Overview
This guide contains a couple tips for those who know the basic mechanics of the game but not quite sure how to make the most out of them. Great for PoTD!
Introduction
This is a compilation of a couple nice tricks, not-so-obvious mechanics and advices on how to take those mechanics one step further.
Some are for min/maxing, some are for having fun, some are for optimizing sloppy habits.
all of them are useful for making your challenge runs easier.
Will probably update over time as I discover/remember things.
The aim is to have a general advices part, a section about not-so-obvious class-specific stuff and a section about encounter-specific advice (aka “boss battles”). All of the following is tested by me on 3.x builds of the game.
Work in progress. Comments and ideas are welcome, I’ll always give credit.
General Advice
In no particular order.
– Brigthollow. IMHO the best bonuses are:
1) Dexterity. Whatever you do in combat, this makes everything a bit better.
2) Mechanics. Situational, but sometimes you need that boost to get super OP items ahead of the curve. (djinni lamp @ Valian Embassy, Tidefall)
3) Perception. Similar to dexterity, it makes everything you do a littlie bit better.
– Inn resting bonuses.
Generally, don’t make a big fuss out of this. If you want to min/max this, the best one is probably the Golden Whale in Stalwart, but mostly I just used whichever is the best where I’m at. In a general sense, they are all great, well worth the money so use them.
When slaying dragons, consider one from the Dracogen Inn.
– Courtesans.
If you didnt know this already: You can have a good time with the courtesans in the Salty Mast, and get various temporary bonuses from them. Experiment with these if you feel like you need them. I never really bothered. The best is Serel’s boon, but it’s damn expensive.
– About gun swapping.
Quick Switch & Arms Bearer & playing Island Amanua will give you 4 super fast shots without the need for reloading. If you play a competent shooter like ranger, cipher or fighter, that pretty much finishes any non-dragon enemy in the game.
Works with any ranged weapon but you can make the most of it by using guns or arbalests since they have a long reload time.
The biggest hurdle to this tactic is finding 4 Tier1 guns of the same type and pimping them out.
– Rules of dealing with traps.
1) Always move fast mode sneaking in a dungeon. That’s rougly equal to normal mode walking.
2) If you cannot disarm a trap and you know its attack type: trigger it with whoever has the best defense for it.
If you dont know its type: Trigger it with a paladin (he has the best overall defenses).
Or trigger it with a rogue/ranger if you are feeling lucky (most traps are Reflex types).
Stay the heck away with the rest of your party.
– Caed Nua easy prestige tip:
You might think the best for prestige is some +4 building, but in reality it is the Barracks, more specifically the recruits that come with it.
Right on the start, it gives you anywhere in between 6-10 prestige.
Later on you can recruit some unique guards for even more boost (if you get them). In theory you can get as much as +20 prestige from this building alone.
And the recruits pay for themselves (with bigger prestige come bigger taxes) and the money they cost is small fry anyways.
You need various prestige levels for various stroghold quests to appear, but in general you wanna crank that prestige up as soon as possible since you can only do a limited amount of stronghold quests in the game. (tied to how many quests/tasks you do, and those are limited)
Security does not matter. You can always go home for the fights and the tax income is in the pocket money range anyways.
– Money.
Just so you know what to expect in the game in terms of disposable money:
You can easily make 150k, spend it on useless stuff/crafting materials, then make another 150k and have nothing to spend it on.
Don’t be stingy with your gold.
– About potions
The best potion in the game is Warpaint DAoM. (especially since you can craft it)
The second best is DAoM.
The third best is DAoM on everyone (except on wizard, duh).
The fourth best varies by style.
– Warpaint is pretty good on frontliners, but the supply is limited. There are 25-ish flasks of Warpaint in the game, if you collect from every location. There are also about 7-9 “bossfights” so ration them accordingly.
– Bulwark Against the Elements or Wizard’s Double are great on your casters but I’d honestly just gulp a DAoM and never stop casting.
– For wizard, Merciless Gaze is great, but as above, you’d rather just cast a DAoM and never have the time to drink a potion until everyone around you is dead.
– About food.
Feel free to play around with them. The only one that matters is Dragon Meat Dish, and that’s only if you really wanna min/max (in which case buy all the dragon meat).
If you want extra irony points, use dragon food to kil dragons (you won’t *need* them anywhere else)
Some other fun ones (good, cheap and readily available everywhere): Rauatai cookies, Stew, Casserole.
– About drugs
IMO Svef and Carow Golan are okay but the crash makes them not worth the high.
D’amarr from Darshiva says: “Various drugs, such as blacsonn can do wonders and are well worth the negative effects.”
– About summons
Prefer the ones that summon multiple guys. You can get free flanks super easily with them.
Loot the djinni lamp as early as LVL4 from the Valian Embassy in Defiance Bay. (needs 7 mechanics at least)
It goes without saying but lategame Concelhaut is the best pet.
– About scrolls.
Things like Protection and Valor are fun to fool around with, but the only 2 that really matter are Maelstrom and Paralyze.
If you don’t have a priest in the party then Prayer against Fear is the No.1 priority (luckily thats a LVL1 scroll and also craftable).
For dragon fights, paralyze is a must. Having as much as 10+ of them in the quickbar is sometimes not considered overkill. (Except vs Alpine who is immune to paralyze but goes down to petrify)
– On Rites: You can cheat a couple points of Survival if you use a rite before resting before a fight, to get that ACC bonus or whatever. Same goes for Mechanics and chests.
Sadly rites are uncraftable.
General Advice Pt.2
In no particular order
– Skillpoint allocation.
It is pretty easy to waste a lot of skillpoints all over the place and since you get diminishing returns on most you don’t wanna do that. Here is a compilation of how you should allocate those points.
1) Sneak: Don’t bother. Sneaking is good for 2 things: Scouting ahead and getting in position before fights. Basic stealth (like the one that comes with rangers or you get from items) should be enough to find mobs before they find you and you should use more reliable methods (like mobility abilities and the ranger) to deal with the enemy backlines.
2) Athletics: put EVERY excess point on EVERY character here.
3) Lore: Have 1 lore guy and pump this on them. The only 2 relevant scroll types where Durance cannot help out are Paralysis and Maelstrom. Consider if you need them and set your lore accordingly. Best candidate is the Chanter obviously.
4) Mechanics: Have one mechanics guy and dump EVERY point here. Getting to 13 MEC is a chore and that is what you need to safely disarm every trap in the game (there ARE traps that one shot your guys).
5) Survival: This is the trickiest. Survival is only good at certain values and there’s a lot of filler inbetween.
– 2: Get this on EVERYONE except the mechanics guy. Get this on the mechanics guy if you *know* where in the game the sick traps are. 2 Survival will pay dividends all game with the amount of healing in a normal party. This also boosts Second Wind so in a sense this gives you free Athletics points.
– 4: Consider getting this on your DPS chars, especially the ranger or cipher. Sometimes there are a couple fights where dealing with a crucial enemy wins the (otherwise hard) fights (Pwigra, Adragan). This will help with just that. Pity there is no ‘kith’ in here, otherwise this would be the must-go on every character ever.
– 8: Notice the huge gap here? You need to sink a lot of skillpoints into survival to get here so only consider this on your frontliners, but boy does the extra healing add up. In longer fights this easily amounts to an extra 100+ healing. Especially on characters with Frenzy (Barbarian and whoever has the Sanguine Plate) this will make the difference between dying and not dying. Similar to the first tier, this also gives you a couple free Athletics points.
– 12: Grab this on a ranger or rouge if you want a sick dragon-killer build. Don’t bother anyway.
– Heodan goodies Pt.1
Out of all the merchants in the game he works with the best prices. You can sell him your stuff for great profits, including preorder items, Calisca’s stuff and anything you find on the first area. If you pick the watershed up he disappears.
– Heodan goodies Pt.2
You can disarm all the traps with him in the trap room in the ruins. Tons of free XP.
Free xaurip spear
When you meet the xaurip in the first ruins, it will give you a xaurip spear if you feed skuldr meat to it. After the interaction, you can kill it and loot another spear. Since xaurip spears are the best weapons this early, this is a neat littlie trick.
Class- specific Advice
Barbarian
Even if you are in frenzy mode, if you set the auto-pause for dropping below 25% endurance – it will tell you. In most cases that’s just enough time to pop an insta-heal.
Chanter
the “+% area of effect” items are actually +radius, which is even bigger since +10% radius gives you about +21% AoE if my math is correct. Same for every AoE in the game but this is the class with the biggest impact IMO
Cipher
Druid
Fighter
Wizards and druids stand aside, let me present the best AoE nuker in the game. That’s right, thanks to Charge a well-built fighter does enormous AoE damage. I *think* the damage formula is somehow tied to your weapon damage, so a DPS fighter with a good 2-hander, huge MIG and a good crit ratio will do 100+ damage easily in an AoE (biggest I’ve seen was 178). Oh did I mention that this is 2 per encounter. Oh did I mention that this is also a mobility talent.
Monk
Paladin
Priest
All the seal spells are considered as traps so Mechanics will affect their Accuracy. Repulsing seal for AoE 10+ sec prones? Yes plealse
Ranger
Rogue
Wizard
Encounter- specific Tips
Sky Dragon
Adra Dragon
Alpine Dragon
Bog Dragons
Concelhaut’s Crushing Doom will totally hit any of the main enemies here. It pretty much one- shots Lengrath and even the dragons go down eventually for a very long time. If you have a wizard you can even cast 2 at the start of the battle for a really easy fight. Combine this with Wall of Many Colors and the fight is pretty much over.
Concelhaut
Radiant Spore
Thaos
Brynlod
The most powerful entity in the game is a chap named Brynlod. He is a LVL21 human cipher – that’s right, 5 levels higher than your maximum allowed level. He is the last bounty mission in the game, offred by Asca in WM Pt2. Otherwise, the fight looks like an ordinary party on party action, only mega tough. IMHO the most problems come from the wizards in the back. If you give them any breathing room they will barrage you with Cadebald’s Blackbow spells. Needless to say, come here fully decked out.