advantages over different challenge types?

[General Jah]

Hey guys I have a question on the challenge types you choose.

Some challenge skills such as magic for example are really difficult to get good stats for but others such as social seem much easier. Given the choice should you always choose the one your group has the best stats on or are their advantages for choosing say magic based on the encounter type?

I guess what im also wondering is if you have a three skull challenge across the board, will some of those types be easier depending on the type of creatures you face and if so how can you guess which one will be the most favorable to your group?

[listless]

Generally speaking, you should always lean on your people's strength. Usually the number of skulls indicates that one path is easier than another.

Sometimes an enemy's weakness compels you to choose one option over another. Such as using social skills against Goblins, stealth against Giants, or magic against Vily.

[the_charch]

it also depends on the rewards you want, a lot of magic challeges reward either more magic, an elf or a buff to magic so they can be worthwhile. some of the social events can be then fought as well for more xp/ stats/ buffs or loot (a few bandit events among others).
magic is basicly social for undead, and you can only fight or stealth giants if you start the fight so end game you gotta be able to do one or both of fight and social.
usually 3 people with +5 magic will win a 3 skull magic fight, stealth and hunt are also fairly easy too. physical can be really tuff unless your a warrior group, and social depends on what your facing. scavegers are usually pretty low, so are most goblins.

[General Jah]

Ah so certain creature types definitely are better at certain skills than others?

[listless]

For sure.
Beating Orcs and Goblins at social challenges is pretty simple, but just throw in a few enemies with comparable Social attributes like a Matriarch and a couple Orc Witches, or a few Shamans for the Goblins, and the social challenge becomes much tougher.

As well those five skull Undead with Enchanters and the like, or those wandering Cultists and hordes of Bound Spirits - can be quite difficult to challenge with Hex related attributes.

The wiki has some good information on the abilities of different classes, and I believe there are a few guides here that discuss classes to some extent.

[Davypi]

As a side to all of this, another advantage to other conflict types over combat is that you don't risk injuring you team. A successful combat encounter can still cause a team member to be injured. Winning a non-combat test (sneak, social, strength, tactics, etc.) causes no harm to the party but you still typically get the same loot. I often like to get three or four heroes built up on tactics or sneak. You can pass a lot of encounters this way without putting anyone in danger.

[the_charch]

sneak is huge because it is the only non combat you can do vs giants.

[Hugo]

Social and combat -challenges are a bit different from the rest. This is becouse the challenges for social and combat are not really indicated by the skull level.

A level 3 undead combat challenge might include 4 skeletons (a piece of cake really) or 4 living corpses + 12 skeletons (impossible to win - until relatively late in game)

Yet both challenges are equally as easy/difficult when initiating a sneak challenge. If you are certain you easily can kill of theese 4 skeletons whitout major injury, but uncertain you will win a level 3-sneak challenge, just initiate combat. Even though you should generally avoid combat if you can, losing a non-combat challenge, may fatally injure one of your members.

On the other hand, if you face this mob of 4 living corpses + 12 skeleton, then initiate that sneak challenge, even if you are unsure of the outcome.


Likewise, the social- challenge option, as has been mentioned, is not dependent of skulls at all but on what you are facing. (you really cannot lose a skull level 3 social challenge against 3 goblins warriors for instance not matter how this is considered a 3-skull social combat)


When facing events or when visiting locations though, the skulls for the social challenges are more prone to show the actual difficulty of the challenge. Theese are also the only situations were you see different skulls for different types of challenges and here, they generally represent the actual difficulty for all of your options. (in general, not always)


Sneak is often a good choice, since both your counter-offence option AND main attack value are based on stealth and stealth is very easy to obtain in this game due to the fact that the value is futher boosted by dexterity and there are so very many items that gives you dexterity. Additionally, you can counter tactic cards with the "will" value. This more or less gives you the option to counter tactic cards with those characters that are bad at sneaking. Even the warrior-class is good at sneak- challenges, becouse of the tactic-skill.

This beeing said, as long as you have more cards than your opponent, your should more or less always be able to pull off a sneak-victory - even whitout beeing particulary skilled in the card game.

Other challenge types .. well, you need to more carefully monitor and develop the skills your party is having.

[glythe]

Something no one has mentioned yet is that magic encounters are usually extremely easy because they assume you won't have much of it. But once you start to master the game and min/max the materials you will realize that you can pretty easily give +8 magic to a number of your villagers with gear. If you have someone with 4-5 magic and you give them 8-10 more you will solo any magic encounter with that character.

Stealth and Tactics are the most powerful abilties in regular fights. Ranged is something you can add to every character too (and it really starts to matter when you decide to fight giants).

Magic is just a great power overall as it gives you a lot of bonuses in challenges and gives you more dialogue options.

[Hugo]

Originally posted by glythe:

Something no one has mentioned yet is that magic encounters are usually extremely easy because they assume you won't have much of it. But once you start to master the game and min/max the materials you will realize that you can pretty easily give +8 magic to a number of your villagers with gear. If you have someone with 4-5 magic and you give them 8-10 more you will solo any magic encounter with that character.

Stealth and Tactics are the most powerful abilties in regular fights. Ranged is something you can add to every character too (and it really starts to matter when you decide to fight giants).

Magic is just a great power overall as it gives you a lot of bonuses in challenges and gives you more dialogue options.

Hex is easy, becouse (as far as I remember) there are no events that present hex-challenges higher than skull 2.

If you play as Veles, you don't need to develop magic to any degree during the course of the game.

[glythe]

There are at least 2 challenges with a 3 hex rating but they are super rare.