No canister loyalist?

[Retlaw May]

How can you be truly the most effective you can be if you don't use canisters? All the most powerful creations and spells come from canisters, so how do you overcome this (I'm talking torment difficulty G3 here). I'm mostly talking about Agent and Shaper here since they are the most greatly affected here.

[Major]

Quote:

How can you be truly the most effective you can be if you don't use canisters?

You can't. But, that's the fun of it it's more challenging! (Yes, I know your talking torment.)

[Delicious Vlish]

Agents with out canisters require skill, tactics, and thought to play. Not for everybody, but it is not hard. Not really.

 

No canister Shapers are easy as pie. You will want some Cryoas, a pair of battle creations, Thahd Shades or Alphas or what have you, and some Vlish. From that point on, tactics rule the day. You can deliver quite a beat down with some very simple creations. The higher level creations really are not needed, except by those that lack wit and creativity. You don't need a Gazer to be the game. Vlish are far more powerful.

[Retlaw May]

So since a guardian is not so affected by canisters, is there an efficient way to play a melee guardian?

[Dikiyoba]

This is an interesting topic on G3 canister usage for Guardians. Discussion never really took off, but it's something to think about.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Mike Montgomery]

I played a no-canister loyalist Agent on Torment on G3, and it was not so bad. I did allow the two people to alter me, but I don't perceive this as having the same dehumanizing effect as canisters. To increase the challenge, I played this without using any pods, spores, crystals, gems, etc. I was tempted a few times to use essence pods just to avoid taking the time to go back to a safe area when low on essence, but I wanted to stick to the challege. Using some pods and gems could make some of the toughest areas much easier.

 

As an agent, the only spell you don't get is Battle Roar. Not such a great loss. You lose a few extra points on some abilities as well, but again, not a major loss, as long as you careful hoard and allocate your skill point. For example, I delayed increasing spellcraft until I could train two points first. This made the first part of the game a bit harder, but saved a lot of skill points. Also, you don't need any skill points in Healing Craft if you are just a bit patient. And you can still finish the game with 8 healing craft, more than enough for all abilities. I put no skill points in Strength, Dexterity, Melee, Missile, QA, or any kind of Shaping.

 

My most questionable choices were a few points in Parry (after training two points of course) and Luck. I might have put too many points in Leadership and Endurance as well, I'm not sure.

 

Fully equiped, my ending agent stats were:

 

Level: 40

Experience: 39266

Health: 301

Essence: 590

Energy: 1369

Coins: 19994 (I had tons of stuff left over that I had not bothered selling, because there was nothing I needed to spend money on.)

 

Armor: 121

Fire: 106

Cold: 109

Energy: 106

Stun: 158

Mental: 157

Poison: 109

Acid: 106

 

Strength: 9

Dexterity: 12

Intelligence: 19

Endurance: 11

 

Melee: 2

Missile: 4

Quick Action: 3

Parry: 8

 

Battle Magic: 9

Mental Magic: 9

Blessing Magic: 8

Spellcraft: 16

 

Fire Shaping: 0

Battle Shaping: 0

Magic Shaping: 1

Healing Craft: 8

 

Leadership: 14

Mechanics: 16

Luck: 8

 

When necessary, I could get 20 mechanics swapping out my gloves, necklace, and robe. (I could get to 21 by swapping my shield also, but an extra shield was too heavy to carry around, so practically speaking my max mechanics was 20.)

 

What in particular did you consider the main loss of cability of going without canisters for an Agent? Perhaps I can help with some strategy ideas?

[Delicious Vlish]

Not quite the most optimised build there, but over all a very good agent, well rounded, all bases covered, very little weakness, and not a total glass cannon. Out of a scale of ten, I'd rank that as an 7 for offense and a 10 for survivability.

 

Really a very good no compromises sort of build. There are ways to get either Battle Magic or Mental Magic up to high teens or twenties and then rely on skill boosting items to pick up the slack on other magic skills like blessing magic, which really doesn't need to be trained in at all. You can buy two levels, and then items will take it up as high as it needs to be. Of course, making a glass cannon has its downsides.

 

An Agent like the one above has the potential to wade in to melee and crush skulls should the need arise, and using the right buffs, make her self darn near physically immune. Well, everything immune.

 

Very nice work.

[Mike Montgomery]

Thanks for your feedback, Delicious Vlish. I'm still not sure if I should have put less in leadership (how much leadership is needed for various favorable options), endurance, parry, or luck. I feel like I had enough intelligence. For tough areas, I could spend 140 essence buffing with Essence Armor, Steel Skin, and Augmentation, giving my agent exactly 500 hit points, and a lot of resistance to damage, and still have 450 essense left for mass energize, protection, and lots of damage and healing. So if I had backed off on one of those areas, I would have put the points either in spellcraft or one of the specific Magic Skills area.

 

My agent had 11 AP not hasted, and 16 Hasted. That one extra action point was useful to either step around a corner to attack, or to back off one space from attackers so that I did not default to a melee attack.

 

With the 15 spellcraft, all of my magic skills were effectively at level 23-24. I could have raised this maybe 3 more levels across the board, or raise one particular skill 6-7 levels.

 

With GF1 and GF2, Greater Daze made almost any situation trivial, with enough energy and essence. At a much lower mental magic level than 24, Greater Daze would affect everything around with 100% effectiveness. With GF3, Greater Daze was much less effective. It was still a useful tool, but not reliable enough for cheap tactics like attack, attack, daze; attack, attack, daze; repeat until dead, where the enemy never even got a chance to hit back. Removing the over-powerful nature of the Greater Daze in GF3 made it much more tacticly challenge, and more interesting. I wonder if another 6 points in mental magic (30 total) would have restored Greater Daze to the 100% effectiveness of GF1/GF2? If so, it would be undoubtably a great investment of skill points. But even so, I liked the greater tactical challege of not having an overly powerful greater daze.

 

I would still like to hear from Retlaw May as to what the specific difficulty was with the no canister agent. I am wondering if it is near the beginning of the game, at the Lair of the Creator? This area was the toughest for me to complete with my added contraint not to use pods/spores/crytals. I found that with speed spores and 6 icy crystals, I could win. I could not win with less. But you can bypass the whole battle with 10 leadership. So that is what I did. Which is why I might have ended up with more leadership than I really needed.

[Retlaw May]

Right now I'm on the second island with my no canister loyalist and he has some trouble with the vlish because they act before him and the one hit and then poison kill him. A question I have for you is how did you get your action points so high?

[ex post slarto]

It's been a while, but I believe my no canister Melee Agent who relied on Strong Daze had a Mental + Spellcraft score of around 30-32 by endgame and had no trouble dazing things.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally by Retlaw May:

 

Quote:

A question I have for you is how did you get your action points so high?

With quicksilver and other AP-boosting pieces of equipment.

 

Dikiyoba.

 

Edit: Fixed quote.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by Retlaw May:
Right now I'm on the second island with my no canister loyalist and he has some trouble with the vlish because they act before him and the one hit and then poison kill him.

If getting beaten to the punch in combat is causing problems for you, what you want is to invest in more Quick Action and Dexterity -- at least, if you're a Guardian or Agent. If you're a Shaper, what you want is to hide far behind your creations at all times.

Until you can get your initiative-boosting stats up to respectable levels, hasting yourself (through the spell or speed pods) also helps you act earlier in combat.

[ex post slarto]

If you keep your creations at high level by creating as soon as the type you want becomes available, they will likely have high enough natural Dex to act before almost all enemies, even on Torment. My Vlish have *never* gotten second strike as of yet.

[Mike Montgomery]

Quote:

Originally written by Retlaw May:
Right now I'm on the second island with my no canister loyalist and he has some trouble with the vlish because they act before him and the one hit and then poison kill him. A question I have for you is how did you get your action points so high?

For the action points, make the Crystal Shroud or Emerald Chestguard as early as you can for +2AP. The Crystal Shroud can be made pretty early. Later, make the Lightning Girdle for +1 AP.

As for the vlish acting first, the trick is to stay in combat mode for tough areas. I don't know exactly where you are in the game, but if you have used speed, you will have 12 action points. Otherwise, you have to make do with 8. Always stay unencumbered; come back and pick up things after you have cleared the area. Staying in battle mode also makes your protection and war blessing spells last longer, which you should always have on all your characters.

If you spot an enemy, back up until the enemy is just out of sight range, then end your movement. Make sure that your other characters are also just out of range. The when a new turn starts, you will get the first action before the enemy can do anything.

Also, make sure you don't move your last movement point or two. If you exhaust your movement, your last point or two might put you in range of an enemy, with no action points left to back off.

I like using acid attacks with Vlish, since they tend to run when injured, and if you pursue them, you often run into other Vlish who have been summoned by the injured creature. If the Vlish was hit hard with acid, you don't need to pursue. A turn or two later, you will usually be notified of the experience gain from the dead Vlish.

I invested nothing in quick action, and had no problem use the combat mode tactic. I do not recommend spending a single point in QA unless you are using melee combat, where QA can sometimes give you a free second melee attack.

[Delicious Vlish]

Hit Vlish with terror to make them run away, and then splash them with acid. They are of no threat to you that way.

[Retlaw May]

Thanks for the advice though I had figured the combat mode thing out by myself and am now on the third island. I guess now I just need to seek out some good equipment.