If you are a fan of The Elder Scrolls Online, you might be interested in the new single-player or co-op PvE activity called Infinite Archive (formerly known as Endless Archive). This new content brings together new concepts and familiar bosses from the last decade, promising to keep you engaged for hours on end. Skinny Cheeks's video provides tips and tricks to help you achieve a deep run in the Infinite Archive.
Tip 1: Create a Tanky Build
When you progress further in the Infinite Archive, the enemies become increasingly more powerful and hit harder. As you push higher waves, more enemies, including elite ones, will spawn, making dealing with them more challenging. As a damage dealer, even if you have a tank accompanying you, you will inevitably take some hits. Moreover, some boss mechanics will cause unavoidable damage, so you'll have to recover some health. Therefore, opting for a tanky build will make it easier for you to heal.
Here are some suggestions for creating a more tanky build. But feel free to adjust the setups to your situation.
1. Ring of the Pale Order
The Ring of the Pale Order is a must for a damage dealer. Since you are limited to only two in your group, the healing effect of the ring remains potent. It's not very necessary in a duo for the first few Arcs. But by Arc 4 or 5, wearing a Ring of the Pale Order will be significantly helpful.
2. Add More Max Health
Another thing that can help you is to increase your maximum health. You can achieve this by starting with a more traditional setup or equipping some tri-stat glyphs. Doing so will ensure that your damage output does not decrease too much, and you will have a higher chance of surviving with the extra health.
3. Food that Adds Max Health
When playing the Infinite Archive, it's important to prioritize food that has health bonuses. This means that items like Lava Food Soup-and-Altrice (which increases max stamina) and Ghastly Eye Bowl (which increases max magicka) should be avoided, even though they may be popular in other areas of the game.
4. Raise Your Health Higher
As the run progresses, it's essential to increase your health. One way to achieve this is by investing more attributes into health. You don't need to redistribute the points right away. It's better to wait until later in the Archive, preferably at Arc 7.
If you are playing alone and plan to redistribute your points, remember to come back within 5 minutes after porting out. If you take longer than that, the instance will reset. Additionally, you will need some gold coins to donate at the Shrine while redistributing your attributes in ESO.
5. Visions
As you progress further into the Archive, you will have many powerful offensive Visions. These Visions are essential to maintain high damage output while building a more defensive character. This way, you can play as a tank without compromising on damage.
6. More Armor
33,000 Armor = 50% Mitigation
660 Armor = 1% Mitigation
You'll want to get your resistances up for the Infinite Archive. 33K resistances will put you at 50% mitigation (the cap), and the Major Resolve and Minor Resolve are great ones to start with for 20K+ Armor.
As enemies become stronger, increase your resistance through additional actions.
7. Resistance Potions
Using the Essence of Heath potion will provide you with a significant boost to your physical and spell resistance. However, it comes at a cost - you will lose your stamina and magicka recovery, as well as the bonuses provided by regular potions. Therefore, it is important to make sure that you have enough buffs to sustain yourself before switching to these resistance potions.
Luckily, some Visions increase your recovery, and there are also some that incentivize doing heavy attacks, helping you sustain better. But if you haven't gotten enough recovery buffs from the Archive yet, you can try swapping to a food with high recovery and health on it, such as the Clockwork Citrus Filet, Artaeum Takeaway Broth, or Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch.
8. Mundus Stones
The Lady Mundus Stone is another nice option for getting resistance. Yes, you do lose a lot of crit chance for losing the Thief Mundus, but as mentioned before, the Archive will grant you more offensive buffs that increase crit chance so that you can slowly change your build for easier survival. Therefore, it's good to keep track of the buffs you're getting and play around them.
The Lady Mundus Stone is a great option if you need resistance. It's true that you'll lose a lot of critical chance by giving up the Thief Mundus Stone, but the Archive will give you offensive buffs that will increase your critical chance over time. This means that you can gradually modify your build for better survival. It's important to keep track of the buffs you're receiving and try to make use of them.
9. Heavy Armor
Wearing heavy armor can grant you resistance in combat. A Reinforced heavy chest piece can be particularly helpful, like the Pearlescent Ward you can get from trial. It's especially useful for a tank build because its five-piece bonus allows you to deal more damage and gives you extra mitigation. This is especially helpful when one of your team members is down, as the bonus will make it easier to recover. This also frees the tank up so that they can wear other equipment and have more flexibility in their setup. Wearing one of the tank trial sets also grants you the Minor Aegis buff, which decreases the damage you take.
10. Damage Reduction
It's extremely beneficial to have both Protection and Aegis, whether in the form of Major or Minor effects.
Major Aegis and Minor Aegis
When equipped with the Vrol's Command set, you can activate the Major Aegis by performing a heavy attack. This will reduce the amount of damage taken by you and your allies by 10%. This is particularly useful when facing an upcoming hard-hitting phase or a new set of adds.
Major Protection and Minor Protection
You can get Major Protection easily by slotting Revealing Flare. Additionally, there are other ways to acquire it. For Minor Protection, it is advisable to equip Runegard of Freedom as it provides an array of useful
defensive buffs.
With these four buffs, you'll receive a 30% reduced damage taken, which is very noticeable. You can even take it further with the Blackrose Prison dual-wield weapons for another 6% reduction in damage taken.
11. Vampire Stage 3
If you're looking to further enhance your survivability and can sustain, consider reaching Vampire Stage 3. This will activate the Undeath passive, adding a significant boost to your survivability. Note that reaching Stage 3 will increase the cost of your abilities considerably, and you'll need to watch out for bosses that deal flame damage. However, Undeath is a powerful skill that can often make the difference between life and death in many battles.
Tip 2: Know Enemy Resistances
If you want to know the amount of Armor your enemies have in the Archive, you can use the Berserker Rage Ultimate skill. This skill gives you the same physical and spell resistance as the enemy you hit with it. To check the armor levels of your enemies, you can compare your own before and after using the skill. Most enemies in the Archive have 9,100 physical and spell resistance, which is the same as the enemies found in overland, delve, and public dungeons. This means that it is relatively easy to break through that amount of Armor.
The fifth Cycle boss, Tho'at Replicanum, is an exception as she is the final boss in each Arc. Each version of her has 18,200 armor, which is similar to the enemies in the dungeon and trial. Although it is not overly challenging to get through all that Armor, you may have to put in a little more effort than you would with the other enemies in the Archive.
Tip 3: Choose Helpful Verses and Visions
Verses are temporary buffs that last only for the next Stage. You'll grab one of these at the end of Stages 1 and 2, and they remain active for Stages 2 and 3.
Visions are buffs that you acquire when you defeat a boss at the end of Stage 3. They remain active for the rest of your run in the Archive.
Below are some useful Verses and Visions that provide significant power:
Verses
Normal Verses
Offensive Verses
Augmented Area, Class Embodiment, Archival Weaponry, and Guild Superiority are specific to skill. Make sure you build around them, as they significantly increase the damage done.
Swift Gale, Flame Aura, Exsanguinate, Fire Orb, and Magical Multitudes are offensive buffs that will add a significant amount of damage to your next Stage, and they scale with your offensive stats.
Offensive buffs such as Swift Gale, Flame Aura, Exsanguinate, Fire Orb, and Magical Multitudes scale with your offensive stats and add a significant amount of damage to your next Stage.
Defensive and Utility Verses
If you don't have a good offensive option, you can use these top defensive and utility Verses. Some are tank-suited, and some are situational:
• Enhanced Remedy
• Head-On Defense
• Reactive Curse
• Rebirth
• Regenerating Basion
• Sequential Shield
• Tomefoolery
• Transfusion
Transformations
There are also three Transformations you can unlock. They require completing a trio of Visions that correspond to the specific avatar. Once you do that, the Transformations will be added to the pool of possible Verses that could pop up for you.
As a damage dealer, you will receive huge damage mitigation from the Iron Atronach while you're transformed, and the amount of passive damage it puts out is also insane.
The Ice Avatar is more effective on a tank than a DPS.
You lose current skills for using the Bestial Transformation, and it's the least effective for the more difficult Arcs.
All those Transformations have built-in synergies that provide a special secondary feature. They work as an automatic resurrection tool. This means that if your partner is defeated, and you can hold on long enough to activate your avatar synergy again, the resurrection will happen without you having to do it manually.
Side-Room Verses
As mentioned earlier, you will only receive one Verse for Stage 2 and one for Stage 3. However, successfully completing one of the bonus side rooms will grant you an extra Verse option, allowing you to take two Verses into either Stage 2 or 3.
Mystery Verses
Mystery Verses can be bought for 200 Archival Fortunes or obtained as drops from special bosses called Marauders. These bosses appear once per Arc when you reach Arc 2. You can use these Verses once per Cycle, which means that you can either save them for battles against bosses or use them immediately by quick-slotting them.
Since you don't have a Verse in Stage 1, if you encounter a Marauder, you can activate one of these Verses quickly to increase your chances of defeating it. You can choose whether to use one of these Verses on a Marauder or save it for one of the bosses. The decision is yours.
Visions
Offensive Visions
If you want to deal damage, your best bet is to use Focused Efforts. Before you get the account-wide unlock to increase your Vision power, this is only 200% increased damage to status effects. But once you have that bonus unlocked, this jumps up to a 500% increase. What is more, this can stack if you get it more than once. This Vision is crucial if you want to build a strong and durable character while dealing massive damage.
To benefit from Focused Efforts, ensure that you are slotting skills that take advantage of it. Two such skills are Elemental Susceptibility and Barbed Trap, which will proc your burning and bleeding a lot. The good news is that all classes can use these skills.
When using Charged-Trait dual-wield weapons or a Charge-Trait bow or staff, it's important to make sure you're procing status effects as frequently as possible. For instance, the Heartland Conqueror Inferno Staff, equipped with the Charged Trait, can be very effective if you have multiple stacks of Focused Efforts.
It is strongly advised to acquire Ferocious Support and Scorching Support. They allow you to deal a lot of extra damage, particularly if you haven't obtained the Focused Efforts yet. While they may not be as powerful as Focused Efforts, they can still add in a noticeable DPS increase.
Piercing Perfection is another good one to grab for most setups. You don't need a ton of stacks of this, but it does allow you to easily hit that pin cap on enemies without much investment into that stat.
Crystalline Strikes, Ferocious Strikes, and Scorching Strikes can significantly increase certain types of damage. They may work better for certain builds than others, but they all pair very well with Focused Efforts that status effect damage increase.
There are a few other Visions that are also beneficial. Although they may not have the same level of impact as those listed earlier, they can significantly increase your critical chance, critical damage, and maximum magicka or stamina if you manage to accumulate a few stacks of them.
Defensive Visions
In terms of defense, Crystalline Fortification, Ferocious Fortification, Effortless Aegis, and Hearty Vitality are some of the best options available. Effortless Aegis is more useful for tanking, while the others offer a significant amount of extra protection, making them a good choice when the stronger offensive options are not available.
Utility Visions
Archival Endurance and Archival Intelligence are nice options for getting extra recoveries. As discussed earlier, they make it possible to have more build flexibility, which can lead to a lot more damage and tankiness.
Attuned Enchantments works well on the weapon damage enchantment and the weakening enchantment. This Vision also allows for good sustain when paired with some of the restoration glyphs.
Extended Favor makes your Major and Minor buffs and debuffs last longer. But currently, this Vision is inconsistent with gear set bonuses that provide Major or Minor buffs.
Supplemental Thread is a rare Vision, but allows you to gain an additional attempt in Infinite Archive.
Those are some Verses and Visions that are worth picking up. To get the most out of them, you need to get the account-wide unlocks from the merchant inside the Infinite Archive.
Tip 4: Buy Permanent Account Upgrades
Each of the permanent account Upgrades is tied to spending a certain amount of Archival Fortunes and also completing a certain Achievement. There are six mini-game activities within the Archive that you can take a side portal to interact with, and each of these mini-games has five Stages of difficulty to complete. Upon doing so, you'll earn an Achievement that will open up a corresponding Upgrade to purchase.
Sweeter Deal and Filer Kor's Truesight add an extra Verser and Vision choice each time they pop up. That means you'll have three to pick from: one from each category instead of just two. This significantly increases your chances of obtaining a more desirable option.
Ghostly Gratitude and Aramril's Training increase the power of the Verses and Visions. Mostly, they increase your strength of Verses and Visions by 20% - 25%. However, there are some outliers that increase by different amounts, such as Focused Efforts (200% - 500%).
Tentacular Motivation increases your movement speed inside the Archive, helping you to zoom around more quickly.
Destozuno's Safety Net grants an extra Thread within the Archive, allowing you to start with four lives instead of three. If both you and your partner have this Upgrade, you can start with five lives. Therefore, this is a beneficial Upgrade to acquire if you intend to delve deeper into the Archive.
All the Upgrades above cost 100,000 Fortunes, which may seem a lot, but the rewards will increase the further you go into the Archive, so it doesn't take quite as long as you might think.
That is how to progress further in the Infinite Archive. If you like this video, don't forget to give the video a thumbs up and subscribe to Skinny Cheeks's channel.
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