First Time Playing Dragonfall: Character Choices.

[Teh Roarist]

Hey All,

Wall of text, commence!

So, I just completed the original DMS campaign for the first time with a custom Pistol-using Elf with some healing and support magic, and my intentions for my first time with Dragonfall were to make an Elf that uses a Sniper Rifle with tons of Cyberware, and let my teammates handle Decking and buffing with spells.

I must say, I'm absolutely loving the changes in the interface and the combat system so far, but I'm having a bit of a crisis with my character.

I traded in my starting rifle for the first available Sniper Rifle, and now that I'm half-way through the hotel area, I'm having second thoughts about my build. I know it's still quite early on, but I'm realizing that Sniper Rifles don't seem to have the "feeling" I was expecting (it seems like Sniper Rifles are to Rifles what Revolvers are to Pistols). Sniper redundancy with Eiger, high AP cost per point of damage, and the consistent close-quarters fights are kinda irking me too.


I'm considering going one of four paths, with their own ups and downs, and I'm finding it hard to decide as there's so little info out involving the new combat system:

1) I could go for non-Adept, claw-using melee, with a specialty in throwing weapons (since I love how both throwing and claws "feel" in this game so far), but I'm afraid that with the new flanking system that melee might end up underpowered (especially as an Elf), and that throwing and bleeds might not scale well enough in the endgame to be useful at all, damage-wise. Does bleed strength or duration actually scale with stats? Does the new Throwing scale well?

2) I could go pure offensive Mage, but that would make it very difficult to be a Decker as well, and some people have said that going Decking is a very good idea in the original Dragonfall, and that pure offensive Mage wasn't nearly as fun as in DMS.

3) I could go for Decking, and take Pistol again, as I hear there's a pretty powerful pistol in Dragonfall, but if pistols are too similar to DMS, I'd rather not take this path.

4) I could stick with my current build, and go with Assault Rifle instead of Sniper Rifle (or slot one of each), to avoid redundancy, and try to fit Decking in if points allow it.

I have no idea how many Karma points I'll end up getting to spend during the game, so I can't make an educated decision on which path to take.


I'd prefer not to create more redundancy with my current teammates, but having not played the original Dragonfall, I'm not sure what kind of choices for a team I'll have later on.

Anyone have any spoiler-free advice or suggestions outside of what I listed?

[Emong]

Throwing is actually very useful with the new cover system because when you hit someone with a throwing weapon they get popped out of cover and are considered flanked by everyone for the rest of the turn. Melee does that too.

Race is also pretty much meaningless from a mechanical standpoint (outside of Trolls/Orcs and Intellegence).

[Teh Roarist]

Originally posted by Emong:

Throwing is actually very useful with the new cover system because when you hit someone with a throwing weapon they get popped out of cover and are considered flanked by everyone for the rest of the turn. Melee does that too.

Race is also pretty much meaningless from a mechanical standpoint (outside of Trolls/Orcs and Intellegence).

I noticed that about Throwing, and it seems excellent as a support skill for teammates to follow up on, but I was wondering if it scaled well with damage, to make it worth using, say, if you were taking a break and getting healed while behind cover as a melee, or something that could be focused on in a build for decent damage output. I hear it wasn't great in the original Shadowfall, but that it has potential in this one. I don't expect it'll stack up to any primary forms of damage dealing, but I'm curious to see if anyone has tried a real heavy throwing build in this version yet.

Oh, and the main reason I brought race into it, is because I'm not sure how far along in a Strength tree I could expect/hope to get with the Karma allotted in Dragonfall's campaign. Race would be more meaningless if the lack of Karma in the campaign wouldn't allow a Troll with that build to take reasonable advantage of his uncapped stats.

I tried playing a Katana-wielding Troll in a user-made story in the original, and found that I had a hard time finishing it because of the sheer number of enemies thrown at you at once at the end, with very little cover. It made me a bit wary of melee in general, though it was probably just the particular story being unbalanced against melee (or a poor build in general).

[notbatman]

I recently did a playthrough with a phys adept who did secondary throwing. So, throwing has the same damage formula it seems as melee weapons, so my throwing hits were doing like ~23 damage at the end of the game with 9 strength. That said, I barely ever used throwing. For that character running up and bashing stuff with chi onslaught was just way more effective (70-80 damage and 3-8 ap damage ------ actually he was pretty ridiculous). If you specialized in throwing I think it would probably be pretty good, but I don't think that throwing has any multi-hit skills which might make it inferior to some other trees in the damage department. It also has limited range, but with a shuriken and high strength you won't notice it as much.

As far as how many points you get, you get about a little under 200. I found over 3 playthroughs that was not enough for full rifle/decker (1st playthrough), adept/melee specialist (2nd playthrough), but was enough for spellcaster/conjurer (3rd playthrough). So I think it's enough to max out roughly 4 trees to the human maximum, or three and most of another for a class with a higher maximum. So I would pick ~4 trees and maximize them, or 5 trees and know you're only gonna get about halfway through two of them. I found any build where I just put a few points into some 'secondary' skill, it was mostly useless and I never used it.

[sanddorn]

Secondary skill with a few points: well, a mage with a totem can be quite nice.

[Teh Roarist]

Originally posted by notbatman:

I recently did a playthrough with a phys adept who did secondary throwing. So, throwing has the same damage formula it seems as melee weapons, so my throwing hits were doing like ~23 damage at the end of the game with 9 strength. That said, I barely ever used throwing. For that character running up and bashing stuff with chi onslaught was just way more effective (70-80 damage and 3-8 ap damage ------ actually he was pretty ridiculous). If you specialized in throwing I think it would probably be pretty good, but I don't think that throwing has any multi-hit skills which might make it inferior to some other trees in the damage department. It also has limited range, but with a shuriken and high strength you won't notice it as much.

As far as how many points you get, you get about a little under 200. I found over 3 playthroughs that was not enough for full rifle/decker (1st playthrough), adept/melee specialist (2nd playthrough), but was enough for spellcaster/conjurer (3rd playthrough). So I think it's enough to max out roughly 4 trees to the human maximum, or three and most of another for a class with a higher maximum. So I would pick ~4 trees and maximize them, or 5 trees and know you're only gonna get about halfway through two of them. I found any build where I just put a few points into some 'secondary' skill, it was mostly useless and I never used it.

Thanks for the detailed reply! This is definitely some of the info I was looking for!

Any idea about the efficacy of Bleed damage? I noticed after I posted that that another site lists the weapons in the game, and there were three claws listed as in the game, with each scaling Bleed damage better with Strength.

I'm considering that the strengths of a melee character are the ability to roll movement into AP used during attacks, the ability to Bleed enemies, and the ability to lock characters down with several AP denial moves.

I'm curious if I build into massive Strength, Claws, and Throwing, if I could play a hit-and-run melee, relying on buffing, applying bleeds, and running away to cover, throwing knives from cover to pin enemies, sap their AP, and to pop them out of cover for my team to shoot between melee runs. I do worry that I'd spend too much time/AP moving away (though there'd be no AP spent on reloading) and not enough time attacking, and I'd worry about large crowds that aren't terribly grouped. Also, Bleeds don't work on mechanical targets, so there'd be that downside. I wonder if using Roundhouse Kick can apply the Bleed to all targets...

Bleeds would have to be pretty good in the long run to make them worth using, since a weapon with higher pure damage could easily outpace it across the same number of turns otherwise. It'd be nice to learn that it was more than just an increasingly useless "theme" buff used solely to differentiate claws from regular melee.

Hmmm...

[Bollox]

Originally posted by sanddorn:

Secondary skill with a few points: well, a mage with a totem can be quite nice.

I'm playing with an Ork Mage/Shammy at the moment and annoyingly I've found the totem stops me using all my mage spell slots. Is there any way to slot the Totem out?

[Royal_Tenenbaum]

I've played the DLC version and this as an Elf street samurai. I used a shotgun and katana the first time. The Director's Cut playthru was using a rifle and that nade launcher when I was awarded it. I was pretty beastly in the first go. This time I used wired reflexes often and chromed my PC out. I had no overlap. I also find Sniper Rifles to be the best thing in the game.

You can always draw the enemy into a bottle neck trap that allows Eiger to tear them apart. Her 2 shots for one ap final is awesome. This go I am running another decker and I am toying around with a shaman. I told Blitz to f off so I can always use Glory. She seems to have been greatly improved in this version.

[Kline]

Originally posted by Royal_Tenenbaum:

I told Blitz to f off so I can always use Glory. She seems to have been greatly improved in this version.:dragonskull:

Glory is a monster. I never played the DLC version but in this one she tears things up. She was my go-to teammate for every run. Hit her pump, throw a haste on her if you brought Dietrich along, and send her off to tear through 4 or 5 enemies on her own.

She got particularly nasty after doing her personal story fight. I opted to kill Harrow and Glory seems to have picked up the Adversary...Led to some interesting dialog post-game. Her attacks all started applying mana burn as a heavy bleed and usually did AP damage too, so she really shredded things though.

For the APEX battle I was able to leave Glory to defend the flank with no turrets active all by herself. She's very, very strong.

[sanddorn]

Originally posted by Bollockoff:

Originally posted by sanddorn:

Secondary skill with a few points: well, a mage with a totem can be quite nice.

I'm playing with an Ork Mage/Shammy at the moment and annoyingly I've found the totem stops me using all my mage spell slots. Is there any way to slot the Totem out?

Sounds like a serious bug. It works fine for me.
– That is I can't slot out the totem, but it doesn't block all other slots.

[Mauman]

Just a note about throwing. All throwing weapons have an unlisted perk. They flush enemies out of cover. With the new cover system in place this is a BIG deal. I can't list the times I've flushed out multiple enemies at once which set Eiger up to clean house with either her shotgun or sniper rifle.

The special abilites of thrown weapons are also nothing to sneeze at. AoE attack? Got it. Pinning attack? Got it (which makes certain fights and even missions a joke). Ap drain attack? Yep. Armor piercing attack? Yep.

It's a rediciuosly useful weapon group. The only problem with it is that there is no skill to increase crit chance with it, so you're stuck with a mere 1 in 3 chance of critting for the game. Though since nothing can actually be in cover against you you'll probably see more crits than normal anyways.

edit: Just noticed the flushing thing was already noted...derp

[Teh Roarist]

Originally posted by Royal_Tenenbaum:

You can always draw the enemy into a bottle neck trap that allows Eiger to tear them apart. Her 2 shots for one ap final is awesome.

Can the player get that ability as well, or is it something tied directly to Eiger via her storyline missions?

[Tigris the FUN-gineer]

Used spoiler tags here cause there may be some things people haven't seen yet.


Eiger has special sniper abilities you don't get, sadly. Leave the sniper work to Eiger. I'm tempted to say though that the shotgun spec, given how close most of the combat is, is slightly more effective... but I went sniper and I don't have regrets there.

Melee is pretty beast mode now, since you are always at max crit chance. You're basically always flanking when in melee, so you're all good.

The previously pointless SMG is now worth investing in on your main character as well. If you're going pure guns you can probably even afford to invest in SMGs and Rifles/Shotguns for some serious combo fun. The "Flush" ability late on the SMG lets you destroy an enemy's cover bonus, then combined with Eiger or... when you have the AP, a Minigun/Assault Rifle (You don't have to invest a lot into rifles to have them viable, just enough to get full auto), is just hilarious. You don't have to move around, expose yourself out of trying to get a flank, just to get that crit chance up.

Glory destroys everything, when she hits. Have Dietrich cast aim on her and just laugh as she romps through people. So too does Dante for that matter, though he's a bit squishier, his basic attack does -AP damage, so you can stunlock the crap out of your enemies. Add to that the fact that he gets to cast spells and he's pretty combat effective.

If you don't have a decker, you will have to take Blitz, I suppose. He doesn't get the flush ability, so you'll want to bring drones. Honestly my least favourite combat character.

Bleed is mostly useless for the way I go about combat, focusing down one enemy at a time to decrease enemy firepower. I can think of like, two fights where there was a big enemy where someone bled for more than a turn. Doesn't make melee not viable though. It's very much so viable, just the bleed part of it isn't worth much.

[Mauman]

Blitz get's flush eventually. Furthermore he has a decking/int of 8 with an excalibur. Add the fact that you can buy him an additional esp, killer, and sniffer he has now become nearly as good as a pc decker.

I honestly can't think of a reason to NOT use blitz now (since he's almost as good as a pc decker and THAT'S saying something). Since nobody is really near the killing potential of pc mage/samurai I would say it's best to focus on those instead. Unless you don't like his personality I guess. I like him though (in the new missions he made me laugh a ton).

I rarely use his drone nowadays actually except as a decoy. He's a decent enough shot with flush and aim. Plus he get's free cram.....that's huge in my opinion.

On Glory....yeah, when she hits. If you play on anything but normal though she can't hit the broadside of fricking barn. It irritates me that Lucky Strike is better than her in every way.

Also, you can mix and match eiger's abilities. I went with the first two shotgun abilities and the final 2 sniper upgrades since I don't care for two ap abilities.

[Tigris the FUN-gineer]

Ah, I didn't know Blitz got flush eventually. That makes him infinitely more useful. I'm usually a decker so I could care less whether I had his decking abilities, but my next playthrough I can maybe drop SMGs for another weapon.

And yeah. I've had Glory miss two full turns. I almost always get Dietrich to buff her. Lucky Strike is cool and all but I can't be bothered to spend money on her when I have a core team... for lore reasons, really. Out of curiousity, does she ever say anything more outside of her introductions in the Wienkellar?

I have to either make a new campaign or stop playing at the moment, since my AP pool reset to two after doing Glory's loyalty quest... small bug. Made a thread about it already, hoping for a solution. Unless I can figure a way to edit the save or use the console or something to bring my AP pool back to 3, I'm going to have to restart from some ways back.

[Teh Roarist]

Well, I've been progressing a bit with this character, and if Eiger is best at Sniper Rifles, I'll just stick to Assault Rifles. I stuck three points in Intelligence and Biotech, as it seems to offer a lot of good dialogue options, and more effective medkits are always good. Hope I don't end up spread too thin in the long run. I supposed I shouldn't, if I avoid Decking, thanks to Blitz's buff in the Director's Cut.

I'll probably just end up saving my melee character for a second playthrough. I don't wanna give up on Bleeds just yet, though. I'll have to see how Glory performs across the campaign, and I guess I'll use that info towards determining how I plan my melee build for the next run.

Thanks for all of the replies!