first talents to pick?

[Adeptus Lebowski]

Can i assume that most people pick the All Skilled Up and Bigger and Better Talents first as they both give extra base stats and abilities without leveling? I have read on google what most people consider the best talents but surely at the start it is better to first pick these talents as they actually boost your main stats, seems OP to me.

[Thurgret]

Pet pal on the main character, for me. Opportunist for melee characters, sometimes far out man for ranged but it's less important.

[Adeptus Lebowski]

So you don't want the free attribute points or abilities?

[Pyromus]

I wouldn't at all call them OP. ESPECIALLY not bigger and better, which is kind of trash. All skilled up is really nice for the extra civil point, so that you can steal more with your thief, or tweak the civil skills of recruited party members who have civils you don't necessarily want them to have. B&B is just never worth it.

"standard" starting talents are things like executioner, opportunist, elemental affinity, arrow recovery, pet pal, and torturer. All working well for specific character builds. The one thing that makes ASU seem more appealing, is that it is useful on any build, but most build specific talents are just better. If you do get ASU, it's probably best to respec out of it once you leave act 1 since you won't need the extra civil point then.

As for B&B being trash, Mnemonic is just straight up better. Most builds will eventually need a few points into memory. Mnemonic gives 3 points there. B&B gives 2 points to spend on attributes. Since you are eventually going to need points in memory, those 3 from mnemonic mean you can now instead pump your damage stat more freely for 3 points worth. B&B lets you pump it 2 points worth. Since there is a hard cap at 40 for an attribute's base point, this means eventually you should hit that cap, and the vast majority of builds would get there just that little bit faster by investing in mnemonic rather than B&B. The only exceptions being something that has extremely low memory cost, like potentially an all melee build, which then would benefit far more from executioner or opportunist.

[Pyromus]

Originally posted by Lebowski EzRekt U Cri:

So you don't want the free attribute points or abilities?

Seeing this as I posted my wall of words.

No, we don't. Because it's not free. It costs two extra AP per kill (executioner), or one AP per skill cast (elemental affinity), or an added attack per round (opportunist), or extra experience (pet pal).

[Senki]

Talents can boost your character way more than a few more stat points.Stuff that lowers your ap costs or gives you ap or savage sortilege which allows your abilities to crit are a lot more important to casters.

The only build that wants all skilled up is summoner and that's about it because they can't get elemental affinity and every talent that boosts the caster is useless since your summons do everything.

[Yojo0o]

I take them occasionally in the very early game. Executioner is fantastic, but not so much before you have a broad variety of skills available to actually use with your extra AP, which doesn't kick in for a few levels at least.

But yeah, within a few levels you're absolutely better off going in other directions.

[Adeptus Lebowski]

ok, so i'm mainly getting from reading all this is that the other talents are better because attribute points are less rare than the other talent abilities. So maybe i will avoid them actually. I really like the sound of the talent that stops you from dying and revives you at 20% health, i think all chars should have this.

[Yojo0o]

Originally posted by Lebowski EzRekt U Cri:

ok, so i'm mainly getting from reading all this is that the other talents are better because attribute points are less rare than the other talent abilities. So maybe i will avoid them actually. I really like the sound of the talent that stops you from dying and revives you at 20% health, i think all chars should have this.

Ooh no, I hate that talent. Generally speaking, you should be building your characters to win harder, not lose less. As mentioned above, talents like Executioner/Pawn, Elemental Affinity, and Pet Pal are powerful early game options to increase your relevance in a fight. Don't plan to die.

[Adeptus Lebowski]

hmm ok, atm my chars get one shot sometimes lol but i see your point.

[Tim]

Generally you only get one-shot in early game because you're picking fights above your weight-class, using unoptimized builds, or simply lacking equipment for armor and skills to mitigate incoming damage. All three are generally a given on your first time. The first issue is alleviated by avoiding enemies above your level, the second by asking for advice, the third by either purchasing/stealing some or by using a complete map guide to locate hidden stashes (also helps for finding general content you missed early on, e.g. I completely missed the turtles behind Fane or the frogs in the cave or the buried zombie).

Other than that there are a handful of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bosses that have a free 6AP opening move and will often use it to absolutely crush one of your characters, if not everyone at once if you didn't bother to split up. The same goes for some enemies in general zero-ing in on vulnerable characters, like your mages.

[DrunkPunk]

yeah I can't say I ever pick those talents. starting talents usually depend on what class. melee it's usually opportunist, magic it's usually far out man or savage sortilege or maybe elementalist, huntsman it's usually arrow recovery.

[Chaoslink]

All skilled up is okay if you want extra thievery, but you'll usually respec it out later. The death prevention talent is also weak since that 20% health doesn't stop on more attack from finishing you anyway. There are many better talents.

[snuggleform]

Savage sortile and tormentor are really good for necro builds (blood rain + grasp of starved combo).

[Pyromus]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

Savage sortile and tormentor are really good for necro builds (blood rain + grasp of starved combo).

This reminded me I didn't go into detail on why I listed Torturer. The main reason to grab it at 1 or 3 is because of the skill Worm Tremor in geomancy. If you have torturer, it will immobilize enemies for 3 turns. On an all ranged or even mostly ranged team, that means 3 turns of vastly less damage taken, sometimes none. The burning/bleeding/poisoned through armor is nice, but the first turn immobilize is just amazing. As Chaoslink has pointed out, worm tremor will also allow a spear user (kinda rare build, but good) to attack just out of other melee units' range, making even your frontline builds able to attack with little incoming attacks to worry about on a lot of units.

[Mrvecz]

The revival on death is abit misleading in its usefulness, on paper i was like "well this is kinda neat" but in practise, if your team mates are dying, you are in deep ♥♥♥♥ anyway. And either they will be killed again (in the same turn if the enemy has some AP left) or they wont be able to move if they are in flames as that would kill them yet again.

But the biggest reason is one item you will be able to get later on, its an item you can have for your entire party (For a price if you want it for everyone, or without a penalty for one character if you have someone capable of pickpocket). This item will resurrect the user if he perishes in combat, to 100% HP and can be recharged even mid-fight with res scrolls. So its objectively better than this tallent.

Executioner is quite useful, executioner is aplicable for mages too. Execution with Oportunist has a neat feature that if you kill someone during the reaction attack, the +2AP will carry to your next turn so you will start with 6 AP.

Elemental affinity is great too

Picture of Health, while not being as shiny now, will be in the late game, my Red Prince by the end of the game had more health than the first final boss. But a worthy pick for warrior or anyone with warfare skills.

Overwatch or how the game calls it "Attacks of oportunity" is one of few reaction based abilities and it has scored some deaths here and there and it does synergies well if you have mixed party, due to how AI works (Prioritizes weaker targets, also why tanking doesnt actually work) enemies will constantly try to walk away from your tanky melee characters. This works better with hard hitting weapons like warhammers or battleaxes due to their large DPS per hit.

Tormentor lets you skip the "destroying the armour of the enemy" part of the game and lets you apply some crowd control effects no matter what. This is straight up broken and even then its just a straight up DPS boost because enemies will burn, bleed or other damage over time effects from the get go.