Forums: Tips and Strategies

This post will likely be long. I tend to ramble. This also contains ability spoilers, obviously. Warning over.

So, thinking about it, I’m examining my characters and figuring out what I like and what I’m fairly luke-warm over. I’m fairly happy with how battles go for the most part, so it’s a matter of tweaking what I have. I’ll share what I definitely like about my team first:

Air + Airwind. Garrok’s my least damaging character, but the support abilities in Air + Airwind more than make up for it. Clarity and Focusing Atmosphere is priceless in a game without proper heals…they are, in essence, ‘heals’ for defense, which is very handy. I daresay it’s better at keeping someone up overall than a flesh coil could ever be. Tornado rules at tearing down defenses, and the area of effect is just gravy. The downside…well, Choke is horrible. The only ability capable of dealing health damage, and it often does single-digit damage for reasons I cannot fathom.

Grappling + Flesh. Fleshtheft, enough said. I get far better mileage out of that than I ever did with Herbal Remedy. Also, Rend Flesh is a decent ranged attack when I need it. The downside…I rarely get to use Flesh Pass. It seems either a character is at high health and then dead the next turn, or he’s hurt for reasons that make it very difficult for Geilir to steal health back from (such as fire shields.)

Gravity + Clubs. These two go together perfectly. Gravity Shield is perfect as a defense, and Grakor does sick damage with Berserking + Weighted Bludgeon. Gravity’s utility abilities are also great at separating enemies and making the encounter easier. Downside? Melee-only damage, which really sucks against fire coils.

Fire + Stone. Lava-spam, and the fire protections. Mass destruction in an easy to obtain package.

Plant + Frost. Lock-down with Entangling Roots + Freezing Growth, or emergency damage with Ice Shards. The Plant utility abilities come in handy too.

Short Blade + Mindwind. Deceitful Blade ignores defense and hits health directly, which as let my character off character’s surprisingly quickly before. Mindwind utility is so-so, but I’ve used Mindblank a couple times to help lock down someone. Melee-only damage.

Now, what I’m luke-warm about…

Staff + Brawling. I feel compelled to give SOMEONE staff, but no matter who I give a staff to I feel like it’s operating sub-par. I’ve seen Alrekr do as much damage with Slug as he does with Two-handed Swing, which is really the only reason to take this combination. Restricted to melee sucks.

Long Blade + Short Blade. Lots of options here. But they’re all melee. And the defensive abilities aren’t as great as they seem, because getting the computer to target this guy requires a minor miracle from heaven…and, when they do, it’s not likely to be from melee attacks. I’m thinking about switching the short blade for something…but when I gave Ulfarr a frost coil, I wasn’t that impressed with Frigid Blade, though having a ranged attack helps.

My main problem, when fighting the computer, is fire coils. And it seems like every encounter with the computer has them with a ton of fire coils. The fire protections stack, and I’ve seen up to 25 damage reflection on melee attackers on a single person, which ignores defense. This makes Clarity + Focusing Atmosphere useless as a counter, and Flesh Pass is similarly crippled because Geilir takes the retributive damage when trying to use Fleshtheft. This is brutal on a melee-heavy team like mine…only three characters can really do damage from a distance (ignoring Choke here), so I’m likely to get mauled pretty bad. I’ve made it habit to kill off fire-coil users first if altogether possible for this reason alone. Big reason I’m thinking of changing up some of my melee-heavy characters.

Think I’m done now. Suggestions? My set-up useful to someone?

Well, you don’t mind if I comment, do you? Oh, yeah, and warning, possible spoilers ahead

I don’t think I have to comment on Air/Airwind or Flesh/Grappling – or Fire/Stone, for that matter. Those two are classical choices, because they are very powerful. Of course, I prefer a character with Fleshtheft AND Herbal Heal, because Herbal Heal is twice as effective as Flesh Pass, which makes the sacrifice much more bearable.

Short Blade + Mindwind… yeah. An old favorite of mine. Short Blade + Airwind works the same way, though, and there are a few others. I personally prefer Mindwind + Plant + Staves nowadays, for Pretty Flowers (aoe AP/MP/Def denial) and Cranial Smash (melee straight damage attack that doubles as AP-denial)

Gravity + Clubs. Great combo. Gravity Field is VERY powerful, though somewhat rarely used. It’s a good choice. Combining Berzerk with Weighted Bludgeon is also a win – be aware though, that Berzerk has its downsides.

Plant + Frost. Rarely seen combination, but it does have its benefits. Great denial abilities. I like it.

About Staves and Long/Short Blades: Double-Blunt and Double-Blade Attack are the two strongest actions in the game, numbers-wise. Long Blades and Staves gives you Ranged Strike, a somewhat clumsy melee “ranged” attack (it can span one empty space, which SHOULD make it unaffected by firecoat and such), but the beauty in these things (Double-Blunt or Double-Blade) is that there are tons of items having one of their components plus X. As your main melee attack with such a combo is supposed to be the Double-attack anyways, it doesn’t matter if the staff/club/longblade/shortblade part is primary or secondary: A krati stone staff (Stone / Staves) will do nicely, as long as you can combine it with a club-type weapon. Of course, those won’t be the most efficient combinations, but they usually make up for it by being VERY versatile (as long as the items are good enough on average).
Favorite Example? An Airwind-Longblade (there are tons of those, Gustblade, Windy Blade, Windblade, Fine Gustblade) and a Frost-Shortblade (Drak Fine Dagger, Ice Shard, Frost Blade)… Double-Blade Attack (Strong Melee Straight Damage), Ice Storm (Mediocre, Ranged AoE Straight Damage), Wind-Tunnel Slash (Mediocre Melee Knockback Attack), Swiftblade (Def-Ignoring Melee HP-Damager) to name just some of the options.

Against Fire-users… try AP-Denial. Mindblank, Grasping Vines, Pretty Flowers (Mindwind / Plant, AoE). No AP means no fire protection. The fire protections stack because there is two of them. Fireward is rather expensive and aoe, so as long as the enemies aren’t close to each other, it’s not really viable. Plus: It has an incredibly low range. Knocking them back with utility (Blowback (Airwind/Gravity), Wind-Tunnel-Slash (Long Blades + Airwind) and the likes) and/or denying them movement (Heavy Boots works wonders) will have them largely unable to use these skills on each other.

Of course, with a melee-heavy team, there are other options still. Strengthen on yourself or Weaken on your target (both Flesh Primary) can improve your damage output in melee. (though these skills have to be reworked, they significantly lose effectiveness in the late game) Frigid Flesh (Flesh + Frost) can do so especially for Blunt Weapons… and it goes on, and on, and on. ;)

Is the ranged melee problem fixed then?
Last I checked, if an action had a skill from the melee tree, then it was melee and thus affected by fire coat and similar actions, even if it has a longer range (geostab was the one I used as an example when I first brought this problem up).
If it IS fixed, then there are quite a few long range melee actions that can be used with a primarily melee character to avoid fire defenses

Yes. Ranged Melee was fixed at some point… by adding a flag to the defensive skills to only affect stuff “at melee range” it SHOULD work. Apart from Geostab (Short Blades / Stone) and Ranged Strike (Long Blades /Staves) … I don’t know that many melee-mix actions, though…

hmm. I was sure that there were more of them, but I can’t think of any others.

Thanks for the comments so far. Given me a bit to think on.

I’m convinced that if/when more skills are added, the staff will be the first thing to go from my list, followed by Ulf’s short blade. If I get a combination that makes it possible to use Double Blade or Double Blunt, good, but I’m not going to go out of my way for it…not worth it.

AP-denials becoming a favorite trick of mine against fire-users. Not uncommon for me to be twiddling my thumbs for a few turns zapping a fire-coil’s AP while waiting for that stupid Fire Coat to go down. :p

Heh. I’m with you on that one, Grakor. I usually don’t attack when firecoat/ward is on an enemy. I usually use meta to kill em.

Since peeps have been putting their strategies on here, I guess I can too.

My characters consist of :

One Fire/Stone (Lava, of course, and stone to mud can be useful…sometimes, but rarely meteor strike. And sometimes firecoat/ward).

One Air/Airwind (Great Defense remover, and great buffer for defense and elements…no direct damage other than choke, but Tornado is amazing).

One Longblades+Airwind/Gravity (Great damage dealer with Weighted Longblade (usually around 30-60, depending on buffs and debuffs), plus this guy can use heavy boots to maintain a good control of the battle. Also he can Blow his enemies away with blowback, if needs be).

The last person, I’m always switching around…mainly because I’m not sure what to do with him. For the most part, I have him at Grappling+Stone/Flesh, which works well with everyone else. Another stone to mud in there, which is good. Plus the grappling and flesh works with healing when I need it (which is occasionally). But while I’m good on health for the most part, I’ll switch him to Brawling/Staves for a 20 AP two-handed strike, a Mindwind/Plant for a good AP debuffer (Maybe a plant staff and mindwind, for the AP debuffers, but also have Cranial Smash…but this requires more AP costs), or a Plant/Fire for another AoE (Brushfire)…maybe even Frost/Airwind for Icestorm (for all those fire-resistant guys in “deep within”).

This thread is very interesting for me, actually. The dev team is considering to rebalance all actions in a while (it’s a large project and it has just been drawn out as a basic scheme) because of adding features and then actions that use these features etc etc. And getting to know how stuff is perceived by you – the players – helps a LOT in finding out what can be considered “balanced”. One fundamental insight we already had was that Weapon Speed, for example, is much higher regarded than Weapon Damage, which will lead to speed being rated higher in the final weapon rating than damage (this will come at some point).

So… any bit of info about what’s worthwile and what’s not, what’s super-effective to a degree that not using it is shooting oneself in the foot, what’s ineffective to a degree that using it is the same… how strongly does the negative side of melee (having to bee at melee range) weigh in, etc. etc. any such info may help. ;)

Well, I think I may have found my fourth players weaponry…

I found that Long Blades+Stone/Mindwind works well in AP debuffing…and you still get to use a back-up sword slash attack. Not too shabby =D (And with Air Stun on my Air/Airwind guy, it works very well in AP debuffing)…It still kinda sucks because I want Pretty Flowers or Dust Storm or some kind of great AoE AP debuffer…but oh well. Maybe I can figure something out.

Nice to hear that this discussion is of use, Kranodor. Makes me glad I brought it up!

I actually think the balance in the game is quite good overall, all things considered. I have a few opinions on balance, but I’m also likely biased to my fairly melee-heavy team. For example, I’m fairly convinced Fire is a bit too powerful. Fire Coat + Fire Ward stacking is pretty powerful, but made worse by the fact that any Joe with a Fire primary can use both and stack them. Compare to, say, Focusing Atmosphere + Clarity stacking, which I would say is roughly as powerful, but requires an Air primary for one and an Air + Airwind combine for the other.

I’m also wondering if the sacrifice of being melee is really worth it. Yeah, when all things go well Double-Blade and Berserk+Weighted Bludgeon can do sick amounts of damage. However, melee is significantly punished due to the sheer number of skills used to negate or severely hamper it (Grab and Block, Double-Whatever Defense, Gravity Field, Fire Coat/Ward, Stone Coat, Bark Coat, Thorny Skin, so on so forth.) Metatherics has significantly fewer protections (Elemental Buffer, but that really only matters against Fire and Frost (does anyone SERIOUSLY try to kill anything with Choke?), Coldskin which only matters against Fire, and that one Mindwind skill are about all I can think of off-hand) and really doesn’t do that much less damage if you use the right actions. This is made worse by two things: Melee characters are not in any way appreciably tougher than metatherists unless you use your defense skills (and how often does the computer target your dual-blade guy first?) and the two most common enemies in the game so far are double-blade characters and fire-coil users…in other words, two types that can severely punish melee use.

Again, I’m probably biased though. And I’m still working my way up the missions, so my opinion might change later.

Just for the record…I don’t use double blades for any of my characters. I find that my “Melee” damage-dealing character is great with the Longblades+Airwind/Gravity for the Weighted Bludgeon. He can also use Beneficial Gravity which increases the damage dealt (I think), so I usually hit (even on the “toughest bunches of guys”) around 35-60 damage. Plus this guy has Gravity Field, and Heavy boots, and some others like blowback and stuff.

For example, I’m fairly convinced Fire is a bit too powerful. Fire Coat + Fire Ward stacking is pretty powerful, but made worse by the fact that any Joe with a Fire primary can use both and stack them.

That and with Stone or Plant in any way, he’ll be able to pull of Brushfire or Lava, two of the most devastating (and aoe) actions of the game. So, yes, I too think that fire is somewhat overpowered.

I’m also wondering if the sacrifice of being melee is really worth it.

Good to know. I’ll add that Stonecoat doesn’t work against anything but Blades, Thorny Skin only works against hand-to-hand, and that there are more actions decreasing enemy defenses as well, working in the same way as stonecoat, barkcoat or thorny skin (gravity field and fire coat/ward are serious drawbacks, though, as are the melee-defenses, which are melee themselves, however) just in opposite directions: Blowdown, Upward Slam, Expose Enemy, Frigid Flesh (Blunt Only)… but it’s good to know. I was thinking about gravity field or fireward-esque actions against metatherics already… oh, and there is hotskin, too (Flesh + Fire) against Frost (like Coldskin)… and Elemental Buffer… well… it DOES work against Tornado, Acrid Smoke etc. as well. Anything that USES air, not only air primaries.

Metatherics […] really doesn’t do that much less damage if you use the right actions.

True, and one of the biggest problems. Likely, to balance at least one factor out, a lot of metatherics actions will get minimum ranges, so you have back away from melee characters. Likely, melee will get additional options. I’ll have to see about that.

This is made worse by two things: Melee characters are not in any way appreciably tougher than metatherists unless you use your defense skills (and how often does the computer target your dual-blade guy first?)

Positioning is the key, but then again: Those melee-based defenses only affect melee attackers, so we’ll have to look at other possibilities.

and the two most common enemies in the game so far are double-blade characters and fire-coil users…in other words, two types that can severely punish melee use.

Hm. I’ll have to take a look at enemy types. I’m afraid that, while it may change somewhat, it won’t in the long run, as enemies have to be efficient as well. And fire-users are efficient.

That just… ah, a bit advocatus diaboli, but just wanted to share my thoughts and give some more points.

Ok, so my team is now an Air/Airwind guy, a Longblades+Airwind/Gravity guy, a Longblades+Stone/Mindwind guy, and a Fire+Plant guy…

Air/Airwind for the Defense debuffing and defense buffing. Plus I use airstun to a good extent now.

Longblades+Airwind/Gravity for the airwind-gravity push-backs, and weighted longblade kicks * (and with beneficial gravity, it even kicks more *). Plus, I can use the Gravity’s Heavy boots and gravity field.

Longblades+Stone/Mindwind for the regular slash attack for “ok” damage. But especially, for the mindblank, muddy mind (wooo!!), and shocking slash. These AP debuffers come waaay in handy (Along with Airstun).

And finally, Fire+Plant for…you guessed it, Brushfire. Also, for firecoat/ward, and occasionally for barkcoat as an extra defense buffer. But the most useful “extra” on this guy, is Grasping Vines (Another AP debuffer).

So that makes a total of 5 AP debuffers…Muddy Mind (Great, 2 turns), Grasping Vines (Pretty Good, also 2 turns), Shocking Slash (Great), Airstun (Great), and Mindblank (So-So).

At some points I can usually get 2 guys to do absolutely nothing, because of my AP debuffs, while I’m still doing some damage to them and all that. Sometimes I may even get 3 guys at one round to do nothing.

This set-up is a great one.

(I do, however, switch my fourth guy to Grappling+Stone/Flesh if I get injured a little in a battle…just to heal up. But it doesn’t happen often).

I forgot to mention that my Longblades+Stone/Mindwind guy has Defiance, which is a great self-defense buffer. He also has Mental Acuity for strengthening metatherics of a player (and feedback, the metatherics debuffer).

I’ve found that I use a lot of the same actions as already mentioned in this thread. Particularly, these are my favorites:

Air+Airwind: Air stun is wonderful for wearing down a single fire caller or otherwise annoying enemy. And, of course, tornado just decimates defenses.

Staff+Club and Long Blade+Short Blade: I am a huge fan of using double bludgeons or double blades. If you find the necessary two weapons each with a good speed in the melee skill, you are able to get great melee damage for a relatively low amount of AP. For instance, one of my characters has double-blade attack for only 30 AP!

Gravity+Long Blade: Weighted longblade is another relatively low AP, high damage attack.

Grappling+Flesh: Great healing abilities in fleshtheft, particularly when you can precede it with a tornado. If you can get a plant weapon in on this as well, the combination of fleshtheft and herbal heal provides a solid way of healing the entire party.

It should be said that I run a nearly exclusively melee team. As previously mentioned, there are a lot of skills out there set up specifically to inhibit melee attacks. That said, I’ve found that adding in tornado and earthquake for their long-distance defense attacking properties and air stun for its long-distance AP debuffing can really help in finishing off annoying opponents. And, hey, if you have a person with a flesh weapon, there’s always flesh rend.

good to read that the ranged melee problem seems fixed (tremir’s post), one ranged melee I know is the boomerang throw which I just liked because of it’s name, but if the problem is fixed it becomes useful!

To my strategy, I don’t have any specialized (melee/metatherics) anymore. With that I don’t have the absolute powerful attacks but with buffs and debuffs I still can get high damages and I’m much more flexible against any enemy. So it’s not that important which team I have in the field and I can use all of my eight characters.

I just changed to that strategy in the past ours, so one of my characters (the countess) is still a bit weak in melee and forces but will catch up soon enough ;-)

good to read that the ranged melee problem seems fixed (tremir’s post), one ranged melee I know is the boomerang throw which I just liked because of it’s name, but if the problem is fixed it becomes useful!

Yeah, to be more specific, most counter attacks have a setting that makes them “melee range only”. So if you use boomerang from one space away from a fire-coated enemy, you won’t get burned – but if you are standing right next to them, even using boomerang you are still close enough to get burned. It’s not 100% fair, I know, but it was the easiest way to fix the problem – and at least now you can do a few melee attacks from one tile away and not get burned. Also, it leaves us the option of turning “melee range only” off on a counter attack, in case we come up with some crazy action that needs to be able to counter from a distance.

I’m finding this thread very useful – thanks to all who contributed with their strategies and their insights into where the imbalances are. As Kran mentioned, we are going to do some rebalancing at some point, so this is great information.

To those who feel like giving up on melee characters – I know it seems like it’s a little lopsided, but we’ll keep working at it, so don’t give up hope :) I think you’ll find in the future, there will be more and more variety to NPCs, and sometimes they will be extremely resistant or susceptible to meta or melee attacks. There may be times when you’ll run into a couple very meta-resistant NPCs and you’ll be glad to have melee specialists around :)

wait, so if I attack with a pure meta attack from melee range I can get burned?

Short answer: No.
Firecoat and Fireward trigger on actions that correspond to the “Melee” Skill tree exclusively. That has not changed. Only “in addition” a flag was added that restricts those counter-attacks to you being in melee range, so it does affect a melee-skill attack with more-than-melee range, if it is done in melee-range, but not if it is done in more-than-melee range. Non-melee-skill actions are still unaffected, regardless of range… which gives me an idea for some neat actions, though…

hmm. nice.
maybe we can have an air/grappling “Arrow catch” action which triggers on ranged melee actions to reduce damage and counterattack