Make Combat Training available to all classes at start

[Parcae2]

As the matter currently stands, Combat Training is easily available and the cost is meaningless ... if you know where to get it. Making it available at the start would make no difference to gameplay in the main campaign (and Infinite Dungeon/Arena aren't balanced anyway), but would make the game slightly more noob-friendly.

[Grey]

I agree, though on some classes (like Archmages) it would only be 0.7 mastery.

[edge2054]

Learning shoot the first time you equip a ranged weapon would make sense too. I understand why it's a talent but I had a friend that was new to the game recently ask me, how do I shoot this sling? And I had to reply, you have to learn how first.

It closes off options. Not for veteran players who know where to go but when the world is new and mysterious it's kinda a big deal.

[Grillkick]

I don't know about that. I recently met a guy who collects well-made bows. I had never shot one before, so he offered to let me try his shooting range outside (this guy is seriously into it). Believe me- you have to be shown how to shoot properly. Even after being taught I still can't hit even a milk jug with any degree of consistency.

[bricks]

I don't know about that. I recently met a guy who collects well-made bows. I had never shot one before, so he offered to let me try his shooting range outside (this guy is seriously into it). Believe me- you have to be shown how to shoot properly. Even after being taught I still can't hit even a milk jug with any degree of consistency.

I have trouble believing that bows/slings are artifacts of bizarre and unknowable nature, but I can pick up any old magical item and activate it to teleport away or conjure light, not to mention wield all sorts of melee weapons with at least passable efficacy. It's a game, after all.

[edge2054]

I understand the logic in it, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying it limits options. When the game is new Last Hope is a far off mysterious place. For people who've been around the block a few times it's no big deal but it really closes doors for new players.

[Grillkick]

@ Edge- I see your point, without getting into it with Bricks lol

I think a good solution would be to just have the combat training options available in the shops of every starting town instead of exclusively Last Hope. This way it is just about inevitable that new players would see the options while everyone else doesn't have to clutter up their skill trees with categories they'll never take.

[Parcae2]

Wait, who doesn't take Combat Training?

I think that the tree has issues of its own - it's all boring passives and the fact that everyone takes at least one rank in Armor Training is not good - but if it's going to be there, I don't think there's any reason to make people do something boring and routine to get it.

[Sirrocco]

I'm going to have to argue the other side on this one. As you've said, this is really only for the new players, and only for those playing classes that don't start with Combat Training already. I'd say that in many ways, Combat Training is something of a trap for those classes - at least at the beginning. Sure, eventually you might want to experiment with melee alchemist builds and the like, but that's already taking you out of the "raw newbie" phase. Admittedly, armor training and toughness can be important skills in the long run for almost anyone, but for your first 20 deaths or so, you're not really getting far enough for toughness to matter all that much, armor is more of a question than an answer, and it seems like it would be more of a distraction than anything else.

[getter77]

Perhaps give it to all classes, mages at a slightly lower potency level, then just have the trainer investment be a more costly enhancement to it? Surely down the line I'd imagine there to be trainers of various sorts afoot in all major towns and scattered around the worldmap not unlike the Alchemists are presently

[bricks]

Are players really prone to choosing sub-optimal builds like a melee alchemist? Even outside of roguelikes, where poor character builds are rarely discouraged and often punished. There's nothing (maybe a loading message?) to direct the player to Last Hope, nothing to suggest that talents/categories can be purchased from trainers, and not a single other place in the game where you can purchase talent categories. Further, with a meager amount of gold, you can pretty much get this category right after starting.

Personally, I was a little annoyed when I discovered that I could have, for a few gold and a generic point, equipped some nice artifact equipment on my non-physical class characters. If the point is to discourage certain classes from using armor, then how Fatigue interacts with talents needs to be examined.

Alternatively: remove Combat Training as a trainable talent category, and allow all classes to wear all levels of armor. The strength requirements and fatigue penalties should be enough to motivate when armor is worn, and if necessary, increase the effects of fatigue, and let the Armor Training talent reduce the effects of Fatigue.

[stinkstink]

New players are very prone to making suboptimal Alchemist builds already, due to Heat being misleadingly more powerful than bombs at low levels. I don't think Combat Training would change that.

[Parcae2]

bump as per DG's request

[SageAcrin]

Firstly, I object to the idea of off-classes getting potentially abysmally low Combat Training. Archmages don't need really low Combat Training, they have bad synergy with all of the skills in the category except Thick Skin. All it does is shut down odder builds. 1.0 for most people works well as it stands, with higher category values being a selling point for combat classes(be...sides Wyrmic for some reason. Wyrmic's 1.0 there always makes me unhappy, even if it is sorta believable plotwise...).

As to the main question...well. Everyone in the game likes Thick Skin, and missing out on that option is probably a bigger newbie trap. Mages, if anything, benefit more-often a mage will build nothing but Willpower and Magic(Or Cunning and Magic, depending on the mage type) for their main offense, or someone like Doomed who builds Willpower and Cunning, so they can both easily field the Con to have better survivability. A newbie that doesn't know about that store will lose out in that way.

Does that counterbalance the occasional crazy person that doesn't understand Fatigue, buys up 4 Armor Training for their Archmage, doesn't think of Disruption Shield in order to make that sort of work, and ends up wasting three(or so) points? ...Yeah, I think it does.

I would support making it just a universal base unlock, on this reflection. I think the upsides outweigh the downsides, and if people are genuinely doing things like making a magic user and then sinking a ton of points into, say, Knives, consistently and without a gameplan...that kind of player wasn't going to get that far anyways, likely.

[Sirrocco]

I don't actually think that missing Thick skin is a newbie trap. One or two points in thick skin doesn't make a whole lot of difference when you're too low level to be stacking a whole lot of resist on your gear - and with the con requirements, you need to have a decent level before you can grab all that many points. I figure, by the time someone is good enough to consistently get to a level where Thick Skin starts really pulling its weight, they should have found out about the combat training already.