Queen's Wish 1 - Mechanical Musings

[Murreh]

Since I'm an obsessive numbers guy and again in the mood to share information I couldn't find, I'll leave a rambling mass of tidbits here.  It won't be as detailed or organized as some other stuff I've done, but somebody might learn something.  I overlooked a lot of stuff initially and had to find out by accident, maybe save some people the same trouble...

 

First thing worth mentioning is that your character sheet doesn't include many bonuses (like Tower of Might bonuses) while in a Fort, but you can simply step outside to see what the numbers should be.  This also includes bonuses from Shield Ally (important later).  This is how I first noticed the evasion cap, I thought I was getting hit too often to really have 90% evasion, turns out I didn't.

 

Gear Augments: Any piece of gear that can have Augment Slots can have up to 3 slots (except Wands, I think the best of those has 2). Shields and Orbs can have up to 3 "Augment" slots each, chestpieces can have up to 3, helmets can have up to 3 (only the T3 Haven Bassinet from smithshops, nothing else I've seen has more than 2) and I got well over halfway through the game before realizing there are neckpieces with up to 3 slots too.  "Augment" on offhands, chests, necklaces refers to a specific type of slot.  Weapons are listed as having augment slots, but they only take "Runes".  The exact same time I realized neckpiece slots were a thing, I also noticed that helmets are special and can take Augments as well as Runes, that moment caused major chaos in my numbercrunching.  As long as the Augments are not identical numerically, they can be stacked on the same item... for example, you can put a 9%, 6%, AND 4% Speed in the same item if you have to.  It's generally better to not do this when you can avoid it (because you're usually better-off using more powerful Augments spread around on more items for efficiency), but it's possible.  It was mostly necessary midgame on my tank to overcome the huge speed penalties of good armor and stay in that 20-25% sweet spot.  Earlier, before you can get Fleetfoot Ring and Support talents to move your stats around, simply don't bother with heavy armor at all, the cost is too high.  If you decide to rush smithies to be able to buy Bassinets (because they're the only thing with 3 slots at all for helmets), you can un-place your smithies afterwards to reduce the Iron upkeep and still wear them... they'll block half damage, but the Augment slots are worth it for anyone who can wear them.  However if you un-Talent Tier 3 combat you can't wear them at all.

 

Speed: 65% is as high as it goes, Haste effects give 40%, and as in every Jeffgame Speed is about as important as it gets when it comes to maximizing your OP-ness.  This means if you can get a character's unbuffed stats to 22-27%, you'll be within a few percent of "as fast as possible".  Fighting anything really dangerous, causing Slow effects does the opposite to enemies.  If your whole party is at 160%+ Speed and your enemies have 40% taken off whatever their base is, you can sometimes act 2-3 times per character per enemy action, giving tons of opportunity to deal with whatever comes your way (or simply smashing faces harder).  You can get up to 20% Speed from the Support skill tree (10% from passive talent, 10% from the tier bonus for having any T4 Support skill).  This tends to mean your support characters won't need many speed augments, but your heavy armor specialists will probably want to get a ton of Support talents for the Speed and Evasion bonuses.  Heavy armor's 20% penalty and the 10% penalty on big shields really hurts (but Dyne's Palisade is so much worth having to overcome that penalty).  It's also worth mentioning that Curing, Disruption, and item usage only cost 4AP, so you can use them to wipe off 13 rounds of bleed/poison/whatever or remove an enemy's Evasion buffs and still attack with 1AP that same turn... this makes Jar of Medicine potions really powerful in many situations, especially if you're always huddled up anyway as a Tower-of-Might-stacking Crystalized-Fire-and-Ice-shanking party.

 

Evasion: Both evasion stats cap at 80%.  The tier bonuses in the Support talent tree give 5% to both evasions.  Tower of Might in earlier versions of the game was supposedly bugged (but fixed later on), and now it properly gives 5% to both evasions to everybody in range per point.  There's a Charm pack item that grants +1 Tower of Might.  Dyne's Palisade is a heavy shield available later on that gives +2 Shield Ally, and the Ruby Pendant gives +1 (though only has one Augment slot).  I found it worth using the Ruby Pendant because combined with the Palisade it's 15% Physical Evasion for the whole party.

 

Cursing: I don't know if there's a specific cap, but there are very few ways to increase it anyway.  The Magery talent is Tier 1 Magic, and everybody should have it (because it gives healing and blessings too, and +1 Energy).  There's a 10% Curse charm, 10% Curse duration runes, which means you can get 20% for one rune each in a weapon and helmet.  The Static Jade necklace is fantastic, giving 10% duration and some other stats and also has 3 augment slots.  With everybody having 40-50% Curse duration, it's much harder for enemies to Bless away your opposing penalties, and they last much longer when that's not a problem.  Bludgeon Senseless for example, at level 3 with +1 from a ring, does 75% extra damage and causes three different curses that have a base duration of 6 turns, plus 50% extra duration... Shield Shatter will last 9 turns per application, or Crystalized Fire stabbies that proc Vulnerability will have it last an extra turn (making 5 stacks of Vulnerability easypeasy to achieve and sustain without having to use Shatter more than a couple times at the start).  If an enemy's Hasted already you'll probably want to Disrupt it away (because haste has such a big base duration), but once they're Bludgeoned a few times into being slow they're going to be SO slow and Weakened they'll never haste or bless it off again.  Extra levels of Curses you don't really care about still helps prevent enemies from Curing off the ones that do matter, Curse duration is a great stat if abused.  It's also worth mentioning that weapons and skills that add Curse or damaging effects can land those effects more than once at a time, a Shield Shatter with a Vulnerability-chance-on-hit-weapon CAN give you 2 stacks.  While I know for sure Bloodletting and Vicious Strikes can give 2 stacks of bleed, I don't know for sure if it also works with Brutal Blow (though I'd assume it does from everything else seeming to work).  It might be possible to get Brutal, Bloodletting, and Vicious all at once for 3 stacks of bleed (and MAYBE even 4 with a bleeding weapon), but the chances are low and bleeding isn't very good so I lack the appropriate level of care to test it.

 

Blessing: If you make sure to have a Blessing duration rune in every possible piece of gear, the people who bother using those skills are all going to have 120-150% extra duration.  For me, it was well worth passing up Healing power whenever necessary for more Blessing duration.  Inspiring Cry lasting 13-15 turns makes it really easy to stack it and smash faces for long battles.  Haven's Might at only 1 point gives ~20 rounds of Haste and Bless, you don't even need anyone who knows Battle Frenzy... if you REALLY want to go all-in with two points in Haven's Might and maximized Blessing duration, I saw some at 35+ rounds.  The less time and Energy you can spend buffing, the more damage and healing you can afford to do, and it even means your Haven's Might Haste will have enough duration to take several hits of Slow to remove, prophylactic power has its own benefits.

 

Critical Hits: These seem to do 50% extra damage, but it's worth noting they are multiplicative with extra damage bonuses on skills.  Eventually I even threw a Fury Ring and Necromancer's Robes on the same character (it was worth losing the Blessing duration of shop robes and 2 lost augment slots for the 10% crit, because Haven's Might already has a huge bonus duration over Haste and Inspiring Cry).  Weapon bonuses from your main hand weapon apply to all your attacks, even bows.  I mentioned Crystalized Fire earlier, and I had everyone using them eventually, that 20% crit that always applies is huge when spamming extra damage abilities on a Vulnerability-stacked enemy.  10% from weapon and helmet runes, 20% from an arcane weapon, some rings and necklaces... everyone can have 30% crit, 1-2 can have 50% or so.

 

Mental and Stun: Mental resistance definitely caps at 90%, Stun probably does too (but I never got anyone higher than 85, so meh).  It's worth mentioning because these are the effects that can cause loss of character control, and it's totally possible (rather easy, actually) to get everyone to 85-90% Mental resist.  Well... "easy" if your party has 3 casters using offhand Orbs with 15% resist and everybody has Steelskin talents and you have both of the 10% resist pack Charms.  There are two special Augments called Equipoise that give 15% Mental resistance.  If 90% isn't enough for you, there are some jewelry pieces and pack Charms that give bonuses to the Radiance talent as well, the Ahriel cultural ability that gives a chance per turn to remove Mental effects from anyone in range, and the Fanatic's Fetish necklace also gives +1 Free Mind (on top of 10% Mental resist, 5% Crit, AND 3 augment slots, good lord it's amazing)

 

Overall: I tried Ukat party members for mass Bleeding and it wasn't worth the Talent Points.  Even at 5 stacks of Bleeding, end-level enemies were only taking 80-100 damage every 8-10 attacks (and some of those attacks were over 200, Bleed is awful for a focus).  I tried Ahriel here or there before I realized how easy it was to max Mental resistance once you've got the resources, and they were instantly irrelevant when I found the Free Mind necklace.  On the other hand, with your Royal and a full party of Vol buddies, you can actually get your entire party up to 80% Physical Evasion and 60% Magical Evasion if you stay within 4 spaces of each other (and have acquired Dyne's Palisade), drastically reducing the amount of nastiness that needs to dealt with.  Three characters have well over 120% Blessing duration, all have at least 22% Speed, 30-50% Crit, 85-90% Mental resist, and 40-50% Curse duration.  A couple characters even had some extra Augment slots for some small Healing bonuses.  Everyone ends up at 20+ Energy and ~130 HP (no Hardiness, second rank of Shield Shatter is too good).  Rank 1 Restoring Rain heals for 30-35 or so, Jar of Medicine seems to be doing about the same, rank 1 Haven's Mercy is more like 70-80 (Princess fairy dust is overpowered, anything is possible with SPARKLESPRAY ENGAGE).  Well almost anything... maybe don't try killing Ghorsh on Torment at level 13 unprepared with just your EveryDayCarry couple potions and nothing else, didn't realize he was a Big Bad and when I triggered his third phase with no resources left I knew I wasn't winning and reloaded to fight another day.

 

That's it for now, maybe I'll add more stuff later if anything comes up, or fix it if someone points out where I goofed.

Edited June 6 by Murreh
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