conventional / unconventional wisdom / tips / tricks / etc

[rayultine]

Hey everyone,
I was wondering if people thought it was a good idea to try to compile some short and un-obvious tips & tricks in the game into a stickied thread. The AUDACITY of someone with less than 10 posts suggesting such a thing. But hey, I finally won yesterday so I'm feeling good! It could kind of be a companion piece to the Dumb Questions thread? It would be kind of cool to have a non-spoiler/non-opinion list of facts that have blown my mind while playing or reading the forum/wiki. Here are some examples:

-You can hold a dagger (or mindstar?) in the offhand when armed with a sling
-Rogue/Shadowblade/Marauder classes Deadly Strike is an instantaneous attack! (edit: schooled by nate, Cursed Slam is not instantaneous!)
-Cursed class Blindside can go through walls!
-Learning Dream Walk is awesome teleport escape route for antimagic
-Shadowblade class Shadowstrike gives automatic ranged crit to level 4/5 Illuminate!
-Escort talents can be given to golems
-You get three allocatable stat points whenever you have an out of body experience (Slave compound, dreams - maybe this one's a bit spoiler-y?)
-Don't forget most (if not all?) undead bosses are unable to heal

What else ya got?

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Golems (and other summons) can be leashed to the ground, or to an escort, rather then to you, causing them stay with X distance of there leashed target (or tile), rather then following you. This can be useful if you want your golem to stay behind and block a corridor while you run, or bottle up an escort while you clear the level. Works less well for other summons (wilder summons have a duration, not always helpful, but again, I believe you can leash them to the ground; and thought forms forcibly warp to you once you pass X number of tiles away. Shadows would work, but are so squishy, they don't make effective stopgap measure.) Similary, you can force them to attack specific targets by assigning them one. Skilled micromanagement can DRASTICALLY improve the usefulness of any summon, be it golem, wilder, shadows, thought forms, clones, etc.

Really not intuitive on how to do this, but it helps. (Right click and interact) Similarly, you can adjust how they use there talents, and if you switch control to one of your summons directly, you can adjust how your normal character behaves when you aren't controlling them as well. (The latter is most useful for alchemists.)

[rexorcorum]

-You can hold a dagger (or mindstar?) in the offhand when armed with a sling

Technically yes for both, but the offhand weapon negates the speed bonus from Rapid Shot for instance (I was using nate's Chronometer addon to actually discover that). Wearing a shield with the sling though is ok in this regard.

EDIT: OOPS, overdid myself See nate's reply below, sorry for the unchecked assumption.

[nate]

Rex, did you verify that behavior by checking turn counts? It might be a weird situation that the chronometer addon doesn't handle correctly. I'll have to investigate.

rayultine, slam is not instantaneous, just did a double check to verify. You might have reached the conclusion because if the conditions aren't right for it to activate (no adjacent targets), it won't.

EDIT: yup, it's Chronometer that's incorrect. Characters use the slowest attack speed of the weapons they use to make a melee attack, but wielding a slow off-hand melee weapon won't impact ranged speeds. I'll fix chrono soon.

[rayultine]

rayultine, slam is not instantaneous, just did a double check to verify. You might have reached the conclusion because if the conditions aren't right for it to activate (no adjacent targets), it won't.

I reached that conclusion because I occasionally lapse into habits of poor reading comprehension. Hey, I'm a nate, too. Cheers!

[Amphouse]

Non-ranged characters can still equip quivers and pouches to increase their stats. Played for a long time before I realised this.

[SageAcrin]

But no quivers and pouches actually give bonuses to stats.

(IIRC the stuff that looks like they might, like the +damage to specific races, still don't, they just boost their own damage.)

[Amphouse]

But no quivers and pouches actually give bonuses to stats.

(IIRC the stuff that looks like they might, like the +damage to specific races, still don't, they just boost their own damage.)

Uh...really? What about the stuff under "When wielded/worn"? Like resistance penetration? That only effects shots?

Why do I keep seeing people in the vault with quivers/pouches, then? Like this guy: http://te4.org/characters/30614/tome/46 ... 444a416cb2

You're probably right though. It makes sense, anyways.

[lukep]

quivers " of torment" are the only ones with an on-wield effect, they should be changed.

[SageAcrin]

But no quivers and pouches actually give bonuses to stats.

(IIRC the stuff that looks like they might, like the +damage to specific races, still don't, they just boost their own damage.)

Uh...really? What about the stuff under "When wielded/worn"? Like resistance penetration? That only effects shots?

Why do I keep seeing people in the vault with quivers/pouches, then? Like this guy: http://te4.org/characters/30614/tome/46 ... 444a416cb2

You're probably right though. It makes sense, anyways.

That particular ego does in fact appear to be an exception!

That makes it a bug/oversight, though. IIRC it's very much a stated goal not to have quivers become a "real" equip slot that everyone uses, and instead just a weapon. Prevents power creep(Since that slot used to only be used for consumable ammo).

[tylor]

Three solipsyst's thoughtforms have separate cooldowns, even though it is same skill.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Aatually, I don't believe that's entirely true. When a thoughtform is destroyed, it goes on cooldown, and you can instantly summon a second one from the other two, but when I attempt to summon a third after the second is destroyed, it won't let me. Something trips a cooldown on the third one, though I'm not sure what it is.

Nonetheless, you can rapidly bring a new one out, when the first is destroyed.

[TheRani]

Aatually, I don't believe that's entirely true. When a thoughtform is destroyed, it goes on cooldown, and you can instantly summon a second one from the other two, but when I attempt to summon a third after the second is destroyed, it won't let me. Something trips a cooldown on the third one, though I'm not sure what it is.

Nonetheless, you can rapidly bring a new one out, when the first is destroyed.

Your Cunning limits how many summons you can have at once.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

But you aren't having any more then 1 out at a time. Sequence goes summon defender, defender dies (defender enters cooldown), summon archer, archer dies, and warrior is ALREADY on cooldown. Happened repeatedly on my solipsist. I *THINK* that activating one cools down all of them, but when one dies, only that one goes on cooldown, but I don't have my solipsist in front of me to test it with. (Stupid yeek winner...)

[lukep]

Mindstars do a minimum of 100% damage in the offhand, even if it would usually be reduced from a low-damage talent like flurry.