Request: Race Guide

[Gamer-man]

As the title says, i request a racial overview guide

such as
Shalore:
Main benefit is the timeless trait that lets you extend the length of buffs. Typically benefits hybrid classes the most.

[phantomglider]

OVERALL
Stat modifiers are rarely important past the first 4 levels, except that a -2 prevents you from hitting 36 by level 12 if you don't have some way to boost the stat by then. HP mod and racial talents are the most important factor in race choice. EXP mod is mostly a tedium reducer.

Cornac
No stat modifiers, no racial talents, no EXP penalty, and an extra Category point. Cornacs are explicitly the generic, flexible human. Usually inferior to other races, Cornacs are a good choice for classes that want to spend a lot of category points and have enough places to put generics, or for trying out one of the unlockable trees early. Good for going antimagic, as they have a lot of generics floating around and the extra cat point makes it less costly to open and improve Fungus. Terrible for Archers and Reavers, excellent for Solipsists and Cursed (unlocking Rampage at level 1 is vital). Also good to consider if you really need to get to a certain level as fast as possible (eg. Shadowblades which become immortal at level 18).

Higher
Minor stat boosts across the board, +1 hp per level, 15% exp penalty. L1 is a Wil-based instant-speed ten-turn regen; L8 is a boost to sight range; L16 is a bump to spell save, arcane damage, and arcane resist; L24 makes your talents not cost resources for a few turns. If you're pumping Wil, the L1 replaces a regular regen infusion until about level 30, at which point it slowly falls behind. Both passives are quite niche. Aether Archmage is good, Necromancer is good (the regen works while undead, and the L24 mitigates their resource costs), Paradox Mage is good (Eyes of the Overseer + Gravity Well can kill people from startlingly far away). You can do some gimmick builds with the Crystal Focus, but Higher is otherwise mediocre for melee characters.

Shalore
Str penalty, Dex, Mag, and Wil bonuses; -1 hp per level, 35% xp penalty. L1 is a Dex-based speed boost; L8 is a 10% crit chance boost; L16 is a sustain that unpredictably turns you invisible; L24 reduces negative effect durations and extends positive effect durations. Shaloren, contrary to their fluff, are terrible at everything in the "Mage" metaclass because all of their buffs are sustains and they don't like the HP hit. Bad for antimagic because their active racials are spells. Best for Berserkers and Temporal Wardens, which both get giant benefits from Timeless; decent on Anorithil, Corruptor, Archer, Bulwark, Marauder, and a few similar classes; bad for Paradox Mage, and Archmage and such.

Thalore
Mag penalty, boosts to Str, Dex, Wil. +1hp/level, 35% xp penalty. Wil-based activated buff to all damage/all resist; boost to P and M save; disease immunity, blight resist, and +10% all resist; an instant summon. Good at everything, especially good if you want to pump Wil. Resist all becomes more valuable the more of it you can get, so Crafty Hands becomes better (sweet, sweet base 40% resist all). All the innates are great. Go wild, there aren't really any bad choices.

Halfling
Str penalty, boost to Dex and Cun. +2 hp/level, 25% xp penalty. Cun-based activated boost to crit rate; Luck-based evasion in response to damage; boost to all powers and saves for each enemy in view after the first; clear stun, pins, and daze and become immune to them for a few turns. Again, decent at everything, but better at hybrids or things that want to be in melee but don't have great melee resist or stun resist (which is often hybrids). Likes Lucky Day, which will jack up the L8 to a 95% dodge rate. Excellent for Arcane Blades and the Rogue metaclass.

Dwarf
Big Str and Wil bonus, Dex and Mag penalties. +2 hp/level, 25% xp penalty. Con-based boost to armor, spell save, and physical save; armor in response to melee attacks; +35 all saves; move through thin walls. Once more, good at everything. I feel it's been a bit overshadowed by Thalore recently, but with the massive saves bonus they can quite comfortably save against most enemies by the end of the game, and even have a good save chance against the final bosses. Probably best relative to Thalore on an already high-save class. Solipsist, temporal warden.

Skeleton
Dex and Str bonuses. +2 hp/level, 40% xp penalty, loses infusions. Passive boost to Str and Dex; Dex-based shield; passive reduction in harmful effect duration; heal. With the change to attack runes, losing wild infusions is less painful than it once was, though note that the ice rune can't remove silence. Generically good, but the racial tree is both very important and a generic hog. The shield becomes absurd if you pump Dex or have Aegis. Especially good for archer, temporal warden, bulwark, brawler, archmage, arcane blade.

Ghoul
Str and Con bonuses, Wil and Cun penalties. +4 hp/level, 20% xp penalty, loses infusions, 20% speed penalty, 50% stun immunity. Passive +str/con; jump to targeted space; create zone that heals undead and does blight damage to others; attack+disease with a bunch of effects. That speed penalty is really huge and IMO impairs the race a lot. Better for classes whose limiting factors are their cooldowns or low HP. Better as Necromancer (Retch heals your minions), Reaver (Carrier spreads Ghoul Rot), Alchemist (Throw Bomb cooldown is your main limit on damage).

Yeek
Physical stat penalties, massive boost to Wil and Cun. -3 hp/level; 15% xp bonus, 35% confuse immunity. Dominate an enemy; mental save, confuse immunity, and silence immunity; 15% speed bonus; instant speed weak summons. Starts with two extremely deadly tier 1 zones, and must complete both. Cannot afford to be a slow-starting class unless you want to spend hours trying to get off the island. That HP penalty can be vicious if your class also has one, though yeeks level fast enough that they will often be in rough HP parity until they hit level 50, at which point other races still have room to grow. Good for solipsist, summoner; good at many melee classes if you can get them off the island. Paradox mages antirecommended in the strongest terms.

[Pigslayer]

Ghouls are good as corruptors. Demon form eliminates your speed penalty, epidemic combos with retch, and blood grasp gives you another heal. Ghouls are probably decent with any class that has a passive speed boost (cursed, temporal warden, etc.).

[SageAcrin]

Cornac is generally tied to the value of a category point, for its worth. To a much lesser degree, it has low HP, so it doesn't make a good Paradox Mage or Archmage(though, the value of a Category point is reasonably good on both classes, so it's not a total wash).

Lots of people like Cursed for the early Rampage, but if you can actually survive the first ten levels without it, many other classes will make a better Cursed, long term-they don't need that extra Category point, long term.

Higher is basically a good option for anything that uses Willpower, and for Archmages due to the specific application of Arcane resistance. Especially good on high Willpower classes with a lot to do with Generics already-1/0/0/0 on the racial category still effectively gives you a bonus (albiet high CD) Regeneration Infusion. That's pretty good. High LoS abuse is funny, but I generally don't find a lot of major setups that reward it, personally-then again, I don't look for them, admittedly.

Thalore is a slow leveling operator. It's actually in the same situation that Skeleton was a while ago(and Skeleton has gradually become less and less impressive due to better competition)-it's the go-to "broken(RE: Very good skills)" race. It's basically good as long as blowing 10+ Generic on the racials isn't a problem, as their save skill and their resist skill are both really good. It levels slow(will level slower next version), though, so don't use it for stuff that has levels matter a lot, like Arcane Blade. But in general, it's decent to good at most things.

Shalore is...iffy. It works well with those with long buffs, that don't have bad HP penalties, and that don't mind slow leveling. This is a rough combo, and the second to worst HP isn't helpful. The times it is best are when Dex comes into the picture-the racial instant is gamebest by miles, overall, IIRC it goes over 50% Haste and can be extended with Timeless. Archer and Rogue types are the best for abusing the Haste, but the Rogues all have slow starts and extending them with the level penalty is rough. The effect extension is great on paper, and hilarious with some Prodigy effects(though not amazing, it's still pretty nice to extend some of the status resist skills), but ultimately mostly applies to Temporal Warden(Haste extension is great). So basically...Archer and Temporal Warden. Yep. In SVN, the EXP penalty's getting dropped some, so that'll help.

Halfling is a good blank slate. Lowish EXP penalty and a racial category that works excellently at L1 on all of its skills, great crit booster if you're building Cunning and good HP. It also can be used if you want anti-physical abilities(a close up fighter with poor physical damage mitigation skills, like Temporal Warden or Rogue, is a good example of this). Absolutely nothing it's bad at though.

Dwarf is similar to Halfling, but with saves instead of physical mitigation. People complain about having to keep cash around for Power is Money, but it's worth it; +35 to all saves makes it the gamebest save boost skill. Best used for extremely low or extremely high natural Saves classes-the former has intense trouble dealing with status, as every status attack will connect, while for the latter, you can actually mitigate boss saves. They make good Antimagic candidates due to a racial pseudo-teleport, too. Good HP and good EXP also make them good at the blank slate effect that Halfling has as well.

Skeleton is...not as flashy as it once was-four or five versions of buffs to every other race(and I do mean every other, I think the sole exception is Cornac, and Cornac's leveling speed has been passively buffed by EXP removal over time) have taken their toll. They're still good though-huge EXP penalty means you want to think of when you pick one, but Bone Shield is great to spectacular, depending on if you can leverage Shielding type bonuses or not, and depending on if you can build Dex or not. Reassemble is one of the best skills on Roguelike runs, and has only gotten better with Blood of Life getting less reliable to obtain, and Resilient Bones is really cool for shortening many unusual effects(like being set on fire!). Great for anything that can handle status well, also great for Dex classes...which generally can't handle status well, so I hope you get something to handle status with, or else they're not so great.

Ghouls are basically good in cases where they're either pet reliant(Necromancer is the most obvious case, and only that and Summoner are really all that pet reliant...and Summoner's not an option. Oh well.) or when you can get speed mitigation. Archmage and Corruptor get global speed bonuses which are obvious and easy ways to mitigate this, and with the huge base HP bonus Ghouls have, they make really good versions of these, though they're hard to get off the ground. But anything that can get passive or sustained speed bonuses-especially if they get active, triggered speed bonuses too-makes a good Ghoul candidate. Most of the rest isn't good for Ghouls, though there's some use to using the high base HP with extreme tank setups(Ghoul Berserker HP can break 2000, which is definitely impressive.).

Yeeks are...iffy, poor at the start and endgame. Getting off the island with some classes is a nightmare and it holds them back a lot, and their terrible HP at gamestart hurts them substantially. Their HP sorta becomes Cornac level(better than Shalore after the EXP penalty, at any rate) in the midgame, due to the level advantage, though, and they're very good in that span. Generally they have more stats and more skills than anyone else, from around Dreadfell to around the Prides, where they tend to hit L50 sometime in there and become much less fun. Best used for classes that don't get into direct combat much(Summoner; Necromancer's HP is just too low), classes where you can stack speed benefits enough to reliably get bonus turns(Archmage, if you can stand the HP, Corruptor if you can't.), and high HP mod front line brawlers(I've heard good things about Yeek Sun Paladin, and Yeek Berserker should be relatively good too.). I hate this race, as a note, but 7 HP mod drives me insane.

As a note, EXP mod isn't quite just a tedium reducer. It is true that there's enough EXP for every race to hit 50 before High Peak, but Yeeks and Cornac can hit L50 before the Prides with grinding, or during without-this is a massive survivability boost in a very dangerous period of the game, the enemies in the Pride scale up far less than you do during that time.

And for the slowest EXP mod classes, you have to go to Farportals to hit L50; Farportals have gotten less dangerous over time, but it's still very possible to get gutted by an inordinately good randomized boss. Your survivability generally goes up with better EXP mod, as such.

[Mewtarthio]

The recent boost to attack runes might bump Skeletons back up to Thaloren-tier, since it gives them instant status clears.

[Parcae2]

In general, I feel that people tend to overvalue races that require a lot of generic-point investment because they don't adequately take into consideration the opportunity cost of those generics.

Consider Thaloren, for example. Let's say that you want to play a Thalore with antimagic. You then have to spend 18ish points on Fungus and Antimagic, minimum 6 on Combat Training (Thick Skin and a point in Armor Training), and 11ish on your racial ability. That's all but about 10 of your generics gone before even touching the generics specific to your class, Psiblades, the often undervalued Survival tree, or anything from escorts - and, if you're a melee class, you also need to invest in Accuracy and one or both of the weapons damage generics. You can skimp on your racial abilities, especially the treants, but then what's the point of being a Thalore in the first place? A little bit of resist all that the nastiest foes will penetrate easily by the late game?

If you take into account the fact that most classes are simply not going to be able to afford to spend that many points on racials, then Halflings look a lot better. They get a major increase in survivability against melee opponents and a free physical wild, all for only three points. Thaloren look a lot worse - many of the classes people recommend them for (such as Cursed) already have severe generic-point shortages. Ghouls are definitely the worst race for most classes - not only are their racials mediocre, but they're also expensive, since only Ghoulish Leap is any good as a one-point wonder. You really need to have truly fantastic racials, like Skeleton, for it to be worth neglecting investment in other generics. Even then, Skeletons only really work for classes with good synergy.

[SageAcrin]

The recent boost to attack runes might bump Skeletons back up to Thaloren-tier, since it gives them instant status clears.

Nah.

It does, of course, help, very non-trivially, but I don't think it helps that much for a few reasons.

One: Reliably getting an attack rune-a specific type, yet-is surprisingly hard. I only noticed this when doing an Alchemist run, but it's still true.

Two: They don't show up much until middle and late game. This means that early game-where having a Stun cure probably matters the most-they're still out of luck.

Three: There's no dual status covering runes-which are what other races are picking up around the time a Skeleton or Ghoul is finally getting their single status coverage Rune. Admittedly, this gets partially made up for by the fact that instant damage is probably a better niche than boosting your all resistance, but it's still probably not as good.

Between all of this, it's a nice buff, but it's not quite that amazing. Phase Doors help some too, but to a lesser degree.

In general, I feel that people tend to overvalue races that require a lot of generic-point investment because they don't adequately take into consideration the opportunity cost of those generics.

Consider Thaloren, for example. Let's say that you want to play a Thalore with antimagic. You then have to spend 18ish points on Fungus and Antimagic, minimum 6 on Combat Training (Thick Skin and a point in Armor Training), and 11ish on your racial ability. That's all but about 10 of your generics gone before even touching the generics specific to your class, Psiblades, the often undervalued Survival tree, or anything from escorts - and, if you're a melee class, you also need to invest in Accuracy and one or both of the weapons damage generics. You can skimp on your racial abilities, especially the treants, but then what's the point of being a Thalore in the first place? A little bit of resist all that the nastiest foes will penetrate easily by the late game?

If you take into account the fact that most classes are simply not going to be able to afford to spend that many points on racials, then Halflings look a lot better. They get a major increase in survivability against melee opponents and a free physical wild, all for only three points. Thaloren look a lot worse - many of the classes people recommend them for (such as Cursed) already have severe generic-point shortages. Ghouls are definitely the worst race for most classes - not only are their racials mediocre, but they're also expensive, since only Ghoulish Leap is any good as a one-point wonder. You really need to have truly fantastic racials, like Skeleton, for it to be worth neglecting investment in other generics. Even then, Skeletons only really work for classes with good synergy.

I'm pretty glad you noted this, since I don't feel I really explained it in that much depth.

There's some things I disagree with, though. Ghouls can entirely ignore their last skill-it's pure niche-and the first skill on many races is of dubious value. Sounds trite, but on the other hand, the other two skills that Ghouls have are really good-this is where I strongly disagree, Retch can easily outclass most Regeneration infusions and deal radial constant damage as well, and Ghoulish Leap is a very precise leap type skill(which means it can ignore no teleport limitations, making up somewhat for the lack of going through walls).

(Skeleton's first skill doesn't strike me as particularly better than Ghoul's, either.)

But having said that, I very much agree with the principle here, and it's good to look at the Generic options for your class before deciding that Skeleton or Thalore is the god race. If you don't have really great options, so be it-Berserker, for instance, can get away with fairly low invests. But for something like Cursed, it can be a nightmare to pull out the points to sufficiently cover all those good options and still get your own class' good options. You're better off going for high impact/low invest skills.

There's also a question of curve, here. Thalore is, for instance, an amazing race if you have the Generic for it. But you need to think of how they're good-10% all resistance is amazing once you have a good layer of Thick Skin, and some other resists...but you can't even level the resistance skill until L17, and you're not likely to get more than an okay 10% drop to damage at those levels, because your other resists aren't that good. (Thalore is still good anyways, because the save skill is fixed bonuses, good bonuses, and can be leveled at L9. But make sure you have Generic to pump that with, or else it's not going to help you out earlygame much, either!)

By contrast, you could be getting 30+% boosts to critical rate with Halflings that have boosted Cunning, in the same L10~ span, for one point. Or even better, a free Regeneration infusion, on Highers that boost Willpower-Highers are a very good choice for those just starting out, because that regen is really, really handy before you have the early game down.

And, relative to the investment, there's almost no skill in the game as good as Indomitable. One point, cure basically everything a physical Wild can cure that matters, plus a short inocculation against more hits. Even counting the 1/1/1/1 invest to get there, it's still good.

As such, try to get a feel a little, for how much you need Generic, before picking a Race. Just because races are generally good or bad at something doesn't mean they are good or bad at that specific class, even if it fits the role the race seems to mesh with.

[sofocles]

wow...
that was GREAT insight.
I wish there where more races though... thinking up combos is usually a lot of fun.

[cttw]

There are more races in the addons.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Basically, Wight or nothing though, isn't it? Aren't the rest all defunct?

[tylor]

AM and Fungus are pretty decent even at 1/1/1/0 + 1/1/1/0, especially with late-game mindpower.

[wobbly]

I'd say yeek melees are definitely viable. I've got a nice yeek anti-magic bulwark going. The stamina regain from resolve running true-grit helps a lot with the low-hp problem. He's still got a long way to go (just gained the fortress, drilled the wierdling beast in a few turns) but he hasn't struggled since reaching level 2. Even a yeek bulwark is still tanky in melee & a bit of extra speed & confusion resistance is always nice.

[Parcae2]

My personal preferred races for various classes:

Alchemist: Halfling
Anorithil: Halfling
Arcane Blade: Cornac
Archmage: Cornac, Higher (if arcane)
Berserker: Shalore
Bulwark: Thalore
Corrupter: Ghoul
Cursed: Halfling
Doomed: Halfling
Mindslayer: Anything
Necromancer: Shalore
Oozemancer: Anything
Paradox Mage: Halfling
Reaver: Halfling
Rogue: Halfling
Shadowblade: Halfling
Solipsist: Yeek
Stone Warden: Llama
Summoner: Halfling
Sun Paladin: Dwarf
Temporal Warden: Shalore
Wyrmic: Halfling

Basically, Halfling crops up so often because it offers lots of hitpoints plus three great one-point wonders, so I select it whenever I pick a class that has a shortage of generic points (which is most of them) and no special synergies. Cornac is best if you have a shortage of category points as well as generics. I was somewhat surprised to realize that Skeleton isn't my first choice for anything, although it's my second choice for a lot of things. Highers enjoyed a brief moment in the sun when Arcane Permeation was imbalanced, but now they're kind of weak. I never understood the fondness for Dwarves; over the course of a long game, you need to rely on certainties, not luck, and your saves will let you down eventually. Ghouls are pretty terrible at almost everything, but they do have great synergy with Corrupter. Shaloren have good synergy with a few things. Thaloren suffer from the fact that they are best at willpower classes, and willpower classes tend to have a lot of good generic options. Yeeks are the same, plus they also have terrible HP; they're a much better option in the ID, though.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

My personal preferred races for various classes:


Stone Warden: Llama

Uhhhhhh..... Can you explain that?

[tylor]

Halflings are interesting, but their first skill depends on Cunning, third needs 5/5, and other two are nice, but not that spectacular.
And solipsists need saves for Dismissal (and have lots of Will), so Thalore is a go. Even with their shortage of generics, there is nothing better to spend on than 1/5/5 in Thaloren.