Tactician mode, level 3 : no DPS whatsoever

[Nkia662]

Hello!

I'm playing with my husband in Tactician mode, and we're level 3. We played DOS 1 and a lot of turn-based RPG but, this time, it seems we are doing something seriously wrong.

The problem: We.Suck.At.Every.Damn.Fight.
And I mean, really: we beat the crocodiles and the turtles on the beach, and that's about it! We had to postpone the fights versus Griff, the arena and the magisters in the underground prison because we were unable to make them more than a few bruises.

Our team is:
- Ifan Ben-Mezd: Wayfarer.
- Sebille: Witch, with focus on necromancy (all INT, a bit of Warfare). Necro skills are too rarely used (cooldown for the mosquitos, or no cadaver in sight), so she end up attacking with her wand most of the time.
- Lohse: Enchanter.
- The Red Prince: Fighter, with a shield. Doesn't tank ♥♥♥♥.

The worst elements are probably the Red Prince and Sebille (too bad, since it's my character xD).
I feel that we're seriously lacking DPS (and the enemies are such bags of PV and shields...), and there's maybe a problem with the way we can attack physical/magical shields (but I read it could be a good thing to make both physical and magical damages too, so I'm unsure).


I'd sincerely appreciate any advice you could give me

[HEY]

Having a Tank like in other games is generally not such a good idea in this game. Its almost always preferred to have 4 dps. Is you want to have split dmg (Magic, Physical) then its best to gave two characters for phy and 2 for magic to balance things out. Right now you have 3 phy and 1 magic.

Early necromancy is rather weak, its usually suggested to run 2 handed warrior with a bit of necromancy early on. Though personally a good start with necromancy for me has always been starting with Mosquito Storm, Decaying Touch and Battering Ram.

Having some kind of CC (Crowd Control) early on is really help full.

Cant say anymore without knowing more info like your stat distribution and what skills you use etc.

Also personally I will always play the Griff fight at level 5 or above.

[Nkia662]

Originally posted by HEY:

Having a Tank like in other games is generally not such a good idea in this game. Its almost always preferred to have 4 dps. Is you want to have split dmg (Magic, Physical) then its best to gave two characters for phy and 2 for magic to balance things out. Right now you have 3 phy and 1 magic.

Early necromancy is rather weak, its usually suggested to run 2 handed warrior with a bit of necromancy early on. Though personally a good start with necromancy for me has always been starting with Mosquito Storm, Decaying Touch and Battering Ram.

Having some kind of CC (Crowd Control) early on is really help full.

Cant say anymore without knowing more info like your stat distribution and what skills you use etc.

Also personally I will always play the Griff fight at level 5 or above.

Thank you very much for your response!

For Sebille the necromancer, I'll try to do like you did. I guess it'll give her more opportunities to heal from blood if she's close to the enemies like that.

For the phys/magical damages problem, do you think we should ditch the Red Prince and take Fane as a fire/geo Wizard?


For the stats and such, here's the full thing:


Ifan Ben-Mezd: Wayfarer.
FIN 16, MEM 11. Huntsman 1, Scoundrel 1, Warfare 2. Pet Pal, Excecutioner.
Skills: Adrenaline, Elemental Arrowheads, Pin Down, Ricochet, First Aid.

- Sebille: Witch.
INT 17. Necro 2, Warfare 1. Leech, Far Out Man.
Skills: Mosquitos, Raise Bloated Corpse, Blood Sucker, Decaying Touch (mostly because I don’t have another skill to give her for now, because I make her attack from afar). She also has Teleportation (from the gloves).

- Lohse: Enchanter.
INT 15, CON 12. Aero 2, Hydro 2. Far Out Man, Mnemonic.
Skills: Armour of Frost, Restoration, Rain, Hail Strike, Blinding Radiance, Shocking Touch, Electric Discharge. Staff of Magnus with air damages.

- The Red Prince: Fighter.
STR 15 , CON 12. Geomancer 1, Warfare 3. Picture of Health, Opportunist.
Skills: Fortify, Battering Ram, Bouncing Shield, Battle Stromp.

[Nkia662]

Originally posted by Doxy!:

level 3 versus Griff and enter Arena it's quite early..

did you done free Amiro?
find out who steal Griff's orange.
Help Migo?
Help Magister finding her Father?
Heal a man wounded on cave entrance?
get underground prison..

you can get level 4 without fight..
(crocodiles, turtle, 2 void worm)

and did you explore the cave?..
did you try play hide and seek with the kid?

:D

I didn't free Amyro because Griff told me he'd let him go only if I found the oranges thief. Which I did but, when I refuse to reveal the identity of the thief, he attacks me, so... kinda stuck here xD

Otherwise, I did all of the above except :
- healing the guy in front of the cave, thank you for this one!
- explore the cave (which one, in the prison? with the level 4 fire bug? or the one with the elves?).

I also found the dog buddy of Buddy^^ in the castle.

[Nkia662]

Oh cool, thank you!

[Stabbey]

You're complaining about DPS. This seems like it might be too obvious a question, but are you upgrading your weapons for your physical attackers? You need to upgrade your weapons every time you level up or else your damage falls behind.

Armor needs to be upgraded every 2-3 levels at least so you can survive enemy attacks.

[Nkia662]

By upgrading, you mean buying new ones, right?
Well, I try to do so, but I haven't relevant weapons for each character (my necro has better than her level - lvl 4 wand - the fighter has a lvl 3 hammer, but the warefarer and the enchanter each have a level 2 weapon, sadly).

Thanks for the tip, anyway, I'll try to look out for those when I'll get the chance.

[ElectroRanger]

Assuming you have some decent sneaking skills, having a bunch of skills as early as possible can really help out more than most weapons. I'd recommend teleporting up a sneaky character into the fort and go for a theft spree in there. The money from that would prove useful. (There's a non guarded entrace from the left of the magisters who guard the entrace. You may lower the ladder there later as well)

Generally fort joy should probably be treated as viable thievery location due to the fact you barely have money yet.

[LaserGuy]

Originally posted by Doxy!:

For the stats and such, here's the full thing:


Ifan Ben-Mezd: Wayfarer.
FIN 16, MEM 11. Huntsman 1, Scoundrel 1, Warfare 2. Pet Pal, Excecutioner.
Skills: Adrenaline, Elemental Arrowheads, Pin Down, Ricochet, First Aid.

This is a good build and should do well enough.

- Lohse: Enchanter.
INT 15, CON 12. Aero 2, Hydro 2. Far Out Man, Mnemonic.
Skills: Armour of Frost, Restoration, Rain, Hail Strike, Blinding Radiance, Shocking Touch, Electric Discharge. Staff of Magnus with air damages.

Enchanters are always good. Don't invest points into CON. You only need enough to be able to use whatever shield you want (at most 15 by the very end of the game). If you aren't using a shield, don't put any points in CON.

- Sebille: Witch.
INT 17. Necro 2, Warfare 1. Leech, Far Out Man.
Skills: Mosquitos, Raise Bloated Corpse, Blood Sucker, Decaying Touch (mostly because I don’t have another skill to give her for now, because I make her attack from afar). She also has Teleportation (from the gloves).

- The Red Prince: Fighter.
STR 15 , CON 12. Geomancer 1, Warfare 3. Picture of Health, Opportunist.
Skills: Fortify, Battering Ram, Bouncing Shield, Battle Stromp.

These two builds should ideally be combined into a single character, IMHO. Necro is quite weak in the early game, and you get the best benefits from it by being in the thick of battle. A necro with a melee weapon works very well. Going with a 2-hander can let you focus more on direct damage with warfare; using a weapon/shield combo will mean your damage from basica attacks is slow, but you'll have stronger necro spells and shield bounce to work with, and can use battering ram/hammer stomp for CC at least.

The other problem is that you have an imbalanced party: 3 of your characters deal physical damage, while the fourth deals magic damage. The result is that your magic character isn't actually working well with the rest of the team. Ideally, you would switch one of your physical damage characters (Red Prince being an excellent candidate) to magic to balance it out. Alternately, switch your enchanter to a physical damage character and go all in on physical damage (IMHO not as good as a mixed party but it's perfectly playable). Since you can effectively eliminate one character from your build by combining your necro and melee character, you free up an extra slot to take another magic user. Note that the natural choice, Fire/Earth, doesn't actually play very well with Air/Water since Fire destroys most of the nice surfaces that water makes. Better to do Air/Earth or Air/Earth/Water or something. If you really want all four elements, consider Fire/Air and Water/Earth, so you can always combine surfaces effectively.

[danbjp]

Level 3 is a tough spot in fort joy; Have you given Migo what he's asking for - there are loads of them around fort joy. Have you got any characters with thievery?

If so you can steal his breastplate.
You can steal from Hilde by getting her up near butter and having a char to talk to her and another to butter (assuming Griffs group hasn't aggro'd you)
You can steal from Nebora and the doctor.
You can also steal from Stingtail and Maol for skillbooks.
Have you killed the guy on the beach that tells you to 'sod off'
You can talk to the woman near him and if you listen to her story (ask her about her boys, after asking if she's alone) you'll get a restoration scroll - you can do this with each character.

You can find a way up from the prison, and there's some guards on an upper balcony - you can teleport one, kill him, run and come back.
You can also do this with the silent monks.
Have you got lucky chance? If so open every container in the fort.

If you can get to lvl 4 things will be a lot easier; and as others have said - check your gear and builds.

GL

[Nkia662]

Yeah, we already stole from nearly everybody xD
And killed the guy from the beach, help Migo and his daughter, etc.

Last night, we manage to make it to level 4. We can now access better skillbooks and such.
We also did builds arrangements, the main two being ditching the Red Prince (fighter) for Fane (Geo/Aero build) and giving necro Sebille a melee weapon.
We'll see where we stand on future fights, but I feel our team is really better now.

Thank you for all your kind advises! You've been super helpful!

[ElectroRanger]

For future reference, I waited until lvl 4 before i stole books from merchants so i could get the highest skills. It also helped i was lucky to find some real good loot (lucky charm)

[Godwoken Dovahkiin]

You can get a decent spear if you play hide and seek, a nice sword and some skills books if red prince slaps a certain lizard on the face, an OP crossbow if you have Ifan on your team and meet a certain undead vendor. You can escape the fort without fighting and get tons of exp usually a level, perfect to reach lvl 4 and reach the next power spike. Also stealing gear/skill books is nice.

But if you're a masochist like me, you better grab everything you can, sell it and craft gear at every level and show this video game you can endure the pain with blood, sweat and most of your resurrection scrolls because we don't reload in here.

[Herc]

Originally posted by nkia662:

Hello!

I'm playing with my husband in Tactician mode, and we're level 3. We played DOS 1 and a lot of turn-based RPG but, this time, it seems we are doing something seriously wrong.

My wife and I play this at same level. We are pawning the game.

I am geo/fire/healing/summoner
She is scoundrel/summoner/necro

We both selected lone wolf

This is way easier than when we did the classic mode with 4 characters.