What are the stats and the skills efficiency levels?
For example:
1. Alchemy efficiency level is 5/10/15 - for 1/2/3-level potions.
The trade more than 15 ranks into Alchemy is only the waste skillpoints.
?. Cartography efficiency level is 17 - more ranks did't improve minimap.
The most interesting are the elementel and divine magic skills.
Best regards
Last edited by Forest on December 6th, 2007, 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
Technically, 31 is the magic number for both elemental and divine - the top tier spells require 31 to cast at level 6 (e.g. spells like Portal).
Practically, I would say 20 or 23 in Elemental, 20 in Divine. 20 gives you access to level 6 spells at the second tier (i.e. those with a base cost of 6 mana per level). These are going to be the main spells you end up using from my experience. The third tier spells (i.e. those with a base cost of 10 mana per level) are nice, but expensive. Also, the benefits you get from using them at level 6 don't really justify the expense. E.g. the damage spells are very hard hitting, but cost too much mana; the Portal spell allows more portals to be set, however do you really need more than 3 or 4 portals?
Afaik, the weapon and armor skills don't cap, but the incremental benefits of raising levels aren't really worth it - going from +1 to hit and damage to +2 is a reasonable jump in power, but going from +10 to +11 won't really be all that noticeable when you get to that point. My view is that weapon skills are useful in the 12-20 range (20 if you're not using magic such as enchantment or bless, 12 otherwise); beyond this, I'd rather have a few other mid-level skills.
I don't have any experience of the pick lock and skullduggery skills as my characters have relied on magic for these areas instead, but again I think a mid-level total (say around 12-16) is probably sufficient.
To my mind, only a couple of stats have a major impact on your character.
Firstly, it pays to maximise end and per at initial creation; each point you sink into these stats yields 2 hp or mana respectively, and this is the only time you get this bonus. Therefore, the best races are those that give either end +2 or per +2, and you should put all 15 bonus points into one or the other (or both).
I think after this it really depends on what kind of character you're trying to build up. For a general all-rounder who will have decent elemental and divine magic skill (i.e. adjusted skill of around 15-20 in each skill), you don't need to have a massive hp total; your mana can be used to top up hp through divine heal, and you can regenerate at 1 mana / 3 rounds quite easily.
Therefore, I prefer a character with final Per in the range 35-40, end = 20.
Intelligence and Wisdom can be kept quite low - Int can be left at 10 and Wis 14 I think for you to be able to use all spells in the game (because of items that raise these stats).
Dex and Str can be raised via magic quite easily, but its nice to have a reasonable amount in each of these. I quite like bumping up str because you then don't have to swap weapons around to cast, but if you have a higher tedium threshold, then this is not necessary.
Which leaves Spd and Concentration. Spd, as far as I can tell, is a complete dump stat. It never seems to make any real difference except when you're running away, and even then I can't tell if its a bug or intended that you gain or lose ground to enemies. Concentration is nice, it helps to-hit, and can't be buffed easily.
Putting all of this together, I would see an decent end stage build as something like:
Str 20+; Dex 20; End 20; Int 10+; Wis 14+; Spd 10+; Per 40; Conc 20
I would start the character with End 20, Per as high as possible. I would then max Per as quickly as possible. After that, it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference what order you raise stats - however, I'd want to get to adjusted Int 15 / Wis 15 quickly to learn the 2nd tier spells.
Your points about fine-tuning the increases level on level are probably correct, but in all honesty you level up quite quickly so you're never really going to be stuck too long at a given attribute level.
For skills I agree, it seems best to stick to even numbers (except cartography which seems to be based on odd numbers).
VPeric wrote:Actually, probably not. I was thinking of the Swords skill - no idea how much Speed actually adds.
Going by the general rule that seems to be applied, its going to be +1 every 5 or every 10 I'd guess.
I'm tempted to say (without having done the tests) that speed probably adds +1 damage per 10 points of the attribute, and +1 armor rating per 5 points of the attribute. In which case, I think I would go back to saying that actually, its a dump stat
