The Drunken Lizard Pub

I have a Level 5 Barbarian and here are my current stats:

STR 20 DEX 20 END 12 SPEED 18
INT 8 WIS 12 PER 16 CON 16

Heavy Armor 3
Swords 4
Bow Weapons 2

Amulet of Accuracy (+3 To Hit)
Sword: Iron Falcata - Base Damage 3

ToHit Ability 12

I only use the bow to damage enemies from afar and then use Sword to finish them off.

Currently when fighting say Thugs, with my Sword I am only at a 50 - 60% chance to hit (in daylight). I am just having a difficult time killing just 1 of them.

I'd assume continue to pump points in to STR/SPEED/DEX, or just focus and keep spending all points into DEX to keep raisng my ToHIT?

Any suggestions?

First of all, your endurance seems quite low, which means your hitpoints are low. If you cant hit more than 60% of the time, you should be able to win, using healing potions. Well, there are a few of things you could do:

1) make/buy ogre strength potions and keen eyesight potions (+8 chance to hit), as well as leatherskin potions. If you want a spoiler, I can post the recipes for ogre strength and keen eyesight.
2) buy healing potions at lvl. 2 strength
3) If you can kill one of them, then you can do "hit and run" - kill one, run away into another zone, heal, then come back.
4) use archery attacks from far away
5) use predator sight potions and fight in darkness; they get a to-hit penalty, and you attack as normal (or so I've heard).

Rob

My barbarian character was tough at first but was an absolute powerhouse between level 10 and 16. I remember levels 4-8 being pretty tough.

Here's my build:

Level 16

STR 27
DEX 32
END 20
SPD 25
INT 15
WIS 15
PER 17
CON 17

Swords 30
Light Armor 10
Dodge 16 (10 base, +6 from amulet)
Bow Weapons 11 (7 base, +4 from bracers)
Alchemy 13 (7 base, two +3 rings when mixing)

ToHit 29
Max Damage 34+2
Armor Rating 37
Dmg Reduction 8%

Elements 36%
Toxins 51%
Magick 38%
Disease 41%

I used alchemy a lot, even around level 7, to mix level 2 and 3 healing potions. The low endurance is a problem but I used two +20 HP rings from level 10 or so onward which helped a lot. Enemies rarely hit me with the high dodge and stats.

soma wrote: Light Armor 10

Interesting... any reason you are not using Heavy Armor?

I've been doing some testing. It seems that concentration contributes to hit chance just as much as dexterity. The % is the chance to hit the first salamander outside the starting hut. There's 1 level difference between the two weapon skills, and the difference in hit% is 3. I'm not sure if any other stat has any effect on hit chance.

7dex 28 conc - 6sword, tohit 10, 72% - 5 short blade, tohit 9, 69%
28dex 7 conc - 6sword, tohit 10, 72% - 5 short blade, tohit 9, 69%
22dex 22 conc - 6sword, tohit 11, 75% - 5 short blade tohit 10, 72%

rayres wrote: 1) make/buy ogre strength potions and keen eyesight potions (+8 chance to hit), as well as leatherskin potions. If you want a spoiler, I can post the recipes for ogre strength and keen eyesight.
5) use predator sight potions and fight in darkness; they get a to-hit penalty, and you attack as normal (or so I've heard).

soma wrote: Alchemy 13 (7 base, two +3 rings when mixing)
I used alchemy a lot, even around level 7, to mix level 2 and 3 healing potions.

Hmm I have avoided taking Alchemy mainly in my desperate need for money (doing all sub-quests, fully exploring areas, only spending money on armor/weapons/demon oil) I sell everything, including all the reagents I find. That or I am just getting terribly bad random loot drops. And potions are just too expensive.

I think this is the problem. It seems that potions and or Alchemy are basically required for melee classes. Which is fine, I just had not planned on that.

my first exploration toon was sword and while i found a couple good ones the damage wasn't that remarkable - some monsters down right 0 type of damage.

second is using a cleaving weapon and fairing much better.

Heavy Armor 3
Swords 4
Bow Weapons 2

Are you not spending your points? Looks like you never spent more than your starting points on these...

As a mage I had some serious trouble against thugs as well, I just try to make sure I only have to fight one or two of them, and then I rest to regain mana, and finish off the rest of them.