Murderous Psychopaths Needed!

[Shadenuat]

At the endgame my dagger-guy just ate shrooms and killed everyone with fast attacks before they could kill him (6 Daggers, 6 CS and 6 Dodge, 8 Crafting, Blue Steel Yatagan +crit/+passive chance).
My victims included Power Armor fight.
Hard guys went down with nets and arterial strikes.
Occasionally bringing down enemy in 2 criticals in a row was nice, but why rely on RNG when you could just use a stronger weapon?

The only weapon left to try are them javelins. Their passive looks good, but Crafting is an obvious, if not must have pick paired with Throwing - cause where do you find fuckton of steel/blue steel+ javelins?

My personal rating of weapons is:

Category A: You Need to Know How to Left Click.

- Axes. Flat bonus to damage, one-handed, two-handed, with Critical Strike or not - a solid choice. No wonder most people would probably go for axemen first when fighting groups, and disabling/killing them makes rest of the fight easier. Perception? You need no frigging Perception since you can just fast-strike everything, which gives axemen extra HP from CON.

- Bows (possibly Crossbows too, but I like Bows for easier AP distribution, until you get Bolter/Repeater/Scoped whatever). Just don't forget Alchemy and high DEX and most enemies won't even reach you. Hybrids can rely on poison, while pure fighters can use stronger bows to put accurate and devastating arterial strikes, killing enemy in 1-2 turns.

Category B: 50/50 Left Clicking and knowing what are you doing. Good for DoT builds and hybrids for extra kiting.

- Hammers. Knockdown crit is basically a free Bolas, use it. To get the most out of hammers, like from every kiting weapon you might want to invest into DEX. And have good THC to actually land Knockdowns. Meh favorite is Spiked Club - looks just like Justice +3 from Planescape, has +crit and +passive and moderate/low AP use. Diagonal-strike option is also avaible. If you rack up Critical Strike you might stun enemies for 2 turns with every knockdown, all while removing DR from their armor.

- Spears. Positioning is the key. You can do diagonal strikes even with 1-handed weapon. You can bash people back with a shield and they will have to get AOO again. You can use AOOs for free poison strikes and use all AP remaining for kiting. You can use 2-handed spear for massive damage combined with nets and bolas. Don't forget liquid fire barriers too.

Category C: You actually need to know what you are doing.

- Swords. Lots of options avaible, but without very high skill bleeding DoT is not very good. Gladius can be put into bag slot, and you also get a 2-handed weapon. Overall, I'd stick with gladius. Probably biggest advantage swords get is that they have best sellable weapon if you look at combination of price/stats, meaning you can ignore Crafting. Fine choice for hybrids with alchemy.

- Daggers. Not unplayable, but not very friendly to newbies either. You can land some devastating hits late game tho if you have high Critical Strike. Arena Champion dies in 1-2 turns comparingly easily to other weapons if you disable him and land 3-6 arterial strikes in a row with a good dagger.

- Throwing (just theory for now). Like Bows/Crossbows but need Crafting to get a lot of good ones with +CS/THC/Passive. You can use these with shield or other weapon, meaning thrower would probably outshoot bowman. I am looking forward to bashing someone with heaviest shield away and then putting a javelin into his stomach. Weaker in kiting but get chance to nullify enemy armor. Only ~3-4 ap per shot too. Can be put into Bag slots (even pilums).
Countra: bugged when poisoned, cost shitton of metal to craft, cost too much in shops.

 

[Shadenuat]

Oh wow, you can poison a friggin bow but you can't poison a stack of throwing weapons - poison applies to weapon you hold in your hand, and it's only a single one from a stack

You also need 1 lb of metal per pilum

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Regarding swords, don't know if my game versions is bugged bu Khopesh and Shamshir have a hidden +5 THC bonus compared to Gladius (and Handar). It doesn't show in the attack rating but in the % to hit the enemy during the fight, tested it against many different enemy types (dodgers, blockers, light armored, heavy armored, Agatoth etc.).

 

[Jaedar]

Oh wow, you can poison a friggin bow but you can't poison a stack of throwing weapons - poison applies to weapon you hold in your hand, and it's only a single one from a stack

Throwing weapons are pretty bad in general.

 

[Shadenuat]

Throwing weapons are pretty bad in general.

They need to fix poison thing and make them come in stacks when crafting, and lower prices for them in shops. Mechanically they are an interesting choice.

 

[Tigranes]

I've managed to beat it and I remember how hard it used to be, that's why I've been bugging Vault Dweller for months to increase its difficulty.
It's too easy considering that you walk into the home of one of the most powerful people in AoD world guarded by his elite guards. I remember when in 3-4 turns almost all of IG were decimated by Daratan guards, now the player doesn't have to do much (if anything) to win this fight. IMO it should be one of the hardest fights, maybe not as hard as them decimating in 3 turns but harder than it is now. I doubt Antidas would invite armed men if he wasn't sure he could handle them without much losses (what would be the point of killing them if he would lose all or almost all of his guards in the process?).


You won't have enough ingredients to win many fights (unless you will invest in some weapon).


Swords used to be the best weapon and you could buy very, very powerful ones (blue steel).

In the current version, my IG guy made a huge mess of the start & also got a couple of big crits, so after killing Antidas he was basically on 5 health. I decided to net Dellar and a couple of others, and then shot a few people in the back 3-4 times before deciding I might as well hide behind a pillar.

I'd think that without Dellar and Antidas, IG allies would win the battle on their own every time.

 

[Goral]

Throwing weapons are pretty bad in general.

They used to be better when throwing nets/bolas and alchemy potions depended on it. I used to invest a couple of points because it helped with the fight with Arena champion. As a thief (6-9-5-7-7-9-4) I've become a champion and a Demon slayer while having 4 daggers, 4 dodge and 4 alchemy (and 2 or 3 throwing) and was basically unstoppable because I could do the non-combat quests too (only the Abyss was closed due to my perception). But that was in February.

 

[Shadenuat]

They used to be better when throwing nets/bolas and alchemy potions depended on it. I used to invest a couple of points because it helped with the fight with Arena champion. As a thief (6-9-5-7-7-9-4) I've become a champion and a Demon slayer while having 4 daggers, 4 dodge and 4 alchemy (and 2 or 3 throwing) and was basically unstoppable because I could do the non-combat quests too (only the Abyss was closed due to my perception). But that was in February.

It feels like trying to fight ogres and bears in Baldur's Gate with a Wizard who ran out of spells and has to shoot them with 1 gp d3 damage darts with 1 weapon pick in Darts.

30 bronze darts and 10 iron knives later :

Spoiler

 

[Goral]

30 bronze darts and 10 iron knives later:[/spoiler]

I wouldn't have the patience to make a build with throwing as primary weapon. I once tried to make a really, really weak assassin (but smart) just for the fun of it - reached the "kill Lorenza" point and decided to stop because it was EXTREMELY hard. It was actually a build similar to what Lurker King wants to achieve except with shitty stats for fighting. I might try a build like that again later but the fight with Levir thugs in Temple district was the hardest fight I've ever had (and I have over 300 gameplay hours, including with BMT beta).

 

[Shadenuat]

I AM A QUEEN OF BLADES

Spoiler

Spoiler

...Didn't know that if you make 1 step to the left at the beginning you can throw a net at crossbowman. And he doesn't wear a helmet.

I wouldn't have the patience to make a build with throwing as primary weapon

I don't want to restart game but high PER and loads of points put into Critical Strike are probably mandatory (I went 9-9-8-6-4-4). When you hit but don't penetrate it's fine, but when you can't hit and passive doesn't work you're in total shit. But 10 PER (and anything less than extra 20% doesn't help much) screws build as you lose damage, ap and hp right away.
Knives are better than darts because of that, since they have higher +Passive bonus.
Pilum to the head is best but there's not enough materials to spare so have to run with 100 knives in backpack. Can also poison 1 best pilum > net/bolas > to the head it goes. Retarded but might be necessary against "bosses".

Don't know how to fix these weapons, I think either +aim per level or +aimed hit debuffs per level while keeping some of DR-negating bonus might be ok. Or some of that bow-stopping slow-down passive power.

 

[Esquilax]

-Low damage which makes for a rough beginning unless you pair it with Alchemy or Crafting (though you can find a steel dagger almost right away). Every other melee weapon group has big hitting 2H weapons to get you through.
-Passive that only works on aimed attacks.
-Needs to be paired with CS to truly shine.

That said, if you can handle the additional skill investment for CS and grind through the early fights they definitely start showing their worth and are fun to play around with. They become versatile and effective, especially when it comes to 1 on 1 fights when you surgically dismantle an opponent.

Late-game especially, daggers are unbelievable. You'll have ~50% CS chance on fairly well-armored targets with fast attacks/flurries at 10 CS. Yes, daggers need to be paired up with CS to really shine, unlike a lot of other weapon classes, but once they do, they shred enemies up in two turns. I hit Agathoth with a few consecutive arterial strikes at the end of the game (I had maxed out dagger, dodge and CS, as well as an eagle-eye neurostimulant to grant me better odds of actually hitting him), and I'd be doing 12 damage between turns thanks to how often I was landing crits.

 

[Shadenuat]

I think Perception as a stat could use a small buff for combat. Either extra 1% of accuracy per point, or a bonus to accuracy as long as enemy is away from you. Like if he's 1 tile away maybe spearmen get small bonus, and if he's very far Perception reduces penalty to THC for ranged characters.
Bonus to crit could work to, if it was some sort of a multiplier - more PER, better crit-based build.

Also +Hardeness on some throwing weapons makes no sense when you concider your choices, since +passive increases chance to negate armor completely.
It would make more sense to make at least things like "barbed" knives with more damage against unarmored and "armor piercing" pilums with no crits but ability to penetrate DR.
But easiest way to buff Throwing would be to make it increase accuracy/duration/crit chance/dmg of all throwing consumables without touching their default stats.

 

[Sheepherder]

- Bows (possibly Crossbows too, but I like Bows for easier AP distribution, until you get Bolter/Repeater/Scoped whatever). Just don't forget Alchemy and high DEX and most enemies won't even reach you. Hybrids can rely on poison, while pure fighters can use stronger bows to put accurate and devastating arterial strikes, killing enemy in 1-2 turns.

Alchemy is nice to have, but as a bowman, you can do well with Bows, crits and dodge, without investing general SP into civil skills. Don't expect to kill the tentacles tho.

 

[Tigranes]

Late-game especially, daggers are unbelievable. You'll have ~50% CS chance on fairly well-armored targets with fast attacks/flurries at 10 CS. Yes, daggers need to be paired up with CS to really shine, unlike a lot of other weapon classes, but once they do, they shred enemies up in two turns. I hit Agathoth with a few consecutive arterial strikes at the end of the game (I had maxed out dagger, dodge and CS, as well as an eagle-eye neurostimulant to grant me better odds of actually hitting him), and I'd be doing 12 damage between turns thanks to how often I was landing crits.

Hrmph. I'll retry daggers later, and maybe I'll learn to git gud.

Bows are a breeze thus far. 6/6 Bow/Dodge with 4 CS, and at 7 Alch/6 Craft I was killing everything with few problems. Jacked up Alchemy to 10 just for the Amaranthus Extract, but the guy was still able to push 6 Streetwise, 10 Lore, and maybe 6 Lockpicking if I want it. Bows just seem very flexible due to zero-AP reloading and 3 different 'tiers', so combined with alchemy (Bolas & Fire, later neuros) it's easy to manage different problems.

 

[Esquilax]

Hrmph. I'll retry daggers later, and maybe I'll learn to git gud.

Use the assassin background, as there are lots of training opportunities (each text adventure kill gives you a +1 to CS chance, you'll get like an extra 15% in crit chance by the end of the game) and a CS skill boost in Teron to help you out. A build that I really like is [STR 5] [DEX 9] [CON 7] [PER 8] [INT 7] [CHA 4] - you don't need much strength for this because once you get your skills up, you'll be carving everyone up with criticals. It's fucking brutal. I like keeping CON high because I like to be strong defensively, though you can fiddle with that as you like. The high perception is great for giving you a boost to aimed strikes, which you will be using all the time once this build starts hitting its stride.

If a guy is wearing tough armor, use torso strikes to get his CON down. Every successful crit to the torso increases the chance of each subsequent crit by 10%. So the game plan once you git gud is to go for torso strikes to wear down the enemy, then arm/leg strikes to either disarm them or slow them down. I am telling you, daggers are fucking insane, they are very powerful.

 

[Tigranes]

That's pretty much what I had, last time, assassin & attributes, and I got by OK, but by Maadoran I simply wasn't feeling the big boost. I suspect I wasn't leveraging the CS/aimed synergy properly, so I"ll try again.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

That's pretty much what I had, last time, assassin & attributes, and I got by OK, but by Maadoran I simply wasn't feeling the big boost. I suspect I wasn't leveraging the CS/aimed synergy properly, so I"ll try again.

Did you use crafting/alchemy/Arbitrator? By say 6 Daggers and 6 CS you should be stat draining like crazy.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Late-game especially, daggers are unbelievable. You'll have ~50% CS chance on fairly well-armored targets with fast attacks/flurries at 10 CS. Yes, daggers need to be paired up with CS to really shine, unlike a lot of other weapon classes, but once they do, they shred enemies up in two turns. I hit Agathoth with a few consecutive arterial strikes at the end of the game (I had maxed out dagger, dodge and CS, as well as an eagle-eye neurostimulant to grant me better odds of actually hitting him), and I'd be doing 12 damage between turns thanks to how often I was landing crits.

When I used daggers I first lowered his defense (and accuracy) by draining his STR (as he's a blocke) with aim to arms (had around 40-50% to crit I think) and then used arterial strikes. Daggers are probably the most fun of all melee weapon groups for me as you'll be switching attacks and causing critical effects so often (making melee guys drop their weapons and crippling archers and spear users is hella fun), flurry became very effective once I reached a certain level of critical chance but I rarely used it (except for counter-attacks obviously) as other options were much more satisfying.

 

[Shadenuat]

: I am not afraid of you. What do you have, your little tricks and knives, and we have spears and crossbows and overpowered stats--

Spoiler

And 2 extra:

Spoiler

But I used all nets and bolas and fires and... like all and everything what you can get in Teron.
Didn't do gold quest cause not enough Honor.

Switched the build too for 6-10-6-10-4-4.

Now... to manually decompose 87 iron knives after I upgraded Crafting by 2 points.
NEVERMIND ITS [CTRL] IF ANYONE S WONDERING

Thanks to developers for new universal AP2 shield bash, saved my ass already a few times.

P.S. Extra to the extra:

Spoiler

Some of the arena fights got better, I liked new Barbari swordsman with DoT build. Triarii need some ranged weapons tho against liquid fire cheese cornering.

 

[Lurker King]

It was actually a build similar to what Lurker King wants to achieve except with shitty stats for fighting.

The only reason I didn’t made this build yet is laziness and lack of time, mostly the latter. After the release, I spent my spare time posting and promoting the game instead of playing. I’m coming back to the game now.

 

[Lurker King]

Vault Dweller, am I making this stuff up? I remember a Gannezar beta update mentioning that CON would affect heavy armor penalties.

OK, I’m making this stuff up. Sorry, dodgers. That is what happens when you try to debate about the game relying only on your memory and developers’ speculations.

 

[Lurker King]

: I am not afraid of you. What do you have, your little tricks and knives, and we have spears and crossbows and overpowered stats--

.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Yeah, had to reload quite a few times since your allies are WAY too strong IMO. I've been asking Vince for months to make Antidas fight harder since as it stands now IG can kill Antidas, Dellar and Daratan soldiers almost by themselves. It was tricky to kill them before they were killed by my allies. I had to use whirlwind, swing (it's perfect to kill your own allies and it costs 1 AP less - basically ideal for a build like mine), had to remove my armour to have 12 AP (and it was still often too little because after 1 turn there were often 2 or 3 opponents with "Almost dead" status).

I think it's easy for you because you tried all the builds in the beta and learned to use items/nets. But that early in the game i didn't know this and went in just fighting. IG team is ALWAYS being weared down by Daratans and Dellar can be very tough for them, Antidas has good chance to knockdown the only damage dealing guy on IG team (the two hander). Even with slight poison i had major troubles. Could just win by keeping Deller/Captain busy ony me and starting with atleast -30 HP CS path on Antidas.

Only with better gear from Bandits/Outpost (which are also tough - so people might skip them, as i first did) the fight is more manageable. But again, i had to start "being a hero" and block Antidas/Captain/Dellar long enough, so IG team manages something.

- Swords. Lots of options avaible, but without very high skill bleeding DoT is not very good. Gladius can be put into bag slot, and you also get a 2-handed weapon. Overall, I'd stick with gladius. Probably biggest advantage swords get is that they have best sellable weapon if you look at combination of price/stats, meaning you can ignore Crafting. Fine choice for hybrids with alchemy.

Like you suggested - buying Dreamweaver (2k) improves sword combat greatly for a loooong time. So with it and potent poison you can easily do Arena, get better gear. I found having nice THC really awesome, wouldn't want to miss it.

 

[Tigranes]

The game should not be "just right" for people playing the very first time and not knowing the basics. This is the problem with modern gaming: a gamer who never uses consumables, a gamer who never realises he is attacking Arcanum rock golems with swords, a gamer who attacks high Reflex enemies with Reflex attacks, etc. - well there's nothing wrong with that when it's your first time, but the more the game caters to those people and let you progress, the more the game becomes a farce where you don't actually need half of your options to survive, meaning that anybody who actually learns the ropes goes through the toughest challenges with no effort.

Think: you come up against Antidas, and you die horribly. If you are a filthy casual, you quit and you move on to Fallout 4. Otherwise, you think: what can I do to beat these guys? I can't just swing my sword. What can I do? And that's the kind of challenges that push you to finally try that net thing, scour the merchants trying to see if bombs or bolas will help, thinking more carefully about how to manage space, etc. If you beat Antidas on the first try, then none of that happens, and you just push through, and think "oh it's an OK game whatever" without ever realising all that you're missing.

The very original Antidas was too tough in the sense that even veteran players with a full fighter character could run aground in what is a main questline fight. But right now it is too easy.

I think you would actually agree with me if you weren't having such a tough time with fights personally. Remember: if you take Antidas and Dellar out of the fight, the IG allies - the INT 6 ones at any rate - can basically kill everybody themselves. Antidas and Dellar are strong, but that basically means you only ever need to take those two on - or hold out long enough against them.

 

[Shadenuat]

Spoiler

Great.

Where the fuck do I put another 200 blue steel throwing knives?