Mea Tulpa

Hahaha, you're right about that last bit Alorael.

I believe the Arcane Blow Magical Efficiency bug was also present in A5. (Was it just Arcane Blow or all AoE spells?) Anyway I'd email Jeff about that one.

No, he probably did -- adding that detail would be out of character for Jeff. The option doesn't show up unless you have enough ingredients, and you need quite a few pieces of leather. If you head in his direction early in the first chapter, you likely won't have them.

Not if evasion works the way it works in every other SW game, including Geneforge.

Illoyd: The boards are -not- a chat room. Capitalizing the first word of a sentence, using punctuation, and checking your spelling and grammar really does make posts easier to read. Although some people chose to be rude about it, I'd encourage you to ignore the rudeness and listen to what they had to say. People making unnecessarily snarky comments about Illoyd: Being friendly makes everything better here. Please, let's keep everything friendly. If someone doesn't take your hint, rephrase it or send them a PM, don't start bashing them. We're done here.

If you kill golems during the first test, presumably they will still be dead for the second test, right? That could help quite a bit.

Important omission: Cavarin can craft Mercuric Leather.

Not to mention extra points from traits. An extra 10 levels for a DT EW character translates to 3-4 Blademaster, 1-2 Parry, and 2-3 Sharpshooter and Spellcraft.

The blessings from the priest in Dharmon still look good under this view, or at least the first three do: everybody wants them so they can unlock battle disciplines, they are priced about adequately for the 16 skill points they are worth if you never invest in those skills, but since you are likely to, they become bargains.

MAJOR strategy update: I went through and calculated the exchange rate for skribbane, and it throws a wrench into things. If we assume a party of 4 45% experience penalty Nephils or Sliths (DT/EW, DT/NM or DT/PS), you need on the order of 6200 raw XP (pre-penalty) for everyone to get a level up. (Possibly closer to 6400 depending on Jeff's math.) That translates to selling about 310 skribbane. You can buy for 30 and sell for 20, so that means that you can trade approximately 3100 GP (and a kazillion mouse clicks) to get everyone a level up. That means 3100 GP for 20 skill points, or 155 gold per skill point. That price is significantly better than the deal most trainers offer! This does not mean trainers are completely useless. Their main advantage is that you get to use their skills right away, whereas to get the full benefit of the skribbane skill points you have to wait till late in the game. Additionally, if you forego trainers entirely and plunk tens of thousands of GP into skribbane XP, I suspect it is possible to encounter the level cap (level 61), maybe even before the end of the game. However, foregoing expensive trainers doesn't make you lose out on anything since there are still some cheap trainers you can plug that GP into. In particular, Taddeo is awesome. And of course, foregoing trainers gives you the benefit that you don't have to hold off on skills you'd rather take earlier, like Spellcraft or Magical Efficiency. This is a VERY POSITIVE THING for min-maxing, because it means you don't have to do so much circus contortionism! Really the only skill worth holding off on that you really need early is Melee Weapons. HOORAY!!!!!

It's possible that Faerie Blood gives a bonus to Faerie Lore that depends on your level, though it seems unlikely it wouldn't give a bonus of +1 right away. Perhaps it just gives some kind of resistance bonus.

I strongly doubt it, both because items can only hold 1 enchantment, and because of how item creation works.

So I just did some math. I put the expected damage increases for each skill into a spreadsheet, along with skill costs, to figure out how much % increase to damage you can expect from each individual bought point of a skill. The results were interesting: Code: % Increase in Expected Average Total DamagePer Skill Point Spent on a Given Skill IncreaseSkill QA LB Anat DW----- ---- ---- ---- ----1 4.00 0.40 0.75 1.19 2 3.85 0.38 0.73 1.16 3 1.85 0.30 0.57 0.76 4 1.79 0.29 0.55 0.74 5 1.15 0.23 0.45 0.54 6 1.11 0.22 0.43 0.53 7 0.81 0.18 0.36 0.42 8 0.78 0.18 0.35 0.41 9 0.61 0.15 0.30 0.33 10 0.59 0.15 0.30 0.33 11 — — 0.26 0.27?12 0.24 0.06 0.25 0.27?13 — — 0.22 0.23?14 0.20 0.06 0.22 0.23?15 — — 0.19 0.20?16 0.17 0.07 0.19 0.19?17 — — 0.17 0.17?18 0.15 0.06 0.17 0.17?19 — — 0.15 0.15?20 0.13 0.05 0.15 0.15? Note that the shrinking numbers do not indicate that pumping these skills is useless. They continue to increase damage at a steady rate, and the main reason for the precipitous drop at the top of the table is increasing skill point costs. I am showing the numbers this way, rather to compare which skills are most cost-effective to grab, in terms of skill points. This does not take into account points from items, but those don't make much of a difference -- again, the bulk of the shrinking comes from increasing SP costs; the effect of already acquired skill is smaller, outside of the 10-cap. Quick Action is the obvious winner up to 10 QA -- very convenient since it's the only skill here that doesn't have to be unlocked, and has no trainer. After that getting Dual Wielding and Anatomy up to about 10 is probably worthwhile. Lethal Blow stops being cost-effective after just a few points -- it probably isn't worth chasing after too hard. Of course, also not taken into account is the fact that Anatomy doesn't boost damage against everything. Comparing the impact of pumping the basic skills (Strength, Melee/Pole Weapons, Blademaster) can't be done flat-out like this, but you can do it for your situation. For example, say you have the Jade Halberd (20-80) and 24 points total in those skills. Your base average damage before modifiers is 95. So adding a point to one of those stats will increase your damage by about 1.9%. Say it will cost you at least 7 skill points to do so; you can then get a result of 0.28 per sp -- making it worth doing before pumping Lethal Blow, but probably not before getting QA and Anatomy to 10. Alternately, let's say you have a Blessed Broadsword (12-36) and the Frozen Blade (11-33), and your total from the basic skills is still 24. Your base average damage before modifiers is 91. Adding a point to one of those stats will increase your damage by about 3.3%. Say it will cost you 7 sp, again; you can get a result of 0.47 per sp -- moving it a bit higher on the list, though not substantially. The impact of these basic skills is higher with dual-wielded blades than with poles, and it is also higher at the start of the game when base damage from weapons is lower.

Hooray! I was suspicious that was the problem. Exile 3 was working before, wasn't it? QUAD650 refers to a Quadra 650, a lower end model of a higher end Macintosh line that many people were fond of in the days before Power Macs and other commercially successful Apple products.

Blademaster gives you fatigue reduction, and it is not high enough until it is at 20, or close to 20 so that after a few more level bonuses you'll reach 20. I just did some math on the other skills, which I'm posting on the other topic. Not so hot!

I'm pretty sure it's just a bonus to Faerie Lore. If the game ever checks for the trait directly it's hard-coded and not in the scripts, and I very much doubt it does that.

No. There haven't been a ton of changes from A4 and A5. Some of the skill unlock requirements are different, but there are topics for that about each game. A4 handled encumbrance differently, and obviously it didn't have battle disciplines or fatigue reduction, and neither A4 nor A5 had dual-wielding. A4 and A5 had Magery, which was completely identical to Spellcraft. Magical Efficiency sucked in A4. Tool Use contributed to the Unlock Doors spell in A4. Quick Action was slightly better in A4 (I think). Parry was better in A4, it parried a greater percent of attacks and it also provided very high general purpose damage reduction. Resistance used to be slightly better, @4% IIRC. That's all off the top of my head. Thanks for the additions.

When I tested, I could only find a very small damage increase for raising DW beyond 10, so other skills are probably better. And yeah, a proper DW melee build *will* outdamage a slith pole fighter.

Nope. That would be nice, though.

Yes. I doubt it's possible to reach it, unless there are respawning monsters that are fairly high level.

Well, he did go out of his way to raise the skill cap from 30 to 40. The attractiveness of 1,2,3,5 or something along those lines is that this allows you to max out at an effective level of 20. Alternately -- this is how it's done in the BoE code -- perhaps the game specifies certain sp values to pay attention to. That could even give us ...16, 18, 20, 23, 26, 30, 35, 40.

Again, it may look like it does because you get a crappy roll followed by a great roll. It doesn't. As always, I welcome proof otherwise.

Wait until you get to 20 Parry! Seriously.

Alorael -- you are basically right about armor, but there is a random factor involved. The best guess I have seen is Thuryl's from Nethergate: Resurrection, that each individual point of damage has a chance of being blocked equal to your armor/resistance score.

Assuming it works that way, it should be free at 37 or 38 depending on cap implementation. But I still use up SP at 39. Perhaps I'm wrong entirely, or perhaps the cap goes 1, 2, 3, 5 and doesn't give credit for the 29-30 step.