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Screw ranged attacks. If you desperately want ranged attacks, drop a point or two into hermetic magic and use magic attacks, since both hermetic and adept run off will.
Key stats for Adepts
Strength (Duh) for Damage.
Body (Duh) For Survivability
Will (Duh) For Spells.
Secondary Stats.
Quickness For Dodge
Cha For The Talkies.
The cheapest way to run an adept is this:
Body 3 (no point in advancing cyberweapons)
Quick 2 (No skills yet, pick up dodge when you have free points.)
Strength 4, Close Combat 3, Hand to Hand 3. You can pick up melee weapons instead, but killing hands and the 'bare handed' fist weapons together will do more damage in the long run.
Int 1 (screw this stuff. You're a TROLL!)
Will 4, Spellcasting 2, Adept 4. (The hardest part will be the initial ambush at the docks, before you can buy anything.)
Cha 3 (Buy Cha 4 sometime when you have the free points.)
With this build, you start with manabolt, a powerbolt weapon, a spiked fist weapon, and killing hands. While the ambush at the docks is taxing since you have ♥♥♥♥ armor and not a great health count yet. The key is to play more conservatively, and let sarge with her area spells clear things out before you rush in.
Your early game will be to pick up higher body and close combat skills, and then work your way up to max will and chi casting. The very basic ranged bolt magic should cover any ranged stuff you need until you build up your armor/health enough that you won't care about running across open ground. Don't really plan to invest any more in magic, it's a sideline for you.
This build is cheap in a number of ways. No need for paying the costs of guns or other expensive gear, your adept spells are much fewer and less costly than a mage's wider repetior. The karma cost is fairly low compared to a decker or rigger or shaman, and by the endgame, you're killing people pretty much immediately, sometimes three or four at a time.
The option of mellee weapons costs about the same karma wise, and has a nice sword in the emperor's tomb, but doesn't do quite as much damage in the end game (Even with a few of the top end swords from the shop.) On the other hand, the crowd control is better with the sword, since it has better and earlier area effect abilities. A lot of your chi powers like mobility still apply to mellee weapon builds, but it's slightly less impressive.
Hope this helped!
Get some Body and unlock that essense boost. Hell, get both points and get Wired Reflexes too. Just keep your essense above 6 and there will be no negitives. Half of my encounters resulted in 2-4 enemies being disabled before they ever got a chance to attack.
I have to say, my Dwarf adept hits hard with his Chi spells, but poorly with actually unarmed combat (although he only lags behind his Chi 9-point progression by 2 points!)
EDIT: Riffing off of what RoboPlus said, I found that between my Adept's stunning and Duncan's subdue/baton/AP-damage grenades, combats became quite the cakewalk, especially when enemies were clustered.
If you choose to not put points in affinty still consider getting muscle augmentation in both arms, as it has no affinty requirement.
I personally boosted my affinity to six and got wired reflexes, muscle augmentation on both arms, Alphaware magnification cyber eyes and the shockhand cyber weapon which put me at five essence, totally respectable imo.
Also be aware that the pain editor combined with six in cyber affinity allows you to boost chi-casting to ten as cyberboosted stats count as natural stats from certain items* allowing you to get martial defense II which normally only dwarves can get.
I also get spirit summoning to three f0r cobra totems passive damage increase and accuracy bonus.
*Enhanced articulation, cyber legs both normal and alphaware, Alphaware dermal plating and tailored pheremones are excluded from cyber affinity six's treat cyber boosted abilities as natural effect.
What's "hermetic magic"? Is this a new Hong Kong magic category?
Close combat attacks that hit knock the target out of cover. Run from foe to foe, and you can set up a number of targets for your ranged guys (usually Duncan). Use your last AP to duck under cover, as opposed to standing out in the open looking silly.
Combat adepts really start to shine once you get 3 AP. Get hasted and grab a shot of Jazz, and you are moving with 5 AP. Stride plus Leopard totem let you blaze across the battlefield.
Close combat adepts depend on speed and mobility; dwarves don't make as good a race for this, since they move a bit slower. Trolls have the best stats, with their big strength and body edge. You will want a number of Qi casting spells, especially stride, and later on, Bonded Spell.
Get 3 ranks of cyber affinity and the jolt alert, and also the magnetic arm when it becomes available. Being knocked down to 0 AP by flashbang grenades will definitely rain on your parade.
Pump strength and close combat up to 8, then you can grab some weapon skills. You want to get a good hit chance first; you want to be able to score a hit as your first priority.
Also get 3 ranks of conjuring. This will not only let you summon shrine spirits (they never turn on you, no control needed), but you can pick a totem. Get Leopard; this adds +1 to your movements and also to your Armor.
Swords vs cestus type weapons? People like both. I personally went with the shock katana (Distant Storms Foretold) and the Vampiric Dagger (Blood calls to Blood). Spider Shen will offer them for sale, but not until you have a number of runs under your belt. Use a regular machete, or else grab the Emperor Sword on the Dig run.
I wanted to go unarmed, and it was pretty dicey early on. I am pretty good at the game, and my adept got doc-wagoned in the very first fight 3 times in a row. Mainly because I didnt have any dodge skill, so the enemies all ganged up on me (also because I was out of cover - which is sort of necessary for a melee character - and I did not yet have the martial defense spell to prevent crits).
The interesting twist as the character progressed, however, was when I started planning out where I wanted to end up late-game. I was aiming for final stats of:
Body 6
Strength 9
-Close Combat 9
Will 9
-Qi Casting 9
This was intended to get reliable hit chance, good damage, and as much of the Qi Casting Damage mitigation as possible. Quickness and Dodge were not pursued because there just isnt enough karma to get the above along with those 2 (I did put 1 point into dodge, but that was it). The idea being that with Qi Casting spells, you can nerf incoming damage to a large extent:
-No enemy melee/ranged crits while Martial Defense is active
-No enemy spell crits due to Magic Resistance
-High Armor (get best available Outfit at all times) with Mystic Armor - and if armor gets lowered by enemies, then activate the ability to bump it up to counter
-Pain Reistance to get more passive damage reduction (not planning to use the activated ability because 2 AP is just to costly for what it does)
Looking at this, I came to the realization that I could settle for Will 7/Qi Casting 7 and the only thing I would lose was Pain Resistance. (Mystic Armor is equippable at Qi Casting 6 despite the description - which is good, because waiting till end game for that 1 extra armor would suck). So, dropping down to 7 for both stats freed up 34 karma for me.
Then I started looking at Cyber Affinity (I know, I know, - most folks say don't mix magic and cyber - but hear me out and follow the math).
Since I was already at Body 6, it would only cost 21 Karma to get Cyber Affinity 6 - which would get me 2 essence for slotting Cyberware without impacting spell cooldowns. Looking at the cyberware available, I settled on the following:
Pain Editor - 0 Essence, and for 2 karma to bump my Int to 2, I could leave my Willpower at 6 (the Pain Editor would bump it to 7 for me, allowing me to buy up Qi Casting to 7) this works because rank 6 of Cyber Affinity allows Cyberware bonuses (Some, not all) to count as actual stat points on the Karma screen - they appear as White dots. In build 3.1.2 the skin and leg Cyberware dot not seem to work for this, however.... but pain editor is just dandy for the Willpower. It is worth noting however that the -1 Int penalty from the editor actually *locks* your max int to the new reduced value - you cannot but your Int up later with Karma (so make sure your int is where you want it before slotting the editor). Anyways, this trick essentially saved me 5 karma - the difference between buying my Willpower up directly with Karma (cost of 7 karma) versus buying my Int up to 2 (cost of only 2 karma) so that I could use the pain editor to bump my will to 7.
So right there off the bat, that 21 point cost for Cyber affinity goes down to 16. And it gets better.
Next I was looking at Cyberware for Strength boosts. Turns out - while it is only available late game, the Muscle augmentation cyber only costs .25 essence. With 2 of those, I would gain +2 strength (and +2 quickness, which doesnt hurt anything). That would allow me to leave my Strength at 7 on the Karma screen - saving me an additional 17 Karma points (the cost of buying Str up to 8 and then 9 respectively) - while still allowing me to purchase Close Combat 9 for the improved accuracy.
OK, so now, I have actually saved myself 1 point of Karma by going with Cyber affinity - still getting those stats I wanted - sweet, right?
Here is the best part, in my opinion...
I have 1.5 essence left to play with. Guess what cyberware costs exactly 1.5 essence?
Wired Reflexes. So now I save myself 1 Karma and I also get to boost movement by +1 passively, and I can get +1 AP when activating the cyber - both of which are very good for the build.
You could go with Supra-Thyroid for More Strength, Quickness, and Body - thereby increasing the Karma savings even more and leaving more essence available for other cyberware (Maybe a Cyberweapon, Dermal Plating, etc) - but in the end I deemed the +1AP to be the most powerful boost, and something you can't get anywhere else (except for drugs - which cost more nuyen and are only usable once, or a Haste spell, both of which Wired Reflexes stacks with).
So yeah, Save Karma and become More Effective by spending 21 Karma on Cyber affinity with your Physical Adept - who'd have thought?
I will say though, saving up for the stuff, and waiting till late game for it to become available meant relying on teammates in the first 3/4 of the runs, which I kind of dislike, personally. The build is a 'late-bloomer' but it kicks some serious tail when you get there.
The Cyber Affinity trick coupled with the 'settling for 7' on Will/Qi Casting also allowed some Karma flexibility for actually raising Unarmed skill (or if you like swords you could do melee weapons - but the Qi Focus and Qi Onslaught abilitys pretty much auto-crit regardless, so you dont need melee weapons skill) because unarmed adepts tend to suffer for damage output against armored targets - higher crit chance mitigates this (and unarmed 5 unlocks the armor reducing ability in that tree as well). Yes, Pain Resistance would be nice for more damage mitigation... but that passive 2 points of it, just doesnt justify 34 Karma cost... and if you slot Lightning Strike instead, you can kill things faster which is a form of damage mitigation in itself.
For weapons I ended up with:
-Emperor's Sword (from killing the mummy at the dig site) - it does decent damage, it can be obtained early game, and it has that really nice lightning bolt attack - plus its *free*, so I can save the nuyen for other stuff
-Shock Glove (from the Whampoan weapon vendor) - its got decent unarmed damage (+2), its really cheap (350 nuyen), and that stun attack can be tactically amazing if used at the right time.
-Blood Calls to Blood - The +3 damage, bleed effect, and healing when you get a kill made this the best unarmed weapon by far. Pricy, but not as much as some other builds top-tier weaponry (ie. Minigun or Ares Alpha) but well worth it, I think.
For spells I slotted:
-Magic Resistance - not getting critted by spells means worrying a little less about urgently charging over to geek the mage on my first action - which often turned out to be tactically a catch 22 (if no geek mage, mage does bad things to party - if geek mage first, then MC exposed and enemies gang up and do bad things to him). Admittedly, late-game the damage mitigation was solid enough to handle some pretty serious incoming fire - medkits and heal spells took the rest of the edge off (I dislike using/relying on them - but even in the roughest fights - such as when fighting the Tir spy, Tsunami mercs, and the Seoulpas at the same time - it was needed only rarely (once if at all). Without magic resistance, the magic crits might have been troublesome.
-Mystic Armor
-Martial Defense I
-CounterStrike (this can be pretty amazing if you get in the middle of a group, attack until you have 1 AP left, then switch to the Emperor's sword, select the Qi Onslaught ability, and then activate CounterStrike to end your turn)
-Bonded Spell - Killing Hands & Stride - kind of a 'No Brainer' once you get Qi Casting 7
-Lightning Strike
Anyways, I hope that info is useful to some other folks.
You can mix and match cyber and magic a number of ways with cyber affinity (a skill, you may note, that didn't exist in Dragonfall). You also can have a non-magical close combat build, with full cyberization, that is also pretty vicious. The Shiawase razors are a nice step up from the basic Ares hand razors, and you can still use swords as well.
The monofilament whip is an aberration that close combat builds should ignore. It's for primarily ranged weapon users who want a little something extra, since it doesn't take up a weapon slot or need reloading.
For my magical adept build, I ended up with Distant Storms, the shock glove, and Blood Calls for weapons. Racing Fulmination also has points in it's favor, however. I like to grab a bunch of support spells from the mage and conjuring spheres to augment Qi casting. Self cast haste and heals are quite useful, and can also be used on fellow crew members.
Note that if you are able use the Strip Armor 2 focus spell, you GAIN 1 AP the next turn after a successful hit. Nice. Wild Aim is also fun, although you can also give it to Gobbet; she has the skill to use it later on in the game.
Agree with most of your info :)
I do want to mention that the Distant Storms sword, while it does have that nifty shock effect, doesn't eclipse the Emperor's sword by that much in AP damage if you are using the Qi Focus/Onslaught techniques. They pretty much always crit (I don't remember seeing any normal hits, though when my close combat was lower, there was a miss here and there). Due to the auto-crit nature of the tecniques, pretty much any sword (or a machete) will do anywhere from 2-6 AP dmg even without the Distant Storms effect. I have found the big benefit of the shock is that it also gives *ongoing* AP drain in subsequent rounds... but if I get in close enough to land a Qi Focus/Onslaught, that means the target is dead on the next round at the latest, so the shock duration rarely comes into play.
Regarding Mono-whip - yes, definitely not optimal for close combat users. It does have one really sweet benefit for the ranged builds - it allows you to dig enemies out of their cover if you hit them with it (even just a basic attack) since it counts like striking them in melee. This can work *wonders* with a shotgun (high dmg crits).
Update: I just checked in game - and on my version (3.1.2) the Emperor's sword lightning bolt is routinely giving me 99% chance to hit on enemies in Prosperity Tower. Since my quickness is only 3 (and ranged combat is 0), I can only conclude that it must use either Will/Qi Casting for its accuracy, or more likely, it is actually using Strength/Close Combat. I only remember ever missing once with it... and that ranged AP drain... so nice.