Character builds

[tofucsek]

After some thorough search regarding different character builds, I've come across with the repeated opinion when ppl claiming that magic on higher lvl is useless due to high enemy resistance. I've only invested around 10 hours into the game so far and even though that I usually play mage characters, it would be great to have some input which could save me from some frustrating gameplay on higher lvls.

If that's being the case, what character build would you recommend trying out? Some detailed specifics would be much appreciated (main stat distribution, skills to pick, weapons to look for, etc).

[Elendil / Redshift]

They are talking about third party expansions for the old iPhone version of the game.

In the base game and in Islands of Ice and Fire you'll not have this problem.

(We are planning to add Steamworks integration to the game, so that anyone can create expansions. When that is done, it's likely some of those expansions will be updated and released for Steam by their creators. Hopefully they'll correct the magic resistance problem. :) I think they are aware of it.)

[tofucsek]

Thank you for ypur reply.

I've decided to create an undead battlemage, focusong on Str, Int and Endurance. She is a real beast, however I'm having trouble with certain unded casters who just loves to annihilate me in melee range.

My new project is a ranged toon, focusing on dex, int and endurance. She is doing well so far, I'd like to see how she'll hold up against those pesky undead mages. Will be back to report.

[tofucsek]

When it comes to improving damage, do you guys prefer to enchant main attributes or weapon related ones? As an example: ranged is governed by Dexterity, Accuracy and Light Weapons. Which one should I raise through enchanting? Same question would be for using a heavy weapon build.

[Ichthyic]

the single decent potion you can make as an alchemist is a 110% magic resistance potion, and you only need 30 alchemy to do it. it just gets better from there.

it will say you probably aren't high enough skill to make it, but really it should only fail about 25% of the time... so just reload.

easy formula:

C. vulgaris + Necromancer's Nightshade

Pick the "unknown" formula to make your magic resist pot.

so with a single decent piece of magic resistance gear, and your homemade potion, those nasty casters aren't a problem any more, even for undead.

FWIW... I found strength to be rather isolated as a stat. it does not contribute to armor like endurance or dex, but both of those also contribute to your carryweight, and dex to your damage as well with any light weapon. so you get more bang for your buck with a dex build instead of a strength build IMO.

so that said, I think going the dex route wtih light weapons dual wielded, or even single with a shield (also DEX!) is far better. and endurance is more important than either strength or dex.

for you battlemage (which is what I made as well, but Derth), 50% more int than endurance, 50% more endurance than dex... and a smattering of points to personality was more than sufficient for points distribution. I never put a single point in strength except from perm stat potions I found. You can always fortify it for any quest that requires you to use a heavy weapon (think there is only one?)

Mystic Katana is easy to buy from either Phrynn or Mithria, and it does pretty much top damage, plus has 350 enchantment points to play with.

go heavy armor, as again, champ armor is easy to get (even from the easy nobleman's quest early on) and is highly enchantable again, plus has 16 armor.

I went heavy armor caster, shield, light weapons, boosting protection magic and attack magic, and have zero regrets. I rarely take any significant damage, even when surrounded by superior foes. later I added skill in dual wield just to kill casters faster that cast resist magic on themselves.


"When it comes to improving damage, do you guys prefer to enchant main attributes or weapon related ones?"

damage scales better with attack skills instead of stats, but stats are much more important on the defensive, resistance, and support sides. I balance it out, and put stats on my armor, and skills on my weapons. For magic users... scaling magic skill level has equivalent scaled mana costs, so you absolutely need to boost int signficantly with at least some of your gear, or you will be popping mana pots like candy, which takes away significantly from your dps in big fights. for physical fighters, not quite as important, since there is no "stamina" attribute, so boosting skills has far less of a downside.

that aside... you can always try out using various fortifying potions and see what floats your boat.

[tofucsek]

Thank you for your detailed reply.

Even though I prefer to play caster caracters in most games, I've been fiddling around with melee in this game.

Few downside I've found:

-weapons deteriorate very quickly so repair skill is almost a must have
-caster mobs in melee tend to use more debuffs (especially paralyze), which means that I have to boost those resistances on top of magic res as well

I'd be keen to give your dual wield build a go but trying to figure out which 6 main skills to choose. Environmental, alchemy, repair, heavy armor, dual wield (or just focus on light weapons?) light weapons all seem like a must have, which still leaves me short for other important skills. Could you give advice on how did you build your toon?

Your help would be much appreciated, thanks in advance.

PS. I've built a pure mage focusing on attack magic but the mana cost is just simply insane, using 3-4 full mana potions in almost every fight with more than 2-3 enemies.

UPDATE

Tried the dual wield with light weapons, dual wield, enviro magic, heavy armor, repair and prot magic skills. Not overly fond of it so far, taking forever to kill something. Checked Mythria for best off hand weapon and I could only found one with 10-20 dmg (dagger) with +5 dual wield, which is a bit poor compared to the 20-35 katana.
Do you find it important to actually boost prot magic? I found that using wands are a tremendous help as they come in all sizes and shapes. In last 2 cities it's easy to pick up empty ones with 800 enchant slots, that's a whole lot of stone skin or other prot magic I can cast without using any mana. Usually I run around with plenty of wands, for example restoration, mark, recall, create food, stoneskin, magic immunity, strong magic res, recharge wand, etc. I was thinking about doing a build which actually focuses heavily of using wands for most situations.

[Ichthyic]

for the main game, you can focus on a handful of skills, and use trainers, then books, to supplement the rest. there is no attack magic trainer, though, so plan to spend most of your skill points there if you go mage.

I made the mistake of listening to the advice of guides saying to make alchemy a primary skill.

for the regular game... this is totally unecessary. there is an alchemy trainer in every city, and TONS of books to pump that skill; far more than for any other skill.

If I had it to do over, this would be my ideal battle mage build:

light wep
heavy armor
attack magic
protection magic
mind magic
environment magic.

secondarily put a few points in block just to make it to mithria for the block trainer, the rest take care of themselves through use or trainers + books.

mind you... this is for base game, with no expansions.

with expansions installed, I would be saving a lot of books for later.

at level 15, by derth looked like this:

melee damage: 36-60
armor: 75
health: 240
mana: 500
fashionable (hey, style is important!)

strength: 11
dex: 40
end: 50
int: 94
pers: 25

77% magic resist (just 3% short of cap, thanks derth!)
25% poison and disease resist (with no boosting gear)
33% paralysis resist (again, with no boosting gear)


94 in attack magic, over 60 in all other magic skills, light weapon, heavy and light armor (without ever training light armor, btw), 80 alchemy, 55 block, and 45 dual wield.

that's with my standard loadout near endgame.


oh, things I learned late:

robes are the same as capes (they take the same slot, NOT the armor slot)
the mystic katana is the best weapon in the game (buy several, and enchant them with different skills), and it's easy to get in mithri

yup wands are your friends. buy empty superior wands in mithria and enchant them up with the magic skills you are lowest on, like I can make a wand of paralysis at skill level 100, where my own skill level is only 61, and since that is also a costly spell to cast, might as well carry some wands of it.

level 100 stoneskin, paralyze, resist, disarm, unlock... good wands to have for the last half of the game.

also, lightning storm wands (find these or buy them... for some reason I cannot make ones that rival the ones you can find already in the game... level 60 with 8 to 10 charges? I can make a level 66 with 4 charges... but they must be using high base enchant wands :)

didn't find fireball to be all that useful, especially now that the patches made magic resist cap at 80%, so you self harm whenever you use the spell :P

[Ichthyic]

"Do you find it important to actually boost prot magic?"

there is no magic skill you need to boost over 60 other than attack magic. 60 is the same level as the max wands you will find or buy, and will more than fulfill any sidequest skill checks. you can always boost a particular spell from one of those schools higher by enchanting a wand, which doesn't work as well for attack magic, since you are typically casting it every turn as a mage.

[tofucsek]

Thanks again for the reply. How do you take care of weapons? They tend to loose their dmg pretty quick, even after a few foes and I've already down 3-4 max dmg values.

[Ichthyic]

well, you can't repair weapons during a fight... but you CAN swap them out at will....

I carry duplicates. ezpz.

there aren't any unique weapons in the base game AFAIK. you can buy any and all of them at the smith in mythria. buy a handfull, enchant them how you like, swap them out as need be.

another reason to go light weps instead of heavy... they're uh.. lighter.

[tofucsek]

Good point with the multiple weapons. Do you actually enchant them for light weapons or attack magic?

How do you go with money (to buy that many duplicates)? On my mage I've never had any problem but it's been a bit of a struggle on melee ones.

Would you mind giving me a piece-by-piece list of your main item slots and what enchant did you use for them (excluding the ones you swap for enchant, alchemy, etc).

[Ichthyic]

both. I swap out depending on whether I want melee damage or magic damage.

there are several enemies that will cast magic resistance on themsselves, and then I swap to dual wield with light wepon skill enchanted katana.

too bad the best offhand weapon is already enchanted. the buttlerfly knife is the best offhand you can enchant, and it really isn't worth bothering with. still... just the one good offhand sword that is available gives a significant damage boost when dealing with magic users that cast resist.

so my primary weapon is always a mystic katana. fully enchanted with either lw skill or attack magic skill (+23).

usually using an ancient shield in offhand enchanted with +8 intelligence. swap out to either offhand short sword for dual wield, or that "god shield" for the poison and disease resist, just so I don't have to keep casting it all the time in the fens and swamps.
mithril armor with +20 endurance
the purple robe with +24 intelligence
silver gloves with +4 dex
ancient belt +4 dex
gold pants +2 dex
ranger boots +3 dex
Holy helm... first I added pure armor, but stoneskin pretty much takes care of armor, so I changed it to +13 attack magic skill. so when using both the helm and the katana, it's +36 to attack magic, which is good enough. was running with around 90 attack magic base for levels 11-16.

best damage boost when you really need it is to use fortifying pots, which I always used for the really big battles. each level stacks (small, strong, ultimate) so you end up doing well over double damage for half a dozen rounds, and the strong and ultimate stick around for another 10+ rounds or so, which is more than enough to win most fights.

if you have an opponent at less than 50% health... try using smite. it has a pretty good chance of just finishing them off outright. I think it has higher chance the lower your opponents % health. Killed the dragon king with it when he was at around 40% health... would have taken 4 maxed lightning bolts to do the same amount of damage.

frankly, I started this game with the 1.61 build, and in that you could max out resistance at 100%, so I rarely took ANY damage from magic users.

with the 80% cap, I still don't recall EVER once having to cast a healing spell in combat past level 7 using the build I outlined above. just got better and better gear, with higher enchant, and took even less damage. maxed stoneskin, plus heavy armor, plus shield means nothing physical can do a lot of damage to you (typically blocked over half the attacks with shield before they even dented my armor), and maxed resists (even at 80% cap) means you take little magical damage, so you can just rush any casters, then cast in their face, or melee them. As you noted, a lot of casters will switch to a "melee" attack when you are in their face, and then your shield pretty much makes whatever they are doing useless.

if they tried to run away, or i wanted to rush them without interference... I had 3 different ways to paralyze them; golden daggers, bow with assasin arrows - yeah, even used a bow occassionally - or spell from casting or level 100 wand.

I found this game fun, and a blowback to the past (reminded me most of the first elderscroll game), but past about level 4, I didn't find it tremendously challenging. :)

mostly it was all about cash flow... once I figured out how to make enough cash to buy whatever I wanted... the rest was gravy.

[Ichthyic]

oh, btw... the way you can tell if a caster just cast resist on themselves is you see the black sparkles appear around them when it is their turn to attack, and they don't attack that turn. it lasts 3-4 turns, and that's when you DON'T want to attack them with magic.

[tofucsek]

Another very detailed block of information , thank you for sharing your experience. I'm very much liking the idea of taking care of those mages casting magic immunity on themselves by chopping them up to nice and even slices.

I'll give your build a try (already started, I'm around lvl 5) and see how I go. It seems pretty foolproof, which is something I definitely need to make it work myself.

Trying to figure out money making but so far what I did was save/load before major enemies died (got 10k gold from first cyclops).

[Ichthyic]

if you have the patience, doing the 500/game cards at the inn in the center of Mithria is a good way to make money. just use the necromancer deck, it's the fastest and easiest to win with.

yeah, grinding that den is good money and experience early on. I used the ancient sword I found there at level 4 until I finally replaced it with the mystic katana.

[GlassDeviant]

Character race is largely irrelevant, especially as you progress and your stats and skills increase far beyond the relatively minor racial differences. Mostly consider racial penalties to resistances, those are what realy handicap you.

I have a character who uses mainly Attack Magic but wears heavy armour and wields either light or heavy weapons interchangeably and have had no problems whatsoever getting through The Quest and Islands of Ice & Fire. She has not read any of the skill books, not paid to train skills much (until the end when I literally could not find anything else to waste my gold on).

This is the first time I have played The Quest since I (did not finish) the main game on my iPod Touch years ago. At the end of the HD game + expansion here is my character:

Name: Corporal Entity
Race: Derth
Level: 24
Experience: 1,835,427 (Next Level: 2,020,000)
Fame: Saint (this is even with picking a few evil actions)
Outfit: Well Dressed (84)
Damage: 18-32 (with my magic staff!)
Armor: 159 (183 with level 100 Stone Skin wand)
Health: 172
Mana: 525 (325 naked)
Crime: 0

Strength: 20 (base 25 - Derth)
Dexterity: 24 (base 29 - Derth)
Endurance: 43 (base 48 - Derth)
Intelligence: 65 (base 55 + Derth) - 75 with Sylon's Amulet
Personality: 40

Magic Resistance: 62% (base 32 + Derth)
Poison Resistance: 21%
Paralysis Resistance: 29%
Disease Resistance: 21%

Primary Skills:

Repair 54 (fixing your own gear saves a lot of gold)
Appraise 70 (1. buy for less, 2. sell for more, 3.profit)
Persuasion 70 (you really need this for several quests)
Attack Magic 102 (182 with item enchantments) (combat spells, obviously)
Environment Magic 70 (Mark [bind in other games] and Recall [gate], Enchant, Disarm traps, recharge wands, Feather [increase weight carrying capacity])
Alchemy 80 (make your own potions, most useful skill in the game)

Other Skills:

Block: 50
Light Weapons: 54 (limited by Dexterity)
Heavy Weapons: 46 (limited by Strength)
Dual Wield: 50
Light Armour: 58
Heavy Armour: 70
Accuracy: 40
Healing Magic: 80 (70 + Derth)
Protection Magic: 50
Mind Magic: 80 (70 + Derth)
Undead Magic: 0 (not Rasvim)
Lockpick: 58 (limited by Dexterity)
Disarm: 40
Stealth: 40

Gold: over 100k left after spending like crazy on training skills, collecting books, buying alchemical components, buying up any gear that offered even a slight improvement (especially in enchantment capacity), making full sets of the best Enchanting and Alchemy gear I could manage, stashing a few choice bits of gear and so on.

My strategy?

1) use save/enter shop/reload to get better items and spells

2) play cards as Necromancer a lot, save before each hand so you can reload if you lose

3) explore the map thoroughy before hitting dungeons to get your XP/levels up

4) pick up any alchemical reagents, even if you never use them since you can sell them

5) pick up all loot to sell at the shops

6) save before the final blow to a major enemy (miniboss/boss) and reload if the loot isn't good

7) make gear sets for several purposes:

a) your regular gear - the best you can get for your combat style (melee, ranged, spellcaster)
b) enchanting gear - all enchanted with +Environment Magic to boost your Enchanting ability, usually takes 2 or 3 sets to get them maxxed out completely by recasting with the older set to make the new set
c) alchemy gear - you can make amazing health, mana and resist potions with this
d) persuasion gear - to get quests or pass certain steps of quests that require a minimum Persuasion level
e) buying/selling gear - Persuasion and Appraise will get you better prices for buying/selling

8) base camp - you need a base camp to store your stuff, and the only really good spot is the Ruined Crypt in Matras with 8 barrels, 3 shelves and no respawn, ever. Get the Mark and Recall spells so you can Mark the crypt to Recall quickly whenever you want/need to. Remember to never turn in the smugglers to the mayor of Matras, or you will lose access to this fantastic spot forever!

Edit:

9) there is a spell just called Resistance which boosts ALL resistances. Make sure you get both the spellbook and a wand or two so you can always have it ready. By mid-end game, you will want one or two wands of Ultimate Resistance (I have 4) which max all your resists for about 21 rounds of combat/movement. You will also want the spell Recharge Wand, it is the most useful spell in the game, period.

10) Wands are your friends, keep wands of Cure Poison, Cure Paralysis, Cure Plague, Cure Warrt and Remove Curse on hand and keep them recharged! Again, Recharge Wand is the friend to all your wandy friends.