Willpower is by far the most powerful attribute, here is why. (Plus a build)

[Vain]

I don't know if this is common knowledge or not but I haven't seen many people discussing the utterly game breaking potential of pumping the willpower attribute, so I thought I would shed some light on it if there are some out there who are unaware.

It occurred to me that many might be ignorant of the strength of a willpower focused character awhile back when people were complaining about the glimmer spawns making a pure esper unplayable, which simply isn't true for the reasons I am about to go over.

Below are some examples, off the top of my head of how powerful boosting willpower can be once you have 32(+8) in the attribute. (Note you never need more than 32(+8) willpower as at that point you have a 80% cool down reduction on all skills and powers, to a minimum of 5 turns which is a hard coded maximum reduction).

1. Permanent Buffs:

You can VERY easily make such powers as Force Bubble/Wall, Ego Projection, Clairvoyance, Sprint (with Conatus) entirely permanent as your cool downs are now shorter than the duration of the powers. This is true by level 24 even if you don't place a single mutation point in them or an attribute point in ego, as long as you start with at least 18 ego.

2. Ego projection giving INSANE attribute scores due to stacking.

Not only can you make Ego Projection permanent but you can stack multiple iterations of it on top of itself leading to semi-permanent Strength/Agility/Toughness scores between 40-60. (Depending on starting stats and ego amount).

3. Ability to spam crazy powerful powers.

You can use sunder mind every 6 rounds, you can disintegrate every 20 rounds and the 3 rounds of down time after matters very little because that is what perma-force bubble is for.

Powers like freezing hands or more importantly cryokinesis will become available so quickly that you can keep almost all enemies permanently frozen as your freeze powers cool down much faster than they can warm up to get rid of their frozen status.

Another example is if you pump Temporal Fugue you can get it to the point where your clones are present 32 of every 40 rounds. Which means you can have 7 mind sundering, teleporting clones who are basically always around randomly teleporting about killing everything on the current map with their minds & weapons. (Assuming maxed fugue and 22 ego score which you will naturally have by level 24 with a starting ego of 18). Even more insanely if you have a sphinx salt injector in your inventory the clones will use this causing their own Temporal Fugue to be available before their own timers run out, and THEY WILL EACH SPAWN 7 MORE OF THEMSELVES MAKING AN ARMY OF POTENTIALLY 49 CLONES AT ONCE. It is awesome!!!

Yet another example of this is you can get BERSERK (Every hit with an axe dismembers) on a 20 round cool down which due to the fact that the power itself lasts 5 rounds means that a full 1/4 of the time every single connect with an axe dismembers. At that point you basically don't care about actual damage anymore and you can just hack all the limbs off of everything making them harmless until you inevitably cut their heads off with decapitate. Getting the 32 wisdom and the required 29 strength for BERSERK is a little tricky but it can easily be accomplished with double-muscled. By the way don't worry about the movement speed decrease because you have perma-sprint!

4. Much lower glimmer than an ego build.

I like 18 starting ego and I never put another point into it. By level 24 you have 22(+3) ego which allows for a maximum skill level of 13 for mental mutations this is more than enough for devastating sunder minds, disintegrates etc... which can now be used so much more frequently that if something happens to survive your first salvo you have another one coming in just a few rounds. Meanwhile, keeping your ego lower means you are not getting higher than necessary glimmer scores as your more moderate ego isn't needlessly boosting powers that you don't really need any higher because their cool downs are already so low with your willpower. (Force Bubble/Wall, Teleport, Clairvoyance etc...)

Now without further ado here is my personal favorite willpower based character build:

The Teleporting, Clone Army Creating, Vibro-blade Dual Wielding, Mind-Melting, Chrome Pyramid Slayer.

(Mutated Human)

Starting Attributes:

Strength: 14
Agility: 15 (you can put this extra point in anything you want, 14 starting agility is enough)
Toughness: 18
Intelligence: 13 (for duelist stance at lvl 24).
Willpower: 22 (Will take pilgrim for a starting willpower of 24, boost this til you have 32 then focus on something else. I like agility for more +To-Hit)
Ego: 18

Mutations:

*Hemophilia defect (you will take the pilgrim background which starts with meditate to survive bleeding early on, don't worry it always works. Once you have more HP this defect becomes almost entirely irrelevant.)

*Sunder Mind — Max 10 points.

*Temporal Fugue — Max 10 points.

*Clairvoyance — 6 points for 10 point full map permanent vision at level 24 (with your ego bonus).

*Teleportation — No points until lvl 25, then pump this after. Even with no points your teleport cool down will only be in the 30 round — 20 round range which is more than manageable and after lvl 25 you can continue to pump this until you have the lowest possible 5 round cooldowns.

Notes:

1. I like to wear AV armor and with 14 starting strength you can get by, though your carry capacity barely supports being decked out in fullerite until you get perma-whole map clairvoyance at which point you can ditch the floating glow sphere for a hoversled.

2. Shoot for dual-wielding vibroblades and then upgrade to ceremonial vibro-kopeshs, once you have them you & your clones can hit reasonably hard on anything regardless of its AV and your lowish Strength score is irrelevant, it's killer.

3. This build starts to bloom at lvl 10 or so and only gets much more powerful, but expect a slightly rough start as you will be weaker than a pure strength fighter so you will have to play smart at first, running and waiting for your powers to cool down. Take conatus early to aid in survival.

4. By the time you are level 25 with 2 vibroblades/kopeshs you will be able to create 7 clones, 32 rounds out of every 40, the last 10 or so of which they will all pop their own Sphinx salt induced temporal fugues creating an addition 7 clones for each surviving clone. These clones will teleport around seeking things to destroy and when their sunder mind doesn't work (which will at this point 1 shot all enemies with a mind except for rhinoxs and lava crabs) they will carve them up with their blades instead. You can usually clear out a whole map with 2 cool downs worth of temporal fugue by just sitting there safely doing nothing but letting rounds pass. I have killed both Leering Stalkers and Chrome Pyramids with this build, but expect to go through a few cool downs of clones in order to take them down (more than a few for the pyramids but it works nonetheless). Also obviously keep your actual character as far away as possible because the pyramid will kill you if you get too close and don't teleport away.

5. ALWAYS let your clones sunder mind an enemy which you suspect might have mental mirror as that way they will take the damage and eat up the charges for you. (this includes any special/legendary pink enemy).

6. A fun alternate version of this build is to ditch fugue and teleport and instead take force bubble, disintegration and ego projection. Max disintegration but don't put anything in bubble or projection until you have maxed sunder mind, disintegration and got your 6 points in clairvoyance.

[Vain]

Saad Amus is super easy with the above character. Your clones will swarm him spamming sundermind and pretty much instantly kill him if you are high enough level. Even if not they will box him in by surrounding him while you are safe to sunder his mind repeatedly from a whole map away via teleport + clairvoyance.

That is why I suggest farming a second kopesh for dual wielding from a clone on a deep lvl of underground (ruins) as he is so easy to kill.

[Zalpha]

Wow thanks for this, I had no idea.

[[GAS] JDUBS]

Any willpower builds for True Kin or Chimera?

[Fridge]

Originally posted by jdubs:

Any willpower builds for True Kin or Chimera?

I had a really good run with a flaming hands/quills/electrical generation chimera. This was before they changed willpower to apply to non-mental abilities, so it'll be even more powerful now. I'd take acid gas generation instead of electrical generation though, or electromagnetic pulse if you want to take down leering stalkers and chrome pyramids later on.

[[GAS] JDUBS]

That sounds fun...but i heard quills were bad?

[Vain]

Flaming/freezing hands is good with a little wisdom. Just remember that the minimum cooldown is 5 rounds.

So as the cooldown for flaming/freezing hands is 10 by default you should only need 26(+5) wisdom to get them to their lowest possible cool down.

This leaves alot more stat points for physical stats for a chimera build based around freezing or flaming hands.

For a full wisdom(32) build as a true-kin or a chimera I would build it more around one of the ultimate weapon skills like berserk, demolish, ultrafire, empty the clips etc... Seeing as their cooldowns are larger so you get more bang for you buck outta the wisdom stat investment.

[Fridge]

Originally posted by jdubs:

That sounds fun...but i heard quills were bad?

It gives you access to an attack with high damage, nearly 100% accuracy, and no cooldown until you've used it a few times. It's even better than a standard melee attack in most cases for low/medium strength builds. Being able to hit all adjacent enemies at once is an added bonus.

The impale damage enemies take from attacking you is also fairly high. Having up to 6 AV with no DV penalty isn't too bad either.

[shakezoola]

I tried out a build like this last night and had a great time. I made a few changes, however.

Starting stats:
str: 10
agil: 10
tough: 14
int: 10
will: 24
ego: 24
Then picked Greybeard for the +3 will

With 24 ego you'll get some pretty high starting bonuses to your mutations, so I ended up getting to level 8 or 9 before I could even put mutation points into any of them.

The upside to this is that I was able to buy two random mutations - I ended up gambling for cryofreeze and stunning blast. Stunning blast was awful with temporal fugues - the clones will stun you - but cryofreeze was great, as I could easily deal with just about *any* enemy. The cooldown of cryofreeze was around 12 rounds or so by the time I picked it up, which is short enough to keep something permanently frozen!

I eventually died by getting chain stunned by my clones. Definitely not picking stunning blast again for any reason, that was my mistake.


The early levels certainly are awful, but here's my strategy for getting to level 10 or so relatively risk free:

1) Get the zealot's quest in Joppa to visit SDS
2) Loot all the houses in Joppa and sell everything so you have a minimum of 100 drams of water
3) Leave joppa, beelining your way up to SDS
4) On visiting SDS, you'll instantly hit level 4 or 5 thanks to the quest
5) From then on, I roam the desert, finding any screen with the birds that throw flame at you - their name escapes me. You can kill these things with one or two sunder minds, and each nets 375xp!
6) After level 10 or so, I headed to the jungle and let my clones do work. I picked up another three levels amazingly quickly.

On future runs, I'll probably do steps 1-3, then pick my random mutation. If I don't get a good pick like ego projection, I'll probably immediately restart and repeat steps #1-3 again. As the original post states, chaining multiple ego projections is insanely good, absolutely game breakingly awesome!

[Fridge]

Originally posted by shakezoola:

I tried out a build like this last night and had a great time. I made a few changes, however.

Starting stats:
str: 10
agil: 10
tough: 14
int: 10
will: 24
ego: 24
Then picked Greybeard for the +3 will

With 24 ego you'll get some pretty high starting bonuses to your mutations, so I ended up getting to level 8 or 9 before I could even put mutation points into any of them.

The upside to this is that I was able to buy two random mutations - I ended up gambling for cryofreeze and stunning blast. Stunning blast was awful with temporal fugues - the clones will stun you - but cryofreeze was great, as I could easily deal with just about *any* enemy. The cooldown of cryofreeze was around 12 rounds or so by the time I picked it up, which is short enough to keep something permanently frozen!

I eventually died by getting chain stunned by my clones. Definitely not picking stunning blast again for any reason, that was my mistake.


The early levels certainly are awful, but here's my strategy for getting to level 10 or so relatively risk free:

1) Get the zealot's quest in Joppa to visit SDS
2) Loot all the houses in Joppa and sell everything so you have a minimum of 100 drams of water
3) Leave joppa, beelining your way up to SDS
4) On visiting SDS, you'll instantly hit level 4 or 5 thanks to the quest
5) From then on, I roam the desert, finding any screen with the birds that throw flame at you - their name escapes me. You can kill these things with one or two sunder minds, and each nets 375xp!
6) After level 10 or so, I headed to the jungle and let my clones do work. I picked up another three levels amazingly quickly.

On future runs, I'll probably do steps 1-3, then pick my random mutation. If I don't get a good pick like ego projection, I'll probably immediately restart and repeat steps #1-3 again. As the original post states, chaining multiple ego projections is insanely good, absolutely game breakingly awesome!

A good starting combo for builds like that is clairvoyance, teleportation, and sunder mind. When you start out, go to the canyons and use clairvoyance to search for sealed off areas within the walls. After that, teleport there and pick off all the enemies on the screen with sunder mind. Equimaxes are a particularly good target for exp. If you can't find any enclosed areas, simply kiting and teleporting around your enemies as you kill them works just a well.

Put all your attribute points into ego and spend all your mutation points on getting new mutations. Mental mirror should be your first choice if you see it since you'll be dealing with psychic enemies later on. Precognition, mass mind, ego projection, temporal fugue, and force bubble/wall are also good picks.

Later in the game, wander around the dessert and try to encounter and kill the psychic enemies that come after you. Whenever you kill one, there's a 10% chance for you to gain a permanent +1 boost to your ego.

[shakezoola]

@Fridge - I can't imagine doing this build without temporal fugue at the start, its the entire reason the build works.

[Fridge]

Originally posted by shakezoola:

@Fridge - I can't imagine doing this build without temporal fugue at the start, its the entire reason the build works.

Sure, you'll lack raw damage, but you'll be practically invincible and invisible to anything that can't teleport. Eventually having unlimited visibility and mobility is also very useful.