Path of Achra: Cycle 4: Ape Unataak of the Worm/Champion

In this series I will play cycles of Path of Achra, trying to beat them. I am not going to 'promise' that each cycle will be beaten with an entirely fresh combination but I will try to mix them up a bit.

It is best to consider this an 'irregular' series as, past around cycle 10 or so, things start getting very, very, VERY VERY VERY HARD. So, I'll try and record further but, for all intents and purposes, with each 'cycle' video that comes out consider it the 'last' until further notice.

Unlike a lot of my stuff, due to the nature of how PoA is played, I will actually do - *gasp* - editing. Minor editing (which is the most skilled editing I can do) to show off what I call 'bloopers' at the start of the video which will come with a timestamp, just to show how many attempts it took to beat that cycle without boring you to tears with dozens of minutes (in some cases it may be a few hours, in the later cycles) of footage of me losing.

That said... not every episode will necessarily have text unique to it, but if it does, it'll be below but above my usual link to my other channel.

In this episode, I end up picking the Ape, and going with the Unataak class, along with 'the Worm' deity.

Let's break this down.

The Ape as a culture is pretty straightforward - you have a good amount of starting life, a very hefty STR bonus at the cost of miniscule starting DEX and WIL, along with a modest penalty to psychic resistance with what (I think is, anyway) a rather humorous and flavorful passive in his preference for nakedness translating into increased resistances per empty armor slot capping at +20% for all resistances, and an inverse penalty that caps out at -40% if those same armor slots are full (-10% each).

What is worth noting, and easily missed however, is that our furred friend has an 'on adjacent attack, apply inflame to yourself equal to your Strength' passive, which is actually quite strong if you're specializing into that.

Which we don't, because...

Unataak, the 'fighter-monk trained by the yellow church', is the class we've picked, mainly for its passive but to overview, it gives a modest starting life bonus, a pretty decent +5 starting speed bonus, as well as +3 STR and +2 WIL, with some starting gear. The passive, however, is that on stand still the Unataak removes a random *externally applied* effect from the character, and then, performs an extra attack against an adjacent enemy which repeats for each bare fist - this includes weapons that say in their description 'this weapon is a bare fist' or some such, obviously.

None of that is relevant much though because we go with, for our character's deity...

the Worm is an incredibly interesting religion choice. I've never, until this playthrough, on any cycle, gotten this thing to work simply because I misunderstood its passive and first ability. You see, the idea is that you cannot let the Du' Eird (the first tier prayer ability) fill up, as if it does, the main strength of picking the Worm is nullified, and as well, if you try to 'dump' more than one charge of the Du' Eird at once you risk it completely ruining your defenses.

What's worth noting about the Worm is that its second and third prayer abilities aren't perhaps that strong on higher cycles, but worked amusingly and particularly well here on cycle 4. As you'll see in the video, we essentially don't play a character that is an active melee combatant despite not taking any non-martial powers, but rather, we end up playing a strange caste archetype more reminiscent of a cleric, using the second and third tier prayer abilities - Eiqab and Muejab respectively - to 'nuke' the map and snipe survivors from the initial 'nuking', also respectively.

The whole thing was a bizarre run that culminated in the single most funny interaction with the King of Many Colors I've had in dozens of hours of playing Path of Achra, and as well, my first victory ever with a religion pick for which my initial evaluation clearly needs reassessment.

Anyway:

My non-gaming YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Logic-Mysticism/featured

My YouTube channel for gaming-related content: https://www.youtube.com/@Anterogradegaming

My other, non-gaming Rumble channel (there'll be Rumble-exclusive content someday): https://rumble.com/c/c-7776076?e9s=src_v1_cbl

This is not Rumble-exclusive content.