Overview
Insightful, objective guide that summarizes different combinations of character types that work will together in parties. Also provides tips to optimize development of characters.
Overview
Xulima is a modestly difficult game. If you choose your party poorly, or develop characters incorrectly, it will be a tough go, especially later in game. This guide will provide some good general principles that will give you a fighting change.
Some people have a particular character or party make-up they innately favor, and try to justify or force use of these characters or party, even when not warranted. I love mages, but my preferred party doesn’t have one, which should tell you something. I have tried to be as objective as possible, but also include a number of different party combinations that can be successful, to accommodate different tastes.
This guide will summarize some basic principles of game play and party creation, then review character types one by one, and then provide some more advanced party creation and development principles. Some character development principles may be merged with descriptions of specific characters.
Character Types
The 10 character types are:
Barbarian
Soldier
Arcane Soldier
Paladin
Cleric
Mage
Thief
Bard
Divine Summoner
Explorer
You have to include Gaulen, who is an Explorer. You can’t add a second Explorer, and no one would want to. Your party has six slots. You can choose five characters to fill those slots, from one of the nine non-Explorer classes.
Party Creation Basics
4-2 or 3-3
You have eight slots in the combat view, two rows of four. You can change the party layout, but most people generally create parties for one of the two configurations, 3-3, or 4-2. That is, 3 characters in the front row, and 3 in the back, or 4 characters in the front row and 2 in the back.
3-3: Bard and Paladin auras/effects only act on characters they are directly next to. If your party isn’t 3-3 and the Bard and Paladin aren’t in the center, every character won’t be effected by Paladins or Bards. This is the major advantage of 3-3. If you are using a Bard or Paladin, you need to probably go 3-3. If you want all front row characters that take damage to be total tanks, but still want some firepower in the rear, you probably need a 3-3. The primary disadvantage of a 3-3 is that you have one less character up front dealing heavy front line damage. Bows and pole weapons do MUCH less damage. The combat slotting is 4-4, so if you go 3-3, there is a blank spot on the edge. The computer puts monsters on outside edges of 4-4 slotting, meaning the edge character near the blank spot will often get the tar beaten out of them with 3-3 setup.
4-2: You get four guys up front, dispersing damage taken on front line, and maximizing heavy frontal attacks with the devastating weapons such as katanas, flails, etc. The problem is that you need tanks to survive damage up front, so have to make some compromises. You either put 4 tanks up front (soldier/barbarian), and forsake some other characters. Or you put a weaker non-tank character up front, ideally on outer edges, not in center, and tank them up a bit. By way of example, if you put 4 barbarians up front, you have Gaulen in back, and then only one other character, probably a cleric. If you put two barbarians front and center, you can have a thief on the right edge, Gaulen on the left edge, and a mage and cleric in back.
2 Empty Slots
You will always have two empty slots in combat view for your party, unless you select a Divine Summoner, which can conjure two allies. No Divine summoner equals no use of empty slots. This does not mean you need a Divine Summoner.
Proper Mix of Characters
You will never survive with Gaulen and 5 mages, nor with Gaulen and 5 barbarians. You need 1-3 tanks up front to take and deal heavy damage to/from front row enemies, someone to heal the party during combat, and someone to deal damage to the second or back-row of enemies with a bow or magic. You also need some non-combat abilities such as trap detection, lockpicking, herb identification, knowledge of terrains, etc. If you don’t have some mix of these four elements, it will be a loooooooooooong game.
Additionally, you need some character(s) that can stun, freeze, or wound powerful enemies including bosses. Though either weapon selection, skill development, or spells, you MUST have a plan to cultivate this capability. If you expect to just duke it out blow for blow or spell for spell with the powerful enemies without disabling them in some way, you are sadly mistaken.
Beginning vs. End of Game
The party that will excel early game is not necessarily the party that will excel later when enemies have more than 1,000 hit points each, heal wounds, resist stun, cast spells like mad, etc. This will be covered as we summarize each character and other information, but generally, later enemies are usually killed by bleeding them to death, inflicting bleeding.
God Blessing To Choose When Creating Characters
First, I’m going to list them here. Can’t stand it when other guides list the names but not the actual blessing, as if anyone remembers them all off the top of their head.
Nalaet: +5% to hit points
Taliet: +5% to combat speed
Kersket: +3 to strength
Valvet: +4 to agility
Febret: +10 to evasion
Raznet: +15 to combat initiative
Golot: +4% to experience gained
Alnaet: +5% to power points
Yul: +3 to all resistances
Lot of different views about which ones are best. Some prefer percentages, reasoning they last all game. Some prefer fixed additions. These are all meant, IMHO, to help early game. The 5% to your stats at level 30 is going to be 5-40, which isn’t going to matter a ton by that point. If your speed is 100, raising it to 105 probably isn’t a huge deal, and the game is almost over by that time. Early in the game, you need an attribute of at least 20 for 5% to even be a full point, 40 for it to be 2 full points. Does 42 hit points instead of 40 really matter? No. 42 speed instead of 40? Perhaps, but not a massive difference.
What is a massive difference? A barbarian starting the game with an AGI of 12 instead of 8, a 50% increase from baseline value. Or saving 14,000 XP over the course of the game.
Best
Golot: Great for casters, especially clerics, mages, paladins, bards. The math behind this is eye opening enough that I wrote a separate section. A cleric needs 379,000 experience points to reach level 50 and have all spells, as does mage. Starting off with +4% experience drops this to 364,000, a savings of more than 14,000 XP, or the total XP of the first 14 levels. With other prophet items added, this gain increases. Doing EVERYTHING to accelerate acquisition of super powerful late spells by casters is huge in this game. I favor this for casters only. This is the ONLY god choice that will still be effecting your character meaningfully, albeit minimally, after level 12.
Valvet: Front line tanks need to start using better weapons ASAP, and need significant STR and AGI gains to do so. Adding +4 agility helps armor early in game, hit chance early in game, and helps get better weapons sooner early in game.
Good
Raznet: Great for casters. ONLY applies to the first combat turn, the initial order of combat. If you need your bard, cleric, or mage enhancing your party or dealing damage right away, this can be a good choice. I choose Golot far casters, so don’t use this. Even in later portions of game, +15 to combat initiative is nothing to sneeze at, but the first turn is still only one turn.
Okay
Taliet: Speed is King in this game, and 5% is still something. If you hate using Golot or Valvet, this can be a good choice, especially for a caster you will be dumping speed into, giving them MANY turns in combat late game. Have no illusions about it making a big difference early on, it doesn’t. Speed 21 vs. 20 is not a huge difference.
Febret: If you are putting a non-tank, non-attacker in front row, like a dud cleric or Gaulen, this evasion can make a world of difference early on. Not my first choice, but not an awful one under very specific circumstances.
If it isn’t one of the five listed above, I don’t like it. Why pick +3 STR when you can get +4 AGI and gain an extra point? +5% to HP or PP will never make much of a difference. Same with +3 resistances.
I give my soldiers, barbarians, and thieves, and any other front line attacking characters Valvet +4 AGI. I give my cleric or mage or paladin or bard Golot +4% XP, so they get the powerful spells ASAP.
Stun, Wound, or Bleed?
You can disable enemies in three main ways in combat: stun, wound, bleed. You need to decide which of these you are going to emphasize BEFORE creating your party.
If you stun enemies, they can’t attack or evade, and all attacks hit. Stun enemies enough, they sit dormant for the entire combat and you slaughter them easily without taking any damage.
If you wound enemies, their attack and defense capabilities erode. Wound an enemy enough, it can’t hit you at all, and every attack hits for virtually maximum damage.
If you bleed an enemy for a certain amount of damage, it loses that damage each round, losing hitpoints each round even if you never attack it again. If you bleed an enemy a ton early in combat, you can just defend and let it bleed out and die.
Accounting
Stun is measured in time. You stun an enemy for 8 seconds, for example, which is about 1 turn for most characters, depending on the speed of their weapon. This drops the enemy in combat order, allowing other characters to attack again before it, hopefully stunning it again, dropping it in combat order, allowing other characters to attack it and stun it again. . .
Wounds are measured in number of wounds. 8 wounds is a lot. 2-6 wounds will make many early game characters miss completely.
Bleeds are measured in hit points. If you bleed a character for 8 hit points, it loses 8 hit points every time it takes a combat turn.
Weapons And Their Effects
Maces, hammers, flails, and staffs stun. Swords and shurikens bleed. Axes, bows, spears, and halberds, wound.
The best stun weapon is the flail. The best bleed weapon is the katana. The best wound weapon is the battle axe, and crossbows also do serious wound damage too. Some spells wound or stun as well.
Maces stun for 4 seconds, hammers for 6, flails for 8. Maces are curious creatures. EVERY mace lists a stun of 4 seconds. EVERY hammer lists a stun of 6 seconds. EVERY flail lists a stun of 8 seconds. With other weapons, the wound or bleed increases with stronger weapons, rather than staying the same for all weapons. Hit a creature with a flail that says 8 seconds , it won’t stun it nearly that long, and the exact factors determining this are uncertain. Bleed and wound will also be lower than maximums listed on weapons, depending on strength of enemy? Staffs also always cause 3 stun.
Weapons are made of different quality materials. Metal, brass is lowest quality, ulnalum is highest. Wood, pine is lowest quality, ulnalum is highest. Most players complete game before ever seeing ulnalum in shops or monsters dropping. Higher quality material means more damage, and more wounding or bleed. It may mean longer stun, even though all weapons of certain type list same stun time, no matter what material.
Ranges of damage, brass/pine to ulnalum, damage increasing with material quality:
Spears cause 1-6 wounds. Halberds cause 2-9 wounds. Axes cause 1-6 wounds. Battle axes cause 2-9 wounds. Short bow causes 1-3 wounds. Long bow causes 1-6 wounds. Crossbows cause 2-9 wounds. Basically, a front row tank using a battle axe, a rear-row archer using a crossbow, and a rear row using a halberd, all do same wound damage approximately 2-9 wounds. The most powerful spells or soldier skills do 6 wounds. 6 wounds is a fair amount, and will impede most enemies up to mid-game significantly.
Too many swords in this game, LOL. No totally unique weapons is lame (Excalibur, Merlin’s staff, whatever). One handed: Short sword does 2-8 bleed. Long sword does 2-9 bleed. Saber does 3-15 bleed. Two handed: Bastard sword does 2-12 bleed. Claymore does 3-15 bleed. Katana does 4-24 bleed.
Which To Choose: Anything But All
Generally, an attack will do damage, and then add a stun, wound, or bleed. Neither stun, wound, or bleed is inherently superior, and players argue about which approach is the best. More on this later, but you’ll need at least one for sure.
Some players focus on one effect. Four frontliners with katanas, for example, will bleed the piss out of their enemies, especially with a thief also heaving shurkiens. Four with axes will stack up wounds in a hurry. And so forth.
I am more of a fan of bleeding, though this is a subjective preference. Later in the game, stun and wound don’t work as well, enemies heal themselves, and killing multiple enemies with 1K hitpoints or more each without bleeding some of them becomes very difficult in many cases. The most powerful weapon in the game hands down is the thief shuriken, because the bleed is so insane, but you have to buy or find shurikens, they are disposable, one used per attack, they cannot be used for an attack indefinitely like a sword or flail or normal weapon.
Stun is probably the most polarizing or debated choice. If you put four barbarians up front, give them all flails, they should be able to stun enemies relentlessly, and nothing can ever hit you, right? You just stun every enemy and mop up, right? Some players report this, but tried this approach and never had this experience. Stuns didn’t stink, they are good but they were not as dominant as I had read or hoped. Later in game, I encountered a LOT of enemies that resisted stun outright or recovered from it very quickly.
There is something to be said for combining effects. If you are going to stun, then you probably want 2-4 players up front with flails or hammers, not just 1, so you can stun repeatedly. If you are going to wound a boss or strong enemy and not get slaughtered, the ability to hit it for 12 wounds in the first round and totally neuter it is useful. If an enemy can hit you hard and you are going to bleed it out, you need to do some serious bleed damage early, or you won’t be alive by the time it bleeds to death.
I think an approach of wounding or stunning or bleeding can work. The one approach that did NOT work as well was having one guy up front with an axe, one with a flail, one with a sword. You need to make choices in this game, and focus abilities, not just for single characters, but for how groups work together. If I have two barbarians with flails up front center, and two thieves on edge with katanas/shurikens, then I can bleed and stun. I haven’t chosen one thing, but I focused on two, and didn’t try to do everything, watering down focus so much I effectively accomplish nothing. This will matter much more later game, when enemies become much harder, and it takes much more stun or wound or bleeding to effect them meaningfully.
Best and Worst Characters
Everyone has an opinion on this, here is mine:
Greatt
In no particular order:
Barbarian, Soldier, Cleric, Thief
Good
Mage, Paladin
Okay
Bard, Divine Summoner, Arcane Soldier
Terrible
Explorer
Have to use one, so why complain?
I’ll complain anyway, terrible decision by designers, robbed the game of greatness.
Cleric
The cleric is hands down the most powerful class. You can complete the game without one, but it is a ton harder. Early game, cleric heals HP, bleeding, wounds. Later poison, disease, curse, as well as resistance enhancing spells that make a big difference late game. Cleric gets some offensive spells that double damage against undead, demons, and demigods. Several spells are noteworthy:
Divine Prayer egenerates large amount of HP, small amount of PP. Not a spell, but a skill. You can use it every turn if you want, in combat, healing character indefinitely. At skill level 5, restores 38-60 HP, and 9-15 PP. Not strong enough to save you late game, but super powerful for cleric early to mid game.
Mass Armor, Mass Heal, and Mass Regenerate are all late game spells that are insanely powerful. They effect your entire party. You will want a cleric with speed, so they can cast mass armor right away, and then mass regenerate, and then mass heal if needed if damage massive. It can be very hard to win some late game battles without mass regenerate. Maxxed out, it gives each character 60 hp per turn. Mass armor adds +48 armor maxxed out, and mass heal gives 90-150 HP, to all characters. Ray of the Gods is the single most powerful attack spell in the entire game. You don’t get it until level 45, and it won’t be maxxed until level 49. At that level, it can do as much as 1200 damage to undead, demons, and demigods that are most late game fights, and as much as 600 damage to all other monsters. This is insane. Finally, a heal spell at level 50 removes all conditions and restores all HP, even if character dead.
The key to developing the cleric is to get to these five late game spells as quickly as possible, and making sure you have enough skill points late in game to max them all out every level. This means you’ll need like 36-50 extra skill points from level 28-49. If you’ve pissed those points away earlier in the game, you’re hosed, because skill points will be insanely expensive by end of game. Seeing those insanely powerful spells but not being able to max them will make you want to cry.
Some people think the cleric should be a frontliner, owing to divine prayer. You put him up front, and just let him soak up damage and heal him for free with divine prayer, right? Wrong. Put the cleric in back. Don’t waste skill points on armor or weapons or bodybuilding skills, which at 3 points each are insanely expensive, or any other frivolous skills, but instead let the cleric focus on amassing skill points and XP. You don’t upgrade maces or weapons even once, unless you find a skill book. You don’t waste money on fast reflexes or any other garbage. You also don’t try to get every spell, only the ones that truly matter.
EVERY philosopher (+3% XP) or prophet (+5% XP) item you find should be given to cleric. One reason you do NOT want the cleric in the front row is you may have to give him some screwy stuff because it has philosopher or prophet. If you have him up front as a tank, putting a prophet cloth suit on is not practical. Always remember with the cleric that the insane power of the late game spells is far more important than tanking. The gains in XP that accelerate attainment of super powerful spells outweigh any other concessions. You will realize this the first time you obliterate some demon with Ray of the Gods for more than 1,000 damage.
You do learning every level, you raise armor to 3 right away early game to make sure the cleric can equip odd stuff you find that has philosopher/prophet, use any armor books on cleric. You also do immunity every level. Late game, elemental attacks are prevalent, and as the cleric will be wearing all prophet or philosopher by then, they won’t be able to use many, or any, rings and items that boost resistances by as much as 20%. I also usually do meditation, and do SPD and CON every level. Later, once HP high enough, switch to SPD and EN to increase spell points.
With the mage, later powerful spells are so high in terms of PP cost it is preposterous, 200 and 320 PP for the two most powerful spells, and investing in PP increases is dubious. Not so with the cleric. It gains 3 PP per level, or 150 by level 50. Add 60 more from meditation, that is 210, plus any energy increases. EVERY power point and energy increase as well as speed increase in the entire game should be given to cleric, at cauldrons etc. That should easily be more than 240 power points–enough to cast Ray of the Gods twice, drink a potion, and then cast it twice more. If you give every speed increase to the cleric all game long, by end of game, they will take tons of turns in combat, cast mass regenerate, armor, and then destroy enemies with Ray of the Gods.
Thief
The second most useful character, IMHO. The thief disarms traps, picks locks, has quick strike which is deadly combined with katana, and has the most powerful non-magical weapon/attack in the game, the shuriken.
Let’s start with shuriken. As mentioned, you kill lots of more powerful characters by bleeding them. Early game, shurikens are in dire supply. Later game, thieves drop them everywhere, and you can go town to town buying them up. It becomes a question, as many have observed, of not if you can win a battle, but how many shurikens it costs. A pain relative to just swinging a sword, gathering shurikens, but worth it.
By level 30 skill, attack improvement to any weapon is +150. With shurikens, it is +200, or 33% more, a huge difference. Max damage is 98, 20 more than the two most powerful standard weapons in the game, the ulnalum flail and battle axe, both with 78. The bleeding is an insane +48 per turn, double the 24 of next best weapon, the ulnalum katana (which are virtually impossible to obtain until the very end of the game, except from a certain chest). A soldier with maxxed out bloody strike and an ulnalum katana would still do 8 less bleed damage than a thief with lvl 30 shurkien. By lvl 15 skill, at XP lvl 15 for the thief if maxxed out religiously, the shuriken does 24 damage, equal to the most powerful bleed weapon the ulnalum katana which won’t be obtained until MUCH later. Shurikens are INSANE. If the thief did nothing else, shurikens would make them worth having.
They also disarm traps and pick locks. Some say just blow all traps and break all locks, but this costs a ton of food and there are tons of locks and traps. You can brute force it, but not optimal. You can also have Gaulen do so, the only other character who can acquire skills, but this will cost double per level, or 60 skill points more to max out. So it makes sense to have a thief to handle this.
And then there is quick strike. The thief gets it level 5, early on, and can max it by level 15. At that level, it increases the speed of the next action by 55%. It costs 12 PP at that level, meaning it can realistically be cast 2-4 times. This means the thief can often strike 3-4 times early in combat, in the time other characters will only strike once. If you have a katana, you can do massive bleed damage very early in combat. Striking from the rear in rapid succession with a bow that cannot bleed or poison someone is much less useful, daggers suck, and these are the only weapons the thief is allowed, the bow, the sword, or the dagger. Also, why have two ranged weapons, bow and shuriken, on same character? So the katana is a no brainer. You put the thief up front on the edge, where they can katana and quick strike, but where damage they take is minimized relative to center positions. When needed, they switch to shurikens.
Even with no quick strike, thieves slicing and dicing from the edge are pretty lethal.
Two thieves, in a 4-2 party, one on either edge, is very interesting. They can absolutely maul enemies with katanas quick strike and shurikens, but they can’t ever katana the same enemy in the center. An advantage is also that one thief does locks, the other traps, minimizing the skill points, as thieves are relatively skill starved.
The other disadvantage for the thief is they don’t get lots of hit points, 3.5 per level vs. 4 for soldier and 6 per barbarian on middle difficult. Also armor is expensive, 2 points per level, for them. The soldier gets cheap armor, decent hitpoints. The barbarian gets tons of hitpoints. The thief gets neither, so isn’t designed for life up front. But with 3.5 HP per level, same as Gaulen, they have higher than any other classes except soldier barbarian. So unless you are going to put gaulen or a solder or barb on edge, thief isn’t horrible.
You level up shurikens every level no matter what, and swords. That is 3 of 4 pp you get per level. Add in learning, that is 5 per level. Add in locks or traps, plus quick strike, things get dicey fast. Some quick strike is better than none. Traps and locks can alternate every other level, or locks locks then traps. Burning picks more costly than taking damage on traps. You’ll also need to add a few points of armor early on, as thief on front line. I try to add armor every level until quick strike available, then switch to that, which gives armor level of 4. Light plate is the thief’s best friend. Once you get quick strike done, life settle’s down, You do sword, shuriken, learning, and either locks or traps each level, until level 30.
Lvl 2-4: Swords, shuriken, armor, trap or locks, 6 total.
Lvl 5-7: Swords, shuriken, trap or locks, quick strike, 6 total (7 lvl 5).
Lvl 8-14: Swords, shuriken, learning, quick strike, 7 total. You let traps/locks slide here to get quick strike maxxed, unless you can pile up the skill points, but make sure 3 for each additional level.
Lvl 15-30: Swords, shuriken, learning, traps and/or locks.
Lvl 30-37: Learning, traps and/or locks.
After this, isn’t much left skill wise, except armors, bodybuilding, reflexes, or immunity. Immunity and reflexes cheaper, but armors and bodybuilding bit more useful. If you have to let something slide for a level with thief, it should be learning or traps/locks, NOT swords, shurikens, or quick strike. You may have to do this to sneak armor in a few levels. If you stay on these three swords, shuriken, quick strike until lvl. 14, your thief will be pretty kick butt by then. I do not favor total abandonment of learning, still need to get to lvl. 30 shuriken ASAP, but you aren’t trying to get to lvl. 50 like cleric, who cannot miss one lvl of learning ever. Remember that with thief shuriken lvl. 30 is the grail, as is maxxed quick strike and high sword attack. If you lose a few picks cause these skills fall behind lvls 8-14, oh well.
Resist the temptation to try and give the thief normal plate armor on anything dumb like that, wasting lots of points on armor. You will come across light plate or scale armor eventually. Might be some healing before then. Give thief light everything you find to give armor class without weight.
Barbarian
Very simple character, perhaps the most powerful. Gets very strong relative to other characters as game progresses. Later fights can be long with enemies with many HP. After PP of thief or soldier have diminished and their custom attacks no longer used, Barbarian can still be pounding away. This is the supreme virtue of the barb, the simplicity. Some find this boring.
The barb gets 6 hp per level, 2 more than soldier at medium difficulty, or 60 more HP by level 30. By level 30, the barb has added about 180 HP, a ton. That is a lot. Moreover, the barb gets bodybuilding for 1 HP, vs. 2 for soldier, the only class to get it that low. This adds 4 HP per level, or 120 by level 30. The barb starts with more than 30 HP. If one leveled up bodybuilding every level, which may not be possible, that means at lvl 30 the barb has 180 (leveling up) + 30 (starting) + 120 (bodybuilding), or 330. Yes, some may be playing hardcore, blah, blah, blah, but the point is, that is a ton of HP, far more than any class can hope to amass. Those HP make a big difference early game, you can usually rely on barb not being as brittle as the soldier. The barbarian is tough to kill owing to sheer volume of HPs. The soldier, by comparison, cannot afford bodybuilding easily, and as noted gets less HP per level, so has about 150 HP by level 30, or almost 175 HP less. That is quite a bit.
Some like barb, some like soldier. Both are good, in different ways. I’m always a little torn.
The barb doesn’t have any attack skills no quick strike or bloody strike like soldiers, merely passive skills that improve their defense and attack. Any weapon, 1 point, like the soldier. Two skills are very powerful, rage and steadiness. If you aren’t going to max them, a barbarian is pretty pointless.
Rage increases chance of critical hit. I have no idea if a critical hit is double damage, or what the exact formula is, but it is a lot more damage, and seems to increase bleeding damage but not wound or stun damage. Rage is 3 skill points per level, and increases the % chance of critical hit 1 per level. First level rage adds 2%, you start with it, so by lvl 30 is 31% increase. Most weapons have 3-5% chance as well. So if you have say a katana which has a 5% critical, plus 31% from rage, that is 36% chance of critical. This is random, sometimes you will critical hit 6 times in a row, sometimes not for awhile, but with such a high chance you critical hit a lot. The key point here is that this is continuous, without draining any PP, as the quick strike of thief, or venom strike of Gaulen, or other special skills of soldier do when used. This means that the barb can slug it out for awhile and still be doing critical hits a high percentage of time long after other characters have exhausted their PP or need potions. Earlier in the game, most fights are shorter, so quick strike or soldier’s strikes don’t become impotent as soon. Later in the game, fights grow longer, and even with potions other classes can use, the barb just grows stronger in a relative sense because of this endurance of attack other classes lack. However, it is fairly late in game when this happens.
The second skill is steadiness. You get it lvl 10, it reduces stun duration by 10% per level. When maxxed out at lvl. 19, still reasonably early in game, barb is totally immune to all stun. You don’t realize how significant this is until you see your barb never getting stunned, never being dropped back in combat order because of it. As game progresses, this gives barb a LOT more attacks than the soldier most people would replace it with, especially at higher levels where some nasty monsters stun you lots. 3 skill points per level, costly. Especially when trying to maintain rage every level, but again, if you aren’t going to do this skill and rage, a barb is a waste of time.
Barb has 3 downsides. One armor is expensive, and with rage also costing a ton, as well as steadiness for a time, it makes it very challenging to keep barb in good armor unless you get something good and light. This can be done later game though, with strength filling some of the gap. If the barb has terrible armor, all the HP in the world won’t save them. Two is the very volume of HP can make healing a challenge early game, until you get greater heal. Minor beef, as their are plenty of potions, but potions are a lost attack in combat. Three is lack of flexibility. Thief has swords, shurikens, quick strike. Soldier can choose one of multiple attacks, bloody or wounding strike, but once you pick a weapon with barb, that is it. This can be limiting early game when you are used to soldier that can switch between stunning or wounding or bleeding, as needed to deal with an enemy. If you go stun or wound weapon, then the lack of bleeding is limiting. If you go, katana, then bosses can be problematic unless some other class can stun wound or freeze. The barb is definitely a one trick pony, mauling with a single weapon class the whole game. This is both his great strength and weakness.
People who like barbs usually like flails or katanas. If you are going flail/stun, then you want several characters that stun, not just one, so you can keep enemies stunned.
One final note on the barbarian is that his damage scales all game long as more powerful weapons are found, and the soldier does not. The damage is a function of the weapon, and critical hit increases this base weapon damage. So as the barb acquires more powerful weapons, and grows stronger increasing damage, the critical hit scales with this. By comparison, the soldier adds a fixed wounding or bleeding or stun duration that never changes once maxxed, making it progressively weaker as the game progresses and enemies become stronger, though it is never impotent. Same with Gaulen envenom strike. Quick strike is speed based, not damage based, so is not apples and apples comparison. When you add this scaled damage factor, plus the fact that the barb is better than other classes as fights become longer, he becomes significantly stronger the later it is in game.
Also, the barb never has to rest to refresh PP, like soldier and thief. Not huge, as usually some character in party needs PP or HP replenished, but if you had 4 barbs up front, big difference in endurance fight to fight vs. thiefs and soldiers and Gaulen, all who use PP intensive skills, unless thief just heaving Shurikens.
(Cont’d)
Barbarian II
(Cont’d)
Some find the simplicity of barb refreshing, others boring. Shrug.
I final advantage of the barbarian is that they have greater freedom of what to wear, armor wise. The cleric will need the prophet items. The soldier will need some or many PP maximizing items, and these can also benefit the thief and Gaulen, both of whom may also need light items. With no PP to worry about, barb is free to wear King everything, massively increasing strength agility etc.. I favor prophet stuff for him as well early game, again to max rage ASAP, but after that a few levels more or less for him doesn’t matter that much. He can switch to wearing rings and amulets and cloaks that up his resistances to 100%. Then he has tons of HP, is immune to stun, or she, and immune to all elements. Don’t do this until you find 15% – 20% for all resistances type items. Not worth piddling with any earlier. So you go prophet items until lvl 30, and then switch to resistances. With a cleric also having decent resistances, and barbs, you are more resilient to the myriad elemental attacks late in game.
I favor the katana with barb, because bleeding damage scales up with critical hit. Personal preference, not the only approach that works.
In some ways, the barb is the most powerful character in the game. Especially if you get some good armor, especially light plate, early in game until armor buttressed later. The thing though is that their powerful attacks, their critical hits, are random, can’t be selected, as with shurikens, envenomed strike, wounding strike, etc. BIG difference.
Interestingly, barb also one of most skill starved characters, serious contrast to soldier.
Remember to always give strength modifiers, herbs or cauldrons, to barbs. Early game, if you forsake armor, that strength helps with armor, but more importantly, the strength will be augmented into add’l damage in critical hits.
Lvl 2-7: Weapon (1), Rage (3), Armor (2) = 7 or
Weapon (1), Rage (3) = 4 or
Weapon (1), Rage (3), Bodybuilding (1) = 5
I favor the second choice with only rage and weapon. Few points of bodybuilding first couple levels makes early game ton easier. On the other hand, nothing more frustrating than finding plate armor your tanks can’t wear, LOL. Problem here is steadiness is huge, so bodybuilding will have to wait until later unless you are really loading up on skill points. If you get even modestly lucky with armor, helmets, etc., you will easily use up armor points here, in addition to those provided by strength. Don’t get greedy and try and do armor bodybuilding every lvl and not have enough to do rage AND steadiness lvl 10-19. If you get lucky and find light plate, could just do bodybuilding, save points, do armor after steadiness maxxed. The smartest, but hardest, approach is only weapon and rage, so that you have plenty of PP to keep learning, rage, and steadiness churning lvl 10 – 19. You do that, your barb will be super powerful moving forward as you round armor bodybuilding out.
Lvl 8-9: Weapon, Rage, Learning = 6
Lvl 10-19: Weapon (1), Rage (3), Steadiness (3), Learning (2) = 9
This is where something has to give, and is why it might be wiser to ignore armor and body building altogether until lvl. 20–if you find light armor and develop strength. If have to skip learning a bit fine, but do not totally abandon it for armor or bodybuilding.
Lvl 20 – 30: Weapon, Rage, Learning = 6
If extra points, add bodybuilding, make sure 2 extra next level though.
Lvl 31 – 37: Learning, Bodybuilding, Armor = 5
If rolling in points, add weapon master.
Lvl 38 onward: Armor, Bodybuilding, Weapon Master (5)
Add fast reflexes if want, but not at expense of weapon master.
The x factor here is weapon master, which adds to attack starting lvl 16. For a barb swinging a weapon ALL game long, additional attack crucial. If you say screw learning, which I wouldn’t, substitute armor, bodybuilding, weapon master when possible. Barb is easy to mess up, because easy to become tempted by armor and bodybuilding and weapon master, plus fast reflexes evasion. Remember, your goal is to make it to level 20 with rage, weapon, and steadiness all continuously fed. The rest is debatable, those three items are not.
One rather fun thing I always pondered was a 3-3 party or 4-2 party with tanker barbs in middle, bodybuilding, constitution every level, plus all HP and constitution bonuses given to them. End up with almost 500 HP. Be funny to see. Not a great character functionally, but interesting. You would want to emphasize armor the whole way too. Guy would have tons of HP, and be hard to hit, even if attack sucked. Which it would.
Soldier
Check back later
Gaulen the Impotent
Mage
Paladin
Bard
Arcane Soldier
Divine Summoner
Some Good or Interesting Party Combinations
Learning and Prophet Items Rule!
You want your cleric and mage to level 50 asap, especially your cleric. And your bard to level 36 asap for song of victory. You also want your Paladin or other mixed classes to get spells that are delayed until later levels asap.
First, the game will almost always be over by level 50 without learning or prophet items, and usually by level 40 or 45. The dunces designing the game completely dropped the ball on basic pacing. Kind of sucks, as you never get a chance to use the coolest spells, essentially cheating the player, LOL. Moving on.
Now the math. The percentage modifier is added to XP you earn. If I earn 100 experience points (XP), and my modifier is 10%, I actually get 110 points. 100 plus 10% of 100, or 10, which is 110. The amount of XP I earned is increased. This has two effective consequences. The first is that you level faster. The second is that you have to earn less XP in the game (in terms of XP earned before the modifier) to reach a fixed XP goal, such as the 379,000 required for lvl 50 for a cleric or mage to get the best spells. And the mage would actually have to get to level 54 to max out comet showers, if you wanted to spend 320 points every time you cast it. One and two are kind of the same, but also a bit different.
One. Combat in Xulima is comparative. Your speed vs. theirs. Your defense vs. their attack. When you level up faster, you are stronger relative to the enemies you face. You accelerate your development within the fixed amount of experience that can be gained at each point in the game, making you more formidable at any point than you would have been without learning (ignoring what you might have done with skill points used on learning, the opportunity cost). Two parties can both go through the game exact same, one with learning, one without, and all else being equal the one with learning will be at higher levels as game progresses, and thus have applied more skill points, strength agility points, etc., and have higher combat speed, defense, evasion, etc. If you max out learning plus wear some prophet items, you won’t believe how fast you level up. It will seem like you are leveling up every 6 or 7 or 10 or 12 fights. This is because your modifier will exceed 100%, meaning you earn double XP, if you get 100 XP from a battle, it is actually 200 with modifier. You literally level up twice as fast as you would have normally, and gain attributes that make you stronger twice as fast as you normally would.
Two. By earning more XP with each fight, I reduce the number of fights I need to reach a fixed goal. You need 379,000 XP to get to level 50. Suppose your modifier is 100%. You actually only have to earn 189,500, a hell of a lot less XP. But it isn’t this severe, is it? Well, no, but it is a massive difference, especially when one considers how powerful late level spells are.
Let’s take a cleric. They start the game with Golot, get the 4% bonus right out of the gate. They fight the first fight, enter town, get lucky, find two prophet items right away, buy them. Now their bonus is 14%. They get 14% additional XP, or 114 applied for every 100 earned. To get to 379,000 with this modifier, you would need 332,000 XP, or 46,000 XP less. It is easy to go, man, that’s a lot. It is equal to all experience earned in the first 23 levels of the game, BUT later in the game, applying the XP and subtracting backward from level 50, this is only 2.5 levels. Very roughly, without doing it iteratively level by level, if you had 14% learning and the same exact character did not, and you were in the same party, you would be level 50 when they were level 48. With a barbarian or soldier, who is just adding strength and some extra damage, who cares. With a cleric getting Ray of the Gods almost 50,000 XP earlier (a LOT of fights), it is kind of a big deal.
Learning and Prophet Items Rule! Part II
So how much can you enhance your XP? There are 10 slots for armor, rings, weapons, etc. Prophet items give 5%, philosopher 3%. Golot gives 4%, though the sceptre offering raises that to 5%. Learning maxes out at 78%. So the THEORETICAL maximum is 50% items, 5% Golot, 78% learning, or 133%.
So, again oversimplified, let’s say you start game with this, and need 379,000 XP. You would only need to earn 162,000, a savings of 216,000 XP. When you were level 50, someone with no learning would be level 38. So the difference in terms of expected gametime, almost no one can’t finish by lvl 50, the difference is 12 levels.
Let’s suppose you find tons of items, max learning, have say 120%, which I have done. Very tough to find a prophet mace, LOL, but the rest are doable. Figure you get 7 of 10 with prophet, 1 philosopher, 2 other empty. That’s about 120%. If we just calculate starting level 37 when learning maxxed, there are 213,000 XP to level 50, with 120% modifier, we only have to earn 93,000 more, So the entire party earns 93,000 XP. starting at level 37; a person in our party with no modifiers will be level 43 when we are level 50. If both characters are clerics, we now have Ray of the Gods doing 1200 damage max, they don’t have it for 2 more levels, even then at skill 1 rather than 5.
With the first 37 levels factored in, we have somewhere between the theoretical calculation of being level 50 when everyone else is level 38, and level 50 when everyone else is 43. The specific point will probably be near 40, depending when armor items are acquired. So you gain 10 levels, give or take a level. Say 9 – 11 levels. When your party with no learning is at level 39-41, you will be at level 50. Most people are still finishing game at level 40, so learning allows you to obtain the three most powerful spells in the game 10 levels earlier, in terms of non-adjusted experience that you earn. That is why every cleric and mage should max out learning. Especially clerics, who will have mass regeneration and ray of the gods maxxed out by the time the rest of the party is level 40.
Tips For Early Portion of Game
Trying to avoid spoilers here, and just focus on broader advice.