The main idea: Use The Land Before unique idol that gives you +4 max companions but only lets you summon one of each. Use Crab Ring, Tolmat’s Incorrect History, and Evolution’s End to get as many minions as possible. The primordial unique relic Tyrant’s Skull gives us a T-Rex and gives us stat scaling to buff up all our minions.
The plan from there is to run literally only companions and buff them up as much as we can with stat stacking and other minion effects. There are actually 7 companions and sadly we only have 5 ability slots, so we have to choose who to leave out of our pack. The funny thing I’m also realizing now is that this many companions is already possible without the idol and in fact you can’t use all of those +1 companions with the limitation of only being able to summon one of each. So what this actually does is let us drop all of those for other things. Which… now that I’m thinking about it isn’t actually THAT much of a bonus. One of those +1s is a single passive point, another is a 3 point threshold node on a +str/dex passive that we kind of wanted anyway for the T-Rex stacking, and then there’s the helmet that gives +1 companion while also giving us other minion bonuses. So now that I’m saying this, I kind of wonder if these aren’t just two different builds. Like Maybe the T-Rex build doesn’t use the Land before and just takes all those companion increases so it can take the str/dex passive and then it can just summon more than 5 companions, meanwhile maybe The Land Before build could make use of the other minion primal unique: Chorus of the Anurok which gives you extra summons up to the companion limit. Since The Land Before physically stops us from running as many companions as we’ll have slots, we could use that to fill up the remaining slots with the Anuroks, whatever those are.
I’m also very aware of a problem with going for only companions: Some of the passive buffs only work when YOU hit things. So this blocks us from that. I’m… not sure how willing I am to compromise on that. Half the point is not having to do anything. But… idk… I guess I could see some variant of this that runs gathering storms or swipe just to have something to proc those effects.
Anyway, I’ve successfully managed to confuse myself. Here’s the planner I made: I’d appreciate any thoughts on this or related builds:
And land before time + that hat is straight up +6 companions. The anuroks do not count as companions. So by all wording, if you have 0 companions summoned, the helm, and land before time, you summon 8 anuroks. Being a beast master is +1, then you can get another +2 for 11…
I made a planner for a potential version of that build. 11 max companions. Using 3 real companions: Bear as a tank, Spriggand as an aura bot, and Wolves as damage, then I used Frenzy Totem and Etera’s Blessing for ways to buff up all the minions and then those slots just get filled with more Anuroks. I was going to initially also add in the bees, but then I remembered that they are more bleed based while these are melee damage based. So for now I didn’t really know what to do with that so I just gave us the Cleaver Solution + Vessel setup since we want to stack str anyway. The planner needs a lot of optimization. There are just so many passives to consider, especially if we want to fit in minion stuff and stat stacking. I’d love to be able to dip into Shaman for attunement stuff, but as it is I’m not even taking all the generic minion stuff in BM.
It remains to be seen if the idol will let you spawn multiple Anuroks or just 1, though. After all, the idol says “You cannot summon more than 1 of any type of companion” and the helmet says “If you have less companions […] you summon Primal Anuroks”.
We’ll have to see, but I think it should work. The item reads:
Primal Anuroks are melee minions with no maximum duration. They do not count as companions, but disappear as you summon more companions, so that your combined number of anuroks and companions does not exceed your companion limit.
So they don’t count as a companion, so they shouldn’t be affected by the limit of one of each type of companion, and the Land Before’s wording implies that these aren’t special slots. There are two components to it’s text: 1. +4 Max Companions (If condition is met) and 2. You cannot summon more than one of any type of companion.
So if it’s working the way we’re interpreting, my stat “Maximum Companions” should just be bumped up by 4. When Chorus of the Anurok looks at that stat relative to my number of summoned companions, it should just do that number - my current summons, then summon the Anuroks equal to the difference. Since they aren’t companions, they shouldn’t trigger the unique companion limitation.
Yeah, I think it should work as well, as would any other temporary minions you can summon (since minions aren’t companions either). Just not 100% sure (it wouldn’t be the first time EHG has fudged up a description), which is why I pointed it out to be on the lookout for.
The helmet also says “If you have less than your maximum number of active companions you summon Primal Anuroks up to your maximum number of companions
Primal Anuroks” which would indicate directly that you can summon multiple.
Just waiting to see which one prevails, the helmet or the idol. I’d place my bet on the idol though.
I’d say it’s more likely that you will be able to fill the slots with Anuroks. If it’s just a minion and doesn’t count as a companion, the idol shouldn’t apply to them.
But there’s also the possibility that they’re just restricting minions in general (after all, almost always temp minions available to primalist don’t come in more than one) and the description is innacurate.
While I think it’s the first, we’ll have to wait and see (or ask Mike on discord).
Gearing for scaling is what is going to be hard. I had a planner that used Foot of the Mountain boots for the +12 all stats. I could see going with Advent of the Erased with Shattered Worlds though, which will give your minions 100% uptime on Frenzy and Haste.
Then we have Minion Area and Damage prefix on Amulet and Gloves.
Then trying to scale Str, Dex, and Att sufficiently.
