Suggestions for an enjoyable beginner's build

[Koovan]

Hopefully the title covers it - appreciate any advice/suggestions and links. Thanks in advance.

[Heinrich6745]

What kind of character would you like to play?

Do you like melee, ranged, magic, tanky, hybrid

single target dps, aoe, bit of both in between?

Utility or normal?

hardcore or softcore?

[Koovan]

Heinreich - a magicky, ranged, bit of both, normal, softcore (although not sure exactly what the last opttion refers to). Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[Siddha]

Hardcore means if your character dies it's gone.

[Heinrich6745]

Ok i just leveled up to 118, will reply back later with some things after i finish cleaning the house and thing things through for some builds for you bud...

And as Siddha said, hardcore pretty means 1 life only, you die once that is it, you lose the character for good...it's fun though! :D

Would have commented earlier when i woke up but steam was having issues.

[Koovan]

Ahh, I see - understand hardcore it wa the presence of softcore that threw me. Cheers for the clarification Siddha.
I would appreciate that if and when you get the chance Heinrich.

[Heinrich6745]

Here is some ideas i have so far,

An elementalist Dragon mage.

Skills

Bargaining (unless you already have a shopper)
Elemental Magic Lore
Elemental Magic Focus
Combat Discipline
Ancient Magic
Armor Lore
Concentration
Dragon Magic Lore (for buff)
Mentalism Lore (for buff)
Constitution

Attributes

Intelligence and Willpower

[Heinrich6745]

And this may be something to look at too, i am too lazy to copy/paste everything so here is the link.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sacredplayersunited/discussions/1/846941710376977707/

[belgarathmth]

My suggestion would be to not start as a "squishy" character if you are a beginner at the game. Pick a shadow warrior or a seraphim for your first getting-to-know-the-game character. It's hard to go wrong with skill and combat art selections for these two characters.

If you must choose a "squishy" for your first character, you need lots, and lots, and lots of health potions. Heinrich's dragon mage build is a good one, but it assumes a lot of skill in Sacred combat for its survivability, especially in the lateness of its yellow defense skills.

We could go back and forth a bit about the order of skill selection, but that's kind of an advanced player thing. It's a really good dragon mage build, but a beginner might have some trouble with survivability early on.

If you don't want to have to either sit on the space bar to drink health potions every second, and to agonize over every single skill point decision, I recommend starting off with a tough character - the shadow warrior is the toughest and easiest, and the seraphim is second from there if you want more of a fighter-cleric feel than a straight fighter or fighter-mage feel.

Actually, if you do a shadow warrior as fighter-mage (Astral Lore concentration), you are going to wind up invulnerable, such that the game will become boring. Even a straight fighter shadow warrior comes close to boringly invulnerable in silver level.

So I guess it comes down to how much challenge you want while you're learning. Maybe one should start with a tough class and then start building a squishy once the game starts to seem too easy?

BTW - either the shadow warrior or the seraphim can be a magical ranged fighter. The seraphim actually gets a special "BFG" in her abilities that makes her look like she's holding a starship launcher, and it sounds like photon torpedoes when it goes off! And, almost any character can be a "chew-chew-chew" blaster fighter it they take tactics lore and ranged weapon skill.

[Heinrich6745]

I agree, it is a little tougher to play a squishy toon early on when you are not use to the game, but as for somebody like myself, it is not a problem. The SW and Sera are good starter toons to pic, if he/she still wants a more magic ranged type you could do a Celestial build which is really good and works well trust me ;)

Skill order comes down to preference as he said above, no questions asked there.

As for the Shadow warrior astral lord, i would say stay away from making shadow veil a buff because it will break the game and be boring since it was never nerfed lol...will get bored.

I took a pure melee shadow warrior into niob at 124 and he was fun but still posed a challenge for things, didn't really get bored myself but everybody is different, I know some people that constantly get bored after 35-60 levels and restart new characters...everybody is different i guess.

Above all i always plan my stuff out since i am experienced and try to do as little rerolling as possible, but when i first started out i rerolled a lot due to picking wrong skills or combat arts or attributes and restarted over and over tons of times lol..Now i don't have that problem.

Anything else we're here to help :)

[Koovan]

Thanks for everyone's' help - very much appreciated.

[Tom]

what does ancient magic do ? instead of creating a new topic , i saw it was mentioned in this one

does it just increase all spell type damage? , if an enemy doesnt have any resistance to a spell , will it still be more effective?

[Siddha]

I think the best advice for a beginner is to try out the different characters for a few levels each. That way you get an insight into how each one plays (they all play quite differently); as well as getting some experience and familiarity with the various game systems, stats etc.

I did that and eventually found I lked the gameplay style of a Dragon Mage Mentalist using polearms.

Have not taken ancient magic so cant help you there Thomas.

[UABBlazers]

Originally posted by thomas-zamora:

what does ancient magic do ? instead of creating a new topic , i saw it was mentioned in this one

does it just increase all spell type damage? , if an enemy doesnt have any resistance to a spell , will it still be more effective?

Ancient Magic raises the damage of non-weapon based Combat Arts by a percentage. It starts around 5% and raises approximately 10-15% for every 10 skill points. At Mastery (Level 75) it adds a percentage which reduces immunities. The begins around 50% at Level 75 and increases by around 2% for every 10 skill points. Its theoretical maximum is around 75% which would require you to increase it beyond 200 points using equipment. For the High Elf it is quite good to have. For other classes, it may depend more on your build. For example, a melee Shadow Warrior will find it rather pointless.

[mr.peter.clay]

Check out the build "Bee Eff Gee Seraphim on darkmatters and also take a look at the pure summoner build for the shadow warrior. I love my pure summoner build reminds me of the necromancer in D2 but you can get in there and use a two hander really effectively while your minions handle everything else. S also has this great ability in the Astral Lord tree that eventually becomes almost a buff that will render him invisible and you just sit back and let your minions destroy everything.

[starcypher]

i would take seraphim as a first toon and also take Enhanced percption skill, witch seraphim can accses at lvl 1. This will greatly increase the drop rate of epic items and armor sets wich you can then store in the chest in village square for other toons to use. Doing a toon with Bargaining is also a good idea but not on the same toon. This will give you the option to plan your gear on the class you settle on and make its easier for hardcore play.