Oil strategies

[Olleus]

Firstly, for those who don't know, you can add 1 or 2 oils to main hand weapons in order to get a permanent buff to them. Nifty, and one of the main uses of the alchemist.


I'm curious what oils people use on what builds. There are a *lot* of them, and the possibilities are vast. I'm building up to a big re-equipping of my troops as they approach level 11 and I wanted to see what others thought before committing a lot of ingredients to this. My own not very carefully thought out thoughts as of now are:

+15% Attack of Opportunity damage: no brainer on someone who will be using riposte, spear wall, or barrage repeatedly.

50% change of causing bleed: That's a nice one, bleed is the status effect that does the most damage, and it doesn't risk spreading to yourself like fire does. However, it doesn't stack, so there's no point over using it. Good to combine with AoO because DOT damage is taken at the end of a unit's turn, so it does damage faster if it applies during an enemy's turn than yours.

+10% Critical: Speaks for itself. Critical is increasingly important at high level, and so is always welcome. Particularly good with weapons/builds that have an additional effect trigger on critical hits or have a wide damage range.

+50% chance to cause 50% damage again: If I understand this infectious oil correctly, this averages out at a flat +25% damage output. What's not to love! It might be the most consistent and powerful oil.

Ignore 50% of guard: I like to put this on weapons that will inflict destabilise, so the first attack on a tank ignores half the guard, and all other attacks on them will ignore all of it.

50% chance of causing slowdown: Very nice for units that will be doing hit-and-runs against the enemy. Nothing like this on archer to force the enemy to walk slowly through a hail or arrows as you continuously run away from them.

50% chance of 1VP whenever using a skill that costs VP: This sounds potentially huge, especially for builds that have lots of actions rather than passives. Ranger and Swordsman are what I'm thinking of here.

The other oils... I don't see the point of so much. A chance at a few extra strength or dexterity makes little difference IMHO. Causing poison or fever is too long term an effect for me to care about. Setting things on fire is too much annoyance for me to deal with. The others I haven't mentioned are similarly meh in my mind; either too weak or too situational or both.



Finally a few quick question: All the weapon oils have a "1" in their names, does that mean there's a second tier of oils available? I don't see where they would fit in my alchemy compendium, it has some holes, but not all that many. And, how do the concentrates work? They give an extra 50% chance of applying the corresponding effect, but is this a 50+50 = 100% case, or a 50*1.5 = 75% thing? Lastly, I believe the oils apply (where appropriate) whenever the unit bearing them does damage - be it from their basic attack of another ability - am I correct? Does it also apply separately each time damage is done to a different target (or repetitively on the same target)?

Apologies for the long post, but I feel like this is one aspect of the game that I haven't mastered at all yet and could do with brainstorming on.

[Zarquon]

i'm just using sharpening and brave atm. Want to switch brave out for something else on a couple of characters. Doing level 8 encounters and at my difficulty still finishing them first turn so a lot of the bleed/burn ones wouldn't get any effect

[mikejunt]

I've never really used them a lot; I dislike the coinflip proc rate, and I don't like devoting the accessory slot to fixing it when there are things like the Tule Charm out there. But I suspect I'm leaving some meat on the table there.

IMO the VP regeneration is the biggest one, because you can pretty easily build your team to consistently regain a VP on most turns, making it easy for characters to use 1 VP skills while remaining 'neutral' by the start of the next turn. It's very difficult, however, to use a lot of 2 VP skills on a sustainable basis. I would be much more interested in skills like Cutting Maelstrom and Laceration with this kind of effect. Of course, those are also the characters who get the most benefit out of the Tule Charm (10% flat damage is A LOT)

I don't like Bleed very much because I think it's generally your objective to minimize how many turns the enemy is allowed to take in the first place, usually only allowing their most tanky and least-damaging members to take actions, and then when you're killing those ones you have huge numbers advantages over them because all their friends are already dead. Ditto poison; IMO the main reason to use those effects are things like Viper and Strongblade which turn them into proactive damage. Having an enemy pick up poison and bleeding from being caught in an AOE effect and then being able to kill them with a character who normally struggles to kill a target entirely on its own because Strongblade will attack 3 times in a row can really be pretty valuable; it's certainly strong when you're burning down champion types.

Its unfortunate how bad things that require setup are in this game, since you don't control (and can't really predict, outside of the info bar about the next several turns) what order your enemies will get to act. This is compensated by being able to act your own team in any order, of course, but most of the time at the start of battle I am portioning out my characters based on which enemies or enemy groups I want them to kill on their turn, and you don't necessarily know what order those enemies are going to have to be killed in (since it will be determined by when they come up in the attack order). This makes strategies that depend on another party member acting first (like setting up bleed/poison for Strongblade or Viper) a lot more dicey, because there's no guarantee you'll be able to do that without giving the target the opportunity to take it's turn unhindered - something you're usually trying to avoid.

Extra VP gain is really synergistic with this, because it lets you deal more damage consistently with more powerful abiltiies more frequently; on the other hand, effects that are randomized (50% activations on oils in general, or the 50% chance to do 50% extra damage, or crit rates that are moderate but not dependable) really aren't because you don't want to end up in positions where you can only kill the target if you're fortunate and get the crit/oil activation. "This thing will get free action if I don't crit it/my oil doesn't activate" is are situations that I spend a lot of time trying to avoid. This might be my background in card type strategy games: minimizing variance is something I always prioritize, and oils are the essence of variance.

[Olleus]

The problem with DoT is, indeed, that it only goes into effect after the enemy has had their turn, which is later than ideal. That's why it works well with attacks of opportunity - they happen in the enemy's turn anyway - so it's hardly a delay. If some enemy ends their turn in the kill zone of your barrage, DoT damage is ends up being the same as normal damage. Except it ignores all armour, which is cool too.

Also, no answers to the specific questions at the end of the OP?

[mikejunt]

Originally posted by Olleus:

The problem with DoT is, indeed, that it only goes into effect after the enemy has had their turn, which is later than ideal. That's why it works well with attacks of opportunity - they happen in the enemy's turn anyway - so it's hardly a delay. If some enemy ends their turn in the kill zone of your barrage, DoT damage is ends up being the same as normal damage. Except it ignores all armour, which is cool too.

Also, no answers to the specific questions at the end of the OP?

I haven't tested all the oils, but from what I've seen it depends. Obviously the ones that apply DOTs happen later; but many others activate immediately; there's a whole Tracker weapon line based around 'this attack has a 100% chance to activate your oil' and then having that oil bonus for the rest of the turn, for instance, and you see NPC trackers use it (like during Ludern storyline when you have the Master Tracker as an ally if you side with them)

I find that ignoring armor is not that relevant unless you're doing enough of it to kill things - it doesn't matter if you did 80% of their health through their armor if you still have to punch through it to deal the last 20%. That benefit only really exists if you can somehow add up to 100% health with it, which is very difficult to do with anything besides Splitter's special effect.

This game has a lot of mechanics that primarily serve to help enemies make things more difficult for the player via attrition. I think poison/bleed are among those kinds of mechanics. You probably won't die from them, but you can take enough damage through your armor from them to acquire injuries. Since enemies don't have any mechanics like that, they're not different from regular damage unless you can somehow do enough to get to 100% health, which is pretty difficult given how much you need to stack them to do that - except for Bloodshed, which is a flat number and not a percentage, and so you can easily get situations where you whack something with 140 armor and 90 health for 100 damage with splitter, and then it's just dead after it's turn due to Bloodshed. Poison and Bleed just, in practice, almost never do that because you can't stack them fast enough.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Crit oil for everyone:) not much strategy to it.
With the full release there are many more options but they are more like sidegrades or weapon specific.
I got the sword that hits the enemy as many times as dots they have so i put the 50% poison oil on it, it can apply it even if you hit with the shield.
The fever oil is nice with the 4 overwatch shots from the archer.
Sadly, you really need to go out of your way to get all the weapons that can upgrade then experiement

[Arctuhris]

The Fortification/Hardening (double guard) is currently broken in my game, which is too bad, because with the belt item, it's supposed to be a 100% uptime of double guard, which would be 80% on my tank, which would be useful ... if it worked.

[Der Kage]

ye crit oil for everyone and istable oil as 2nd layer for melee, specialy with counterattack buff on the strategy table.

[Olleus]

Originally posted by mikejunt:

Originally posted by Olleus:

The problem with DoT is, indeed, that it only goes into effect after the enemy has had their turn, which is later than ideal. That's why it works well with attacks of opportunity - they happen in the enemy's turn anyway - so it's hardly a delay. If some enemy ends their turn in the kill zone of your barrage, DoT damage is ends up being the same as normal damage. Except it ignores all armour, which is cool too.

Also, no answers to the specific questions at the end of the OP?

I haven't tested all the oils, but from what I've seen it depends. Obviously the ones that apply DOTs happen later; but many others activate immediately; there's a whole Tracker weapon line based around 'this attack has a 100% chance to activate your oil' and then having that oil bonus for the rest of the turn, for instance, and you see NPC trackers use it (like during Ludern storyline when you have the Master Tracker as an ally if you side with them)

I find that ignoring armor is not that relevant unless you're doing enough of it to kill things - it doesn't matter if you did 80% of their health through their armor if you still have to punch through it to deal the last 20%. That benefit only really exists if you can somehow add up to 100% health with it, which is very difficult to do with anything besides Splitter's special effect.

This game has a lot of mechanics that primarily serve to help enemies make things more difficult for the player via attrition. I think poison/bleed are among those kinds of mechanics. You probably won't die from them, but you can take enough damage through your armor from them to acquire injuries. Since enemies don't have any mechanics like that, they're not different from regular damage unless you can somehow do enough to get to 100% health, which is pretty difficult given how much you need to stack them to do that - except for Bloodshed, which is a flat number and not a percentage, and so you can easily get situations where you whack something with 140 armor and 90 health for 100 damage with splitter, and then it's just dead after it's turn due to Bloodshed. Poison and Bleed just, in practice, almost never do that because you can't stack them fast enough.

Good point about ignoring armour. I guess that DoTs looks fancy and, because it's so annoying as a player, I kind of want to return the favour. I still think it has some uses when put on AoO, bleed at least does a little, poison is far too weak to be worth it. By the way, bleed doesn't stack. You either bleed or you don't, you can't bleed twice.

I'm debating between putting bleed and infectious oil on Splitter, because if I'm going to have to wait for Bloodshed to kick in anyway, it makes sense to go all in on that path.


@Bankipriel: In what way is the doubling guard oil bugged? Isn't guard capped at ~70% anyway?


Anyway, critical oil and oil of the brave seem to be the most popular, perhaps unsurprisingly.

[Tactics]

Hi - where can I get infectious oil?

[Zarquon]

Switched out some brave oils. Now both the heavy armour wearers have sharpening and Fortifying oil (50% chance to double guard).
The Duelist has sharpening and Fortifying Oil (50% to reduce damage taken), haven't found the opportunity attacks oil or unstable oil yet.
Barbarian has sharpening and Misty oil (50% to deal half damage to "enemies next to the target". Need to test this, because if "next to" means touching bases then it probably won't be very useful.

[araxdebold]

Unstable oil and Misty oil... When it works it Works...

[Olleus]

So I've gone for sharpening on almost everything - I like how . Topping that is Alertness for pikemen and infantrymen, for that sweet AoO damage. The others have Brave. I'm actually thinking of having brave essence as a belt item for swordsman, warrior, and ranger - that would essentially make all of their VP actions free right? I'm still not sure if its 50+50 = 100%, or 50% x 1.5 = 75%.

Then, there's the question of what to do for mercs who have two weapons on level 10. I'm guessing only the oils on the active weapon matters? In which case brave on the one with the highest str/dex stat is an obvious choice. For swordsman and warrior, I'm going for one AoE weapon and one single-target weapon - I'm thinking reduce guard on the single-target one and maybe misty on the other (whichever doesn't have brave)?

[RainbowPig]

I haven't got high enough level to try it yet but I suspect the Infectious Oil would be a super broken oil at high level fights. It has like a 50% chance to turn 50% of every point of damage you deal into an equal percentage DoT effect. At level 7 this already did some ridiculous stuff on my swordsman. Kick, attack, and riposte, together doing about 100 damage (in this example to keep numbers simple) all trigger the effect which means the enemy takes 50% of their max health as damage when their turn ends, if they're even alive (Which is the main issue really, since as people already pointed out the idea is to kill asap and DoT kill too late to prevent them inflicting attrition)

But at high levels imagine dealing 200 damage on a hit and that oil activating, doesn't matter if that foe has 400 health or 200000000 health. They're dead at the end of their turn.

[Olleus]

Originally posted by RainbowPig:

I haven't got high enough level to try it yet but I suspect the Infectious Oil would be a super broken oil at high level fights. It has like a 50% chance to turn 50% of every point of damage you deal into an equal percentage DoT effect. At level 7 this already did some ridiculous stuff on my swordsman. Kick, attack, and riposte, together doing about 100 damage (in this example to keep numbers simple) all trigger the effect which means the enemy takes 50% of their max health as damage when their turn ends, if they're even alive (Which is the main issue really, since as people already pointed out the idea is to kill asap and DoT kill too late to prevent them inflicting attrition)

But at high levels imagine dealing 200 damage on a hit and that oil activating, doesn't matter if that foe has 400 health or 200000000 health. They're dead at the end of their turn.

That's not how it works. It does damage for damage, not damage for % damage. It's basically like a weaker version of the splitter axe. IE: You do X damage with infectious oil. There is a 50% chance to inflict a status effect that will do X/2 damage on the target, at the end of the target's turn.

You get it in Drombach IIRC.

Originally posted by Olleus:

I'm actually thinking of having brave essence as a belt item for swordsman, warrior, and ranger - that would essentially make all of their VP actions free right? I'm still not sure if its 50+50 = 100%, or 50% x 1.5 = 75%.

So I've tested it, and it's definitely not 100%. Looks like 75%, although I got a little lower than that, it's probably just statistical noise. For "The Brave's Oil" at least. The belt essence is thus only half as good as the oil in terms of average VP generation. But, it's still waaayy better than the other belt item that gives you a 5% chance of a free VP at the end of a turn (about 10x better, assuming you use an average of 2 VP skills per turn with that merc).

[Grimshot]

The combinations I'm using so far are...

Harpooner with Officer Pilum (bleeding oil + Paralyzing oil + Bleeding oil conc.) - With the ranged attack you can slow down rows of enemies and you can use the slow debuff to do hit and run attacks on enemies. The multiple hits from the weapon can each trigger bleeding letting the Harpooner nearly solo bears, elites, ect if rngesus is on your side.

Hunter with War Bow (Sharpening oil + Perforating oil + Quality Projectile belt) - Shoot things dead, simple as.

Destroyer with Erkeshets Mace (Strength oil + Perforating oil + Pocket Knife) - Autocrit smash things dead, simple as.

Destroyer with Purgatory (Acidic oil + Hardening (fortifying) oil + leather straps) - Pointlessly spread fire everywhere while wondering if Hardening oil even works.

Wrongdoer with Lucilla (Paralyzing oil + Perforating oil + Back Brace) - Launch enemies across the map, 50% chance they wont be a problem next turn. Mostly just good for a laugh.

Cutthroat with Viper ( Putrid oil + Unstable oil + Whetestone belt) I'd prefer Poison oil instead of Unstable oil if I could find it, Unstable oil is still good because of Frenzy's multiattack though (assuming they even survive Frenzy.)

Poisoner with Kruppe's Saex (Sticky oil + Brave oil + Brace oil conc.) - Poisoner is pretty skill heavy so getting points back really helps, sticky + the knifes bonuses let you make some risky attacks to protect another unit or finish off an enemy.

Strategist with Inquisition Cinqueda (Sharpening oil + Unstable oil + Pocket Knife) Class doesn't matter really. Find an enemy with a bonus and turn their kidneys into swiss cheese.

Swordmaster with Inquisition Knights Greatsword (Sharpening oil + Sticky oil + Stiletto belt) - I'd prefer Conversion oil and its concentration to counter the health drain over sticky oil if it even still exists. Just run into groups of enemies, strip their armor off with the basic attack and them mow them down with Laceration.

Sentry with Brotherhood Knights Greatsword (Putrid oil + Unstable oil + Putrid oil conc.) - With light armor this faction always inflict vulnerability. The sword has an AoE that inflicts fragility and you have a chance of adding fever on top of that. I like sending the Sentry into a group to debuff it before I wipe everything out with my swordmaster duo.

Beastmaster with Sleuth (Putrid oil + Brave oil + Brave oil conc.) - Need to spam skills to get the most out of a beastmaster so brave oil is an obvious choice. Sleuth initiates attacks like Attack! so Putrid oil could be useful. Taming arrow will debuff your own animals with a fever stack too, but I've never found the debuff to be a problem.

Beastmaster with Hunter's Bow (Perforating oil + Brave oil + Brave oil conc.) Same deal as the other beastmaster but with Perforating oil to make the most of the free crits.