[spoilers] Regarding Rings

[Giant Octopodes]

This post and thread is all spoilers regarding post Community Center Content, so if you don't like spoilers, get out now!

Spoiler: You have been warned!

So I was looking through the forging information today based on the post regarding the fishing rod. It looks really cool! Can't wait to unlock it and delve in, literally and figuratively. One thing in particular which stood out to me was the ring combining. I had no idea that was a thing, and it's really cool! I never have enough fingers for all the rings I want as is, and there's a LOT of options. So I'm curious, what rings have you combined? What ones are effective? Tried any combos which didn't work out in practice as well as you had hoped?

The ones I'm most looking forward to making, and which stand out as options to me, are as follows:
Iridium Band + Slime Charmer's Ring: The Utility Band. I'm planning on having that on basically always. Being able to ignore slimes, plus glow, magnetism, and increased damage? All in one ring? Yes Please!
Napalm Ring + Burglar's Ring: The Dungeoneering Ring. The Napalm Ring I find super helpful in the mines and SC because blowing up rocks when you have to fight something means chances at staircases. Plus more rock, so you can make more staircases. The Burglar's Ring I don't think I need to sell anyone on, more loot is better than not! Combining them would make for me the perfect ring to bring into dungeons.
Crabshell Ring + Immunity Band: The Pacifist's Ring. If you don't want to kill enemies, this will help prevent them from killing you! Add in the proper boots and certain weapons and you can get a defense of 15+ while being immune to debuffs.

Looking forward to seeing what others have done or are planning on doing, and especially how it worked out!

 

[Zen_the_Ogre]

My dungeoneering ring is a luck ring and bandit. The drops increasing is a good combo

I use a iridium plus salamander ring for turbo mining

Tank ring is immunity band plus crab shell. It's like wearing space boots. Combine those with drogonscale boots and your only mine deaths are going to be from unfortunate use of megabombs

I have another iridium ring with a vampire ring. I call it the eternal warrior. Your gonna hit the 2am barrier more often than not before you have to heal. Combine that with the turbo mining and enemies just don't stay around long enough to be a problem. I mean one one each slot not that you can combine the combos again

 

[Boo1972]

I have a luck + iridium band that I always wear. My other top rings are vampire + soul sucker (which isn’t quite as fun as I was hoping) and burglar + slime charmer. I also have crab shell + immunity and soul sucker + napalm. That last one stays in the wardrobe; there was an unfortunate incident with a tiger slime exploding by a dragons tooth which caused me to toss the ring in my backpack and almost the trash.

I really want one of those coffee rings combined with the burglar ring. No more buying coffee for me! If I ever find the damn thing.

 

[Worblehat]

See this thread.

I agree with the consensus in that thread that this question reduces to "what do you combine with your two iridium bands?". And really one of those is the burglar ring, so it's just what you combine with the other iridium band. For me it was the vampiric ring. I could see the case for the napalm ring, but it was literally the last monster eradication goal I finished so there was no point forging another ring when I will never set foot in the mine/SC/Volcano ever again on this character.

I don't really see the appeal of spending a slot on the slime charmer ring. Slimes just aren't that dangerous or annoying by this point in the game. And they were the second- or third-to-last eradication goal for me, so opportunity was extremely limited even if I cared about that ring.

Lucky ring does look like a reasonable choice, but I've never seen one outside of the wiki.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

I personally would not agree with that consensus, I generally find that I don't need a larger glow radius, and the additional 10% damage rarely makes a practical difference in the breakpoints or time to kill for monsters, at least not to the point where it's worth a slot. The magnetism is somewhat nice, of course, but rarely comes into play unless you're tossing around megabombs, and I'm far more often using regular bombs than megabombs for a variety of reasons.

So though I certainly agree having an iridium band involved is a no brainer, it's the best ring in the game in terms of the raw convenience provided, I do not think the benefits provided by a second one warrant the slot. To each their own of course.

 

[Worblehat]

and the additional 10% damage rarely makes a practical difference in the breakpoints or time to kill for monsters, at least not to the point where it's worth a slot.

When you say this, are you also including the 30% damage bonus from three ruby forges on your weapon? Two iridium bands plus a fully forged sword plus Fighter and Brute is +75% damage. It's been a while since I actually fought anything in this game, so looking at the math: no matter what you do, you'll two-shot a serpent, so the second iridium band doesn't matter at all. On average, you'll two-shot a magma sprite with either setup, but there's more room for low rolls to force a third swing if you only have one iridium band. The big difference is the magma sparker - always three-shot with two iridium bands, sometimes four-shot with just one. To be clear, calculations assume the galaxy sword; if you have the infinity blade and for some reason still feel the need to fight things, I don't know how that changes anything - could well be that the extra +10% is meaningless then.

So it's a matter of how much you value that speed and reliability in the Volcano, compared to having both vampiric and napalm (or one of those plus slime charmer, if you care that much about slimes).

At this stage of the game, we're deep into "You know what else works? Anything." territory anyway.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

When you say this, are you also including the 30% damage bonus from three ruby forges on your weapon? Two iridium bands plus a fully forged sword plus Fighter and Brute is +75% damage. It's been a while since I actually fought anything in this game, so looking at the math: no matter what you do, you'll two-shot a serpent, so the second iridium band doesn't matter at all. On average, you'll two-shot a magma sprite with either setup, but there's more room for low rolls to force a third swing if you only have one iridium band. The big difference is the magma sparker - always three-shot with two iridium bands, sometimes four-shot with just one. To be clear, calculations assume the galaxy sword; if you have the infinity blade and for some reason still feel the need to fight things, I don't know how that changes anything - could well be that the extra +10% is meaningless then.

So it's a matter of how much you value that speed and reliability in the Volcano, compared to having both vampiric and napalm (or one of those plus slime charmer, if you care that much about slimes).

At this stage of the game, we're deep into "You know what else works? Anything." territory anyway.

For sure! No, not including the 3 ruby forges, haven't had those yet, so I can't speak for that, nor for Volcano enemies. However mathematically it's better to do a crit fishing setup from an average damage perspective than it is straight damage increases. I can't speak to what that does for breakpoints (having not had practical experience in the content) but here's the math:

Straight DPS increases:
Galaxy Sword: Base damage 60-80 (average 70). 2% of the time is a crit dealing 3x damage. As you said, +30% (Ruby Forge) +25% (Brute + Fighter) +20% (2 Iridium Bands) = +75% damage, 60*1.75-80*1.75(Average 70*1.75) = 105-140 (average 122.5). 122.5*.98 + 122.5*3*.02 = 127.4

Crit Fishing:
3*Aquamarine enchants make the crit rate 15.8%. *1.5 (Scout) = 23.7% crit rate, which thanks to Desperado is a 6x strike when it hits. Still sticking with the 2 Iridium Bands for comparable metrics, we have 60*1.2-80*1.2 (Average 70*1.2) = 72-96 (average 84). 84*.763 + 84*6*.237 = 183.54.

On a crit, you're doing average damage of 504, which I suspect should one shot most enemies in the game, and you're doing that on average roughly once every 4 swings. Of course, if that means you're taking more average swings per other enemies that's a net loss mathematically, though I'm kinda counting on a napalm making up for that, practically speaking, not in terms of damage but in terms of utility. I also definitely still plan on fighting things post- getting an Infinity Blade, but for the crit fishing setup the Dragontooth Cutlass is theoretically superior, due to having 8x damage crits instead of 6x damage ones. Of course that may make zero practical difference as it's just more overkill, so I definitely plan on testing out both of them.

 

[Zen_the_Ogre]

I will never understanding going for damage thresholds. I mean running two iridium combos of luck and bandit is often more user-friendly than the crit builds. I mean the enemies ai is so lacking that the only enemies that are slightly problematic are brutes and ironheads which have extreme knockback resistance to hit you.


If they included boss characters and a dodge option then maybe go for the crits but with the basic enemies a sword is all you need and there is not a need for blocking or crits

 

[imnvs]

We've had this discussion before. Some light reading for everyone: https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/1-5-spoilers-rings.3533/

Also, regarding crit builds, the weapon you're looking for is the Iridium Needle. Assuming you forge it with 3 aquamarines and are wearing 2 aquamarine rings (say 2 iridium bands forged with 2 iridium bands?) and are a Desperado? You will crit 53.5% of the time for average damage of 264.7 (average on crit: 465.85). Using the average damage over time for this is not a great measure, too, because when you crit it is more likely that you'll do more damage than is necessary to kill your target and that overflow is wasted.

With my Infinity Sword forged with 3 rubies and 2 iridium bands forged with ruby rings, and being a fighter/brute, on the other hand? I average 289.4 and I don't run into overflow issues nearly so much.

Oh, and in Stardew, you don't add up all the multipliers and then multiply. You just multiply everything in order. For example, 2 ruby rings, each gives +10% damage. That isn't +20% damage. That's +21% damage (1.1*1.1=1.21).

 

[Giant Octopodes]

We've had this discussion before. Some light reading for everyone: https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/1-5-spoilers-rings.3533/

Also, regarding crit builds, the weapon you're looking for is the Iridium Needle. Assuming you forge it with 3 aquamarines and are wearing 2 aquamarine rings (say 2 iridium bands forged with 2 iridium bands?) and are a Desperado? You will crit 53.5% of the time for average damage of 264.7 (average on crit: 465.85). Using the average damage over time for this is not a great measure, too, because when you crit it is more likely that you'll do more damage than is necessary to kill your target and that overflow is wasted.

With my Infinity Sword forged with 3 rubies and 2 iridium bands forged with ruby rings, and being a fighter/brute, on the other hand? I average 289.4 and I don't run into overflow issues nearly so much.

Oh, and in Stardew, you don't add up all the multipliers and then multiply. You just multiply everything in order. For example, 2 ruby rings, each gives +10% damage. That isn't +20% damage. That's +21% damage (1.1*1.1=1.21).

Nah I don't think Iridium Needle is the one I'm looking for, I think something might have gone awry in your math just fwiw. .1+.138=.238*1.5*1.1*1.1 is 43.197% crit, it's a x14 crit, so 24-42 (average damage 33) at 43.19% crit is 218.61. More importantly on a non-crit it's doing an average damage of 33, which means a crit is nearly Required to kill something. Dragontooth Cutlass using the same setup is average damage 99.825, crits on 28.67% of hits, deals 798.6 damage on a crit, total average damage is 300.20, using the more favorable sword attack pattern, with 3x the damage on non-crit hits and better insurance against an unlucky streak. I definitely plan on testing it out but based on my experience with daggers in general, combined with the math on it, not expecting to use it routinely. Typically with daggers I find I basically have to run into the enemies to use them and both take more damage and take longer to kill packs of enemies, is your experience different?

Also planning on testing the "Big Numbers" setup of the Infinity Gavel with the Brute and Fighter combo, with Ruby Rings and Iridium Bands combined with Ruby Forging. I used your math methods above but have not tested myself - based on what I'm calculating, that should be 110 average damage * 1.1 (ruby ring) * 1.1 (Ruby Ring) * 1.1 (Iridium Band) * 1.1 (Iridium Band) * 1.3 (Forging level 3) * 1.15 (Brute) * 1.1 (Fighter) which should give non-crit damage figures of 264.84 on average? Regardless all of those number chasing builds are mostly just for fun and Science! and are not what I'm planning on running with in most cases, as indicated earlier. I just don't see optimizing for damage in most cases as being worthwhile vs other options, practically speaking. Time will tell of course!

 

[Boo1972]

Lucky ring does look like a reasonable choice, but I've never seen one outside of the wiki.

I was, ahem, incredibly lucky when I found the lucky ring in a barrel in the beginning of a SC run. But I coveted it so much that I watched some YouTubers find it. According to Mr. PenguinPanda (I hope, I watched a lot of videos), the best way to get the lucky ring is to pan in the bone quarry on Ginger Island. Plus, you can find 2 in one day. Say you manage to to pan one at 10 am. If another panning spot appears in the same place at 10 pm you can get another lucky ring. It’s worth a shot. I never have my copper pan with me so I never tried it personally.

My favorite ring strategy is iridium band + your favorite ring and whatever combined ring strikes your fancy. Late game can be very freeing- your weapons are great, your shoes are top quality, money is no object, nothing has to get done. It’s nice to have something fun to fiddle around with.

But, I noticed someone cast aspersions on the slime charmer ring. Are you kidding me? Wear that ring to Skull Cavern and watch all the slimes bow and wriggle before you. You. Have. Become. Their. God.

 

[imnvs]

I think something might have gone awry in your math just fwiw.

To be fair, I used another's math without questioning it and copy/pasted from an earlier thread the chances and averages I used above. Errors may have been made, but this was from a thread comparing damage output of dagger weapons, and the Iridium Needle is hands down the winner there.

Typically with daggers I find I basically have to run into the enemies to use them and both take more damage and take longer to kill packs of enemies, is your experience different?

This is why I never, ever, ever play crit-fishing Desperado builds. I'm always a Fighter/Brute. (Fighter/Defender is pointless, as food exists.)

Also planning on testing the "Big Numbers" setup of the Infinity Gavel with the Brute and Fighter combo, with Ruby Rings and Iridium Bands combined with Ruby Forging.

You know, I'm not a fan of the restricted range and speed of a club weapon compared to a sword. An Infinity Sword's speed and how wide the its' swing is totally makes up for not reaching quite the pinnacle of big numbers the Gavel can reach.