Veteran Skills

[MilkyJoe]

I've just made it to level 7 of the Veteran Skill system and I can't decide where to spend any further points, especially as it's permanent so I'm stuck with the choice (thats not a complaint btw).

Playing as Mercs i've taken masteries in the skills that extends the days for Wyrdstone deliveries, reduce costs of training skills and reduce cost of hiring new characters. The "Contact" skills look interesting but are they worth it? I was thinking of maybe contact armourer or enchanter but is the equipment you recievie usually worth it or is all low quality?

Any other skills worth considering?

[LazyPandas]

The contacts scale with your warband level I think. You get a chance to get purples if you have a higher rank warband. Personally I use a boatload of consumables so I took the alchemist for poultice/anti-toxins as they are always useful for me, but the equipment contacts are alright I guess. At some point you get all the purples you need from random drops or enemies but that's at least 100 hours of play time down the road typically.

[Kernest]

The ones you've picked so far are usually the recommended ones.

There was one that improved scouting, chance to find higher quality missions with higher quality loot, I like that one, as later on you'll send them out more and more.

Healer ends up saving a lot of money in the long run from all those crits you'll take, but you'll be swimming in money at some point anyways.

Librarian contact shortens the amount of time it takes you to gather all of the (non-faction rank dependant) formulas, but after you do, it'll just deliver money.

If none of those strike your fancy, then the equipment contacts are quite ok, but just think things through before picking one, as probably each of the weapon contacts can deliver weapons none of you guys can use, but in my experience there's less need for the armour contacts, as armour is very hard to lose forever, unlike weapons.

[cantila1]

I would definitely go for the librarian. You will soon be swimming in both gold and purples, but those formulas take ages to grind if you want close to all (especially the purples).

[Zorlond]

Commander can trim your costs a bit every mission (you always bring your Leader, after all, even if you don't use Impressives), while Healer can be good if you get a lot of injuries (personally I try to avoid needing medics). But Librarian is also good, if only to help along your Veteran progress in collecting enchant recipies.

[MilkyJoe]

Thanks for the replies, I went for Librarian in the end.

LazyPandas comment interested me though as I don't think i've ever used a consumable even once. Are they useful? I havent tried any deadly or brutal missions yet, I assume they're necessary for those?

[Kernest]

Originally posted by MilkyJoe:

Thanks for the replies, I went for Librarian in the end.

LazyPandas comment interested me though as I don't think i've ever used a consumable even once. Are they useful? I havent tried any deadly or brutal missions yet, I assume they're necessary for those?

They're not "necessary" and in my opinion they just add to your warband rating, making those brutals and deadlies even more brutal and deadly.

I only ever use Healing Draughts and Poultices, and even those only in story missions, where the rating doesn't matter.

Not saying I'm absolutely right, but that's my opinion.

[Boink]

As for Consumables as Veteran Skills randoming with a lot of different consumables it feels like it is not worth it. You end up with a low value'd item for a price of a veteran skill.

As for bringing them yes you should always bring at least one poultice (I bring two) reserve for your leader. I had a match where the AI crit spammed me and end up with 5 wounded 2 day light injuries.

As for it increasing warband rating, this is true but only at lower lvls 0-5 you want to increase rating for higher value'd weapons to drop at lvl 6-10. Blue and Purple weapons are a must have and if you don't use them they do sell well.

[Darth Cannabis]

I try to roleplay my veteran skill choices as best I can. My skaven for example I went with scouting, increased sell values, etc. (the whole loot and scavenge mentality) wheras I went the more traditional trainer/cheaper hire with gunsmith contact on my mercenaries. Chaos (being led by a mage leader and persona) certainly got librarian, negotiation, scholar, etc.

There's a lot of combinations that work well for various reasons. Some keep your costs low, some keep your profits high, and some just allow you to keep a momentum going.

[Ishan451]

The ones i always get are:

Explorer level 2 (it increases the quality of rewards missions give)

Librarian level 2 (As soon as possible, because it ensures you have a lot of Formulas once you reach the point where you can actually use them)

These two i'd consider a must, the rest is entirely optional, in my opinion. Usually i go for the rest of the management ones: The one that gives you more days on the delivery, and the reduction in cost for Healing. Paying less upkeep for leaders and impressives.

I never needed another contact that give me items, beyond the one that gives you formulas.

[cantila1]

I never get healer. My reasoning is that taking a contact instead you get items that you can sell for in the end at a total value higher than what you save by cheaper healing (which is quite little as it's not your entire warband). Plus you might get a purple or blue item you actually want.

[Boink]

The ones I get:

Commander lvl 2
Explorer lvl 2
Librarian lvl 2
Scholar lvl 2

Options I could go for

Armoursmith lvl 2
Weaponsmith lvl 2
Haggler Lvl 2


If I decided to go for rolling Deadly challenge missions I go for:

Wyrdstone delivery

I will never get:

Alchemist
Evaluator
Healer because I will never die or OOA.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Boink:

Healer because I will never die or OOA.

Even without it, you'll incur healer bills whenever you get an open wound debuff.

[Boink]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

Originally posted by Boink:

Healer because I will never die or OOA.

Even without it, you'll incur healer bills whenever you get an open wound debuff.

Poultice x 2 should be suffice.

[LazyPandas]

There's a number of factors that led me to choose the alchemist. I do pvp matches with some friends and potions are extremely valuable to me in that particular warband. We mostly follow something close to the permaleague rules but since there's only a few of us we have some very distinct changes.

Open wounds are probably the most important. Not only do you avoid light wound injuries that you would get after a deployment, but I have two doomweavers where one is a traditional caster, and one is a MR tank with eventually 100% stun resist that goes into the enemy team and blows himself up to hit everyone (I usually will bring one or the other, not both at once). Problem is, sometimes I don't want to use a tonne of HP on 'causterize' to remove them (the only unit where I would take that skill) and sometimes I'll hit my allied units where letting all those guys take a 2 day rest would hurt my overall campaign since every day really counts for me.

Another big thing I use is anti-toxins and antidotes. There's typically poisons absolutely everywhere since two out of the four friends I regularly fight are also skaven. I usually carry a couple of these on choice units to negate/mitigate the effects during critial engagements.

The other potions I put on certain units that fit them. On my tanks or melee units with low leadership I'll throw on a bugmans ale (+psych test chances). I have mad cap mushrooms (+melee hit chance) and crimson shade (+initiative) I use situationally if I'm setting up a stun combo with overpower on my black rat (I havn't been able to train up the mastery version yet in this warband so these potions really help). Elven wine and draught of clarity are also situational. I typically bring one of each but I have only used them in one match so far, although it looks like one of my friends has headshot on his archer and is trying to build for crit so this may change once he levels up. I throw 2 healing potions on my leader just in case.

If you only do PVE however, consumables (minus maybe 1 poultice) are sort of unneccesary. I usually don't bring anything with me since I want to max my inventory slots for wyrdstone and loot since those vs AI games are very important for getting your economy back on track.

Realistically, these contact veteran skills are complete RNG and are super unreliable unless you play many matches over a long period of time. Though I did get an epic formula of havok (the +8 crit wep enchant) at warband rank 5 from the contact librarian on my witch hunters lol.

If you're doing a pve only warband I would recommend:
-Less training cost
-Better scouts
-Wyrdstone delivery time (if you think you actually need this)
-Better selling price or market rotation events
-Hiring costs (not 100% neccesary, but if you plan on doing a lot of hired swords early-mid game it could be worth it. Late game you will be swimming in cash anyway)

I took contact: armourers apprentice when I was new to the game on my first warband for like my second or third skill (I think I went negative leader upkeep and reduced mecial costs?). It was actually a VERY nice thing to have early on up until I started regularly getting epics from random chests and enemies so I actually just have like 20 epic shields and helmets sitting around in my inventory. I wanted to try something new and 40% seemed like a fair number and I have to say I'm actually pretty satisfied with the alchemist.

Hope this helps.

[uddhava]

I also take the alchemist with an eye on PvP. It takes ages to safe up lots of potions