Thoughts on races?

[Requimatic]

Been a long while since I played this.. I don't remember this many races, nor their bonuses.

Looking now, there's quite a lot of choice! But I also see that things like increased experiences gains may lose value entirely if there are caps on levels/professions/etc.

That being said, what is everyone's thoughts on the races? Certain ones better for different situations, any good "over all" races? Other than Gnome (hah), everything seems like a pretty solid choice based on how you want to play, which is good.

Personally leaning towards Dark Elf or maybe Lizardman for a new play through myself.

[Locklave]

Lizardmen's buff effect is super dependable, +100 hp +50% dmg once built. Their armor bonus of +50 is huge, 5% healing on kill. Makes them super reliable in combat.

Dark elf is okay, the regen is amazing at night and in caves. But it's a bit of a pain in the ass above ground when time of day can't be fully controlled. Sleeping seems to have a timer connected too it, you can't just sleep till night every day.

There are no bad choices, Gnome aside. The devs did an amazing job balancing combat/skills/stats across the races. I can't think of a single one I'd avoid, they all have builds they'd be amazing at.

What build you are going for might be something you consider for your race of choice. The only thing I might say feels a bit restrictive would be magic and human/high elves, the extra mana pool is extremely helpful early game. However I'd point out that other races are still super viable. Examples, Lizardmen would make for a ultra tanky mage even in cloth. Dark Elf would have amazing mana regen at night/caves. The race traits are so flexible in this system. Everything is and can be meaningful to any build.

All that feeds back into my belief that the devs did an amazing job with balance.

[gran2996]

As for me, overall humans are the best option, at least on paper.
You get extra XP for all professions and the main point is that you have all the XP from professions tripled, so you should progress much faster, though I have not tried the other races.

[ed]

Originally posted by Locklave:

Examples, Lizardmen would make for a ultra tanky mage even in cloth. Dark Elf would have amazing mana regen at night/caves. The race traits are so flexible in this system. Everything is and can be meaningful to any build.

+1, I've been playing lizard melee (spear now, axes before spears were introduced) + necro pets since forever it feels like, at varying difficulty levels and generally in cloth armor, and I've always liked it.

[Jean]

Gnomes are obviously the best race with their +50% to Ironing which really shine at the endgame.

Dwarves are awesome, the best tanks and ironmen by a huge margin.
Wild Elves are similarly awesome, very fun to play, particularly versatile and shine with stamina-based attack builds.

Orcs, Humans and Dark Elves are tuned pretty well. Dark Elves get a multiplicative +100% regen which make them extremely good as mage and stamina based-builds. Orcs should probably get +10 to their maximum stack by level.

Lizards are a strictly worst version of the Orcs, but at least they are kinda fun.
"Their armor bonus of +50 is huge" but since it quickly turns into 1/2% of damage mitigation when the heavy diminishing returns quickly kicks in a bit before the midgame, it's next to worthless.

High Elves are a strictly worst version of Humans. Their bonus are not just bad but boring.

That leaves Goblins, which are... a fun race. I think they're "fine" but as an ironman player I think 25% damage resistance malus is too much, should be 10%.

[Requimatic]

Thanks for all the info, everyone!

For the time being I've decided to go with Lizardman; the benefits vastly outweigh the negatives (compared to other racial bonuses) for me. The stacking buff, early armor buff, and health on kill means sustain in combat is a non-issue.. which I remember being a problem the first time I played.

I've also decided to go with a Dagger/Necro build to see how that pans out. I figure the lower Stamina usage of daggers in general, plus the speed at which you can attack, and supporting debuffs from Necromancy would be pretty devastating.

Then again, Axes looked really appealing also with the Execute debuff.

Thankfully talent resets are on the way in v1.1 (soon hopefully, heh), so if I end up not liking how that plays out I can at least re-roll and try something else. The only thing I dislike about Daggers thusfar is their abysmal range, but that's sort of expected considering they're daggers.

[ed]

Magic costs might hurt you a bit running axe/necro though, if you were thinking of that. Spear has a magic discount (not as high as dagger though) and I still felt a hit at a couple points in my current playthrough, when I'd unlock a new summon and find I couldn't quite cast it yet. And that's while currently ignoring the actual non-summon spells, which I'm saving until after I'm done with spear/pets/some basic general talent stuff.

On the other hand, alchemy is in an excellent state right now, especially if you have the patience to farm rare materials to get a lot of high-end magic restoration and magic cost reduction potions. So it might still be a doable combination.

[Locklave]

Originally posted by Jean:

Lizards are a strictly worst version of the Orcs, but at least they are kinda fun.
"Their armor bonus of +50 is huge" but since it quickly turns into 1/2% of damage mitigation when the heavy diminishing returns quickly kicks in a bit before the midgame, it's next to worthless.

I'd like to point out how terribly flawed the way to are looking at the math is. If you go from 80% DR to 81% how much more are you now reducing? If you answered 1% then you are wrong. it's 5%, 1/20th less damage for that 1%. Which is why diminishing returns exist, because higher values are exponentially more valuable. So 2% more on 80% would be 10% less damage then everyone else is taking.

Orcs aren't also strictly superior.
Lizards stack to +100 hp, +50% damage, +25 to fire/ice resists

Orcs get +50 hp, +50% damage and +50% to all regens. 50 less HP the lizardmen and the Orcs number drops every 2 seconds instead of lizards with 2 minutes till drop off.

Lizardmen also get 5% health recovered on kill. On a character with more hp that takes less damage.

They match Orcs damage bonus, have 2 times the health bonus, take less damage, have resists and heal on kills. They get less regen. Again not strictly worse, just different brands of fighting.

80% of 100 = 20
82% of 100 = 18
20 to 18 is 10% less. Clearly not "worthless".

[Jean]

The armor bonus in term of % after diminishing returns is not exponential, it's proportional.

And it's worthless to me considering the opportunity cost of playing an inferior race that lacks a +50% bonus to all regens. I'll add that another benefit is that Battle Rage usually fill up to 500 in 1 second or two and that it takes a whole 60 seconds to drop to roughly a little less than 300, which again clearly favor the Orc over having to kill a hundred enemy for the Lizardman.

Ultimately opinions may vary, that's fine.

I think a bit part of my disdain of the lizardmen is my disdain for On Kill abilities in general.

[Dean]

Humans are the most immersive, other characters assume you're one.

Be a dwarf if you love mining or a high elf if you love magic.

Play a wild elf if you want to run faster, since there're no mounts, and animals won't attack.

The dark elf is a dps machine at night; they do double damage to low health targets.

As others have mentioned, the lizardman is a solid choice.

The gnome is hardmode, but the goblin receives 25% more damage so they may be harder.

The orc reaches its full potential during boss fights, otherwise it's lackluster in my opinion.

The cursed (undead) are expected in the future. We just don't have an official date.

[Locklave]

Originally posted by Jean:

The armor bonus in term of % after diminishing returns is not exponential, it's proportional.

Literally gave you an example of how that's not the actual case.

Originally posted by Locklave:

80% of 100 = 20
82% of 100 = 18
20 to 18 is 10% less.

2% at those number is having a 10% greater impact. You clearly can't understand the actual math.

1% more armor means almost nothing on lower values. But on higher values it's huge.
starting at 0% adding 1% = 1% of 100 = 99 damage
compared to having 0% it doesn't matter, it's just 99 vs 100.

starting at 98% adding 1%= 99% of 100 = 1 damage.
compared to having 98% it matters a great deal, it's 1 vs 100, instead of 2 vs 100.

2 points of effective damage vs 1 point is 50%.

98% vs 99%. The 98% is taking 2 times as much damage. 1% on the super high end is reducing damage by 50%. The effect is exponential.

I'm ending the conversation on Armor values with you now. You are wrong in terms of actual effect and the math presented is proof of this.

Originally posted by Jean:

And it's worthless to me considering the opportunity cost of playing an inferior race that lacks a +50% bonus to all regens. I'll add that another benefit is that Battle Rage usually fill up to 500 in 1 second or two and that it takes a whole 60 seconds to drop to roughly a little less than 300, which again clearly favor the Orc over having to kill a hundred enemy for the Lizardman.

You understand that the Lizard keeps his buff for 1 hour and 40 minutes real life time and would have to kill nothing during that time for it to drop off? Unless you are AFKing for hours it effectively permanent. So long as you get 1 kill a minute the lizards bonus never drops from 100 once it reaches there. You afk to make a sandwich for 10 minutes and the Orc buff is completely gone. We literally kill thousands of enemies, killing 100 isn't a big deal.

You are also ignoring several things. +25 resists vs fire/ice, Double the hp bonus and the fact that Lizardmen are likely to start with a 100 or close to 100 stack meaning the first hit will be at near full power when the Orc drops off counting down every second.

So long as you get 1 kill a minute the lizards bonus never drops from 100 once it reaches there.

Regen is overrated midgame. Potions exist and completely outclass and overshadow regen by midgame, which you are using as the bar for effectiveness measuring. Regen is only meaningful if you lack potions or don't want to use them.

You can also stack huge bonuses early game with raw meat having quality 10. 50 armor is 32% armor on character creation. Lizardmen are better early and late game in combat. As intended. It's why they lack skill growth bonuses.

Lizardmen are better at combat, period. If you want to pretend Orcs are better, go for it, play w/e you want. But be prepared to have it refuted if you say it on the forums.

edit:
I don't mean to overstate the advantages, I'm using extremes to clearly illustrate the mechanics. The actual difference isn't massive but rather is meaningful enough to note and matter to anyone looking for those advantages.

[Jean]

Originally posted by Locklave:

Originally posted by Jean:

The armor bonus in term of % after diminishing returns is not exponential, it's proportional.

Literally gave you an example of how that's not the actual case.

Originally posted by Locklave:

80% of 100 = 20
82% of 100 = 18
20 to 18 is 10% less.

2% at those number is having a 10% greater impact. You clearly can't understand the actual math.

1% more armor means almost nothing on lower values. But on higher values it's huge.
starting at 0% adding 1% = 1% of 100 = 99 damage
compared to having 0% it doesn't matter, it's just 99 vs 100.

starting at 98% adding 1%= 99% of 100 = 1 damage.
compared to having 98% it matters a great deal, it's 1 vs 100, instead of 2 vs 100.

2 points of effective damage vs 1 point is 50%.

98% vs 99%. The 98% is taking 2 times as much damage. 1% on the super high end is reducing damage by 50%. The effect is exponential.

I'm ending the conversation on Armor values with you now. You are wrong in terms of actual effect and the math presented is proof of this.

Originally posted by Jean:

And it's worthless to me considering the opportunity cost of playing an inferior race that lacks a +50% bonus to all regens. I'll add that another benefit is that Battle Rage usually fill up to 500 in 1 second or two and that it takes a whole 60 seconds to drop to roughly a little less than 300, which again clearly favor the Orc over having to kill a hundred enemy for the Lizardman.

You understand that the Lizard keeps his buff for 1 hour and 40 minutes real life time and would have to kill nothing during that time for it to drop off? Unless you are AFKing for hours it effectively permanent. So long as you get 1 kill a minute the lizards bonus never drops from 100 once it reaches there. You afk to make a sandwich for 10 minutes and the Orc buff is completely gone. We literally kill thousands of enemies, killing 100 isn't a big deal.

You are also ignoring several things. +25 resists vs fire/ice, Double the hp bonus and the fact that Lizardmen are likely to start with a 100 or close to 100 stack meaning the first hit will be at near full power when the Orc drops off counting down every second.

So long as you get 1 kill a minute the lizards bonus never drops from 100 once it reaches there.

Regen is overrated midgame. Potions exist and completely outclass and overshadow regen by midgame, which you are using as the bar for effectiveness measuring. Regen is only meaningful if you lack potions or don't want to use them.

You can also stack huge bonuses early game with raw meat having quality 10. 50 armor is 32% armor on character creation. Lizardmen are better early and late game in combat. As intended. It's why they lack skill growth bonuses.

Lizardmen are better at combat, period. If you want to pretend Orcs are better, go for it, play w/e you want. But be prepared to have it refuted if you say it on the forums.

k

[Qchaos]

As far as I can tell, race superiority depends mostly on what you want to do, but as for me, these are the outliers :
Goblin, easiest to get trading up because that is the easiest way to get ressources by far.
Dark elf, a decent regen at night and underground (early game at least), which is most of the dungeons.
Lizard, looks reliable, assuming stacks are uncapped, can reach a very good amount of damage.
Orc, once again assuming stacks are uncapped, can get a stupidly high amount of stacks. I deal around 633 damage with a fire ball as a dark elf according to character sheet (it's really more than that but whatever), that means 633 stacks on a single fireball, which equates to 63% more damage from a single hit. Also, unlike lizardman, orc has regen on his stacking passive, which makes it much better than lizardman. With 2 fireballs worth of damage, I would gain more regen than dark elf.
Do note that depending on your spec (fire caster in my case) your race might be completely irrelevant by the end, I clear everything using firefly, I used a total of maybe 8 potions for the entire game. I started as dark elf, and the 100% regen was decently reliable.

[Korhilus]

Dark Elf has +100% to the regeneration at the start, no problems with energy and mana. Most fights are indoors and in dungeons, or you can sleep until night. And also +10% damage, speed, and +100% damage on wounded enemies with 25% health, which helps well against elite opponents, with a lot of health on hard difficulty.
Orc is also good, rage at maximum gives +50% to regenerate, and +50% to damage. Although the rage passes quickly, it quickly gains in battle. Also specializations in blacksmithing, which allows quickly open recipes for good equipment.

Dark Elf is an easy choice for any builds: mage, summoner, warrior.
Orc is the best choice for maximum damage.