Skills.....choices,choices

[jackson]

Hi All

Finally, thanks to havock18, I got MW3, installed it on my wifes PC so she's happy. But guess what...I'm hooked ;D

What an amazing game, minimalistical and complex. You did a great job Jim. Wonder how many hours you've spent on coding.

Now, I've read the help file and worked myself through the forum posts (yes, I did read all). Still I'm uncertain which 10 skills to choose. So far I got:

and I'm planning to take

However, I'm not sure about the 10th.

Food Preparation sounds tempting but Rune Research has the Conjure Food spell and and Foraging provides plenty of food anyway.

Bind Wounds seems to be a little redundant, too, because of the spells Heal and Emphatic Healing provided by Rune Research.

Stealth seems to be very useful and quite different to the Invisibilty spell.

Meditation is the most appealing to me since mana is used almost all the time and even with high Intelligence and a Mage Staff you run out of mana quickly.

So, at the moment I tend to take Meditation but since you folks are way more experienced I would appreciate your advice.

Thanks,

Jackson

[havock18]

In my opinion meditation is a nice skill to have until the few last rows, the benefit of it is no cost 15 seconds cool down time and full health mana restore.

Stealth is something of personal choice it can save you in difficult situations but it tends to fail a lot to.

Bind wounds as you said has lots of replacement skills and food preparation is just a nice extra to the overall play but none crucial.

I found this one of the few weaker areas of this mod it would be nicer to see for example higher grade food gives you 15 minutes of time per unit and berries and raw meat just 5 minutes or so.
This would add a bit more of pressure the further you go in the game since more members means more food rations needed.

However I can imagine that this would be allot of work to program and is probably not worth the time compared to the overall play.

Personally I dropped the bower skill for stealth, cause if I want ranged I just pick up trowing axes or even rocks mostly I only need it if 2 to 4 bishops start to snipe me.

But it is free choice however single player restricts you in his own way so it isn't really as open as proclaimed.

You can't win the game trough melee however the knight is really a sword user but it doesn't line up with the story basically if you don't have a bit of intelligence and spells your stuck.

In overall meditation gives you a benefit at start while stealth is more useful later on (pyramid fight and further)

Best to save before you choose and keep it as backup if your style is not the type you like or need some challenge.

Good luck with the game.

Oh and if you do use meditation be sure your not targeted ruined my day once xd

Greets,

Havock18

[Kilarin]

I've never found meditation to be of any use at all to the way I play.

I'm with havock18 on Food Prep. It's FUN, and neat for adding to the atmosphere. It doesn't really make much difference to your playability.

Stealth is NICE.

Nice thing about MW is that you have LOTS of options. The game can be played in different ways.

[jackson]

Thank you for the feedback, Havock18 & Kilarin.

Will follow your advice and learn Stealth instead of Bowyer.

Concerning Meditation: I took it mainly to speed up leveling of Mundane. That works quite nice together with Lockpicking at the tower in QK1. But now, after having the Mage Staff, it seems to be a bit obsolete. I can now cast Lockpicking almost continuously. Maybe I reload for a fresh start

Jackson

[milagroso]

Both meditation and food prep are good ways to increase mundane. Meditation helps you rejuv mana faster between grinds, and food prep increases mundane score. It is alot of fun to make the food too. I went with meditation in the end, and still found it very useful even in the last few rows. So, my vote is for meditation, but it really depends on your playstyle.

[taltamir]

wait, what do you mean you can't win SP as a pure melee? uh oh....

[Liantedan]

Well, the Rooks and King have 480 Strength. The Rooks don't have much Dexterity, and are immune against pebbles and arrows, and against magic. So the only way to fight a Rook, is head-on in melee. A pure melee char can duel one-on-one with a Rook fairly easily, despite their overwhelming Strength and Hitpoints.
If you're not melee-focused, you summon a Demon and let it do most of the fighting for you. Just assist the Demon to keep it alive as long as possible, and run-and-resummon when it gets killed.
But a King has a LOT of Dexterity on top of Strength and Hitpoints. Unless you make a maxed-out 100% pure melee character ( that literally means not a single point of xp in anything but melee ), you won't have much chance against him. And if you do that in SP, you won't be able to export your character to MP, because she's already maxed out ( you can only export non maxed-out chars to MP ), and you'd have wasted an enormous amount of time and effort on a character you won't be able to play again.
Also, since your companion(s) are only capable of melee, you limit your entire party to melee-only. This WILL put you in situations you cannot get out of alive. You do need to be able to do more than just bash things over their heads sometimes. Some foes are viciously tough, or just PLENTY. No matter how good you are in melee, if there's half a dozen enemies around you, trying to hit you, you'll never do more than blocking, or trying to block, and eventually run out of health.
If you had some experienced with the bow, you could have picked off one or two of that group before they got in melee-range. If you were knowledgable in the arcane, you'd wave your hands and make every single one of them halt in their tracks before the last one got to you, and then you could choose whether to beat them up in melee one at the time, or blast them with fire or lightning or whatever you have at your disposal ( for their disposal ).

Oh, and with "a maxed-out 100% pure melee character", I really do mean not a single experience-point in Precision, Talent or Mundane. Every single point of experience should be in Confidence. This literally means you character will not be able to learn how to make better armour or weapons, nor how to open a locked door, nor how to find/make food, nor how to even start doing magic.
So without friends helping out, you'll find it very hard to even survive. You can only get food by buying it, or melee'ing deer and grovellers. And you won't be able to get your hands on better equipment, unless you miraculously manage to kill an enemy merchant, whom all reside behind locked doors and are guarded by very tough enemies.
Truly, it's pretty much impossible to build a PURE melee character in SP. It's hard enough as it is to do that in MP.

So if you have started out doing nothing but melee, and if you don't plan on reconsidering ( and starting over ), you better make a savegame to fall back on, and start working on your ranged skill so you can blast everything with that Arma Igneus. You'd like some Precision skill and Dexterity for more chance to actually hit what you're aiming for, but in all, you'd make the things you point it at very dead, very quick. Just make sure you have ample arrows, as the ones used, can't be reused.

Keep in mind, the game's called MAGEworld. Magic is very useful, if you have the mana to cast it and developed the right spells.

Whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best of luck.

[taltamir]

when i say nothing but melee i mean i learned all the mundane and i learned some magic, but i focused on melee as the main means to kill enemies.

right now i am melee 18, talent 11, and mundane 18. (i grinded).
Magic is, as always, underpowered in games because melee characters all godmode (it takes dozens of stab wounds to kill one, and the more practice they get, the more stab wounds it takes, and they heal... and they just do damage without "running out", and have more armor, etc). Although, this is the first game where this is actually explained as them being magically enhanced by an uberwizard and not just a farmboy who can soak 5 sword shanks to the gut.

I wondered if i should focus on killing every single opponent from now on using magic because it takes a mage to properly beat the game, as that is what it sounded like.

[Kilarin]

Magic is, as always, underpowered in games

only at the beginning. In Mageworld (And Hyperborea for that matter) magic is incredibly powerful at upper levels.

[Blondin235]

I meditate on the flying boats - to de-stress, after heavy Research..
- besides, gives me something to do on the journey..

[Liantedan]

Oh, you're not that far in the levelling curve. So yes, focussing on Talent would be good. Try figuring all spell recipies, so you can be sure to have the right spell for the right situation, too.
One of the first spells you come across in making, often is Firebolt. And really, it's still one of the deadliest you'll find. It hits hard, and fairly often. Especially at high level. But it takes 7 seconds to cast. So you need a spell that prevents enemies to run up to you and hack you down while you're casting.

Even Flare, my maxed-out pure melee character ( every single point of xp in Confidence ), is tossing out a spell and a Arma Volatus amidst her battles. It just gets too tough if you're on your own. Even at PURE melee, you won't last long against multiple foes in the end rows. Either trim their numbers while they're running towards you, or use magic to ensure you'll be melee'ing one-on-one.

But if you aren't truly pure melee and maxed-out, you'll simply not be capable to win from a few enemies in those last rows.

I think you'll be happier in the long run if you did indeed switch to magic ( I suggest you research the spell formula for a Magic Staff, you'll love it ), and once Talent passed your Confidence, you keep levelling both. That way you'll still be able to melee with whatever weapon you want, whenever you want, and also be able to beat the foes your muscle can't.

In Mageworld, like rock-scissors-paper, you will loose if "rock" is your reply to everything.

[Kilarin]

One of the first spells you come across in making, often is Firebolt. And really, it's still one of the deadliest you'll find.

Actually, I think Magic Dart is the deadliest. It's so fast your enemy can't hit back, unless it fizzles.

[Liantedan]

May 25, 2009 0:59:25 GMT -5 Kilarin said:

Actually, I think Magic Dart is the deadliest. It's so fast your enemy can't hit back, unless it fizzles.

Oh, naturally. Yet Magic Dart is pretty much useless with low Talent, whereas Firebolt does VH damage on any level. Low Talent one will be less likely to hit, but I think even with the lowest Talent, a full stack of casting ( burning all your mana in a single cast, including the Magic Staff's mana ) is likely to kill even a knight of the homerow. Likely not the Ancient ones, but at least the regular Elder ones. Takes time for the caster to recover from it, and if you don't kill the knight, you're already wounded from casting, and wholly out of mana, with the knight closing in on you. You'd be dead.
But a low level melee fighter wouldn't even stand a chance. Neither a low level archer.

Magic Dart is incrediby good on a high level of Talent, but useless for an apprentice mage. Of all the offensive spells, Firebolt is the most usefull allround, on every level. Whether you cast it from Stealth and spray fire over enemies who haven't seen you, or on the enemy you've rooted on their run towards you. If you finish casting it, chances are the fight's finished too. Just takes a bit of stacking the cast, especially when the enemies aren't a few levels lower than you.
Lightning works wonders on groups, but takes a lot of mana to even have a chance to take out the tougher of knights. And you don't want them charging you when you're out of mana.

Also, fizzles on the Dart aren't too bad, if you keep stacking casts. Unless you fizzle two to three times in row, your previous Dart is still going, and it takes the enemy another split second to recover from that last hit to begin their swing, and another split second for that swing to connect.
Just need to make sure you don't run out of mana before the enemy is down. ( And start frantically stacking more when you see a second or third fizzle. )