Darksiders II is one massive game with a gigantic overworld, tons of dungeons, and several distinctive areas. The great thing about it is we don’t even know everything about what’s in the game. THQ has been tight lipped about several aspects of the game and just today they’ve announced a new feature known as The Crucible.
After completing the final dungeon in the Maker’s Realm, Death will get a letter through the Tome system stating that the Crucible has been unlocked. The Crucible is a 100-wave enemy gauntlet, starting with the most simplistic of enemies, and quickly reaching some of Death’s greatest challenges. Once you unlock the Crucible, you won’t be able to make your way through its entirety, as it unlocks in stages, with later stages featuring enemies and mini-bosses that are not encountered until later in the game. Even if you could theoretically reach these stages, Death would just get massacred without reaching the proper skill level, unlocking parts of the skill trees, or having any upgraded loot or weapons.
Each time Death plays through the Crucible, after five waves he will have the choice of whether or not he wants to continue on. If he chooses to stop after the fifth wave, Death will receive an item, in which for the most part this consists of a rare piece of loot. Death will have this option of whether or not to continue after every fifth wave. Obviously the further Death makes it within the Crucible, the better the reward will be.
During my playthrough, we were tossed into the crucible at the measly level of 15, in which I struggled, but I did end up making it to the 16th wave of enemies before I reached my Death. However, during a second playthrough of The Crucible, THQ tossed us in with a level 30 character and tons of high quality weapons and loot. The first thing you’ll notice is what a difference a higher level character makes. When my Death was Level 30, I was able to storm through the first 40 waves without much problem at all, while on the contrary, at a level 15 Death, I was struggling mightily to make it passed just 15 waves. Point being, the loot and weapon upgrades that Death finds throughout his quest are not just cool optional things that you can do on the side. It is absolutely essential and no gamer will be able to make it through the game or The Crucible, without a properly upgraded character. (Yes that is a challenge to all you hardcore folks out there).
In my two playthroughs of The Crucible, I completely changed the way I went about battling. During my first run, I ran through the waves, trying to hack and slash my way through all the enemies that got in front of me. Unfortunately, as the enemies got more difficult, they ganged up on me and I eventually fell victim.
During my second, I choose to heavily upgrade my Necromancer Tree, being able to summon Ghouls and Crows. Thus my battle style was drastically different, this time constantly trying to dodge away from enemy attacks and stay far away. When there was an opportunity, I would use Exhume, a wrath ability that summoned ghouls from underground. These ghouls would then run up to the various enemies and do most of the heavy fighting for me. While this was going on, I stayed back and used Redemption from a distance. Redemption is one of Strife’s Pistols, and while it isn’t one of Death’s more powerful items in his arsenal, it does help in quickly regenerating wrath, allowing me to send out ghouls even more frequently.
As my character started to lose some health, instead of summoning ghouls, I used another wrath ability known as Murder, along with one of its upgrades, Bless. Murder would cause Death to summon a murder of crows that would go and attack any of the nearby enemies. The Bless upgrade caused the crows to suck damage from the enemies and restore it back to Death. Once again, while sending out the crows, I continued to dodge enemy attacks and used Redemption from a distance.
This strategy that I developed caused me to very rarely use my Scythe or melee weapons at all, as almost all the battling was done from the ghouls and crows, with my main focus being to dodge enemy attacks. Even so, I specifically choose particular weapons and armor pieces based on their wrath incentives. That’s right, each piece of armor has some special ability or upgrade, and in this case, a particular shoulder piece that Death was wearing, could raise the amount of damage one of Death’s wrath attacks do. The amount of customization here is endless.
All in all, the idea of an enemy gauntlet is not entirely new in video games, but the way it is done in Darksiders II, it works perfectly. It’s incredibly challenging, and the customization of Death’s character allows you to take on the gauntlet in so many different ways. While demoing the game, I spoke to one of the developers on the combat team for Darksiders II, and it was clear that he was very giddy about the Crucible and he has great reason to be. It is an excellent additional feature tossed into a game that is already loaded with content.
Darksiders II is set to release on August 14th here in the US and shortly after across the rest of the world. Stay tuned here at Darksiders Dungeon as we will be proving an indepth Darksiders II Walktrough upon release, along with the largest Darksiders Wiki online.
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