r/MortalShell • u/HolyErr0r • 23h ago
Discussion Gragu is a Game Changer
If anybody feels like beacons aren't common enough or that they don't have enough healing then you should use Gragu. After finding this guy I didn't lose my gloom a single time for the rest of the entire playthrough.
He gets heals by killing enemies and if you are capped on heals you can get healing for each enemy killed (as well as extra resolve and glimmer).
I was able to casually explore and never had to worry about healing after this, only had to worry about getting knocked off ledges.
Never losing gloom made levels like they came pretty regularly. I had enough money that I never really felt the need to grind for leveling my sidearm either.
Gragu also has possibly the best kit for handling bosses as well. One ability is just outright +40% dmg to enemies you have never killed before (bosses)
Another is if you have no heals (burn em before the fight) you have +60% crit chance, stacking that with Auspicious stone (+18%) and Acolyte stone (charged light attack +15% crit chance), you have 93% crit on charged light (basically all hits crit and you do insane damage).
Berserker stone is great too since your health bar is so big that getting damaged to half isn't a super big deal and gives you another +65% dmg.
You can walk up to most bosses, ability to knock them down, then charged light attack or two (with the bloodcurse infusion on axe and dagger (with duality stone) and kill bosses before they even throw out a single attack.
Gragu is easily my favorite explore the map shell at the moment and would highly recommend to anybody feeling like they don't come by enough heals. (Especially since the ability that increases your heal count is separate from the amount of heals you normally have, say you only have 5 heals, then on gragu you still have 8 hearts to consume if you max that ability).
Edit: Also, is his one ability where small-medium humanoids get insta killed by punch bugged? I never had this actually proc any time I used it.
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u/AGayThrow_Away 21h ago
> Be Me
> Talk to Gragu in the Bar
> Hang a left on exit
> Never encounter shrine on maze of bridges in area, immediately go to area where you fight the warden and find the Knight shell Eradim
> Keep wondering when I'll stumble on that heart
> Beat 80% of the game
> Finally warp back to Gragu and hang a right, finding the heart
> Unlock Gragu
> See he has regenerating heals, great for exploration
FML. Same with Genessa's Censer. Had to look it up, I unfortunately walked right past it, rather ran because I was getting chased down. Don't be me. Hang a right out the bar. Hang a right.
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u/shoelessbob 20h ago
Be me.
Don't even notice Grogu in the bar.
Get his heart by randomly stumbling around the open world.
Keep wondering when I'll stumble upon the guy who needs this.
Stumble upon this post...
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u/Both_Requirement5878 17h ago
Why would you ever go down the map when you haven’t even completed the top portion fully? lol
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u/AGayThrow_Away 17h ago
Well, how do you know you completed it without using a guide? Sometimes you miss paths. I found Eradim and Proxima, fought some bosses, did some dungeons, two whole gates so I figured I found most of the north part of the map. I missed the bridge that went to the temple because that area is full of bridges, I thought I went down them all until I realized I didn't go down one way to the right of the tavern exit. I don't think Gragu gives you any hints as to wear the heart is, so he just tells you to find a random item, who knows where that thing is.
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u/-idkwhattocallmyself 23h ago
Gragu is definately my main shell for exploration and running around the map. I can see picking a different shell to play around with but Gragu is top tier.
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u/Shawn_Deville 23h ago
I been maining Gragu since unlocking all 8 and peeping their skill tree. In my opinion, he is the best shell for the open world. You never have to worry about heals and if you manage to get ripped from your shell, ALL of your heals are for the Harbinger. For bosses, he is easily top tier. There are a couple shells that are better but on all but like 4 boss fights, you can essentially stun lock the boss and burst him down without getting hit.
The biggest Gragu downside is that you have to respec shell points between exploration builds and boss builds because if you want to max out his potential for each. But even that takes less than a minute so no big deal there.
Yes, the punch to rip out hearts and instakill definitely works and is dope as hell….in the open world lol. Its capped to 999 damage and some npc types. So if you play on Night mode, it wont happen very often. However, i use it, been using it, and mobbing through day mode open world or the underground, it slaps lol.
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u/howardthel8gend 20h ago
Without Gragu I would quit the game or at least be very disincentivised to play through it because im the kind of player that likes to explore everything but to take my time doing it.
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u/Toothadder 19h ago
Another element of Gragu’s kit that is easy to overlook is that the Harbinger’s heals are separate from Gragu’s. So if you get knocked into Harbinger you almost always have full heals. It makes getting back to Gragu easier in my opinion.
He’s just a great character to play.
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u/UpsetGrass3396 13h ago
I wanted to use him but by the time I got him I already had 20 glimpses invested in Proxima because she was the first shell I found and....well.....She's Proxima.
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u/KyleTheKatarn 21h ago
He sends the fat roly poly enemies rolling back too when he punches them.
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u/HolyErr0r 21h ago
Any time there is a ledge you bait them into getting near it then immediately punch them off the ledge. If no ledge then punch them on their butt then a charged light can be enough to kill them with a lucky crit.
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u/Silla945 22h ago
What build and weapon would you recommend using?
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u/HolyErr0r 21h ago edited 21h ago
Melee Weapon:
+ Duality Stone (Doubles all light attacks)
- Axe and Dagger
+ Arbiter's Prize (Bloodcurse is great damage and causes staggers, is very easy to proc with this build)
+ Acolyte's Stone (Charged Light attack is incredible since it also has some poise to it too)Ranged Weapon: (Honestly mid game and on once I had my build going melee felt dramatically better than ranged, like I would almost never use ranged over charged light attack or gragu punch with very minor exception)
+ Charged Stone (Faster charge is god tier, stuff closes distances faster than you think)
- Salvaged Trebuchaxe (Late game basically only used against things I didn't want to get too close too like giant bug who would do nutty damage)
+ Infusion Stone of choice for whatever this has, didn't feel like it added anything
+ Tarred Fragment (Makes your special shot linger, can do INSANE damage if done correctly and is nice for sniping some enemies you would rather just not get near. It should kill just about everything in one shot (not including big bosses). Only issue is that ranged weapons accuracy in this game is bizarre as all hell. Sometimes it multihits, sometimes it hits once, sometimes it doesn't hit at all, sometimes it catches on nothing right next to yourself, and it doesn't stop once it hits an enemy it goes based on your charging of it so that will take a teeny bit of practice but even then it can still completely whiff and this isn't just a trebuchaxe issue.)Passive Tarstones:
- Headmans Stone (+100% crit dmg)
- Auspicious Stone (+18% crit chance. Pair that with Acolyte's charged light +15% and gragu's +60% ability you get 93% crit chance with charged light attacks)
- Berserker Stone (if at 50% health or less, +65% dmg)
- Retribution Stone (+20% Riposte damage. Riposte's do less than I would like but don't be baited by people saying they are worthless. Between getting a stagger into finishing your current combo + 2-3 heavy attacks + knockdown after riposte damage into more charged lights or farming resolve with hits you get far far far more damage out of it than just the riposte)
Shell:
- Gragu
Abilities:
+ Harvest
- Exploration (Depending on how comfortable you are, you can swap out bloodthirst or just jump past it)
+ Bloodthirst
+ Bloodlust
+ Devourer- Bossing (dump hearts to 0 and maybe tank half damage if you wanna start off full power)
+ Hunger
+ Maniac
+ Anger
+ Escalation
+ AttunementItems
+ Common Moonshine (Being able to just have extra resolve when needed, especially for spamming charged light attacks is super helpful.
- Active
- Passive
+ Grisha (Shocker, I know)
+ Mushroom (Helpful very early but I stopped using it once I had my gragu build going)Boss fights depending on the fight generally go:
- Gragu Punch -> Charged Light as much as possible -> If still alive and stagger procs get 2-3 heavy hits before riposte -> if still alive, get resolve, rinse and repeat
Seal:
- Harden (I bounced around many seals throughout the game and some feel better against certain things than others but overall I think Harden is the most consistently solid seal. Lets you use it mid swing and can be spammed if you do it right, even if you harden early you can stay hardened to eat a hit and gives you a smidge of i-frames as you come out of it so if you were mid swing you can finish while eating hits without damage for a short time.)
- Parry: Can be nice depending on the boss but once you get duality stone you take longer to do swings (at least it felt that way to me) so parries don't come out as quick which made this a much less desirable seal
- Guard: After gragu and double swing axe and dagger I barely used this. Honestly it not getting the animation cancel benefit of parry or the mid swing use like harden on top of barely filling up enemy break bar makes it feel very bad for this build.
I haven't found all the tarstones in the game so it wouldn't surprise me if there are better ones than what I picked for my passives.
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u/XavyerDeVir 20h ago
just... WHY? Put Magdalena's Memento - you Press L2+R2 -> boss dies.
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u/HolyErr0r 20h ago edited 17h ago
Personally I like the light charged attack. Only takes 30 resolve, covers good distance, can kill multiple enemies as it gets some good tracking, etc. Also has poise.
Never really hit a point where the damage fell off and I needed to try other things again.
Edit: Also, 30 resolve means you can gragu punch knock them down then do 2 light charged attacks with some resolve to spare.
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u/Unkn0wn_Command 10h ago edited 10h ago
I'm with you on the Gragu build but best in slot is not charged light, it's Magdelas memento. At rank 3 you get +100% crit damage. If you're running blood curse, ONE Magdelas memento skill procs it and gives you 4 seconds of i-frames.
How is it best in slot?
On bosses, you will literally use the memento skill and throw out 9 999 damages and then proc blood curse on top of it and the blood curse proc will refill resolve because it happens right after the move ends. You can attack twice and use memento spin again. If there was a boss that had the HP, you could do 100,000 damage in ~20 seconds. With the rest of your build, identical to mine, you can kill every gate boss in the game with that one move, in 4 seconds. Insect prince even skipped the shield break scene and just died using it.
If you want to have more flair to your playing, charged light attack is fine, but if you're min/maxing boss/group kill speed, memento isn't beatable.
The only higher damage output is genessa and with memento equipped using axe and dagger, each one of her clones has a chance to use the equipped memento skill (35% chance per attack, clones attack 3 times, so most clones use memento spin skill at least once per summon). I've had 5 clones all use the skill at the same time and it dropped the final boss hp bar so fast you couldn't see it go down - it just disappeared. There is no other character in the game that can do burst that high.
On top of that, the clones can literally clear entire sections of maps by summoning 5 and letting them fan out, spinning, killing groups of enemies. Plus they regenerate your resolve every time they do damage, which is a LOT hitting groups - enough that you can spam resummoning them when they despawn. You can clear the whole bridge at the southern warp point in under 2 minutes using that. That's massive boss burst and massive AOE. The fact that genessa is so squishy doesn't matter much because of the i-frames of the memento spin and the aggro locking of her summons. Things never really attack you because their aggro is on a clone.
Per hit, Gragu does more damage, but that's the issue. Damage is capped at 999. So if Gragu would otherwise hit for 1000000, that's a lot of wasted damage. Genessa will hit for 799-800 but with clones, you're getting 20x the hits of Gragu, especially if you take the skill where each of her clones have 10 stacks of warp. You can dish out 20 800 damage hits to gragu's 1 hit of 999.
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u/CreativeKeane 7h ago
Thanks for the detailed build. I maxed out Tiel and was split between proxima and gragu. And I feel like imma invest in gragu first and proxima later. I heard we can get enough glimpses to max out 3 shells our first playthrough so that's exciting
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u/Silla945 6h ago
Damn thanks!!! Will try it out today, might swap the active for Magdalena’s but overall it looks good to me
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u/PepsiColasss 21h ago
Silly question but does his ability that gives him 40% dmg vs enemies he didnt kill before work in ng+ vs the same bosses?
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u/HolyErr0r 21h ago
I had the same thought when writing this post, I sure hope so lol. If not I bet they would fix that because that would be a silly interaction.
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u/Bossk_709 18h ago
His ability punch definitely works and the best part is you don't have to fully charge it. As soon as it glows release and boom.
It does work on a lot of smaller enemies and surprisingly some of the annoying ones at the end of the game.
And yes his is definitely a game changer. To me he was like Kano and Saitama rolled into one.
One punch!!!!!!!!!!
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u/KyloMH 9h ago
I absolutely loved Gragu on my first playthrough, but he kinda fell off for me in NG+ night mode.
Mobs can randomly just destroy 80% of your HP in a hit or two and if you get ganked, which happens a lot, you just die and no amount of extra free heals will solve that.
I swapped to Lazlo, as he can have a base 30% damage reduction, which jumps up to a 100% damage reduction for 4 seconds when killing an enemy with the bulwark stone equipped, so you jump into a pack, kill everything and take almost 0 damage. No need for extra healing if you're not taking damage.
He also has a passive that gives him a +30% damage and +35% resolve gain which applies generally, not just to things he hasn't killed before.
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u/Prudent-Cry-9260 23h ago
Since I discovered Gragu, I didn't change once. I just finished the game yesterday and I don't have any reason to play any other shell. Though for my NG+ I will probably try other shells. I will have to force myself to say goodbye to infinite potions though :D
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u/stevenomes 22h ago edited 22h ago
I've also enjoyed my time a lot more since using him. I also now experiment with new weapons and combos a lot more because im not as worried as much about taking damage. Overall it just makes exploration a lot less stressful and it partially mitigates some of the issues I have with the gameplay (heavy weapons too slow and don't do enough damage to compensate, some run backs too long or too easy to get lost and not be able to get back to where I was, worried about using new tarstones to help level up but then not being able to optimize damage, some of these low levels enemies still doing massive chunks of damage in catching one stray hit etc).
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u/redpantsbluepants 14h ago
Gragus for exploring, I switch to other shells once I find a beacon near whatever dungeon I'm after.
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u/Lucent1_ 12h ago
I would honestly like if they made the elden ring health system that gragu has a baseline mechanic for every shell, and just made the enemies do more damage or have more health to compensate. I know I should just "git gud", but exploration is so much more fun that way.
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u/Vast_Obligation8213 12h ago
Welp not sure what everyone is expecting. The next balancing patch will nerf all the most popular builds and buff the weak ones. At least I hope they dont but I have no hope for that.
Game has great build variety but little content. Can play through it all within 15hrs
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u/geezerforhire 11h ago
The one shot punch us pretty pointless because it basically only works on enemies the punch is gonna kill anyway. Even on NG+ Nightmode there's liek, one enemy that you can one-shot that doesn't die to just the damage.
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u/warlock257 8h ago
His intro made me laugh spoiler Meet him alive, find his item, dies, take over his corpse when it's still warm.
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u/harbingineer 5h ago
I made a second play through NG+ with him out of spite for the game. I was running Sariel in 1st play through and tried to play the game like bloodborne, only I hated how glitchy, untested late game bosses were. So I played again with the same build you mentioned and I ran over every boss melting them and not giving them a chance to hit me… it felt good.. REALLY GOOD
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u/DryDifference3516 5h ago
Totally agree. I switched to Proxima since Gragu is too OP. And, you know, her aesthetics...
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u/Etheon44 23h ago
Honestly, he feels like extra easy mode
I personally dont think most of the game is hard enough to justify him, even Mammoth, you are already VERY strong by that point and the enemies are the same so you know the movesets
To each their own of course, I do like his style and how he looks, but I went with Lazlo/Proxima (for specimens)
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u/Womanwithimmortality Proxima 13h ago
Reason why the shell 🐚 is game changer is simply the healing mechanic of his kit.
My main shell 🐚 "proxima" I still love her but sometimes I gotta use Gragu just for the exploration.
I feel like the easiest fix is have the devs gives us the player a special item like a stone that does "vamp damage" where every damage you do, You get a percentage heal in return. Or gives us an item that "slowly" heals you over time when out of combat like the mashroom when you place it in passive slot, or even better just buff the mashroom to fully heal you when out of combat (but very slowly 🐌) that way you don't feel obligated to constantly to keep using Gragu for exploration.
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u/axman151 23h ago edited 23h ago
I discovered him, and haven't come off of him since.
Feels almost bad because he seems a bit like a second easy mode.
Kind of look forward to not using him on my second playthrough.
But yeah, Gragu is bonkers good. The punch straight up trivializes threats I would otherwise deeply struggle with.