The Drunken Lizard Pub

I've been playing as a mage, and put all my points into intelligence with the aim of maximising my mana. I'm now level 10, with 43 intelligence, and I just found this article and saw the formula for mana per level:

http://www.basiliskgames.com/forums/vie ... f=3&t=2386

What the hell guys? I pump what is almost universally in RPGs used as 'the mage stat', because the game doesn't give me the slightest hint that perception might be better than intelligence for mana. I put skill points into meditation because I figure, if I have to use my attribute points on my intelligence to get good mana I'll have to use skill points on meditation to get good regen. At that point of course I had no idea you even need intelligence to get more spells because the game doesn't tell you. But with that in mind, seriously, intelligence has to give me good mana because what the hell else is it for?

BUT NO. Because I didn't pump perception I have at the most 2/3 of the amount of mana I should have assuming I would have been putting most of my points into perception, but some into intelligence to unlock spells.

On top of that I'm also left with at the very least 8 wasted attribute points on intelligence (as that's how far I've gone past the limit of how much intelligence unlocks the ability to learn more spells).

On top of THAT I've got a crap-ton of wasted skill points on meditation, because perception would have served the same purpose as the points I've spent on meditation to bring me to what I've now discovered is the regen cap, which the game also didn't tell me about. From what I've read I could just have easily reached the regen cap almost as quickly from pumping perception with some points still put into intelligence.

That's an absolute ton of points that I could've spent on absolutely anything else, AND an absolute ton of mana that I now don't have.

Maybe I'm missing something but I can't for the life of me see why intelligence doesn't just give you the same amount of mana as perception. How could you think it's a good idea to make perception give twice as much mana as intelligence, AND give mana regen, AND not tell players about the mana difference or give them any clue that pumping intelligence was a bad idea? And why is meditation even in the game if you're supposed to pump perception?

In any case, that's over 15 hours I've spent on this character and at this point I'm not going to start again and call it wasted. I can either plough on through and start putting points into perception now, or I can read spoilers for the story (or just cheat my way through and see it first hand) and start on book 2. Or I could just quit and leave it at that. A game should not involve this much anguish.

What do you think I should do?

Haradan wrote:In any case, that's over 15 hours I've spent on this character and at this point I'm not going to start again and call it wasted. I can either plough on through and start putting points into perception now, or I can read spoilers for the story (or just cheat my way through and see it first hand) and start on book 2. Or I could just quit and leave it at that. A game should not involve this much anguish.

I hate to break it to you, but at this point starting over isn't that bad of a thing. I strongly suggest you do not quit entirely, or just skip to Book II. I played through Book I at least three or four times from when I got it to when Book II came out. It's not that bad of a thing to start over, but if you honestly don't want to, here's what I suggest.
-Finish the game with what you have, and start putting points into perception starting now.
-When you win, restart a new character and win with better skills.
-You now know the storyline, and where to go at each point in the game, so the second time through will be faster for two reason.
-1. You have better skills.
-2. You know what you're doing.

It does seem pretty silly to give up on it now. As long as I don't hit a brick wall of difficulty I'll probably keep on with it. I just feel my illusion of progress pretty well shattered at this point, but as long as I don't keep having to kite to wait for my mana to regenerate painfully slowly, while in combat, I guess I'll keep going.

It does make me worry about other such unfairness in the game's systems as well though. Any other SNAFUs I should be wary of running into?

*SLIGHT EARLY-GAME SPOILER ALERT*

Now that I think about it this reminds me of the bit near the beginning when you can fight your way through the salamanders north of Aridell to get to the northern parish, but if you then try to turn back because you can't handle the bandits in the north you find a bunch of noximanders have spawned behind you, which can be pretty brutal if you haven't leveled up enough, or at all.

That was brutal and awesome, mainly because it didn't let you get too far before you realised you couldn't get out. This just seems unfair.

Book 1 is harsh on mages because of mana pint regeneration even if you had built up perception. Most players train in alchemy and get brewmaster rings to just make mana potions. I spent minutes wandering in a circle to get the mana for another shot.

Book 2 has significantly faster mana point regeneration.

Haradan wrote:the game doesn't give me the slightest hint that perception might be better than intelligence for mana.

Just a slight nitpick, and I know that this is easy to overlook, but when you mouseover the "Perception" stat on the character generation screen, this is what it says: "Perception represents your character's ability to perform acts of magick and divine channeling and is the basis for all his maximum Mana Points, Magick Resistance and Mana Point regeneration rate..."

So there is at least some indication of that stat's importance. Not that my first Book 1 character (also a Mage, also with a lot of Meditation pumped in) wasn't pretty off-balance and not terribly effective. I enjoyed the challenge of fighting through the rest of the game with a subpar character, though.

FWIW, I personally don't consider points in Meditation "wasted." Even knowing what I do about the stat system, I tend to put points into Meditation anyway, just to get to the regen rate cap more quickly. I know others may disagree with me on that one, though. :)

The in-game guidance could be better. But yes, there is some indication with the mouseover tip and of course the manual.

Don't feel bad - this is not an easy game, and definitely is not one where assumptions always pan out. The first time I played it I had to restart about 4 times just to make it to Aridell

Then, I probably had another 3 restarts (plus multiple returns to the previous "level-up") before I found stats that could carry me through to the end. Actually, I thought it was sort of fun to try to figure out the system...........

Painted Lady wrote:Then, I probably had another 3 restarts (plus multiple returns to the previous "level-up") before I found stats that could carry me through to the end. Actually, I thought it was sort of fun to try to figure out the system...........

For me, a sign that an RPG is going to be good is how often I want/need to restart to make a better character. With a good RPG, I'll restart 3-4 times before committing to my character(s).

In contrast, with Dragon Age, I never restarted once...and never had the desire to finish the game.

Interesting POV. I've never finished DA:O either, though for different reasons. So far I'm enjoying Book 1 with about 9 hours played on my magick-user.

BasiliskWrangler wrote: For me, a sign that an RPG is going to be good is how often I want/need to restart to make a better character. With a good RPG, I'll restart 3-4 times before committing to my character(s).

I never finished BookI, and it took me about a dozen characters (some which I didn't play for more than a few hours) to finally play one till the end of the game