Summoners and You: A Guide for Beginners

[Nimmy]

Thanks for the guide !. Just won for the first time, using it, with the following variations suggested by Nivrax:

- Cornacs are amazing for AM summoners. You need all 5 category points for max infus slots, Fungus and 2 trees, and I value those way more than what other racials give.
- Earth Eyes is amazing at 5 points. It grants Telepathy all which is HUGE for class that don't need line of sight to fight enemies, allows for very safe scouting ahead in tough places like Lake Nur 3, Dark Crypt or High Peak.

I went Cornac AM (not really for the 5 category points, but for the 20% XP boost compared to dwarves), and Earth eyes 5 + Meditation is indeed wonderful for a summoner. There is an other winner a few days ago also with Earth eyes 5 + Meditation on, and I think this should be discussed in the first post.

Also at the end, I did not max Ancestral Life: the equilibrium gain is ridiculous when you have meditation all the times, so it's 5 points to gain a turn. At the end I used my remaining points into Elemental Harmony. Not sure about it, though.

[Rutee]

The guide is generally pretty good, but I think your races bit can use some work. Cornac is pretty excellent for both new players and veterans. The starter category point can buy you an infusion slot early, giving another panic button while you progress, while class points are tight. Getting to 5/5 infusions is always useful. Veterans can leverage that slot further by getting the Taint of Telepathy from Urgol of Last Hope, which, well, gives you telepathy: all while it's active. You don't always find a telepathy: all item, so this helps.

Thalore gives Resist-all: This is crucial before you learn layouts and vaults well enough to blindly summon into them, and is useful even when you do unless you have literally flawless gameplay (which obviates the use of a guide at any rate). Treants are much better meatshields than Wayists, and are still instant.

[Faeryan]

Beautiful guide! I especially like the way the skill levels in each talent were explained thoroughly.
Also there were actually some generally nice tips I didn't know that work for all classes.

This really made me wanna play summoner that before has felt like second least interesting class to play.

[kestell]

I'm not sure if resilience is really worth it.

I like the summons dying because then I can summon a new one, and all of the new summon's abilities are available.

Detonate helps and also resets one summon - which is nice.

[kestell]

Ultimately, you only have so many generic points to spend - if my calcs are correct it's 46 or 48 if you build complete that Alchemist Quest.

Call of the wild
Meditation/Natures touch/Earth Eyes/Nature's balance
1/5/1/5
Combat training
Thick Skin/Armor training/Accuracy/Weaponmastery/Knife Mastery
5/3/0/0
Anti-Magic
Resolve/Silence/AM shield/Mana Clash
5/1/5/0
Fungus
Wild Growth/Fungal Growth/Ancestral life/Sudden growth
5/1/5/1

The above build uses 43 points - which leaves only 3 to put into racial trees, armor training, Earth Eyes or mana clash - This is one of the main reasons Cornac is awesome for summoner.

[Atarlost]

You're over-pumping the first fungus talent. If you run two regen infusions (which you have to do to get constant regen since 10 cooldown infusions don't spawn) you only need it at half of ten less than the average cooldown of your infusions. That's only 1 point if you find a couple good 12 cooldown infusions or 2 points if you find 13 or 14 cooldown infusions or a 13 and a 15. You shouldn't need more than that. That's another 3 points saved, 4 if you're willing to tolerate breaks in your regen.

[SageAcrin]

The flipside to that is, if you get a good 12, 5 at 1.3=6 bonus turns=11 turns of regen.

You can get by with one Regeneration quite easily, if it's running 11 turns out of 12, by capping out the first skill.

I'd more question the five points in AM Shield. I've never felt like that's useful; If you're on higher difficulties, AM Shield isn't powerful enough to save you from major damage and is probably not worth the effort, and if you're on Normal or lower, AM Shield does fine at 3.

Capped out Nature's Touch is similarly questionable(you have Fungus and Turtle's heal, and 3 gives very solid returns), and Nature's Balance, while good, is never actually necessary if you want something to ditch for racials-sure, you reset cooldowns, but in general, your Equilibrium matters somewhat more in my experience.

Oh, and the generic is higher than that. 40 from levels, 1 initial, two preset to Heightened Senses and Meditation(which you can remove on creation if you want)=43, +2 Arena, +1 Sandworm Queen Heart, +3 from final bonus=49, +2 from possible potion.

So 49/51, though some of it is only very late. There's enough there to scrape up one good racial pretty easily, in short.

[Sirrocco]

...and I'd have other feedback.
- I think that 5 in AM shield is *great* for normal. Sure, it's not worth it in NM+, but the more you crank it, the less you have to worry about (as long as you can keep your equilibrium up).
- I'd argue that you really don't need more than 1 point of armor training. Your stat points are going into con, will, and cunning, which means that your equip stats are coming off of items. In general, your best main armor is going to be robes or leather - that's where the majority of the mindpower boosting stuff is, and it lowers fatigue (see "keep your equilibrium up"). You'll never use shields. The first point of armor opens up enough gear that I could see it beign worthwhile anyway. (heck, I'd do it for spellhunt remnants alone). The next two, though, are basically wasted points - except for those few occasions where you decide to wear heavy armor, they give you nothing.
- I see no reason to put more than 1 point in resolve. It's interesting, but a healthy antimagic shield basically renders it obsolete in normal, and the fact that you have to take a hit first renders it obsolete in NM+
- Echo SageAcrin on Nature's Touch. It goes up with mindpower, and your'e pushing mindpower. You won't need 5 points in it.
- Not sure about the third fungus skill, but I know that the equilibrium regain on it is a little funky - I think that for summoners without an extra cat point it caps out at 3 for 3 and then doesn't increase - meaning that you might as well save those two points, since the speed boost certainly isn't worth it.

On the flip side, you forgot about mindstar mastery, and Silence can actually be worth pumping. I'll also note that every tree you listed here is available to all antimagic Wilders - and Call of the Wild is the only one that isn't available to every Antimagic character out there. It's hardly an argument that Summoners in particular are generic-starved.

[morganp]

I thought equilibrium was unaffected by fatigue?

[RedFeather]

Just wanted to mention how incredibly useful I found this guide -- I'm a new player, only been playing for a couple of weeks. Prior to this guide, I'd only ever reached Dreadfell once, and that time I lost my last life almost as soon as I entered. With this guide, I got Against All Odds the first time I ever met Ukruk. Easily. Just an amazingly powerful character (some lucky drops helped, of course)

[Sirrocco]

It certainly was the case at one point that equilibrium was independent of fatigue, but I believe that that is no longer the case.

[breadsmith]

It may be affected by fatigue in 1.05, but it still seems to be unaffected in 1.04

[Doctornull]

It certainly was the case at one point that equilibrium was independent of fatigue, but I believe that that is no longer the case.

As of 1.0.5f it is indeed the case.

Fatigue does not affect Equilibrium costs.

This is super easy to test.

[Sirrocco]

Ah? I've been misinformed then. Good to know. I still don't think that you need to be wearing the heavier armors. In general, summoners are going to want summon boosts (mindpower) more than survivabiity, and summoners shouldn't be getting into melee - particularly not if you're skipping mindstar mastery. That basically means that most of the armors you'll want to wear are robes, with possibly a few leathers.

Does meditation still reduce summon damage? If so, is perma-meditate really worth it?

[Faeryan]

Does meditation still reduce summon damage? If so, is perma-meditate really worth it?

It does, by half. At least on normal I used to have it on nearly 100% of the time only turning it off for some tougher opponents that refused to go down fast enough.

It's not overly tough to toggle it on and off when needed but having it on constantly doesn't really matter that much (again only on normal, wouldn't know about other difficulties)