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Maximizing Skill Point Investment


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The optimal party and training method I believe is as follows. Always only train a skill until after you can buy training.

 

All Divinely Touched.

 

1. Nephil Deadye. At the beginning of the game, only put points in dexterity, endurance, and luck. Put all the -Strength and +AP on this character. Train bows and sharpshooter after Training at Camp Samuels.

 

2. Nephil Elite Warrior. Train Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Endurance, and Luck. Put the best melee weapons on this character. A warrior will own anything without parry. That's why intelligence is important for the warrior because if a creature charms or terrorizes a warrior on a successful hit it probably means they don't have parry. Quick Action, Quick Strike, and Lethal Blow are the best skills for the warrior.

 

3. Nephil Natural Mage. Train Intelligence, Endurance, Luck, and Mage Spells. Strength and Dexterity are ignored to get the full benefit from Putrified Gauntlets and other stat decreasing items. After training from Cecil train magery and spellcraft. After Almaria train in Tool Use.

 

4. Slith Pure Spirit. Train Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Endurance, Luck, and Priest Spells. Dexterity is important because they don't have gymnastics. Give the best pole weapons to this character. After, Cecil train magery and spellcraft. Then after training in Silvar start giving them warrior skills. The best warrior skills are again Quick Action, Quick Strike, and Lethal Blow.

 

How to hold off on Nature Lore, Arcane Lore, Tool Use, and First Aid.

 

It's actually good not to have First Aid because it encourages you to go back to town more often to sell all your stuff. First Aid isn't that good until you get all the permanent buffs like Steel Skin, and so on. Between buying it, Mother Phelps, and the Explorer's Ring you'll have all you need.

 

Tool Use is hard because the best way to earn the money to buy tool use is to open the locked doors and chests that can only be opened with sufficient tool use. So in terms of buying skills buy tool use first after buying Unlock Doors. Write down all the places that you left unlocked traps, doors, and chests and come back to them. After the demo barrier you can potentially skip most of the eastern gallery. Just stop by all the towns to kill all the unnamed civilians and steal all the loot you can.

 

After that go straight to the secret passageway to Almaria. The fight with the guard can be quite hard at this time. Now after Almaria you have all the Great Cave towns to get easy civilian kills and easy steals. Then you have to go investigate the Vahntai trap. This is a difficult battle but the techniques about getting through it are well documented. If you don't have any nature lore yet, it's even harder. Just tough it out.

 

For Nature Lore, wait until you can buy training then go back for all the caches you missed. Train up when there's a cache you can't get. There's a benefit to having 25 nature lore so despite some NL boosting items it's hard to waste points here if you only train as needed.

 

Arcane Lore, you'll have to do more waiting after you buy training. You have to wait to make the magus vest(Save 1 focusing crystal and 4 fine leathers, of course the Mandrake Root), find the Crystalline Aegis and the Silk-Woven Cord. After you have those three items go back to all the spell books, crystals, etc. that you couldn't decipher.

 

All the combat trainers are easy to wait on. Kyra's Blessing and training from Cotra and Camp Samuels are the best deals so it's good to buy those first.

 

For the construction items, save the fine leathers for quests and then save four more to make the Magus Vest. The skill points saved from the 2AL are well worth the loss of the knowledge brew. Save all Mandrake Root, and sell the other herbs if the number is much greater than the amount of Mandrake Root. Make the Fine Steel and Focusing Crystals into Blessed Bracers west of the Tower Colony to get the best selling price.

 

The answering gloves might be a good use of a mandrake root but parry and riposte aren't that good of skills. But the bonus from the item is much more than the loss of a knowledge brew. If you need more of those skills get it.

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I understand the fun of tinkering with mechanics, but this would be too much effort to be fun for me. If optimizing makes you happy, though, go for it!

 

—Alorael, who feels no urge to roleplay in A4. It's a game about the combat mechanics. It should be played by playing the combat mechanics.

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Don't sell extra potion ingredients beyond the Mandrake number because you can use them for energy potions (elixir neeeds mandrake).

 

It seems like a lot of work to do it your way. You do miss experience from traps and unlocking items by waiting for tool use and unlock doors. By waiting so long the value decreases to almost nothing.

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I play a similar party. Except I use a slith with elite warrior + DT for my melee'er because the best melee weapons are polearms.

 

Why you would use a nephil for melee is beyond me, you might as well use a bow since they get better bonuses and bows will do the same damage ( unless your using a stick?? ).

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Nephilim are useful even as melee fighters because they get free Gymnastics skill, which helps you act faster and dodge attacks.

 

As for why you should make a melee fighter at all, well, bows are only comparable in damage potential to melee weapons before you start routinely getting double attacks from Quick Action. It's also worth remembering that some of the better special skills have melee skills as prerequisites.

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Quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:
Nephilim are useful even as melee fighters because they get free Gymnastics skill, which helps you act faster and dodge attacks.

As for why you should make a melee fighter at all, well, bows are only comparable in damage potential to melee weapons before you start routinely getting double attacks from Quick Action. It's also worth remembering that some of the better special skills have melee skills as prerequisites.
Gymnastics skill is what? 1 every 10 levels? Big deal.

The bonus to polearms for slith is 2 for start and 1 every 6 levels.

Since the post seemed to be about the best of the best, the best of the best for melee would be a slith poler with Divinely Touched and Elite Warrior.
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Quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:
I don't like polearms; the Quicksilver Bulwark is just too good to pass up, and it works best on a fighter.
You can still get 10 AP with mercuric plate + boots of speed. The bonuses from that shield don't matter if your weapon is a 3 multiplier instead of 4, and only sliths get the polearm bonus.
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Every point of gymnastics (unless you buy a whole bunch manually, which is expensive and not worth it anyway) gives you a 5% bonus to dodge. EVERYTHING. That's nothing to laugh at all.

 

The pole bonus is nice, but nephils get an equivalent bonus to bows and throws. Bows are good for everyone in A4, melee fighters included. They have no drawbacks and drastically increase your tactical options.

 

On the other hand, on higher difficulty levels, enemies have so much HP it will take numerous attacks to kill them whether or not you have a few extra points of weapon skill. At that point the key to taking down your enemies actually becomes minimizing the damage they do to you. Dodging ability is critical, especially for someone who will be in the front lines. Having unlimited, good range attacks is also important.

 

Finally, don't be so quick to judge Quick Action as providing a huge advantage to melee/poles over bows. 2 bonus points to AP -- easy to come by once you hit the second half of the game -- mean that an archer gets two shots to the enemy of his choice EVERY round. A pole fighter with 10 AP will frequently either not get two attacks because he has to move, or will get two attacks against an enemy he cares less about killing, because it's the one that's next to him.

 

If you just want the "best" from a pure gameplay perspective, there is no reason to play humans or sliths in A4. Open and shut case.

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You are wrong about parry being weak. Have a high parry, and not only will you not get hit by melee much at all (and have a chance at parrying magic and bows) but all damage you take will get dramatically reduced. Actually, parry is overpowered, IMHO.

And, I strongly think that the most fun, at least the 1st time through, comes from playing things naturally, generally without reading the boards at all, and not trying to "optimize." The 2nd or 3rd time, if you want to power play, go for it.

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