Should I invest my points in manipulation?

[Software22]

I'm playing the Story vanilla
Leaving the character with 90 of manipulation you can buy items and resell more expensive. right?
Is it worth get 90 of manipulation? or better to invest the points in another attribute?

If the answer is yes.
What is the best character to invest in manipulation?

[EolSunder]

Depends. There are different ways to build your character, personally i wouldn't go with a support/manipulation build the first time, but its up to you.

You can do a melee combat build with claws/full close contact powers, or a casting mage type build weak in combat but chucking out ice cages/firestorms, etc.

Or you can go support, with 90 manipulation to buy what you want, support your party with awe, and other powers that benefit your party more than you, etc.

Some problems with a support character.. first, you naturally are weaker than the other party members, and going with manipulation/support abilities take away any early points into your actual ability to be useful fighting stuff. Getting 80 manipulation takes a lot of experience early on, making you pretty weak and sucky in any confrontation, even if you can buy max armor/weapons early.

Also having 90 manipulation isn't going to make you a bank vault early on. The return on buying/selling items at 90 manipulation, which by the way is upping of 600 experience a point at that level, is very small. To build up any type of bank account you have to spend a lot of time farming stores, buying the high priced items and reselling, maybe getting 500 coins each time. Takes a while just to build up to 20,000. Then again, taking some time to "make" money you can get a full set of blood items, the current top gear, full discipline jewelry, back up rings, and potions that do more than the piddling 25 blood restore your normal potions do. But it takes a long time to build up. If you want to go faster you'll have to keep pumping points into manipulation, but again that gets experience expensive very very fast.

So, just depends on what you feel like playing. If your going to go full manipulation, then buckle down and realize you aren't going to be the melee or casting powerhouse you would normally be. Focus on support skills so your party members can be all they can be instead.

Since only you are there in both halves of the game, logically you should have manipulation on your main character so you have it at all times. Some in the first half of the game put it on a support character instead, which i find silly since your basically working that character 1/2 a game and the 2nd half of the game in modern times, all that work.. poof. useless. I would always put it on your main, and make them a support type character and let your other party members be the combat types.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by EolSunder:

Depends. There are different ways to build your character, personally i wouldn't go with a support/manipulation build the first time, but its up to you.

You can do a melee combat build with claws/full close contact powers, or a casting mage type build weak in combat but chucking out ice cages/firestorms, etc.

Or you can go support, with 90 manipulation to buy what you want, support your party with awe, and other powers that benefit your party more than you, etc.

Some problems with a support character.. first, you naturally are weaker than the other party members, and going with manipulation/support abilities take away any early points into your actual ability to be useful fighting stuff. Getting 80 manipulation takes a lot of experience early on, making you pretty weak and sucky in any confrontation, even if you can buy max armor/weapons early.

Also having 90 manipulation isn't going to make you a bank vault early on. The return on buying/selling items at 90 manipulation, which by the way is upping of 600 experience a point at that level, is very small. To build up any type of bank account you have to spend a lot of time farming stores, buying the high priced items and reselling, maybe getting 500 coins each time. Takes a while just to build up to 20,000. Then again, taking some time to "make" money you can get a full set of blood items, the current top gear, full discipline jewelry, back up rings, and potions that do more than the piddling 25 blood restore your normal potions do. But it takes a long time to build up. If you want to go faster you'll have to keep pumping points into manipulation, but again that gets experience expensive very very fast.

So, just depends on what you feel like playing. If your going to go full manipulation, then buckle down and realize you aren't going to be the melee or casting powerhouse you would normally be. Focus on support skills so your party members can be all they can be instead.

Since only you are there in both halves of the game, logically you should have manipulation on your main character so you have it at all times. Some in the first half of the game put it on a support character instead, which i find silly since your basically working that character 1/2 a game and the 2nd half of the game in modern times, all that work.. poof. useless. I would always put it on your main, and make them a support type character and let your other party members be the combat types.

Agreed vis-a-vis not being ideal the first time round. However, it is the most powerful build bar none. If done right, it lets you build a character you should really only be able to create by cheating. Major spoilers ahead: Play the game like normal (spend your points on whatever you like as Christof, even true faith, it does not matter at all... we're gonna get a LOT more of them) until you get Wilhem now go to the monastery and let Christof go into torpor (same with Serena when you get her). He won't get xp but this is actually a good thing. Keep playing as Wilhem, only putting points in manipulation and also getting awaken 1 (do NOT level it any further). Do not spend any money on anything. Ideally sell everything you find (you can use torpid characters as pack mules). Once your manipulation's 80 (should be mid-way through the catacombs), get two rings of manipulation so your manipulation's now 90. Don't do this before because you're just going to waste money making the next stage take longer. If you don't get the option to buy rings of manipulation, reloading the game resets shop inventories so just keep doing that until you get 2. You should have enough money. Put them on and get that paper son. Like you said, the returns aren't great at first but just buy as many magical items as you can, sell, save, load, buy more, etc. It'll take about 20 minutes before you can afford 4 full discipline sets and a full blood set. If you cba, we only need the blood set right now and, ideally, one discipline set. Now resurrect the other 2, proceed to the Tremere Chantry in Prague and go to the portal thingies which summon imps, elementals or blood stones. Make sure you quick save before approaching the portal (you won't get an elemental 100% of the time so just reload if you don't). Bring a fair amount of blood too, the discipline set makes awaken cost very little but you're still going to run out of blood with Wilhem. Give Wilhem the discipline set and kill the elemental for 300 xp (a crap load this early on). Once it's dead, use awaken 1 on its outline (you need to be fairly quick). It'll be revived with almost no health, quickly kill it. Rinse, wash and repeat. Spend your points wherever you like, they're infinite, BUT before your characters cross the 'rank up' thresholds (5000, 10000, 50000 and 200000 xp, you're not meant to be able to get that one but we can, plus if you diablerise the priestess, which you really should), give them the blood pool sets. Your blood pool gets boosted when you 'rank up' but it boosts your total blood pool, not your base blood pool, which then becomes your new base. So instead of Christof's base blood pool going from 80 to 100 when he hits 5000 xp (neonate, mid-way through the monastery usually), it now goes from 80 to 155 (80 base + 55 from the bling + 20). Do this right and you'll end up with a blood pool of 795 as Christof (post-Londres) with max stats/disciplines. Put the full discipline cost reduction set on and you can cast disciplines to your heart's content and just won't run out of blood, especially once you get the Ainkurn sword. Probably the greatest benefit is that you don't have to micro-manage your coterie anymore. Pink wants to turn into a wolf even though there's only one enemy and they're almost dead? Who cares. It cost 5 blood and his blood pool's 400. The reason we use Wilhem is cos his blood pool and stats reset when he reunites with Christof so they don't matter. If you wanna do it with Lily and Pink (there isn't really a great opportunity with Samuel and Wilhem 2.0 sadly) then the werewolf in London's a great choice, giving 1000 xp a pop. Also you can wait a bit if you're getting sick of the grind in Prague until the Teutonic Order HQ/Haus du Hexe in Vienna where there are Tremere Lords who give 500 xp each. If you're a REAL masochist, and this is already excessive, the game won't let you have 999,999+ xp. Instead of hitting 1,000,000, it goes back to 0, meaning you could hypothetically do this forever (if you somehow got around mortality and the eventual heat death of the universe) for infinite health/blood.