End game build guide?

[Pokepug]

There's so many options with crafting that I feel a tad overwhelmed. I know with Thea 1 I wanted big hammers and strong spears at the end so I could kill without being touched. Is there a similar meta in 2? Just from reading a variety of posts it sounds like shield leech is about the most important property to have in weapons. What weapons should I be most interested in crafting?

What about armor? I've found a lot of beginner guides but what's the best way to gear up for challenges over level 10?

[Jaasrg]

Used poison+shield leech bow for a while just because it worked for physical and mental challenges. Swapped it for life+shield leech 2h sword since that's ultimately much safer, even if it only works for physical and because mental challenges I felt you can just ignore most of the time or those were conceptual.
For spiritual none of the weapons I looked at did anything relevant and it came down to just having the right innate skills, maybe the artifact type weapons that raise mysticism?

Armor you just make whatever the best is your people can wear, no real variation there compared to weapons.

[Heau]

41 god's branch 2h spears for poison+shield leech is almost always the best option for red/STR.

I don't know about a meta, since this is a SP game, it wouldn't be exactly tracked, but my late game usually runs 2 zercas as support units for speed buff, and at least one unit has a -15 second turn timer (quick, cover!). I forget the mats...I wanna say purple essences on an enchanted 2h book.

Purple is typically night-elf racial, ground shake (ability obtained with RNG on magic users), or chain lightning book (purple essences - forgotten essence), 2h book. Random blast(4) can be a poor man's chain lightning if you only have high MYST but no high DEST character.

The easiest way to gear for 10+ challenges, and Xeno will hate me for saying this, but is to play nomad with max essence "the one ring". Now it trivialises the game so much once you are familiar that you kinda want to play without it self-imposed. You can achieve that ring super early by researching a T5 essence attached to armoured stone, downgrading them to armoured stones, and making an armoured stone ring.

Without the ring, it largely depends on your starting options and whether you lucked out some of the great non-human classes or have a team with somewhat weak stats.

You generally want to focus top weapons first with your mats, as you can generally work around lower health / lower armour, by using speed altering abilities to effectively take 0 dmg from most encounters.

God's branch spear is dual yellow essence, so it can also be used on a high INT character for yellow challenges, like a zerca or a healer. Just be aware that many late game yellows involve true dmg enemies so shield leeching to infinity doesn't quite do the same in yellow as it does in red. You can also use it to craft javelins for PER based red, or WIS based yellow. Although for WIS, God's branch relics are just better since the last tier weapon gives +42% Wisdom passive (49% if improved craft).

The best settles, provided you are strong enough to defend the town, are generally in green lands where you can get like 2 ancient wood, 1 mythical leather and 1 dragon bone and coal in a 4 tile radius town. Ideally with a T2 stone. The best material for late game is, imho, god's branch. It unlocks the best weapons for yellow and red. It uses a ~3 ancient wood to 1 obsidian ratio. But it is very rare to find a quality settle that has both within reach since obsidian spawns in molten lands and ancient woods in green land. So you need a good rng dig. Hence I prefer to just settle green lands with leather and bones too, in order to craft good relics and books for purple.

[Heau]

Originally posted by Jaasrg:

For spiritual none of the weapons I looked at did anything relevant and it came down to just having the right innate skills, maybe the artifact type weapons that raise mysticism?

There is a 2h relic craft that gives a %mysticism buff, but the abilities it provides with the buff are dreadful. So you would need the unit to have a good innate MYST based ability which are hard to come by. I mainly use them to buff a child before growing up events. I know there is a T1 weapon with a myst % but I forget if there's a T2 or T3 variant.

There is also a 1h...I forget if it's relic or artifact. It has a DEST % buff. It also has rather weak abilities with it. I think its chocking fog off the top of my head, which is only viable with one super strong unit that gets played once and buffed to boot with your other 6 action points. However, if you use a tainted shaman and lucked out on ground shake, or use a night elf, then the DEST % scaling alone is worth.

Unless your unit has an innate or learned strong AoE ability for purple, the end game is either a RAND(4)*1.8 MYST scaling book, or a RAND(6)*2.4 DEST scaling book. God's branch relic can also be considered for DEST, as it has poison + shield leech, but you need a lot of speed buffs from other characters to make anything purple really viable since there are no first strike + shield leech option.

Chain Lightning(DEST) is typically a lot stronger than random blast(MYST). One of Lorska's mod (I believe) does some tuning of those books(mainly a nerf to chain lightning).