A3: RW - Trainers (SPOILER)

[Randomizer]

Mage Spells

 

Fort Emergence - Yanmitho - Basic Training (slightly expensive) 

-- Bolt of Fire 80c

-- Call Beast 128c

-- Cloak of Curses 160c

-- Daze 160c

-- Haste 240c

-- Pool of Fire 272c

 

Ghikra - Tekora-Tel (trains when you have Spirit Prism)

-- Capture Soul 560c

-- Simulacrum 700c

 

Inn of Blades - Arion trains (expensive) - Bolt of Fire to Pool of Fire

 

Erika's Tower (after defeating a plague) - Erika (exorbitant) - Bolt of Fire to Lightning Spray

 

Shayder - Sara (pretty average) - Bolt of Fire to Spray Acid

 

Sharamik - Spraggins (expensive) - Slow to Summon Aid except Capture Soul and Simulacrum

 

Dellston - Macitar - (utterly ridiculous) -  Slow to Pool of Corruption except Capture Soul and Simulacrum

 

Calloc - Black (exorbitant) - Dispel Barrier to Fireblast

 

Moon Library - stand [4] - level 1 - Call the Storm, Move Mountains, Divine Fire

 

Gale - Velnas the Mage - (exorbitant) - Slow to Cloak of the Arcane Blow except Soul Capture and Simulacrum

 

Lair of Khoth - Khoth (utterly ridiculous) Slow to Arcane Blow

 

Blackcrag Fortress - Petrie (utterly ridiculous) - Summon Aid to Arcane Blow

 

 

Priest Rituals

 

Fort Emergence - Eva (slightly expensive)

-- Minor Heal 80c

-- Curing 112c

-- Smite 144c

-- Protection 160c

-- War blessing 192c

-- Call the storm 240c

 

Tower of Magi - Mother Clarisse (pretty average) - Minor Heal to Heal

 

Silvar - Temple of Divine Lucre - Kilborn (exorbitant) - Minor Heal to Summon Shade 

 

Pergies - Paulo (slightly expensive) - Minor Heal to Summon Shade 

 

Shaydar - Ahonar (pretty average) - Minor Heal to Curse the Land

 

Sharamik - Ellyn (pretty average) - Minor Heal to Divine Fire

 

Mernia - Sydow - Priest Rituals (very reasonable) - Bless the Land to Divine Restoration

 

Gale - Zachariah (pretty average) - Call the Storm to Ward of Elements

 

Temple of Divine Lucre (level 1) - 5000c for Return Life, Divine Retribution, Divine Restoration

 

Moon - stand [4] - level 1 - Bolt of Fire, Daze, Haste, Pool of Fire

 

Blackcrag Fortress - Shane (exorbitant) - Divine Fire to Divine Host

 

 

Skills

 

Fort Emergence - Yanmitho - Advance Training (need average party level 6)

-- Melee Weapons 1280c

-- Pole Weapons 1280c

-- Bows 960c

-- Thrown Missiles 960c

 

Portal Fortress - Carol - First Aid 800c

 

Tower of Magi - Brigid - (pretty average) Arcane Lore 700c, Cave Lore 700c

 

Erika's Tower (after defeating two plagues) - Erika - (utterly ridiculous)

-- Spellcraft - 2500c

-- Arcane Lore - 1250c

-- Magical Efficiency - 1500c

 

Shaydar and Hectar - Meena - (extremely cheap) - Cave Lore 500c, Bows 600c

 

Bavner - Voorn - (exorbitant - reduces to very reasonable after roach plague) - First Aid 1100c, Resistance 1540c, Hardiness 1540c

 

Golddale - Londo (exorbitant) - Hardiness 1540c, Resistance 1540c

 

Malloc - Mrrrr - (exorbitant unless nephil in party then extremely cheap) - Bows 600c, Thrown Missiles 600c, Sniper 900c

 

Lorelei - Yukikio - (expensive) - Hardiness 1260c, First Aid 900c, Nature Lore 900c, Quick Action 1350c

 

Tevrono - Tenuta - (utterly ridiculous) - Hardiness 1750c, Parry 1875c, Riposte 3000c, Gymnastics 1500c

[mikeprichard]

Errata:

1) Sara (in Shayder) is missing from the list of mage spell trainers (pretty average - Bolt of Fire through Spray Acid).
2) Velnas should be in the mage spells list, not the priest spells list.
3) Zachariah should be in the priest spells list, not the mage spells list.
4) The Moon spell-teaching "stands" are placed in the incorrect lists - the priest spells stand should be moved to the mage spells list, and vice versa.

Edited February 3, 2018 by mikeprichard

[Feathin Silyar]

The list is missing Ellyn in Sharamik for priest spells: Minor Heal through Divine Fire for pretty average.

[Bonam]

Ellyn in Sharamik teaches priest spells (pretty average): Call the storm - Divine Fire.

 

Oops: Saw this was already posted above. 

Edited February 14, 2018 by Bonam

[Shadow Wulfe]

How many times can Zhang train XP?

[Randomizer]

Zang is infinite, but diminishing returns with the XP amount dropping as your party gains levels. I usually quit below 60 XP per 3000 coins.

[Superteeth]

Mrrr in Malloc trains at exorbitant prices, not extremely cheap. Is there something you need to do first?

[Entropic]

Mrrr trains at extremely cheap for me, with the text specifically referencing a "Nephil discount". So, presumably, if you have a Nephil in your party, you get extremely cheap prices. If not, it's exorbitant.

[BenS]

1 hour ago, Entropic said:

Mrrr trains at extremely cheap for me, with the text specifically referencing a "Nephil discount". So, presumably, if you have a Nephil in your party, you get extremely cheap prices. If not, it's exorbitant.

Crap; I'll have to keep that in mind for my next, all-human party

[Superteeth]

I was guessing that was it after stopping the plague didn't change the prices. Guess that means more job board quests. Non-humans suck in this one, anyways. Sure isn't worth the extra traits to have a flat one-time bonus. At least now I know I can't get the price lower for sniper anywhere else. I'm close to having 20 points in sniper with items, so presumably that means double shots every round...

Edited February 20, 2018 by Superteeth

[Edgwyn]

Vlosto in Central Avernum (between Bengaro and Calloc) trains all four characters in Bows for 5000c.

[Slawbug]

Meena trains Bows at the best price too, 600c a point, which is much better than Vlosto.  For Sniper, you'll have to put up with the higher cost.

[pebble]

Blackcrag Fortress - Shane (exorbitant) - Divine Fire to Divine Host

Prices are extremely Cheap if you are part of the Anama or have the rings (he is of the Anama)

[Entropic]

On 2/19/2018 at 10:24 PM, The Executable Branch said:

Meena trains Bows at the best price too, 600c a point, which is much better than Vlosto.  For Sniper, you'll have to put up with the higher cost.

 

Vlosto doesn't count against trained points though, so you can do both...

[BenS]

There are a few references to Cave Lore that should be updated to Nature Lore...

[Entropic]

On 2/19/2018 at 7:13 PM, Superteeth said:

I was guessing that was it after stopping the plague didn't change the prices. Guess that means more job board quests. Non-humans suck in this one, anyways. Sure isn't worth the extra traits to have a flat one-time bonus. At least now I know I can't get the price lower for sniper anywhere else. I'm close to having 20 points in sniper with items, so presumably that means double shots every round...

I dunno man, my Nephil archer carried my damage against bosses in Torment. He reached 54% lethal blow chance, and had a listed +35% crit chance on gear, but seemed to have a much higher crit chance than that in practice (against endgame enemies like alien beasts and beyond). His damage was absolutely insane, routinely reading 250 (+900 resisted) on endgame bosses, and hitting cockroaches and slimes for 800 lategame. That, combined with his lvl. 20 sniper for guaranteed double shot, and high fatigue recovery for frequent 4-shot turns with Adrenaline Rush, made him an absolute burst monster. He routinely single-handedly took bosses from full to almost half HP in a turn, and I never really overleveled or anything (ended the game at lvl 33). I haven't played a human archer to compare him to, but since I exhausted all the DPS traits on my Nephil long before level 33, the only benefit would've been for survivability (which I didn't really find lacking on him) from extra tank traits like parry master.

 

And yes, 20 sniper guarantees the double shot (as long as you have enough AP to trigger it).

 

The way sniper works is that your attack costs 5ap instead of 9, so with lvl. 20 sniper, you get 2 attacks if you attack at 6ap or higher, and 3 attacks if you attack at 16ap or higher. I found it to be very inconsistent in its interactions with haste though. Generally, I wouldn't even use haste. My human mage & human cleric (both made good use of the extra traits) just used +AP items to guarantee 10ap, and then had ~10 gymnastics +2-4 from items, giving them great chances at 12 ap, making haste pretty irrelevant. And my slith tank (didn't go for any dps traits outside of 5 strength levels) didn't really contribute enough damage for a haste on him alone to matter. I want to say that the 10% fire resistance came in handy against dragons, which it might have, but I feel like my tank could've easily been better as a sword+shield human, just swapping in some extra fire resist gear for dragons.

[Slawbug]

Based on previous games, "lethal blow" and "critical hit" are actually the same thing -- so from the above numbers plus presumably a base chance of 5%, you might have 94% to crit.

 

Sniper isn't actually inconsistent in interacting with Haste -- rather Sniper and Haste trigger the same effect, a -4 AP cost to use your action effect, but it will only trigger once on a given turn even if you have both Sniper and Haste.  This is the real problem with Sniper: even if Haste is irrelevant, it's a very cheap spell that is basically equivalent to having 6 or 7 points of Sniper.

 

That said, 1150 damage before armor is indeed pretty high!  Let's unpack this...

 

Longbows use d4s.  At level 33, figure 50 from Dex (with items, traits, etc), 17 from levels, 16 from the weapon, 12 from bows, and rounding up to 100 for convenience/item bonuses, that's a base of around 100-400 damage, clustering fairly closely around 250.  But let's assume these are good-ish rolls and go with 275.  Now for the percentile bonus: 10 from Nephil, 9 from traits, let's say 56 from Sharpshooter (w/ items), 51 direct from items (note that 25 are from the Fury Bow, not an early find).  That's about a +125% bonus, so it'll take us to a base damage of around 620.  If you have Cloak of Bows active, which perhaps Entropic does, that would boost it quite a bit higher -- in A:EFTP, level 3 CoB was an additive +50%.  War Blessing helps too.

 

Depending on the Cloak and which of my other assumptions were accurate (or not), 1150 does sound plausible, either with +50% from crits as used to be the case, or perhaps altered crit mechanics.

 

Here's the thing: basically all of the same numbers can apply to spells as well.  You miss weapon levels, but get more from Spell skill, and a higher die size for top tier spells (1-6 for Arcane Blow and Divine Retribution).  So that's around 350, percentile bonuses somewhat lower (15 traits, 20 spellcraft, 41 items) -- multiply it out and it takes us, again, to around 620.  Basically parallel buffs.  And spells can crit too, though admittedly a magic-user is much less likely to have manual points in Lethal Blow, so crits may be less consistent.

 

Seems like a small price to pay for the ability to hit multiple enemies at once, personally -- not to mention the flexibility to be able to do stuff besides attack, when needed.  It's true that mages won't have the high dodge rate; OTOH, archers who go after the full suite of missile skills would have a hard time finding points to reach Resistance.

[Superteeth]

I'm not sure what the bonus is for nephil. My archer gets tons of turns because of sniper and adrenaline rush too, but doesn't do that much damage. What are you equipped with that lets you do that much?

[Entropic]

23 hours ago, The Executable Branch said:

Based on previous games, "lethal blow" and "critical hit" are actually the same thing -- so from the above numbers plus presumably a base chance of 5%, you might have 94% to crit.

 

Sniper isn't actually inconsistent in interacting with Haste -- rather Sniper and Haste trigger the same effect, a -4 AP cost to use your action effect, but it will only trigger once on a given turn even if you have both Sniper and Haste.  This is the real problem with Sniper: even if Haste is irrelevant, it's a very cheap spell that is basically equivalent to having 6 or 7 points of Sniper.

 

That said, 1150 damage before armor is indeed pretty high!  Let's unpack this...

 

Longbows use d4s.  At level 33, figure 50 from Dex (with items, traits, etc), 17 from levels, 16 from the weapon, 12 from bows, and rounding up to 100 for convenience/item bonuses, that's a base of around 100-400 damage, clustering fairly closely around 250.  But let's assume these are good-ish rolls and go with 275.  Now for the percentile bonus: 10 from Nephil, 9 from traits, let's say 56 from Sharpshooter (w/ items), 51 direct from items (note that 25 are from the Fury Bow, not an early find).  That's about a +125% bonus, so it'll take us to a base damage of around 620.  If you have Cloak of Bows active, which perhaps Entropic does, that would boost it quite a bit higher -- in A:EFTP, level 3 CoB was an additive +50%.  War Blessing helps too.

 

Depending on the Cloak and which of my other assumptions were accurate (or not), 1150 does sound plausible, either with +50% from crits as used to be the case, or perhaps altered crit mechanics.

 

Here's the thing: basically all of the same numbers can apply to spells as well.  You miss weapon levels, but get more from Spell skill, and a higher die size for top tier spells (1-6 for Arcane Blow and Divine Retribution).  So that's around 350, percentile bonuses somewhat lower (15 traits, 20 spellcraft, 41 items) -- multiply it out and it takes us, again, to around 620.  Basically parallel buffs.  And spells can crit too, though admittedly a magic-user is much less likely to have manual points in Lethal Blow, so crits may be less consistent.

 

Seems like a small price to pay for the ability to hit multiple enemies at once, personally -- not to mention the flexibility to be able to do stuff besides attack, when needed.  It's true that mages won't have the high dodge rate; OTOH, archers who go after the full suite of missile skills would have a hard time finding points to reach Resistance.

 

Everything you said here was pretty much SPOT on. Almost my Nephil's build to the letter, including Cloak of Bolts + War Blessing use. And yes, the Cloak makes an absolutely enormous difference. I'd estimate it was giving me around 25-30% net damage increase, based on when I briefly dropped it to dabble with Cloak of the Arcane and see if my casters could post some decent numbers. Lethal Blow and Critical Chance being the same also matches with my experience - like I said, I pretty much always saw "Critical hit!" from my Nephil, but 94% does sound about right. Very, very rarely it'd be noticeably absent. I had expected Lethal Blow to be like Assassination from the original series, so I thought it'd be separate, but acting as critical strike chance ended up working very nicely for my build.

 

I do disagree with your sentiment on Haste vs. Sniper though, a guaranteed 2 shots per turn is a world of difference against bosses and for general quality of life. I'm really not a huge fan of RNG, and I plan my fights pretty carefully, so having bad/mediocre odds of a second shot with haste was just frustrating. Granted, Battle Frenzy can be RNG cheesed before every fight (or Eyebeasts simulacrum'd, but more often than not fights were over long before that came to happen, with all 4 party members exploiting adrenaline rush for burst) to get the same effect, but with my party setup, even Battle Frenzy was just redundant.

 

You're also right about the inability to reach Resistance; I think I had absolutely zero Resistance on him by the end of the game (might as well have used some of those Resistance crystals on him that were just sitting in my inventory all game...). I somewhat fixed that problem by giving him the shield artifact (so much generic hostile effect resistance!), which I also picked up fairly early on in the game (very shortly after first getting the Orb of Thralni) and relying on his naturally great dodge chance.

 

The lack of flexibility was never really a problem though - being able to get a nearly guaranteed 2-shot, 1-turn kill on any non-boss enemy ended up being pretty much all I could ever want from him. This was even more true considering my general approach to the game, guerilla fighting, where I'd try to fish for favorable engages that left me against only 1-3 enemies at a time where possible. In many cases, an engagement would just be: start fight, tank attacks the only enemy on screen, Nephil finishes it off with 2 shots (or shoot+adrenaline rush+3 shots if there's 2 enemies), end combat. I intentionally added enough points in Quick Action that I was always guaranteed the first move in any combat, and that no enemies would move in between my party members. It ended up giving my playthrough a very nice assassin-y feel to it, as opposed to the room-wide nuclear destruction that fireblast and arcane blow (especially while hasted) provided me in the original Avernum series I played on Mac back in the day.

 

Ironically, I always felt much more like it was my casters who were inflexible. Their SP costs were so high if I wanted them to do any sort of reasonable single-target damage, and their AoE spells would massacre my own tank (Arcane Blow, Fireblast, Divine Fire) if I tried to get a nice group aggro going to let me hit more than 2-4 enemies, or put them wildly out of position in the case of Divine Retribution (which I ended up using only in conjunction with Adrenaline Rush for the most part). It felt like the vast majority of my casters' turns were spent either doing healing/buffing/dazing/immobilizing, or doing absolutely pathetic (~50-120) damage with Fireball/Smite because I wanted my 10-15 total first aid levels (from items & trainer only of course) to sustain my SP, rather than having to drop what I was doing and scurry back to the nearest town. And that was with 40+ Int and plenty of damage gear! I'll grant you this though, when the stars aligned, and the enemies were grouped well for Arcane Blow or Divine Retribution, and I had the SP to spare, Adrenaline Rush + 3 Arcane Blows from my mage + 3 Divine Retributions from my priest would definitely do work. It just wasn't worth the SP in most cases for me. I'll admit I was actually tempted to max out Magical Efficiency and First Aid, just to see what devastation a full caster party could do with unlimited SP... But by the time I saw the potential, it was just too late to muster the points. And honestly, I feel like I'd have been sacrificing a lot of my casters' survivability, which was already on a razor's edge with the huge damage in Torment on all the godawful AoE elemental damage effects that get thrown around.

 

Fury Bow being a later-game pickup might also be true for most players. But man, when I heard about a legendary bow from Judith in Shayder... I kid you not I left Bigail and before even fighting Troglodytes or Giants I went far north and hunted around for the Pit of the Wyrm using Judith's tip that it was near Bremerton. I thought I found it when I came across a group of soldiers standing outside of an overworld tunnel, got destroyed by their mage, and came back after I got the Orb of Thralni only to find that it was just a Skribhead fort. After a little more searching I found it, and with great difficulty I managed to make it through at that rather low level (getting ~25exp per kill in there). So actually I ended up getting the Fury Bow very early on (and of course immediately blessed my new God bow), having it for at least half the game overall.

 

The boss fight to get it, and those damn Hhorthas or whatnot, was the single hardest experience I had in the game. At the level I went after it, even the altered giants in that cave were absolutely decimating my party. I saved after every 2-3 giants I killed, pulled & retreated to draw them a few at a time, and very slowly made my way through the cave. The first one of those slimes I saw single-handedly wiped my entire party. I ended up approaching the Pit with extreme guerilla tactics, dividing and conquering my way to the boss fight. And that boss fight, with the brutal Deep Stalker AoE, juiced up Empire Archer + Dervish, and constant summoning of mobs that I couldn't afford the damage to kill... don't even get me started. Thankfully, I eventually realized just how far I could kite it, and exploited a staircase chokepoint to get the boss far from his summoning platforms and keep my ranged characters safe. After stockpiling all my acid/poison resistance gear onto my high-hardiness, Endurance-invested tank, he could survive any combination of the boss's attacks. After that it was only a matter of time. Still possibly one of my most memorable Avernum fights of all time, after perhaps a certain dragon in Crystal Souls.

 

Overall, I was very satisfied with my team comp, a balanced approach, that gave me excellent single target damage for bossing via my Archer, and excellent support + on-demand AoE damage via Adrenaline Rush + AP item abuse on my casters.

[Slawbug]

17 hours ago, Entropic said:

I do disagree with your sentiment on Haste vs. Sniper though, a guaranteed 2 shots per turn is a world of difference against bosses and for general quality of life... Granted, Battle Frenzy can be RNG cheesed before every fight... to get the same effect, but with my party setup, even Battle Frenzy was just redundant.

 

A guaranteed 2 shots per turn from Sniper requires TWENTY points of Sniper.  Yes, you can reach this, but it takes some serious effort, and you're certainly not going to get it on more than one character.  Whereas other routes to guaranteed 2 shots, like cheesing Haste, take less investment and can apply to the whole party.  Those 10 points (or whatever) that you manually spent on Sniper did nothing relevant except contribute to those guaranteed 2 shots.  I understand the convenience of never needing to cast Haste, but 10 skill points (plus other sources) is quite a cost for convenience!

 

To be clear, I think it's awesome that you were able to tech out your archer so well and that they performed so well for you.  I just object to the assertion that they performed better than a spellcaster in the same role would perform.  While it's true that Arcane Blow and the like eat up SP quickly, Lightning Spray is quite efficient at 10 SP.  And not putting those points into Sniper (and putting them into Spellcraft instead) frees you up to buy Resistance -- the clear answer to "the godawful AoE elemental damage effects" that you saw so much of.  Your spellcasters might have hung back, but there is no reason they have to take that role in A3 -- they can access Hardiness and wear good armor just like the warriors can, when properly prepared for it.  And if you don't mind moving them into less isolated positions, the difficulty with using cone spells effectively vanishes.

[Entropic]

On 2/26/2018 at 6:03 PM, Cornucopic Brows said:

 

A guaranteed 2 shots per turn from Sniper requires TWENTY points of Sniper.  Yes, you can reach this, but it takes some serious effort, and you're certainly not going to get it on more than one character.

 True, I only had 1 character as an archer though (and probably wouldn't change that, given you only get 1 Fury Bow), so it wasn't too much of a problem.

 

On 2/26/2018 at 6:03 PM, Cornucopic Brows said:

 

Whereas other routes to guaranteed 2 shots, like cheesing Haste, take less investment and can apply to the whole party.  Those 10 points (or whatever) that you manually spent on Sniper did nothing relevant except contribute to those guaranteed 2 shots.  I understand the convenience of never needing to cast Haste, but 10 skill points (plus other sources) is quite a cost for convenience!

Like I said, the rest of my party already had guaranteed 10ap, due to +AP items and Gymnastics (except for the tank, who didn't particularly need 10 ap), making both haste and battle frenzy irrelevant. The other big thorn is that battle frenzy can't always be cheesed; unexpected fights, outdoor fights, and prolonged boss fights where cheese'd battle frenzy runs out (not that there were many of those, with the archer's burst) all invalidate that kind of pre-fight cheesing. Finally, those 10 skill points would only have gone to Spellcraft/Resistance, which was taken care of by the artifact shield and extremely high natural dodge chance.

 

On 2/26/2018 at 6:03 PM, Cornucopic Brows said:

 I just object to the assertion that they performed better than a spellcaster in the same role would perform.  While it's true that Arcane Blow and the like eat up SP quickly, Lightning Spray is quite efficient at 10 SP.

The role of this character is single-target damage, with extremely high burst potential for taking out high priority threats. To achieve the same results with a spellcaster, you'd have to be using 80sp per turn. Not very sustainable. And even then, best case scenario, a spellcaster ends up with similar non-crit numbers, but about half the crit chance (if even that), and is even more reliant on RNG for haste procs or battle frenzy activation. So on average you're looking at a pretty big damage loss. Lightning Spray isn't relevant at all to the discussion of single-target damage because of its mediocre damage, but like you said can be useful for cheap area damage (and indeed, towards the end of the game, my mage's turn would frequently be Lightning Spray-Adrenaline Rush-Lightning Spray x 3, in situations that weren't dire enough for the desperation move of throwing away 1/3 of my SP for 4 x Arcane Blow).

 

On 2/26/2018 at 6:03 PM, Cornucopic Brows said:

And not putting those points into Sniper (and putting them into Spellcraft instead) frees you up to buy Resistance -- the clear answer to "the godawful AoE elemental damage effects" that you saw so much of.  Your spellcasters might have hung back, but there is no reason they have to take that role in A3 -- they can access Hardiness and wear good armor just like the warriors can, when properly prepared for it.  And if you don't mind moving them into less isolated positions, the difficulty with using cone spells effectively vanishes.

Took care of the resistance problem on my archer with the artifact shield. Also had a ton of Resistance and Hardiness training crystals that could've done the job too, if I'd actually needed them. The godawful AoE elemental damage effects was mostly an early-game problem, before I had the points to double dip into the 2nd of Hardiness or Resistance (depending on character, archer and tank got Hardiness early, and Resistance very late, spellcasters got Resistance early and Hardiness fairly late). By end game, all of my characters had high levels of both, except the archer who only had somewhere between 3 and 5 Resistance. My spellcasters were using fairly decent armor, but would still get destroyed by physical damage when moving up to use cone spells before I unlocked Adrenaline Rush, since they had neither the parry of my tank nor the dodge of my archer. After Adrenaline Rush, the fights that AoE would be useful in were generally over in 1 turn, between 2 spellcasters using it with the archer cleaning up.

 

                                                                                                                                                              

 

All that being said, if you have a party setup/stat/skill guide for a full spellcaster team in Torment, I'd love to try it so I can judge the numbers and playstyle myself. Also interested in your thoughts on full investment into First Aid+Magical Efficiency for a full spellcaster team, if it's a worthwhile (or even possible) path after getting damage, Resistance, and Hardiness (which also unlocks adrenaline rush in the process).

[Slawbug]

54 minutes ago, Entropic said:

Lightning Spray isn't relevant at all to the discussion of single-target damage because of its mediocre damage

 

Lightning Spray uses the same dice as longbows (1-4).  It does, to be clear, about 5/7 the damage that Arcane Blow does.  If your Lightning Spray damage was "mediocre", that's because your mage was not built with a single-minded focus on damage the way your archer was.

 

As far as crit chance goes, mages get access to literally all the same crit chance boosters that archers do -- they can wear the same equipment.  They are less likely to put manual points into Lethal Blow, but that's not exciting: since crits just do +50% damage, that means a point of Lethal Blow is +2.5% to average damage output.  (And if a mage wants to ignore Resistance, as your archer did, or perhaps ignore Hardiness instead, they certainly could put those points into Lethal Blow.)

 

The thing is, there aren't very many situations where you really care about ST damage and only ST damage.

 

54 minutes ago, Entropic said:

All that being said, if you have a party setup/stat/skill guide for a full spellcaster team in Torment, I'd love to try it so I can judge the numbers and playstyle myself. Also interested in your thoughts on full investment into First Aid+Magical Efficiency for a full spellcaster team, if it's a worthwhile (or even possible) path after getting damage, Resistance, and Hardiness (which also unlocks adrenaline rush in the process).

 

Here's what I ran with in A3RW:

 

All PCs are mostly identical, but the first two are priests and the second two are mages; differences will be mentioned where they appear.

 

4 Humans (obviously).

 

Stat points ALL go to Intelligence.  No Endurance.  It's truly not worth it after the very early levels, and you can just play carefully there.

 

Skill points:

Mage Spells or Priest Spells (as appropriate) up to the level needed to cast the most useful spells currently available.

Tool Use to 5-6 for mages only.

Edged Weapons to 8 and Hardiness to 10 (raise together) as a priority for survival and for Adrenaline Rush access.

Early money should be spent on just a few key spells, then weapon training, getting 1 PC at a time up to 15 for AR.  (Money also needs to go into buying Arcane Lore; this can even be done after 1 or 2 PCs get AR, as just that makes a huge difference for a while.)

Priests put points into Parry when available.

Once all that's done or mostly done, each character boosts Spellcraft to 8 and Resistance to 10 (raise together).  Mages can eventually pick up some Parry as well.

Eventually, train Hardiness and Resistance to 12 (and Parry, for priests).

 

I did not go for First Aid + Magical Efficiency, but you certainly could work it in there, perhaps by using trait slots on Nimble Fingers.  You certainly can and should buy training in both skills.

 

No manual points into Arcane Lore (buy Vahnatai Lore instead) or Cave Lore.

 

Key Traits:

Improved Intelligence (everyone)

Parry Mastery (priority for priests)

Swordmage x2 (priority for mages)

Blessing Focus (priority for your Haste caster and your Protection/War Blessing caster)

Eventually: Elemental Focus; Recovery; Good Health, Robust Health, Perfect Health

Optional but convenient: Negotiator

 

Equipment:

Priests are in front and can just armor up, though make sensible choices for to-hit purposes (pants over greaves, etc.)

Mages can wear a surprising amount of armor even without Swordmage.  Prioritize big pieces: everyone should wear the best chest armor available, and eventually the best shield.  Other than that avoid too much to-hit reduction.  Definitely wear a longbow, as that 10% crit chance applies to spells as well (sigh, such lazy item/ability construction).

 

Key Spells to Buy Early:

War Blessing (to level 1 on 1 PC)

Call the Storm (to level 1; primary purpose is board control, not damage)

Curse the Land (to level 2)

Mass Curing (to level 1 on 1 PC)

Mass Healing (to level 1 on 1 PC)

Ward of Steel (to 2)

 

Daze (to 2)

Haste (to 2 on 1 PC)

Icy Rain (to 2)

Lightning Spray (to 2)

Capture Soul & Simulacrum

Cloak of the Arcane (to 2 on 1 PC)

 

Since you abhor SP use, you will also want to boost Bolt of Fire and perhaps Smite.

 

Basic strategies:

1. Control the battlefield.  Enemies without ranged attacks, like ursagi, can be completely disarmed by combining Daze (which essentially guarantees Ensnared at level 2) with Call the Storm (which guarantees knockback).  By using geography to your advantage, this can also keep enemy archers and mages out of range for a few turns, enough time to set any fight up to your liking.  In outdoor battles, it is often helpful to have everyone fall back 1-3 squares on turn 1 in order to facilitate this.

 

Summons are also quite valuable on Torment -- they aren't going to do a lot of damage but they are great at distracting your enemies.  (Simulacrum, of course, can be incredibly strong if you capture the right souls.)

 

2. Control the odds.  Buffs are key and so are debuffs.  Curse the Land level 2 is amazing: it not only delivers strong magical damage, it also curses the enemies significantly (and likely curses any enemies behind it, since they rarely seem to pathfind around field effects).  Take the time to buff before combats, and to renew buffs when they wear off.  This is the reality of this game engine; don't fight it.  (Although you don't even really need Haste level 3 on every PC once you have AR.)

 

3. Control your angles.  If you play around with cone spells and learn how to target them in order tweak their AoE, you can generally hit LOTS of enemies while avoiding party members.  More often than not, I actually find them to be better for targeting purposes than circular area spells.

 

When your first party members act, THINK AHEAD about where your later casters will want to be firing from... you want to position everyone in a way that won't step on anyone else's feet.

 

4. Control your metabolism.  Adrenaline Rush is still extremely OP.  Once everyone has it, there will be few enemies that survive your first turn.  Also, not only does it cost nothing, it reduces SP consumption by allowing you to cast multiple cheaper spells instead of one really expensive one.

 

Adrenaline Rush is the real reason that +AP stuff like Gymnastics, equipment, and BF is not the end-all be-all.  Getting 3 actions on turn 1 is more than enough for most battles, and for the few where it isn't, you can take the time to make BF land.

 

5. Control your destiny.  If you are really that worried about running out of SP and don't like going back to town (or simulating it with "imdrained") then just buy and/or craft energy potions, and drink them.

[Entropic]

Most of that sounds about like what I did, with a few key points that must've contributed to the lackluster performance of my casters in the early/midgame:

 

- I added endurance early game to lower the frequency of oneshots, to the tune of 3-4 int : 1 endurance, missing about 5 intelligence

- I waited far too late to level edged weapons and unlock Adrenaline Rush on my casters, maxing both Spellcraft and Resistance first (would definitely change that in a future playthrough)

- Underutilization of Call the Storm and Curse the Land: I routinely kept all enemies Ensared at the least, with my mage, but frequently just used Smite on my priest's turn (with my high Sniper level, I was actually getting curses pretty frequently on whatever my archer was attacking, however)

- Using Cloak of Bolts instead of Cloak of the Arcane: I knew this would make a difference, but wasn't willing to lose my primary single target damage source

- Ignoring swordmage: I didn't have even a single level of this on my mage, and was just using AP items or particularly high-armor caster items

- Inefficient use of money: I bought 2 levels of every spell early game instead of putting it into weapon skills for Adrenaline Rush, and didn't start getting selective about buying spells until sometime after Bigail

 

I definitely still had a lot of fun with my balanced playthrough, but I'll keep these things in mind for a future all-spellcaster playthrough and see how it goes, thanks.

[Randomizer]

I would recommend Summon Shade for a Priest summon as cheaper SP cost, immune to cold and mental effect attacks, has a chance of cold cone attack, and has a decent to hit chance through the middle game.

[jlsgaladriel]

Random unfortunate trainer trait: Black in Calloc won't train you if you've got anama rings.  I'm sure real anama wouldn't care, but I guess those thieves' guild rings are pretty good copies.  

(Have my fingers swelled?  Why can't I just slip 'em off and put 'em in my pocket?  Am I eating too much salt?)

 

Edited March 27, 2018 by jlsgaladriel

[Randomizer]

Mage NPCs aren't going to train or offer quests to Anama or Fake Anama. Some won't even sell you things.

[Lilith]

3 hours ago, jlsgaladriel said:

Random unfortunate trainer trait: Black in Calloc won't train you if you've got anama rings.  I'm sure real anama wouldn't care, but I guess those thieves' guild rings are pretty good copies.  

(Have my fingers swelled?  Why can't I just slip 'em off and put 'em in my pocket?  Am I eating too much salt?)

 

 

I think if you join the Anama it's specified that their rings are deliberately made non-removable so that members have to make a commitment to living as Anama. I guess the fake rings need to have some of the same enchantments in order to fool magical means of detection.

[Portia]

Just created an account to point out that Petrie in Blackcrag Fortress is Extremely Cheap if you have Anama rings.

 

Edit: And I see someone mentioned this above but the list hasn't been updated to reflect it.

Edited April 17, 2018 by Portia

[Darren]

Meena the Healer doesn't offer me training. Do you have to join the Anama?

 

[Randomizer]

1 hour ago, Darren said:

Meena the Healer doesn't offer me training. Do you have to join the Anama?

 

You have to finish the quest for Jed in the Hospital.

[Zkal]

On 2/25/2018 at 3:19 AM, Entropic said:

 

Vlosto doesn't count against trained points though, so you can do both...

 

I have just checked this and it does count against trained points ; so, you can do both, but if you want the maximum increase (+3), you must first buy two points at a trainer and only then train with Vlosto. It’s the same as with all the skills for which you can buy points from trainers and get extra points elsewhere (because the game checks whether you don’t already have at least two extra points when you want to buy a point at a trainer, but extra points gained elsewhere will just be added whatever the number of extra points you may already have).

I have found one exception so far, however : in the northwest, there is a Drake Lord which gives you +1 Blademaster and +1 Spellcraft for 5000 Gold. These two points are added to the base skill instead of to the extra byte that is used to store trained points. This could be because there is no trainer for Blademaster otherwise

Edited February 10, 2019 by Zkal

[Lucidus]

This is a follow-up to Zkal's post about bonuses to trained skills. To maximize your skill points, you should first bring your preferred skills to the maximum possible 10 using the points gained from levelling up. Then you should purchase the 2 additional points available from the trainers listed at the top of this thread, and only then should you go for the bonuses available from the special locations and encounters. To help you manage this, here is my list of those bonus encounters, in no particular order.

 

1) In Golddale, when you complete Ivanova's quest for the stolen transporter book, you get a bonus of +1 to Hardiness.

2) In the Monastery of Madness, just NW of the entrance, there is a book which will give you +1 to Gymnastics.

3) In the Fading Tower, there is a basin which grants you +1 to Dual Wielding. Since this tower disappears after you complete it, you may have to accept this bonus earlier than is ideal.

4) In Poulsbo, when you complete Daltrey's quest, you get +1 to Lethal Blow.

5) Near Calloc, if you kill the vampire for the giants, you get +1 to Lethal Blow. If instead you kill the giants for the vampire, you get +1 to First Aid.

6) In the Lair of Khoth, there is a book which gives +1 to Arcane Lore. (This applies only to your first character; all the other bonuses listed here are applied to all members of your party.)

7) Vlosto, in his home north of the Abandoned Hut, will give +1 to Bows in exchange for 5,000c.

8) The Drake Lord will also charge you 5,000c for +1 to Blademaster and +1 to Spellcraft. (As Zkal stated, it appears you can get this one at any time without it counting against your limit of 2 trained points.)

9) In the Great Wall, there is a crystal that will grant you +1 to Spellmaster.

 

If I have missed any, please let me know.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Lucidus

[Juan Carlo]

I'm playing through this right now and I need to know what order to train higher level skills in to max them out.

 

EDIT: Never mind.   Just noticed the post above explains this.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Juan Carlo

[Hrafnskald]

Great information, and I appreciate people sharing their tactics and ways of using different spells. 

 

What is the ettiquette on sharing external information/sites/guides? 

I recently found a pair of guides over on the Steam Avernum Discussions section that I think could be quite useful for players here. 

I don't want to overstep, or spam if linking to other sites is not okay. Is there a way to do this right? 

 

-Hr

[Slawbug]

Linking to those is definitely fine.  I would suggest just making a new thread for that.

[khoitnmsubs]

On 1/31/2018 at 5:14 PM, Randomizer said:

Arcane Lore 700c, Cave Lore 700c

Just an update that in my version, Brigid trains Arcane Lore and Nature Lore (no Cave Lore)