Quick Questions

Hey all,

I asked this on the steam forums but couldn't get many answers, so I thought I'd ask them here instead.

1. How is the Subterfuge tree in terms of combat? Is Sneak Attack powerful?
2. What is the difference between a dagger and a sword?
Why would you use one over the other?
3. Strength increases the damage you do. Is this just the base damage with a weapon?
Or do abilities also benefit from it (i.e. both strength and abilities increase the damage)?

 

I haven't used the Subterfuge tree much so I can't speak to that. But I can say that base damage with a weapon both increases as your attribute goes up, as well as the basic bBades skill. There are some innates/passives on the right side of the Blade tree also increase speed and damage.

Then in the right side of the Subterfuge tree there are skills to increase crit chance, etc.

 

1. don't know can't help with that one.
2. Daggers have small damage but big crit modifiers, swords have more normal damage. (I don't think many people use daggers for grinding after the first day or so, they just don't do enough damage once you get past 1 skull areas)
3. Weapons have a strength factor witch increases the weapons base damage, but the modifiers are so tiny. Melee Glyphs are affected by the weapons base damage so there should be a trickle down effect into glyphs but it's tiny.

Strength also increases the effects of the spells from the earth magic tree. (e.g. root hold longer, and sticks better with higher strength, obsidian arrow hits harder with higher strength.
Strength also increases your health.
Strength also increases your carry capacity.
Many releases ago, you could see a combat statistic of "attack power", strength, Int, and dex all raised this magic number equally, however that number was dropped from statistics, and then /stats was moved to the chat log file, so who knows what effect it has, if any.

Right now we can't get clear information regarding what the stats actually do.
@Chris doesn't want us to figure out how the sausage is made so they won't give us any answers except, maybe "yes there is an effect", they also won't give us practice dummies out side of the tutorial so we can test for ourselves, instead we get 0 damage gustballs, so testing reliably is difficult.

Right now common opinion is something like this.
The most important factor in combat is your level compared to your targets level. They weaker they are compared to you the more you hit, crit, and damage them. They higher they are compared to you, the more you miss, the less you crit, and the lower your damage to them.
Your dex versus enemy dex may affect your chance to hit, crit, miss and the damage done, esp with archer enemies and your ranged combat.
All three stats are important for every build and no stat be neglected completely in any build.

 

Thanks for the replies

Do player levels still exist? As I searched through google, it was possible to view your level by pressing V, but now V changes your view mode.

So there is no room for specialisation?

Currently for some reason I am having difficulty against Timber Wolves, yellow difficulty. Large Grey Wolves are also yellow difficulty, but I can kill them easier.

My Strength is 10, dexterity is 20+. I have 2 sword abilities that can do damage, 2 light armor abilities to increase dodge and avoidance I think.
I am wearing leather armour, and using sword and shield.

What do I need to do to fare better against them?

 

If you're not using Earth magic, a mage can ignore Strength.

But a melee user cannot ignore Intelligence because you need tons of focus to use your melee abilities or you have very weak DPS.

 

You can see this information (stats that include the level) in log file when you execute /stats

A tools that parse the log is developed by a user: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ats-log-parsing-legible-stats-and-more.54410/

 

For a new player who does not know /stats, how would they know whether they are high enough in level to progress?
In fact, how do you increase your level?

 

The "Con" system and the skull markers in zones. Green is easy, Yellow is similar level, Orange is higher level, Red is melt your face off.

The level is increased by total xp spent on skills.

 

Thanks.

1. In Morrowind there was a danger of levelling too fast due to non-combat skills like athletics and acrobatics increasing, making the player weaker relative to the enemy.

Is there such a danger for this game?

2. Is it possible to drop in level if you let your skills decay?

3. I find that innate passive skills take up a lot of xp compared to active skills. Is it better to focus on abilities (glyphs) than innate skills?

4. Right now as advised by the game I took the path of love and spawned near the Soltown region. After Soltown, which other area that is developed do you recommend I go visit?

 

If you were to purposefully turn off the training of your offensive skills, and pump all your experience points into non-offensive skills, then yes that is certainly possible.

However, you would need to do so *intentionally*. By default, all your skills are enabled for training, so you will increase in offensive skills at an appropriate rate as you adventure.


Even if you do accidentally do so, you can always go back to easier zones and fight the creatures there until your combat skills improve.

Unlike Elder Scrolls, the monsters in this game do *not* automatically adjust in difficulty to match your level. You will need to move to new hunting grounds if you want to find tougher opponents.

No. Your "level" will only ever go up. It is based on how much life-time experience your character has earned, not on the level of your skills.

 

Looks like to be more useful while on PvP, or in a party. I cannot imagine its a good skill for PvE, solo playing.

But you should experiment and test it.

Just one advise, do not raise a lot of the skills at the same time, the game will think you are stronger than you are and the character development will slow down. Use the <K> key to check your experience pool and focus on combat for a while.

 

A pure mage, which doesn't need the hit points or the carrying capacity, or earth magic, could consider ignoring strength.

Your not supposed to know about /stats it's one of the things they want to ween us off of, they are moving the information they want us to see to the bottom of the character sheet.
They keep showing less information, and making it harder to find, so long term we probably we won't be able to get that information.

Your supposed to be looking at the skull poles (explained later) and creature name plate color.
Grey trivial, green easy, yellow medium, orange dangerous, red deadly. normally you want to focus on Yellows with some greens for easy leveling. The miss rate on orange and red is too high to be effective leveling (although it does feel good to kill one while it is still red).


Your Adventure level is raised by earning xp by killing things.
Your producer level is raised by earning xp by Gathering things, refining things, crafting things, repairing things, or salvaging things.
Please note that some things are xp negative (Spends more xp than it earns) at very low levels, such as refining skills like smelting, and fishing I think both go xp negative in the early 20's so you will need to farm xp doing something else in order to raise those skills quickly.

1. No this isn't possible, mobs don't scale to your level, so even if you never spent any xp at all, eventually you could face tougher and tougher mobs. Choosing exactly what to spend xp to raise can dramatically increase your effectiveness. But since most of the early gains are the biggest this is a problem that is very easy to correct at anytime, at any level.
2. No you level is determined by total xp ever earned, which never decreases. current skill levels are determined by xp spent - xp decay - xp removed by unlearning skill. Most skills can not drop below 40.
3. Most passive take up lots of xp because they are triggered by almost everything you do. You will find active disagreement about what is best. I believe you should level everything to 40 both actives and passives, then focus on raising passive skills atleast into the 60-80 range before raising actives again. (you get glyphs at 1,10,20,40, 80, focus costs for active skills increase after 40, and 1-40 has more benefit for an active skill and some passives than 41-80 does) However other people feel differently.
4. Really the game only advised you that the area was more "fluid" for brand new players. Your at the point now where you've ran out of fluid and your going to need to venture into those under construction areas to level. If it was me I would venture into all the nearby areas, turn around and look at the skull pole. you should see 1-5 skulls on the pole (the ones on the ground don't count) more skulls means more dangerous and more xp. So I would start with 1 skull, if it feels too easy, explore to find a 2 skull, if it feels too easy explore to find a 3 skull, etc.. You can tell us how you far against which mobs, and we could tell you the best place to go for maximum xp per hour, however all our information is based on when we originally leveled 2+ years ago, so we are just going to tell you which zones to hit in Hidden Vale in what order. You will miss out on so much by not exploring the region your in until you feel confident to venture further into the world.

 

A pure mage operates at range and has damage avoidance, so they're not designed to just sit there and soak tons of damage with tons of hit points.

 

Yes in concept what you are saying is correct.
However I don't think anyone would recommend a newbie with no outside help, start by leveling a pure mage.
Even then at a certain point raising strength just to carry more loot to sell/salvage, and more hit points for when things don't go as planned seems worth at least some token xp.. ( I mean when you looking a putting a million + xp into a skill for a single point, what is 5k xp just to unlock heavy lifter, and pick up some free hitpoints really cost you?)

 

Is it really only 5k to hit 40 in Train Strength? I wonder if innates/passives or tier 2 skills need more XP.

I'm a few weeks in and I still haven't hit 40 in Train Str, Train Dex or Train Int. I've disabled everything but those three skills and I'm averaging maybe 1 point in each for a few hours of play. But most everything kills me, so I'm sticking to tier 1 scenes most of the time and not getting much XP.

I think I have Train Strength up to 38.

People tell me you can get all your skills to 40 pretty much in the blink of an eye, but it simply hasn't happened for me. I wonder if it is because I haven't leveled in a group.

 

Leveling with a partner, makes it much easier to start with. you only earn 2/3rds of the xp per kill but you kill twice as fast and can handle bigger things, and when your with someone it makes adventuring not seem to crawl by.

Also pure mage is the hardest template to level starting out they bloom last but bloom the best, it's easier to be hybrid when your starting out, and then after you've got all the basics covered (40 in everything you care about, then start focusing more on the caster side until you can handle combat without dipping into your melee or ranged skills) Now if your pure mage for RP reasons, then you've got a long row to hoe, but eventually you will get there, I would seriously recommend that you seek out a pack of hunting buddies or a guild and just hang with the group, throw out what dps and heals you can, Later on they will come calling upon you for your help, but right now your looking at an intial hump that every single point of xp is going to make things massively better.

Another thing you might seek out known pure mages like @Fizzlebang I'm just a melee who has dabbled into magic but he's an actual pure mage he might have some actual good advice for you.

 

I grouped with a new/weak player briefly last night to make a run through Soltown Catacombs. The archer killed everything in one shot. It took me 5-10 shots to kill weak mobs in a tier 1 scene after I've been "leveling" for two weeks.

I'm beginning to suspect that a traditional fighter build of heavy armor, 1-handed sword and shield just isn't viable and never will be. The armor doesn't help protect me much. Most mobs still melt me so quick that I cannot gain any XP to advance. And I do absolutely terrible DPS compared to other builds.

 

I'm heavy armor and swords myself, This I can help you with...
On day one I salvaged everything in my starting zone to raise blacksmithing, and then went mining in Owl's nest. Got myself 36 copper ore (minus 2 ore per 12 metal scraps I aquired, with 18 ore minimum) , and 4 tin ore and crafted at copper 2 handed sword with a bronze hilt.
That sword is 5% + 12% crit chance, and at your level it meant I was basically swinging the sword waiting for a crit to kill the creature and I went from sucking to owning instantly.

If your committed to using a shield, you must get a crafted weapon, it's even more critical that you get a weapon with the highest crit chance you can craft/afford than it is with a two hander.
Basically, a shield adds nothing to your survival at low levels, and a one hander really reduces your damage.

Tell you what My ingame name is Rofo, message me in game, I'll give you a crafted two handed sword I made myself, and maybe even take you out for a bit of xp to help you get started.

 

That is a very generous offer. The only real earth combo I'm seeing available to me is off shield bash (and I need to get a tier 3 skill to use it).

I think it was a mistake going with a shield because one-handed DPS is pretty terrible. But in theory all playstyles should be somewhat viable.

 

Aye, it harkens back to the old adage : "The best defense is a good offense".

Best to simply just kill your enemy first, and don't give them any time to deal damage to begin with, and for that two-handed weapons are key.


Shield characters do serve a purpose though, as one would expect : As tanks for parties.

The shield does provide a good defensive bonus if your intent is to simply sit there and take one for the team, while everyone wails on them with ranged skills.


For a solo player though ? My thoughts would be to go with the two-handed weapon. It just *feels* better to deal the massive damage up front rather than prolong the battle.