I guess it's more like I could play it, but I simply didn't it for quite a while. I just felt like coming back to Demon fairly recently. I like that there's easier means to get speed modification. I haven't seen any speed brands that are that high yet; maybe just 19% at most. Also, I've been around long enough to remember when Adria was considered to be much weaker.
I think brands shake things up in a pretty interesting way. They allow for even more options for your enhancing your characters in many ways, which is always cool, as well as the enemies of course. I think it has helped the overall game be more interesting in gameplay, from beginning to end.
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/yXzTNM3.png)
This character was an "antimummy" that began with fire dart and went on from there. My Hand of the Dead character died to dipsas in Arcadia. Anyway, this run went much more smoothly than the previous run (probably because my party had abilities and attacks covering more elements throughout the game rather than just the early and late tower). My relic upgrades were SEPI, Refine Brand, and Call Demon. I guess there's not too much to say about a lot of this run, but I guess I'll lay out some points of it:
1. I got Combust from a corpse early on and Melting Touch from a slime too. I had Arcadia this game and I encountered the early dipsas, so those abilities really helped with defeating them. I think I still lost something in that battle, though.
2. Early on I got Dazzling Gaze and Freezing Touch. I guess I could've replaced them with better abilities, but they were still very useful to the very end of the game. I picked up Mending as an extra means of healing; it's generally a good ability to pick up on magic characters as it still allows your character to support allies in places and situations like corridor battles.
3. When it came to actual mummies, this character definitely fared better against them than my latest "Booth" character. I ran into two groups of them: one summoned in Turdak's Sanctum summoned by a trouble chime and the other found around Tower:12 alongside ghouls. In the first battle I had an akateko ally to keep them at bay, but unfortunately it was too drained to fight in the latter battle so my poor alicanto had to be in the front. Fire damage is simply good against them!
4. My party was just
about complete when I was in Baphomet's Sanctum. I got a Power there by using a bronze offering on it, as a means to even the odds in the incoming battle and gain a powerful ally with ease. It served me well, but it died on the final floor from being drained to death by shikome. I had a volcanic yali but replaced it with umdhlebi as it wasn't doing too well in a lot of battles; my ala was just there for a lot of the game and I don't think I used it at all on at least the last four floors I visited, but it still helped in earlier battles with electric and dark mobs. My last undone ally would be a shikome recruited with a bronze offering, and it helped with defeating Tremane. I guess I'll explain the asrai in the next point.
5. I figured out through unicorn links that killing enemies at all is a good way of restoring max HP; while enemies fought in these links don't give experience, they can still undo drained max HP. I picked Call Demon because of this, as I linked with asrais way earlier and their link is convenient for this purpose. It's pretty expensive, though, so I figure the main reason why I could access this is because of how well I was playing with a party that was becoming more and more underleveled as time went on, even if I was still spending credits on applying AND refining brands. I guess Refine Brand gives your allies better staying power (my current Refine Brand strategy is to replace old brands if they're at least 5 levels under, or especially if they're 10 or more levels under).
I also tried to give my last asrai a silly brand like +43 vitality but -30% speed under whatever condition but I couldn't afford to give it a high level brand so I gave it a +7 agility after movement brand that was still level 2. I held onto that in spite of never really having a need for that niche.
6. My healer druj nasu and chthonic alicanto did really well. It actually took quite a while for me to get Cleanse onto the former (I didn't bother to give it Cleansing Aura from the nero I used for fusion for no good reason), so body status effects were harder to deal with moreso than usual for a while, but I still got by fine. On note of the latter, I guess some of the speed lowering brands can be tolerated. Its penultimate one was basically the same thing but with needing SP under 50, but I replaced it just so I didn't have to spend on Refine Brand to give it three more or so levels (there would have been an equal gain of vitality). I guess the replaced brand is technically better as it means more HP when it has less SP but I that's how I rolled. It and my late power fought a lot late enemies together.
To sum it all up, this was a pretty good and fun run. I haven't started a new character yet. I think that's all you'll hear from me for now.
<1 minute edit: I guess I had a lot more to say than I initially thought, albeit a good chunk of it was on new game mechanics.