Looking for advice on prodigies - Anorithil

[rickynumber24]

So, this is my character:
http://te4.org/characters/92538/tome/a2 ... 02ed9c5f22

It's ... only my second time that I got as far as the Gates of Morning. (My first was an aether archmage who died a horrible death when his disruption shield exploded and killed him with his own arcane resistance penetration...) She's been great: Honestly, with Hymn of Moonlight, I sometimes feel like I could clear levels just pressing Z and 5. It's not actually true, because managing negative energy is more work than that in any serious combat, but it feels that way. I got around the long cooldown times on positive energy talents by getting staff mastery. It turns out that a staff blast is a spell, and, if it crits, it triggers Corona. (I tested this with Hymn of Moonlight off, on a training dummy.) Also, with my accidentally sky-high willpower, I can easily keep it up all day, and it has better range than Searing Light. The mostly-excellent survivablity also helps because I'm not willing, at this point, to do the careful scouting that a less-survivable character would need to do. (None of the deaths are due to going around a corner and getting hosed; usually it's when I discover I don't have an exit plan after engaging, because I usually haven't needed one...)

I've got a spare cat point and an opening for a prodigy but I'm not sure what it would be best to do with them. I do have some thoughts, though, and, if nothing else, I think laying them out here might help clarify things for me anyway. While I'm here, I wouldn't complain about advice on equipment, especially since I think I have some interesting things in my bag, and I need to use or melt some of them soon in case I find other interesting things.

Cat point:
I feel like I should be spending this on an inscription. Also, I'm about to get another one in three levels. The thing is, I don't really use abilities that aren't on the bar at the bottom of the screen, unless they're sufficiently situational that I think, "I could really use something that does ... I know I can do that; where is that ability?" Unfortunately, this limits me to 18 or so active abilities because, in practice, I don't use many more than that. I've gotten around my reticence at actually *using* the more generic abilities by setting a bunch of ones with obvious use times to auto-use either on sight of enemies (speed, shield) or when enemies are next to me (all the circles except Sanctity). Actually, I think I've figured that one out by looking at my inventory again: There's a heroism infusion of the psychic which should help me kill things faster with that jaw-dropping stat boost and gives me some extra effective hitpoints.
If I can find an action slot to spare (I might; Eclipse seems to only get used for cooldowns, so it can go into the menu...), I suppose I could go for the Rune of the Rift, too. Currently, it does much better single-target damage than any of my class abilities, unlike the non-artifact runes.

Prodigies:
I've got access to all the Con/Mag/Wil/Cun prodigies by stat, but not all of them by other things. I ... accidentally killed the Grand Corruptor by picking the wrong dialog, so I didn't wipe out Zigur and can't take Corrupted Shell, and some of them are antimagic-only and stuff.
Things I'm thinking about:

• I haven't taken enough fire damage to get Cauterize. Is it good enough that I should put a point into firebeam (which I took out when I got the staff blast, tbh) and shoot myself in the foot until I qualify, or should I just hope to take enough fire damage to qualify later?
• My single biggest headache in this game seems to be confusion, because it's the only stat effect other than stun that has successfully prevented me from casting Providence. Is Unbreakable Will (which I assume cures all mental effects once every 7 turns, based on the wording) worth it, or should I just rely on my wild infusion and Timeless, which seem like they should be good enough.
• The staff blast tends to crit for ~125, and definitely will if I sink another point or two into it, so a greater starstaff set to temporal might be able to spam out slows. Rune of the Rift would work for this, too, although I don't know how it interacts with the "out of time for 4 turns".
• Speaking of temporal damage, some people seem to have been rather successful with Temporal Form, so I'm not sure if I should count that out, either.
• The Hymn of Moonlight/Corona combo absolutely guzzles negative energy when up against a group. (It also kills groups of enemies surprisingly quickly.) I assume Hidden Resources would remove the energy requirement on those abilities and let me keep blasting away, although it would prevent me from regenerating energy at the same time. I'll need to play the heroism infusion game for that, but I should probably do that anyway.

I think that's pretty much all the ones that are actually useful to me.

I am wondering a little about my equipment, too, while I'm asking for advice, tbh. In particular, that Staff of the Archlitch is looking pretty good, and I'm wondering if it's worth trading off the "greater" effect from the ego staff I'm using in exchange for slightly higher spellpower and a bonus on one of my skill sets. The only other slots that I haven't really been enormously happy with my choices (as evidenced by all the options I have lying around in my pack) are for light and tool. I've been using my current light for its mental save, primarily, with the crit multiplier being secondary. I picked my current tool for resistance penetration, but, as you can see, I have a bunch of nice artifact tools, too.

Thoughts?

Edit: Should this be in Spoilers: Celestials instead?

[Tharsonius]

Hi im not that experienced with anorithils in general, but will try to give u some general advices.

first one would be to maybe adjust ur skillbar at the bottom of the screen bigger so u have 2 rows of talents, i guess anorithil has many skills to use together with items, runes etc u will need it

since ur life/death is 1/5 by now u should really invest in stuff which keeps u alive.

2: check the infusion merchant, if he has a heroism infusion bigger than -500, use the cat point on an infusion slot. same applies for shielding runes >300 - u can use two of those, a movement infusion would maybe be even better to escape. also i would replace the phase door by a teleport rune because its a safer escape - but thats also a matter of taste, phase door ofc gives some resists

3: cauterize is a very good prodigy, and u will soon meet many fire mages which will qualify u to take it. unfortunately there i a bug in 105 which will prevent u to burn urself with a spell i guess

4: change ur amulet and use spellblaze echoes! its very strong amulet for any caster and u already have 78% crit chance

wintertide phial can clear u of mental effects, which could be better than the mediocre stats of ur current light source

try to get more life and resist (specifically fire, cold and blight) from ur items.- when ure back to last hope u can also buy the combat training tree there for 50 gold, which includes thick skin - 5/5 = 15% all res


5: watch ur chants, remember u can only use 1 at a time so u should focus ur points only on 1 of them

6: max timeless as soon as possible, its a very strong skill which makes any buffs longer, cleans u of all effects, recharges skills

for anorithil specific hints someone else needs to help

Good luck on ur game and hf

[HousePet]

Unbreakable Will is extremely useful if you don't have a mental Wild. Providence can't be used if you are silenced.
I've also found Eye of the Tiger good for the crazy cooldowns.

[rickynumber24]

Unbreakable Will is extremely useful if you don't have a mental Wild. Providence can't be used if you are silenced.
I've also found Eye of the Tiger good for the crazy cooldowns.

I've got a physical/mental (combo, admittedly) wild, but I think I've also had it get randomly put on cooldown. Then again, I've had that happen with Providence, too, so maybe that's not the greatest argument. I think I need to get better (in general) at just punching the wild when I get confused instead of trying to get Providence up. Sanctity is pretty great for silence, although there's a chicken-and-egg problem there if I don't know I'm going to get silenced.

[Mewtarthio]

Instant use abilities, such as wild infusions, can't be forced into cooldown, and confusion can't block them, either. Note that Relentless Pursuit is also instant use, so make sure to chat with Aeryn if you don't have it yet.

As has been noted, you can click the "unlock" button in the lower right corner to rearrange your UI elements and make the hotkey bar bigger. I, too, prefer playing with two rows.

[rickynumber24]

So, I managed to defeat the Sorcerers in High Peak. That makes this my first win.
As a result, I decided to sacrifice myself at the end even though I could have sacrificed the sun paladin instead, and I don't seem to have gotten a character dump update for the win.

Some thoughts and experiences:
I died exactly once after my first post, and it was sometime after I'd found the Blood of Life, so I feel justified in saying I more or less didn't die except before level 30. That one time was when I kept trying to autoexplore with a temporal stalker next to me which was invisible and trying to do its damnedest to kill me. After I figured out what was going on, I went back and murderized it. That was the only time I saw Cauterize activate. I did get down to <10% HP a few times due to alpha, but I could always put up a shield, kill whatever I was fighting and either heal or activate Providence.

I found the randart robe with its insane bonuses very early on, probably in a vault, because I shouldn't have been getting tier 4 equipment at the time. I wore it for almost the entire rest of the game, excepting right near the end when my crit rate was going off past 100% and I swapped it out for more darkness damage. Similarly, the short staff was excellent, although I didn't really end up settling on a shield. (The shield and the tool were the two slots that I was generally dissatisfied with what I was using. Unfortunately, the lunar shield didn't drop.) For awhile, I had 100% crit rate without even the heroism infusion active, never mind bunnification.

If I were to go back and do it again, I'd say that the stat priority is magic > constitution > cunning. You don't really need anything else, because of +strength equipment, so you can actually afford to max those three out relatively early. Then, if you roll high on the wyrm bile, you end up over-cap, and if you roll low you can patch it up. Similarly, I'd say that, early-game, you really need to focus on survivability. Once you're doing alright on that front, you can turn up the damage knob. If I'd done that, instead of trying to go for a balance between the two stats, I think I could have had fewer careless deaths early on, because I would have had more alpha resistance as a result. It's really amazing what kind of rooms I could stick my face into, especially if I ran away and healed up after a couple turns when it was an obvious chokepoint. (Jumpgate is great for this, and I suspect I didn't use it nearly often enough.) So, despite the early deaths, I really think that this is an amazingly survivable class, which is good, given that it lends itself to sticking its nose places and seeing how hard it gets slapped. On the other hand, at least when going with a crit-based build, you max out Hymn of Moonlight eventually and will regret any points you put into the others, as they won't be used.

One last thought: while the chant of fortress (+saves) chant is definitely the best one, there's some significant value in having at least one point in each of the next two so that you can turn on a bit of extra elemental resistance if your equipment isn't providing it. I really liked it for some of the elemental-damage-themed dungeons that didn't have much of the really nasty hex-and-curse magical disables. It's more valuable early on, because, by late in the game, you end up taking an extremely small number of hits while nuking everything in sight all at once. Firebeam, Moonlight Ray, and Starfall are all extremely efficient damage dealers when you have several points invested in them, and I liked Shadow Blast, but it didn't *feel* like it was doing stuff in the same way that dropping a 400-damage Moonlight Ray on a line of monsters did. It added to the attrition you got from having large-area circles and Hymn of Moonlight, though.

Next up: actually buy the game on steam, and try something new. I finally unlocked necromancers...

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

Went ahead and moved this into the spoilers section.