0.11.x appears to have not changed anything related to the build based on a quick scan of the patchnotes. I'll be playing a bit and I'll update things as required.

This build is, mostly, an endgame build, though later elements will address the earlygame. While I'll be making no direct reference to the story, you may find that some mechanics are spoiled simply by virtue of the game's progression. If this bothers you, this guide is not for you and I'm sorry.

Let me clear up something before we go on. A question that I'm sure is burning in your mind: Why did you swap to Windrunner?r?

0.9.x dropped a banger of a spec. Windrunner. Speed scaling out the door for the low low price of a bit of reduced survivability is a good sell to me, and with the build's move to sphinx-based traits we have more fallbacks to work with. It's a powerful spec, with many of the perks that Purgatorian gave us and more, but the downside is that your survivability does take a major hit.

You're more than welcome to continue using Purgatorian as normal as the build functions amazingly well under it and focusing on speed of completion and nothing else is a boring-ass concept anyway, but tweaks will be made to this build over time to make it more Windrunner-friendly. Any suggestions will be very much appreciated.

At some point I'm going to edit the guide to re-order Mogwai into the 5th slot. Somehow I didn't realise that Mogwai now only shares to two allies. Still a very viable choice, however, as having three 100% speed scalers is better than using a balladeer to have six 50% speed scalers. It's all in how defence interacts with stats.

You are like me. You like birds. You also like indirect damage, because it's harder to deal with. While normal people would go for something like a djinn or something to do damage with living, breathing monsters that don't like dying, we take the chad move. Our creatures are expendable. Their lives, forfeit. Again and again and again.

As you can probably expect, this build revolves around three primary mechanics:

The Dark Ritual spellgem, which allows you to sacrifice one of your creatures in order to give the casting creature those stats. The stat gain isn't that important really, but between this and Death Siphon or the other one that deals damage based on hp, it has the better stat benefit. That, and who really cares? You're just looking for an excuse to kill something for free, you wonderful psychopath, you.

Lifebinder, the Ancestral Phoenix trait. While this build has multiple methods of self-perpetuation, none are more important than the instant gratification this one gives. If one of your creatures kills an ally, then all of your creatures are revived. It's pretty nifty, but why are we so determined to inflict an endless purgatory on our creatures like this?

Buffet. This trait comes from one of the first creatures you'll meet: the Volatile Phoenix. Put simply, this puts the butter on the bread that the previous two mechanics set up.

But why is Buffet so good, you ask? I'll tell you the heck why. Speed-based damage. That's right. None of that pansy attack or intelligence. Speed. Normal builds, they like their normal virgin stats. Us? We like speed. We go fast, we play fast. We deal damage to Every. Enemy. When, you ask? Why are you even asking? On-revive. 50% of your creature's speed goes right in the enemy's face like wha-bam.

A mixture of apocalypse traits for long-term, non-destructible stat bonuses, Royal Phoenix to keep ourselves on top as much as we can, an "invincibility" setup on a Bile Slime to help us have somewhat consistent revival capabilities and a backup Panda Rebirth to help mop us up when things get spicy keep us fighting for longer. Regalis is also here to just give us more firepower. How nice of her!

It's terrifying in the early game, and with a bit of help, makes for an almost perfect accompaniment to afternoon tea while you stroll through the realms massacring hordes of helpless, innocent creatures many thousands of levels your better. Because you can. Because you're worth it.

There's a whole lot of other traits at play here that propel this simple formula into viability and I'd love to go through them all with you. That's pretty much what this entire guide is for.

Before you scroll down any further, if you end up liking this guide, I'd really appreciate it if you give it a quick rating, or let me know your thoughts. Hell, even dumb build ideas are valuable to me. I like making dumb builds to make up for my crippling inability to form a coherent, useful thought <3

First off I'm proud to announce that, barring a bit of risk on classes like Animator and Grovetender, this build is viable on all classes with varying flavours of success.

Why, I hear you cry in despair? I'll tell you why. Because that goblet is a hell of a thing to have to deal with during your early and midgame woes of "never enough resources". A good, solid, all-rounder of a team puts that thing to work and lets you unlock classes to build that reward multiplier up without worrying.

For those that prefer to stick to one class, we really like the Windrunner. Check this magic out.



Accumulation
So here's a scenario for you. You're going around looking for some resources like the good boy king (or girl queen(or nonbinary monarch)) you are. Suddenly some real lairy looking dudes roll up and they're looking for a fight. Your dudes are faster. 5% faster, in fact, each time they take a turn in the upcoming street brawl. Royal Phoenix makes us real happy here, because we take a lot of turns.

Aeroforge
More speed. If you're not putting speed on your artifacts, go put speed on your artifacts.

Derivation
This perk just makes us better at what we're doing. We have buffs that give our creatures speed plus another stat, and this makes that extra stat scaling work more towards what we need it for. More speed. 15% of the amount we gained in that other stat, in fact. Note that this doesn't affect HAVE traits, like the Apocalypse or Sphinx ones.

Further Beyond
Increasing your creature's maximum non-mitigated stat boosts is great for endgame scaling.

Inertia
SPEEDY BOYS KEEP GOING SPEEDY EVEN WHEN THE MAN SAYS NO

Quick Hands
You kinda don't want to lose your artefact traits. Think of this trait like hot welding your artifacts to your creatures, and now think about all the animal rights violations you just committed.

Retention
Our favourite Purgatorian trait - your creatures' stats no longer reset after they're killed! You don't need me to tell you this is poggers as hell.


Born Again
Start of battle kills don't really matter to us because we have trait-based revival that isn't stopped by the ingame teamwipe spellcast nerf. It's nice to have I guess, but so is a gold plated bathroom.

First Served
We don't really care that much about forcing the top of the timeline, and even when it matters, we usually are just that because of how we scale into speed. At best this is mitigation against the tiny chance that you get killordered and our failsafes don't kick in.

Primordial
So honestly, nobody gives half a metric ♥♥♥♥ about nether stones if you're this early in the game that you're using a build thatt's built to be pre-guilds. They're nice, don't get me wrong, but to find a decent speed scaling stone that isn't superceded by a decent trait stone is a rarity at best. Still, on the offchance it happens, you're out here taking dubs.

Propulsion
Damage mitigation literally does not matter for this team in its current incarnation. Royal Phoenix keeps us able to act if we're being cunked by some dumb boss, and our near endless source of fallback resurrections makes it so that even when we do die, we just keep going. Why even try?

Sidestep
This basically doesn't matter to us, but it's a lovely little thing to have. If you're stacking 300% of your base speed (that's 300% of the "have" modified speed, I think), you don't have to worry about things like Silence or Scorned stopping you doing your thing. Doesn't stop death, though, which some would argue is the most powerful debuff.

Singleton
While it's nice to mitigate how many times enemies are attacking or casting, it literally does not matter to any sort of normal person. At least any person running a rez-based build.

True Ending
Why would you ever take this perk on this build? Don't take it. On-death triggers form part of our failsafes, and if we lose that, we're idiots. Dead idiots.

Velocity
We already have speed scaling from the Mogwai, so making our creatures scale with 30% speed instead of atk/int is literally pointless. There's some edge cases where it might matter but in the long run, it doesn't.


Purgatorian was the OG for this build, and while we've sacrificed some survivabiity in the move to Windrunner, it will always remain in our hearts. With perks that allow traits to trigger even while a creature is dead, Purgatorian is the go-to low-risk, low-speed alternative option.

Necromancer Used primarily to inflict debuffs to make the Gonfurian fight possible, Necromancer is a solid all-rounder that uses Minions and persistent-through-death effects to stick it to the man. Not into that myself, but you do you.

Cleric Though it's far better with Anointments, there's a stat-scaling perk in there that provides hella boons to your squad.

Tribalist A 30% on-death rez for your birds, a boost to our sphinx buffs, extra buffs all-round for our class bonuses and other little utilities make Tribalist a hot contender. Those buffs are "have" buffs, my friend. You know how we feel about those.

So for some reason, the game lets us give Regalis the "bashful" personality. There is literally nothing bashful about Regalis.
Regalis makes this team tick in ways unimaginable. Despite how strangely we use the trait, she makes sure that no matter what, we're doing our thing and we're doing it right so that everyone can be sent right to horny jail.

In the 0.9.x nerfs, we see this team nerfed in some ways but buffed in others. No longer do we have to worry as much for max extra traits: 1, because the way Regalis' trait now lets us share things allows us to distribute not only an extra Buffet to the right, but also an extra Secret Recipe and Lifebinder - two traits you'll become familiar with later in the guide. This is huge for our survival. Be a believer. Love Regalis.

Class: Life. It used to be that we went for chaos, but now we only need specific creatures to have the same class. That's right, reader. We're changing it up.

Personality: Shy or Bashful, in flagrant disregard for canon

Scrolls: Speed. Spiders ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ go, man. Have you ever seen a spider? They haul butt.

Traits
Brothel. Brothel. As well as being about as on the nose as a brick to the face, this trait is why we choose Regalis over any other God Avatar. While most Regalis builds were nerfed into the ground when 0.9.x came around, this build flourished, and even became stronger in certain circumstances. The core thing to bear in mind is that even though a creature may not be the same class, it can still have something shared to it, allowing us to share important things even under max extra traits: 1. You're going to see why this is amazing soon.

Bear in mind, by the way, that Regalis' trait is not an important one to share, but we actually only have two or three traits we care about sharing. She can go here. Because she lives in our hearts.

Blessing of Sands, from Sphinx Ordainer. It used to be because of my superstitions that we used this in a certain order with the rest of the team, but now we know it's not true and it's also not that important. We still use this, though, for reasons you'll understand later. 3 more of our creatures look like they're the same class for same-class buff effects.

Vext's Invocation, boss trait material. This is a weird one. Now, I'm not entirely sure whether this affects the Apocalypse trait we have on our Volatile Phoenix, but the gist is that our stat boosts are 50% stronger. This means that, failing all else, all the ways we have to give our dudes more speed are more powerful. That means that, even if we're not running Purgatorian, Gift of Scylla is giving us an even more hefty, but temporary boost.

Artifact
Stats: Speed. Come on now.

Trick: Rebirth on Damage. For some reason I also use Warded on Damage here. Probably a holdover from an old version of the build. You can basically use anything here.

Spell: Rrrrrrrrrrapture.

Spell gems
Dark Ritual: More charges, Generous, Class swap: Life. We do it this way so that your creatures ALWAYS have a Dark Ritual to cast, and have an extra little buffer in case a realm gets spicy. Stats don't really matter here as you're mainly going to be using your ethereal gems, but if you feel like you'd rather have up-front statboosts as a Purgatorian, consider changing More Charges to Stat+/-

Ethereal Knives: Damage increase, Magnetic, Class swap: Life. A holdover from before this build scaled entirely off speed, Ethereal Knives is my old faithful in terms of a decent charge count and decent damage. It hasn't let me down since. This can be changed for anything you like, bearing in mind a certain realm trait we'll go over later, but I recommend keeping it a damage spell.

Rapture: Generous, Magnetic, Class Swap: Life. But Sparky, I hear you whine, we already have Rapture on our artifact! Shut your mouth, dear reader. Sometimes our artifacts can't be trusted. For everything else, there's a manual cast rapture to the face.

Regalis is the main example of the "little by little" building blocks of this build. Nothing that Regalis does is impressive, at least in this setup, but she makes sure that what we do, we do consistently, even under the effects of Max Extra Traits. We still love you, spiderwife, even if the metagamers don't.

I mean until tier 3 chroma and flubris. Then you're on your own.

Boom. This straight-up chad. He is the reason we're here. Picture yourself roaming the realms and you see yourself a cool-ass looking bird. You put him down, but not before peeping that trait. "Why," you think, "I literally have a unicorn vivifier just aching for a partner in crime". Because for some reason that's the creature the game just gives you.

My friend, you're on your way to greatness.

Class: Life. The gift that keeps on living.

Personality: Shy or Bashful. We want speed at the cost of stats we don't use.

Scrolls: All speed, all the time. Come on now, did you expect any different?

Colours: We give this one the skin, and we stay on the defaults. This is mandatory. He is the coolest bird.

Traits
Buffet. We've gone over this already: 50% speed, damage to all when an ally rezzes. And because he's such a cool dude, he shares this trait with everyone else. We have him on the first slot because this is probably the most important trait the phoenixes can give us.

Desert Glory, from the Sphinx Avenger. In an attempt to make things more survivable, we want to leverage our class in as many ways as possible. When a creature dies outside of your control, you want it to get back up like the king it is. 5% chance, per creature of the same class on your side. Regalis' fuse suddenly makes more sense now, huh?

Gift of Scylla, boss trait material. This is one of those things you could probably easy enough replace when you're not playing purgatorian. When your creatures die, they pony up 25% of their useless attack stat and their delicious speed stat and spread the love to your whole team. This resets on death outside of Purgatorian's protection, but even outside of that it's a nice temporary boost that scales well late into harder fights.

Artifact
Stats: all speed. You're basically using performance enhancing amphetamines at this point.

Trick: 20% rebirth on damage as a just in case, and whatever else takes your fancy. I took scorned on damage this time.

Spell: Rapture. You'll understand why later, but this will work. Insane damage, weak and vulnerable. Keeps the enemies in check.

Spell gems
Dark Ritual: More charges, Generous, Class swap: Life. You might be starting to see a pattern.

Ethereal Knives: Damage increase, Magnetic, Class swap: Life. We like to stab.

Rapture: Generous, Magnetic, Class Swap: Life. You may be wondering why I'm even writing these out. Mind your business, that's why.

The Volatile Phoenix is our primary source of mechanical damage, and if we're not playing Purgatorian, we tend to avoid Dark Ritualing this one so that the Harbinger effect keeps ticking freely.
Thanks to Regalis, Buffet is ALWAYS shared to two members of the party due to his privileged position at place 2, where Regalis is receiving no bonuses and the creature to the right will always get a buff, even under Max Extra Traits: 1. We placed him here to maximise his damage. Because he's worth it.
Gift of Scylla gives us some surprisingly powerful, sometimes temporary scaling in longer, drawn-out fights. Changeable if needs be, I've never found a reason not to keep it a permanent part of my team.
The spells chosen are exactly what they need to be. Dark Ritual is our most important spell, and the rest just dole out damage, plugging a gap caused by our reliance on indirect damage and on-death, on-revive effects.
Volatile Phoenix is a force that is not to be trifled with.

I really want some trifle now.

Gross.

The Bile Slime setup is one of the cornerstones of our build. If the Ancestral Phoenix is the offensive option, this is the defensive. I lovingly call this the "immortality setup", because while it doesn't make us totally immortal, it makes us FEEL immortal. Until the kill order goes wrong.

Then we just sort of weep in a corner for a bit, honestly.

Class: Life. Personally I don't want this guy to live any longer than he has to, but he's just too damn useful.

Personality: Shy or Bashful, which honestly given how gross this thing is probably comes off as more of a blessing than anything else.

Scrolls: Speed. As in "get the hell away from me as fast as possible".

Traits
Secret Recipe. After this creature is resurrected, your other creatures are resurrected as well. This is a bit of synergy with how this creature's artifact trait works, and with the new trait sharing changes in 0.9.x, you can be assured that another creature will ALWAYS have this trait available. Double the recipe for double the fun.

Pharaoh's Boon, from Sphinx Elder. 10% more useless, useless, defence, and speed. We redacted the stats that don't matter and replaced them with more fitting words. With our team setup, that means we're running 60% more speed for free. But wait, there's more: remember Regalis' fused trait?

90% :)

Myrtle's Perseverence, boss trait material. This is what makes Bile Slime's innate trait shine. When any creature is killed, this creature is resurrected with 100% health. Yes, before you say it, this wasn't my idea. I'll credit the relevant person later on, but basically this absolute cosmic brain strat gives us insane defensive options and helps mitigate one potential shortfall of the build by patching up a glaring killorder problem. It doesn't solve it entirely, but would you argue with this multi-eyeballed freak of nature?

Artifact
Stats: Speed. We can't stop running. My legs hurt.

Trick: Rebirth on Damage. For some reason I took Frozen on Damage as well, probably in protest for how crap Frost Phoenix is in this build. I promise, I tried.

Spell: Brrapture. I'm not proud of what I just did.

Spell gems
Dark Ritual: More charges, Generous, Class swap: Life.

Ethereal Knives: Damage increase, Magnetic, Class swap: Life.

Flourish: Generous, More Charges, Healing Increased.

So in a departure from the norm, I decided to give this one a bit of extra utility. If, for some reason, everything has gone horribly wrong and this creature is the only one left alive, Flourish gets you out of this tough situation. It's Generous because this could happen to any other creature. I think. Maybe. It's also a holdover from an older version of the build. I just didn't see much point in getting rid of it.

The Immortality Setup is a deeply flawed masterpiece. It neither renders us immortal nor really sets us up for all that much. It just helps us stay in the fight for longer, helping us win turn 0 duels by synergising with both itself and our sixth creature's artifact trait.
The Bile Slime is also ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ disgusting and I want it to go away. It's literally the only reason I might just restructure this entire team in the future.

The string that holds it all together. Except it's really cool string. With LEDs on it. And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ glowsticks. Woe betide the poor creature that tries to get in the way of you killing your own allies. The raw power of this trait will leave enemies wondering why your dudes just keep coming back for more.

Trust me, they love it really.

Class: Life. Again. It comes to my attention that until 0.9.x I never actually updated this build. Oops.

Personality: Shy or Bashful. I don't know if you're seeing a pattern here yet.

Scrolls: Speed. I am speed.

Traits
Lifebinder.The innate trait of the Ancestral Phoenix, it's friendly fire apologism in action. When your creatures kill an ally, all your dead dudes are revived at 50% health. The numbers don't matter. What matters is the fact you've just invoked a metric asstonne of Buffets, and your enemies are about to feel every last one of them. A handy dandy little quirk of this is that even if he's dead and we're under max extra traits: 1, you've got a friend to shoulder this burden. So cute!

Recombobulation, from the Sphinx Justicar. At the start of battle, your creatures are set to the same class, chosen randomly, and with no weakness. This is a double whammy. It sets up the stat boosts we covered earlier to handle all our dudes, and erases part of the risk of running this build, which is dying to otherwise weak enemies due to class weaknesses. This is also a lot of why I didn't update this build until 0.9.x, because I knew Regalis' changes would be coming soon. I just didn't realise how they'd work out. This is still a very good utility though, as 90% on a "HAVE" is very, very powerful.

Endurance Aura, from Phase Knight. Our artifact trait might seem a little weird for a team that likes dying, but this actually gives us a little insurance against the realm trait 'damage reflect'. There is a certain kill order that, if we're unlucky, will see us dead. This makes sure we can still pump out the damage we need without gibbing ourselves in the process.

Artifact
Stats: All speed, all the time. Be a speedy boy.

Trick: Rebirth on damage is a must. As for the second, I went for another Scorned on damage. Why? Because I can.

Spell: Rapture. You already know why by now.

Spell gems
Dark Ritual: More charges, Generous, Class swap: Life.

Ethereal Knives: Damage increase, Magnetic, Class swap: Life.

Rapture: Generous, Magnetic, Class swap: Life.

Just like before, we keep to our core on this one. Almost every creature we have uses this spell gem setup. It's just so damn effective.

THIS JOKE DOESN'T MAKE AS MUCH SENSE NOW THE ORDER IS FLIPPED BUT ♥♥♥♥ YOU IF YOU THINK I'M DELETING IT
If the Royal Phoenix was the jazzy homebrew wine that you're sure you put way too much of that one weird fruit you've never heard of in, this is the tried and true stuff from italy or something. Wherever wines famously come from. This is a really bad analogy, but basically we've got some nice, stable traits here.
As ever, Regalis makes sure that we're sharing that innate trait not for any real benefit other than ensuring that, no matter what, we get its effect. This is a squishy team and you need all its moving parts to make it go.

The Royal Phoenix is probably one of the more niche, understandably overlooked creatures in Siralim. With a trait that under normal circumstances would likely be superceded by something more fitting a build's theme, it's easy to see why he'd feel unloved, or unwanted. But we're always willing to give creatures a second chance. Get it? Haha.

Class: Chaos. Yep, we're not sharing this one. Second Chance is nice, but it's not THAT important.

Personality: Shy or Bashful, shedding the useless Attack and Int traits for the far more enticing Speed stat

Scrolls: Speed.

Traits:
Second Chance. Our Royal's innate trait, Second Chance gives us a 50% chance for our creatures to pop to the top when they drop and get up with a hop. That last one was a bit of a stretch. This trait never needed to be shared, and as such is fine as it is. A tasty bit of utility for the discerning phoenix lover, and it also lets us scale our apocalypse traits a little faster by giving us free turns, and ensures we have control over a battle.

Urh Harbinger, from the Aaxor Apocalypse. Every turn your creatures take, they HAVE 15% more of a lot of stats. The most important? Speed. This is non-destructible, so even if you're not playing Purgatorian, these stats do not reset on death. This is also the second coolest thing ever.

Cyhra's Adamance, boss trait material. Naxor Harbinger doesn't do enough. Your creatures deal 100% more damage each time they've been mopped up from the earth. Just bear in mind for a moment that the rez cap per creature is 15.

:)

Artifact
Stats: Speed is the ticket, as usual

Trick: Like usual, we want rebirth on damage, and then anything that tickles our fancy. I took Protected this time, as it's a small point of defence for a creature whose traits might be nice to keep ticking.

Spell: Rapture. We always want a chance at proccing Rapture.

Spell gems
Dark Ritual: More charges, Generous, Class swap: Chaos.

Ethereal Knives: Damage increase, Magnetic, Class swap: Chaos.

Rapture: Generous, Magnetic, Class Swap: Chaos.

Just like everything else, our spell setup focuses on putting out Dark Rituals as our primary spells, with the backup of Rapture and Ethereal Knives for direct damage output.

The Royal Phoenix setup we have here is an amalgamation of noticably niche traits that all come together to make our previous setup slap harder. Your creatures won't be hitting any more than normal, but when they do, they're going to use their fapping hand. We all know that's the strongest hand.

Mogwai is basically the epitome of "oh god my team doesn't do direct damage what do I do". There's a story behind this one. Around the time I was starting to bump into real legit issues with the lack of direct damage in my build, someone who was outspokenly a total newb had looked at my build and was like "you use regalis, why not use mogwai instead of bard balladeer?".

So in short, I'm a massive idiot and that person basically revolutionised this entire build, letting me free up trait space used to try to prop things up in ways that were failing.

Class: Death. By now I'm sure you understand that these classes literally don't matter.

Personality: Shy or bashful. Exactly like this thing shouldn't be.

Scrolls: spid

Traits
No Sanctuary. This trait alone is probably enough to justify Regalis as our avatar choice. Instead of lame stats like attack or int, we use SPEED to scale our attacks and spells. This means we can pump literally everything we have into speed. Speed is the only stat that matters. Ever. Regalis ensures that all of our creatures benefit from this absolute gift of a trait.

Salted Earth, from Transient Spectre. This was a hard choice for me, but I figured that the best way to boost this build would be to lower enemy stats. Specifically, lower them by factors of their own stats so that this trait is always relevant, even when level disparity gets super high. This means that we need to change tack a little bit for this creature's behaviour. We'll cover this later in the macros.

Pandemonium Rebirth, statue trait Direct synergy with the fifth creature's trait means that this creature will continually pick itself up as long as fifth creature is dead. There's still room for poor kill order involving this one dying first, but there's only so much you can do in this game to render yourself invincible.

A quirk of this trait means that it has to be on the rightmost creature. If your entire team is wiped by the same action, then Pandemonium Rebirth will only revive creatures to the LEFT of it. This is why I justify certain trait orders.

Artifact
Stats: Do I even need to tell you?

Trick: Rebirth, and another frozen on damage. I REALLY got mad at frost phoenix being bad. Honestly might think of a master of phoenixes style CC setup at some point.

Spell: Rapture go brrrrrrrrr

Spell gems
Dark Ritual: More charges, Generous, Chance to Defend. Past the second turn, we want to just randomly proc our Salted Earth trait whenever. Just for laughs.

Ethereal Knives: Damage increase, Magnetic, Class swap: Death.

Rapture: Generous, Magnetic, Chance to Defend. Yet again, we want to proc Salted Earth whenever we can.

Mogwai is the disaster management creature if ever there was one. Namely the disaster of my inability to make a team that makes any sense. He props up our ability to put our direct damage and generally just teabags on anything he doesn't like.
What a cute little dude.

Unless stated otherwise, you can safely assume that the netherstone choices here are good for every creature.

Generally we want to see as much speed here as possible. Now, we stack so much speed in general that we can forego speed on a netherstone in favour of every other desirable factor on a stone, because at this point an extra 20-50% speed (on your average semi-decent stone) isn't going to do much for us, but in general, if you were to choose a stone based on stats alone, speed's your game.

There's really not much we can work with here. Here's a list of possibilities. Before you ask: Yes, I had the codex up and I went through literally every spell gem, filtering out the "only vaguely useful" from the "yeah this'll slap". You're very welcome.

• Abundance. A heal and a small universal statgain is pretty nice to have.
  
  
• Acid Rain. Because we already scale so much speed, lowering enemy defence is valuable. However, this might not scale well into the super endgame, as you really want to scale enemy defence loss off THEIR stats rather than yours.
  
  
• Affliction is never a bad choice. Free debuffs!
  
  
• Blur is really good for our build, especially since we scale our spell potency on speed. It lets us just... Get more speed, for free. If it's on-defend, make sure it's on the Mogwai.
  
  
• Charm of Life seems like Blur, but better. It gives us max health too, which seems a bit counterproductive given we like dying, but it offers us a buffer against potential poorly ordered teamwipes.
  
  
• Cyclone Strike is solid for raw damage. We wouldn't want to manually cast this as its charges are smol, but as a nether stone proc? Aw yeah.
  
  
• Dense Fog effectively gives us more ways to stay on top, but only if we're tapping enemies and scaling our stats to the point we can actually do it. When Royal Phoenix doesn't quite proc enough for us, this should fill in the gaps and offer us far more survivability when fighting against the curve.
  
  
• Drain Power is an interesting sell. If you get this proc on a lot of monsters, say on turn start or on cast, you could theoretically remove the Generous enchants and replace them with something that more suits your flavour.
  
  
• Elemental Wrath. Large damage. AoE.
  
  
• Entangle, like Dense Fog, allows us to mitigate bad luck with the Royal Phoenix proc, but arguably more consistently. This sticks enemies to the bottom of the timeline with a 10% chance for them to break free every creature turn. We get a lot of turns, but then again, they don't.. Put into consideration the possibility of replacing our spell slots with this: it sounds absolutely hilarious. You'll want a lot of procs of this to make sure it happens, as we cycle our team pretty randomly.
  
  
• Firewall gives us a small consideration for our defences, as well as moderate damage to the enemies. It's not that great as you scale into later realms - nothing scaling off your stats ever will - but it should keep you propped up for a long time to come.
  
  
• Flame Lash. Now, don't look at me funny. Sometimes when your Buffet doesn't seem to be doing enough, your creatures will hit like articulated trucks with a basic attack. So what if you want to do a little extra with that?
  
  
• Flash Freeze, just like Entangle and Dense Fog, is a consideration for our control over the battlefield. The thing is, the enemies still get their turns, and this wears off if its deactivation procs at the start of their turn. This is the lowest priority of the three.
  
  
• Flourish. You know, because you can.
  
  
• Godly Gin. Silence really does a number on us in a lot of cases, and this helps us mitigate that by offering us the Immune buff, negating all debuffs. Just don't drink too much there, buddy. You're the designated driver.
  
  
• Impending Doom is a weird one. I wouldn't usually put single target spells here, but on a long battle where your traits aren't proccing like you want them to, the chance at popping a random target for free is just too good to ignore.
  
  
• Inner Strength. The 1/4 chance at ridiculous amounts of speed is nice, and the 1/4 chance at Defence can really turn the tide of a drawn-out fight. Why, when I gave it ♥♥♥♥ before? It's a "massive" amount. That's why.
  
  
• Judgement. Lol.
  
  
• Lucious Lager. If you don't feel like leaving things to chance, this guarantees that 3 enemies will take a nap.
  
  
• Madness. The same logic as Impending Doom, but with a twist. You and the target BOTH take a devastating amount of damage. I mean what are they going to do, stop you from reviving the dude that just went all kamikaze? (screams in elf traits)
  
  
• Magic Suppression. Silence all enemies. I shouldn't have to tell you why this is good.
  
  
• Morph: Nature. Speed at the cost of turning into another class. It literally doesn't matter what class we are, we're all the same in the eyes of whichever god we're in the realm of.
  
  
• Necromantic Armour. A moderate helping of the only 2 stats in the game that matter.
  
  
• Planets. Large damage. AoE.
  
  
• Rapture. You know why.
  
  
• Requiem. Like Flourish, but bigger.
  
  
• Sabotage. Do it ♥♥♥♥♥, you won't.
  
  
• Sacred Ground. This is a bit of a gambit, considering some bosses really just refuse to die and sometimes a swift slap to the chops is what they need. Still, if you have a solid spell setup you can make this a powerful tool for defence. Also bear in mind that when your dudes die, they lose their debuffs. :)
  
  
• Sandstorm. Literally just here for the Darude joke.
  
  
• Schism. Moderate damage. Based on the amount of revives that happened. We don't want this as an equipped spellgem because that's exactly how we run out of charges. Artifact slots don't have charges. :)
  
  
• Snowstorm. 50% chance to freeze atop an AoE global damage. While we don't like Freeze as a control option, we do like the large damage on top of it. Consider this.
  
  
• Stampede. With Mogwai at the helm giving us speed scaling, this is actually a terrifyingly powerful move, and a real chad play. Our boys hit REALLY hard after a while.
  
  
• Starfire is a moderate damage AoE with a scorn/silence coinflip. A nice alternative to Sacred Ground, if a little less consistent.
  
  
• Steel Storm. Massive damage. AoE.
  
  
• Any of the summon gems are fairly solid choices depending on what your general fallback strategies are. They back you up good. I recommend Writhelings for a catch-all option if you're stuck for choice.
  
  
• Timely Demise is a weird choice - sort of a 'win more' option. Scaling its potency based on how long a fight has gone on, it compounds with our control over the battlefield to slap things real hard. Thing is, we're already kinda doing that. This is definitely a "ymmv" situation.
  
  
• Transcendance. Among all the "free trait" spells, this one's the only real contender, as it restricts is only to the traits we can get from the race of the creature that casts it. The phoenixes may be more of a threat than a help though, as Thunderstruck Phoenix is in that pool. All my homies hate Thunderstruck Phoenix.
  
  
• True Light. Defence for you, no defence for them.
  
  
• Truesight. Literally only to deal with that one absolute prick of a creature master.
  
  
• Volcano. Large damage. AoE. Burning.
  
  
• Whirlwind. If you're having trouble in the lategame with stat scaling vs defence, this ignores 30% of that troublesome stat.

We're looking for stuff like Horde or Kindness here. Anything that lets us scale more speed to a significant level. Breath of the Dying offers nice utility since it's a phoenix trait, though Thunderstruck is the direct opposite of useful due to the bizarre way Stone works. You also want to look for anything that lowers enemy defence stats.

Honestly, this is the most boring part of the guide. The relics are not useful to us at all, outside of a couple of edge cases that are mostly due to the fact they give us stats. Even then, later on that won't matter much. I'll try my best to list what relics are best to use in general, but honestly? If it gives you speed, it's what you need.

This section will be split up into two sections. How you should spend your Piety to make the most out of this build quickly, and what relics you want to run.

So to begin with, you want to get yourself a healthy base of relics. Focus primarily on the speed ones at first: those are your go-to sources of extra spice. Extra pizzaz. I managed to get my 6 relics up to level 50 (and then the rest up to 20 for achievements) before I had to worry too much, but your mileage may vary.

Once you've got your relics up a bit, you want to mosey on to the Enhance function on the altar. Your goal? Max out the Synergy perk. This will ensure that your relics benefit your entire team regardless of whether they're equipped or not. Since none of the relics give us any significant direct benefit outside of stats, this is a vital change. Sprinkle a bit more around whatever utility suits you too, but don't neglect the artifacts themselves, for in them lie achievements to boost your Piety gains.


For a significant amount of time, you're going to be hella leaning on your speed-based artifacts. Do not be afraid to max these out or at least put them to rank 50, as they'll be a large part of your life.

In terms of what you want to run overall, though, I have a few choice picks for you

ASSKICKER, SPARE BOOT OF TORUN
This is an obvious pick. Timeline shenanigans to help keep you on top, speed boosts for basically free, and a bit of extra attack speed scaling as well. While few relics really give us much of the 'oomph' that many other builds might get from a relic, this is one of the standout few that give us some real pep in our step.

Put Asskicker on a high speed creature. Something that'll really benefit from it.

Our build lacks in defence, and while you'd think that's a good thing, it really isn't. There's the ever-present danger that your creatures die in a bad order, and that's something you want to avoid.

Every time the holding creature deals damage with an attack or spell, it'll give you a bit more of a HP buffer. Ranked up a little more, you'll spread that benefit to all your team. A very comfy bit of kit.

Petra and Aes, War Drums of Meraxis
This is another really solid bit of kit for our team. Once again, we've got excellent speed boosting and scaling with very little in terms of dead perks. If you're looking to max out a relic, max this one out and give it to your highest speed creature.

Salus, Jade Guardian of Lister
This is another nice defensive relic, and synergises well with Bloodseeker once you get it to rank 80. Increased max hp means that we've got even more of a defensive buffer, and by rank 100 this thing's giving as much as it takes in terms of damage. I'd personally put this on the Mogwai, as he wants to be the last one dead.

Temptation, Bladed Whip of Regalis
This one isn't the best, I'll admit. It's a long slog of an animation spammer and it really doesn't do that much for us. With slim pickings, the tipper for this one is the rank 90 trait where the bearer gets 5% more speed each time the relic attacks.

Temptation attacks a lot.

Thousand Needles, Honed Bow of Apocranox
Okay, so it turns out that almost every speed-based relic is really good for us. This one is... less so, admittedly, but once again, there's specific parts of this kit that really shine. Specifically, the multicasting. When the bearer of this relic starts dishing out Raptures and the like, it's going to keep hitting. There's really nothing more that can be said on the matter.

Materium, Shifting Gem of Aurum
A bit of an honourable mention, this one, and since it's the 7th pick, consider this one merely a potential gamechanger for the future.

Opening up a wide variety of different spell gems for use without wasting a class change is nice, but what really makes this pop is the perk that makes it change a creature's class based on the first spell gem equipped. We could potentailly remove one of our phoenix's lower-impact chaos fuses and move into something much more effective, all at the cost of equipping this instead of something like Thousand Needles.

It's something to consider.

Siralim's full of cute little buffs. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of what cards to get in what order, this should give you some idea of what cards to aim for when you start to struggle a bit.

This section will be updated as I discover more card sets.

I'm also going to avoid listing cards that are universally important, such as Griffons or Smiths, as such entries belong in their own guides.

Phoenix cards
This is a mandatory pick if you plan on pushing the lategame beyond your means. Raising the rez cap for your creatures is so goshdiddlydarn important. It's just a shame that you need all the cards to get much out of this set.

Eft cards
Base speed. Base speed. Base speed? Base speed. Base speed!

Mite cards
Mites triple-dip into increased speed. Each tier of card perk offers you another 10% more speed from stat boosts, making Gift of Scylla and Dark Ritual offer you far more bang for their buck. I don't know if this applies to the Harbinger and Sphinx traits, but god could you imagine?

Spectre cards
The 3-card perk for Spectre offers us a cheap 5% debuff to enemy defences, and the full set gives us a luck-based debuff to any enemy with defence on their artifacts. It helps us push endgame further, and after a while you're going to want that boost.

Amaranth Cards
Because our team lacks defence, the Amaranth set is valuable to us. 5% more defence per card tier isn't much, but it helps patch us up against some of the more moderate hitters.

Forsaken Cards
Just like with Amaranth cards, Forsaken offer us just a little extra boost with 1 more base defence per tier. This picks up quick.

Masochist Cards
Another case of 'patch up our defences quick' - 3% less damage per card tier up to a whopping 9%. By this point, you should be doing a lot better for yourself.

Pit Worm Cards
While this is a direct synergy with the Mite cards, given all our sources of speed tend to give us defence too, we don't actually want to prioritise this one outside of use with Purgatorian. 10% more defence from stat-boosting effects doesn't give us the punch we need, nor does it give us the permanent boost we need to survive. Again, Purgatorian mains will see this as higher value.

This section has been generously contributed to (and copied almost wholesale from) ElOhTeeBee - thanks a whole bunch.

Pre-0.9, it was necessary for us to run a VIP setup due to me not knowing how to make a decent mechanical and survival combo. Now that's no longer necessary, and macroing for the entire team is as easy as making one or two macros for all your team. Thanks to the help of ElOhTeeBee we've got the hot stuff right here.

Important note: My Mogwai is holding a Rank 30+ Salus, and so always defends at the end of its turn. If you don't have this yet, then your Mogwai will need a separate macro starting with "If this creature has taken <2 turns, defend." Otherwise, this macro functions for the full party.

If this creature has >0% Health, cast Seduction. - Regalis will always cast Seduction as soon as she can. Only Regalis actually gets use out of this line, but it doesn't hurt the others, so we just use the same macro to save slots.

If this creature has Conquest, test next line.
If this creature has War, test next line.
If this creature doesn't have Famine, attack a random enemy. - These lines only take effect when using Necromancer, but again, no harm in keeping them in all the time. If your creatures already have Conquest (gained from casting a spell) and War (gained from taking damage), they'll then attack an enemy to gain Famine, then resume the normal plan. This way, you can get all four Horsemen for those juicy Apocalypse casts.

If this creature has <3 dead allies, cast Dark Ritual on a random ally. - This is the main upgrade from our previous setup, as the requirement to protect the VIP is no longer in place. Moving dark ritual casts to true random helps balance out our team's rez caps.

If this creature has >2 dead allies, cast Flourish. - If your party numbers get too low, this will help out. Unless you've just hit the rez cap, in which case consider rapidly rethinking your situation.

If any enemy doesn't have Vulnerable, cast Rapture - For when you're out of Dark Rituals or, more likely, they've gotten Sealed.. Rapture is more valuable, so we set it to only cast when the debuffs would apply.

If this creature has >0% Health, cast Ethereal Knives. - The other offensive spell, which will be spammed as long as enemies are already Vulnerable.

If this creature has Silenced, attack a random enemy.
If enemy (all) has Invisible, defend.
If this creature has >0% Health, provoke.
If this creature has >0% Health, skip turn. - Generic 'well, I guess you just do stuff?' for if all of the above fail.

No build in this game is without its flaws. This build fails in small, specific aspects that will be explored in a couple of different categories, and I'll do my best to explain what you can do to avoid taking a big fatty L.

Since you're a total gigachad and you run Realm Instability 5, you're going to be facing a lot of adversity in the form of negative modifiers to your team. Now, there's no way to avoid getting hidden traited into oblivion, but you can mitigate by rerolling out of visible traits.

Maximum Resurrections: 1. The change to this realm modifier from an outright rez lockout to a 1 rez restriction was nice, but this is still a dangerous modifier for us. Thankfully it cannot roll as a hidden modifier, but it is an incredibly valuable modifier. The risk might be worth it on a non-boss realm, but definitely roll out of it if you can afford it.

Maximum extra traits: 1. Before the 0.9.x change, this killed our build. Arguably, the Regalis nerf was a buff to us as Max Extra Traits does very little to us now. Still, it's a hit to our survivability that compounds with the Windrunner change. If you need to run this realm modifier, swap to Purgatorian just in case.

Reduced speed. Reroll off of this if you can afford to. This is your only important stat, and it won't be expensive to avoid, though honestly it doesn't matter a huge amount.

Reduced indirect damage. This kind of sucks, but as long as you're doing damage at all, you're ok. Reroll if you care for efficiency over common sense, or if you're in the extreme endgame where you're desperate to actually kill things.

Can't manually defend/provoke. This one hurts to see, but you generally don't want to worry about it too much unless it rolls with too many other directly detrimental effects.

The rest of the traits should be fine generally. There's a couple of universal problematic traits that I haven't listed here, but if you've ever bumped into them you already know what to expect. If you don't, then I'll let you discover them yourself :)

If you see elves, or fused elf traits, just shut down your pc and go outside. Failing that, play aggressive against Hate and Other Triumph, and Justice and Other Fallacies. Those traits shut you down hard.

Shadow Bulwark is also a trait that can cause you problems, but Rapture procs should see to this.

The two names that should strike fear into your heart are Chroma and Flubris. These two nerds are immune to indirect damage, and are pretty much the sole reason aside from elves and shadow bulwark that we run Mogwai. They're also total ♥♥♥♥♥ because they can just be immune to whatever they feel like.

Surprisingly, Andrick isn't much of a threat to us. He tends to be a problem boss for a lot of players, but this build should see to him well enough. Because we're total gigachads who don't use conventional means to win.

This build can generally deal with almost all of the GOTG encounters, but there's a few edge cases where you need to make specific moves to help deal with them. This build has been tested against level 10, where most of the easier to attain achievements reside. I'll keep you posted if I manage level 50.

Aeolian, God of Wind The big birb is basically Chroma but more obnoxious. Since you can prep for this one better, bring a Timewalking gem with Generous, and put it on your fastest creature. That's the one that'll be casting it the most. Cycle him to Chaos, but not too soon, and consider making use of Regalis' Seduction sooner rather than later.

Azural, God of Frost. Frosty the Snowman here should go down easy enough if you run Warden. It's free buffs for just doing what you do.

Friden, God of the Sea. This is a tough one, and until I learn about Mogwai my only recourse would have been to use Muster. It's still a solid spell, since it should scale off of Friden's stats and make him gib himself, but if you run Cleric, you should be in with a shot at killing him with kindness. Just hope that your immortality and panda setups keep you alive. Failing that, Purgatorian should do you fine through raw stats alone.

Gonfurian, God of War. Play as Necromancer, and play defensively. He basically gives you this fight for free. There is wisdom in using Lister in your first slot for this fight however, as by the time you've cycled a few deaths, you'll just stop caring about incoming damage.

Lister, God of Fortune You don't need to do anything special for this fight, though I recommend that, since you won't have Lister yourself at first, you look to the Apocalypse traits for a defence buff. Specifically Zarox Apocalypse, who has the damage reduction trait that Lister's avatar folds into his innate.

Tartarith, God of Punishment Again, nothing special, but here you really want to NOT be defensive. Let your creatures die, play Purgatorian, and just keep letting him duel you. You'll keep reviving and slapping him back.

Tenebris, God of Shadows. Mass Dispel. Very good spell.

So I have like 900 hours in this game, so I don't remember much of the earlygame. I remember going into this idea hard though, and I'd started as an Animator. The Animatus sucking up all those delicious phoenix and rez traits was just an amazing treat to behold, and allowed me to bruteforce almost the entire mainstory.

Creatures to look out for early on are Wights especially. Resurrection Code is an amazing trait that, if you stick it on a few creatures, will give you some slightly shaky but surprisingly consistent self-revival. You shouldn't have to get too lucky to get Pandemonium Rebirth, and your full compliment of Phoenixes should be easy to get early on.

You start with a Unicorn Vivifier, so consider investing into the early Hounds as well. Dire Wolves is a really good trait for you to build on early, as they trigger on-attack and scale from your speed stat. Seriously, this carried my earlygame and I highly recommend you go for it.

Through your post-story woes, you'll be looking to implement a Bard Balladeer and the Raven Lord for attack and speed scaling, replacing the Mogwai/Regalis setup. It's not ideal, but it's the tools you have, and for now it shouldn't matter too much that your primary damage is indirect.

Transitioning into your midgame, up to real depth 500, you should start looking into working towards the full team. You want to have a Mogwai/Regalis setup by the time you fight the nether bosses for the third time, as that's when things get really problematic for you, especially in terms of Flubris and Chroma. Thankfully Regalis isn't a very difficult fight, so she's an easy get early on.

Don't be afraid to play around with the goblet early on. Avoid Grovetender and Hell Knight, as well as Evoker and Cabalist early on, as they don't really give you all that much benefit. Later on you can use them like any other class because your build will stand on its own.

To be written. Summer's coming up so I'll be suffering from insomnia but I'll try my best to get this updated soon.

This build is hella unique. Asking in the discord for help with this was like asking someone to tell me where the needle was in a particularly big haystack that was also on fire: it's just a concept that people don't really bother with.

Well I bothered with it.

Mathematically I didn't really do much: it was all theorycraft. Anybody that knows the game better than I do would be a far better fit to help optimise this build, and I'm very open to suggestions about how I could do it better. I enjoyed making this build a lot, and while I really want to make another build, I don't know if I have it in me.

Credits for certain setups are as follows.

Gay Monster Aunt gave me the headsup on the Bile Slime Immortality Setup. Very nice and slick and cool.

Armadi in the Thylacine Studios Discord is the dude that gave me the idea for the Mogwai, and helped me theorise on a couple of things that really broke this build wide open. Couldn't have done it without you bud.

Raikomaru for sitting with me for half a day theorycrafting an entire rebuild of my team when I changed from Lister to Regalis. He helped a whole bunch.

I hope you guys enjoy this build as much as I did. This guide took me hours to write. It's time for me to relax and do what I do best.

Kill my own dudes and win.