String Theory: A Puppetmaster's Guide *NEW*

You've been doing VD Ambu within 2ish minutes using OD Valoredge? I kinda remember it being a lot more tedious last time due to the adds popping and going after me instead of the maton.

Get geo, cor or brd buffs up and it spams hammer instead. It's probably not the intended way to kill but autos are just that sturdy and if you can survive that well frog is squishy

Just tried it myself, very easy VD solo with COR rolls using Light/Fire/Water. Fantastic month~

Hmm, what kind of attachments is good? Would more PUPs make it go faster for those of us who aren't geared as well?

I used full VE with Mana Jammer 4, TC1+2, Magniplug 1+2, ARK IV, OF1+2, Inhibitor 1+2, Attuner, Coiler II with Beast+Comp.

I had to heal my maton a couple of times to keep it from dying to repeated hammers, so in hindsight I'd probably switch out the maton to Soulsoother/Valoredge and Inhibitors (maton kept holding TP until 2k+ very often anyway) for Mana Jammer III and Analyzer to increase safety as back-to-back hammers are the only real danger. Steam Jacket didn't seem too useful as the boss often reset the Light resistance by spamming Water/Fire nukes. Also, forcing Bone Crusher may or may not be a DPS increase--the loss of STP really hurts and String Shredder>Distortion did about 75% of BC's damage.

Edit: Please see my attachment setups on the next page for best performance.

Gear was Xiucoatl, Anwig, 4/5 Acc/DA/DT Taeon, Shulmanu, Domes./Enmerkar, Thurandaut+1/Varar+1 (would probably use Cait Sith ring if I had it), Ambu cape, Klouskap+1. Full Rao+1 could also be pretty decent for the HP+. More safety at the cost of killspeed.

As for more PUPs: yes, it could be possible. Just the TP feed could make things dicey as more Quenching Hammers will go out.

Sorry, I was a bit sleep deprived when I wrote that.

Since you aren't using all of the Fire capacity of Valoredge, use Soulsoother/Valoredge with Mana Jammer 4+3 instead for best results and highest safety.

I edited my previous post to reflect that.

Nevermind that, it probably has a ton of occult omen. Curious how it can use hammer immediately, but it obviously does depend on tp or mew would be irrelevant. lol

Just ignore that previous post... a lot of stupid musing and deleting...

Real question; Analyzer. It's in the build bix uses, but does it work? With overdrive zero earths, it only -40% 1 hammer? Is it every other hammer?

Second question: steam jacket does nothing, hammer has no element?

Quenching Hammer seems to be Light-based like Magic Hammer, so if the Steam Jacket isn't reset by a different element it basically nerfs the damage to negligible amounts.

And I have to admit I completely forgot that Analyzer worked on this fight. I edited that into my post above.

Quenching, not magic, hammer

Sorry, I clarified. It seems to be Light-based like Magic Hammer as it was doing very little damage when Steam Jacket was not reset by nukes. But that happens too rarely for SJ to be worth it.

I should probably stop posting so frequently for now as I just woke up and I'm not thinking clearly enough to provide useful info or discussion yet.

Analyzer is just the back to back safety net as stated. Though I seem to remember when I started do some testing on it before it seemed a bit weird compared to the wiki on it.... and that was right after I proved the steam jacket entry was waaaaaay off so not sure exactly but hey it definitely helps in runs.

If you have more than 1 pup I'd recommend ditching skillchain attachments (and sometimes even with) and if ODing using flameholder. With OD up bone crushers were doing 24-39k with most dealing around ~29k range

Magic hammer is light based but it will never use with rolls up so not a concern. I don't think ever found an element for quenching... given it dispels and doesn't seem resistible would be pretty hard to determine one to begin with. idk maybe throw different avatars at it? idk I'm usually not too close enough to really watch particularly for any period of time considering it's half dead by the time I got all rolls up and the pups situated but I wanna say it seems to help on hammer... guess I could try locking my dt and check while going slower. With 2 autos spamming ws it does hammer pretty often though

Steam jacket mostly ok for reducing consecutive nukes... they don't really do that much damage even but just having a little more buffer for hammer is nice

Yeah, Mana Jammer 4+3 + Analyzer + Light/Fire/Water makes Quenching Hammer pretty much a non-issue as long as you have decent DT gear on.

Also, I can confirm the random overload under OD sucks ***. They really need to fix that ***as there's no excuse to be overloading with single maneuvers.

Are you guys handling it without OD? Seems I need OD to survive the hammers ha. I probs just need better DT.

Yeah, of course OD only.

Without OD you'll be spamming mulsims (and taking entirely too long!)

I've done it without OD tribox... it takes longer though (I didn't time it but I wanna say like 8-10 min) and you pretty much stay in light water and another light or water and full on full time your full dt set. Even then your autos will sometimes occasionally die without assistance (though generally only 1 at a time like that and not every fight). But no OD you can just jump down to D and it's still pretty easy

Did you have to kite it a bunch? seems to not stay glued to my auto.

no. Stop taking actions in hate range. You should have effectively zero master hate

So did some testing and hammer definitely is steam jacketable. Had one auto stand out of aga range and boy steam jackets destroyed the hammer damage. Analyzer continues to be a pain in my butt to figure out. Spent like 20 minutes on D trying things around and ended up accidently killing it lol. Still not sure what's going on

Whats the agro range? I was out at 30-35 before

The target of the spell/ability needs to be over 30 away from the mob

I did the fight the second time at 40+ without any issues with agro....little slow on damage though :/

Yeah, as I said before I'm pretty sure Quenching Hammer is Light-based just like Magic Hammer, so Steam Jacket works.

Regarding master hate: as long as your maton doesn't die you can Dia 2 before running to safety and the boss will still stay on the maton as long as they've done any kind of damage. If your maton does die, just Ventriloquy hate to your new maton before deploying.

Just did some testing show in the ambuscade thread... doesn't confirm 100% but highly suggests it's light damage.

Other notes of the testing an auto that can shell itself would be ridiculous damage lowering.

One good thing of steam jacket is when it's say chainspelling and sprinkling in hammers you take some of those nukes from ~200 dmg to <10 which adds up

It would be nice if the auto that can cast shell had a worthwhile tp move. that was like my immediate thought but bonecrusher to stronk. No one wants to OD with magic mortar....

maybe knockout with light fire wind and flameholders is worth a test for the harle bodies shell? (wouldn't hammer just dispel it anyway...)

slapstick is pretty strong (especially with flameholder) but you have to either forgo light or fire

And yeah hammer dispels it but test I just did showed it still lowered dmg. So dmg first dispel later... though having your auto spam buffs would be lame lol

Any Light maneuvers would just force Magic Mortar anyway, so the best you could do would be to force Slapstick via Light/Thunderx2 or Knockout via Light/Windx2 and neither option is worth losing Fire maneuvers.

In any case, with the combination I mentioned above the matons are typically never in danger of dying during OD even without Steam Jacket (from my experience so far), so trying to make Shell work would be somewhat wasted effort in my opinion. Especially since Harlequin body also has less HP to work with than Valoredge.

Here's a video of PUP/COR soloing this month's Ambu for anyone who cares:



I accidentally recorded the wrong Xiucoatl, but I swapped to my Xiu Path C when my maton deployed.

Might be difficult to replicate due to gear requirements, but if you have a friend with COR main for full-powered rolls (Beast/Companion) that should make it possible for a single PUP even without Su5.

wrong Xiocoatl… ***only one has ever been ahd on my server and never seen any around bazaars

Not for nothing, even surprised there was one. Without doing "the thing" yeah. Only reason to be on, or go to asura.