Table of Contents
Learn how to play Pygmalien in The Bazaar with this in-depth hero build and strategy guide!
The Basics
Patch 0.1.6 already is the third of the month, and marks another change for Pygmalien, which goes back to its roots with this one : Economy and long term Scaling. Indeed, while Pygmalien still can't compete with the explosive start Dooley can have thanks to its Core, often meaning we will lose the early fights of our journey. The late game is definitely our area of expertise, landing huge blows and having tons of health to tank opposing hits.
Sure, a beefed up Yo-Yo or Atlatl can carry a build, and might represent the highest potential available to Pygmalien. Yet, these crazy runs don't happen that often, so we need a plan the rest of the time. That plan is to find a weapon and scale its power to absurd numbers, enchant it on top of lowering its cooldown as much as possible. Then, simply hit our opponents for half, or all their health.
Here are the items we can rely on for damage, which will typically dictate our strategy going forward.
If you get Dog early, focus on economy items to generate Spare Change while being able to afford gum balls, chocolate bars & other small items to scale your Dog.
Regal Blade requires you to buy and sell weapons, which is even more expensive than Dog. Economy items will be that much more important here, except we don't need spare changes as much.
These two won't scale their damage on their own, but carry great rewards if you manage to do-so. The Weights got slower with this update, now charging only 1 second instead of 2, meaning this strategy lost some scaling ability.
However, other items were buffed, so new support is available, such as Apropos Chapeau.
The Medium Weapons build around Crook, even if nerfed, still is fine for a solid early to mid-game. However, it tends to run out of gas late unless you find other ways to buff your weapons outside Crook.
If you didn't get a starting item you can rely on all the way, or picked a non-damage dealer such as Bushel, you can focus on gaining health until Gold items become available later on. Then, look for Lion Cane to become your source of damage.
Another direction to consider is the Fixer Upper, which is just a shield item early on, but will become insane once enchanted, now that Poison or Burn will represent 10% of the shield. If you find it early, you can focus on building its value and prepare to enchant it later on. The surrounding items should be focus on maximizing its value, or just be strong standalones such as Marbles or Uwashiwali Bird.
Silk Scarf is very slow, but shares the same condition as Dog, so you could look to build both until you decide which to enchant as your carry item for the late game.
Early Stages
Typically, I just accept losing against Dooley and Vanessa early on, except if I can get some serious scaling done during day one. Yet, I would rather focus on building my economy for the future, or gain experience, as the real game changer often is the enchantment we get as our level 10 reward. With that said, my aim is to start winning PvP matches on day 3 or 4, rather than spend too much to win on day 1 and 2 and be left with no gold in the long run.
This plan is quite easy to pursue if we picked a scaling weapon. Then Gold should be on main focus, ensuring we can support our carry item on the long run. We don't necessarily need to look for other items, as we can win just landing a few big shots. Then, economic items for gold, or experience to get to upgrades and skills should be the logical path to follow.
Plus, getting our weapon as a starting item means they are Silver, so their scaling ability is decent already. Visiting merchants in hope to upgrade our starting item is always an option, obviously.
If we picked Atlatl and Yo-Yo, we will have to find their supporting cast, which increases our spendings early on. We could also aim to level up before the first fight to pick up a damage enhancing skill, even if most of the best ones only start at the silver rarity.
With the weights nerfed, here are other items you can turn to in order to support your Yo-Yo or Atlatl, in addition to what you will find on monsters. You will notice they start at the silver rarity, meaning I would rather focus on gold on experience on day one and start looking for those on day 2 :
if you went with Fixer Upper or Silk Scarf, you could count on the Storm to beat your opponent, although a matchbox never hurts to help. Otherwise, you can also look for a way to transform your shield into damage.
Best Monsters to pick early on
Because we want to invest in our economy, getting usable items or skills from monsters will go a long way into optimizing our goal. Here are my targets during the first days :
Day 1 : Banannabal for Duct Tape or Fanged Inglet for the Deadly Eye Skill
Day 2 : Covetous Thief for Shadowed Cloak, Grindstone or either skills, Pickpocket and Keen Eye.
From there, I will typically pick the elite if I'm able to beat it, with a few exceptions depending on my build, or specific great skills such as Bonk from Thug :
- On Day 3, Rogue Scrapper's Barbed Wire is nice to pair with Duct Tape
- On Day 4, Retiree has Bushel and the Extreme Comfort Skill if you go for a Shield / Heal build
- On Day 5, Infernal Envoy has a nice skill while Hakurvian Rocket Trooper represents another shot at Shadowed Cloak, in case Trashtown Mayor didn't show up.
If our economy allows it, here are some items I like to grab on the way as support, just to beef up our health in the long run. These are especially important if you have Lion Cane in mind as your future weapon.
Racking Up PvP Wins
As our start is often focused on other areas than PvP, we don't have that many loses available in the later days due to digging into our prestige early on. Fortunately, if we managed to build a strong economy, we have the best scaling character in the game heading into the second portion of the run. Indeed, from this point on, we should always have at least one encounter helping our build, be it to grow our health, scale our weapon damage, or simply gain experience or a new skill.
Naturally, scaling the damage of our weapon is the most essential part here, so we want to focus on skills and enchantments until we found the good stuff.
With the change to how Poison and Burn enchantments work (now represent 10% of the item's damage or shield), they have become a big source of extra damage for most Pygmalien's builds. Otherwise, Shield or Heal will align on the weapon's damage, so can easily represent a huge survivability boost.
When given the choice with another strong enchantment, I will not pick the Lifesteal enchantment, because we can find it through a skill:
Atlatl and Yo-yo will have you focus on boosting their damage, as their speed should already be excellent at this point. Typically, most of the strong scaling skills can be found during the first six days, meaning you can keep your foot on the gas pedal, whatever it is that makes your weapon grow.
However, Dog, Regal Blade and Lion Cane can make huge improvements in the cooldown area. Here are a few ideas to help:
Last, running a mono-weapon build typically opens up space to build around it. While you probably didn't wait this long to get a full carpet, here some late game items you can pick up to bolster your PvP power :
If you went with Upper Fixer, The build will benefit a ton from the Juggler or Master Salesman skills found on day 10 on Trash Titan and Property Baron. Also, Balcony is sort of a Phonograph for our property, representing insane support.
Closing Words
Vanessa's poison build got slower with Pufferfish now on an 8-second cooldown while Dooley's scaling ability got slightly worse as well. Pygmalien didn't more to feel competitive again, and the king of the late game.
We probably will still lose the early fights more often than not due to our items requiring to be nurtured over time. Yet, once beefed up and enchanted, they are very difficult to stop, hence why I believe it is fine to sacrifice the early fights to build our scaling ability for the future.
I hope this guide was helpful, and I wish you luck in The Bazaar! If you have any questions or if you're looking for coaching, feel free to reach out on Discord @den_ccg.
Good Game Everyone.
