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I DID IT.

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Just to bring back that perennial flower that is Bastion, I've been working on a challenge for a while now. Beating the Who Knows Wheres with full idols, and a few rules.

1. No Galleon Mortar, no Calamity Cannon. They're both OP as hell and are basically cheating. Every winning strategy I've seen has used the Galleon Mortar, so fuck that noise.
2. You get one life, and one life only. When you're die, restart, even if you have tries left.

I started with a few idols on the pipe WKW (The Kid's dream) and worked my way up. My notes below:

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I used the Cael Hammer as my big damage, upgraded with all the base damage boosts and the focus attack. I used the checkered face even though there's no armored foes, mostly out of habit. I'd use the bell face for the potential stun in the future. Most strategies I've seen don't include a melee, but short of the Galleon, there's no substitute for the huge one-shot damage done by a charged Cael Hammer blow.

I used the Army Carbine as my range/AoE with all the reload and aiming boosts. I used the knockback upgrade, although it honestly wouldn't have made a significant difference if I'd used the aiming walking speed boost. Obviously I used the Boomer rounds because the Razor rounds are pointless and the AoE is essential.

Spirits:
Bastion Bourbon + Black Rye are must-haves. The extra two swigs make the difference.

Leechade is necessary to make the Bourbon last. It also allows for an interesting strategy with Micia, where you can sap large enemies for their health indefinitely. I like to do this with big Scumbags.

Bull Brandy and Cham-Pain are major stat boosts. Cham-Pain in particular lets you reliably one-shot a lot more things with the carbine.

I was only level 7 while I was doing this, so I finished with Cinderbrick Stout for convenience and Lifewine for that safety net.

Most of my troubles were around the two waves of red spinning gasfellas.

The red gasfellas are the worst of the worst because you can barely outroll them with Pyth's speed, they'll last for years because of Jevel's defense and ol' Mother Micia, they'll corner you in an instant with Lemaign's crippling effect (and I think it stacks!), they'll spin in arcs and come around your shield if you're focused on one, and basically fuck everything because you're dead if you so much as look at them too hard.

I went through a bunch of loadouts to deal with them, but my winning solution was sneaky decoy secret skill, and then sucker punch them with an auto-crit charged hammer. Suck my hammer head you red floaty bastards. Even better if the AoE knocks out two. When you get it down to just one, it gets much much easier.

If anyone else wants to try this, I'd be happy to spew more of my incredibly important mancer research.