the grind is wearing me down

[Farwalker]

Having finished with my first successful playthrough, I decided to try something. Effectively a "Vow of Poverty" monk. I'm not going to use any weapons, armor, magical rings, amulets, etc. No equippables at all, except for perhaps thrown weapons.

Sounds fun! I played for quite a while with no armor, and then even in late game I went barefoot. Having quick travel wear down my shoes was really irritating for whatever reason... Also in lava, I just took off the leggings and footwear, because apparently my fireproof armor was less fireproof than me.

[kelticpete]

I have played as a ranger and now as a mage. it may be exploity but most of the first 5000 gold I found went to buying foraging up to 8, then a foraging book, and then foraging rings. I am playing on on all hardcore settings and I was able to find the foraging rings pretty quickly. selling alchemy supplies allowed me to then buy up alchemy, carography, and some magic....unless you are going for a challenge I would use some magic as a fighter.

alchemy is really nice on armor.

foraging at level 14 allowed me to have enough money to buy arrows and light armor as a ranger and spells as a mage.

there is no shame early on in running and coming back. i found later in the game with my ranger that the game was easier.

don't know if this helps.

[SpottedShroom]

Really exploit-y is running from fights and using quest XP to get to level 5, pumping all skill points into mercantile. Then money stops being a problem, you can buy all the skills and equipment you like, and go back and pound on the enemies you skipped.

[IJBall]

Really exploit-y is running from fights and using quest XP to get to level 5, pumping all skill points into mercantile. Then money stops being a problem, you can buy all the skills and equipment you like, and go back and pound on the enemies you skipped.

What Level in Mercantile did you shoot for? - 15? 20? 25?

In Book I, you'd start to "profit" off all transactions starting about Mercantile Level 25-30...

[Farwalker]

There is a point with mercantile where the merchants pay you to take their stuff...

[silverkitty]

That point is precisely 26 - 22 points of natural mercantile + 2 for book + 2 for dealer's hat (which doesn't even count as armor and thus doesn't ruin the Untouchable challenge)... at that point you can (very slowly) clean merchants out by buying their stuff and selling it back to them for more.

[Discoveria]

I followed dragonslayer's strategy in this thread: http://www.basiliskgames.com/forums/vie ... =12&t=3423

Basically, the idea is to pump all skill points into Mercantile until you have 26 (with the Dealer hat and the book if you can find them). Then make it to Port Kuudad. Clean out the merchants every week and spend the money on training all the useful skills to level 8 (and buying the skill books). Makes the game easier than intended.

[SpottedShroom]

It's not even that slow to clean out most merchants, as long as they have inventory that's expensive. The weapon and armor sellers in particular are pretty easy to work.

[silverkitty]

Well, it has to be really expensive - I mean, I was typically finding I could make like 139 gold per transaction with the regular blacksmith in Port Kuudad with his typical inventory - taking about 20 iterations to clean him out. With the junk sellers, I could often make a measly 10 gold per transaction of their most expensive item.

[Evnissyen]

Well, to be honest, though nobody has said it yet, so far as I recall: the wear-down speed on weapons really is, in my opinion, too fast. I mean, playing a fighter, first-time-out, my sword ended up disintegrating long before I managed to reach level 2 . . . and this is not good at all, in my opinion.

Of course, you can say "you can change the deterioration factor in the original settings", but I don't want to. I want my weapons and armor to deteriorate, just . . . at a much slower rate.

In other words: much faster than the Book I rate but at the same time much slower than the drakonian Book II rate.

...Sigh... if only I'd been a tester... .

Now I'm on my second run through and I'm instead playing a ranger with Piercing Weapons abilities. That means that all the knives he finds underground can be put to good use, and it also means that powder kegs can be used, because of his adeptness with bows, to their proper effectiveness.

The food and drink aspect I have no problem with . . . so far. It's nice to play a game, for once, that treats these issues realistically.

...Although 'twould be refreshing -- no pun intended -- if the game also happened to be the first CRPG in history (so far as I know) that addressed . . . well . . . the problem of digestive excess.

There was actually one adventure game I remember, from a long time ago -- don't remember the title but I do remember liking it a lot, and I don't think it was a well-known game, either -- that did end up with your character dying embarrassingly if he/she did not at some point address the "growing pressure in your abdomen" which tended to occur occasionally.

[KillingMoon]

Well, to be honest, though nobody has said it yet, so far as I recall: the wear-down speed on weapons really is, in my opinion, too fast.

It is fast. Mostly I need to take a break from fighting because my material has worn down, more than from a loss of hitpoints. This rapid deterioration is probably done to make 'Repair' an interesting skill or something; I'm not too fond of that, as I prefer to play as an insomniac. Bludgeoning weapons remain in a good state for much longer, and I'm assuming the material your weapon is made of also will have an influence.

Now I'm on my second run through and I'm instead playing a ranger with Piercing Weapons abilities. That means that all the knives he finds underground can be put to good use, and it also means that powder kegs can be used, because of his adeptness with bows, to their proper effectiveness.

I'm not sure you're aware, but any untrained fool can blow up powder kegs. I'm usually throwing a stone at it, and for that we don't need any expertise in thrown weapons; one stone with damage 4 will do it in most occasions. With a bow and no bow skill you'll likely need more than 1 arrow, if it's just an ordinary arrow and an ordinary bow.

[Evnissyen]

Now I'm on my second run through and I'm instead playing a ranger with Piercing Weapons abilities. That means that all the knives he finds underground can be put to good use, and it also means that powder kegs can be used, because of his adeptness with bows, to their proper effectiveness.

I'm not sure you're aware, but any untrained fool can blow up powder kegs. I'm usually throwing a stone at it, and for that we don't need any expertise in thrown weapons; one stone with damage 4 will do it in most occasions. With a bow and no bow skill you'll likely need more than 1 arrow, if it's just an ordinary arrow and an ordinary bow.

Hmm... I hadn't considered that at all, actually. I'll have to give it a try, red 'incompetency' frame be damned.

Come to think of it: If I'm not mistaken (that is: I might've learned the skill in a book) I seem to recall using thrown weapons (demon oil) in Book I without any skill in thrown weapons.

In regard to weapon deterioration: it occurs to me that this can't be quite realistic, since if a sword deteriorated that quickly (from slaying rats, no less): one would think that a warrior would never get through a battle without their sword becoming uselessly dull.

Granted, in a battle there're a variety of ways to use a sword... that's sort of beside the point, as far as I'm concerned.

Plenty of stories . . . especially in the Celtic cyles (as exaggerated as they are) of warriors cutting off the heads of their enemies with great abandon . . . hard to cut off the head of an enemy with a sword that's duller than a butter knife or even broken.

...And a mace? Haven't tested it in Book II, but honestly: how quickly would steel-ball mace tend to deteriorate?

Again: haven't tested it yet, so I've yet to figure out how quickly, if at all, such a mace deteriorates with use.

A wooden cudgel I can imagine deteriorating quite quickly. But a mace, or a morning star (those chains aren't fragile, after all)... no.

And a knife or sword simply will not deteriorate unless it strikes something harder than itself.

A rat is not harder than a sword.

Nor is an unarmored person's belly.

An armored warrior would be, but common sense tells me that you strike an armored warrior with the blunt of your sword -- for reverberation damage -- unless you're striking at the neck, should that spot happen to be vulnerable . . . which it usually isn't (chain mail). Methinks you strike with the point of the sword at vulnerable areas between the plates. ...But then, I'm no student of ancient warfare.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Copper and bronze dull extremely quickly in combat, actually. As for maces and morningstars, it's the haft that breaks first, in general, which is not usually made from metal like the head. In the days of the Roman legions and such, soldiers spent most of their evenings tending to wounds and sharpening their weapons again.

As you get better quality weapons, they last a lot longer (and the named weapons seem almost impervious to wear in my experience--unfortunately for swordsmen/women, the two named swords don't come up until VERY late in the game).

And, you would NEVER hit an armored opponent with the flat of your sword unless you wanted to shorten it quickly. The pommel, yes, but the flat, never.

[serenetempest]

I seem to remember reading/hearing somewhere that in ancient history where most soldiers were using bronze weapons that the weapons were generally good for one battle and then needed to be replaced.

Also, since you have no chance of missing a barrel, I find that switching to power mode with a 1-2 damage thrown weapon and an untrained character still usually does it in one hit.

[CrazyBernie]

And a knife or sword simply will not deteriorate unless it strikes something harder than itself.

A rat is not harder than a sword.

Nor is an unarmored person's belly.

Lewis dodges the overgrown rat's sudden lunge, then follows up with a downward swipe of his sword. The blade barely makes contact with the rat's shoulder, scoring a small wound. The sword's momentum carries through and strikes the ground, hitting a stone; the impact shatters the brittle bronze material, leaving Lewis with naught but a stub of blade attached to a hilt.

"Aw, crap."