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IRONEST CHALICE achievement in MASSIVE CHALICE

IRONEST CHALICE

Complete an IRON game (Brütal Difficulty)

IRONEST CHALICE+8.3
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How to unlock the IRONEST CHALICE achievement

  • SchaafySchaafy
    07 Jun 2015 07 Jun 2015 07 Jun 2015
    RazorPriest has done a great guide as far as preparation, but I have a few more tips that can really help make the playthrough easier.

    Right at the start, you definitely want to have 3 keeps, and have each one producing hunters. Not trickshots, not enforcers. Hunters have the follow-up ability which will allow you to one shot bulwarks in a bit.

    If you ever get an event that gives someone the Patriotic personality, they are you're MVP, you want to put them in the crucible ASAP. By the year 120 or so I had a person in my crucible with Alert, Patriotic, and Tranquil, and my hunters had no less than 80% chance to hit. This drastically reduces the time spent save scumming.

    Definitely research veil armor as soon as it shows up, but also research the steady aimer. An extra 10% chance to hit goes a long way in saving your sanity from all the save scumming. Once you have those researched it pretty safe to make a Sagewrights guild, but dont go overboard on putting people in there. I personally put any alchemist/caberjack class in there because I only wanted hunters in my vanguard. After the Sagewrights guild, go for hunter weapon training research.

    You only need 4 relic weapons, as you will get a caberjack variant right before the last battle. It's very important to make sure you get relic weapons as early as possible, as by the end of the game mine were levels 6-8, so not even maxed and I got most of them in the first 60 years.

    Around the year 180, you should make a second crucible so that your trainees will get more experience and start at a higher level. It's important to only put people with good personalities as your standard, but don't be afraid to put someone in your vanguard as your standard, even if they have a relic weapon. Ideally, both standards should be giving 250+ xp per year, each.

    Around the year 200 you should make a 4th keep and use the research to find new heroes so you can make a caberjack variant in that keep. Also, research the weapons training and Ramcap Caber for caberjacks at this point. If you have a 15 year old caberjack around the year 250, your in good shape to bring him along in every battle and get him to level 10 ASAP. THIS IS CRUCIAL FOR THE FINAL BATTLE.

    Ironically, with 4 Hunters with okay relic weapons and 1 Shadowjack with the Ramcap Caber, the final battle was the easiest of the playtrhough for me. I didn't need to save scum a single time on it, and I killed each wave of enemies in 1-2 turns. The hunters focused on Bulwarks, Cradles, Lapses, and Wrinklers in that order. They should be able to one-shot any of those except maybe Cradles with the follow-up skill.

    The Caber type person, if they are level 10, can go around killing every seed and most wrinklers in one turn. the Ramcap caber allows you to line up multiple enemies so the knockback stuns them all and deals a lot of extra damage. My Caber was killing a minimum of 5 enemies per turn. I had one turn where I hit a wrinkler into two more and the knockback killed the close and middle one, then I just killed the third with the action point I got from his level 10 ability.

    All in all, the last battle is ridiculously difficult if you are not prepared, but if you have 4 good Hunters and 1 level 10 Caberjack variant, it can actually be a cakewalk. I never felt in danger and my chalice took 2 damage from a seed hitting it once. The whole battle took me about
    1 hour 30 minutes or so.

    Guide not helping? View 4 more guides for this achievement.

    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    Darth Hawk CZGreat guide. Helped me to emotionaly survive through the game. At year 280, bad random event took all personality traits away from all of my soldiers. I cried, most of them had Patriot. But I managed to survive the final battle anyways.

    I have just done this so a few of my pointers... Took me one try, only the last battle was a bit chaotic, my caberjack died halfway through (you get a new one with lower level, so it was farewell to unlimited killing).

    I haven't really used save scumming as it was in the early days. Game saves on your last turn of the round, so if the enemy decimates you on their turn, you can simply pause the game with start, real-exit the game through xbox guide and load the save. This with the cloud was more than sufficient. Hat down for all the people that actually did the savescumming on each turn with the old dashboard.

    Cloud saves
    DO NOT QUIT THE GAME. That uploads the save!
    In the xbox guide menu, select the game > manage game and go to the savefiles directly. Delete local saves and go back to the game. It will crash because the save will be gone and restart. You can use this to move back a little further in time, but there are no guarantees how far.
    Once I used this to get rid of bad random event outcome, it took me back about 15 minutes to a previous fight. You can quit and launch the game after each battle, to force the upload.

    Playing offline
    Settings > network > go offline. This prevents the save upload. Only time I really played offline was during the final battle. I went offline before deployment for the final battle. I kept deleting my local saves until I got random enemies I liked. Then I played the first round, left my Caberjack for the last turn, save & quit and real-exit the game, so it doesn't run in the background. I waited a bit for the save to upload (no way to tell when that happens), went offline and struggled with the final battle again. When I was satisfied with the round outcome, I repeated the steps to upload the save to the cloud.
    Posted by Darth Hawk CZ On 01 Mar 20 at 17:13
    KroktapusFinally went back to this game after years and got this achievement. Two keys to success for me were having a caber in the final battle (I was resistant to that my first playthrough) and the "Playing offline" instructions posted by Darth Hawk CZ. I used the offline method to save scum random events and saved at year 290 and went forward to the final battle offline. If I failed: quit game, delete local save, go online, load game, wait for cloud sync, quit game, go offline, go back to game and try again.

    Final vanguard was 4 hunters (levels 7-10 with 8+ level relics) and a level 10 caberjack with no relic. I thought I'd have 1 more random battle pop up between 290 and 301 to kill off a couple of my own heros and pass on the relics to younger/higher level heros).
    Posted by Kroktapus On 22 Jul 20 at 14:54
    UneaseEntree7It was mentioned above, but it's important to understand that the Xbox Cloud ONLY creates a new Cloud Save whenever you QUIT the game WHILE ONLINE.

    I thought Cloud Saving was dynamic in real time whenever you are online in the game similar to the Iron Mode saves every turn, but it only makes a Cloud copy when quitting the game online (I assume you have to close the game right to the Xbox dashboard, not just quit to ingame menu).

    I lost my first Brutal Iron run at Turn 70 because I didn't time the Cloud saving right when playing online and had no save at all on the cloud after deleting my local data.

    Thus, I made sure to go back online and quit to dashboard after every successful battle to create a new cloud save.
    Posted by UneaseEntree7 On 14 Jul 22 at 00:31
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  • AwooAwoo
    03 Jun 2015 02 Jun 2015 07 Jun 2015
    Good news: you can use cheesy savescumming methods to ensure all your attacks hit and to avoid most enemy attacks.

    Bad news: This is still obscenely hard and time consuming, and it's very easy to completely destroy your run at any given time if you're not paying very close attention and making all the right decisions.

    - Use and breed only hunter and alchemist classes, caberjacks are absolutely useless. Vanguards of three hunters and two alchemists are the way to go. Unless you want to use the method that Schaafy describes in the other solution for this achievement.
    - Build 3-4 keeps and keep 2-3 bloodlines alive since you absolutely MUST have relics passed down throughout the game to even stand a chance later on.
    - Allow your vanguard heroes to grow old so they leave behind relics when they pass away, then keep passing those relics on to young heroes.
    - Do NOT use Cadence weapons! These do not turn into relics when the user dies, so while they may be useful at first, you'll sorely regret it down the line.
    - Pay attention to personality traits when choosing new heroes for your vanguard. Try to avoid Revelers if possible (especially if appointing a Standard!), and just try to keep the negative traits to a minimum in general. This also goes for appointing regents.
    - Research Veil Armor as early as possible, and abuse the hell out of it to safely scout out areas with your hunters.
    - As for items, use whatever you like. I prefer to stock up on health items, researching health vials and ultralixirs as early as possible.
    - Speaking of ultralixirs, the Ultralixir Arrow (hunter) and Throw Item (alchemist) skills are incredibly handy because it allows one health item to heal several people at once.
    - In keep/crucible/sagewright defense missions, it's nice to save the people appointed there, but do not take unnecessary risks to do so. If you spawn on the opposite end of the map from the sagewrights for example, you may as well just move slow and let them die. They are far more easily replaced than your vanguard.
    - When building, don't go for the outer regions. Most of the bonuses (with the expection of the reduced research time one) are not worth it and will put your stuff at huge risk later on. Not to mention you'd have to do more awful building defense missions.
    - Something very important to always remember is the stun effect from the shockwave when a lapse dies. The stun may only last one turn, but it can really screw you over if you forget about it. This is especially important during the final battle, as your whole vanguard is usually pretty grouped up. Be careful!

    Here's how the save abusing works:
    In battle, the game saves at two times; when your use up an action point, and at the end of the enemy turn. It does not save between every enemy attack. It does not save the results of the last action you made on your turn until the end of the enemy turn, so if you load the save during the enemy turn, you will be put back before your last decision. You can use this to redo an enemy turn as many times as you like, which is absolutely vital to make sure ranged enemies miss as much as possible. Especially Advanced Bulwarks.

    Now here's the problem. When you make a move that's not the last move of your turn, the game does not let you pause and load until the action is complete, which means whatever you do is irrevocable. Unless you VERY quickly hit the guide button, then start, then quit game. Start the game up again, and if you were quick enough, you'll be back before your last move. As horribly tedious as this is, you pretty much have no choice but to use this method.

    Everything is fairly manageable until year 151, but that is where shit really hits the fan with the introduction of advanced enemies. Those Advanced Seeds you were mowing down just fine on normal? Yeah, they now have 39HP, hit like trucks and are awkwardly hard to target. Just one of many reasons to have a few alchemists with you at all times, since their accuracy is not dependent on the enemy type.

    Lastly, we have the final battle. Your whole vanguard should be at least level 7, all have relic weapons of at least level 6 or 7, and good genetic traits. If you don't have at least the first two of those, you won't stand a chance. The enemy numbers are absolutely insane, and you will have to abuse saves a LOT to ensure critical hits. If you have Advanced Hunter Armor, equip it instead of Veil Armor since stealth is useless here. It's all about offense. Stay near the chalice and destroy everything from afar with the hunters, making sure every shot is a kill. The alchemists need to kill several enemies with one flask every turn, and recharge their flasks at the chalice whenever possible. Use Ultralixir Arrow/Throw Item to heal your whole vanguard at once if necessary, and protect the chalice at all costs. Enemy attacks can glance and miss the chalice just as they can you, so use that to your advantage. Seeds and wrinklers are top priority kills, then lapses, then cradles, then bulwarks and twitchers. This battle took me close to three hours, and I only had about 40/500 chalice health left at the end. And that was with a level 8-10 vanguard all with relics around level 8-9. If you've gotten this far in Brütal Iron, you likely have the tactical wits necessary, but just know what you're getting yourself into.

    Good luck, and feel free to leave any questions or added advice in the comments.
    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    Poopdog M60RiotThough I think brewtalists are by far the best class
    Posted by Poopdog M60Riot On 08 Jun 15 at 00:55
    BlazingXeroGreat advice! Followed it to the end with only one death due to a low level alchemist and close range throw.

    Not sure why but in my final battle, there wasn't any cradles or twitchers and only one bulwark at the start. Only had lapses, seeds and wrinklers spawning
    Posted by BlazingXero On 17 Jun 15 at 02:58
    CkrauserSo F***ing frustrating... Got all the way to the final battle, got basically near the end, they destroy the chalice. No matter how many times you reload, can't save it. There goes 10+ hours. F*** this.
    Posted by Ckrauser On 02 Jul 15 at 03:06
  • cptObbescptObbes
    04 Aug 2015 04 Aug 2015 29 Jul 2018
    Just a hint for save scumming that is not mentioned in the other guides:

    You can abuse the cloud save and play offline.

    For example before random events:
    unplug your ethernet cable / go to network settings and go offline, if you have a bad outcome quit the game, delete your local save, get back online and the game will sync with your cloud save.

    You could also unplug your cable / go offline at the beginning of each battle and after you won, go back online to update your cloud save.

    It might take some time until the save is uploaded because mine were like 7 MB at the end.

    I think you get the idea.

    Could also be added to one of the other guides.

    I beat the final battle with 2 lvl 10 hunters (had +50% dmg each after some kills...), 1 lvl 9 hunter, 1 lvl 10 shadowjack and 1 lvl 9 shadowjack.

    For the cabers I used Ramcap Caber, Boneshell Armor and Spongestone, they were really helpful and nearly invincible.

    The Hunters had 2 Relics and 1 Bone Barb Bow and Steady Hander.
    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    Darth Hawk CZYou can save yourself an extra step. You don't need to go offline.

    In the xbox guide menu, select the game and go to the savefiles directly. Delete local saves and go back to the game. It will crash because the save will be gone and restart. DO NOT QUIT THE GAME. That uploads the save!

    We did this with Gears of War 4 Ironman achievement, no need to go offline.

    Only time I really played offline was during the final battle. I kept deleting my local saves until I got random enemies I liked. Then I played the first round, left my Caberjack for the last turn, save & quit and real-exit the game, so it doesn't run in the background. I waited a bit for the save to upload (no way to tell when that happens), went offline and struggled with the final battle again. When I was satisfied with the round outcome, I repeated the steps to upload the save to the cloud.

    I haven't really used save scumming as it was in the early days. Game saves on your last turn of the round, so if the enemy decimates you on their turn, you can simply pause the game with start, real-exit the game and load the save. This with the cloud was more than sufficient. Hat down for all the people that actually did the savescumming on each turn with the old dashboard.
    Posted by Darth Hawk CZ On 22 Feb 20 at 15:52
    B Scrizzle21So if I don’t like what I see I should just pause and then manage delete local save for the game. One one hand you say don’t quit the game and then you also say to real time quit?
    Posted by B Scrizzle21 On 27 Nov 20 at 07:49
    Darth Hawk CZ
    So if I don’t like what I see I should just pause and then manage delete local save for the game. One one hand you say don’t quit the game and then you also say to real time quit?
    Posted by B Scrizzle21 today at 08:49
    You are mixing things together.

    Delete your local save when you are NOT SATISFIED with the outcome of your turn. It will download cloud save from earlier time.

    Real-quit the game if you ARE SATISFIED and it creates a cloud save you can come back to using the method above.

    Game saves on your each turn and when the enemy round ends. If the enemy decimate you, you can real-quit the game (you have time until the enemy rounds end) and go back ingame, at the beginning of enemy turn. This creates a cloud save. You get another chance on the enemy turn, so they miss, move differently etc. If you fall asleep or something, enemy decimate you and it's your turn again, you can not quit, you need to delete your local save and download the one from cloud, which is at the beginning of their turn (if you had quit the game after your turn, otherwise the cloud save could be minutes before that).
    Posted by Darth Hawk CZ On 27 Nov 20 at 08:53
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