Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Niveras]

I want to like Paradox Mage but I expect it requires making good use of Precognition, which is pretty irritating to use because every time the timeline resets I have to wait 10-20 seconds. Anyone have any tips on making that loading better/faster?

Maybe I'll try moving it to my SSD but I would think all the save data is either in RAM or in my users folder, which would already be on the SSD.

[Graven]

First off, congrats on the win Rob! You're doing pretty well for yourself

Second of all no, everyone trying to even slightly defend the Breeding pits is objectively wrong and I will dance a little dance of happiness knowing its gone. It was disgusting, served no practical reason other than to prove the orcs were twisted [and you can do that without being that disgusting] and I've deliberately stayed out in nearly all my games. I've also posted a ton about how disgusting they are so I'll stop now, but thank god they're gone

If they put a sort of training camp it'll be a net gain of a level for me, and I like that. As DeKaFu said, it's a plain repulsive piece in an otherwise pretty decently written dark-ish fantasy world [the halflings, the Mouth, the various horrors and demons' description are all rather nice].

Other than that, I'm about to face some retarded changes at work, so what better than to start a god damn Shadowblade!

I plan on going a bit heavier on the defensive side - appears all the winners skipped the talents focusing on getting Defense, but I'll probably need them to survive the early game. I also noticed this guy who won without a single death, and who used a Staff in the mainhand and also got the achievement for doing over 6k damage in one hit, but that's a bit too esoteric for my tastes.

Anyone want to offer some advice on shadowblades? I'm planning on getting the Temporal tree [it was godly on my archmage], Dual weapon defense and training, max Rush and Blinding speed, hit up stealth and Backstab, and for prodigies I'm not really sure - Arcane Might and Windtouched speed? Giant Leap and Windblade? Eh. Any vital skill I need to get that I've missed?

[Niveras]

Also, vaults on level 1 of the ID can DIAF. In fact, all vaults before level 10 of the ID can DIAF.

Yes, I can skip them. And forever lose whatever artifacts that might have generated in them, which may have been something supremely useful, the various alchemist rewards (or other quest-only items from the campaign).

[Robsoie]

On her last life , (last life at least according to what i found on the board) as i managed to kill her 5 times with my character, but only thanks to having prepared the equipment specifically to survive her fire+physical overpowered meteors and to penetrate her high resistances, but each time she revives she gets more health and more damage.

That's not all, add to her last life having as much health as 2 Elandar, add the fact she has phase door -without- any cooldown and will teleport far regularly so you can't reach and damage her enough quickly (and that from a character with flurry that hit between 3000 and 4000 damage ! ) before her Draconic Body cooldown is finished (so she heal again for the same amount of health as shown)
Basically on her last life i think you need a character able to hit at more than 5000 damage to be able to kill her before Draconic Body cooldown reach 0 and coupled with her regen just heal her full.

And of course she resists -all- the high level dazing and stunning effect my character produce, probably 100% immunity i didn't even checked.

Linaniil, the most stupidly overpowered character of the whole game, i really wonder if the dev even tried to play that battle with a regular character (i'm so angry at a character that does not even exist i even smile when reading what i write) .

I'm not sure what kind of character can hit for 5000 in a turn (not in theory, but in real gameplay), that marauder is the most damaging character i ever played in those 2 years of playing that game and never managed to reach 5000.

[Frumple]

Fairly sure late game ABs can still break 10k with a lucky flurry, for what that's worth. An adventurer set up to exploit the same strategy (Arcane combat dual-wield flurry, for huge damage and ALL THE PROCS) but moreso (add TK wielding, and probably that acid flurry for a second round of it and, gods, I think the corrupted strength loop has been cut off, but it might still get an extra hit or two in and it'd be more damage anyway so.) could likely match or surpass it.

E: You know what's great? Meleeing everything to death in the initial level of the temporal rift and taking a grand total of two damage doing it. Temporal blocking kinetic shield + antimagic shield = HAHAHAHAHAHA BITE ME TIME!ES HAHAHAHAHA

E2: Holy hell, when did the sandworm tunnelers get huge? I wasn't expecting a 3x3 (well, looking. Still seems to only occupy one tile) w when I went into the lair...

E3: What the f... why does the ruined dungeon notes now start off as the Dragon Slave chant?

[Graven]

Frumple - alternate versions

Also my poor Shadowblade managed to already die once pre-Tier 3 dungeons, but it's kind of my fault since I stood in the same screen as a summoner rare. Shadowblades do not take damage lightly, let me tell you that. By Jove I'm squishy.

[Darkmere]

Yeah those huge sandworms freak me out, but I've only gotten Alt!lair twice. I still prefer it to alt Daikara, though. Ugh.

[Robsoie]

I'll have to try an Arcane Blade or a custom Adventurer if they can go that high in damage.
Though surviving up to the endgame will be something else

[Frumple]

Yeah... it's a pretty simple concept, really. Hit them six times in one turn, cast Earthen Missiles (because both them and your melee attacks are physical, so you're getting the respen and damage boost from crystalline-whatever) six times in one turn. The latter alone will net, what 3-4k damage in the end game, easy? Nevermind what the actual flurry does. Add on beyond the flesh and you've got another hit+cast, you might still be able to get another one out of corrupted strength, and then _{what is that thing} dissolve? You do it again the next turn with the physical attacks converted to acid damage. Or ideally you're running on some kind of global booster and do it in the same turn. If you're really frisky, you might even have a cooldown resetting talent (I think TW gets a stamina talent based one of those?) and then chain another flurry into that mess. If you're talking raw damage it's pretty much the most you can squeeze into a non-addon character.

[Graven]

Well I'm currently trying a dual wielding Arcane Blade, going for Earthen Missiles as per a guide on the tome4 forums.

I'm at level 17 or so currently, and I must admit so far I like it a lot less than shield/Assault AB. I suppose the damage will be higher lategame, since shield AB depends more on Arcane Destruction, and that's weaker than Arcane Combat, but for early and mid-game, Assault/AD is a lot more damaging. I was doing close to 1k assaults on my previous AB, and I barely breach 500 total from Flurries with this current build. Not to mention I'm a lot tighter on Category points and I really would like to add a shielding rune without taking away anything.

Also the stat distribution is a bit harsher, and I'm not really comfortable with spreading points through so many things [Cun, Mag, Dex, some Str].

Supposedly it's pretty amazing lategame, but the only recent AB that won on Nightmare had gone for shield/assault with the two defensive shield prodigies for what it's worth.

Hopefully I at least survive long enough to show Rob how Real Manly Men [tm] flurry 

[Frumple]

Yeah, it only really takes off in terms of damage once you can fairly consistently get a full AC proc flurry, which takes a good chunk of cunning. And get the rest of it in place... full up crystal-whatever, higher spellpower, maybe some +physdam, etc. Before then... well, you'll still delete most things you run into pretty regularly, but it's not in the one/two-shot-the-end-fight-boss (Though I do think it's been somewhat nerfed since that happened >_>) range yet.

E: Hrrg. Reach wayist. Open door. TK Leap in between Z and wayist. Same turn, Z shadowsteps over me, getting critical on both attacks and instakilling the wayist. One turn, one action, dead wayist. It... it's always annoying when that happens. Z dies two turns later, of course. grumblegrumble
E2: Oh man, that good ol' Dark-Crypt-One-Step-From-Dungeon! It's been a while. I think I missed it.

[Robsoie]

I've been following the same guide as Graven from what i read, and i must say it's harder to get going than a Marauder, it looks like i need more stats points everywhere to get good skills too.

But as i reached level 20 and could unlock the tree with Flurry (i'm dual wielding to benefit from it more, but in the same time dual wielding halve the chance of the "cast spell by hit" skill so you need more luck), the damage output increased a very lot.

I'm not impressed at all by the Earthen Missile that i maxed from the Stone tree i unlocked first following the guide (i should have listened to myself and take the tree with Flurry first, it was a hell to survive without it and kill things quick enough to avoid high retaliations, lost 3 lives already ), even maxed the 3 shots it gives you does not really do big damage, but now that i have Flurry i'll see if it goes better.

Not on a Marauder level of power (especially as he hits a lot more times during a flurry) at that point of the game, i'll see how it goes later

And speaking of that damned wayist, i managed to save his sorry bottom by annihilating quickly Subject Z but due to me being a halfling, that yeek just hated me on sight and tried to kill me.

[Frumple]

Yeah, the big thing with earthen missiles is the synergy between it (and the stone tree forth tier, of course) and your normal melee attacks. Since you're primarily outputting physical damage, you can focus in on that more than a more damage-type diverse build would allow, letting you pump it higher and get better penetration. It also really does hit fairly hard, it's just that it's about on par with flame et al, instead of what you might expect from a 10th level tree. The real fun begins when you're putting out 6x3=18 shots in a single turn, though. Then it gets frisky.

Incidentally, incredibly annoying encounter? Eternal Bone Giant Shadowblade rare. It can't hurt me, like, at all. But trying to kill something that's invisible 75% of the time, has 50 something defense, evasion, a 755 hp shield, a 580 something hp heal, multiple lives, and 50% resall on top of that is, just.

It's taking a while.

Managed to cut down one life, so far. Might not have been able to manage that if it weren't for the fact the bugger's wearing some anti-magic kit and occasionally getting its invis turned off

[Graven]

From what I read it also works great with "on hit [spell]" talents, as all the separate bleeds can trigger the effect, so with maxed Earthen Missiles you'd get 6 chances to proc the ...proc... on hit, as the first bleed is applied immediately from what I could tell reading the combat log. Still, the stat distribution is driving me nuts. Man, when it comes to complex hybrid characters I wish I was playing Crawl so damn much.

What am I generally supposed to dual wield? The guide states Top half of the staff of Telos, but that could take quite a while. I'm currently using two daggers, but I'm not sure that's what I should be going for.

Also I went Cornac, to unlock flurry ASAP and to not die of boredom while I reach the level when I'm finally powerful. Seems all my characters have been Cornac lately, just can't be arsed with exp penalties. ORDINARY HUMAN FO LYFE

[Robsoie]

2 daggers seems to work fine for me (found several artifacts dagger and only crap 1 handers so far anyways), i cleared all the dungeons i could before Dreadfell, cleared the 8 first levels of Dreadfell and reached level 24 without much problems now that my character gets his Flurry going (damn that randomness insisting in doing the flame or lightning effect instead of the earthen missile, could be so much more damaging)

Now i'm wondering if i get out of Dreadfell and take the risk of the Dark Crypt to get another level, or waste a life or if i should get to the Master now, level 24 sounds a bit weak for there, and out of dark crypt, my halfling has no more optional dungeons to gather more xp , out of Elven ruins that is out of my level for now and Graveyard that is like Elven ruins, something i always keep for when i come back from East.

Oh there are Farportals, maybe i'll do that for a bit.

edit : since the Urkis dungeon, i got regularly error messages popping up if i simply hit, rush or flurry some enemies, the same as i got in 1.1.4 when i was playing marauders, all reported online, hopefully next version will have those annoyances fixed.