New player question

[Godwin]

Hi all,

 

I am loving this game so far... I keep encountering on the net that the older games are better... so I might have to investigate that (especially since they seem harder and less 'dumbed down' and I am a fan of hard and intelligent), but that will be for a later stage, so far I enjoy this a lot.

 

I have been searching everywhere what encumbrance really does, but I cannot find it. If I put my bladedancer in the encumbered state he can still walk, so it's not that. Less hit chance then? I don't know... I would like to know, anyone who knows this? Thanks!

[*i]

You lose action points each round in combat. The amount depends on how encumbered you are.

[Randomizer]

Encumbrance means that you have one less action point for every 5 pounds over your carrying capacity. In the earlier games this could mean that you didn't have enough action points to do anything but empty your backpack so you could fight. Some games made it your maximum carrying capacity.

 

Later games made encumbrance only count the items on your character and not in the pack.

[Godwin]

Thanks! So it's not that bad to give them a little encumbrence then. No evade chance reduction or anything... nice to know

[Dikiyoba]

You'll probably miss that action point from being encumbered more than you'll benefit from a few more points in armor.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Lilith]

My missile-specced Sevilin did spend a portion of the midgame wandering around with 7 AP. It was bearable, since he didn't have to run around and melee things, but there were a couple of situations where it became a nuisance.

 

Don't go below 6 AP or you won't be able to get extra actions when hasted.

[Godwin]

Really? I thought they were kinda useless anyway since the enemy comes to you anyway, and you have ranged weapon and nonranged, so basically I hardly ever move around after a combat begins. It works well enough so far (Hard difficulty, but not far into the game (@ the dragon near Goldcrag).

 

Other totally unrelated question because the thing intrigues me: Who is this Alorael and why do people post with her seemingly saying stuff? And why do edits sometimes get performed by non-hamiltonian physics?

[Jerakeen]

Pretty sure Alorael is a he, and he's the guy at the top of the Top Posters List over there on the right of your screen. For reasons best known to himself, he changes his display name at least once a day. But he always adds a comment from Alorael, so we can tell who it is. Even if we didn't recognize the avatar.

[Randomizer]

Alorael changes his public displayed name in protest as an older member that never received a custom title from Drakefyre back when he still could hand them out.

[Alorael at Large]

And now I do it because the weight of tradition is too heavy a burden to put down, if I may butcher my metaphors. (Hi, I'm Alorael, and most of those posts saying that I said something were probably by me. All my posts end the way this one does because, well, that's how I end posts. Tradition!)

 

—Alorael, who considers it at least worthwhile to keep AP to avoid the hassle of being unable to maneuver as much as you want. It doesn't take much effort; a couple of points of strength will save you from getting stuck one tile away from where you want to go. There are also a couple of places where getting around quickly is important.

[Godwin]

Wow that's pretty darn awesome actually!

That also explains the edit: it was the older nick, so that's why it seemed as if someone else had edited it...

 

But yeah, gotta love traditions and burdens like that hehehe...

 

Too bad actually, I was getting in the mood to throw in a few

"-Alorael, who..."'s in there (won't type it then to not cause confusion).

 

Does that ever happen actually? That others pose as you? Seems to be able to lead to all sorts of mayhem lol!

 

...but really... it's a hypnotic start of a sentence, that "-Alorael, who", it's stuck in my brain like a song. One I cannot sing, to my dismay

[Randomizer]

A few members have used memorable Alorael quotes as their signatures.

 

One time a member changed his PDN to Alorael using Hebrew characters. So it wasn't a complete impersonation.

[Dikiyoba]

Huh. We've removed the impersonation clause from the Code of Conduct. Anyway, I know this discussion is all in good fun and not malicious at all, but impersonation is highly discouraged. It just makes the board too confusing; it's already confusing enough as is.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Godwin

Really? I thought they were kinda useless anyway since the enemy comes to you anyway, and you have ranged weapon and nonranged, so basically I hardly ever move around after a combat begins. It works well enough so far (Hard difficulty, but not far into the game (@ the dragon near Goldcrag).

Missile weapons are actually significantly better than melee, for a number of reasons:

1) They key off Dexterity rather than Strength. Dexterity helps your defences more than Strength does, improving your survivability.

2) There are more and better missile skills than melee ones. All ranged and area attacks for the Blademaster and Shadowwalker actually count as missile skills and key off your Dexterity, even if they're described as melee attacks.

3) There are a few battles that make running over to engage the enemy in melee difficult or dangerous, for one of a number of reasons.

[Randomizer]

The best part of missile attacks is against a melee enemy you get free attacks while it closes.

[Mea Tulpa]

Also, when appropriately hasted, you can always get 2 attacks on the target of your choice. This is often but not always possible with melee. This list goes on...

[kryft]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

2) There are more and better missile skills than melee ones. All ranged and area attacks for the Blademaster and Shadowwalker actually count as missile skills and key off your Dexterity, even if they're described as melee attacks.

Is the damage of the melee area attacks really based on the missile weapon, as the ability list in Strategy Central seems to indicate?

If your melee attacks have a chance to inflict a status effect (e.g., poison for the shadowwalker), do these work with melee area attacks (or even single target abilities)?

[Kexin]

Looks like melee needs a buff.

[Lilith]

Really, any one of several changes would greatly improve melee as an option:

 

* Make investment in Dexterity less central to survival. This is the big one and should probably be done regardless of whether any other changes are implemented.

 

* Expand the skill tree so that there's a full branch of melee skills and a full branch of missile skills, allowing a meaningful choice of what attacking skills to pick.

 

* Increase melee damage somewhat relative to missile damage, to make up for the inconvenience of having to stay at melee range.

[Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

A few members have used memorable Alorael quotes as their signatures.

One time a member changed his PDN to Alorael using Hebrew characters. So it wasn't a complete impersonation.

Really? Who/when was this. Anyway, off to change my PDN...
EDIT: it wont let me.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: kryft

Is the damage of the melee area attacks really based on the missile weapon, as the ability list in Strategy Central seems to indicate?

If your melee attacks have a chance to inflict a status effect (e.g., poison for the shadowwalker), do these work with melee area attacks (or even single target abilities)?

For the first, yes, it's based on ranged weapons, oddly enough. For the second, I'm not sure, but I believe the answer is no and that you only get your bonus poison when you are using a standard melee attack.

—Alorael, who remembers trying to make his name [Edited because the UBB won't display Hebrew, apparently] before. He recalls not being able to get it to work either. And he can't get it to work now.

[Dintiradan]

I was the one who did the whole Hebrew PDN thing. It was only possible with the old UBB. Even then, it took a number of tries to get UBB to accept it.

 

The great thing about that PDN was that it completely messed up the front page (the most recent post for each forum). Apparently, UBB had no idea how to put right-to-left text in the middle of a left-to-right section.

 

EDIT: The old UBB also let you embed BBCode into your PDN, which would break edits, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more. Hmm, though, I wonder...

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

is un

able]I was the one who did the whole Hebrew PDN thing. It was only possible with the old UBB. Even then, it took a number of tries to get UBB to accept it.

The great thing about that PDN was that it completely messed up the front page (the most recent post for each forum). Apparently, UBB had no idea how to put right-to-left text in the middle of a left-to-right section.

EDIT: The old UBB also let you embed BBCode into your PDN, which would break edits, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more. Hmm, though, I wonder...

(I mainly did this to see what UBB would do with your PDN)

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

is un

able]I was the one who did the whole Hebrew PDN thing. It was only possible with the old UBB. Even then, it took a number of tries to get UBB to accept it.

The great thing about that PDN was that it completely messed up the front page (the most recent post for each forum). Apparently, UBB had no idea how to put right-to-left text in the middle of a left-to-right section.

EDIT: The old UBB also let you embed BBCode into your PDN, which would break edits, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more. Hmm, though, I wonder...

(I mainly did this to see what UBB would do with your PDN)Yeah, I just tested it out with the 'Preview Reply' option. Of course, what's great about it is how confusing it makes pyramid quotes.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

didn't somebody just do that to get the PDN of spidweb?