Help with warrior character

[metamorphium]

Hi all,

Eschalon is the game I really enjoy after not playing old school CRPG for so many years. However I feel that I sort of went out of it and I don't know if I shouldn't start from scratch.

I've made a warrior character and right now I crawled out from the underground repository. My problem is that all enemies I encounter I am able to either single by using expensive elixirs II or if they are more than one I can use hit and run tactic to lure them to places where are guards.

I feel that as a warrior this sucks as I'd expect that he must be more powerful than that by now. Moreover there are no more "training grounds" as I've cleared all easy quests (being a completist of a sort) and I have terrible time fighting off acid grubs, raptors and mercenaries who are now my oponnents.

As I think I might have probably just wrongly built up my character, I want to ask how off it is and if I shouldn't rather restart a game and not going on with this one as it's not very funny gameplay after every single monster travelling to pub to sleep it away.


Thanks for any help/tips and I'm on the following stats:

Level 9 (Artisan)

Strength 21
Dexterity 22
Endurance 20
Speed 20
Int 14
Wisdom 13
Perception 14
Concentration 19

Combative

To Hit 14
Max Damage 20 + 0
Armor Rating 27
Dmg red. 2%

Resistance
Elements 36, Toxins 42, Magick 51, Disease 34

Skills

Alchemy 2, Light Armor 4, Heavy Armor 2, Shields 2, Cartography 3, Dodge 11, Mercantile 1, Spot Hidden 1, Short Bladed 1, Swords 12

Equipped

Mithril Long Sword (6), Rabbit food, some rings for protection and mana up + armor to get 27 rating, I also have a shield with rating 1.

[kxc]

You have very low armor skill points for a warrior.

[agnari]

I NEVER bothered with shields or dodge. found the points more useful in weapon skill.

on the subject of wepon skills, 2 are needed 1 ranged and 1 melee. So unless that short bladed was learned via a book/trainer it was a waste of 3 credits.

heavy armor makes you more of a tank, but light armor does very well and seems to find way more +skills bennies on it then on heavy which seems to be rarer. so pick one and go with it NOT 2.

i've got a 9 or 10 bow toon and since he has a high alch skill his armor is all +3. his armor is 58.

[Toxic]

I had the same problem you did at this point. I was very lucky to find a 7 attack sword w/ +3 enchantment on it in the Store. I believe it was about 3000 GP.


You might want to think about doing that trick where you QUICKSAVE before you talk to a shopkeeper and then keep reloading until you get some ideal selections of armor/weapons that will benefit your character.

edit: Also buy MANY haste potions. They can help you beat almost every enemy and they are dirt cheap (30 GP)

[dg_1974]

focus on Speed instead of Strength. It's just as good damage-wise and it helps your AC. Strength is mainly important for encumbrance.

get a couple of Brewmaster rings and make your own healing elixir II's for cheap. build your alchemy to 9 plus 2 brewmaster rings and you can +3 any weapon or armor and make healing elixir III, haste II and invisibility II. I really think alchemy is the great leveler in the game. Demon Oil III is amazing, you can wipe out hordes with 5 or 6 of them. Potions of Cure Greater Disease are the only potions I think you can make a profit off of, but you can take all the alchemist's gold in Bordertown that way when Belladona and Charcoal are in stock (given you have a decent mercantile).

but just standing there and trying to hack through the game is tough.

[ArkansasIMCista]

Ah Metamorphium, I got the game a couple of days before Christmas but I still haven't gotten past mid-game because I keep finding interesting new ways to build a character and thus keep restarting. So yeah, if you are not happy with your character, I'd say go ahead and restart myself.

I have to leave in a few minutes so I can't go into extensive detail right now but here's a few quick points. First, as already mentioned, an Alchemy skill of 15 will help you immensely with your current character. That way you can add +3 to all your armour as well as +3 hit and damage to your weapon, not to mention brewing your own potions. The easiest way to get that skill to 15 is to train for the first five levels, then read the brewing book and add two more skill points while leveling up to bring you to 9. At that point, two Brewmaster rings at +3 apiece will bring you to the magic number 15.

Next, I disagree with agnari about choosing between light and heavy armour. Myself, I like to be able to use both.

Oops, gotta go. More later.

[metamorphium]

A big thanks to everyone. It's really enlightening for me to read your advices. Of course I see now (doh!) that I've completely neglected the armor so I've already raised this and it helped. On the other hand I don't see any other way now than to start over from scratch as level 10 is far away and I already know how to build my character way better. I also went to the goblin town and discovered that without long range weapons I am pretty much doomed thanks to those exploding barrels.

So thanks again and this time I'll try to do it right.

[dg_1974]

Demon Oil. And the best way to get Alchemy 15 is to buy the first 5 levels from the alchemist in Bordertown, spend 4 more skill points and then get the two brewaster rings. That way you've only spent 4 skill points.

[ArkansasIMCista]

Again I just have a few minutes between doing other stuff so here's another quick thought, this one about armour.

Atm my current character is at level 9 also and is happily hunting raptors. His armour level is at 51 using a mix of heavy and light armour all imbued to the max. With that number and a to hit of 19, he is hitting the raptors at 63% while they are hitting him at 20%. At that rate, he can go at them one on one while barely getting scratched. If he casts Bless at 6 and Stoneskin at 5, his to hit reaches 81% while the raptor's drops to 2%. With those kinds of numbers, he can take on a pack of raptors and emerge unscathed. And he's getting those numbers with a a Light Armour skill of 3 and a Heavy Armour skill of 1.

All that leads to another point which I don't have the time to go into fully right now but that should be raised before you start a new build, Metamorphium. Are you dead set on a warrior only build? 'Cause I gotta tell you, after restarting a number of different experimental builds, I'm happiest with a character that wields an effective sword while using Divination and Elemental Magic to boost his attack/defense stats as well as providing other useful support skills like Predator's Sight, Lore, Portal, and of course a ranged attack that doesn't need a supply of arrows.

[agnari]

quote
Next, I disagree with agnari about choosing between light and heavy armour. Myself, I like to be able to use both.
end quote

trouble with that method is you are pumping skill points into both instead of one, which means both are weak or you are weak somewhere else

yes it is an option but i favor the one type knowing typically that the ligth will find more bonus stuff like +bow, +str ect then the heavy. but then the heavy is abrams tank material.

[ArkansasIMCista]

Hehe, take a look at the numbers I gave in the post just above yours, Agnari. I don't think my heavy/light armour mix is weak at all.

Metamorphium, here's the stats for my level 9 character. As I mentioned earlier, he's being built as a sword user able to cast desirable support/utility spells from both the Elemental and Divination sets.

STATS
Strength 18
Dexterity 18
Endurance 21
Speed 15
Intelligence 18
Wisdom 18
Perception 23

To Hit 19
Max Damage 20 +3
Armour Rating 51
Dmg Reduction 2%

SKILLS
Alchemy 9
Divination 17
Elemental 15
Light Armour 3
Heavy Armour 3
Cartography 7
Meditation 10
Mercantile 1
Pick Locks 1
Spot Hidden 1
Survival 5
Cleaving Weapons 7
Swords 15

One thing of special note- this character started Level 1 with 1 skill point each in Elemental, Light Armour and Heavy Armour, with 5 points going into Meditation and the rest being saved. As soon as he had some money he made a run to Blackwater in order to set up the Quick Travel link there and started training in Divination, Elemental and Swords. Doing it that way in effect gave him 14 extra skill points

[Horace2]

it doesn't seem to me that armor skills are worth much of anything beyond the first point. Well, to be specific, they increase 'damage reduction' percentage by around 1.25% per point in the best-case scenario of having heavy armor on torso, head, and legs (feet and hands don't seem to matter).

But "damage reduction" isn't as powerful as it seems, since when it kicks in, based on the displayed % chance, damage is halved. Otherwise it has no effect. So the net damage reduction is only half of the displayed number. So, all in all, each point in heavy armor reduces average damage from a successful hit by .6% or so (best case).

Compare that to the percentage gain in to-hit and damage for points invested in a weapon skill, and the choice is clear between the two. I can't see it ever paying to invest in armor over weapons, beyond the first point (and even that is debatable - but that 'unskilled armor penalty' message is too annoying to deal with permanently).

Another reason not to bother with armor skills is that it reduces options for which armor to wear. Keeping both armor skills at 0 or 1 allows the player to use any armor in the game on its own merits rather than artificially favoring one type of armor over the other simply because it's the one that has the skill point investment for it.

[Josia]

(and even that is debatable - but that 'unskilled armor penalty' message is too annoying to deal with permanently).

The unskilled penalties are actually pretty severe, at least early on - something on the order of -1 to hit and -3 to armor for simple light armor. Wearing armor unskilled can, in fact, reduce your armor rating! The penalty for shields is even worse; -2 / -5 in my simple test. Wielding a simple weapon unskilled is at least -2 to hit and -2 to damage. Unskilled armor penalties do not stack; instead they appear to take the worst penalty (e.g. if using both a shield and wearing another piece of light armor, the penalty is -2 / -5 instead of -3 / -7). However they do stack with unskilled weapon penalties.

The only thing I'm not sure about is if they scale, e.g. are percentage based. Additionally I imagine heavy armor has its own scale, although I was unable to easily test this theory with a current character.

[ArkansasIMCista]

Horace and Josia, you both make excellent points that I fully agree with. Josia is right that you need one point in armour to avoid the penalties. Horace is right that the return on investment is so low that it's not worth putting skill points into armour beyond that. The only reason my current character has 3 points each in heavy and light armour is that he got the extra skill points for free by reading the appropriate books. However, he won't be putting any more points into either.

I also agree with Horace about the usefulness of putting 1 point each into both heavy and light armour. Heavy armour allows you to tank up enough to make it significantly harder for the nasties to hit you. Light armour offers a greater variety of stats/skills boosting equipment to shore up places where you are weaker. I don't see any reason to choose only one while excluding the other since having both gives you such greater mix and match flexibility.

[metamorphium]

Hi guys,

thanks again for invaluable help. I finally made a new character on thursday while utilizing your hints and went through the game like a breeze (having very soon alchemy 15 utilizing brewmaster rings and finding some book about divination and buying skills up to level 5 helped immensely). I also focused only on basic skills while others were found in books.

Another thing worth mentioning is that I've kept my bow skills also high and bow is IMO a real killer in this game. Without any long range weapon the game is unplayable (especially in Vela).

This game was such a great return to the old ages when I spent hundreds of hours with Wizardry series. Big thanks to all things Basilisk for that. The only disappointing thing was the very end, although I suspect there might be some more rewarding ending if I looked correctly.

Anyway thanks and off I go.

Ps. I've figured out that one of the things why those oldschool rpgs are so addictive is the fact how fast saving/loading goes. In all solid rpgs you get killed and having to wait 3 minutes for the game to load to die again really sucks. Instant load/save thing is really something which keeps you trying.