How to power up in arx and prep for harder lvl 20 fights?

[bjornvermeulen4]

Im playing on tactician and have reached arx but i feel my gear is outdated and im just no match for lvl 20 enemies who are able to kill within 1 move. They also have a lot of armor making it impossible for me to keep them crowd controled.

Has anyone got any ideas on how to bridge the gap?

Ive been going to vendors but they dont offer any decent improvements.

[Chaoslink]

What level are you and what level is your gear? If you are level 20 as well, but are wearing gear ranging from level 16-18 because it has really good stats, go to the nearest vendor and buy their highest rarity item for each of your slots and replace them, regardless of the stats on that gear. Especially weapons on characters that actively use them. Weapons should always be your level. It is incredibly rare that a lower level weapon is better than a higher level one regardless of the stats rolled as the increase in base damage usually covers that gap. This doesn’t apply to stat sticks for mages. Armor is a bit more forgiving, but you shouldn’t let it fall more than two levels behind unless there is a strong reason to keep it, usually in the form of immunity gear that prevents a certain status. A Geo warrior that uses oil and such to restore their armor and such can keep a slow immunity item long past its level for instance, as they be negatively affected by the slow much worse than outdated gear.

Don’t keep that “ideal” item just because it’s got perfect stats. You’ll benefit more than you realize by replacing it.

All of that said, team build is always a factor too. Assuming you’re the same level of the enemy, struggling would indicate an issue with your builds. You don’t have to min/max, but if you’re too far from min/max you might be too inefficient to be effective. A few steps towards min/max might make a huge difference, like allocating some unnecessary points into more useful things. Dumping your few CON points for a little extra damage, stuff like that.

[bjornvermeulen4]

Well im 19 just got back from the nameless isle managed to get to 19 shortly after but im strugling now.
I think i could drop some int/str/fin items for armour upgrades. Replacing weapons on my hunter and warrior were the first things i did.

My build is
elemetalist 5 Hydro 5 aero 2 necro 9 poly
ranger 5 hunt 10 ranged 2 necro 4 poly
warrior 5 war 5 necro 2 geo 9 poly
sumoner/ battlemage 5 aero 10 sum 2necro 3 war 1 hydro

my elementalist does a lot of damage and can freeze / stun she can also dish out some melee dmg. And heals my party
My sumoner can go elemental damage and physical and can help stun/ knock down heal and freeze
My ranger can use elemental arrows to assist stunning freezing and knockdown arrows for knockdowns> She also does a lot of damage.
My warrior knocks down criples etc necro is for survivability poly is used for more melee options.

They all have a bit of necro for regen. My warrior a lot for survivability.
Poly is used to boost stats except with my warrior where the abilities are used too.

[Chaoslink]

Drop ranged for warfare, max warfare on anything that focuses primarily on physical damage. The 5% boost from Warfare adds more damage than the 5% from ranged or other sources because it is applied after all other calculations are done instead of additively affecting the base damage only. You should be able to max your primary attributes on your mage and such without needing to dump into poly. I’d recommend converting poly into the main element skills where possible now. Your warrior might consider the talent Living Armor if you don’t have it yet so the lifesteal restores magic armor too.

Consider a point in Scoundrel for some as well just to pick up adrenaline. That extra 2AP on the spot can make a huge difference sometimes.

If you’re not going to get both elements max on your elemental mage, don’t try keeping the even. Stack one more than the other so you can use that element first with higher damage to break armor faster. So if you convert 5 poly to boost the skills, max Aero or Hydro to 10 and leave the other at 5. This character can drop necro safely and take one Scoundrel point for adrenaline. Then combine a low tier hydro book with a low tier Scoundrel book to get vampiric strikes, allowing you to get 50% lifesteal when needed.

[Chaoslink]

What do your attributes look like?

[bjornvermeulen4]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

What do your attributes look like?

Tbh i think you have some good ideas but i dont see how a little tweek in talents will change the fact that 1 reactive armour kills 2 of my companions. I think you were right about not worrying about int/fin/str too much and just getting the gear upgrades. That should boost armour and therefore survivability.

As for my hunter ill put the 5 ranged ones into warfare as you said.
My warrior has living armour
My hunter has adrenaline, im sure others have at least 1 scoundrel from gear ill check and give them adrenaline.
As for dropping poly for a single skill i thought about it but i like her to have a lot of skills available so she can help take down physical armour as well as freeze and stun effectively using a wide array of skills. To be able to get her to move first ive dropped quite some points in wits.
She has int +30 con +4 mem +7 and wits +9. The wits is combined with savage shortilege for crits.

As for other talents id really have to look as im unsure.

[bjornvermeulen4]

I checked

warrior: leech, living armour, mnemonic, opportunist, picture of health
hunter arrow recovery,elemental ranger, far out, living armour, mnemonic (ill drop arrow rec for picture of health?)
summoner, comeback kid , far out man mnemonic, picture of health, savage shortilege
Elementalist Elemental affinity (rain and ice duh), far out man, mnemonic, petpal savage shortilige

[Chaoslink]

Well keep in mind that Warfare > all when it comes to physical damage. You want it to be 10 on anyone dealing physical as their primary damage type. So 10 in ranged isn't helping you as much as 10 in warfare. Its hard to do all the damage calculations without specific damage numbers to go off of, but keep in mind that the 5% damage you gain from the ranged skill is the same as 5% from Finesse. The game adds those % together then applies that to your base damage.

So if you have 40 FIN that's +200% and 10 Ranged is another +50% for +250% total. If your base damage is 200 then that's 200 + (200 x 2.5) for a final output of 700. However, if you swap all those ranged points for Warfare points, then its 200 + (200 x 2) for 600. Then you increase that 600 by 50% from Warfare for another 300 making your final damage 900. That's 200 damage more than the ranged skill. So whatever the other stat Ranged offers, 1% crit chance I think, isn't really worth the loss in base damage.

You should only invest in the weapon specific skills once you max Warfare and have nothing left to invest in. All physical characters should max Warfare though. The way the game calculates Warfare's effect on damage makes it much stronger than the other skills. So your Warrior should probably move 5 poly to warfare and the archer can move all 10 ranged over to warfare. You should immediately see a difference when attacking something.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by bjornvermeulen4:

I checked

warrior: leech, living armour, mnemonic, opportunist, picture of health
hunter arrow recovery,elemental ranger, far out, living armour, mnemonic (ill drop arrow rec for picture of health?)
summoner, comeback kid , far out man mnemonic, picture of health, savage shortilege
Elementalist Elemental affinity (rain and ice duh), far out man, mnemonic, petpal savage shortilige

The warrior can probably drop Leech for something else, the healing really isn't significant enough and you'd gain much more use out of something like The Pawn or Executioner. Hothead or What a Rush can be good too, What a Rush being better if you use death wish and Living on the Edge from the necromancy skill to increase damage and stay alive with low vitality. You might take that on the archer as well. Not really much need for Pic of health there, you shouldn't be close enough to be taking that much damage.

I also notice you have mnemonic on everyone. That late in the game, you shouldn't really need all that memory from talents, instead dropping a few attribute points for it. You're much more limited on talents and can gain much more use from those than just a +3 memory boost. I only recommend that talent in act one where attribute points are scarce and your mage needs that memory boost.

Don't underestimate the free movement of The Pawn or the extra AP from Executioner. They're some of the best talents. Being able to reposition one AP worth of distance free can help get onto elemental affinity for your mage if it was lost, move into range on literally anyone for no cost and other common uses. You can even have your ranged damage hide behind a wall, use half the movement to peek and attack, then duck back into cover with the other half to avoid being attacked.

[LaserGuy]

Originally posted by bjornvermeulen4:

Im playing on tactician and have reached arx but i feel my gear is outdated and im just no match for lvl 20 enemies who are able to kill within 1 move. They also have a lot of armor making it impossible for me to keep them crowd controled.

Has anyone got any ideas on how to bridge the gap?

Ive been going to vendors but they dont offer any decent improvements.

Is the problem the Nemesis guys? They are VERY nasty encounters that can catch you off guard quite easily. At least one of them is completely avoidable (the one near the lizard consulate... just keep your distance from the suspicious "Average-looking person" or whatever he's called with 8000 armor points... teleport or chameleon passed him if he's preventing you from getting to the consulate itself). There fight near the school/sewers I think you do need to take. Try to time it so that you can get some paladins to help you. Most importantly, the entire enemy party will flee if any one of them gets down to maybe 50% health. So unlike other battles, what you need to do here is just pick one enemy and relentlessly dump all of your damage on them. These are actually among the hardest fights in Arx, IIRC.


Other stuff:
-Give both of your magic users shields if they don't have them already. The 1000+ defensive bonus you get from the shield vastly outweighs any bonuses from a second wand or a staff.
-Don't be afraid to use the BIG SPELLS. Thunderstorm on your aero mage is an absolute monster that can AoE CC an entire enemy party for many turns. Pyroclastic eruption (geo) is AFAIK the strongest pure damage spell in the game and can do 5000-10000 damage against each enemy with a bit of setup.
-Agree with the above that optimizing your stats is important here. Max out warfare on physical damage dealers; max out St/Int/Dx for the appropriate damage type, stack up runes and magical items to boost your damage further.

[bjornvermeulen4]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Don't underestimate the free movement of The Pawn or the extra AP from Executioner. They're some of the best talents. Being able to reposition one AP worth of distance free can help get onto elemental affinity for your mage if it was lost, move into range on literally anyone for no cost and other common uses. You can even have your ranged damage hide behind a wall, use half the movement to peek and attack, then duck back into cover with the other half to avoid being attacked.

My elementalist is custom i tend to use her bubble a lot so staying on the move to me seems less usefull than the regen. At least for non aoe enmemies.

[bjornvermeulen4]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Well keep in mind that Warfare > all when it comes to physical damage. You want it to be 10 on anyone dealing physical as their primary damage type.

Thanks for the explanation but i understood the first time around. And ill take it to heart. Although damage isnt really a prob it dieing to fast.

[bjornvermeulen4]

Originally posted by LaserGuy:

Is the problem the Nemesis guys?

Them yess... not looking foreward to challenging Kemm either. Alexander, windigo and malady in the dreamworld def avoiding the docter etc ;)

Ive thought about the shield on the summoner but i use a few warfare skills for knockdowns ill try sort him out and see if theres a solution for that.

[Dixon Sider]

Remember to respec thievery into all your characters so you can steal everything and buy everything else. I sometimes even put on plain gear if im too outdated. Armor and resistances are more important than damage.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by bjornvermeulen4:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Well keep in mind that Warfare > all when it comes to physical damage. You want it to be 10 on anyone dealing physical as their primary damage type.

Thanks for the explanation but i understood the first time around. And ill take it to heart. Although damage isnt really a prob it dieing to fast.

Damage is the solution to that problem. You want to burst damage enemies as quickly as possible so you open them up to CC. The more damage you deal, the sooner you can CC the enemy and the sooner that enemy isn't damaging your party. This is what makes Air/water mages so strong. I usually run two in one party so they can destroy the armor of nearly every enemy in the area and lock them down with stuns. Damage on your first turn is worth more to you than damage the next turn. I like to think of it like every turn that passes reduces your damage output by 20%. If you don't get your damage off in the first two turns, dealing high amounts of damage after that is significantly weaker since you've probably been taking more damage than necessary by not getting it out early.

Every battle is really just you working to balance the ratio of damage output and damage taken to your favor. If the enemy is capable of 5000 damage their turn and you're capable of 3000 damage your turn, then you need to find ways to mitigate incoming damage while maintaining high damage output. If you spend too much AP on buffs, heals or other support abilities, you're spending less on damage and CC. If an enemy attack deals 700 damage, you can either take that and heal or simply damage them back and CC them. Maybe you can't afford to take a second hit, but if that enemy isn't capable of hitting you that second time... then what do you need healing for?

Its just things to keep in mind. As you learn the game better, you get by more and more without needing that bubble or other healing sources. Damage output is king.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by bjornvermeulen4:

Ive thought about the shield on the summoner but i use a few warfare skills for knockdowns ill try sort him out and see if theres a solution for that.

Most magic users should be shielded. Your elementalist included. Unless you use a staff alongside warfare skills for damage, you probably have wands. You're much better off dropping the off hand wand for a shield. Same on the summoner. You can still use a melee weapon to keep your knockdown abilities, but that shield goes a long way. It also makes up for outdated gear, allowing you more room to hold onto things well past their usual usefulness.