Hybrid builds (spoilers)

[Western]

What are your more successful hybrid builds?

I'm not sure how successful it will be in Ganezzar but I'm doing a hybrid thief build at the moment.

Stat line was 5/8/4/8/8/7

Constitution is now 5 though as I used Levirs machine.

Also just became arena champion and combat skills are 6 daggers, 4 throwing, 6 dodge and critical strike 6.

Civic skills are all over the place but lore is 8, sneak is 5, crafting/alchemy/streetwise/stealing/persuade/lockpicking/trading are all at 4.

Charisma 7 really helps this build.

It let's you get training from Dellar and Feng, and also helps with dialogue checks.

In Teron I mostly focused and sneaking, lock picking, crafting, stealing, bit of throwing and critical strike. This let me do the palace infiltration. Killing Cassius, the outpost supplier and the hoboes near the tower is enough body count to impress Antidas not to kill you if you critical strike all the guards.

Most difficult fight in Teron was Miltiades ambush (didn't bother fighting the street gang, probably beyond this thief at that point), only attempted it before doing the last mission, used all the alchemy, explosives I could get my hands on and was victorious with a little while luck. Didn't fight the second group, as I was able to intimidate them instead with the higher body count.

Body count, sneak, critical strike definitely make the escape out of Teron easier as well.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Western]

I was still able to finish the game by crossing the Dead River and reaching the Temple. I got a suit of power armour and mistakenly thought it would boost both dex and strength but it only appears to boost strength now.

 

[Cassidy]

An archetypical thief that can put up a fight but would rather sneak away:

5 STR 10 DEX 5 CON 7 PER 7 INT 6 CHA

Crossbow 8, Dodge 7, CS 4. Lockpicks 9. Sneak 6. Steal 5, Traps 4.

Had the toughest fight ever in this game and I should have ditched 2 points from DEX and put them on INT for more skill points and being able to wear better armors.

Spoiler

Taking down the Four Faelans while being on shrooms.

Pity there is no way to totally avoid combat in Ganezzar like a real Master Thief would.

 

[Shadenuat]

Pity there is no way to totally avoid combat in Ganezzar like a real Master Thief would.

There is if you side with Glabrio.

 

[Shadenuat]

So here's a small story about my Hybrid Praetor build which I rolled right after finishing talkerbuild.

Lucius,

a Praetor with very strong anger-related issues.

Stat line: STR 6, DEX 8, CON 6, PER 4, INT 8, CHA 8

The idea was to try low-PER build, counter low THC with moderate application of Poison, and have ~6 Persuasion which is a win-skill for Praetor in many situations, and with CHA 8 it becomes a sum of 14 which, paired with a little of Streetwise and high INT can solve whole lot of checks.
I began with 5 in Spears. The idea here was that we are going to have "free" poison-ticks with AOOs and then can actually use our 10 AP for Brave Robin Ran Away tactic. If they come to us we use Bash with shield and then they have to eat AOOs from spear again.
In Social skills I picked something like 3 Persuasion, 3 Streetwise, 2 Etiquette & 2 Alchemy. In truth you could probably just go with 5 Persuasion really and forget about Etiquette. Build had no LolCrafting to not anger spirit of Roxor.
My plan for Teron was to get Persuasion to 5 and Alchemy to 4 ASAP, then Block to 4-6.
I wanted some Heavy Armor but ended up switching from Praetor to Studded Ordu, then various Arena armors - light steel, steel Lorica; before got Champions Set.
I switched between Hasta & Steel Trident when I needed some reach (great paired with Alchemy) and burst damage (bolas to the head > mushrooms/steroids > Impale), and Buckler and largest shield when I wanted more or less THC/Ranged protection.

The metagaming story of Lucius the Angry:

Spoiler

Teron:
- Our high INT allows us to perfectly solve first Praetor quest. Bronze Praetorian Armor ahoy - CHA pays off? Lucius learns about evil of jews and cuts jews head and brings it to his Lord.
- Scouted a bit for SP, pumped Alchemy to 4. Finished second Praetor quest by killing all. Got Iron Praetor's Armor, Helmet & Hasta. Things look awesome. Brought Crassius to Lord.
- Packed in Iron and with loads of Poison I decide it's time to kill some shit. The goons in alley are hailed with [Praetor] I am Praetor! They say "we care fucks". They die.
Meltiades goon pair dies. I try to prove that I am a powerful Hybrid! So I pass speech checks on next Meltiades goons. Miss on Miltiades quest because of that. Dammit.
Ordu cunt and his crew including girl with crossbow die.
Mines. Talk to my bro Dellan, pass [Praetor], get very powerful poison. I am left with 3 dudes to kill. Die 7 times to crossbow-kiter - 4 Perception starts to hurt. Had to use 1 bolas, win finally.
Raider camp. Focus on archers, then kite everyone else with poison. Left with 1 HP, see leader die.
- Solved last Praetor quest with Persuasion. Didn't have enough Honor to find gold in village. Travel to Maadoran.

Maadoran:
- First hoarded some SP by killing asassins for Gaelius. Then it's some random quests here and there and Arena.
Arena doesn't prove a problem except last guy, as I pumped Alchemy to 6, Spears to 7 and Block to about 5. Had to combine two-handed spear with mushrooms, steroids, bolas, poison and about 3 liquid fires to win. Blue steel set, steel crafted hasta, 2 different shields. In the end found Cavalry shield somewhere with +DR and -THC and liked it most.
- Killed raiders in Tomb of Darius. Raged that didn't have PER 8 for achivo. FFS why don't they at least put something like Traps check to find secret walls and switches?
- Pyramid. Played a little with Lore 6 to see if Equip the Ring would help me with stone demon. Even with ring equpped he killed me in 2 turns max. Reloaded, Liquid Fired him. I never knew that if you throw LF right on top of enemy while standing in front of him, then walk diagonally to him, he gets stuck inside middle fire square and can't do shit unless he has reach weapon like me
- With 7-8 in Spears and 9 in Block I finally decided to do the Twisted Rune of AoD, aka random guy with hammer blocking access to Temple in Slums. Who like, does 10+ dmg with Iron Hammer against Blue Steel armor and his chums get hit like 50% of the time with attack rating of 100. With a lot of growing strong in enduring and kiting around walls of fire did it.
Raiders in Monastery were a lot easier after.

Had enough Persuasion/Streetwise to solve Ordu problem too for Gaelius, thanks to high CHA modifier.

Metagamed Lockpicking to get Lich achivo, raged a lot about Lockpicking and Perception and decided to try some other character with higher fucking Perception, since I already played Gaelius line before. And, TBH, while Persuasion is viable and allows to avoid serious trouble like going against Ubermensch Legion squad for Ordu Khan (Twisted Rune 2.0 ffs), I did a lot more fighting than used my talky skills.

Compared to talker though, I ended up with shitton of money, 4k exactly, which I instantly spent on more Liquid Fire.

tl;dr don't dump Perception.

 

[Eyestabber]

^^^

Your stats are much closer to Titus Pulo than Lucius. Dat high Charisma is right up the alley of the guy who ploughed half the womyn in the series.

 

[Shadenuat]

Surprisingly, even if you do quest for owner of the brothel, you don't get any.
No becoming 6th husband for Lady Lorenza either.
AoD has no sex lol

 

[Magnificate]

What skills civil do I need for Merchant Hybrid? Will maxing Trading be enough for non-combat quests, or not?

 

[Shadenuat]

Merchant checks are combination of Persuasion, Streetwise & Trade. Occasionally 3-4 points of Etiquette and Lore can get you some extra lines.
But while Trade is checked rarely and more often specifically in Merchant's quest line, Streetwise allows more variability and sometimes can get you out of combat in other places.
I'd pick Persuasion + Streetwise, pumping Persuasion to 6+ as main skill.

 

[SniperHF]

Spoiler

My most recent thief right before the end slides. Came up a little short on Hellgate, did the Scorpion death march.

1 more INT would have helped a bit I think.

 

[t]

What difference does it make to have charisma 5 instead of 4? I've been under the impression that the sensible values are either 4 or 7.

 

[Shadenuat]

Same build, different story, and gotta say, it faired pretty well in Teron, even giving me a few new achivos.

I embraced the suckiness of swords in the beginning and decided that alright, we're doing DoT build again. I swear I am so tired of DoT builds but they are just so great for hybrids. Next character I play, if I will play one, would be some sort of Conan Barbarian with 10 STR.
AND WITH LOLCRAFTING.

Here's how far we got with skills upon arriving to Maadoran:

Spoiler

Well you get it all judging by all the titles, but still, a breakdown:

Spoiler

- Titus began as a Mercenary with 5 points in Swords, 4 in Alchemy and 3 in Persuasion. A huge boon to us was that we began in Tavern, and there is an alchemy guy there, so Titus paid 50 gold to get lots of ingredients and poisoned his trusty gladius.
Of course because of no streetwise/PER thief stole from our master, but whatever, he ended up dead anyway. We kill assasin, then go take next job. Sadly our second master also dies (this becomes a pattern), but we get our gold from his body and stuff from Cado's guys.

- Our first points went into Streetwise. We chat with Feng, kill Cassius for him and he teaches us 3 Trading. That proves a surprisingly important skill for us later.

- I spend money on iron lorica - because I had no defensive skills to talk about for a while. With iron lorica & gladius and a funny hat I join Imperial Guards.

- Get fucked a bit on first quest - AI is not very good there. Find position closer to top of the map, so axeman goes to me, I throw net at him and solo him. That proved to be the key to victory.
I was surprised that there are no checks like INT/PER or Streetwise to not be used as cannon fodder in first quest.
At least I hoped there would be some way of ambushing trader and his guards in a more clever way.

- After initiation into Guards, Titus decides that serving in the army is fine and dandy but serving someone richer would be also nice. So we go to Dellar, and try alternative entrance to the palace. Lie our path inside, have some wine and chat with Centurion, and guy turns out nice enough to present us to Antidas. We give Antidas map, tell him he is a chosen one, give him a ring to equip and watch Feng do the thing. Get shitton of skill points.

- I decide that since I am hybrid, okay, let's see if we can get some more easy SP. So Titus comes up with clever solution of using raiders to clean the mines. But first I get gold quest since my Honor would drop after.
Of course, Titus stabs the raider guy and runs away with the money he promised to him. We also save a magical tube for later.

- Then I decide to try other side of hybrid aka hoarding combat points. First guys are as usual the ragtag team behind tavern. All this time I was hoarding points because I didn't know if I would be able to pass Legion quests. So I died to them with my 2 points of Blocking. However, I won later after finally noticing "Attack from distance" pick. If you just rush in they destroy you with aim: arms, but embracing them into sword strikes as they come to you and luring into 1-square street makes fight doable even without defensive skills.

- After dying a bit more to girl-axeman-ordy and Miltiades I pumped Block to 5. I got steel gladius somewhere, Raider Leader maybe? Titus fast talked his way out when Miltiades backstabed him again, but agreed to spare old chum.

- The hardest fight was against 3 guys who follow you from the village. Had to use 2 liquid fires and 2-3 nets. The key was keeping smith alive. Not to mention if you don't quest bugs out I think.

- After all that our skills became like on the picture above minus Etiquette that Antidas teached us I believe. We also got some training from various characters around Teron and listened to their life stories due to our 8 CHA.

Titus continued with IG line, used high CHA to get free stuff and training, high INT to win tower fight easier. Then jew-fu from Feng allowed Titus to make yet another smart career move and avoid being used as cannon fodder at the same time (multiple Persuasion + Trade checks):

But it really, really sucks to fight without Crafting. I miss all the +THC/-armor penalty stuff and my own helmets.

 

[Shadenuat]

Final stats for Titus

Spoiler

I had 100 SP in the late game and didn't know where to put them. So tried killing Agath with a hybrid but failed even with PWA. Learned that you can kite him somewhat behind pillars tho. I had no quest helpers whatsoever however.

For the most of the game I played with 6 points in Swords & 8-10 Block. I think developers should re-evaluate worth of attacking skills and critical strike in combat builds

Also a lot of IG line is broken, especially if you side with Carrinas.

I got ranks of Centurion & Legatus easily even without fighting - high Persuasion allows you to get more rep with Guards after you broker peace with Ordu, gaining rep back.

Overall build is okay for roleplaying, just get the sword for 2000 gold in Maadoran ASAP and PER won't be a problem in fighting.

Some dead people:

Spoiler

 

[Eyestabber]

Final stats for Titus

Spoiler

I had 100 SP in the late game and didn't know where to put them. So tried killing Agath with a hybrid but failed even with PWA. Learned that you can kite him somewhat behind pillars tho. I had no quest helpers whatsoever however.

For the most of the game I played with 6 points in Swords & 8-10 Block. I think developers should re-evaluate worth of attacking skills and critical strike in combat builds

Also a lot of IG line is broken, especially if you side with Carrinas.

I got ranks of Centurion & Legatus easily even without fighting - high Persuasion allows you to get more rep with Guards after you broker peace with Ordu, gaining rep back.

Overall build is okay for roleplaying, just get the sword for 2000 gold in Maadoran ASAP and PER won't be a problem in fighting.

Some dead people:

Spoiler

Any particular reason for that Charisma 8? I hear the sweet spot is 7.

 

[Shadenuat]

Dunno what sweet spot is, maybe you're right. But when I played Merchant for example I faced a lot of checks like 7+7 or 8+8, Skill+Stat sometimes, highest ranging from 14 to 16, so 8 CHA means you can leave these skills at ~6 saving lots of SP.

If only game was more consistent about using it's bloody stats with skills.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

So i reached Maadoran with 6/6 combat skills and 4 Alchemy.
I have 100 SP to distribute and need some suggestions.
Which skills would improve my Imperial guard run? Socially i am on 4 PER 6 INT 4 CHA.

 

[Shadenuat]

- Combat SP into your defensive skill until you reach 10 points.
- Alchemy to 6.
- Persuasion/Streetwise to 6, maybe Lore to 3 if you don't have any.
- You can buy unique weapons & armor around Maadoran, so check every trader, save&reload if you think item is good. Go for unique gladius if you use swords (2000 gold).
- Start going through Arena right away for sweet loot.

 

[Eyestabber]

So i reached Maadoran with 6/6 combat skills and 4 Alchemy.
I have 100 SP to distribute and need some suggestions.
Which skills would improve my Imperial guard run? Socially i am on 4 PER 6 INT 4 CHA.

Crafting is the obvious answer, no? Crafting is OP as fug.

 

[Shadenuat]

It's strong but not as strong as Alchemy and can be substituted with loot and stuff like power armor if you want more roleplaying skills.

 

[Tigranes]

Spent a long flight with a new assassin, 5/9/6/8/8/4 bow-dodge with some noncombat.

1) bow 4 dodge 3/4 alch 2 is enough for most of teron. Yes, including poisoned outpost (exterior and interior), and even cramped confines of pickpockets and aemolas. I think most hybrid builds can afford to spend most of the SP gained after char creation on noncombat, unless they want to pump alch or craft for later. Not sure if i could have handled the bandits but assassinated esberus then bodycounted the rest.

2) went into maadoran with 75sp spare, having done everything except the noblewomans house. Knocked up to 6 bow 6 dodge and it seems sufficient up to ganazzar - along with alch and craft at 4-6. Stormed the monastery, and just beat the arena champion. Most arena fights were simple enough with 5/7-tick poison and bows, tricky ones requiring liquid fire or bola+headshots. In fact the champion, given how much weaker he is rangef (and sometimes declines to throw chakra), became inevitable to kill once i had enough alchemy resources.

3) so done with all maadoran stuff sans abyss. Not sure which way to go with maadoran endgame and after, never been this far with assassins... but given how the guild basically only has 2 quests per teron and maadoran, i feel like its been fine not putting much on impersonate and even leaving sneak at 3...

 

[jagged-jimmy]

- Combat SP into your defensive skill until you reach 10 points.
- Alchemy to 6.
- Persuasion/Streetwise to 6, maybe Lore to 3 if you don't have any.
- You can buy unique weapons & armor around Maadoran, so check every trader, save&reload if you think item is good. Go for unique gladius if you use swords (2000 gold).
- Start going through Arena right away for sweet loot.

Wow 5am already...damn Maadoran is fun. Basically discovered this sword and got it, very awesome. Drastically improves combat options.
I stashed away some steel and now not sure if i should go Streetwise for some talking or Crafting for pure combat till the end. What would i exactly get for Streetwise only? Don't think i can manage to level both Persuasion and Streetwise.

 

[Shadenuat]

There are various checks for political manoeuvring around IG line (just check my Titus posts ^^^) and later you can try various playthrougs in Ganezzar (Persuasion 8 to side with house Cassus) that generally require high Persuasion+Streetwise combos.
But just having high Persuasion might also open some options and give +IG reputation.
You should be fine without Crafting.

 

[Tigranes]

Also playing an assassin, 4/10/6/8/8/4 dodge+bow. How did you do the pickpocket fight? I was thinking fire spam but didn't have the patience to try it. Bandit's with poisoned bow was quite easy, just a matter of running around and spamming poison on everybody, left Esbensus for last because he was slow as shit and easy to kite.

Fire spam is not always the best idea because you only have 3? vials of fire in Teron, so you should think about where you want to use them. Still, you can probably afford to use one here.

If fire vial: poison crossbow girl, walk back to the corner between bench and rubbish, let other 2 come then firevial them, use poison and rotating hits (hit each person with fast shots to ensure they're always ticking on poison), and you should generally be fine. 3 Dodge is usually enough not to get fucked by the crossbow girl, and AFAIK the armoured guy is a blocker, so you can use Aimed: Torso or other shots to try and get something through DR if you have spare AP. If someone's still kicking around at high health when vial is down, a bola + aimed head / arterial shots is enough to kill them.

 

[Tigranes]

For the record, a new hybrid:

Praetor
5/8/7/8/5/7
(8 DEX/PER are probably given for most of my characters, and then 7 CON for survivability/checks & 7 CHA for talking skills / training)

Teron was OK - tried to be 60% talker & a bit of a peacemaker this time, so only a body count of 8 (Behind Tavern gang, Miltiades first duo, Cassius, one guy blown up in the mine). Plenty of SP to achieve everything else through talking.
Ended with 4/4 Hammer/Block, 2 CS, 4/4/4 Etiquette/Persuasion/Streetwise, 3 Impersonate, 3 Alchemy, 3 Lore, and entered Maadoran with 40 SP spare.

I do want combat to be a viable option till the end, but avoiding crafting this time. We'll see how far talking goes.