Mea Tulpa

And really what that means is that you can use the skribbane exploit a bit earlier, maybe 5-10 levels before the end of the game, and make everything that follows easier for yourself, even if you don't actually reach level 61 as a result.

If it really becomes necessary, you can also invest more in Hardiness -- at even moderate levels it provides better protection than any non-body armor. A lack of Gazerskin Sandals is not going to kill anyone. Another boon would be to craft a second Quicksilver Bulwark and use that (plus a defensive weapon) instead of the Cryos Spear.

Hmm. So that's on the order of 80,000 GP to reach level 61 with the skribbane exploit. Has anyone tallied the total GP they acquired in the game? Synergizer?

iampoor and iamdrained are good substitutes for a pylon, I find.

*nod nod* I think it's actually slightly easier than that. There is plenty of mercuric armor available. I guess you have to compare at some point whether or not the loss of skills from putting the Q Sandals on a fighter and not putting the Robe of the Magi on a spellcaster is great enough to make up the skill point cost in investing in a second PC's Quick Strike. I'm not sure that it is -- the ROTM is nice but not really necessary, likewise for the best shoes, and a few points of STR are cheaper than a lot of QS. It may actually be more worthwhile for spellcasters -- I've just reached Mertis in my game and I've already run out of things to invest in for them. Spellcraft and M/P Spells start growing quickly and since both have traits attached, there is a serious case of diminishing returns for investing in them. I've also found that 6 Int and 10 ME is more than adequate to keep my energy topped off... the problem, of course, is that spellcasters are the PCs you probably want to have *predictable* second actions on, and also the PCs that it's easier to fit +AP items on. My inclination then would be to give one fighter a bunch of bought QS and all the QS items, as you suggest above, and to fit the other three characters with 2 +AP items each -- sandals plus armor on a second fighter, and spear or bulwark plus armor on the spellcasters. You can get a free Mercuric Leather relatively early on, so the initial points invested in QS can still be useful when you buy them.

Rentar-Ihrno assassinated plot coherence shortly after the Empire War ended?

Synergy, you have my eternal appreciation for making it ten times easier to go back and loot barriers after obtaining Dispel Barrier, without backtracking across the ENTIRE first third of the game.

As far as I know, wielding a weapon in your primary hand or you secondary hand has no impact on damage. The only impact is whether you wield two weapons, or just one, and that is largely negated with 10 DW. All your setups will do almost identical damage (not counting item bonuses from the Radiant Shortblade) -- the first one will just do an average of 2 additional damage for the BB over the FB.

From Unamuno to Twilight... tear.

Yes. Never use backtostart -- it just isn't worth the risk.

*i probably has a more comprehensive view of the lifespan of BoE than anyone else. I'd consider PMing him.

There are some other food-generators, notably the nephil in Fort Remote who gives you pricey meat strips, so you could even, were you so inclined, use this to generate infinite cash, and use that to generate infinite skribbane and hence infinite XP. Incredibly, incredibly slow, but it does mean that at least in absurd and obnoxious theory, a party of four can buy all trainer skills and still reach level 61 regardless of XP penalty.

Clearly, personality influences what experiences you expose yourself to, which in turn influence your personality, though your personality is in general less plastic when you are older. It sounds like what you are looking for here is not books that shape your personality in a different direction than it would have gone otherwise, so much as books that catalyze its growth, perhaps in a direction that did not seem likely at the time given the rest of your environment, but which actually fit perfectly with your core feelings and beliefs -- giving form and expression to them and allowing for intellectual and aesthetic elaboration. These are the books with themes that seem perenially relevant, that you can go back to and reread every few years and experience not a sense of distance or change, but a sense of familiar immediacy, a sense that they are just as relevant to your life now as they have always been. These are the books that you reach out to, and that respond by reaching out to you. For my part I think The Thousand Nights and a Night comes first and foremost, or maybe Shadow and Evil in Fairy-Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz -- or maybe, if you go back far enough, Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder.

For defensive use such as above, QS seems a poor choice since it is not even guaranteed to give you the bonus AP.

Mmm. I eventually gave up trying to figure out the damage formula in Nethergate: Resurrection. I think I was close, but there was something weird going on with skill contributions there. That may also apply to A1-3 and BoA, which I am less familiar with.

Yes, it's certainly doable, but the question is whether or not those skill points would produce more damage output if plugged into other skills. The answer is that they probably would, beyond the first handful of bought points.

On the subject of Quick Strike and AP, because it hasn't been posted since A4, I thought I'd regurgitate some Quick Strike stats. If you need 2 bonus APs from Quick Strike, you need a lot of Quick Strike: 14 for 49% success, 18 for 81%, 20 for 99%. If you only need 1 bonus AP from Quick Strike, however, you need less: 6 for 51% success, 10 for 75%, 13 for 88%. There are few enough AP increasing items (and many of them come late) that training a PC in Quick Strike isn't totally unreasonable. Plenty of AP increasing armor is available early if you don't mind crafting it. But the 2 Quicksilver Bulwarks, the Quicksilver Sandals, and the Cryos Spear don't appear till fairly late... plus, the Quicksilver Sandals are the only one of those that can reasonably be put on a melee or pole fighter. Note however that because the (cheap, hassle-free, always available) Haste spell doesn't provide any effective extra attacks if you have 2 attacks at 10 AP anyway, getting the QS bonus effectively increases your damage output by 50% and not 100%. QS starts at a cost of 3, which gives us a total cost of: 024 for 06 QS (51% +1) = +25% damage w/one AP item 050 for 10 QS (75% +1) = +38% damage w/one AP item 075 for 13 QS (88% +1) = +44% damage w/one AP item 084 for 14 QS (49% +2) = +24% damage 126 for 18 QS (81% +2) = +40% damage 150 for 20 QS (99% +2) = +50% damage A handful of items provide QS bonuses, but most of those require passing up bonuses from alternative equipment, so I'm not counting those points here. Conclusion: Quick Strike is better than nothing, but is not worth using without one AP-increasing item, and is inferior to two. Even then, it probably isn't worth bringing it any higher than 10 or so.

Some things take forever but brick by brick mountains can be built! --Slarty, who has had a revelation. Many lines spoken by Upon Mars would fit in perfectly with Ultima 4 dialogue.

No, blessed items first appeared in Exile -- I think E2, but maybe E1. Blessed items first appeared as a standard category in Nethergate, replacing the Magic items from Exile, but E2 had the Blessed Kris and several other unique blessed items. However, those items weren't special vs undead, either.

Re sliths, note that they have zero armor, so there's no reason to use the Flaming Sword against them anyway. More generally -- obviously broadswords are helpful, but they are surprisingly irrelevant. For both pole and melee, but especially melee, the majority of the skills that increase damage do it by increasing total damage by a percent, not by adding on levels of damage. So switching from short to broadsword will increase a portion of your damage by about 1/3, which means it will increase your total damage by less than that... that means switching your second weapon from short to broadsword will increase your total damage by less than 1/6, maybe by about 1/8 depending on skill levels and the weapon in question. Obviously that's a very nice boost, but it isn't enough to put dual wielding damage below halberd damage.

Thanks for pointing those out. In each case the lower value is the correct one.

Not quite all -- see the skills topic.

3. Four was a retcon. Originally it was six. It was nephilim though, my bad.

I put together a spreadsheet to calculate expected damage output given skill levels and weapon and spell choice. I then levelled up brand new characters to level 30, plugged in their traits and skill points to optimize pole weapons, melee weapons, bows, throws, mage spells and priest spells, and looked at the results. (I did fool around with different skill point placement to maximize damage output.) For weapons, I used about the second- and third-best weapon choices, which are available halfway through the game, much earlier than the very best options. On the one hand, I didn't account for extra points from items or trainers; on the other hand, I also didn't account for points lost to general skills like Endurance or Nature Lore. The damage figures should provide reasonable ballpark comparisons for most of the mid-to-late game. Note however that I did not take into account armor, resistance, or the like. Here are the results: POLE WEAPONS 6 Str, 14 Pole, 20 Blademaster, 10 QA, 6 Anatomy, 6 LB Blessed Halberd Average Output: 204 MELEE WEAPONS 6 Str, 9 Melee, 20 Blademaster, 10 QA, 10 DW, 5 Anatomy, 2 LB Blessed Broadsword Single Wielded Output: 127 with Flaming Sword Dual Wielded Output: 251 BOWS 10 Dex, 20 Bows, 27 Sharpshooter (yeah... forcing it!) Heartstriker Bow Average Output: 133 THROWN WEAPONS 10 Dex, 20 Throws, 27 Sharpshooter Fine Razordisks Average Output: 169 MAGE SPELLS 24 Spellcraft, 19 Mage Spells Fireblast: 146 Arcane Blow: 184 PRIEST SPELLS 24 Spellcraft, 20 Priest Spells Smite: 138 Divine Fire: 141 Divine Retribution: 123 DAMAGE OVERVIEW: 251 Melee (Dual Wielding) 204 Halberd 184 Arcane Blow 169 Razordisks 146 Fireblast 141 Divine Fire 138 Smite 133 Heartstriker 127 Melee (Single Wielding) 123 Divine Retribution Conclusions: 1. Dual Wielding really is better than Poles, even for Sliths. Even with the Jade Halberd poles do less than dual-wielded blades. 2. Once skills are developed, melee will do more single target damage than magic to any target that isn't heavily armored, and even then the Flaming Sword evens things out. 3. Missile attacks just aren't worth it. The betters throwing weapons may make a good backup attack for non-magic-users, and sometimes it is nice to have a zero-MP, plinking attack. But even the Heartstriker just does pitiful damage. You might as well invest in priest spells and cast Smite. 4. Magic is great! Area effect spells will do more damage per turn if you need to kill multiple enemies. The main issue is being able to cast them over and over, but Magical Efficiency helps with that quite a bit. On the other hand, AoE spells don't get a uniform boost from battle disciplines, and spellcasters can't load up on Blademaster as easily, for its fatigue reduction.

That's true. Really the problem is that there are all these skills that boost melee damage and few apply to missile damage. Quick Action is the main culprit.