Torment advice?

[kryft]

I'm almost level 10, tracking the beast in Khemeria at the moment. I wonder if I'm doing something wrong, because I'm starting to run out of fights that I can win without heavy item use.

 

My main character is a shadowwalker, and I've used Sevilin and Jenell. All characters have invested heavily in dex. I've used the retrain cheat to try a number of builds. Jenell is mostly focused on summoning and healing. She doesn't seem terribly useful, but on the other hand not having her healing (and meatshield) would require more item use. There seem to be plenty of fights where I have to heal one or two characters every round or have one of them fall unconscious.

 

My shadowwalker has 7 (+1 spec) in steel discipline, 4 points in blade training and locksmith and one point in shadowstep. Sevilin has 6 (+1) points in path of the shield, 4 points in blade training, 3 points in second wind and war cry and 1 point in archery.

 

I suspect that I must be building my characters wrong if other people can make it further in the game with just one character.

[Quiconque]

Actually, those sound like pretty sensible builds.

 

I could nitpick a few points here and there (Blade Training is probably worse than the middle column for your Shadowwalker, and War Cry may not be the best investment) but those sound fine.

 

Torment really requires paying attention to the details of how the game engine works and taking advantage of them. Lure single enemies away from packs when you can (sometimes this takes a lot of patience). Use summons and sometimes blessings the turn before you initiate combat / make the enemy visible.

 

And starting in Khemeria (actually starting under Zhethron), there are definitely places where you have to say, whoops, let's just come back later.

[kryft]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Actually, those sound like pretty sensible builds.

I could nitpick a few points here and there (Blade Training is probably worse than the middle column for your Shadowwalker, and War Cry may not be the best investment) but those sound fine.

War Cry was mainly an attempt to improve my survivability by reducing enemy damage output, and it seems worth a point for that (although perhaps one point would be enough; I don't know if weakness curse is worth two additional points).

Quote:

Torment really requires paying attention to the details of how the game engine works and taking advantage of them. Lure single enemies away from packs when you can (sometimes this takes a lot of patience). Use summons and sometimes blessings the turn before you initiate combat / make the enemy visible.

One problem is that I don't really have any blessings to speak of unless I use items. How often can I afford to use Battle Potions etc?

I hadn't noticed that you could lure single monsters; that certainly helps a lot!

[Randomizer]

If you are patient you can use range attacks to pick off the closest one before attracting the attention of the others.

 

At this point you need to start adding to endurance since poison/acid attacks are evaded and resisted by endurance rather than dexterity.

 

As Slarty said this is a good place to come back to later after you have finished the main quest.

[Quiconque]

Remember that new skills cost TWO points. The other problem with War Cry is that you can't apply it before the battle begins, so you are using up a turn to activate it. Just attacking, and therefore possibly removing one of your enemies a turn earlier, might be better.

[Superba]

I believe the skipped first turn happens also to Jenel beasts.

[Earth]

ÿes it does happen and fights against multiple enemies it can be useless to call beast early (especially if there's archers fighting against party).

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Not if you summon them before the fight. This does cut their duration by a turn, but you don't have to be in combat with enemies to use summons as you do with debuffs. Summons are more like buff spells in terms of casting order.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

if you do this early enough you can buff and then attack before they get the first turn attack.

i always hated when enemies got the first attack.

[Earth]

still summons (hellhound) tends to die quickly on arrowrain.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Sharpshooter spray? That's true, but most things (ally or enemy, depending on who uses the ability) tend to die quickly to sharpshooter spray. It's quite powerful, and probably a major reason for the "nerf dex" thread currently in progress.

[Earth]

its only effective when enemies use it (I have used it once at early game).

[Jerakeen]

It's incredibly effective when Sevilin uses it...if he has lots of Dex.

[Juan Carlo]

I'm almost finished with a torment game. The first sections can be hard, though, so don't feel bad about using lots of health potions. I used tons in the first portions of the game to get through some battles, but your dependence on them will lessen as the game goes on.

 

Plus, I think maxing out dex is slightly overrated, as especially in the first portion of the game you can't do a whole lot of damage with a max dex character. I don't think Shima, for example, gets very good at offense until later in the game. My main character is a max strength blademaster and I took a more balanced approach between strength and dex for Sevilin and I used Nathalie, my main blademaster, and Sevelin for the first portion of the game (up through the beast hunt, in fact--after which I tend to use, Shima and Nathalie).

 

I'm a newb and I don't know exact stats like some others might, so I could be wrong, but in my experience it seemed like the high strength melee fighters do way more damage in the early portions of the game (especially with their special abilities) compared to high dex characters. All of your starting abilities for both Blademaster and Shadow guy (can't remember the name of the class) are melee abilities anyway, so it makes sense to me to have high strength until you start to unlock other abilities. So I'd actually recommend maxing out strength on your fighters up until you get to the mid-game trainer--at which point you can retrain them to be high dexterity if you want.

 

Plus, I kind of think warcry sucks. I guess I haven't seen much use for it yet.

[Lilith]

Melee does have its uses early on, when missile damage still lags behind a bit. By the time you reach the retrainer, though, I'm betting you'll be more than happy to make the switch to missile.

 

The top-right Blademaster ability is definitely a late-game thing: it doesn't really get good until you get the upgraded version, which happens at level 27 at the earliest.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Even on a melee-missile hybrid blademaster (like mine in my recent torment playthrough) I found Sharpshooter Spray was one of the best options for damage. It hits hard, and is the blademaster's only option (outside of items) for ranged area damage.

[kryft]

Originally Posted By: Juan Carlo

Plus, I think maxing out dex is slightly overrated, as especially in the first portion of the game you can't do a whole lot of damage with a max dex character. I don't think Shima, for example, gets very good at offense until later in the game. My main character is a max strength blademaster and I took a more balanced approach between strength and dex for Sevilin and I used Nathalie, my main blademaster, and Sevelin for the first portion of the game (up through the beast hunt, in fact--after which I tend to use, Shima and Nathalie).

It's nice to hear that a more balanced approach works - based on most other posts, one might think that maxing dex is the only way to survive torment.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Might I recommend sheer bloody-minded persistence? It works in most situations, though it's not necessarily much fun.

[Juan Carlo]

@kryft

 

It's very possible to not have all your characters be max dex on torment. I'm very close to finishing now and I still haven't respec-ed my main high strength blademaster to be a high Dex character (I just haven't seen a need to yet, although I will if I run into problems).

 

The only part of the game that gave me much problem having such low dexterity was a portion later in the game where you have to complete a mission all by yourself. My character was getting hit constantly, so this mission would probably have been way easier with higher dexterity, but I still was able to make it through OK.

[AethirWeb]

Two words only...Cheat Codes

[Alorael at Large]

Please don't give non-advice in a topic. It just clutters the thread.

 

—Alorael, who thinks everyone is aware that the easiest way to win is to cheat. Unfortunately, that's also not a way to play the game as intended.