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[Rakuen]

Well, I've got a bunch of Dwarf Fortress under my belt, and even a bit of Adventurer... but I really need some help. Just some basic help. For some reason I can't ever get a good melee character. The first quest I get is almost always "go here, kill cyclops, he killed a bunch of us... he killed my sister, only son, brother, and paternal grandmother!" So I go, and I ALWAYS lose to the cyclops. Every. Single. Time. It's getting really annoying. I can kill him by getting people to join up with me (hard as shit and boring too!), or by starting as a crossbowman/bowman (I hate having limited ammo).

Any tips?

[Quixim]

Cyclopses are really, really tough. They are as big as giants, and pretty much as tough. Getting their eye out is gonna save you, but that's about it. Honestly, your best bet is to either train up, or go for more manageable kills.

[Rakuen]

Cyclopses are really, really tough. They are as big as giants, and pretty much as tough. Getting their eye out is gonna save you, but that's about it. Honestly, your best bet is to either train up, or go for more manageable kills.

hmm... well, thats all I ever get, from anybody... so should I just wander around the world, stumbling on wildlife and kill them?

Also, I tried to gouge out his eye once. My wrestler missed the grab to his head, and died the same turn. Yea.

[Quietust]

Train your character up beforehand - it's fairly easy to train swimming (provided you start at Novice or better), wrestling (preferably on some zombie herbivore), and throwing up to Legendary in a short period of time, and doing so will also boost your strength/agility/endurance, allowing you to survive longer. Boosting skill in wrestling is especially important, as it will improve your ability to dodge. There's also an exploit involving shields, where you can equip more than one shield at a time (by (r)emoving them from your backpack one at a time), allowing you to block attacks far more often and train Shield User a lot more quickly.

[valcon]

Also, sneak ... everywhere.  It will make progress a little slower, but sneaking is a great way to train and doing so will increase your movement speed when not sneaking as well as agility I believe.

As far as training weapons and other skills, there is a bit of a shortcut I can advise you on.

Go find a goblin town and sneak around until you find a lone goblin guard or child or something.

If they have a weapon, and you have decent wrestling skill, disarm them (wrestle, grab weapon, shift-I for complex interaction, then grab the weapon) and then set your combat mode to wrestle and hold ground.

Sit or lay down (s) and let them beat on you for a while.

This will train your toughness, your armor, and your shield if you have one. 

Once you've got really good armor and toughness and agility, you can train weapons similarly.

If you have a weapon equipped without a shield, find a lone opponent with a weapon (preferably a blunt weapon) and lay down in front of him.

As he attacks, you SHOULD parry his attacks with your weapon.  This will raise your weapon skill quickly, far quicker than actually attacking him.

Other tips:  You can equip more than one item to a slot usually, so, if you have two shields, equip them both in the same hand, that will both double the skill at which you learn shield as well as double the defensive increase.

My other tip is to train throwing on EVERY adventurer you ever make.  Even if you are a swordsman, train throwing, gather some small rocks, and every time you get into a fight, start it off by throwing some rocks to soften them up.  ALso, if they run away, you will have a recourse instead of just chasing around after them.

The most important advice to any new adventurer though is this:  Run away.  If it is at all possible, and you aren't certain of victory; Run like hell. 

Hide behind a tree and sneak then fast travel away.  It'll save your tail, and you'll live to fight ... okay, well you'll live to die another day, but, at least it'll be a different day!

[Ze Spy]

try training throwing , it will help save you , plus train your swimming a little bit too , you don't want to drop into a river that kills you because you can't swim , do you? , also , topic about recruiting :

1: guards and nobles don't wan't any of that giggling adventuring shit , so don't bother about them

2. try to recruit only melee users , because once archers/crossbow users use up their ammo , they can't reload , and you will end up with some one with a really weak hammer

3. go to a goblin tower , no body will bother swinging weapons at your direction if you don't attack anyone , they ussally have alot of prisoners there , no matter what , those prisoners will always join you , not caring about the limit , how strong are you , or anything you can think of , they make good meatshields and can critically wound or kill a megabeast if you happen to have many/you are helping them by attacking the megabeast

topic of killing that semi-megabeast of yours :

1. throw sand , pebles , stones and anything you can find at the cyclops until it dies , or run around and burn trees , then make the cyclops walkover them , it weakens them

2. have you tried gripping his upper/lower body and bashing him? it makes you hit more and miss less , which means if you are lucky you should score a chainhit on the body , which is of couse a combo breaker

3. did i mention that if you grab a certain body part , the attacks will more likely hit that body part , but why bother to melee the head when you can just gouge his eyes out?

[Quietust]

As an experiment, I had my current adventurer (super-buffed and nigh invulnerable) try the parrying trick with his maul, and he successfully went from High Master to Legendary in a rather short timespan against a kobold swordsman. When I tried the same trick using a spear or a large dagger, though, all I got was a light grey liver and a brown spine (which thankfully healed once I went to Travel mode). My Spearman skill was only at Novice (and Knife User at only Dabbling), so either parrying can only be done at higher skill levels or it only works with certain types of weapons (the Maul was being equipped multigrasp when I trained it up).

[Ze Spy]

it needs a decent weapon skill

[Vester]

Has anyone suggested throwing ammo (bolts and arrows) yet? It's pretty effective and sounds a lot less ridiculous than snapping someone's neck with thrown hoary marmot corpse. (Although it is less badass).

[Arrkhal]

If throwing ammo feels too much like cheating, you could also get some spears and carry those around to throw.  That's what I always do (much like how I never boozecook).  I like to never carry anything worse than ≡iron spears≡, the best you can get from humies, so I often have no more than 2 or 3 spears total.

And train on everything you can.  Personally, I prefer wrestling fish to wrestling zombie hoary marmots, as wrestling in the water increases your swimming skill.  If you're wrestling while wearing armor and carrying a shield, fish-wrestling will simultaneously train wrestler, swimmer, armor user, and shield user!

Oh, always have a shield.  Shield definitely takes precedence over armor.  I do a lot of adventuring as a kobold, modded to be playable but not any larger or stronger, and can usually survive quite well with just a shield, even though kobolds cannot acquire or wear armor at all.

Also, when training your weapon skill, keep in mind that attacking helpless enemies does not grant XP.  Unconscious, stunned, vomiting, etc., will prevent you from getting XP by stabbing them, but won't prevent wrestling XP, so an optimum training routine is often to attack an enemy until it passes out, then wrestle until it dies.

Wrestling is a very powerful skill, and a legendary kobold wrestler can easily disarm a cyclops, break every bone in his body, then strangle him to death.

[silhouette]

i throw swords.
Ninja goblins ftw...

[Vester]

Also, when training your weapon skill, keep in mind that attacking helpless enemies does not grant XP.  Unconscious, stunned, vomiting, etc., will prevent you from getting XP by stabbing them, but won't prevent wrestling XP, so an optimum training routine is often to attack an enemy until it passes out, then wrestle until it dies.

...

I've been doing it wrong this whole time.

Well, now I know.

[AfterShave]

My advice to all of you is

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Go tarzan style! WOOOO. Only loincloth, wrestling,rocks and sand

[silhouette]

and spears that you chuck.

[Vester]

You could also go Mowgli style. Loincloth, and a 17 inch knife. (okay, so, a +Large Iron Dagger+ will do).