Paladin vs Cleric

[Heshynver]

What would work better for Free Game Mode?
Builds?

[Heshynver]

Is going Heavy Blade + Armor + Healing good enough?

[s1mple_girl]

yes

[Gim]

Depends on your progress, really. Thee late game melee set requires simply lvl 18 in HC or LC, skilling armor is NOT needed. Same goes for the level 48 set, which obviously only has a level req. So in essence, you only need to put points into HC and Heavy blades or heavy blunt weapons. Shields are also available for casters, so you don't even need to put points into that tree either.

So the basic idea would be:

HC 20
HB 20

WM 14
Life 14
Boons 14

LC 1 (for Berserk)

Of course you can still put points into armor for heaving more items available while leveling, but usually using armor that have level requirements rather than skill requirements are still okay.

Regarding stat point, keep wisdom and charisma on minimum reqiurements for lvl ups, the buff for you fighting abilities is still very good. Higher values in charisma strengthen the buff. You may allocate at least some points into intelligence even tho it is not required, but mana regeneration with base intelligence is really slow. Else get intelligence from equipment, if possible.

[Heshynver]

Originally posted by Gim:

Depends on your progress, really. Thee late game melee set requires simply lvl 18 in HC or LC, skilling armor is NOT needed. Same goes for the level 48 set, which obviously only has a level req. So in essence, you only need to put points into HC and Heavy blades or heavy blunt weapons. Shields are also available for casters, so you don't even need to put points into that tree either.

So the basic idea would be:

HC 20
HB 20

WM 14
Life 14
Boons 14

LC 1 (for Berserk)

Of course you can still put points into armor for heaving more items available while leveling, but usually using armor that have level requirements rather than skill requirements are still okay.

Regarding stat point, keep wisdom and charisma on minimum reqiurements for lvl ups, the buff for you fighting abilities is still very good. Higher values in charisma strengthen the buff. You may allocate at least some points into intelligence even tho it is not required, but mana regeneration with base intelligence is really slow. Else get intelligence from equipment, if possible.

So would you suggest going HC Blades(boosting up STR and STA for good stats while leaving WIS and CHAR on line of required) only for weapons and and WM Life Boons/Nature (BTW what do you think is better? Boons or Nature) for spells and maybe I could use robes and magic Shields instead of armor and regular Shields? Also are there many weapons from HC that use one hand? And is it worth making the schools from WM? Everything is for Free Game Mode.

[Gim]

Originally posted by Mr. Wood:

So would you suggest going HC Blades(boosting up STR and STA for good stats while leaving WIS and CHAR on line of required) only for weapons

Yeah, using HC for weapons only is a good idea. But keep in mind, that, if you skill WM, Life and Boons to level 14, you still have 17 points to put in anyther skilltree (for example into heavy armors or shields), it is just not necessary. But if it eases your progress, go ahead.

Originally posted by Mr. Wood:

and WM Life Boons/Nature (BTW what do you think is better? Boons or Nature) for spells

Exactly, life and boons for spells. Not only is nature almost completely useless for you, but boons is a must have, since it is the one offering the most absurd spells like aura of eternity, invulnerability, Hallow etc. Life is needed for healing and also offers strong buffs like aura od strength and stamina.So yeah, life/boons is the way to got for this particular hybrid.

Originally posted by Mr. Wood:

and maybe I could use robes and magic Shields instead of armor and regular Shields?

Yeah, using caster shields was exactly my idea. For the robes, you can use them too, however i think its more beneficial to use heavy armors, that boost both combat and magic stats. You can often find these types of items only having a level requirement, rather than needing the heavy armor skill.

Originally posted by Mr. Wood:

Also are there many weapons from HC that use one hand?

Yeah, a decent amount, not sure how many though. But its okay to get through the game.

Originally posted by Mr. Wood:

And is it worth making the schools from WM?

You mean, whether you should make a paladin (HC/WM) at all? I dunno. The paladin gets his strength through his buffs, which increase his combat stats (fight speed, dexterity, agility and run speed are increased by aura of eternity, strength and stamina by their respective auras), but obviously has lower base stats, since he has to put points into wisdom and charisma to get the buffs in the first place.

A pure heavy warrior gets none of these boosts, but has higher base stats and is ultra tanky given the fact that he can use the strongest armors and shields in combination with absurd hitpoints. Its really up to you i suppose.

Originally posted by Mr. Wood:

Everything is for Free Game Mode.

Yeah, i got that. All i said works in free game mode.

[mltnschroeder]

Originally posted by Mr. Wood:

So would you suggest going HC Blades(boosting up STR and STA for good stats while leaving WIS and CHAR on line of required) only for weapons and and WM Life Boons/Nature (BTW what do you think is better? Boons or Nature) for spells and maybe I could use robes and magic Shields instead of armor and regular Shields? Also are there many weapons from HC that use one hand? And is it worth making the schools from WM? Everything is for Free Game Mode.

Boons has Hallow (which is awesome vs undead + shadows and useless against everything else) and Aura of FF, which is awesome IF your avatar can hit worth a damn. I don't know if you have noticed in 1st person mode, but when your avatar hits, it interrupts the enemy's attack/spell. So combine AoFF w/ high DEX, and you can lay on the pain while hardly taking a scratch yourself. Nature has Thorn Shield, which is nice if annoying because it does not auto-recast when it expires.

There are certainly some great HL robes and magic shields, and many decent armors eventually can be worn that have only a simple HCA requirement. Which ones are better probably has more to do with stat boosts and immunities than absolute AC,imo. The problem is getting there. So if at LL if you can get by with less armor, then no problems.

[Heshynver]

Originally posted by Gim:

Yeah, using HC for weapons only is a good idea. But keep in mind, that, if you skill WM, Life and Boons to level 14, you still have 17 points to put in anyther skilltree (for example into heavy armors or shields), it is just not necessary. But if it eases your progress, go ahead.

So after going for HC Blades and requaierd WM skills I'll still have 17 points? Maybe I'll start with Armor after all. You say go for 14 in WM, is that some most effective lvl? not worth going further than that? I've also read that it is not best idea to max HC as the adventages are tiny.

Originally posted by Gim:

Exactly, life and boons for spells. Not only is nature almost completely useless for you, but boons is a must have, since it is the one offering the most absurd spells like aura of eternity, invulnerability, Hallow etc. Life is needed for healing and also offers strong buffs like aura od strength and stamina.So yeah, life/boons is the way to got for this particular hybrid.

Got it, Life/Boons works best, seemd to me like that from begining since only useful spells I saw in Nature were summons.

Originally posted by Gim:

Yeah, using caster shields was exactly my idea. For the robes, you can use them too, however i think its more beneficial to use heavy armors, that boost both combat and magic stats. You can often find these types of items only having a level requirement, rather than needing the heavy armor skill.

So going for armor would still be better than robes? ok, I'll see that. So guess HC Armor isn't as usefull but since I'll have free point Ill go for it.

Originally posted by Gim:

You mean, whether you should make a paladin (HC/WM) at all? I dunno. The paladin gets his strength through his buffs, which increase his combat stats (fight speed, dexterity, agility and run speed are increased by aura of eternity, strength and stamina by their respective auras), but obviously has lower base stats, since he has to put points into wisdom and charisma to get the buffs in the first place.

Why can't it be WIS and INT :D it would be much easier, eeeeh but unfortuynetly WM requaiers charisama which I never liked coz her statistics were never clear to me and on forums people still fully don't know how it works, same with HP gain.

Originally posted by Gim:

A pure heavy warrior gets none of these boosts, but has higher base stats and is ultra tanky given the fact that he can use the strongest armors and shields in combination with absurd hitpoints. Its really up to you i suppose.

Yeah I alsways liked going for full HC (I have 'Huge HP' fetish in games) but after some time It seemed like I had 2 uselles skills maxed out (Shields and Blunt) since I never used them, so thats why I started to be interested in adding my secand favourite WM, to make most use of having Big HP and Some usefull Spells.
I'd like to pack as much as possible into STR and STA (for my fetish), requaierd amount for WM and just a little bit for INT, just to be save.



Thank you for all your tips, I ask so much coz I'm planing longer game.

[Heshynver]

Originally posted by mltnschroeder:

Originally posted by Mr. Wood:

So would you suggest going HC Blades(boosting up STR and STA for good stats while leaving WIS and CHAR on line of required) only for weapons and and WM Life Boons/Nature (BTW what do you think is better? Boons or Nature) for spells and maybe I could use robes and magic Shields instead of armor and regular Shields? Also are there many weapons from HC that use one hand? And is it worth making the schools from WM? Everything is for Free Game Mode.

Boons has Hallow (which is awesome vs undead + shadows and useless against everything else) and Aura of FF, which is awesome IF your avatar can hit worth a damn. I don't know if you have noticed in 1st person mode, but when your avatar hits, it interrupts the enemy's attack/spell. So combine AoFF w/ high DEX, and you can lay on the pain while hardly taking a scratch yourself. Nature has Thorn Shield, which is nice if annoying because it does not auto-recast when it expires.

There are certainly some great HL robes and magic shields, and many decent armors eventually can be worn that have only a simple HCA requirement. Which ones are better probably has more to do with stat boosts and immunities than absolute AC,imo. The problem is getting there. So if at LL if you can get by with less armor, then no problems.

Thank you also, all that help is going to be usefull, and I'll ask you as well, are there any particular LVLs in HC and WM on which I could stop puting points into them, that would be most efficient? I often hear that maxing skills is not always beneficial. Coz I would like to get :
HC:
- Blades
- Armor (+/-)
WM:
- Life
- Boons

[mltnschroeder]

Well, it sounds like you put more weight on the destination than the journey, or rather you want to max HL power rather than ease your early game. That is fine, but that is why HC-armor/shield becomes "useless". It wasn't useless when you were only lvl 1-16 though.

SO maybe check out this page[wiki.spellforce.de], using google translate if you don't understand german. It has all the blade weapons and armors from SotP. You can decide what you think is worth spending the points on.

In the earlier games (OoD, BoW), imo HCA-Blunt is better for absolute damage output than blades, even though there are no HL "magic" blunt weapons. Cause when you are doing 100+ damage per hit (with STR boosts), who cares if it is magic or not. But I think you see the point now that unless there is a specific equipment/spell you want at a higher skill level, it makes no sense to spend your skill pts in that school of expertise. That plus some attributes are still important, even if they are not required for your chosen skills, is why I think talking about "good builds" in terms of absolute max skill levels is sometimes misleading.

Finding the right balance for dps/hps and mana-regen/expenditure and synergy with equipment stat boosts or other quirks of the game engine (like interrupting enemy attacks) is more important than absolute maxed skill level imo.

[Heshynver]

Originally posted by mltnschroeder:

Well, it sounds like you put more weight on the destination than the journey, or rather you want to max HL power rather than ease your early game. That is fine, but that is why HC-armor/shield becomes "useless". It wasn't useless when you were only lvl 1-16 though.

SO maybe check out this page[wiki.spellforce.de], using google translate if you don't understand german. It has all the blade weapons and armors from SotP. You can decide what you think is worth spending the points on.

In the earlier games (OoD, BoW), imo HCA-Blunt is better for absolute damage output than blades, even though there are no HL "magic" blunt weapons. Cause when you are doing 100+ damage per hit (with STR boosts), who cares if it is magic or not. But I think you see the point now that unless there is a specific equipment/spell you want at a higher skill level, it makes no sense to spend your skill pts in that school of expertise. That plus some attributes are still important, even if they are not required for your chosen skills, is why I think talking about "good builds" in terms of absolute max skill levels is sometimes misleading.

Thanks for the site. Looking at it, seems like the HC Armor isn't really worth taking as you'll get many great Armors by just leveling, only the weapon skills are 100% useful. But since I'll have 17 points left even if id max 3 other skills than I guess. Also is it worth maxing magic skills? Coz I see that all of them are available at 13, what are benefits of going higher coz It's not written anywhere, are the numbers significant, the manacost if only 1 mana per lvl.

[Heshynver]

By any chance don't you guys know how HP works? Is it retroactive or the gain per lvl depends by the STA you have at the moment? Or is there a fixed amout you get per lvl and the STA just increases the overall HP?

[Gim]

The reason why you shouldn't increase WM too much is, that per spell level you only increase the bonus of the spell by roughly 1 percent. Charisma has a much higher effect here. However, you need to put points into other stats, since the bonus is applied to the stat points you have. If you have a really high charisma but only base level dex, str and sta, the total buff doesn't turn out to be very helpful. Rather you want a smaller buff on a large base.

[Heshynver]

Originally posted by Gim:

The reason why you shouldn't increase WM too much is, that per spell level you only increase the bonus of the spell by roughly 1 percent. Charisma has a much higher effect here. However, you need to put points into other stats, since the bonus is applied to the stat points you have. If you have a really high charisma but only base level dex, str and sta, the total buff doesn't turn out to be very helpful. Rather you want a smaller buff on a large base.

So it would be best to just stay at 13 in Life and Boons for what it seems. Lower manacost and effectivnes will come from charisma.

[Heshynver]

After calculating it looks like:
We can get 98 skill points at lvl 50, -2 coz we're using them at begining.

HC: 1 + 19

Armor: 1 + 19

Blade: 0 + 20

Together = 38 + 20 = 58
____________________________________________

WM: 0 + 13

Life: 0 + 13

Boons: 0 + 13

Together = 39
____________________________________________
Skill Points needed = 97
We have 98 so it leaves us with 1 skill point unused.

||||||||||||||||||||||||

We start with 25 points in every stat and 30 to use for free.
We can gain 5 points per lvl - 5 from first lvl, so we get 245 points at lvl 50, + 30 free points gives us 275 points to use.
To get requaierd stats for lvl 13 WM Life and Boons we need 88 points (74 WIS + 64 CHA - 25 from each). Leaves us with 187 points.
To get requaierd stats for lvl 20 HC Armor and Blade we need 144 points (112 STR + 112 STA - 25 from each - 15 from each). Leaves us with 43 points to use. From which we can put some into DEX and INT.