Intro:
Hello everyone! I've spent a lot of time recently rubbing tentacles up and down and getting covered in caustic juices. There have been tears and smiles, good times and bad, but most importantly lots and lots of sweet sweet loot. We are talking mountains of randarts and piles of gold. Tentacles have some strange mechanics but I strongly feel are worth touching once you have the meta knowledge to maximize their benefit and minimize their risk. I also have two 10 minute videos on the subject that are at the extreme amatuer level.
I think that tentacles are actually quite easy but require an understanding of their underlying mechanics. I am going to share what I know. If I miss anything please let me know!
~~Disclaimer~~ This guide assumes insane difficultly.
What are tentacles?
Tentacles are a manifestation of the physical perfection of the old gods. If you have the addon Forbidden Cults enabled cultist of entropy rares will one shot you in the maze and tentacles will spawn in several zones. If you click on them one of three things will happen. They will either wither, spawn a rare+ awakened tentacle tree, or they will swallow you whole. Once swallowed you will enter a tentacle zone containing 6 enemies also found in the worm and god eater zones. These enemies like to toss magical debuffs, blind, and slow at you all while stripping your debuffs. Oh, they also all have mitosis. Meanwhile gastric waves come every 10-30 rounds and make you deal no damage and give them all 70% resall. Fun stuff. Fortunately, the enemies tend to be rather weak in combat. They may be hard to kill, but they don't hit hard. They also don't move fast.
Where are the tentacles
Once you believe, you'll realize the tentacles were inside you this entire time. All up in your space. Doing things. They can also be found in old forest, daikara, spell blaze, and reknors lair. I'm pretty sure I've seen them out east too? The enemies are level restricted by zone.
Old Forest: 25-27
Daikara: 30-33
Spell Blaze: 40-45
Recknor: 43-50
A good general strategy is to do Old Forest and Daikara tentacle trees before going out east. And then upon returning do spell blaze and then recknors. When the tentacle trees spawn level 25 mobs they are pretty easy and like SWL chests they can still spawn T5 gear. In fact, you could probably safely do all the trees before going out east.
Bugs:
So right about now you are probably thinking: 'Alright smart guy, I clicked on a tentacle and got tentacle grape soda'd by level 80 tentacles in old forest. Explain that one to me!'
Right, so there are two major bugs going on here. The first is that you are supposed to get one tentacle tree in a level with a chance at mass tentacles. You should be seeing 1 or 2 mass tentacle tree events in a run not 5-6 like right now. They are supposed to be rare. This is going to be fixed in 1.6. However, you may as well learn how to play them now since you are going to see so many. Once you become a tentacle god you can writhe all the way to value town.
The second 'bug' is that once you go east, alternate guardians spawn and raise the level range of the zones. This will change the level ranges of tentacles to 76-79 in old forest, 66-70 in daikara, and 56-60 in Reknors. When I asked Shibari about it, he said they weren't supposed to be that high of a level. So I am assuming this is a bug. Regardless it can be played around by simply doing old forest and daikara tentacles before going east.
As for Recknors you actually benefit from this bug because level 56-60 tentacles aren't much harder and give pretty much all T5 loot. You can also de-level the tentacles by killing the alt-guardian and then exiting to the main menu and loading the game again. So is it an exploit to take advantage of the higher level loot or is it an exploit to de-level the enemies? Trick question: You are going to be accused of cheating by someone in this community regardless so do whatever!
Swallow Mechanics:
If you are swallowed a new zone will be created spawning many enemies in a similar environment to the worm and god eater zones. At random intervals between 10-30ish turns you will get a message that a gastric wave is incoming. 5 turns later a gastric wave will hit gives you a magical debuff that reduces your damage by 45%. All negative effects on you have their duration extended by 6 rounds. All enemies will also gain 70% resall.
If you are in the middle of a big fight and this happens, you will do no damage. You will also likely be covered in debuffs. Life will be bad for you. When that message hits, you need to be in a favorable position or start retreating. It also benefits you to wait until the gastric wave debuff is about to expire before initiating combat.
The zone will be a dark area and require a good light source. There will tend to be nooks and crannies to avoid line of sight. Clear and get to those areas first. The enemies are pretty weak but...
Risks and Requirements:
The enemies spam the following talents:
slime spit (slows you)
Poison Storm (persistent AoE nature damage that causes magical blights that reduce healing, damage, and cause talents to fail)
Eyals Wrath (Drains mana/Vim/Pos/Neg energy in radius 7)
Corrupted Negation (removes a large amount of physical and magic effects from you)
Acidfire (Persistent AoE that blinds and removes magical effects)
Half the enemies also have mitosis, so they are difficult to burst down with single target damage. Things that help are (but not limited to)
Track! (The biggest and most important)
Detect Hidden
Ways to mitigate persistent nature/acid AoEs (resists or Anti-Magic Shield)
Mobility (to avoid the persistent clouds and to retreat when the waves come)
AoE damage (can be quite strong against mitosis)
Blind Resistance
Magic Cleanses
Being level 50. (Being a higher level than the enemies makes them pretty easy. Not much more to say lol)
Not all classes are going to have an easy time of this. Keep in mind the enemies tend not to hit hard, but they are hard to kill. 100 armor and decent hardiness will turn them into kittens in melee. Mitosis makes them extremely resistant to single target damage. If you face rares that debuff you and you get surround things can go south when the gastric waves start hitting. An
Enemy Types:
Tentacles Trees can spawn the following enemies:
Awoken Tentacle Tree: these spawn when you click on a tree and do not get swallowed. They have WO abilities from the tentacle talent tree. They tend to do little damage and be pushovers.
Corrupted Mastoctytic Feeder: These have slime roots (jump 7 spaces, Poison Storm (Persistent AoE that causes several magical blights, and mitosis)
Corrupted Dendritic Hemospinner: These have eyals wraith (persistent AoE that drains mana/energy/vim)
Corrupted Acidic Digestor: These cast Corrupted Negation (Removes your physical and magical effects)
Corrupted Plasmic Disruptor: Slime Spit (slows), Mitosis, Virulent Disease
Protosentient Globula: Mitosis/Call of Ooze (summons a mucus lol)
Protoplasmic Controller: These bastards cast acid fire which lasts forever and blinds/removes magical effects each round. They do not have mitosis however.
Video Guides!
These are both in 3D with 4k resolution. The production value is out of this world. World class animation too. Not sure I could oversell these videos. If you want to listen to me talk for twenty minutes and say what I just wrote above watch them. You can also watch me leave blade furry on too long and run out of stamina. Good times!
Guide Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxxA4pJ194A&t=92s
Guide Part 2 (watch me clear a tree): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4wSwQ5b-tI&t=5s
Tentacle Trees: You know you wanna touch em
Moderator: Moderator
Re: Tentacle Trees: You know you wanna touch em
Wait - am I reading it right? Destroying AltGuardians will delevel tentacles and generated zones?furtbat wrote:You can also de-level the tentacles by killing the alt-guardian and then exiting to the main menu and loading the game again.
English isn't my native language.