Update: Probably made the world's fastest hard + resonate no hit speed kill here

I know you guys are probably sick of these minmax speedkill runs, but I thought I'd share the build and strategy I used to do this run, which was particularly fun to do since the Forgotten General didn't even really get a chance to fight back.

Build

First of all, note that with the below setup you'll be way over the 15 movement speed cap so you don't need all the movement speed bonuses. They're just listed for flexibility. Likewise with the other gear, as long as you can hit the caps overall and aren't too far from the max attack and crit rate numbers in the build here then you should still be fine.

Earrings - 2 x Ancient Earring or any with movement speed
Necklace - Ancient's Necklace or any with +11 attack
Rings - Any two of Pailunese Signet, Greymane Signet, Tashkalpian Signet

Head - Raccoon Cloth Hat or any with movement speed

• Momentum

Body - Bandit Cloth Armor or any 3-slot with movement speed

• Vigor III
• Volcanic Eruption
• Flames of Judgement

Cloak - Hernandian Cloak or any with -10% stamina cost

• Not strictly necessary since the run in the video doesn't use one, but just to be safe

Hands - Martial Monk's Cloth Gloves

• Greater Swift
• Shatter III

Legs - Tariv Cloth Boots or any with >= 3 movement speed

• Greater Malicebane
• Greater Bloodbane

One-handers - 2 x Sturdy Tree Branch upgraded at least 10 levels

Two-hander - Awakened Spirit or any spear moveset weapon with >= 3 crit

• Greater Insight
• 4 x Greater Destruction

Elixirs and Food

• Freya's Greater Elixir
• Hearty Lavish Meal
• Hearty Vegetable Rice Cake or any food that recovers a decent amount of spirit

Preparatory Items

• Any equipment with 2 x Gourmet III slotted - you don't need to upgrade this equipment at all since you'll just wear it once before the fight then swap it out for actual body armor

Build Rationale

I think most of the choices are pretty standard and obvious. The only one worth commenting on is the choice of armor-specific crit chance abyss gears vs attack gears vs greater banes. The calculation for expected value is just a weighted average, i.e. damage weighted by probability of that damage occurring, summed over all possible damage and corresponding probability pairs. In our case, it's crit-damage * (chance of crit) + base-damage * (chance of not crit). We can just normalize these numbers and assume base-damage to be 1. So, based on my tests where non-optimal greater banes will still provide a 15% damage buff, just considering the hands and legs slots and assuming that we cap crit chance at 15 stacks, we have to choose between:

• 2 x shatter + greater malicebane
• 1 x shatter + greater malicebane + greater bloodbane

So the first calculation is 30% crit chance from 15 stacks + 15% crit chance from 2 x shatter, and a flat multiplier of 1.4 from greater malicebane, giving us (1*0.55 + 2*0.45)*1.4 = 2.03

Now, the second calculation is 30% crit chance from 15 stacks + 7.5% crit chance from 1 x shatter, a flat multiplier of 1.4 from greater malicebane, and a flat multiplier from greater bloodbane. We can be conservative and assume the bloodbanes stack additively, giving us a total multiplier of 1.55, which gives us (1*0.625 + 2*0.375)*1.55 = 2.13125

Therefore the choice is obviously just use one shatter and two greater banes.

Now, we can use shatters in the weapon to cap the overall crit chance at 55% crit. But this only raises the average damage, meaning on average, each run will be faster but the fastest of the higher average damage runs will still be longer than the fastest higher total attack runs, since higher total attack obviously raises the ceiling of damage output. It just might take longer to realize a monster run, but the difference in probability didn't seem that big to be of concern, since it's just 55% vs 37.5% and the run only needs some specific attacks to be critical hits.

Prep Checklist and Stats

Before starting the boss memory, make sure you've:

1. Selected fire imbuement
2. Swapped to your two-hander, but stashed your weapon
3. Taken out and turned on your lantern
4. Put on the equipment slotted with 2 x Gourmet III

Now, take Freya's Greater Elixir and then eat the Hearty Lavish Meal, in that order. As soon as you see the blue glow indicating food has taken effect, swap gourmet equipment for your combat piece, then raise your lantern and start the boss memory.

If done correctly, you should have close to the maximum amount of time left on the food buff, which is +50 Attack for ~55 seconds (max 60), no stamina cost for ~15 seconds (max 20). The elixir lasts 15 minutes but only gives +10 attack and is not affected by Gourmet bonuses, hence the reason for using them in this order.

You will be going into the fight with:

• 37.5% total crit chance
• 174 attack
• Free stamina use for about 15 seconds, but realistically treat it as 10 seconds

You would obviously hope to finish the fight in under 30 seconds, but if you die, your food buff will continue to burn until it's gone so keep that in mind. The speedkill is usually still doable without the free stamina use, but if the attack buff from food is around 50% spent when the fight starts, consider abandoning the run, then rebuffing and retrying because you will simply not have enough damage regardless of how well you play or how lucky you get.

Fight Strategy

There are 3 tricks to know:

1. Spamming turning slash with fire imbuement, then cancelling out of the animation with a side-step, then repeating it again. If you get the rhythm down, you should be able to pull off 3 casts on the general before she breaks out of stun and does something annoying. This is your bread and butter for high damage and stagger. You should also be using this defensively for the iframes.
2. Special attack one (the poking attack). This one has good range, good damage, is fast, is spammable, and you can quickly move sideways while casting it so it helps reposition.
3. Heavy attack, heavy attack, force palm loop. This one is good for mixing up a decent amount of damage and stagger in while repositioning the general.

When the fight begins, the general will tend to act in one of four ways:

1. Idle for around a second, then do her summoning animation consisting of her standing straight and tapping the blunt end of her weapon on the ground.
2. Move slightly to the side past the pillar on her side but still staying in the inner part of the arena, then do summoning animation.
3. Run at you, jump, then overhead smash with weapon.
4. Do as in any of the above but instead of the usual non-movement action, do one of her usual combat patterns at you:
   • Wave her weapon around and go for an overhead strike.
   • From your left (her right), sweep at you with her weapon and follow-up with combo.
   • From your right (her left), do a sweeping/stabbing motion and follow-up with combo.
   • Un-dodgeable, un-reactable grab with her weapon that downs you and tosses you away.
   • Hold her weapon in counter stance.

Assuming all your lucky stars line up, the best case scenario is 1. or 2. because when she does her summoning, she's wide open to free turning slash spam and those hits don't really count toward her stuns since her summoning can't be interrupted. The most I've managed to cast is 4 turning slashes on her, leaving only a tiny bit of guard meter left. If this happens for you, then just try to fill the meter and do a full heavy attack chain, plus 2 more heavy attacks in the next chain, then guard break finisher. She should only have a tiny bit of health left after this that you finish using a few pokes or turning slash. Alternatively, as in the video I posted, she may escape by jumping. This is still good, because there is a slight recovery upon landing and because of high movement speed, you should be able to run over and cast turning slash before she completes a full attack motion. If she's already on the second attack motion and in this combo she's got phantoms, then you're likely not going to be able to avoid all damage with the iframes from a single turning slash so it may be a good idea to try again.

If you encounter 3., you need to start your turning slash spam either just before she starts her jump or right as she jumps a little into the air because this will still interrupt her. If successful, then just carry on as above. Otherwise, if you end up only dodging her slam with the iframes, then her phantoms may hit you and then you'll have to restart. Even if you're unscathed, you know for a fact your time can likely be better.

If you encounter 4., if you haven't pulled off a first turning slash to interrupt her, then really only the first branch is salvageable since that's the one you can reliably parry. I've managed to parry the second one sometimes, but it's an awkward timing. So, in all other branches, just play out or retry but it likely won't be your best time.

Finally, try to avoid fighting near walls unless she's guard broken or very close to being guard broken. The only time this can work out otherwise is if she decides to jump away instead of attacking, but that can come with its own problems because she can land out of line of sight or too far away and activate her wall phantoms. And know that you can dispel phantoms with blinding flash although because of the successive appearances and spacing with her own attacks, it's not a very effective default answer but can come in handy. Only the phantoms caught in the blinding flash get dispelled although I'm not sure if she needs to be within range of the blinding flash.

As promised, I test Greater Banes on some bosses to see their effects. Doing this by region so I'm not overwhelmed. Gimmicky bosses are skipped. Details at the video description, but basically actual human bosses except Matthias are affected fully by Greater Malicebane, but also get an approximately 15% damage boost from other Greater banes. These tests were done only with Greater banes so I won't be able to speak to how much the damage boost is per stack of the bane effect itself. All bosses are on hard + resonate.

TL;DR - If human or likely human under the mask/costume and not Matthias/Reed Devil, use Malicebane. If Matthias or Reed Devil or Goblin, use Bloodbane.

Further testing is needed to find out interactions and why seemingly unrelated greater banes also give a damage boost.

Once again, this is Hernand only. Will test more regions next.

Note: There was an error in the earlier video so I remade the post.

I see lots of guides where people are trying things and clipping through by luck. Here, I show you a way to do it first try with exact instructions so you get get the mace without frustration!

Managed to squeeze out even more damage and stagger after finding out Bloodbane doesn't actually apply to the general. Also found out gourmet is snapshotted at time of food usage, meaning you can use gourmet-slotted equipment for max food bonus before the fight, swap it out for combat equipment, then start the fight and you'll have the food buffs with max gourmet bonuses applied.

The result? A disgusting amount of damage and stagger even on hard + resonate.

Actual kill time: 38 sec

When making my max dmg build, I assumed that BloodBane applied to all two-legged, two-handed, armed "humanoid" looking beings in the game. Turns out this is wrong. As you can see, BloodBane applies to Hornsplitter but MaliceBane doesn't. Whereas MaliceBane applies to Masked Liberator but BloodBane doesn't.

Edit: Once I've tested on all the bosses I'll post a list.

Someone was asking about dual wielding so let's see what the differences are between one hand and shield, dual wield, and sword vs other types of one handers.

Here I test:

• sword/shield, mace/shield (max upgrade, no weapon gears, shield has lightning god's affliction, howling chaos but they're not the focus of the test and just happened to be in there at the time)
• sword/sword, mace/mace (max upgrade, no weapon gears)
• sword/sword, mace/mace (shadow claw, crow's pursuit, ator's orb)

Boss is Masked Liberator on hard + resonate

Build is any hat, any armor, +4 speed gloves, +3 movement boots, +6% stamina recovery, momentum in chest, +11 attack neck, +11 attack/+1 crit rings, movement speed earrings. I purposely avoided using a high dps, high sustain build so that you can see the stamina cost and damage output differences.

Personally, I think for fighting bosses, dual wield using this abyss gear configuration is not necessarily worse than a two-hander build that focuses on maximum base damage, but one does have to set their expectations accordingly. For example, once the boss is staggered, you will likely not be able to output the maximum amount of damage possible just because your stamina may be drained at that time. However, the higher average damage output can make up for it.

Note: There's a minor difference between sword and non-sword one-handers. With a sword, you can charge your stab and pin an enemy to the wall and down them from that, but with axe/mace, it's not possible, at least from what I observed. Therefore, in arenas with walls, sword is the superior choice.

Someone was asking if Kuku Spears are the best so I went ahead and tested 4 spears:

- Kuku Lightning Spear

- Kuku Laser Spear

- Electro-Mecha Spear

- Kuku Fire Spear

Boss is Forgotten General on hard + resonate, with a build tailored for bosses. Final stats during the fight are 130+ attack (each spear was different), 51-52% crit rate. I think the Kuku Laser Spear was the worst one because of all the noisy visuals that didn't add much else otherwise. It made the fight harder because it was hard to see. Fire spear had the shortest fight, but I'm not sure if it was just luck or not. It felt like it was the hardest hitting spear there.

Almost all YouTube videos and internet strangers seem to agree that Greysoul Howling is one of the best Abyss Gears due to the absurd amount of damage it does. In order to test this, I'm using a highly optimized build to cast turning slash as many times as possible on Forgotten General on hard resonate difficulty. Playback is at 1/3 speed.

As you can see, Greysoul Howling is complete trash against bosses on hard resonate difficulty by very late game/post game.

This is currently the highest burst DMG prototype build that I'm aware of, not counting the evasive shot cheese and apocalypse axe builds.

Equipment and Abyss Gears:

Earrings - 2 x Ancient Earring or equivalent

Necklace - White Lion Necklace or equivalent

Rings - Greymane Signet, Pailunese Signet

Helmet - Any, 1 x Lvl 3 Gourmet

Armor - Any 3-slot, 1 x Lvl 3 Vigor, 1 x Momentum, 1 x Lvl 3 Gourmet

Cloak - Any -10% Stamina Cost

Gloves - Tariv Cloth Gloves, Greater Swift, Lvl 3 Shred/Lvl 3 Rend/Lvl 3 Shatter (use appropriate for boss armor class)

Boots - Tariv Cloth Boots, Greater Bloodbane (replace as necessary for your boss's type), Greater Malicebane

Active Weapon - Any 2 Hander, Greater Insight, 2 x Lvl 3 Shred/Lvl 3 Rend/Lvl 3 Shatter (use appropriate for boss armor class), 2 x Greater Destruction (replacing one greater destruction for a skill gear is fine)

Inactive weapons - 2 x Sturdy Tree Branch

Food - Freya's Greater Elixir, Hearty Lavish Meal

All said and done, assuming you're using a Balton Longsword, you should be walking into the boss fight with 155 Attack, 52% Crit Chance, 13 attack speed, 15 movement speed. Hope you guys enjoy the ridiculous damage and I'd love to see how you adapt it to your playstyles.

Note: Use this for boss memory fights unless you're using a save editor or something because the greater gears are a pain to replace. I used over 600 Abyss Cells (literally) and finally got a greater destruction from gambling.

P.S. This was the build used in the big cheese video with 10 second Primus kill on hard resonate, except it was a bow instead. Video here. Listen to all those crits!

https://preview.redd.it/a30nnnqos99h1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=14a2b796a082a15c75fa57d18c10756ea5a8de2a

Drakesfall Castle after you defeat Giath, Ballista Arrows upper left and Ballista upper right in the picture. Regular cannon can be found in Gorthak Ironworks.

Some people have trouble with Demeniss. With this build, you can farm them to your heart's content. Early on, each champion/guard captain gives lots of XP. The build only needs 1 item and a pet. Check it out!

IMPORTANT - You need to equip Beehive Club as main hand, or else it'll lose durability and eventually break. i.e. it can't be the weapon being thrown.

Title.

Edit: Also, obviously this applies to food, non-repairable items, etc. So if you wanted to know how long to kill a boss by spinning on it with Oongka dual wielding Bee clubs, this is where to do it.