Late Game AP Aurena (Golden Burst)

[magic nest]

This build centers around using the repeated 100% consecutive scaling of Golden Burst (GB) and naturally low cooldown. GB can be maxed early with no downsides, Aurena's identity is this ability and upgrading still sacrifices same %HP.

Scaling Essence priority:

1: Essence of wealth - As with any late game run, gold is your first and last friend.
2: Essence of predation - Getting scaling as soon as possible is always the best.

Build combo:

1: Essence of clemency - The idea is to put this on GB, heal back the HP you sacrifice. This is the only necessary component of the build.
2: Essence of vengeance - % Damage and Healing scale + AP projectile, only a rare so easier to find
3: Essence of overload - worse vengeance, can replace with any flavor as needed

Nice to have essences:

1: Glacial Core - Since we will be healing insane amounts, this is free damage with a fast projectile proc to chain other essences.
2: Essence of guidance - In multiplayer you can heal allies with Golden Burst, allowing you to have a huge shield. This can also help get clemency to threshold since it is common to find.

Essence of paranoia limit test:

Ping difference can cause you to go to 1hp if GB misses. As long as you have external healing (easiest is Shadow Walk + Passive) you can wait for GB Stacks to go down and be completely fine in most cases.

Chaos Priority:

AP > ATK Speed > Haste > AD > Health

Notes:

• This combo is slightly harder to achieve in Nightmare, due to it relying on healing.
• Damage scaling will never be an issue, as you upgrade GB the ratio to AP gets way stronger, and each consecutive use will 2x this number. I've 1-shot multiple loop bosses.
• As long as you have max HP, this ability can be triggered even if your full HP bar is being sacrificed.
• Early game this should not be rushed, you need survivability since healing is slow until clemency is found. I've found balancing with the passive or Dangerous Theory can help.

[pine kettle]

I want to add to this, Shout of Obvilion with Essence of Metal (-cooldown on kill) and Essence of Virtue (more charges) is a really good fail safe in case you get hit by delusion.

[magic nest]

After testing on new patch I feel that all the information here is still correct. I prefer Dangerous Theory levels to passive levels since it scales healing off AP, but outside that balancing to your preference early is still fine as you'll likely Renewal them both later anyways. There are also some better rare essences to replace with that I chose to exclude to make this more accessible, namely Overload with Divine Faith or replace either with Guidance. I still think Vengeance is necessary as the 2nd slot on GB.

[soft drift]

Since my game is in Portuguese, and there's no option to change, I sincerely have no idea what AP and AD mean. Can you please tell me? I guess AP is Attack Power, but I am not sure.

[magic nest]

AD is attack damage and AP is ability power

[soft drift]

Is your chaos priority correct? If I am reading it right, you're supposed to prioritize health?

What's this Shadow Walk passive healing you're speaking about?

[magic nest]

I'd initially written it with the symbol to mean an arrow like -> not greater or less, I've corrected it for more clarity. AP should be the highest priority. The Shadow Walk passive healing refers to the combos of the two together, Shadow Walk triggering an on-hit with ranged projectiles at 50% and the passive (Disintegrating Claw) being a heal on-hit.

[strong patrol]

what do you mean by "maxed" when referring to GB in the first paragraph?

[magic nest]

Essentially pump as much essence or levels into it as possible

[strong patrol]

id like to nominate essence of spiral and/or glacial core for wealth application

as far as i can tell this is even triggering and re-triggering itself

[magic nest]

If you look at my essence guide you see a similar setup using a feedback loop, but as this is not Aurena specific I opted to keep this guide as simple and concise as possible

[strong patrol]

👍

worth leaving imo as one of my questions when i was starting this was always "how to get wealth applied to everything without it taking up a slot on GB", and now i know spiral works as a more common substitute to glacial core

[magic nest]

If we’re getting technical, the best applicators are procs and augmenters. A good example of both categories are glacial core / spiral / charcoal and dusk / embertail, respectively. I tend to take a secondary memory for this specific utility like umbral, or pillar of flame since they’re easily applied to groups. Mind you, in single player you can easily kite (and usually want to) in order to maximize value.

[primal flare]

This guide is terrible
It ruined my relationship with Mist and now I have an Aurena addiction now

(All jokes aside, thank you so much for enlightening me with this)

On another note, how often do you spend to upgrade the essences? I'm unsure on how often to upgrade the essences over GB using Dream Dust or Boss upgrades
I usually use Dream Dust for my essences and Boss Souls for GB after it starts costing 200+, I don't know if that's wrong or not
Unless the idea is to use gold from Essence of Wealth to fund the essence upgrades, and using dream dust purely for GB

[magic nest]

It’s a matter of preference. I think that pumping it with dust is fine as long as you have the essences and healing to support it. If you don’t, then put more into the healing or utility side. I think around +5 for first loop is enough, but usually if you have a boss upgrade it feels really good to put on GB since it’ll almost always be highest level. Diminishing returns start to happen if you put too much dust into it over essences or healing but it will never really hurt. If you have Clem you can all in and be 100% fine. The other tactic is to invest in everything but GB, then once you find Clem you can renewal and swap the build into this.

[primal flare]

Ah that makes sense. Usually most of my investment goes into Clem until I heal a bit more than I lose, then start pumping GB and the damage scaling essences

[magic nest]

1000% valid, and as you should. You can pre-level Guidance to help Clem reach threshold and give you a large boost to other healing, then do a split into something like Dangerous Theory to really make this flow seamlessly.

[primal flare]

Ah shoot, I gotta remember that I have Dangerous Theory, thanks for clearing my upgrade confusion!

[magic nest]

No worries! I think the ability is super good and grossly underrated. It truly shines in single-player because Aurena tends to get carried by her team (since hitting things to heal with an auto attack as melee can be unreliable with more people) until you get Clem (Clemmy) and you are allowed to pop off.

[unique hearth]

what do you mean by "Renewal"?

[magic nest]

I was referring to these altars, my word choice was a bit off, sorry. They basically refund your spent essence so that you can pivot builds and are insanely useful for scaling into the mid game in general.

[deep dust]

ty for the guide

[pale tide]

incredible fun build! thanks for sharing, i added the "Clutches of Malice" to group enemies for the burst, however special shielded enemies can not be grabbed, so has somewhat reduced effect, still nice to have. Shout of Oblivion to oneshot bosses is always nice to grab obviously^^. Pretty sure there is still room for improvement.

[wintry grove]

Great build, but why ATK Speed better than haste?

[magic nest]

This might be a bit more detail than you wanted but here is my line of thinking. I referenced my notes for my thoughts at the time of writing the build so looking back I'd now take some memory haste and then ATK speed. I tend to think Memory Haste is the strongest chaos stat in early game... but as a general build guide it's hard to include that nuance.

A few reasons why I opt for ATK speed in my build:

• Aurena passive (D. Claws) is consistent lifesteal so this helps carry you before GB comes online
• GB practically has no CD, hence it does not benefit at all from this stat upgrade
• ATK speed doesn't have the same dropoff/plateau as memory haste so it scales better
• The stat is hard to upgrade unless you get essences (i.e. wind) specifically for it, memories can gain CD from levels
• Gives you a pivot point later into the build if you do miss GB and need to heal with nothing but passive, because your other memories are in transition (now I would run a backup heal or hot-swap clemmy, most players would not)
• This build was written when AD was favored by the community, as a way to show love to my favorite combo style of AP build. It's more intuitive for AD-builders to curve into the build this way.

Why/when you should take Memory Haste:

• If you use an external memory for healing (purgatory, ice shield, etc)
• Generally speaking it's much stronger when you have less of it, taking 1 or 2 chaos as this is probably preferred
• I think having memory haste early is optimal and gives your build a more stable scaling curve, regardless of building AP or AD since it brings your CDs to threshold quicker (you can see this with people who take essence of efficiency to boost builds in early game)

[wintry grove]

Thanks for the explanation. I just tested it. This build is crazy. I had trouble with the healing in midgame. And yes, like you said, things got easier when I got clemency. I was wondering if there was any other plan in case clemency can not be found

[magic nest]

Sadly Clemmy is the hinge for this build, GB needs it to work properly. But! AD Aurena can work without it completely fine.

[wintry grove]

Sadly, no more Aurena AD since I found this post 🤣. Hope to see your new guide soon

[bleak nexus]

Guidance + Regeneration combo both at around 60000% quality should be good enough. Should be achievable at 3-4h run in case you got so unlucky with Clemency :))

[meager basin]

I died to hunter bombs xd I'll be trying this again it was fun

[outer lantern]

Hey, so what do you think about this build now ?

Golden Burst, with - Clemency / Guidance / Revenge

what else 😭

[meager basin]

Entered the white dream, did a lot better this time was fun :)

[meager basin]

You could just copy what I did above

[outer lantern]

wow nice you got divine faith and all

[meager basin]

I used lethality before I found divine faith, it does the job and makes the initial hit bigger = more healing

[limber needle]

I just started playing this game again and found this guide. What is considered late game when GB turns on? I feel super weak, but I usually only go 2 cycles of the game before entering the white. I'm just not sure how long you're supposed to be going before things click. I've been maxing GB, but it just kills me lol.

[magic nest]

Late game depends on who is talking about it. To me I feel that’s after loop 5/6 everything becomes completely trivial. At around loop 2/3 is the breakpoint for good and bad builds imho after that the player naturally outscales the enemies. GB needs clemmy to be activated constantly (and after you need to hit breakpoint where healing from clemmy+guidance > %hp lost from GB), otherwise it’s a balancing act of your HP and spamming the ability.

[magic nest]

In general the principle of building is centered around chemistry of essences and memories. Where there is a shortcoming or strength you compensate or amplify with the other, respectively. I wrote a similar guide to talk about my thoughts but it can be somewhat hard to comprehend without a good foundation of naturally playing the game. I recommend it either way but I’d experiment and see what works for you.

I call it specifically late game since it hinges on clemmy (clemency essence) which, based on varying luck, will either show early or late so I take the latter bias.

[restive pebble]

great build I accidentally walked in the same direction as a beam of the world cracker lol. Would've lived if i didnt 😂 Didnt find clemency so i know when i do it will be even more broken

[stable pecan]

died due to a boss's circle i didnt see.. 3rd boss is always problematic.. fun thing is.. i nuked everything in the game in a click.. this build is extremely OP.. adding paranoia to the shield memory and it becomes even WAY more OP..

check the single dmg done.. 600k, crazy

just got Iron Body.. gonna try it next with Paranoia and Shield for some real godlike OPness

[stable pecan]

i got bored and had to go to bed.. i think i could go indefinitely.. 1b shields and 1 shotting bosses was getting boring 😄

my GB was at lvl 200 btw.. crazy

[wild elk]

this build cool

[dreamy coyote]

hello guys, im new to this game, any idea on how to build this part?

[stiff cradle]

@dreamy coyote
Ive marked traveler-stars with T

life:
"second wind" which gives you a second life, and i also like to take regenerative skin increase healing+barrier gain by up to 18%. eel-agility (T) obviously as it will be proced constantly due to golden burst

destruction:
i like resonance effect (T) increasing AP when low, procing when spamming golden burst.

The rest i normally just fill with imagination, mainly double chaos, hypersense (T), reduced merchant price and most importantly "monstrous charm" and "black market", giving 2 more items per page and shop rerolls

For flexible stars, i either dont use any or "strong bond" giving you basically a free golden burst cast but keeping the damage scaling. if you struggle with early game, maybe switch for "dissmantle, dissolve, understanding" to use golden burst more often, allowing you to cast after doge without loosing hp

[dreamy coyote]

thanks for the response, appreciate the help alot. im actually running all of the ones u listed except for eel-agility and hypersense

are none of the dangerous theory stars any good? surprised u didnt take any

[stone vale]

didnt manage to get clemency all run on Q , thought it was over when i reached the boss but thnx to mass protection and alot of hp boosters i was able to finish it anyways kekw

On a nice 30 minutes timer 😄

[stiff cradle]

I play the build aiming on longer runs, especially with the save feature now, means once I get clemency above the healing threshold I am not using any other memory, except sometimes an extra dash or Shout of Oblivion or winter dive for the invulnerability.
The good think about golden burst is that once the engine is running, outscaling the enemies is pretty consistent when using predation and frostcore-wealth for HP and money

(Just in case, frost core uses the unique essence “glacial core”, which fires ice projectiles when healing, together with the frost and wealth essences. So, as long as you are healing (which you should constantly due to clemency and GB), you proc frost for more extra max HP and wealth for extra money. Depending on the loop, you can easily finish a world with +500 or more max hp)

[dreamy coyote]

ahh i see, i understand what u mean. i usually run ice shield together with winter dive, but ive always kept the theory skill thinking it would be important late game

[dreamy coyote]

i dont quite understand the frost core, is that a memory/skill?

[stiff cradle]

It’s an essence combination, using the unique essence “glacial core” (dropped from the ice boss) and rare the essence of frost you can stack permanent max hp.
Glacial core converts some percentage of all healing received into ice shards and shoots them at nearby enemies, which not only does an insane amount of damage but can proc frost. Frost increases max hp by 1 if any enemy is hit by a frost attack.
By putting glacial core and frost on one memory, maybe add something like quicksilver, wealth or insight for constant procs, you can gather hundreds of hp per map, even more when pairing frostcore with flow, which can reduce its cool-down when dealing light damage, for example through golden burst. (star fall +clemency + flow + frostcore is op, but that’s a different build)

[dreamy coyote]

ahh i see, frost + glacial core essence. do u put this on golden burst along clemency? or on other memories are fine

[magic nest]

Any other memory will proc it automatically, the strength of Glacial Core is that it triggers off any healing and that Clemmy converts damage into healing. The base concept is Clem (Healing) -> Glacial Core (DMG projectile created by healing) -> Frost (stuns & gives max hp to player).