Lycanthropy and You [outdated]

Getting the most out of werewolf form.

Lycanthropy and You

Werewolf form is, I feel, a somewhat underrated skill in Gedonia. In this guide I'll demonstrate step-by-step how it can be used to achieve unparalleled sustained DPS whilst simultaneously being nigh-invulnerable.

Character Stats

2 Strength
3 Agility
3 Intellect
0 Charisma



Intellect gives a larger benefit to werewolf form than Strength does, and we won't be wanting any heavy weapons or metal armor in this build anyway. Agility is highly beneficial as well since it gives an all-important boost to attack speed and enables dual-wielding daggers, which we'll see is necessary in the next section of the guide. Charisma is relegated to being the dump stat because something needed to be, and who wants to be friends with a scary slightly unhinged wolf-man anyway?

Equipment

• Beastmaster armor set all items hardened, patched with +2% crit chance/+0.1 m/s move speed/+3% attack speed, and embroidered with +100 health [Source: Citadel of Evil]
  
• Arch shaman necklace enchanted with +100% magic damage/+60 mana [Source: Barbarians faction merchant]
  
• Archshaman ring x2, both enchanted with +100% magic damage/+60 mana [Source: Barbarians faction merchant]
  
• Cloak of arch shaman [Source: Barbarians faction merchant]
  
• Weird living plant [Source: Ergo Merchant archaeologist in Ertoron]
  
• Venomous fang x2, both hardened and enchanted with +30% magic damage/+20 mana [Source: Seers faction merchant]
  
• Maneater hardened and enchanted with +30% magic damage/+20 mana [Source: Lava Filled Cave]
  
• Herbcrafted torch enchanted with +30% magic damage/+20 mana [Source: Enchanted Forest]

Notes:
Venomous fangs are used in place of something granting +% nature damage bonus (Eternal greataxe, living mace) due to their attack speed increase being more beneficial to the build's DPS. Same goes for the Weird living plant, not that there's any nature magic trinkets which would be particularly helpful for this build regardless (Rune of animal pack is terrible; spells are woefully underpowered in werewolf form since you can't apply magic overload).

Maneater and Herbcrafted torch may seem like odd choices for the secondary loadout, but most of the spells chosen for fighting in human form scale with magic AND attack power — you'll get higher average DPS from these melee-focused armaments than from a Living mace and Astral fire (That being said, Astral fire actually more-or-less ties with the Herbcrafted torch, so feel free to use it instead if it tickles your fancy).

Poison is not necessary or useful for either loadout. Add some if you like, but it's not going to have any noticeable benefit.

Skills

This section of the guide will enumerate the skills needed in order for Werewolf Form to truly shine, plus some extra "skill point sinks" you might want but aren't too important to the overall build. Skills used outside of werewolf form are not included here, and will instead be discussed in the following section (Skills Pt.2).

Ferocity

• Rage Despite not building any apparent stacks in werewolf form, Rage will boost your damage output a fair bit; Angry Strike and Killing Frenzy will have no effect, however, so don't bother with them.
  
• Critical Strike Level 2
  
• Melee Damage Level 5 Skill point sink; its effect on your DPS will be barely perceptible. Feel free to skip this one (and/or future skills marked as skill point sinks) if you have ambitions for your human form skills and need the extra skill points.
  
• One-Handed Weapons Level 2

Combat Mastery

• Rend Level 4 Skill point sink.
  
• Fencing Only taken for access to the next skill.
  
• Piercing Strikes Level 2 Level 1 is a decent DPS boost that keeps getting better the longer a fight lasts. Level 2 is a skill point sink.

Note: Although Piercing Strikes is the only skill here we're truly interested in, you should still put a full 15 points into Combat Mastery for the attack speed increase.

Blood Magic

• Tap into Blood That's all we're here for: an easy way to quickly fill our mana back up after it's expended. Tap into Blood is my preference since you can put on Bark and Thorns beforehand to soak up all the self-damage, but there are other options available (potions, conjure food, rune of elemental mastery, etc).

Arcane Magic

• Mana Bonus Level 3 Skill point sink; we have enough mana from our equipment.
  
• Mana Replenishment Skill point sink; Tap into Blood (or an alternative of your choice) will be the primary means of recovering mana.
  
• Magic Resistance Level 3 Skill point sink; Bark and Thorns is going to be protecting us from damage anyway, and it does its job well.

Note: Yep, all skill point sinks. You'll almost certainly want Arcane Magic for your human form skills, though, so investing into the passives isn't that big a waste.

Defense

• Survivability Level 2 Skill point sink; represents only a tiny increase to max health
  
• Mastery Skill: Defense Master Skill point sink; a much more impactful increase to max health, but still not strictly necessary.

Note: Another skill tree consisting entirely of skill point sinks. Don't bother with Immovability; the Beastmaster armor set gives you full immunity to knock (in werewolf form).

Nature Magic

• Beast Element Level 2 Only taken for access to the next skill, but it'll see use in human form.
  
• Mastery Skill: Werewolf Form
  
• Mastery Skill: Powerful Thorns Never take damage again, especially since at the time of writing there is a bug which causes Bark and Thorns to last almost indefinitely when cast in werewolf form.
  
• Nature Power Level 5 Skill point sink; gives you more damage than Melee Damage Level 5 or Rend Level 4, but still not enough to be a compulsory pick. Much more useful at lower levels when your nature magic damage bonus isn't already in the quadruple digits.

Skills Pt.2: Become Human

So werewolf form is all set up and ready to go, but what do you do when there's a dark cave and you need opposable thumbs to hold a torch? I wouldn't suggest trying any purely physical skills since the melee damage bonuses on this build are mediocre at best, but there's enough nature magic spells and "spellblade" style attacks to eke out a surprisingly functional skill bar in human form.

Combat Mastery

• Enchant Weapon Adding beast element to your weapon will give a little extra damage, but more importantly the cleave attack from the second Enchant Weapon skill is excellent burst damage in a fairly large cone AoE.
  
• Summon Weapon Decent enough AoE based on your equipped melee weapon, and gets a touch of crowd control from the runic forge.

Arcane Magic

• Mastery Skill: Maximum Overload Mandatory if you plan on using any spells in the late game; the damage increase is enormous on account of being added multiplicatively to the specific types of magic damage bonuses (e.g. nature magic damage).
  
• Flying Level 3 The absolute best way to get around outdoors, superior even to dragon riding. Pro tip: use three stacks of magic overload before flying to reach continent-crossing levels of speed.

Holy Magic

• Paladin Seal Level 3 The only reason I chose to invest in Holy Magic at all, and taken almost exclusively for its double jump. It's a big investment just for some jump height, but once you've grown accustomed to the werewolf's jump height it feels stifling to play without the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Technically the melee damage bonus is helpful too, but it's really more of a side benefit.
  
• Weak Healing Prayer Level 3 Nothing more than a minor convenience for when your Bark and Thorns runs out unexpectedly, but we're already this high up in the Holy Magic skill tree so why not. It can also heal the spirit bear if you have it tanking for you.

Speech

• Encouraging Speech Practically worthless on its own at 0 Charisma, as you might expect, but the runic forge bonuses for this skill are extremely good and don't scale with Charisma.

Nature Magic

• Beast Attack Unpredictable targeting in a group and not the most amazing damage, but it's one skill point and easy to weave between other attacks (don't bother using it in werewolf form, though; no magic overload = no damage)
  
• Spirit of the Bear This guy will be your best source of sustained DPS outside of werewolf form, especially when buffed with a runic forge enhanced encouraging speech.

Honorable Mentions

Skills I didn't use in this build but think would be okay picks.

• Elemental Attack with beast element is a marginally superior ranged alternative to the basic melee attack in human form.
  
• Drain Water is a convenient combination of health and mana recovery which even works in werewolf form, but suffers greatly from a long cooldown.
  
• Divine Protection is an alright passive for a bit more damage resistance.

Early Game

The bare minimum required for a werewolf build to run smoothly is:

• Mastery Skill: Werewolf Form (obviously).
  
• Bark and Thorns for a bit of emergency protection.
  
• Some way to quickly restore mana (my preference is, as previously mentioned, Tap into Blood).
  
• At least 600 mana so you can stay in werewolf form for the entire duration of its cooldown.

As such, the build is a bit of a late bloomer and you won't really be getting it off the ground until around level 24. If you insist on using werewolf as your primary combat skill as soon as possible, my suggested priorities after getting Werewolf Form itself would be, in order, Bark and Thorns 3, Tap into Blood, Nature Power Level 5, Mana Bonus Level 3. Equipment-wise, your priorities should be split between bonus mana and bonus nature magic damage, then loading up on as much nature magic damage as possible once you have at least 600 mana — trading out nature magic damage for attack speed doesn't become worthwhile until high levels.

A general early game tip that's applicable to any character is to beeline for the player home outside of Ertoron as soon as you can afford the 200 gold to buy it and an additional 1120 gold to build one of each resource generating structure. With a bit of patience this setup allows you to craft some quite passable equipment that will likely be better than anything you find up until late mid-game/early late game, using only materials farmed at home and gathered from safe low-level areas.

A Brief Note on Ancient Runes

In the exhibition video below, I used nine of each color rune invested into every skill (counting the single starting rune of each color you get on every skill for free). This is not actually necessary; the only runic forge enhancements truly affecting the core functionality of this build are red and yellow runes for Werewolf Form and likewise for Bark and Thorns.

Nine runes per color per skill was chosen as my cutoff point because it's the first time the runic forge bonuses reach a whole number, and they don't do so again until a ridiculous ninety-nine runes. Nine can therefore be thought of as the "soft cap."

Exhibition (⚠ Arcane Rift spoilers ⚠)

[Relian]

Oh, I see. Too bad the werewolf master, @Koumori, won't come back and update the build.
Because I actually like the werewolf transformation tricks in various games (like Skyrim). And I'd like to play Gedonia, through an effective werewolf build. But I myself, no matter how hard I tried, couldn't build it.
(-It would be cool to come up with a build through heavy armor. For example, Templar armor, where there is a boost to natural magic. I tried to build a Templar, it didn't work, although it withstood one-shots a little better.
-Or an archer, who, when forced into melee combat, becomes a melee machine for a limited time, long enough to solve the problem. Probably such a build is impossible.)

[Koumori]

@Relian: My memory is getting spotty on account of it having been a couple years since I last played Gedonia, but I seem to recall that Bark and Thorns got nerfed after this guide was written; that's probably why your survivability isn't matching mine. Werewolf form also got a mobility nerf which makes it somewhat more difficult to endlessly circle-strafe enemies. As for damage, this was one of the highest sustained DPS builds at the time (and the highest DPS achievable in werewolf form... I tested it extensively ), but changes in v1.35a and v1.38a hit it hard.

In short, the build presented here is badly outdated and no longer the unstoppable killing machine it once was. Sadly I don't really have any interest in returning to Gedonia, so I'll probably never update the build to bring it up-to-date.

[Relian]

Is this build relevant in 2025 (1.50a)? No matter how hard I try to do everything according to the builds, the werewolf gets a oneshot in Arcane Rift. 1-2 hits and death. The werewolf seems to do good damage.
But the damage from hands is higher if you take 2 axes. And survivability with blood magic and holy magic is much higher. And you still need to wear this stupid beast armor, no options.

Why, I ask, is this werewolf needed at all?

Or am I doing something wrong?

[Narwhal]

Alright thank you for the quick reply. Now with the level cap being increased to 80, the talents skill tree added, and living weapons, I can see this build being even more insane so that's why I'm trying it out

[Koumori]

@Narwhal: Werewolf form partially benefits from melee damage bonuses; you get a fractional amount of the normal increase. I don't remember exactly how much it's reduced by, but I can say that nature magic damage bonuses are almost always better than melee damage bonuses. Ultimately you'll be wanting to increase both stats, but focus on nature magic first (doing so also has the side benefit of empowering the bark & thorns spell, which is excellent for extra survivability on a werewolf build).

[Narwhal]

I know this guide is outdated but you're obviously knowledgeable in the werewolf build and I'm going for it this play through. So does melee damage scale in werewolf form? Like is it better to go for an armor piece that provides 40% melee damage increase over an armor piece that provides 30% nature magic damage increase?

[Koumori]

1.38a has changed the werewolf meta yet again by allowing buffs to be retained while shapeshifted. This entire guide will need to be rewritten as it is now completely obsolete.

[Koumori]

Preliminary tests for the changes/new content in 1.35a are showing that swapping to a 3 str/3 agi/2 int/0 cha build and using the eternal greataxe instead of dual venomous fangs is the new optimal loadout. The new talents skill tree is enormously important, especially the magic stat; a lot of the "skill point sinks" from my guide should be sacrificed for points in talents. I haven't tested how the human form abilities perform now, but some of those will probably also end up being sacrificed for talents.

[Bermud]

Thank you! Need to farm runes :)

[Koumori]

Regarding my comment below, I should also mention that you need to already have a fair bit of nature magic (>1,000) before all those attack speed bonuses and magic damage bonuses will rocket your DPS into the tens of thousands. Easily achieved with the beastmaster set and archshaman accessories, though, which I'd assume anyone looking for an end-game werewolf build would already be wearing.