Which race should I choose?

[blakdeth]

I am having trouble deciding which race to choose. Do racial bonuses make significant difference in the mid to late game? For instance, I am considering a Might/Sorcery build, but I like the look of the Dokkalfar. Unfortunately, the Dokkalfar's racial bonuses don't seem to compliment a Might/Sorcery build. Thoughts?

[Ryan Paul Fialcowitz]

Originally posted by blakdeth:

I am having trouble deciding which race to choose. Do racial bonuses make significant difference in the mid to late game? For instance, I am considering a Might/Sorcery build, but I like the look of the Dokkalfar. Unfortunately, the Dokkalfar's racial bonuses don't seem to compliment a Might/Sorcery build. Thoughts?

Given that you can respecialize your character from very nearly the begining of the game the initial race choice doesn't matter too much from a gameplay perspective. Couple that with the fact that there are trainers, skill books & destinies which boost skills and the choice becomes even less important.

Your race is referenced at least once in dialog right after you pick it, so there's that. . .

- Ryan Paul Fialcowitz

[blakdeth]

Thanks for the tip. I appreciate it.

[Starke]

The diference is very minor. The only time it actually matters at all is when you've got skill books and the beginner trainers.

Okay, I'll explain, but it really doesn't matter much. Each skill has four trainers in the game (2 beginners, 1 advanced, and 1 master), and one skill book (which are named "Skill Book (skill name)"),

Beginner trainers will only train you to 3. Skill books will apply a +1 to a skill regardless of it's current level.

Those bonuses persist through respecing. So, if you're a Dokkalfar, and you find and read the stealth book, before you find one of the beginner stealth traners, you'll never be able to get begining training in Stealth. This kinda doesn't matter, but it is (effectivly) a free skill point lost.

The same thing applies to skills you get a +1 bonus to (Persuasion and Sagecraft for a Dokkalfar), if you don't find both beginner trainers before using the skill book (or using a higher tier trainer), you're going to miss out on a free skill point.

Does it really matter? Not really. You get a skill point every time you level up anyway, and those can be rearanged when you respec. If you have the gold, and are very persistant, you can (eventually) have a base score of five in every skill and six in the three you start with, but you won't suffer if you find a trainer you can't use. Some of the skills (like lockpicking and Merchantile) are nice to have, but ultimately unecessary.

Here's the other thing, aside from Stealth (and maybe Detect Hidden), none of the skills are really playstyle choices, they just open up alternate options at various points or introduce really neat abilities.

Also, when you're using basic trainers? Splurge. Hit a fateweaver to respec, then hit as many of them as you can before you go in and respend your points. This'll let you actually level up skills you need (like Detect Hidden, Blacksmithing, and Sagecraft. Without worrying about finding the trainers before you put points into those skills. (Just be careful of the skill books if you're trying to minmax as hard as you can.)

[blakdeth]

That's some great advice. Much appreciated.

[Starke]

Here's some unsolicited advice on the skills...

There's basically two groups of skills, crafting and, let's call them "access skills". Crafting lets you make items, and access lets you, well, gain access to things you'd normally be locked out of.

There's three crafting skills: Blacksmithing, Alchemy, and Sagecraft. At low levels, none of these really synergize, Blacksmithing produces weapons and armor, but they'll never contain gem sockets, Sagecraft produces gems, and Alchemy produces potions. As you go up, though, Sagecraft and Blacksmithing start conspiring to break the game hilariously.

Blacksmithing is bonkers. Common wisdom holds it as, flat out, the single best skill in the game. With Blacksmithing you can break down items you find in the world, initially just whites, but as you climb up the tree, you'll gain the ability to break down greens and blues. Initially you'll only be able to craft greens, but, as you level up, you'll have the ability to produce blues based on the items you include. Here's the thing, even without spending points in Blacksmithing at all, you can easily produce items that are better than the gear you're seeing in game. At 7, you gain the ability to craft an item with a baked in gem. (On its own, that's not too impressive, but wait until you see Sagecraft 8 and then cackle manically.) At 10 you can craft "mastercraft" items. Honestly, the mastercraft buffs are kind of underwhelming. They're worth having, but it’s a small preset bonus to your items based on the base material you used to make it. The reason I say it's underwhelming is, once you've hit 7 points in Blacksmithing, you can easily produce equipment that's better than the best gear in the game.

Sagecraft initially does not play nice with Blacksmithing at all. You can produce gems, which are somewhat rare in the game, but crafted items will never carry sockets. If you're eschewing blacksmithing for whatever reason, then this is a good skill to pick up. As you go up in levels, you gain access to more powerful gems and finally access to epic gems at 8. Epic gems are very rare in normal gameplay, on a 50 hour save game, I only saw a couple of them, and I have never seen a socket for one. These range from boosting all of your abilities in a specific tree by a point, to giving you a flat stun chance, or an elemental aura that damages anyone that ventures too close. If you have blacksmithing 7, though, any chest piece you make can include an epic gem. If you have Sagecraft 8, epic gems are remarkably easy to produce. You can't produce lots of them, but they are fantastic to have.

Alchemy effectivly caps off at 6. Once you've gotten there, you can produce top tier potions. Running it all the way up to 10 yields instant knowledge of every recipe in the game, but if you're using a guide, that's not much of a buff. The other perk is that each point makes getting potion components (reagents) easier. I'll be honest, I've never found Alchemy to be that useful, but it is nice to have.

Moving on to the Access skills, there's Detect Hidden, Lockpicking, Dispelling, Stealth, Persuasion, and Mercantile.

If you’re used to lockpicking in Skyrim then you can probably flat out ignore Lockpicking here. It’s already a lot more forgiving than Bethesda’s take on this same minigame.

Dispelling is actually fairly similar. If you don’t have any difficulty with the minigame, you won’t want to spend points on this. Maybe I’m getting old, but this one gives me fits. Boosting it to 4 will remove the dark sigil bombs, and makes my life a lot easier. Though, again, how far you want to push this is purely dependant on how hard this minigame is for you.

Detect Hidden might actually be the best skill in the game after Blacksmithing. At 2 you gain access to new drops all over the map. At 5 you gain access to hidden doors; while they aren’t common, they do tend to allow you access to additional gear or, in some cases, lorestones. At 10 nearly every item drop is flagged on the map. This can make fully clearing a map, or finishing off collectables much easier. It makes finding sets a lot easier too. I don’t think it influences your item drop rate, but, it does give you a chance for an extra boost of gold when looting enemies. This one can actually take the place of Blacksmithing... somewhat, because it will allow you to access a much larger number of items as you progress.

I’m just going to trash Mercantile. I know it has a purpose, but it’s very niche. You get more gold from selling things, and pay less to buy things. As you go up, you gain the ability to get gold for destroying items in your inventory. You could always have sold them for more, to a real vendor, though. At 10 it gives you the ability to sell stolen goods, which could be useful, but that’s a long way to climb for something you could just as easily do by fast traveling.

Stealth lets you sneak around. If you’re wanting to do a thief type character, or an assassin, then it’s useful. Otherwise, I’d just ignore this.

Persuasion opens up new dialog options. Strictly speaking, all of the skills do, but persuasion does it frequently, while the others are all fairly rare. It can be useful if you want to talk your way out of things, or get people to give you stuff. There are a bunch of “get that artifact and bring it to me” quests where you can use persuade to keep the item after the quest is finished. Usually this one’s labeled as a “must buy”, but really, if you’re wanting more information, then it is useful, but you won’t cripple yourself if you don’t want to take it because it doesn’t fit with your concept of the character.

[blakdeth]

Originally posted by Starke:

Here's some unsolicited advice on the skills...

I really appreciate this advice. This is so good, you should consider writing a guide.

[none4johnny]

Originally posted by Starke:

Here's some unsolicited advice on the skills...

There's basically two groups of skills, crafting and, let's call them "access skills". Crafting lets you make items, and access lets you, well, gain access to things you'd normally be locked out of.

There's three crafting skills: Blacksmithing, Alchemy, and Sagecraft. At low levels, none of these really synergize, Blacksmithing produces weapons and armor, but they'll never contain gem sockets, Sagecraft produces gems, and Alchemy produces potions. As you go up, though, Sagecraft and Blacksmithing start conspiring to break the game hilariously.

Blacksmithing is bonkers. Common wisdom holds it as, flat out, the single best skill in the game. With Blacksmithing you can break down items you find in the world, initially just whites, but as you climb up the tree, you'll gain the ability to break down greens and blues. Initially you'll only be able to craft greens, but, as you level up, you'll have the ability to produce blues based on the items you include. Here's the thing, even without spending points in Blacksmithing at all, you can easily produce items that are better than the gear you're seeing in game. At 7, you gain the ability to craft an item with a baked in gem. (On its own, that's not too impressive, but wait until you see Sagecraft 8 and then cackle manically.) At 10 you can craft "mastercraft" items. Honestly, the mastercraft buffs are kind of underwhelming. They're worth having, but it’s a small preset bonus to your items based on the base material you used to make it. The reason I say it's underwhelming is, once you've hit 7 points in Blacksmithing, you can easily produce equipment that's better than the best gear in the game.

Sagecraft initially does not play nice with Blacksmithing at all. You can produce gems, which are somewhat rare in the game, but crafted items will never carry sockets. If you're eschewing blacksmithing for whatever reason, then this is a good skill to pick up. As you go up in levels, you gain access to more powerful gems and finally access to epic gems at 8. Epic gems are very rare in normal gameplay, on a 50 hour save game, I only saw a couple of them, and I have never seen a socket for one. These range from boosting all of your abilities in a specific tree by a point, to giving you a flat stun chance, or an elemental aura that damages anyone that ventures too close. If you have blacksmithing 7, though, any chest piece you make can include an epic gem. If you have Sagecraft 8, epic gems are remarkably easy to produce. You can't produce lots of them, but they are fantastic to have.

Alchemy effectivly caps off at 6. Once you've gotten there, you can produce top tier potions. Running it all the way up to 10 yields instant knowledge of every recipe in the game, but if you're using a guide, that's not much of a buff. The other perk is that each point makes getting potion components (reagents) easier. I'll be honest, I've never found Alchemy to be that useful, but it is nice to have.

Moving on to the Access skills, there's Detect Hidden, Lockpicking, Dispelling, Stealth, Persuasion, and Mercantile.

If you’re used to lockpicking in Skyrim then you can probably flat out ignore Lockpicking here. It’s already a lot more forgiving than Bethesda’s take on this same minigame.

Dispelling is actually fairly similar. If you don’t have any difficulty with the minigame, you won’t want to spend points on this. Maybe I’m getting old, but this one gives me fits. Boosting it to 4 will remove the dark sigil bombs, and makes my life a lot easier. Though, again, how far you want to push this is purely dependant on how hard this minigame is for you.

Detect Hidden might actually be the best skill in the game after Blacksmithing. At 2 you gain access to new drops all over the map. At 5 you gain access to hidden doors; while they aren’t common, they do tend to allow you access to additional gear or, in some cases, lorestones. At 10 nearly every item drop is flagged on the map. This can make fully clearing a map, or finishing off collectables much easier. It makes finding sets a lot easier too. I don’t think it influences your item drop rate, but, it does give you a chance for an extra boost of gold when looting enemies. This one can actually take the place of Blacksmithing... somewhat, because it will allow you to access a much larger number of items as you progress.

I’m just going to trash Mercantile. I know it has a purpose, but it’s very niche. You get more gold from selling things, and pay less to buy things. As you go up, you gain the ability to get gold for destroying items in your inventory. You could always have sold them for more, to a real vendor, though. At 10 it gives you the ability to sell stolen goods, which could be useful, but that’s a long way to climb for something you could just as easily do by fast traveling.

Stealth lets you sneak around. If you’re wanting to do a thief type character, or an assassin, then it’s useful. Otherwise, I’d just ignore this.

Persuasion opens up new dialog options. Strictly speaking, all of the skills do, but persuasion does it frequently, while the others are all fairly rare. It can be useful if you want to talk your way out of things, or get people to give you stuff. There are a bunch of “get that artifact and bring it to me” quests where you can use persuade to keep the item after the quest is finished. Usually this one’s labeled as a “must buy”, but really, if you’re wanting more information, then it is useful, but you won’t cripple yourself if you don’t want to take it because it doesn’t fit with your concept of the character.

I know this article is 4 years old, but I just picked this up in the Summer Sale and wanted to say thanks for the great rundown. It helped a lot.

[Suicidal Sheep]

Also from me a big thank you. Really helpful

[GameWarrior2216]

I'm starting a new game too and I'm just curious which race makes more sense lore wise?

I was thinking either light elves or the religious humans for a typical paragon character. Those who played the game all the way, what would be your opinion?

[Starke]

Originally posted by GameWarrior2216:

I'm starting a new game too and I'm just curious which race makes more sense lore wise?

I was thinking either light elves or the religious humans for a typical paragon character. Those who played the game all the way, what would be your opinion?

It's legitimately a wash. Any of the options are equally reasonable. I kinda suspected, based on some stuff Alyn Shir says, that the player character was originally a Dokkalfar. But, it's been a few years since I played Amalur, and I don't remember what I was basing that on, or how solid it was. Either way, any of the available races are legitimate choices, and there isn't a racial pick that doesn't fit with the story the way you might see in Dragon Age or The Elder Scrolls.

[CiaphasCain]

Originally posted by Starke:

Here's some unsolicited advice on the skills...

There's basically two groups of skills, crafting and, let's call them "access skills". Crafting lets you make items, and access lets you, well, gain access to things you'd normally be locked out of.

There's three crafting skills: Blacksmithing, Alchemy, and Sagecraft. At low levels, none of these really synergize, Blacksmithing produces weapons and armor, but they'll never contain gem sockets, Sagecraft produces gems, and Alchemy produces potions. As you go up, though, Sagecraft and Blacksmithing start conspiring to break the game hilariously.

Blacksmithing is bonkers. Common wisdom holds it as, flat out, the single best skill in the game. With Blacksmithing you can break down items you find in the world, initially just whites, but as you climb up the tree, you'll gain the ability to break down greens and blues. Initially you'll only be able to craft greens, but, as you level up, you'll have the ability to produce blues based on the items you include. Here's the thing, even without spending points in Blacksmithing at all, you can easily produce items that are better than the gear you're seeing in game. At 7, you gain the ability to craft an item with a baked in gem. (On its own, that's not too impressive, but wait until you see Sagecraft 8 and then cackle manically.) At 10 you can craft "mastercraft" items. Honestly, the mastercraft buffs are kind of underwhelming. They're worth having, but it’s a small preset bonus to your items based on the base material you used to make it. The reason I say it's underwhelming is, once you've hit 7 points in Blacksmithing, you can easily produce equipment that's better than the best gear in the game.

Sagecraft initially does not play nice with Blacksmithing at all. You can produce gems, which are somewhat rare in the game, but crafted items will never carry sockets. If you're eschewing blacksmithing for whatever reason, then this is a good skill to pick up. As you go up in levels, you gain access to more powerful gems and finally access to epic gems at 8. Epic gems are very rare in normal gameplay, on a 50 hour save game, I only saw a couple of them, and I have never seen a socket for one. These range from boosting all of your abilities in a specific tree by a point, to giving you a flat stun chance, or an elemental aura that damages anyone that ventures too close. If you have blacksmithing 7, though, any chest piece you make can include an epic gem. If you have Sagecraft 8, epic gems are remarkably easy to produce. You can't produce lots of them, but they are fantastic to have.

Alchemy effectivly caps off at 6. Once you've gotten there, you can produce top tier potions. Running it all the way up to 10 yields instant knowledge of every recipe in the game, but if you're using a guide, that's not much of a buff. The other perk is that each point makes getting potion components (reagents) easier. I'll be honest, I've never found Alchemy to be that useful, but it is nice to have.

Moving on to the Access skills, there's Detect Hidden, Lockpicking, Dispelling, Stealth, Persuasion, and Mercantile.

If you’re used to lockpicking in Skyrim then you can probably flat out ignore Lockpicking here. It’s already a lot more forgiving than Bethesda’s take on this same minigame.

Dispelling is actually fairly similar. If you don’t have any difficulty with the minigame, you won’t want to spend points on this. Maybe I’m getting old, but this one gives me fits. Boosting it to 4 will remove the dark sigil bombs, and makes my life a lot easier. Though, again, how far you want to push this is purely dependant on how hard this minigame is for you.

Detect Hidden might actually be the best skill in the game after Blacksmithing. At 2 you gain access to new drops all over the map. At 5 you gain access to hidden doors; while they aren’t common, they do tend to allow you access to additional gear or, in some cases, lorestones. At 10 nearly every item drop is flagged on the map. This can make fully clearing a map, or finishing off collectables much easier. It makes finding sets a lot easier too. I don’t think it influences your item drop rate, but, it does give you a chance for an extra boost of gold when looting enemies. This one can actually take the place of Blacksmithing... somewhat, because it will allow you to access a much larger number of items as you progress.

I’m just going to trash Mercantile. I know it has a purpose, but it’s very niche. You get more gold from selling things, and pay less to buy things. As you go up, you gain the ability to get gold for destroying items in your inventory. You could always have sold them for more, to a real vendor, though. At 10 it gives you the ability to sell stolen goods, which could be useful, but that’s a long way to climb for something you could just as easily do by fast traveling.

Stealth lets you sneak around. If you’re wanting to do a thief type character, or an assassin, then it’s useful. Otherwise, I’d just ignore this.

Persuasion opens up new dialog options. Strictly speaking, all of the skills do, but persuasion does it frequently, while the others are all fairly rare. It can be useful if you want to talk your way out of things, or get people to give you stuff. There are a bunch of “get that artifact and bring it to me” quests where you can use persuade to keep the item after the quest is finished. Usually this one’s labeled as a “must buy”, but really, if you’re wanting more information, then it is useful, but you won’t cripple yourself if you don’t want to take it because it doesn’t fit with your concept of the character.

7 years later and this advice still kicks ass! thanks!

[cr14mson]

Originally posted by Starke:

Here's some unsolicited advice on the skills...

Thank you. Revisiting this game for the Switch version. You rock!

[CRZY0504]

Originally posted by Starke:

The diference is very minor. The only time it actually matters at all is when you've got skill books and the beginner trainers.

Okay, I'll explain, but it really doesn't matter much. Each skill has four trainers in the game (2 beginners, 1 advanced, and 1 master), and one skill book (which are named "Skill Book (skill name)"),

Beginner trainers will only train you to 3. Skill books will apply a +1 to a skill regardless of it's current level.

Those bonuses persist through respecing. So, if you're a Dokkalfar, and you find and read the stealth book, before you find one of the beginner stealth traners, you'll never be able to get begining training in Stealth. This kinda doesn't matter, but it is (effectivly) a free skill point lost.

The same thing applies to skills you get a +1 bonus to (Persuasion and Sagecraft for a Dokkalfar), if you don't find both beginner trainers before using the skill book (or using a higher tier trainer), you're going to miss out on a free skill point.

Does it really matter? Not really. You get a skill point every time you level up anyway, and those can be rearanged when you respec. If you have the gold, and are very persistant, you can (eventually) have a base score of five in every skill and six in the three you start with, but you won't suffer if you find a trainer you can't use. Some of the skills (like lockpicking and Merchantile) are nice to have, but ultimately unecessary.

Here's the other thing, aside from Stealth (and maybe Detect Hidden), none of the skills are really playstyle choices, they just open up alternate options at various points or introduce really neat abilities.

Also, when you're using basic trainers? Splurge. Hit a fateweaver to respec, then hit as many of them as you can before you go in and respend your points. This'll let you actually level up skills you need (like Detect Hidden, Blacksmithing, and Sagecraft. Without worrying about finding the trainers before you put points into those skills. (Just be careful of the skill books if you're trying to minmax as hard as you can.)

Much appreciated for the tip/info.