Just got my first star ancient adventurers - any tips on how to use these properly?

[Airship]

Soul Thief and Night Blade. As far as I can tell, they're meant as anti-healing and dispels respectively, but do you guys have any tips on what to do with them? Are they even usefull at the point where I am at now, at the beginning of hard mode? I haven't really noticed the enemy doing a llot of heaing, for one thing. Will the soul thief be ablle to dispel the obedience thing the northern bandits use? Quite often now this has killed me because they all get to move before my tank can taunt them.

My current party is Paladin, Killer, Bun, Snow Maiden, Missionary. It works decent-ish, as long as I keep my agility up on the tank.

[xanthalus]

Have you looked at any of the community guides? I recently finished updating the one I created to try and fill in as many of the blanks as possible. And if you will pardon the self promotion here is a link to the one I made. I hope you find some of it useful.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1307809345

In my opinion the Soul Thief isn't anything special but having him at Ancient Star rarity means his base stats when max leveled will be substantially higher than any others, so he may have a higher longevity when in long term battles.

The Night Blade is a class of beauty, I really enjoy how this one functions. Yes, his primary purpose is controlling the enemy healing, but he can be supplemented in many ways to make him much more versatile. The Imperial Mausoluem and other levels will have insanely high hp regen and you will need a way to suppress it while you build up the stats for your output.

I do not believe Obedience can be dispelled.

Advice for surviving the Northern Territory: It sounds like you need to change the way your team is built, give them more hps to survive the attacks. I only run the damage reduction passive skill because without it even my strongest characters will get one hit killed by the bosses of the current end-stage dungeons. There is a scroll that gives you the ability to taunt all enemies at the start of battle, that might help too.

Team Setup: A low end Snow Maiden is weak and has several other viable replacements, try a Red Horn for DPS, a Duelist or Tactician for increased resistances.
Using the Taunt on hit on your Bun Sister's weapon will keep the damage focused on the character who has the highest hp.
The Killer without his Star ability is also replaceable, you could switch him with the Night Blade and do very well. In regards to the Night Blade, take his Stun on cast skill instead of the 10% damage increase or Weakening.

Personally I love the Tough Woman character because of her speed and boosts to the team, she is very viable when built and protected correctly.

For much of Hard Mode I built a team to chew through the enemy over time, whether it was damage over time or DPS, each as the levels got tougher took longer to build up and stack bonuses enough to apply lethal damage. Everyone should experience the fun of a 1 million output Red Horn doing AOE or a Fire Assassin doing the same with Fire Seed feedings. Using a Warrior to Tank is good, as in addition to a high defense his ability of Rend just butchers the enemy resists - combine that with a weapon that steals the 3 elemental resist types your team outputs and it becomes doubly significant.

Sorry for going on so long, there are many mechanics and abilities that you're about to find that will make the game more complex. Good luck and happy hunting.

[Airship]

Hey, thanks for taking the time to write all that out! I did take a look at your guide earlier, but it was more a cursory glance than anything else.

The way my team was setup until now was to focus all dps on a single character, the Killer. All the other characters were only there to support him and did little to no damage at all:

Paladin built with a mix of agility, vitality, and resists
Bun Sister built for agility and maximum resists to support everyone
Missionary with agility and intelligence for heals and dispel
Snow Maiden for freezing enemies with a multi target ring and tons of effect mastery (speaking of, does effect mastery actually affect the freeze? Tooltip still says 2 seconds...)

Out of all of these, the Snow Maiden was just kind of thrown in there without much thought as it was the only character I had at the time that wasn't just more dps, and after that she just stuck around to not rock the boat. I'll definitely have her repllaced with the Night Blade as you said.

Other than that, would replacing the Bun Sister with an Elemental Wizard work favourably when it comes to survivability? I did manage to pick up a Star Ancient Bun Sister since making this thread, but looking at her star ability it seems like it won't really help the role I'm using for at all.

Thanks again!

[xanthalus]

The problem with her effect is that there will be levels later that are immune to stun, or the effects won't stick. Between bonuses and enemy resists negative effects caused by your team can be all but shrugged off.

I wouldn't change out the Bun Sister, she can lead your team clear into the mystic dimension if you build her right but it's all about what team you find effective and fun.

[mikeydsc]

Bun Sister dps is based on vitality. Dont bother using str with her.

Add every single piece of gear with the best vitality stat to the bun sister. She will be your best dps at this stage for you.

Frost Maiden is a so so toon. I tried her with an ancient stats and found her to be lacking.
An ancient Cube does much better damage overall. Tactician is better also.

It really does not matter to much at this stage what your party consists of as long as you support them with synergies.

If most of your party is strength based then use the gear that lowers their resistance to that. etc...