* I think skill training makes the game easier.
* Reloading makes the game much easier
* Less characters make it harder.
* Expert difficulty makes it harder.
* Ironman mode makes it somewhat harder.

It's obvious that less characters are harder to play with, but how far can you go? Would you play a 2-character team on ironman expert difficulty without reloads and without skill training?

What is reasonable?

I have played solo ironman with henchmen. Didn't make it, but it was fun. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Two player Ironman, no henchman is my next goal. But I haven't played for a couple of months (Morrowind, Dungeon Siege & NWN have all come out and occupied a lot of time...)

I'll get back to the game as it is so fun...

up to you really, tough challenge to me is playing solo. playing in ironman doesn't have any difference to me, since i don't reload in any battles. except if I want lightsword from bucanner ghost.

It's inevitable to reload in a solo game, especially on expert difficulty.

Does no training also mean no repeatedly mixing powders/potions for infinite money? That trains Alchemy and makes it easy to have a magic heavy party because you can buy all the spell books. Without it you'd be way more strapped for cash, and have less spells to work with if you wanted to save your picks for the high level ones. Would be alot more challenging.

Also what about patch level? The early patches make PPing way more lucrative, I would say it's alot more challenging to go with a patch past I think 001b, one of the ones that limits PPing so you don't get all the great equipment and extra money so early.

Yup, that's another thing to add.
No potion mixing for cash, or stealing in general.
And by not setting portal in Trynton would also make it tougher.

So how many and what characters can you finish the game (with this in mind).

Hard for me to say, I like having a full house rather than taking a small party, and I don't play IM, so I always had at least 6 and usually 8 characters, but I only play in expert because it's just way too easy in the other modes. More a question for the people who are into the small parties.

Also what about experience mining? You could take a small party as far as the huts outside of the mines and gain quite a few levels with all the wasps, etc that respawn there endlessly, that (and other places/instances) kind of experience mining should probably not happen either.

I would categorize " experience mining" as training skills. If I stand around a place for too long I get bored.

I think it's the opposite, you pick an area to get experience rapidly, which actually can stunt skills relative to level if you're not careful. Bad thing in a way to be a high level with low skills as you'll attract the high level monsters with low skills.

To me training is doing somethine over and over that may or may not (usually doesn't) give you any exp but raises skills quickly. So for example, lots of knock-knocks on a certain vault; casting charm person over and over; or even getting into fights where you defend forever to build stealth or shield, or heal the monster and fight to build weapon skills. Those methods get your skills maxed out early on, whereas exp mining raises your levels.

You could use both of course, but they're different.

If the skills aren't increasing very much it's only dangerous to do it. Like you said, it would respawn even higher level monsters when your skills are low. I don't see how this could be of advantage to a smaller team that already levelup pretty fast. Well, I can see how it's useful when your skills are higher. But in any case, I wouldn't do it.

I agree with Gimli.

And I like a balance between stuff that lets you train {why not have your magic users keep armorplate, enchanted blade, etc. active at all times and increase their skills, since it's a twofer) and combat.

I get very bored with repetitive training, but I also get very bored with standing around picking fights with everything that walks just to get more XP.

It seems to me that if you follow the storyline, do some obvious training (like spellcasting where you can, examining locks, etc.), and take the fights that come to you as you go, your characters are a lot better balanced. If you spend all your time fighting just to get xp, your characters will be undertrained in some areas.

I don't have the attention span to do some of the training tricks (I get bored during long battles as it is [img]tongue.gif[/img] ).

Sooo - I think the natural flow of the game, plus using points wisely as you level up, and practicing where it makes sense will get you nicely balanced characters without having to go to an extreme in either direction.

yeah, if you just follow the storyline you will turn out just fine. And try not to use teleporter, it will make journey faster but you'll miss out on battles. unless you want to drag Vi into rapax area. ;)

heres a challenge... how about the NO MAGIC game?

no offensive magic
no defensive magic
no cureative magic
no scrolls or books
only potions & dust allowed.

I am just looking for more of a challenge. My idea of a challenge isn't playing a solo game because you will reload so much, which makes it easy. You can even reload on ironman, but if you are giving yourself limits, the game will finally become more of a challenge to stay alive. And you will have more fun creating your characters, because it's a matter of life and death. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Would someone try to play a 3-character team without ever reloading playing expert difficulty, without potion mixing, skill training etc. Or even 2-characters...

I also like to advance the game as fast as possible without having to stand around. Whenever rested, I always put up all enchantments without calling it training, because the enchantments are necessary. I take advantage of already powerful classes like bishop and bards etc. I think I would take it to an extreme if I limited myself to certain classes. Of course, that would also make the game tougher though.

No offensive magic and only bombs/powders is a no thanks. The magic is the fun part IMO.

I've just tried what you mention el_kalkylus
. but everybody miss their swing during battle too often ( since I can't train ). very very annoying.

Yeah, they miss alot in the beginning, which is why I like to keep more magic with me, so that I can kill monsters with magic while the fighting types miss.

The first time I played through the entire game I used a party of 2 (I had got up to Rapax a couple of times before with larger parties).
My 2 party was a Fighter and Alchemist, though I left the Alchemist dead at AP and just played the fighter through to the end of game. I played on Normal and Expert.
I didnt train, and never mixed potions. Throughout the game the Alchemist wasnt much use and really it was all Fighter. Playing the same on Expert all way thru would be tougher of course but quite possible as this game seems all about melee. I've tried a number of character combinations, and just about anything seems playable IF you can get over the first parts of the game - the Monastery and Road to Arnika are probably the toughest parts of the game for a "weak" party.
I tried a solo Fairie Ninja and took that to AP, and it really became too easy, though I found the early part of the game real tough, and also the retro dungeon with those bloody 7 magic casting heads at the start was a nightmare.
I much prefer smaller parties, the char development is much faster and your chars are much more powerful - I would rather have 2 chars that were real cool than dragging a load of gadgeteers around all game so that they *may* become powerful in the last 10 minutes of the game.
I have found Fighter to be the "best" char in the game but not on solo, though a 2 or 3 char party is great with a Fighter.
This is starting to become a ramble so I had better sign off.

How about just choosing a party of characters that start out weak, but will be powerful later on? (I don't know about y'all, but the monastery/Arnika Road is the WORST for me).

I just started a 4-character party:
Dwarf Valkyrie
Faerie Ninja
Mook Gadgeteer
Elven Bishop

This one, on expert, is a killer at first.

You've got a relatively weak magic user (shoulda started him as a mage and switched later, maybe). You've got 3 characters who have no ranged attacks in the beginning. No Bard to smooth the way.

Those 5 crabs at the gazebo almost did me in. :rolleyes: And just by dumb luck, I got caught by 11 roaches(not the weak ones, the next level up) at the same time I went in to kill that slime and open the chest.

Those damn roaches were nibbling away at me, and without a bard I couldn't seem to keep them asleep for more than a round. Oy! My bishop and I had a serious discussion about training after that one. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I chose this party because, except for the bishop, they were classes I had only played in big parties. It's turned out to be quite a challenge. They should rock later in the game, though. The Valkyrie already gets some big point hits in occasionally, and the ninja suprises me once in a while. It's sad when you have to make the bishop hand over her ring of protection to the ninja. :D She's still whining. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I've tried that too, but the spell either backfire or fizzle all the time ( nearly 70% of the time ). and then mana is just too low to last the whole battle.

Mr Creo, I see it's good you have already done the challenge, except for some details...one big detail is the reloading part.

Rhea, what would you consider easy in the beginning? I agree that a bard makes it easier in the beginning, so what about bard-less parties? My current team had some trouble at the start too, but once they got some more magic they were alright.

Kakero, just don't cast in the red area. Orange will backfire some, you have to expect some backfires, but yellow is quite safe. And try to specialize in skills before taking on too many of them. That is how I do it. Sometimes I am happy that my casters backfire. That way they can cast heal each other, and improve divine magic (and/or divinity, psionic, alchemy).

Not quite sure what you mean by reloading - after battles?
When I played the char party after the fist part of the game up to Arnika I probably didnt have to reload more than half a dozen times due to tough fights, only at the temple and a couple of other places where I tried different strategies, and when I occassionally got surprised because I had been complacent about restoring health etc after a tough battle and then carried on when I should have rested etc. I found that my Fighter became VERY strong and rarely took any meaningful damage, just the occassional magic attack but as the game went on almost nothing could touch him.
I think the game is tougher to play with small parties when one first plays the game but as ones skills at playing the game improve in many ways its actually easier to play with smaller parties. I was though VERY dissapointed that magic especially offensive magic had been so downgraded in the game as to be almost irrelevant. In Wiz7 I just loved Nuke blast but in Wiz 8 it was a waste of time. I was also dissapointed with Samurai, no matter how well buffed a Sam never (at least in my experience) would be as good as a Fighter, crits just suck.
I really like this game and have played it far too much the last months and having a rest from playing it but I will get back to it - I want to play thru solo as a Fighter - will be tough due to lack of magic attack resistance, but worth a shot!

You should try it if it's so easy like you say.

About magic: I have tested this alot. It's all about how good mythology skill you have. Then, you can check the resistances and concentrate on the enemies weak resistances. Then magic is much more effective than melee in most cases. The monsters that aren't affected by magic are usually only one or two at a time, and can easily be killed by one melee guy.

Excellent strategy and one that had never occured to me to try, thanks for the tip - when I next play I shall definitely use this strategy, thank goodness offensive magic does work, I had almost given up on it.

You're welcome.

[img]smile.gif[/img]

The monsters that aren't affected by magic are probably one or two in the game, it seems :)

I have a 5 spellcaster party running. There are only two enemies that i didn't kill with offensive magic:
A golem (granite?) at character level 11 - killed him with razor cloaks.
And El Dorado. Killed him with two elementals.
To my surprise, even Nessie has a resistance hole.

Just for testing, i killed a group of rapax warlocks without water magic. They were 2-3 levels above my level, and 115% resistances everywhere. For me, it looks like power cast helps a lot.

Yeah, same here. Powercast seem to make a big difference. At leást at lower levels.

To sum it up:

The toughest (reasonable) challenge so far should be:

* Expert difficulty
* Ironman mode
* 2-3 characters. (2 is possible?)
* No skill training
* No money making
* No trynton fountain
* No experience mining (i.e look for easy monsters to get exp)
* Most important thing...NO RELOADS! (it is actually possible to reload on ironman, so I have to have this limit too)

I followed these limits with my 4-character party (valk, bish, bish, bish), and it was not that hard. They died at level 13 when the umpani ship crashed, kinda stupid mistake.

If you follow these limits, you should have played the game at least one time before so you know about character development and where items are in the game.

Although it's frutratig sometimes that damage magic (esp. HP reducing) is pretty weak, I think it makes the game more interesting: you have to think of specific tactics for each encounters rather than always nuking. Indeed powercast seems to increase spells' power a lot. I noticed that my bishop with a high powercast did so much more damage than my samurai using the same spell at level 7.

Also the resistances are not to be taken too litterally it seems. Some monsters (maybe all) with a 100+ resistance are quite susceptible to high damage with some spells (like concussion). On the other hand monsters with high resistance to some kind of magic will (it seems) very seldom be incapacitated by spell of that magic and certainly very seldom killed. At least it seems so. So don't waste time casting death wish on monsters with high resistance to divine magic. Or am I wrong ? Too bad Sirtech does not publish the complete formulas (for resistances, damage ...) in some guide.

Mythology is quite useful indeed and in fact it seems to develop rather well by itself, well not always as quickly as I wanted in the beginning but one can at least check the monsters stats in some table. Well, that's assuming you can at least identify the monsters which does require some Mythology since "cousins" which look alike have different resistances.

[ 08-20-2002, 09:11 PM: Message edited by: kolvir ]

I would add that I just started a thread here:
http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=15&t=00280 6#000000

The toughest challenge is to randomly generate a party, then play as outlined above (PLUS no class changes). When the last man dies you generate another party and start over. It makes for some comical combinations (Faerie Valkyrie, for instance, who took three levels just to get some attribute points to distribute!).

I'm finding it both might big fun and highly addictive. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Edited to add: the randomly generated parties are usually 4-6 people (it's hard to survive with 2 or 3 randomly generated characters, for obvious reasons). :D

[ 08-23-2002, 01:09 PM: Message edited by: Rhea ]

I just finished the game! I followed my rules for the challenge except one, (setting a portal beside the Trynton fountain). Here is the party:

* Dracon ninja (lvl 17)/fighter - (str, dex then spd and sns) - close combat, polearm, throwing, stealth and locks & traps
* Elf bishop - (int, pie) - divinity, alchemy and psionic
* Elf mage (lvl 7)/bishop - (int, sns then spd, pie) - wizardry, mythology and then divinity

The reason why I had my ninja develop polearm skill, was because it is an extended weapon. This helps to protect the bishops against melee fighters with extended reach.

--------------------SPOILERS ABOUT THE GAME: ---------------------------------

Monastery: (level 1-7)
No problem, except against Gregor. With the ninjas autopenetration ability, the noxious slimes died quickly and couldn't harm anyone. Then of course everyone leveled up fast (because they were only 3 characters) and could cast spells more effectively. The ninjas dracon breath made it somewhat easier too sometimes.

Arnika road: (level 7)
By this time, the mage had fireball, noxious fumes, missile shield and web, while the bishop had guardian angel and web + some non-combat spells. When I didn't see far ahead of me, I pressed combat mode and moved to see if anything was ahead. If the coast was clear, I continued. That way, I could always get to gaps and fight monsters one at a time, so it was not much trouble on the road with the spells I had.

Arnika: (level 7-9)
I needed money! So I went around almost all of Arnika looking for things to sell. This meant that I had to face alot of monsters, and sleep alot, which meant I had to face even more monsters that respawned. Finally though, I had the money I needed for some spell-books and powders, and got out of Arnika.

Arnika-Trynton road: (level 9)
I just ran through it, because I had x-ray. When I found gaps and monsters ahead, I lured them over to the gap, or rested in the gaps and woke up with hordes of monsters waiting for me. Then I killed them and moved on. The usual tactic was to cast guardian angel on the ninja, and have both bishops cast spells like fireball, noxious fumes, whipping rocks etc.

Trynton tree: (level 9-11)
There are two very hard monsters in Trynton that is better to run past than to go through, leaf sprites and crawling creepers. The crawling creepers are not as hard as the leaf sprites, but they can be very dangerous to my bishops. I tried to avoid these creatures as best as I could, and ran directly to the fourth bough.
In fourth bough, I had to kill oak saplings to get spiked spear. I felt ready at level 10 when I had element shield and superman (safe at power 3), and managed to kill them. With this glourious win, I felt confident and went to kill Don at ratkin tree. He was of course not easy to kill, I must have spent at least 80 rounds to try to kill him, but I finally made it. The stealth skill, extended reach, guardian angel and superman was the key to this win.

The swamp: (level 11)
I had to be real cautious here. Just like Trynton tree, previous IM parties have died in the swamp. So my tactic was to not get too far into the swamp, but lure monsters to the beginning of the swamp. If things would get too tough, my team could easily retreat by walking backwards a bit, to the Trynton map.
When I thought I had killed enough groups, I went farther into the swamp and ran to Crock as fast as possible. I stopped by to kill that ironskin crocodile too, just for fun.

Marten's bluff: (level 11-12?)
There is a great portal here, so my bishop set a portal (even though he didn't have return to portal yet). I bought 3 more spell books, found some items, killed a rapax assassin, and took the idol needed for Trynton. Sauron (mage/bishop) disappeared, so I had to go to Crock again.

The Swamp:
I agreed to do Crock's little quest, and went out looking for the frog. I didn't have x-ray without the mage (after a while), so I tried to stay close to the river. I fought some easy millipedes, killed the frog, then went back. I was very cautious all the time, and pressed close combat alot to look ahead. After alot of effort and running back and forth, I finally made it back to Crock to collect my reward. Sauron cast "return to portal" .

Trynton tree:
Placed the idol, killed the bat.

Umpani base camp, northern wilderness:
Bought some more spell-books, did some "umpani training", fought the Hogar-guardian and got my "return to portal"! That means I had two portals, one in Trynton and one in Marten's bluff which I could use as much as I wanted.

Marten's bluff: (level 14)
Z'ant was so nice to give me all that experience points for so little effort, that I did all his quests. Finally he asked me to kill the umpanis!

Umpani mine tunnels: (level 14-15)
I ran as fast as I could to the spaceport. There was an Umpani commander guarding the panel. I looked around, nobody except him was there, so I killed the commander. He was tough! When he was dead, I still only saw green dots, so I crashed the ship and portalled myself out of there (gained 100.000 exp for the crash). Z'ant was very pleased, so he gave me alot of money and 600.000 exp!

Mountain wilderness: (level 15):
Bought the dreadspear from Bela, then went to the waterfall to get some expensive items to sell. The party started to get really powerful, so I headed to rapax rift.

Rapax rift: (level 15-16)
My intention was to go to the rift while the rapax were still weak. I mean, in previous games I never had to face warlords or warmages before level 18, but this time it was different. I had to face them too, and the fights lasted for a long time. Finally, I arrived to (and killed) El-dorado, which kept killing my bishops over and over until I ran out of resurrection powders. Then I killed Al-sedexus.

Rapax castle: (level 16-18)
Inside the castle, I had to fight at least 30 casters (samurais, warmages and warlords), and about 30 fighters (archers, bowmen, berserkers and veterans) until I reached the upper floor and could become a templar. I managed to kill them all thanks to the defensive spells of my bishops, and the offensive spells of my mage (and of course my ninja with extended reach).
After becoming a templar, I had no difficulty getting all the expensive items in the castle, so my ninja could change to a fighter and wear a very expensive armour. I deactivated the bomb and killed Al-sedexus again.

After this, the game was very easy. Bayjin, underwater area, sea caves and mountain wilderness-dungeon felt like a little picnic. It was quite nice to feel the power though.

Ascensions peak: (level 20-26)
I had a little problem when I was surrounded by 30 rapax templar, but after I managed to freeze half of them and , resurrect, cure paralyzis, unconsciousness, health, stamina etc, I got control of the situation and managed to win.
Other than that, there were 5 tree monsters that kept casting earth quake at power 7. They were also tough. I got 1.5 million experience points from this fight, which is the most I got for one fight in the game.

This was a fun game, and it was very challenging the first levels. After rapax castle it became almost silly though.

[ 10-12-2002, 09:41 PM: Message edited by: el_kalkylus ]