My best characters so far..

[mckwack]

As the title says, these two are my best characters so far..

Myca II the Shalore Bulwark

Bone-Fighter the Skeleton Brawler

Both was played on Normal difficulty, was finally killed at level 30; the Bulwark got killed by Slasul, the Brawler got killed by some Orc Pyromancer in the Vor armoury.

Interestingly, both are bigger than medium sized, though in-game it really didn't mean anything. And also, neither of them found Director Hompalan in the Ruined Halflings complex, even though the wiki mentioned that Shalore should meet him 100% of the time.. Oh well, never mind, I have another Shalore in Nightmare difficulty still alive and kicking..

Well, that's all for now folks.. please forgive me for grieving my two best characters here in this forum.. or maybe not..

Feel free to comment/advice/insult me on anything concerning those two, or about the fact that I focus more heavily on unlocking locked races/classes/other features than trying to reach end game.. I know, there's an add-on that would unlock everything for me, I just want to try and unlock them with my own hands, or die trying..

[Micbran]

Okay, so about your brawler...

Axe Kick is, quite literally, their best skill and probably one of the best skills in the game. An easy 3/5 or 4/5 (I can’t remember the duration breakpoint).

Combat Veteran is a meme, please refrain from going more than 1/1/0/0 in it (purely for faster resting, really. If you have points better served elsewhere don’t even bother).

You don’t need to 5/5 that early (also I hope you weren’t sustaining precise strikes). Blinding speed is amazing, you get to pretend you’re half shalore at the cost of stamina.

As for your generics... unarmed mastery is at a depressing 1/5, something that almost made me sick to my stomach. Consider 5/5 this skill asap next time.

Skeleton racials really aren’t that important, consider 3/5’ing light armor training and trained reactions over 5/5 whatever skelly racials.

Unflinching resolve is amazing at what it does, consider 4/5’ing it over the course of the game, probably by dreadfell at the very least.

Lastly, You Shall Be My Weapon (YSBMW) is a sub-par prodigy choice for Brawler. Consider Flexible Combat instead, a 60% chance to throw another punch.

[mckwack]

Thanks for the head's up Micbran. I'll keep your advice handy for my next Skeleton Brawler.

Truth be told, I leveled up my Brawler going in blindly, just assigning points at whatever skills I found interesting or I thought was needed at the spur of the moment without plans for the end-game. So yeah, it was quite horrible..

The only reason I sustained Precise Strike was because my Attack Speed was well over 100% from some equipment (Mighty Girdle + Snow Giant Wraps set I think), so even with the penalty from PS it was still over 100%. I though it was worth it, even though I had to remember to drop PS whenever I swap my Wraps for something else.

I was rather conflicted between max-ing the skelly's racial or upping Light Armor and/or Unflinching Resolve.. will keep that in mind for my next one.

YSBMW was chosen purely because my skelly has become gargantuan somehow.. I did consider whether I should take Flexible Combat or Giant Leap first, but curiosity got the better of me, so yeah..

Speaking of, I have another Brawler still alive and kicking on Nightmare Roguelike:

Mel'Inda the Cornac Brawler

Another fun char to see if I could get my hands on the Bikining it happen! achievement..

I'm not sure whether it was the Nightmare difficulty or some XP bonus because I play a Cornac, but she managed to level up all the way to 7 merely from finishing Trollmire (including Bill) AND the Unknown Tunnels. Lessee if I could apply your advice on her and survive all the way to the end...

[Micbran]

You had 125% (base) attack speed due to snow giant wraps being leather gloves, nothing to do with the set bonus. Precise strikes lent you about one level's worth of combat accuracy (17 accuracy) and 8% crit chance. Not too bad (and acc is nearly irrelevant because lol perfect strike), but it puts your attack speed down to 115%. The average fight tends to last no more than 5 bumps, in that time, 125% attack speed will have granted you an extra turn to attack, so you'll be able to do 6 attacks in that 5 turn timeframe. With 115% attack speed and 5 bumps you DO NOT get that extra bump in 5 attacks. This is important because the main point of using leather gloves (they have shit base damage) is the increased attack speed (and of course, the procs which is why the attack speed is so nice).

[mckwack]

Ah.. so that's how it goes.. please forgive my n00b ness.. I haven't been researching the game mechanics much, relying on my knowledge of other Roguelike games I've played before to hopefully survive my next bump (w00t! no corpse! how am I going to eat.. that kind of stuffs.. )

[mckwack]

Hi guys! It's me again. Just want to let you all know of my second run using a Skeleton Brawler, if anyone is interested:

Bone-Fighter the Skeleton Brawler

.. the name is not very imaginative, I know, but I like that name, so..

Anyway, this time I try to follow Micbran's advice above as best as I could. I also upped the ante and make it a Nightmare Adventure.

Strangely, I found another size-enhancing equipment (only +1 belt actually), so this time around I decided to take advantage of my size-enhanced brawler and took the Grappling tree at level 10. I've been having fun trying to Grapple most opponents, from the smallest critters to the huge-sized ones and do the Take Down on them.. even good old Norgol seemed to have been reduced to a teddy bear once I had him in my grasp..

Let's see if I can find another size-enhancing equipment again so I could try to Grapple'n'Take-Down one of them gargantuan dragons..

edit: ever since I found that randart heavy armor, all light armors seems to have become moot in comparison.. hopefully I could find some better randart light armor somewhere along the way.. and no good gloves either yet, except for Flamewrought and Sludgegrip (which I just found during my last dungeon run, by the way), only gauntlets.. me sad..