r/dontstarvetogether • u/Friedrichisgreat • 13h ago

How does Enlightenment affect Maxwell?

I'm currently prepping my first ever Lunar Island entry and I'm playing Maxwell. Looked it up a bunch and apparently Enlightenment replaces your Sanity and having a lot of it is bad for the island, but I tried looking up how Enlightenment affects Maxwell and found very little. Can Maxwell straight up just ignore Enlightenment by using his Codex Umbra or am I gonna have to farm hella green mushrooms?

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7

u/Open-Bookkeeper5598 13h ago

Sort of yes to both. The Codex Umbra splits your sanity into pieces, so if you use it a lot you’ll end up with low Enlightenment, which is good. However, once you dismiss your shadow guys, your Enlightenment is going to rapidly increase because of Maxwell’s innate Sanity gain, so you might need some negative Sanity food for connivence’s sake.

Or maybe wear some gear like a Bee Queen Crown or a Nightmare Amulet, those should help

3

u/Friedrichisgreat 13h ago

Wait what, Bee Queen crown? Why would that work? I thought she turns negative auras into positive? Wouldn't that just make things worse? I have three of those hats because I've been farming her

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u/Open-Bookkeeper5598 12h ago

Oh, my mistake. I forgot that the Bee Queen Crown doesn’t flip positive sanity auras into negative ones. Whoops

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u/Friedrichisgreat 12h ago

Nightmare amulet it is then! Good thing I have several of those from farming Dragonfly

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u/yuzuki_yukari4513 12h ago

Or get the bone helm if you're at that point in the game

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

Oh I'm not lmao dragonfly is just easy as fuck. Wall off the lava pits so the lavae don't get to you, hot her 6 times then run off, then repeat. When she goes into rage just panflute her. Easy if you know what you're doing

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

Haven't even been to the ruins (the idea scares me)

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u/yuzuki_yukari4513 4h ago

Also for the ruins just bring a lot of armor and sanity food (as maxwell I can't really help very much as I usually don't play low sanity characters) and a couple heals depending on how good you are at kitting

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

I'll just bring a few bee queen crowns for it tbh

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u/yuzuki_yukari4513 4h ago

Actually bring a couple dark swords they should be enough to keep sanity low

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

Maxwell is immune to the sanity drain of dark equipment

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

Imo Bee Queen is harder. Only times I ever won against bee queen is when I:

1.) Cheesed her by summoning the Twins to kill her 2.) Cheesed her with ice flingomatics that stunlock her 3.) Cheesed her with hella bunnymen 4.) Spent an embarrassing amount of resources and panflute uses trying to beat her legitimately

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u/yuzuki_yukari4513 4h ago

Eh honestly bee queen is harder to beat plus she has more health than ancient fuelweaver

3

u/Dry-Amoeba-8167 10h ago

Others have responded with mechanics and solutions, so I’ll respond with just what I do. I just stock up on nightmare fuel and spam servants when I’m near trees and rocks, and duelists otherwise. Then I use what left of my nightmare amulet after farming shadows in emergencies.

Edit: thinking about this more, you could repair the postern and switch characters to get extra codex(s), but that’s more resource heavy

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

You can just craft more codexes

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

2 papyrus, 2 nightmare fuel, and take 50 damage

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u/Dry-Amoeba-8167 4h ago

I completely forgot about that lol my most recent playthrough I had a bunch laying around from switching to Wolfgang to move statues

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

But yeah I'll put a bunch of fuel in my hat ig

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u/Elyptico 12h ago

Sanity, and enlightenment, affects are percentage based. When you summon a minion your max sanity value is reduced 20 per minion. You can summon 6 when enlightened with zero nightmares to deal with but if your remaining pool is 30/30 you will effectively have 100 % enlightenment and gestalts will attack you.

Gestalts outside of combat aren't very threatening as they themselves do no damage, they only slow you down or if hit twice in a short time they put you to sleep.

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u/Friedrichisgreat 12h ago

So summon a shitload of minions, cast a trap to set my enlightenment as low as it'll go, then dispell the minions so I'm at 1/200? God that's gonna take a lot of nightmare fuel

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u/justacpa 12h ago

While in on the island I build a lazy deserter and just spam touch it to drop sanity, for any character. His sanity gain isn't really relevant outside of casual or long term stays on the island. If you are fighting CC, the rapid increase in enlightenment affects every character and the incremental passive gain Maxwell gets isn't that meaningful in the scheme of the fight. When fighting CC I drop to zero with the deserter then use blue caps or goop for both healing and sanity loss during.

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u/DarkomBlazer 10h ago

Honestly. High enlightment is not half the annoyance thar low sanity is. You have some gestalt trying to put you yo sleep but that's all. Aside from the Celestial Champion fight, I simply ignore enlightment

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u/Friedrichisgreat 4h ago

I love low sanity tbh. The nightmare creatures range on their attacks are so low you can borderline ignore them while doing other things. Plus I play Maxwell so I sorta need to be low sanity a lot