Mea Tulpa

That's a good point. The above math works if you are avoiding using energy potions. If you are going to use a few, ME becomes substantially better than Int.

Something about that Cthulu-fruit just screams "SoM 3". Maybe it's the bizarre resemblance to Carlie...

I cry foul. This is tampering with God's work, Alorael, and we all ought to stop before we create a Monster.

Sweet, but expensive. It costs 50 skill points to buy 10 points of ME; if you have 6 Intelligence, double your SP by buying Int costs about 54 skill points.

The texts can be extracted from the game files -- hard to find, but they are there. I did that for G5.

Actually, you can't anymore, Alo.

I assume that all you have to do to end the starvation effect is pick up a single piece of food and eat it, right? Does it kick in as soon as you are supposed to eat and have no food, or not?

Wait, Lethal Blow adds to magical attacks? Crazy, and neat. It doesn't add 50-100% though. It adds less than 50% on average. This may LOOK like 100% because you get a crappy roll on a regular attack, followed by a good roll on a LB attack. It isn't.

There is another topic about this that has a complete (I think) list.

These don't work exactly as we have assumed. Avg Dmg 28 (Range 21-35) - Baseline Avg Dmg 37 (Range 30-46) - 10 Anatomy (+33%) Avg Dmg 47 (Range 42-53) - 20 Anatomy (+67%) Avg Dmg 28 (Range 21-35) - Baseline Avg Dmg 39 (Range 30-47) - 10 Lethal Blow (+39%, activated 50% of the time) Avg Dmg 39 (Range 26-57) - 20 Lethal Blow (+39%, activated 60% of the time) 10 Quick Action - activated 11/30 trials = 37% 20 Quick Action - activated 18/30 trials = 60% Anatomy and Lethal Blow have full effects on QA strikes, and all three skills have full effects on for both strikes of dual-wielder attacks. [Lethal Blow affects a QA strike iff it affected the first strike, although it makes separate checks for dual-wielded weapons.] Anatomy is very consistent, although it only affects humanoids, and is about as powerful as Quick Action is. Lethal Blow appears to be weaker since only the activation chance increases, so is probably not worth investing in as much. Quick Action is a bit weaker than I remembered (although in retrospect it was like this in A5, too). However, the important note is that all these skills effectively multiply, rather than add, to damage. Between Strength, Melee Weapons, Blademaster, Dual Wielding, Quick Action, Anatomy, and Lethal Blow, there is a LOT for a dual-wielder to add to before they start to see ANY diminishing returns whatsoever! Crazy.

I tried casting Return Life (cost: 50) at 10, 20, and 30 ME, 20 times each. RL @ 10 ME: Avg Cost 26.1 (52%), Range 19-34 (38-68%) RL @ 20 ME: Avg Cost 13.1 (26%), Range 07-18 (14-36%) RL @ 30 ME: Avg Cost 04.5 (09%), Range 01-08 (02-16%) Conclusion: Magical Efficiency provides worthwhile savings and is a better investment than Intelligence when you first gain access to it. However it isn't drastically better, so after you put some points in it a few points in Int are warranted. Note however that more ME increases your effective mana pool by just as much (or more) at higher ME, whereas Int increases for effective mana pool by smaller fractions once you get higher Int. This is relevant if you expect to end up equipping Int-boosting items, which reduce the value of your purchased Int points. Nothing reduces the value of purchased ME points.

What does all of this mean as far as party construction goes? The best pure single target damage comes from melee weapons, and it ramps up quickly enough that it actually is worth being dedicated to that, for once. Defensive builds are probably not any weaker than in A5, though I haven't tested Parry or Riposte. Bows are still not important. Both mage and priest spells are viable -- either just for support, or as an all-out build utilizing Magical Efficiency to cast lots of expensive AoE spells. So I have two party ideas in mind. Party 1: Nephil DT EW Dual Wielder Nephil DT EW Dual Wielder Nephil DT PS Priest Slith DT NM Wizard The priest gets a focus on Magical Efficiency for endless uses of Smite & Divine Fire. The wizard gets more emphasis on spell skill to boost daze spells, and also gets a bit of investment into QA for halberd use. The idea is that you might as well make somebody a pole-toting slith, but it shouldn't be a primary fighter, who would then do less damage than a dual-wielder. Tool Use can go on anyone -- probably the second fighter. Party 2: Slith DT EW Tank Nephil DT PS Priest Nephil DT PS Priest Nephil DT NM Mage The tank takes advantage of the skill bug to get Parry at the game's start, then builds up Blademaster to get to Riposte. The tank gets all knowledge brews and ignores distractions like Quick Action. The spellcasters hide behind the tank and sling spells. The mage again focuses more on spell power to ensure good dazes, while the priests focus more on Magical Efficiency to ensure endless spells. One of them should take Tool Use. Any comments from you people who've actually played more?

Thanks for your comments, particularly Synergy's. I ended up going through the scripts to look at creature resistances. The majority of creature groups have no physical resistance and only scattered resistance to the magical attack types. The following creature groups have lots of resistance to Magic, Fire AND Ice, and either no physical resistance or substantially less of it: Magi, Priests, Demons, Haakai, Gazers, Eyebeasts, Crystal Souls, Altered Giants, Doomguards The following creature groups have weak physical resistance (20-30%) and only scattered magical resistances: Vahnatai, Hellhounds, Turrets, Fungi, Drakes, Dragons, Wolves, Giant Lizards, Ogres, Cave Giants, Sentinels, Stoneworms The following creature groups have stronger physical resistance (40-50%) and only scattered magical resistances: Rockhounds, Chitrachs, Bats, Slimes, certain Wyrmkin, Shamblers Finally, Golems and Pylons have substantial resistance to physical attacks as well as to most magical attacks. Both are relatively weak to energy attacks, but those are harder for priests in particular to access. I did not look as closely at unique enemies that set their own resistances. However, there seem to be very few that set physical resistance unless they set resistance to all the elements as well. Finally, the following enemy groups have mental resistance (all have at least 50%): Magi, Priests, Gazers, Eyebeasts, Crystal Souls, Undead, Black Shades, Vahnatai, Drakes, Dragons, Cave Giants (but not Altered Giants), Golems, Shamblers, Pylons In conclusion, there are a handful of enemies where relying on physical attacks is a handicap, but not tons of them (and sliths are not among them). And daze and charm attacks ought to be effective against most but not all creatures with enough spell power, unless the system is seriously different from G5, which I doubt.

I won't be able to make any play sessions, but I am curious to see what character I would have ended up with. Preservation/Mild/Will

I don't have AppleWorks, but there should be an option to either "Save As..." or "Export" as Text, or possibly Comma-Delimited Text or Tab-Delimited Text. If you want to send me any of those I'll format it for you. Alternately, just send the AppleWorks file, which I suspect either TextEdit or Excel may be able to convert anyway.

So purely based on my numerical analyses, I've come to a few conclusions. I feel good about these, but obviously I'd like to see if they line up with the experiences of people who've actually played the game. 1) Impact of Dual Wielding = HUGE. With moderate investments in DW and QA skills (about 33sp in DW and 30sp in QA) you multiply 1-weapon base damage by about 3. But more importantly, you get a return of about 4.5 damage per attack for every point you put in Str/Melee/Blademaster. This is a much higher return than we ever got to see in A4 or A5 for any kind of attack. The next highest return is 3.5 for a late game mage spell, 3.0 for mid-game spells and Smite, and about 2.8 for halberds. However, the high numbers for spells are misleading because it costs more to invest in those skills, moreso now that Magery is gone. They don't have the side benefits that Blademaster does. And, while you don't have DW or QA to invest in, you do need to pay your respects to Int and Magical Efficiency. This is a huge change. Suddenly, it's actually worthwhile to invest in physical attack skills! The Cloaks help this case. They give a HUGE damage boost of +50%, but can only affect one type of attack. Obviously, Cloak of Blades is the most effective one to use, and at that point, you fighters are doing 6.25 per level, about twice what the spellcasters can do. 2) Bows, meanwhile, are stuck with a maximum return of 1.5 damage per point invested... okay, 1.8 for the Heartstriker. LAME. Bows are now totally useless as primary weapons, and not even that amazing as backups for Nephil spellcasters. Gone are the bow-happy days of A4. 3) Magic can't quite keep up with weapons but it should be able to come close. The best offensive build would be a DT/PS priest with Smite and Divine Fire along with some serious Magical Efficiency. You can go to town with spells and have plenty of healing ability, too. 4) Mage Spells seem better suited to a support role. However, my one question is if pumping spell skill and abusing Daze and Strong Daze is doable. If so, you can essentially make a G5-style Sorceress party.

Actually, it's a really excellent suggestion to compile that all in one concise place. Not what I was thinking of but maybe I should do that.

VCH: It's in the works.

EXPLOITABLE BUG Like Nethergate but unlike A4 and A5, it is possible to raise a prerequisite, unlock a hidden skill, raise that skill, then remove the points in the prerequisite. The hidden skill will relock, but the points you bought in it will remain. In other words, with varying amounts of stockpiled skill points, you can buy hidden skills while ignoring the prerequisites!!! Probably the most practical application of this is that you can access Dual Wielding without having to waste skill points on Dexterity. This is not practical for the most laborious hidden skills, like Blademaster. However, if you are unlocking Blademaster anyway, this lets you skip Int to get to Anatomy, and if you use an Anatomy trainer it even makes it practical to skip straight to Lethal Blow... making Lethal Blow a lot more usable! You can also access Pathfinder without wasting points, but Pathfinder is a waste in itself.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Although Slarty is good at pointing out real stupid ideas in character builds. *beams*

Agreed.

Keep in mind you can wield the regular Blessed Broadswords et al. with your primary hand. Further calculations -- cheat-levelling two PCs up to around level 32 (for the lower XP penalty character): one DT EW Nephil DW, one DT EW Slith pole-fighter. Gave them the best weapons and pumped them full of skills, Blademaster of 20, Dual Wielding where appropriate (taking care to give the slith extra attack skills with those pts) etc. Expected average damage for the Nephil, not counting QA or Proficiencies or armor: 16-48 + (36d3 * 0.75) + 11-33 + (36d3 * 0.75) = 162 + acid drip. Expected average damage for the Slith, not counting QA or Proficiencies or armor: 20-80 + (41d4 * 0.75) = 128 + acid drip. So dual wielding does more damage in this practical simulation too, although the difference isn't particularly gross. That said, if you go with lots of melee fighters, the Jade Halberd is preferable to a 3rd dual-wielder if only for the acid drip (and its significant protective powers). It's nice enough that it's a pity to not have a pole user at all, really -- there must be a way to work them into most any party...

Google definitely does not require their applicants to have Masters. I have several friends from undergrad who all went straight to work for Google as software engineers with just a BS.

I think the "long A" pronounciation of "AE" comes from church Latin, and other more modern Europeanizations of Latin pronounciation.

Interestingly, that appears to be the only other stat-boosting in the game, aside from basins.