High resists are kind of bad if you have low saves (or things have really high power on higher difficulties) due to the spell cross tier effect taking so much resistance off.Effigy wrote:Regarding healing/defenses, I think there are two general strategies that work:
1. Have a high amount of armor/resists or other damage mitigation, and a way to quickly regain health (such as Regen infusion plus Wild-gift/Fungus). Having a large life pool also helps avoid one-shot deaths, although your defenses should generally preclude those from happening on Normal difficulty.
2. Have large damage shields or health pool, and either do enough damage to kill most threats in a few turns or have reliable escape tools to reset your life/shield if you can't kill the target fast enough.
Both strategies are totally viable and which is better will mainly depend on the class you pick.
New player Cliff Notes
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Re: New player Cliff Notes
Re: New player Cliff Notes
True, but it's also easily removed. Especially if you have a Wild (magic).
Re: New player Cliff Notes
Its a cross tier effect, any Wild will do.
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Re: New player Cliff Notes
Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought Wild only removed cross-tier effects of the same type.
Re: New player Cliff Notes
Oh, you are correct.
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OrionJAnderson
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Re: New player Cliff Notes
Use the shops!
1: Zigur (the antimagic town) and Shatur (the Thaloren town) both have shops that sell "torcs", which are equippable tools with powerful abilities. They are extremely cheap. You may be able to clear the first floor of your starting dungeon, leave, and buy a torc before you hit the second floor. You could find a "kinetic shield" that makes you mostly immune to physical and nature damage for seven turns, or a mindblast torc that does around 80 damage in a beam on a low cooldown. Either one will makes the starting dungeons trivially easy in most cases.
2: Inscriptions. Most of your starting inscriptions will be really bad. The starting wild infusion is really good, but the starting regen is terrible. It heals you for 60 HP. If you check the shops (including the infusion shop in Zigur which is hidden way in the upper-right), you can often find regen infusion that heal 200+. After you clear your first dungeon, you can usually afford to buy one, so.. do that. Soon after, replace the 50-point heal infusion with a teleport rune, mental wild, freeze rune, shield rune, or bigger heal.
3: Float points. Remember that when you go back to town, you can remove the 4 most recent class points you've spent (and 3 most recent generics). If you do most of your damage with active skills, you really want to have 3-4 points in your main attacks. As you level up, you generally get access to new attacks that are better than what you had before. (Actually, a lot of the starting level-1 skills are so good you'll use then all game; it's the level 4 skills that tend to be worse than the level 8 and level 10 ones). Crank up your best attacks to 4/5, but keep the points flexible. When you level up, go back to town, pull all the points out of your attack, put one into a utility skill you'll use all game, then put the points back into your attack. That way, when you finally get a better one, you can jump out of your old attack for good.
4: Save points. You may find that at level 6 or 7 there's nothing amazing for you to spend points on. Remember that you can undo the last 4 points, but if you have 6 points available, consider spending 4 and saving the last 2 until you hit level 8 and unlock new stuff to spend them on. Sometimes you may want to save points for level 10 or 12 also.
5: Unlock a class skill category at level 10. It's really tempting to go for a bonus inscription, and in most cases an extra infusion will help a LOT more at level 10 than 1 point in a new skill. The problem is that when you're about level 17, you may run out of skills you want to improve and find yourself hoarding skill points until you get your next unlock at 20. Obviously, some classes have so many great skills it's not a problem, but if you go for an inscription makes sure you have somewhere to put your next 10 skillpoints.
1: Zigur (the antimagic town) and Shatur (the Thaloren town) both have shops that sell "torcs", which are equippable tools with powerful abilities. They are extremely cheap. You may be able to clear the first floor of your starting dungeon, leave, and buy a torc before you hit the second floor. You could find a "kinetic shield" that makes you mostly immune to physical and nature damage for seven turns, or a mindblast torc that does around 80 damage in a beam on a low cooldown. Either one will makes the starting dungeons trivially easy in most cases.
2: Inscriptions. Most of your starting inscriptions will be really bad. The starting wild infusion is really good, but the starting regen is terrible. It heals you for 60 HP. If you check the shops (including the infusion shop in Zigur which is hidden way in the upper-right), you can often find regen infusion that heal 200+. After you clear your first dungeon, you can usually afford to buy one, so.. do that. Soon after, replace the 50-point heal infusion with a teleport rune, mental wild, freeze rune, shield rune, or bigger heal.
3: Float points. Remember that when you go back to town, you can remove the 4 most recent class points you've spent (and 3 most recent generics). If you do most of your damage with active skills, you really want to have 3-4 points in your main attacks. As you level up, you generally get access to new attacks that are better than what you had before. (Actually, a lot of the starting level-1 skills are so good you'll use then all game; it's the level 4 skills that tend to be worse than the level 8 and level 10 ones). Crank up your best attacks to 4/5, but keep the points flexible. When you level up, go back to town, pull all the points out of your attack, put one into a utility skill you'll use all game, then put the points back into your attack. That way, when you finally get a better one, you can jump out of your old attack for good.
4: Save points. You may find that at level 6 or 7 there's nothing amazing for you to spend points on. Remember that you can undo the last 4 points, but if you have 6 points available, consider spending 4 and saving the last 2 until you hit level 8 and unlock new stuff to spend them on. Sometimes you may want to save points for level 10 or 12 also.
5: Unlock a class skill category at level 10. It's really tempting to go for a bonus inscription, and in most cases an extra infusion will help a LOT more at level 10 than 1 point in a new skill. The problem is that when you're about level 17, you may run out of skills you want to improve and find yourself hoarding skill points until you get your next unlock at 20. Obviously, some classes have so many great skills it's not a problem, but if you go for an inscription makes sure you have somewhere to put your next 10 skillpoints.
Re: New player Cliff Notes
I agree with the most of those suggestions, but point #5 is really class dependent.
For most classes, I find an inscription unlock at level 10 is a lot more useful than a category unlock because you usually don't have enough class points yet to get everything you want for the categories that are unlocked by default. An inscription unlock provides a powerful tool without resource or talent point pressure. That being said, some classes have really good options for category unlocks at level 10 (e.g., getting Time Shield on an Archmage or Chronomancer).
I think the big takeaway is, plan out your character build instead of just grabbing whatever looks good when you get a new category point. Gaining something now may not be worth giving up something else 8 levels from now. I find it helpful to plan out my endgame talent levels, stats, prodigies, and category unlocks before even making the character, but I realize not everyone wants to go to that extent of planning. Just having a general idea of "I want talent X by level Y" will help you know which categories to unlock at which level, and also help you get the talent prerequisites by that level.
For most classes, I find an inscription unlock at level 10 is a lot more useful than a category unlock because you usually don't have enough class points yet to get everything you want for the categories that are unlocked by default. An inscription unlock provides a powerful tool without resource or talent point pressure. That being said, some classes have really good options for category unlocks at level 10 (e.g., getting Time Shield on an Archmage or Chronomancer).
I think the big takeaway is, plan out your character build instead of just grabbing whatever looks good when you get a new category point. Gaining something now may not be worth giving up something else 8 levels from now. I find it helpful to plan out my endgame talent levels, stats, prodigies, and category unlocks before even making the character, but I realize not everyone wants to go to that extent of planning. Just having a general idea of "I want talent X by level Y" will help you know which categories to unlock at which level, and also help you get the talent prerequisites by that level.
Re: New player Cliff Notes
There is no hard and fast rule as to whether an inscription or a class unlock is better at level 10. For one thing it depends on race. Then not only is it very dependent on class but also on class build. Different builds in the same class can heavily favor a class unlock while the other favor an inscription.Effigy wrote:I agree with the most of those suggestions, but point #5 is really class dependent.
For most classes, I find an inscription unlock at level 10 is a lot more useful than a category unlock because you usually don't have enough class points yet to get everything you want for the categories that are unlocked by default. An inscription unlock provides a powerful tool without resource or talent point pressure. That being said, some classes have really good options for category unlocks at level 10 (e.g., getting Time Shield on an Archmage or Chronomancer).
I think the big takeaway is, plan out your character build instead of just grabbing whatever looks good when you get a new category point. Gaining something now may not be worth giving up something else 8 levels from now. I find it helpful to plan out my endgame talent levels, stats, prodigies, and category unlocks before even making the character, but I realize not everyone wants to go to that extent of planning. Just having a general idea of "I want talent X by level Y" will help you know which categories to unlock at which level, and also help you get the talent prerequisites by that level.
By and large I would say more often than not the inscription is the more useful and for some people its actually more useful while also not being the most optimal.
The discussion/analysis and even striving for the most optimal allocation of cat points is pretty much beyond a newer player's purview.
Planning out your build is a good idea. This game's class structure basically favors planned out builds. However at the same time newer players can't really plan their builds out right since they will have little idea what stuff is important when. For example I usually feel pretty fine delaying magic condition removal, this is not something I expect a newer player to really have a good feel for and may not even have any real clue.
Suffice it to say either direction at level 10 can be the right choice. The only thing I would say is try to know WHY you are going that direction.