Laertes

Are there any conflicting quests, where more than one person wants the same limited item and you have to choose who to give it to?

I remember in Avernum 1 you could decide who to give magical notes to, and different people gave different rewards. Anything like that here?

So far I've found at least two people interesting in focusing crystals and drake skins, although that's more crafting option than quest I think. And three people have asked for black drake fang, though I don't know if there's enough for everybody or not.

Does it matter if I split that up among multiple party members?

Also, I don't really care about getting every last bit of gold, or every last scroll and wand. What I do what to get though is all the spells/special items/bonus traits and all the top tier unique gear.

Simulacrum can be very useful with the right creature. I captured a drake, and now I use it in every single difficult fight. Lots of hp, spells like a cone attack and ensnaring enemies, plus it summons its own pet! Two pets for the price of one! And often that pet is something with a useful special ability, like a brain rat or a null bug. Their damage output still falls behind my actual characters, making them mostly meat shields, but every little bit helps.

Another handy aspect of summons is creating creatures with damage immunities. For example, undead are mostly immune to cold attacks. Your priest can summon a shade as a meat shield when fighting an enemy that uses cold to attack, and it can literally ignore 100% of the damage each round.

All this doesn't necessarily justify spending points on the summoning trait though. That little bit of extra health might not really matter, since you could also just heal your pets to keep them alive, or summon a new one when it dies. Doesn't mean it's not nice to have stronger pets though.

I've tried searching for this but found some conflicting answers.

In Crystal Souls, how much CL, TU, and AL should I get? And does it matter whether it's all on one character or split among the party?

In CS, I've found that it can be very useful to purchase 1 point of priest skill for another character in your party, just to get minor healing.

During fights can be a life saver if your priest can't heal people for whatever reason that turn, or if you'd rather use your priest's turn for another spell.

It's particularly good for a melee fighter actually. There are a lot of enemies that can immobilize or ensnare them, making them waste a turn if they can't reach an enemy, and don't have enough ranged skill to be effective at a distance. If they can heal, there's always something useful for them to do.

Plus, you can conserve your priest's mana when you heal between fights. Even low INT characters can cast minor healing dozens of times before running out of energy. That 1 point unlocks a whole other well of mana to use up.

How useful is the magic skill that increases your damage? I'm torn between spending all those points for melee/hardiness (and getting adrenaline rush in the process) or boosting their magic damage a lot.

Alternatively, giving melee/hardiness to my priest so they can survive more and be around to heal/resurrect as necessary, while doubling down on magic damage with the mage. What do you think?

Are black fangs a special item, not one you can pick up in your inventory? Several different people have asked me for one.

Also, there are any quests where you have to choose who gets a limited item? For example, Avernum 1 let you choose who to give magical notes you find. I haven't given any magical notes to the person in Fort Remote yet, in case there's a better option still out there.

Probably. It's kind of a waste to raise your basic spellcasting skills above 16, since that's all you need to cast every spell and the benefits the skill provides to the power of your spells are pretty marginal.

Hm, too bad there's no way to raise bows and hardiness, instead of melee and hardiness. It'd be nice to hang back behind the tank and take ranged shots.

Yeah, it sounds like the problem is you've been neglecting defensive skills on them. Casters should generally aim to max out both Hardiness and Resistance by level 30, although that'll be hard to do if you're level 20 and haven't invested in either of those yet.

 

 

 

The thing to look at is hit penalties -- notice how items that encumber mages also have a penalty like "-5% to hit chance" or "-20% to hit chance" listed. If the sum of all hit penalties exceeds a certain limit, your character won't be able to cast mage spells (and only mage spells: priests aren't affected by this). The limit is 5%, plus 10% for every rank of Swordmage you've got. 3 ranks of Swordmage is enough for a breastplate and shield, which are the main pieces of encumbering armour worth wearing for a mage.

Ah, good to know. I have been giving them some resistance, but that's basically their only defense. What's the maximum hardiness?

At this point, since they already have plenty of spell casting, should I basically just be giving them melee and hardiness and more resistance every level until the cap?

Why are your casters more vulnerable than your frontliners in the first place? They'll gain enough Strength just from automatic levelup gains that by level 20 they should be able to wear about as much gear as a fighter. They don't have to worry about doing damage with their melee weapons, so they can use a shield (unlike most melee fighters), as well as a defensive weapon like the Shielding Knife. Buy up a few levels of the Swordmage trait for your mage and you don't have to worry about encumbrance keeping them from casting spells, either. The only thing melee fighters really have over casters is Parry, which is nice but only relevant to physical attacks.

The tank has lots of hardiness and parry. The archer has high dex and gymnastics. They can both avoid at least some of the damage coming their way. The casters don't have any defensive skills, so pretty much everything hits them. In combat I've been careful to keep the tank and archer between the casters and the enemies, as much as possible.

What does the "encumbers mages" descriptor on items mean though? Does it not matter if your mage can carry the weight?

Strength and Dex are basically worthless for a caster, but the bottom-level weapon skills (Melee, Pole, Bows, Thrown) can be useful for two reasons:

 

1) Melee and Pole let you raise Hardiness, which is a good defensive skill for anybody

2) Get 15 points total across all your basic weapon skills and you can use Adrenaline Rush, a very useful battle discipline that only becomes more useful in the hands of a caster. Your mage and priest both using 3 AoE damage spells in a turn can end a fight before it begins.

 

You don't have to buy up all of those weapon skills with skill points, though. There are trainers who will raise your weapon skills in exchange for cash.

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't given hardiness to anyone other than my tank. Is there an ideal number of hardiness for a caster?

Without raising str/dex, will those attack skills actually be able to do anything though? Or is it mostly just to aim for Adrenaline Rush for spell use, and to unlock some hardiness? My primary concern is that my casters can't last long on their own if they're separated from the party, such as with solo missions or with enemies that teleport party members to separate areas. Enemy AoE spells that hit my whole party also devastate the casters, though I can usually mass heal before they die. And if I'm trying to conserve mana when facing weaker foes, my casters don't have much to do besides fire their bows and miss most of the time.

In Crystal Souls, is it worth building up str/dex melee/range for your casters? Or is it better to just focus on magic to the exclusion of all else?

My current game has two level 20 casters, one priest and one mage. I've just been raising their intelligence and endurance, and putting almost all their skill points in magic related things. Should I keep doing this, or is it worthwhile trying to give them a little bit of archery skill or some melee ability?

If it matters, my other two characters are a pure melee tank, and an archer with most of the party's tool use.