Help with the Antiquarian

[hippymoejagger]

I'm need advice on how to use the Antiquarian. I don't understand her use in the game and she seems like a sub par class to me, but I'm pretty sure that's not true. I could use all the help I could get.

[Valentines Tea]

Antiquarian is primarily someone you bring on money runs. Have her interact with curios and she'll usually find gems, heirlooms, and minor antiques along with the other loot you'd get. She increases gold stacking to 2,000 and also increases your inventory slots. Depending on what skills she has, she can also provide a weak blight or heal, but with her Invigorating Vapors and 'Guard Me' skill she can drastically increase the dodge of characters. Usually most people want her to use 'Guard Me' on tanks (such as the Crusader or Leper), but if you use 'Guard Me' on someone like the Highwayman or the Grave Robber (and with the Grave Robber you stack 'Toxin Trickery') they will be pretty much untouchable during the duration of 'Guard Me'.

[Demetry842]

Yep.

+ just dont take her for the boss killing mission and high lvl (red) dungeon. Best - lvl 2 (full upgraded) party in green dungeon, or lvl 4 party in yellow.

Untouchable - yep can works.. but it's a bit... gambling, tank - much more safe. Untouchable setap usualy works with hound master in party (he have best stat\skill\trinkets for this).

[Valentines Tea]

Originally posted by Demetry842:

Yep.

+ just dont take her for the boss killing mission and high lvl (red) dungeon. Best - lvl 2 (full upgraded) party in green dungeon, or lvl 4 party in yellow.

Untouchable - yep can works.. but it's a bit... gambling, tank - much more safe. Untouchable setap usualy works with hound master in party (he have best stat\skill\trinkets for this).

Hound Master's 'guard ally' cancels out Antiquarian's 'guard me', which means you also cancel out her +20% PROT. And it's not gambling at all, since it does work.

[Matuse]

Antiquarian is best for when you're on a dungeon run whose primary goal is cash. She has terrible attacks, poor personal defense, and little utility. But she's still an extremely good character.

1- Money. Have her interact with all loot generating curios. She'll always get (even from the torch curio) an extra bonus loot of the minor or rare artifacts, which stack nicely and sell for a boatload once the dungeon is over. She also increases your pure gold stacks by 500 per inventory slot.

2- Speed. She has super high speed, and there is a blue trinket which gives her +4 more. She will almost always go first in every round. The "Fleet Florin" is a blue rarity Antiquarian-only trinket that gives +4 speed with no drawback. Always put that on her once you get it.

3- Nervous Stab. Bad damage, poor crit. But she can use it from any position and hit rows 1-3. A good option for giving a coup de grace to an enemy with a sliver of health left so you don't have to waste an attack from one of your real hitters.

4- Festering Vapors. Blight damage is cool. This one does pretty terrible DoT, but it stacks with all the other blight, and it gives -20 blight resist so any other blighters on your team have an easier time of it.

5- Fortifying Vapors. Yeah, the heal is wretched, but it's enough to get someone off of Death's Door. And since she'll almost always be going first, she can pre-empt any monster attacks that might deathblow someone in your group.

6- Invigorating Vapors. This ability is amazing. Stackable dodge (+10 per stack at skill level 5) which hits the entire party. This ability will, by itself, almost totally eliminate the need for any other defense on your entire group. Give everyone a +Dodge trinket and after a couple rounds you become basically unhittable. This applies to physical attacks, stress attacks, AOE attacks...pretty much anything can be dodged. Always lead off any fight with this.

7- Trinket Scrounge. Free trinket? Hell yes. Even if you don't want to use the trinket, they sell for a lot when you get back to town. One tactic is to put 4 Antiquarians into a medium or long dungeon, and camp at shortest intervals and have them all spam Trinket Scrounge, then abandon the dungeon. If you don't care about "wasting" a week (for achievements and such), this is a great way not only for fairly risk-free cash, but to find some of those trinkets that elude you.

8- Strange powders. Comprehensive status defense for someone in the group. Only uses 2 time units in camp. Great ability to match with a self-marker like the Crusader.

Generally the Antiquarian is for normal dungeon runs to greatly boost your cash income. But I've brought her on several boss battles, and she's useful there as well. Boss battles tend to go on for a while, which means you can maintain those 3 stacks of Invigorating Vapors so the boss becomes nearly harmless to you and you can grind it down without worrying about damage or stress. She's particularly good on the Siren - the Siren will prioritize her charm attack on whichever character has the lowest Debuff resistance. That's usually going to be your Antiquarian (especially if you put +Debuff Resist trinkets on your other chars). For combat, that's no huge loss at all. The danger of the Siren comes from your own ally giving you a smackdown...but Antiquarians can't smack anybody down.

tl:dr: Antiquarians are great...when you use them to their strengths, and when you don't expect them to do stuff they can't or shouldn't be doing.

[hippymoejagger]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the advice

[charliechuckleberry]

Originally posted by dixxon_sider:

i put my antiquarian in the offtank slot (slot 2) with a man at arms in the first. spam nothing but protect me on the antiquarian, and use riposte on the man at arms every other move. has been extremely successful for me since you can have both a healer and stress healer in the back. although the fights will take forever since your man at arms guy will do the majority of the damage.

I did that too, and no monsters attacked the front two lines. I suspect she's best when doing the easiest quests possible with overpowered (over minimum level, over geared, etc) teammates. Even then, I think my inventory gets full too fast to make her efficient.

In short, I gather gold faster by NOT using her, because runs go faster and easier.

EDIT: I suspect late game she is more useful. I'm barley started (still level 2 weapon/armor at blacksmith)

[butterbattle22]

Lol, I did that with Antiquarian and Man-at-arms too. It's just unwieldy for man-at-arms to have to use his guard move and then riposte. His stun and buffs are really good too, and that leaves almost no turns for him to use those. With the number of enemies that will either melee rank one or rank too, using protect me from rank 2 probably maximizes its utility. Plus, her move also buffs dodge while man-at-arms's guard only ups his protection.

Originally posted by charliechuckleberry:

In short, I gather gold faster by NOT using her, because runs go faster and easier.

Do you have her selected? When I played with the antiquarian in my party, I had her selected and will use her to interact with everything. This is extremely important; you have to use her to interact with objects. When I first started using her, I didn't realize this, so I didn't understand her potential. You will get an antique on everything. You'll get an antique when you pick up a torch!!

With the minor antiques stacking to 20 and big ones stacking to 5, you should be able to end every antiquarian run with much more loot than you would have gotten otherwise.

[Demetry842]

Originally posted by Valentines Tea:

Originally posted by Demetry842:

Yep.

+ just dont take her for the boss killing mission and high lvl (red) dungeon. Best - lvl 2 (full upgraded) party in green dungeon, or lvl 4 party in yellow.

Untouchable - yep can works.. but it's a bit... gambling, tank - much more safe. Untouchable setap usualy works with hound master in party (he have best stat\skill\trinkets for this).

Hound Master's 'guard ally' cancels out Antiquarian's 'guard me', which means you also cancel out her +20% PROT. And it's not gambling at all, since it does work.

I mean - houndmaster (basichigh dodge, collar +12 dodge, camuflage cloak +15 dodge, + a lot dodge from guard skill) works WITHOUT reliquarian in party (for "untouchable" party setap - houndmaster better).

Reliquarian "guard me" on Highwayman - IMHO - it's a bit "gambling" because +5 dodge - it's not much (2 crit from monster = Highwayman - X_X... = left only 2,5 fighter (guard me on tank - a bit more safe)).

[BlazeRomulus]

Eeeh?! There's a hero that increases your looting? AWESOME. I thought this game was merciless <3.

[Quickshooter]

she's a buffing hero, actually the best buffer in the game
use her vapors to boost dodge and her flash powder to make enemy miss

she can force guard an ally so he gets a shield-load of PROT if she's being targeted

she is a very versitile hero but not an offensive one.