Can someone walk me thru skill stacking

I'm very new and having trouble staying alive with this clunky deck thing. I keep reading people "stacking" skills. I get that it can be done I see videos of people using it, but when I hit R I have to choose a hotkey? I hit another key and one icon lights up red, maybe another one lights up green and I have no idea am I supposed to hit the green one or the red one or what.

this game is very unintuitive. Beautiful world and I so like playing in the ultima world again, but ultimas were never this hard to figure out. Could someone please just step me thru how you use skill stacking, I believe that will make my spells more powerful right? and less mana?

Help! Thanks

 

Welcome Whimsy!

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/deck-building-r18.28559/

 

I barely use skill stacking myself, I'll leave the explanation to those who claim to be good at it. What I will say though, is first, welcome to the forums, glad to see another face. Second, your difficulty staying alive will be greatly reduced by getting a few levels and buying up some defensive passives, I recommend avoiding spiders like the plague they are, getting a ranged pull, and farming undead at one of the "road" zones. Once you've put a few levels under your belt, you'll notice a HUGE change in survivability. Then you can explore.

Now, ideally, once this game's systems and gameplay are out of the pre-alpha state, nobody will have to farm. But right now, if you follow the story, or your instincts, you will be up against unwinnable battles pretty damn quick.

 

Hi Whimsy yes it takes a while to get the hang of things. If you watch the video Envy made it helps in designing your deck. If you are playing a mage having a lot of death touch life leach types of skills should help. I always play a warrior myself with augmented plate and use a 2 handed axe. The plate helps keep you alive but you would fizzle too much for a mage build probably. I do like some of the direction they are going with combat, but I know it needs much more help. I dont like the clunkiness of stacking. I think it is very archaic. They may fix it, we just have to tell them to with feedback. Which of course we are Let me know if I can help. I am majoria in the game. Welcome to Shrouds.

 

Thank you all! I actually did watch that video before but it doesn't talk about stacking but he says they nerfed it? So maybe it's not that important anymore?

Anyway, I need to build up a lot a level before I can customize that much. Off to get some levels. Thanks friends

 

I stack with the mouse-- drag and drop the icons. It works better for me. Your experience may vary.

 

I'll provide a scenario in words. Hopefully I make it clear and you can follow. YOU CANNOT COMBINE GLYPHS WITH A LOCKED DECK.

Lets pretend Fiery Fist is pulled into "1" and "2" of your hand. I quickly just press "r" then "1" then "2". You could also press "r" then "2" then "1". The difference is where they are stacked (this could be important depending how you build your deck).

The glyphs only turn green if they form a combo. So I think Fiery Fist + Rend forms a combo. So if both of those glyphs are in your deck they will eventually be pulled at/near the same point in time. When your press "R" they will turn green. It gets more complicated as shown below.

Deck Hand is 7, 1-5 has fiery fist and rend. You Press Z and enter combat. Some time later slots 1-5 have cards in them.

Slot 1: Fist
Slot 2: Rend
Slot 3: Fist
Slot 4: Rend
Slot 5: Life Leech

Slots 1, 2, 3 and 4 will all go green. They ALL indicate a combo and the colors don't help you choose quickly which combo is which. (maybe a future feature to make different combos different colors, anyone?)


My advice is to stand in town and practice. Glyphs of the same type can be combined. Combos can be combined. Combined Glyphs and Combos do a LARGER amount of damage.

 

Could buy a Deathadder and map R to the side button!

I mean there is even an add for Razer stuff on the main page!

 

Yea I've been thinking of mapping 5 - 9 to QWER and doing exactly that.

 

I also found a G13 really helpful too and if you got a programmable mouse you map R to an easy button and then you dont need to click and slide to make your combos.

In regards to stat stacking I stack strength to get some big hits in bludgeon and swords (been testing them) With bludgeon you can get big crits of 90. I find for more consistent dmg though you use Swords (double strike if it crits destroys creatures) or polearms. Push is great for controlling a fight, the speed that polearms hit and with the extra strength bonus you hit damn hard and consistently.

With a pure mage or hybrid build I havent had much experience but Envy gaming and Themo Lock have worked out the dmg output of spells and what stats to stack. I wont steal their work and post, but they are easy to get hold of and I do think Envy has some vids in regards to it.

Some people have different philosophy of builds, some will work for you and not others and vice versa. Just play with it. If you want to leech some exp just whisper Dodgy Dan in game and ill go kill some things for you. Generally centre around one stat, I think strength as its the easiest to learn, and think ok I just want to hit hard and do one thing well. Always grab heals and healing ray to keep you in the fight longer

People will hate me for this but so far best experience places I have found are Spectral Mines (Undead give 800 exp relative easy to kill plus there are mining resources to gain whilst lvling) and Greymark Forest (I think the one near Kingsport) where you have elves. Elves have advantage of dropping loot that you can sell so you can make more gold and its a short run back to Kingsport to sell off ya loot. Elves give 800 exp.

All of this info can be found on Sotawiki (I do not plagiarise) where you can type in a zone and they will show the mobs and their exp. Of course you will have to find a nice spawn where you can manage them or pick them off one at a time at lower levels.

When you get stronger I would go for Spectral Foothills and kill them damn pesky cultists, they drop nice loot but are bit tougher when more than one. Also 1500 odd exp.

Finally I enjoyed going into Ravensmoor. Was some tough fights with the ghosts needing you to either burst them down or maintain constant DPS. Get harder when you get a few more. Fun little dungeon!

 

I made a very quick video in another thread about how to make glyphs predictive. The point of the video is to highlight how bad the deck system is ... but you'll be able to witness my key strokes and how you can accomplish something similar.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-combat-good-or-bad.24390/page-26#post-376952