Impossible to play a melee fighter !!

[Mitrius]

2 hits and no more stamina...
Dying all the time.
Game is 90% loading save, 10% dying.

I don't want to be an Archer-Mage-Infiltrator-optional melee.
I want to be a real fighter.

[Elldar]

Before anything, sorry for no TL;DR, there's just too much stuff to cover and I'm not really good at condensing information like that.

Being a guns blazing warrior is viable, and imo, the easiest way to play the further you get into the game, as long as you build for it. I don't know what your build is, so I'll just outline the things I do to turn my character into a melee powerhouse who destroys everything in his way.

1. Endurance - this is not optional, as a warrior you need a lot of endurance, more than any other playstyle. You can get away with putting the first few level up points into strength if you're good at avoiding damage, but generally you want to get it to at least 10 before you start venturing into the deeper parts of the map. The easiest way to do it is to invest into both Strength and Endurance equally until about level 20, after which you should be in a comfortable enough position to focus more on a specific stat of your choice.

If you opt for wearing light armor(which will become relevant in a moment), having about 15 or so should let you survive most one-shots and guarantee you can bounce back from enemies landing hits on you.

2. Winged Servant and Arcane Aegis - these two spells are amazing. Winged Servant distracts any enemy it hits for about 8 seconds, effectively taking them out of the fight for the duration. Arcane Aegis will cover you in a magic shield that will stop any one attack, regardless of how much damage it deals. They are dirt cheap to cast, too - so long as you're wearing light armor, you can cast them as a warrior without putting a single point into Spirituality.

Winged Servant you can get within 5 minutes of washing up on the shore - just head to the East Gate and ascend the wall until you get into the highest tower, the spell should be in one of the chests. You might need to kill a few peasants to get it, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Arcane Aegis can be acquired with similar ease - head to the All-Mother's Temple guarded by the Dal Riata in the northeast corner of the first map, it's on the altar below a huge statue, you really can't miss it. If you get there too early in the game, you'll be trespassing, so either sneak by them or just rush in, grab it, and run like hell.

That all being said, these two spells are not at all necessary for the warrior, they're just safety nets to protect you against attacks you didn't see coming or if you messed up. It's 100% viable to just go full heavy armor no magic and kick ass, especially with the third and final point here.

3. Lifesteal - extremely good for anyone who expects to take damage often, and there are several ways to get it. There are skills in the Endurance and Perception that give you some, but they require you spend precious skill points that you could use for something else, instead, so it's best to save this option for when you run out of skills you want to invest in as a warrior.

Without any investment into skills, here are your options - Oldsteel Fang amulet, Bloodthorn +1 relic and the Thornsword.

Oldsteel Fang - gives 5% Lifesteal on attacks and the easiest to get. Next to the Sunken village there is a small island with an arch. Below the arch lies a broken gong, and somewhere next to lies the Oldsteel Fang, it's pretty small and easy to miss, so take a good look around.

Bloodthorn +1 - 4% Lifesteal on a weapon. trickier to get, since it requires you to head into an area with strong enemies, but not impossible to get if you use Winged Servant to distract enemies while you grab it. Northeast of Ancient Cromlech(in the northern part of the first area, looks like two stone circles on the map) there will be an uphill path that'll lead you to a fast travel pillar, next to it is a path uphill that'll lead you to Mistbearer's Den(a big stone gate surrounded by creepy child statues, hard to miss), from there head right until you see three bandits bunched together. They are standing over a corpse that has the Bloodthorn relic on it. Throw some Winged Servants at them to distract them, grab the relic and run like hell.

Thornsword - A freakishly powerful two-handed sword that requires 10 in both Strength and Endurance. Really good damage, and a whopping 30% Lifesteal BUT it also drains 3% of your health for every second that you hold it(when sheathed it's harmless).

Actually very close to where you get the Bloodthorn relic. Once you get it, double back to the gate with creepy statues and head the way you came, instead. There's another route which will you to a mini-boss sitting in camp, but you can ignore him, he's not what you're there for. Next to the camp is a big ol' wooden gate, enter it and it'll take you to the next region. Literally a few seconds of running forward will lead you to a small camp on the left with like 3 enemies. One of them is a miniboss named Bloodhound or some similar name like that.

Normally he'd be a challenging enemy, but the funny thing about him is that he's the one wielding the Thornsword, so its 3% health per second debuff applies to him, as well. So engage him and his minions in combat, distract them with Winged Servant, and watch as the miniboss just dies on his own. Once he keels over you grab the sword and, once again, run like hell.

All of this combined will turn you into a certified melee killing machine. Sorry if it was a mouthful, but I hope that if you've read this far, it'll be useful to you, or anyone else who happens to stumble upon this rambling of mine, lol.

And while you didn't ask this, I figured I may as well throw this in at the end - I've experienced a peculiar bug where the game's performance will steadily decrease as I reload the game repeatedly, which is fixed by closing and launching it again. Dunno if it's a bug specific to GOG version, or just me, but if you've ever reloaded a lot and found your performance decreasing, this may be why.

[Sgt.JESUS]

I played as a fighter and kicked as-s, you have to block at the right time and the attacks bounce of your shield, i would like harder combat to be fair, but i got my as-s handed to me by a high level bandit at the wall, right at the start, its a good thing to mix high level between lows, keeps you on your toes. I never understimated another named bastard again hehehe.

[zpc]

My first character was a 2-hand fighter. No problem at all. Get yourself a greatsword and poke everything to death.

[Mitrius]

Originally posted by Elldar:

Before anything, sorry for no TL;DR, there's just too much stuff to cover and I'm not really good at condensing information like that.

Being a guns blazing warrior is viable, and imo, the easiest way to play the further you get into the game, as long as you build for it. I don't know what your build is, so I'll just outline the things I do to turn my character into a melee powerhouse who destroys everything in his way.

1. Endurance - this is not optional, as a warrior you need a lot of endurance, more than any other playstyle. You can get away with putting the first few level up points into strength if you're good at avoiding damage, but generally you want to get it to at least 10 before you start venturing into the deeper parts of the map. The easiest way to do it is to invest into both Strength and Endurance equally until about level 20, after which you should be in a comfortable enough position to focus more on a specific stat of your choice.

If you opt for wearing light armor(which will become relevant in a moment), having about 15 or so should let you survive most one-shots and guarantee you can bounce back from enemies landing hits on you.

2. Winged Servant and Arcane Aegis - these two spells are amazing. Winged Servant distracts any enemy it hits for about 8 seconds, effectively taking them out of the fight for the duration. Arcane Aegis will cover you in a magic shield that will stop any one attack, regardless of how much damage it deals. They are dirt cheap to cast, too - so long as you're wearing light armor, you can cast them as a warrior without putting a single point into Spirituality.

Winged Servant you can get within 5 minutes of washing up on the shore - just head to the East Gate and ascend the wall until you get into the highest tower, the spell should be in one of the chests. You might need to kill a few peasants to get it, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Arcane Aegis can be acquired with similar ease - head to the All-Mother's Temple guarded by the Dal Riata in the northeast corner of the first map, it's on the altar below a huge statue, you really can't miss it. If you get there too early in the game, you'll be trespassing, so either sneak by them or just rush in, grab it, and run like hell.

That all being said, these two spells are not at all necessary for the warrior, they're just safety nets to protect you against attacks you didn't see coming or if you messed up. It's 100% viable to just go full heavy armor no magic and kick ass, especially with the third and final point here.

3. Lifesteal - extremely good for anyone who expects to take damage often, and there are several ways to get it. There are skills in the Endurance and Perception that give you some, but they require you spend precious skill points that you could use for something else, instead, so it's best to save this option for when you run out of skills you want to invest in as a warrior.

Without any investment into skills, here are your options - Oldsteel Fang amulet, Bloodthorn +1 relic and the Thornsword.

Oldsteel Fang - gives 5% Lifesteal on attacks and the easiest to get. Next to the Sunken village there is a small island with an arch. Below the arch lies a broken gong, and somewhere next to lies the Oldsteel Fang, it's pretty small and easy to miss, so take a good look around.

Bloodthorn +1 - 4% Lifesteal on a weapon. trickier to get, since it requires you to head into an area with strong enemies, but not impossible to get if you use Winged Servant to distract enemies while you grab it. Northeast of Ancient Cromlech(in the northern part of the first area, looks like two stone circles on the map) there will be an uphill path that'll lead you to a fast travel pillar, next to it is a path uphill that'll lead you to Mistbearer's Den(a big stone gate surrounded by creepy child statues, hard to miss), from there head right until you see three bandits bunched together. They are standing over a corpse that has the Bloodthorn relic on it. Throw some Winged Servants at them to distract them, grab the relic and run like hell.

Thornsword - A freakishly powerful two-handed sword that requires 10 in both Strength and Endurance. Really good damage, and a whopping 30% Lifesteal BUT it also drains 3% of your health for every second that you hold it(when sheathed it's harmless).

Actually very close to where you get the Bloodthorn relic. Once you get it, double back to the gate with creepy statues and head the way you came, instead. There's another route which will you to a mini-boss sitting in camp, but you can ignore him, he's not what you're there for. Next to the camp is a big ol' wooden gate, enter it and it'll take you to the next region. Literally a few seconds of running forward will lead you to a small camp on the left with like 3 enemies. One of them is a miniboss named Bloodhound or some similar name like that.

Normally he'd be a challenging enemy, but the funny thing about him is that he's the one wielding the Thornsword, so its 3% health per second debuff applies to him, as well. So engage him and his minions in combat, distract them with Winged Servant, and watch as the miniboss just dies on his own. Once he keels over you grab the sword and, once again, run like hell.

All of this combined will turn you into a certified melee killing machine. Sorry if it was a mouthful, but I hope that if you've read this far, it'll be useful to you, or anyone else who happens to stumble upon this rambling of mine, lol.

And while you didn't ask this, I figured I may as well throw this in at the end - I've experienced a peculiar bug where the game's performance will steadily decrease as I reload the game repeatedly, which is fixed by closing and launching it again. Dunno if it's a bug specific to GOG version, or just me, but if you've ever reloaded a lot and found your performance decreasing, this may be why.

Thanks for your long reply, but I asked for a pure melee fighter, and you advise me with spells and a light armor... Not my brief :)

I put my points in Stamina and Endurance, so I can hit more than twice before out of stamina and being stuck to death. But its not enough. I am low level currently (level 6). Will try to play more to see if it's better later.

Best,

[Drake Xanders]

Parry. Parry negates all damage and while timing can be off I do believe shields CAN parry. Learn the parry times like you would in Kingdom Come Deliverance and you should come out on top in most engagements.

Personally I went Assassin, primarily focusing on duel wielding blades [Parrying Dagger in offhand] and Bows. At first when I got into Melee I usually got absolutely dunked on. Until I learned the parry timings then Melee became a joke.

Now I'm doing a mage build on my second run of Act 1 and because of my experience learning the Parry mechanics things have gotten a TON easier surviving Melee encounters when my mana's out or I didn't pack enough potions and this is from a level 3's perspective on the mage front.

If you're going pure Melee, make use of ALL of the abilities available to you. Also remember to TAP the block button to engage parry do NOT hold it. You can parry when the enemies blade is about to hit you.

[Elldar]

Originally posted by Mitrius:

Thanks for your long reply, but I asked for a pure melee fighter, and you advise me with spells and a light armor... Not my brief :)

I put my points in Stamina and Endurance, so I can hit more than twice before out of stamina and being stuck to death. But its not enough. I am low level currently (level 6). Will try to play more to see if it's better later.

Best,

That's fair. Though, as I've mentioned, magic and light armor aren't necessary, and the rest of it should still be applicable. Unless of course pure melee means no amulets and enchanted weapons, either, in which case the going may get a little rough, lol.

In any case, happy clobbering!

[swillfly]

Shields block incoming damage but can do more things if you invest in shield skills. As far as I can tell there is no disadvantage to dual-wielding two one-handed weapons.

Two-handed weapons and heavy armor melee-only bricks are not impossible to play but don't expect to start out as Conan the Barbarian.

Your starting character is a fragile, chain-smoking, pip-squeek that gets winded from running up steps. Have to earn your bruises.

[likho1eye]

I agree with the OP in general terms. This game is so similar to the TES series that it has the same meta problems. It basically twists your arm into stealth archer build from the start, which is safe and rewarding to play in the world where every bandit or zombie can 1-shot you. Melee fighter builds seem to be the opposite - all risk, no reward.

The parry mechanic is interesting, but it has several issues
1) Timing feels a bit off with enemy attack animations, and if you miss one - you're dead.
2) It doesn't actually damage enemy stamina like it does in the tutorial. Actual enemies in game seem to have either too much stamina, or the mechanic is broken somehow. You'd have to parry them like 100 times to actually stun them.
3) It does nothing to mitigate damage when fighting multiple enemies.

Dodge mechanic is just way more reliable avenue of avoiding taking damage. Do a sprint attack, slam one enemy, dodge out, repeat. But even that offers no reward over simply 1-shotting enemies at distance from sneak.

So other than couple of scripted encounters where game forces you into close range combat, there is no reason to play melee beyond ones ego.

To be clear, I don't suggest nerfing ranged combat or stealth attacks. I'd love to see more reward for engaging in more risky combat.

[Aniaran]

Okay so yeah. Melee fighter can be a ♥♥♥♥♥ up until a point where it just works. I don't know how to better explain it than to say when I hit around level 30ish things just started not being a hassle.

Even moreso after getting the 2 handed lifesteal sword that was identified in the first response. I don't even care about being hit any more because I have so much armor and hp that it's going to do negligible damage and one strike of my sword will heal me to full.

All the same the sudden switch is kind of absurd. You go from being one shot to just not giving a ♥♥♥♥ within the span of like an hour or whenever you get the right equipment.

[likho1eye]

Originally posted by Aniaran:

Okay so yeah. Melee fighter can be a ♥♥♥♥♥ up until a point where it just works. I don't know how to better explain it than to say when I hit around level 30ish things just started not being a hassle.

Even moreso after getting the 2 handed lifesteal sword that was identified in the first response. I don't even care about being hit any more because I have so much armor and hp that it's going to do negligible damage and one strike of my sword will heal me to full.

All the same the sudden switch is kind of absurd. You go from being one shot to just not giving a ♥♥♥♥ within the span of like an hour or whenever you get the right equipment.

Yeah just like Skyrim...
Basically poor level scaling.

[Macdallan]

If someone's struggling with melee in this game then they're doing something wrong. I can engage in melee just fine with a non-melee build so if you're built for it then there should be zero issues.

[stmpunk]

Originally posted by Elldar:

Before anything, sorry for no TL;DR, there's just too much stuff to cover and I'm not really good at condensing information like that.

Being a guns blazing warrior is viable, and imo, the easiest way to play the further you get into the game, as long as you build for it. I don't know what your build is, so I'll just outline the things I do to turn my character into a melee powerhouse who destroys everything in his way.

1. Endurance - this is not optional, as a warrior you need a lot of endurance, more than any other playstyle. You can get away with putting the first few level up points into strength if you're good at avoiding damage, but generally you want to get it to at least 10 before you start venturing into the deeper parts of the map. The easiest way to do it is to invest into both Strength and Endurance equally until about level 20, after which you should be in a comfortable enough position to focus more on a specific stat of your choice.

If you opt for wearing light armor(which will become relevant in a moment), having about 15 or so should let you survive most one-shots and guarantee you can bounce back from enemies landing hits on you.

2. Winged Servant and Arcane Aegis - these two spells are amazing. Winged Servant distracts any enemy it hits for about 8 seconds, effectively taking them out of the fight for the duration. Arcane Aegis will cover you in a magic shield that will stop any one attack, regardless of how much damage it deals. They are dirt cheap to cast, too - so long as you're wearing light armor, you can cast them as a warrior without putting a single point into Spirituality.

Winged Servant you can get within 5 minutes of washing up on the shore - just head to the East Gate and ascend the wall until you get into the highest tower, the spell should be in one of the chests. You might need to kill a few peasants to get it, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Arcane Aegis can be acquired with similar ease - head to the All-Mother's Temple guarded by the Dal Riata in the northeast corner of the first map, it's on the altar below a huge statue, you really can't miss it. If you get there too early in the game, you'll be trespassing, so either sneak by them or just rush in, grab it, and run like hell.

That all being said, these two spells are not at all necessary for the warrior, they're just safety nets to protect you against attacks you didn't see coming or if you messed up. It's 100% viable to just go full heavy armor no magic and kick ass, especially with the third and final point here.

3. Lifesteal - extremely good for anyone who expects to take damage often, and there are several ways to get it. There are skills in the Endurance and Perception that give you some, but they require you spend precious skill points that you could use for something else, instead, so it's best to save this option for when you run out of skills you want to invest in as a warrior.

Without any investment into skills, here are your options - Oldsteel Fang amulet, Bloodthorn +1 relic and the Thornsword.

Oldsteel Fang - gives 5% Lifesteal on attacks and the easiest to get. Next to the Sunken village there is a small island with an arch. Below the arch lies a broken gong, and somewhere next to lies the Oldsteel Fang, it's pretty small and easy to miss, so take a good look around.

Bloodthorn +1 - 4% Lifesteal on a weapon. trickier to get, since it requires you to head into an area with strong enemies, but not impossible to get if you use Winged Servant to distract enemies while you grab it. Northeast of Ancient Cromlech(in the northern part of the first area, looks like two stone circles on the map) there will be an uphill path that'll lead you to a fast travel pillar, next to it is a path uphill that'll lead you to Mistbearer's Den(a big stone gate surrounded by creepy child statues, hard to miss), from there head right until you see three bandits bunched together. They are standing over a corpse that has the Bloodthorn relic on it. Throw some Winged Servants at them to distract them, grab the relic and run like hell.

Thornsword - A freakishly powerful two-handed sword that requires 10 in both Strength and Endurance. Really good damage, and a whopping 30% Lifesteal BUT it also drains 3% of your health for every second that you hold it(when sheathed it's harmless).

Actually very close to where you get the Bloodthorn relic. Once you get it, double back to the gate with creepy statues and head the way you came, instead. There's another route which will you to a mini-boss sitting in camp, but you can ignore him, he's not what you're there for. Next to the camp is a big ol' wooden gate, enter it and it'll take you to the next region. Literally a few seconds of running forward will lead you to a small camp on the left with like 3 enemies. One of them is a miniboss named Bloodhound or some similar name like that.

Normally he'd be a challenging enemy, but the funny thing about him is that he's the one wielding the Thornsword, so its 3% health per second debuff applies to him, as well. So engage him and his minions in combat, distract them with Winged Servant, and watch as the miniboss just dies on his own. Once he keels over you grab the sword and, once again, run like hell.

All of this combined will turn you into a certified melee killing machine. Sorry if it was a mouthful, but I hope that if you've read this far, it'll be useful to you, or anyone else who happens to stumble upon this rambling of mine, lol.

And while you didn't ask this, I figured I may as well throw this in at the end - I've experienced a peculiar bug where the game's performance will steadily decrease as I reload the game repeatedly, which is fixed by closing and launching it again. Dunno if it's a bug specific to GOG version, or just me, but if you've ever reloaded a lot and found your performance decreasing, this may be why.

that's all very debatable, the way Parrying was implemented you can get away with very low endurance, the problem is that to pull that off you'll be basically playing on "souls level" difficulty until you reach certain levels (I'd wager 20 for the build to begin picking-up) - The criticism's still valid, the game should provide more tools for these types of build otherwise having a build can become pointless (when you have only a single path to achieve melee, that's a real problem)

This discrepancy happens solely due to how low stamina is naturally and how it's scaling's exclusively tied to endurance and exceptionally low. On paper it does make more sense being the way it is, but in practice that breaks build variety automatically. I tend to play more agile builds in general (fast-paced player reflexes dependent builds) and had to abandon the idea as soon as I left Asylum because of the bad stamina scaling, it's only do-able if using exceptionally low dmg weapons like daggers.

[浣熊]

melee fighter is the easiest way to play right now btw. and always has been.

[stmpunk]

Originally posted by 浣熊:

melee fighter is the easiest way to play right now btw. and always has been.

I strongly disagree... Assassin builds are far more efficient, less skill point demanding, and exceptionally safe save for very few situations. If you grind just a little bit you can unlock some skills that basically make you into a moving shadow which can counter the short-range spawned encounters...

It's so easy to use that I've soft-switched into that once I had to give up on my "agility melee" build without a single respec/reperk, I already had some crit based stuff unlocked, and I haven't spent a single skill point on anything related to assassin build / stealth - meaning it's by far the easiest to play with.

I'm currently playing a soft-hybrid, I can only kill stuff if I'm perfectly parrying + dodging (I call it dancing) because most stuff still one-shots my character (annoying as hell despite using medium armor) - if nothing else works I simply snipe stuff.

-----

My criticism's on point, though, any healer builds are pretty much useless because of the one-shots issue, so you have to tank enough dmg to ever really use it, which's impossible with light armor, heavy armor demanding massive investment to begin using means healing's ineffective.

Pure mage winds up being okay but a really long term investment considering how far spells are of one another, several being situational at the early game, which doesn't help with crap.

Pure Archer (non-stealth) can do stuff but it's virtually useless compared to a stealth Archer (assassin) - melee assassin's mid investment and can have it's ground build done within Act 1 without much issue.

This leaves Melee to be the least favored viable build, and the path to it is very very very narrow / railed.

-----

When talking about Singleplayer RPG games, the builds are only worth their investment and how far in the game they take to be effective / truly useful. Talking about late-game melee as if it was "godlike easy" is sort of absurd considering it can't be reached without resorting to hybridization / switching playstyles / respeccing.

[likho1eye]

Originally posted by stmpunk:

Assassin builds are far more efficient

That's really the main issue. The game (just like Skyrim) strong arms you into stealth archer build at low levels. Sure you can play unstoppable melee juggernaut after lvl30, but where's fun or RP in that?