Death in Caldera

[Allyraya]

I am a terrible player, and I am dying in Caldera Exceedingly frequently. I have Palladium Armor and boots, and the Crimson Plate Mask. My current weapons are a flintlock pistol, the sword Brand, and the Forged Glass Greataxe. I am aware that my current armor does not protect against heat, but it seems like even potions such as the Survivor's Elixir don't affect the rate of heat gain at all, and the cool boon doesn't either.

I am currently stuck on the From the Ashes Quest, at the point where I have to kill the 3 nobles in the Sulfuric Caverns. I've gotten one, but every time I go back to kill the other 2, either I run out of stamina way too quickly (and stamina potions won't help, there's no time to drink them during combat) and or the guy with fire arrows one-shots me.

I am quickly running out of time to complete the quest before my workforce is depleted, so any advice that doesn't amount to "Git Gud Scrub", would be appreciated.

[Naryoril]

On which skill trees have you used your breakthrough points, and if there are skills that exclude each other in those skill trees, which ones did you pick? Giving you advice on how to beat them depends on what's available to you.

[Buldor]

Water, potions, cool tea - they all stack.

There is also a skill that everyone can get that reduces heat impact.

There are elemental resistance potions, which can stack with other fire resistance and Heat Boon to give you an easy 100% fire immunity.

Tea recovers burnt stamina. There are potions like warriors potion that help with stamina as well for when in combat. If you still struggle, keybind a potion and remove an ability. Ideally though, you shouldn't be burning all your stamina during a fight.

[Allyraya]

Originally posted by Naryoril:

On which skill trees have you used your breakthrough points, and if there are skills that exclude each other in those skill trees, which ones did you pick? Giving you advice on how to beat them depends on what's available to you.

Ah, I really don't know/understand what the breakthrough points are/how they work, I think I spent one on either the Cierzo or Berg Skill trainer?

[Allyraya]

Originally posted by 76561198007392301:

Water, potions, cool tea - they all stack.

There is also a skill that everyone can get that reduces heat impact.

There are elemental resistance potions, which can stack with other fire resistance and Heat Boon to give you an easy 100% fire immunity.

Tea recovers burnt stamina. There are potions like warriors potion that help with stamina as well for when in combat. If you still struggle, keybind a potion and remove an ability. Ideally though, you shouldn't be burning all your stamina during a fight.

I hadn't heard of the Warrior Potion before, I'll look it up and see if it helps, but does keybinding a potion help you drink it faster?

[Naryoril]

Originally posted by alawton:

Ah, I really don't know/understand what the breakthrough points are/how they work, I think I spent one on either the Cierzo or Berg Skill trainer?

If you look at a skill tree, you see 5 tiers of skills. You can buy the first 2 skill tiers from every skill tree. But to buy skills from tier 4 and 5, you need to buy the single tier 3 skill of that tree first. Buying the tier 3 skill, requires a breaktrhough point. You have 3 of them at the start of the game and there is no way to get more. This means, you can buy all skills from 3 trees.

If we take the Kazite Spellblade (the one in Cierzo) as an example:
https://outward.fandom.com/wiki/Kazite_Spellblade

Everyone can buy Steady Arm, Shield Charge and Fitness. But buying Spellblade's Awakening costs one of your 3 breakthrough points. You can only buy either infuse fire or infuse frost (only one of them) and either gong strike or elemental discharge (only one of them) if you bought Spellblade's Awakening, and not everyone can buy that one.

If you don't know which ones you bought, could you list all the passive skills you have? All breakthrough skills are passives, so listing all your passive skills will tell us what you spent your breakthrough points on.

I just noticed there is one relatively simple solution to win that fight. If you have the skill frost bullet (everyone can buy it in Levant) get 5 or 6 pistols, put then all on your hotbar and charge every one of them with frost bullet. You can equip a pistol, cast cool (or drink a cool potion), then cast frost bullet to load the pistol. Then equip the next pistol, cast cool and frost bullet again. Repeat this until you have charged all your pistols.
Then before attacking the enemies, make sure you cast the cool boon again (it increases your frost damage) and have the first pistol equipped. Fire it, then use the hotbar to swap to the next pistol, fire it, swap to the next and so on. Depending on your pistols and frost damage bonus, you should be able to kill those enemies in about 3 shots.
The problem with this: you need a bunch of pistols and the frost bullet skill. Since you said you are running out of time, running to Levant to buy the skill (and maybe pistols) might take too long, i think coming from caldera it takes at least 12 days. For the roundtrip.

[Allyraya]

Originally posted by Naryoril:

Originally posted by alawton:

Ah, I really don't know/understand what the breakthrough points are/how they work, I think I spent one on either the Cierzo or Berg Skill trainer?

If you look at a skill tree, you see 5 tiers of skills. You can buy the first 2 skill tiers from every skill tree. But to buy skills from tier 4 and 5, you need to buy the single tier 3 skill of that tree first. Buying the tier 3 skill, requires a breaktrhough point. You have 3 of them at the start of the game and there is no way to get more. This means, you can buy all skills from 3 trees.

If we take the Kazite Spellblade (the one in Cierzo) as an example:
https://outward.fandom.com/wiki/Kazite_Spellblade

Everyone can buy Steady Arm, Shield Charge and Fitness. But buying Spellblade's Awakening costs one of your 3 breakthrough points. You can only buy either infuse fire or infuse frost (only one of them) and either gong strike or elemental discharge (only one of them) if you bought Spellblade's Awakening, and not everyone can buy that one.

If you don't know which ones you bought, could you list all the passive skills you have? All breakthrough skills are passives, so listing all your passive skills will tell us what you spent your breakthrough points on.

I just noticed there is one relatively simple solution to win that fight. If you have the skill frost bullet (everyone can buy it in Levant) get 5 or 6 pistols, put then all on your hotbar and charge every one of them with frost bullet. You can equip a pistol, cast cool (or drink a cool potion), then cast frost bullet to load the pistol. Then equip the next pistol, cast cool and frost bullet again. Repeat this until you have charged all your pistols.
Then before attacking the enemies, make sure you cast the cool boon again (it increases your frost damage) and have the first pistol equipped. Fire it, then use the hotbar to swap to the next pistol, fire it, swap to the next and so on. Depending on your pistols and frost damage bonus, you should be able to kill those enemies in about 3 shots.
The problem with this: you need a bunch of pistols and the frost bullet skill. Since you said you are running out of time, running to Levant to buy the skill (and maybe pistols) might take too long, i think coming from caldera it takes at least 12 days. For the roundtrip.

My Passives are Pressure Plate Training, Fitness, Steady Arm, Hunter's Eye, Survivor's Resilience, Slow Metabolism, Miasmic Tolerance, Blood of Giants, and Peacemaker Elixir.

[Naryoril]

This means the only skilltree you have chose is the wild hunter tree (Survivor's Resilience) in Berg. Do you have the active skill predator leap or piercing shot?

But you should still have 2 more breakthrough points. No wonder you are struggling, your character still has a ton of potential to grow in terms of skills.

This means there are a ton of options for you to get stronger, since you still have a ton of flexibility with building your character. The main problem here is probably your limited time, since to get more skills, you need to travel, and traveling takes time. As for advice on how to build your character, it really depends on your fighting style. How do you like to fight, and what equipment do you use?

As for ways on how to win without getting new skills, the mentioned method with the pistols and frost bullets. If you don't have frost bullet, you could even use a bunch of pistols with normal ammo.
Another option is putting down a bunch of pressure plates and lure your enemies into the plates. If they attack you on sight by now, you could plant them a bit further away and lure them there.

[Allyraya]

Originally posted by Naryoril:

This means the only skilltree you have chose is the wild hunter tree (Survivor's Resilience) in Berg. Do you have the active skill predator leap or piercing shot?

But you should still have 2 more breakthrough points. No wonder you are struggling, your character still has a ton of potential to grow in terms of skills.

This means there are a ton of options for you to get stronger, since you still have a ton of flexibility with building your character. The main problem here is probably your limited time, since to get more skills, you need to travel, and traveling takes time. As for advice on how to build your character, it really depends on your fighting style. How do you like to fight, and what equipment do you use?

As for ways on how to win without getting new skills, the mentioned method with the pistols and frost bullets. If you don't have frost bullet, you could even use a bunch of pistols with normal ammo.
Another option is putting down a bunch of pressure plates and lure your enemies into the plates. If they attack you on sight by now, you could plant them a bit further away and lure them there.

Thanks for all the help! I actually beat them, it took a few more deaths, but I still made the timer. I don't have either Predator leap or Piercing Shot. as far as equipment goes, currently Palladium armor and boots, the Crimson Face Plate, the Sword Brand (for debuffs) a flintlock pistol (had obsidian, but put that in a legacy chest for my next character), and a Forged Glass Greataxe. I also have Mefino's Backpack (110 carry-weight).

I am not really sure what my play-style would be classed as. I like killing my enemies as quickly as possible, Spam-locking (I think is the term) them so they can't respond, which I think is DPS-style? I also want to have a lot of health/stamina, hence the Survivor's Resilience. I only have a bit of magic, primarily I use the spark spell to light fires so I don't have to carry a flint and steel.

[Naryoril]

So you want to go for "simple" melee, either with brand or with a greataxe.

One way you could build up on that is:

Take the Kazite Spellblade tree from Cierzo. The passive gives you +15 stamina, health and mana. Also take Infuse Frost. With that you can enchant your weapon to deal additional frost damage. If you have the money, also take elemental discharge. It shoots a magical projectile if your weapon is enchanted. Even if you don't plan to use it, if you have the cash, take it anyway, it might become useful.
Also make sure you have the cold boon spell, you can buy it in the layline chamber inside conflux mountain in chersenose.

Also get the Shaman skill tree, the trainer can be found in a tower behind the ghost pass dungeon in Chersonese. The passive improves all your boons (like rage, discipline, warm, cool and so on). Also pick up either sigil of wind or infuse wind as well as conjure.

Also get predetor leap in berg, it's a really good skill with lots of impact damage.

I'd also pick up one or two additional points of mana, since using infuse frost requires mana.

Do you still have the crimson plate armor and boots you got from the blue chamber storyline? If so, use these, they increase your frost damage. Brand itself as well as infuse frost profit from it and it has pretty much the same protective properties as the palladium armor.

Especially before a tough battle, try to get infuse frost as well as the cold boon active (it increases the frost damage you deal by 30% if you have the shaman skill tree). If you don't want to plan ahead of a fight, take some cold potions with you, since the cool boon skill has a lengthy cooldown, and you need to cast it twice to get battle ready.

Using brand: Until now you dealt 18 physical and 18 ice damage, the crimson plate mask increases frost damage by 11%, so you effectively deal 18 physical and 20 frost damage, for a total of 38.

If you do what i wrote above, you will have:
18 physical, 18 ice from brand and 19.5 ice from infuse frost. Your armor will have a total of 43% damage bonus on frost damage, and the cool boon another 30%, giving a total of 73%. This brings your total damage by brand to 18 physical and 64.9 frost damage, for a total of 82.9 per hit, in other words, an increase of 130%. And since a lot of enemies in caldera are vulnerable to frost, the damage increase is even bigger against them. And the debuff from brand lowers the enemies' resistance to frost after a couple of hits, which increases the damage even further (if the enemy had 0 frost resistance before, you'll deal a total of 99.1 damage per hit afterwards).