super important as you can find Sprinter and Move Speed
• Item Skill “Cool Off” – This is a 10% chance in a dash to refresh ALL dash charges (The in game says “a dash charge,” but it is all)
  This looks super important, but it’s actually not. You NEED to space out your dashes to have as minimum time outside of dashes as possible. While it is fun to get a bunch of consecutive dashes, if you don’t get the cooldown and have a few seconds out of it, you’ll instantly die in some areas like Slime Time.

All damage boons that do not require attacks are banned as per the rules of the run EXCEPT reprisal as it’s a very nice defensive perk. You will need banishes for lightning bans.

Leigong:

• Required: Ball Lightning – You definitely want the master, but I did have a close run I started novice and rarity it up to expert. Level it up faster to help vs bosses.

Banned Boons: All others except Brevity.

Lady Justice:

• Divine Shield – I did not get this until like 15 min into my run because I had enough damage and was hunting for a master version (goes down to 7.5s at max) You can get any level if you need/want. It is a very nice quality of life.
• Reprisal – Novice is okay, and this is a neat way to help stun bosses and ranged enemies that can be a bit of a nuisance.
• The rest are quality of life defenses. Regen and Protection probably more valuable than the others.

Banned Boons: Day of Judgement as it screen wipes. Consecration, albeit it low dmg, was also banned, but I wouldn’t say it is a huge deal if it was chosen and might as well count.

Winter:

• Path of Frost – This turned out to work very well. Novice is okay as you zoom so much you can paint it all over the place and helps stun bosses every so often.
• Wintertide – Your lightning ball can get decently big which just helps the swarm sections. Any rarity works, but higher is better.
• Icebound – More damage (do not get if you are not getting Path of Frost as rest of the ice boons are not allowed or do not work without autos)

Banned Boons: Frost Dragon and Blight

Moirai:

• Haste – Makes you go zoom with the dash. Higher rarity is better, but any is nice.
• Sprint – Makes you get out of pinches nicer and zoom zoom
• First Strike – The high end damage on getting this perk is NUTS. I was able to hit 8k hits with crits on undamaged enemies with this (which is any enemy not hit by reprisal).
• Fleet-Footed – So so nice as it’s another dash stack. I never found this, but wish I had. ALWAYS take this if you see it.
• Evasion – quality of life defense

Banned Boons: None, but the rest are pointless except maybe for banishes and alterations.

Time:
Now I ended up deciding not to go with Time, but he dose have some perks that are handy.

• Time Field – definitely the best defensive option on his kit. Pairs well with spell are.
• Gem High – This perk is hilarious on this build and I dashes so fast after it the game struggled to render in time. Now, the issue is that inside black boxes I dashed so fast I would go from wall to wall being stuck and it got me killed. It’s okay if you are in dash, but coming out stuck to a wall got me killed a few times. This is the main reason I decided not to take time anymore.
• Temporal Lord – Basically a revive, but it is unfortunate if you are close to killing a boss and it pops. Still a failsafe.

Banned Boons: Temporal Lord and Force (I do think it’s fair to get Force if you get a shrine that gives you 0 pick up as that feels awful and it does so little damage)

BANNED GODS: Mort, Krom, & Summer

It’s fairly straight forward and mostly just skill based pathing.
The most important part is the rhythm of the dashes. You want to as evenly as possible space out your dashes to keep the up-time as much as possible as you are immune to damage during the dash. If you do a bunch of dashes in a row and have to wait a few seconds you’ll end up dying really fast in some sections.
I highly recommend dashing to as many shrines as you can flying through packs as you do. You’ll pick up the gems as you go so it’s best to keep moving unless you have a shrine you are saving or using, but taking too long you’ll miss out on cool shrine buffs.
Now your dash does NOT destroy projectiles so be careful where you end your dashes. Your turn radius is not perfect so be careful trying to whirl around faster than you’re actually able.
If you get to slime time and you don’t have dash you’re probably going to die so I’d recommend just resetting if you don’t have your dash dmg by 4 minutes.
Trying to abuse the Cool Off item skill I pretty much ignored as it got me killed if I tried to use it in the bosses and swarms. It’s nice to help get around the map more when there’s little threat is the main thing.
Shrines:
Many of them are entirely up to the player’s choice. The nicer ones are spell crit (Mjolnir), Master stacking (Oni), and revive shrine. Fate shrines help reroll for master or alteration/banish if you need more. Gremlin house I took dash cooldown every time, but max hp is nice too.
If you have less than 1hp regen a second do NOT take the dash cooldown and range for 1 damage a dash. It also destroys divine shield, but technically you don’t die to it so you can dash at 1hp on it.
Armor and evasion are nice, but I had like 19 evasion at the end of my run so it’s definitely not a requirement.

This was a really fun challenge. If anyone does this without reprisal, they’re better than me and it’s even more valid than my dash only damage run. I understand without exp gain doing some attacks early to get your ball lightning, but when you have that you should not attack anymore. Ideally you have 0 atk on your results page as I did.

Alternate dashes: You can I guess use another dash, but I’d find it difficult to accomplish except maaaybe Mort’s lifelink with spell projectiles stacked. If you try another one rules still apply as it should be your only damage source.

I’m excited to see what other kidns of fun builds or ways people tackle the game especially in future content.

Challenge for the community/anyone. Beat Difficulty 30 with dash as your only damage (reprisal is ok). Mort, Summer, Krom are banned. Banish and alt away from rest of damage source.

Overall this patch didn’t really affect us terribly.

• The exp nerfs might make the online time a bit slower start, but overall it’s not super necessary especially if you get lucky and find Ball Lightning the first level up.
• Buff on striking undamaged foes is also nice with the high end damage, especially if you find First Strike with the stats.
• Better Fate Sisters chance is nice. (More chance for fleet footed, yay)
• While armor and evasion are nerfed, we don’t really focus it on gear so Lady Justice Protection buff is nice as well as Elusion from the Fate Sisters.
• Lower life regen not a big deal as you usually have lots of immune time to trickle any mistake hits back up if you dash well enough.
• Gem High nerf might get me killed less trying it out, haha. I didn’t even touch time after a while and my victory run anyways.
• The ability to pick up gems now at 0 shard pull now is nicer as you can pick up the exp gain shrine and lose the shard pick up range. As you kill the enemies by touching them it’s fairly easy to collect it.

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Thanks to Katsu for their excellent guide; all credit belongs to their effort. If this guide helps you, please support and rate it via Steam Community. Enjoy the game.