Remnant II: How to: Beat Nightmare on a new save

If you just want the short version, here it is.
Start a Invoker, play the Awakaned king and pick up Burden of the Sciolist on the way to the king. Do Nimues mission for Gift of the Unbound and then buy the two Burden rings off of Cass. Then do the Red Throne for Burden of the Rebel and get the Amplitude trait from the Labyrinth. Done.
The rest of the intro is just me talking, skip forward if you want the actual guide.

Now, the idea was to be able to play Nightmare from level 1 and the Way of Kaeula for the most part dominates it. Any boss or difficult encounter can be solved by just clicking Kaeula. It calls down a rainstorm with accompanying lightning bolts that for a long time will oneshot all minor enemies as well as adds during bosses. Having invoker as your main class and stacking a bit of skill cooldown reduction makes you able to use three Way of Kaeula in a row which is pretty much always enough to kill any boss. Important to realise is that the stomp is the least important part of Kaeula, I often run around corners and throw it into whatever is chasing me or I just activate it randomly when I know there’s a lot of enemies coming.
I’m really not exaggerating when I say that Kaeula dominates most of Nightmare. Red mini-bosses can often be killed by just calling down a storm and running in a circle.

The best secondary class is probably engineer as it gives you even more automatic damage. The big problem when you’re playing Nightmare on level 1 is that a lot of enemies just oneshot you but with Kaeula, a laser turret and Scrap shot in a doorway or similar chokepoint means you kill more or less everything before it sees you. Cheesy without a doubt but it’s not like you can do this every fight. Also the engineer traits is something you just want and unlike Challenger, the skills are incredible.

So the first goal of the guide was me thinking up a consistent way to get a working Nightmare build online asap. There’s a lot of fantastic lvl 10 skills but they’re irrelevant when you’re just leveling stuff. Even the fives are a bit slow as the first areas are generally the hardest. Veteran is tuned for it but Nightmare does not give a ♥♥♥♥, having a handgun and a angry dog just isn’t enough. Laser turret used to be the best lvl 1 skill as it helps the most when there’s suddenly fifty enemies surrounding you and bolts of various colors are flying across the screen. Way of Kaeula however has it beat by a mile but I mean, why not use the best of both worlds?

The second goal of the build is that the ease of setting up the first build makes you free to gather stuff for a second build. You don’t need to reroll a bunch to get specific items, you just need to play the Awakened King and then do the Red Throne as your first campaign area.
Once you’ve ready to reach root earth you probably have enough stuff to start leveling other classes. I had enough red shards for two maxed out Mutators and was swimming in rings already, so I switched to a Ritualist DoT-build because I love that ♥♥♥♥.

The final puprose of this guide is that I think Veteran is so easy on a new character that I get bored halfway through the first campaign area. It’s almost impossible to die on anything except specific bosses and it just makes Veteran a chore that you have to do to be able to play Nightmare.
I’m sure other builds could do it, but Way of Kaeula fixes so many things that you will struggle with on Nightmare and Gift of the Unbound just works so well with it. You will have a bunch of all damage, even more skill damage, cooldown reduction and 20% movement speed. And if you find other Burden rings you can easily switch to a completely different setup as just Gambler/Destroyer is a pretty massive damage increase for any build.

If you’ve read all this crap, thanks. Here’s the actual guide.

Now, start a new Nightmare character and pick Invoker as your starting class.
Your second class should preferably be Engineer as it synergises really well with Invoker but any class with all damage or skill damage works as this will focus on ranged weapons and skills.

Invoker starts with Trinity Crossbow[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com] and Bolt Driver[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com], both decent weapons so you don’t really need to spend scraps on anything else.

Now grab Scrap Shot[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com] from McCabe, this combined with your starting skill Way of Kaeula means you can hold any chokepoint and burst down almost any mini-boss.

Next is Twisted Idol[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com] from Cass as your starting armour is farily heavy and the amulet pushes your weight down to green level.

Now you’re set to play the Awakened King on Nightmare.

The initial goal of the build is grabbing Gift of the Unbound[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com] as most of the Burden rings are really easy to get ahold of. On the way however there’s a couple of items to be on the lookout for.

The first one is the Misplaced Memoir[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com] that will always show up somewhere in the Forlorn Coast usually when you return there after the first side-area. Interact with it to get the Bookbound Medallion that you then turn in to the grumpy NPC next to the sewer at the start. (Leywise[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com])
This gets you Burden of the Sciolist[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com], a burden ring so good that you should use it immediately.

Doing all the side-areas you will eventually find the Derelict Lighthouse. In here you can find the Sparkfire Shotgun[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com]. Make sure you use the key in the basement door. You can interact with it to flip the keyhead upside down. The ring you get in the other door is passable if you have nothing else.

Also if you’re lucky and get the Flooding Sewer[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com] event you can pick up Burden of the Divine which can be turned into Burden of the Devoted by killing the Awakaned King wearing the Divine ring.

That’s honestly it for the Awakened King, just make sure you first talk to the king and accept his quest to kill Nimue, then spare her for Nimues Vow. Killing the Awkaned King then gives you Nimues Bloodsoaked Vow which can be turned in at Nimue for the Gift of the Unbound.

Now buy Burden of the Destroyer and Burden of the Gambler from Cass and you’re looking at a pretty functional build already. We’re now firing up the actual campaign looking for a couple more Burden Rings.

We’re going to Yaesha to pick up Burden of the Rebel[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com] for some extra skill cooldown but first we want Burden of the Mariner[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com].

Fire up any Nerud campaign and run to Ascension spire. The Dr’zyr replicator lets you just buy Burden of the Mariner. It’s good if you opted to not play Engineer as your second class but it’s also handy to have once you start leveling different classes. It’s just a free Burden Ring.

Now reroll the campaign until you get the Red Throne. Might take a fair number of rerolls as it’s just 1/7 to get it. Make sure to be nice to the Empress as you’ll get locked out of the ring otherwise.

Just play through the act until you reach the Widow’s Court, it’s always the second last area. At the bottom below the exit is a secret wall and behind it you find the Ornate Lockbox[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com]. Now somewhere in the Widow’s Court is a quest item called Ornate Key, it spawns randomly but it’s always there. Use it on the lockbox to get the Thaen Seed. Just turn in the Thaen Seed to the Empress and you’ll get Burden of the Rebel.

If you haven’t already kill the Great Bole, talk to the Empress and go to the Labyrinth where you will pick up the final piece to the build.

The final piece to make Way of Kaeula go from pretty op to broken is Amplitude[remnant2.wiki.fextralife.com].
Just play through the Labyrinth as usual. You get the trait from the same event you get the quest item from so you truly cannot miss it.

Once you have it you want to increase it to 10 asap. It solves pretty much all bosses and major encounters as you might have noticed.

Beating Nightmare, even with all this still takes some perserverance. You’ll get oneshot a lot and will have to listen to audial cues for elites and ambushes. So here’s some tips.
First, Scrapshot is fantastic. You can put it in any chokepoint and it’ll almost hold it by itself. Experiment with it as it’s low cost and if you die, who cares?
Second, use the environment. Hide behind trees, run around corners, run up or down stairs, hide inside houses and scrapshot the door. Just don’t stand in the open when you hear a bunch of monster noises.
Once things starting heating up, press Way of Kaeula. It’ll take care of most minor enemies. If a big guy shows up, put down your laser turret and focus on dodging. You take A LOT of damage on low-level Nightmare and you don’t have a lot of healing. I absolutely ran for the checkpoint a couple of times with half health and no hearts left. It’s how i enjoy Remnant.
As for your weapons, the Invokers starting weapons are fantastic. I picked up scrap shotgun since I wanted to go status build later but the crossbow is great and the Bolt Driver is a stellar sidearm. The one thing to keep in mind is don’t use two close-mid-range weapons. Always keep a long-range alternative when you’re playing solo, otherwise some fights will just be annoying.
The mods are just random and sadly the ones you get in the Awakened king are kind of mediocre, which is part of the reason I’m not going mod-heavy. I might try another Nightmare first build with Archon at some point but I’d have to plan that out more.

But anyway, that’s all for this guide.

Sounds hella pretentious, like I’m holding a TED-talk.
Anyway, I made this guide because I wanted to share some ideas I had. I love testing classes from level 1 and assembling a build from the stuff I pick up, like the game was when you first picked it up. Veteran is just way too easy, even on the first playthrough me and my friend moaned a lot about how you had infinite ammo and barely took any damage. Even on Nightmare first it’s still not the same thing as Remnant 1’s grueling difficulty but it’s closer, which was my goal.

Maybe I’ll gussy it up a bit if someone actually reads this, maybe I’ll make a second setup with Archon/Sporebloom, who knows.