Well I'm back, starting again from scratch, this time with 4.

Felpurr Samurai
Dwarven Ranger
Dracon Gadgeteer
Rawulf Psionic

Made it to Arnika, feeling very weak and vulnerable, until I turned my Sam into a monster -> wielding bloodlust and a poison dagger, mwahahaha! I decided not to go dual swords this time because eventually I want to wield a stilletto in the offhand for the greater chance of crits. So far he's been lite-striking like crazy, sometimes 2-3 times a battle.

My ranger's my pseudo-tank, would've taken a Lord but I wanted the Alchemy Spell book more. He'll wield dual maces when I find that elusive hammer, (Antone's being difficult again). He doesn't do much ranged fighting. Looks like I'll be summoning some elementals later on to make up for the lack of tank characters. I won't do any cheesey stealth training, I shouldn't have to, since I'll have Vi tag along until I get the Lazurite Stone.

Issues so far:

The only problem so far has been stamina. Doh, I forgot that Psionics couldn't learn that spell. My Ranger is just beginning to cast it, but it'll be a while until until he's any good at it. Double Doh, I should've made my Gadgeteer female. Not having Magic Screen could be a pain, I'll just have to make do with scrolls once Vi leaves.

Speaking of Vi, her stats seem too high, compared with an average human of the same level? I'll have to check those again to be sure.

Samurai can't use stiletto!

One of the handiest daggers is the one obtained as Rapax Templar Initiates <mind goes blank> starts with a "C" <doh!>, the Ranger and Gadgeteer can use stilettos though.

Samurai does better with two swords because once the Sword Bonus goes over 100 it starts ameliorating the malus inherent in dualling. Besides, Enchanted Wakizashi beats Canezou, except only maybe for the Dex bonus.

If you want magic screen you could take Saxx with you when you find the right instrument and he'll cover that for you.

Magic Screen is available from an item usable by every one. The Amulet Pro Magic. Magic Screen 4 with up to 7 charges. It can of course be recharged.

Lana

At the risk of sounding a crawler, can I add my congratulations on an excellent website?

I'm with Wolfie, how come you haven't visited before or have you just been lurking?

Anyway, I've very rarely got the Amulet you mention unless I've been unlucky so far. This would be very useful for my 3 Gadgeteer party.

When I run parties of this nature who have no means to magically protect themselves I make it a point to get this handy little Trinket in Trynton. Either in the Pagoda Armory safe chests or the Rattkin Tree.

I have reentered the Rat Tree to refresh the chest it loads in many a game. Its a little easier than getting rid of the Oaks since I generally make a bee line there right from the Monastery and hold the party level low, 5 or under, in order to avoid magical beings whilst in the trees.

Invariably, these same parties hit the Peak and wind up with a slew of the things from the Wood Spirits there. I am just not willing to wait quite that long to get the first one.

Though it's not a very long bit of game to repeat, but at only 2% it can get a little wearying. It's really kinda sad you can't buy the Scrolls. In any case, i've finished several times without ever having Magic Screen on my party. Not a vast problem if you do have Soul/Element Shields, even less so if you have Iron Will--which you can max out faster than any other skill. There are also numerous devices that protect vs the Realms. There are also tactics to prevent too much mayhem when you're Insane or otherwise affected.

Cheerz you guys for the info. I'm a bit bummed that the Samurai can't use a stiletto, so much for my crit-master. I also found out that a Samurai can't use a main gauche, or a poignard. I knew the ninja couldn't, but why allow the Samurai to learn dagger skill if he can only use the puny regular dagger and the Canezou, what's the point? At least the ninja gets to use a sai, IF you can find one.

I suppose there's the poison dagger, but I'd prefer an enchanted Whakkawhozit. Which leads to my problem...

I like the Samurai, but the Enchanted Wackydohicky isn't worth all the effort it takes to build up dual wield IMO. The Lord makes a better dual wielder, so I usually only go Sam if I want the Mage spellbook. And if I want spells then the Sam usually doesn't dual wield, since so much effort has to go into making him a decent caster, that if I do decide to dual wield, I end up not being able to hit the side of a barn door. I thought if I could find a good enough offhand weapon, I could bear him being a poor combatant for most of the game.

At least I'm getting a steady stream of lightning strikes, but at the moment with bloodlust and the poison dagger he usually strikes 6-7 times and doesn't hit once, which makes it all pointless anyway. To top it off, he constantly needs stamina, which my Psionic can't supply.

Arrggghh... I'm gonna cann this party and try something else.

It's not a total loss however, I did manage to find the secret of Lightning strikes.

Your problems with the samurai come with bloodlust. Berserking greatly reduces you to-hit chance, and uses up more stamina.

I usually go dual with samurai (using enchanted wakazashi). But with bloodlust, i use no secondary for a while, to build up sword skill fast. You can get 2 attacks / 2 swings quite fast with a samurai (not counting the bonus swing from bloodlust). With secondary, its usually 1 attack / 1 swing at this point. Later, with higher skills, check again. At one point, i'll have 2/2 with and without secondary weapon. From this point on, i'll use secondary sword.

Do tell? I for one would be greatly interested in this secret.

Yes, me too! If Flame doesn't know it, it's really a BIG secret! :-D

Actually I am trying to confirm something I thought I had discovered about Lightning Strike. I was running a 4 person Hybrid team with an unusual build for their professions. My Samurai was getting Lightning Strikes at level 2 and got one on the King Crab, then the Gregor. It just kept happening with greater frequency after that. Several times in a large battle and about every other small battle. Little witch even got one against a Berserker in Arnika at level 12. 5x and on the 3rd swing she got a criical kill on it. In exert mode too!

Anyway, I always felt it was the attribute build I used that caused her to be this way since it was something I had never tried before. I brought it up else where but the idea was poo-pooed and I was told there was no way to create a char or items that could be equipped to make LS happen more often. So I just left it alone. Now I'd like to see if there is any similarity. Just to see if maybe I had beed right. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img]

I got a ton of LS's from my imported solo Lizard Samurai (Lisa). I built her to get Reflextion and Powercast. Leftover points went in Speed first, then Strength (of course, as a Liz import her Str was already over 60). Her Sen has remained at 35 the whole time. Katana weapons seem to help. I imported an Ench Broadsword, but the Ench Katana i reloaded 3 times for in the Coffins (actually quite quick if you combat-run past KC and Gregor and don't fight the Noxies--even if you don't import, you can do it @L1) made noticably more LS's, and Bushido, then Muramasa did quite well. I didn't try for a Light with this one, but i seem to recall doing quite well with one with another Sam. But with that one i noticed the LS's started tapering off when my Sen went over 45, so the comparison is invalid, if it's true that low Sen is one of the tricks.

How high was their intelligence?

See this was a Felpurr who of course was naturally fast and I added all creation points to Int, Dex, and Speed. I never touched Str or Sen. Every level up I always put 3 to Int, split the remaining 3 between Spd and Dex, first 1 to one of them and 2 to the other, then the next level reversed that.

She started increasing Critical Strike, Close Combat, and Dual Weild, way faster than sword skill. By the level of 12 when she got that crit on the Berserker 5 levels her senior (she did it twice in row by the way, both an LS with a crit midway) her CS, CC, and DW were well into the 70's but her sword was barely 50.

I had the feeling her Int causing those skills to raise so fast had a bearing on the LS frequency. Even when the crits started so early, many occurred during an LS.

I was just overly impressed with her performance. I've never had a Sam do so well before or after that one. Never again did I build them with the main emphasis on Int. It just made me wonder.

Well, obviously, if i was making Powercast, the Liz had high Int...i didn't touch the Int on the one with *Light*, and i'm pretty sure the Liz had a lot more LS's than she.

DUH! I feel stupid. I did pay not attention to the build where you mentioned PC. My bad. So what do you think? Can we say Int might very well be a factor then?

Yah. I guess we could test that with an editor, how would it work best? If we want to check the value of 3 different Attributes; Int, Dex, and Spd? maybe:
1) 55 Int 100 Dex 100 Spd
2) 100 Int 100 Dex 100 Spd
3) 100 Int 55 Dex 100 Spd
4) 100 Int 55 Dex 55 Spd
5) 100 Int 100 Dex 55 Spd
6) 55 Int 55 Dex 100 Spd

Or would it work better to have Duo's and have only one difference and run 3 parties? And we have to see what Sen does...

There was some testing done which involved Spd, Sen, Dex, and Str.

From what I gathered of it the higher the speed and senses the less often an LS was seen mainly because the number of crits were very high. The theory was they were instant killing them too often to generate an LS.

Strength was found to have little or no real bearing on LS frequency.

Dex factored into it when the Sam started getting more swings per attack, it also seemed to dictate the number of swings in an LS. Other than that not much else was said about it so it bears further investigation I think.

Not only attribs are coming into play here, skills I think are a big factor too. So for example your #1 would need to be something like:

1a) 55 Int 100 Dex 100 Spd
CC 100 CS 100 DW 100 Sword 100

Then 1b-1? altering the skills for that one attrib set. Or not. I am not sure how valid the results would be if the skills are all just set to 100 or varied where some are high and others are low.

I think it would be a huge undertaking and I believe both of us are involved in other projects at the moment that is demanding a lot of our time. We can just park it on the back burner for future reference.

Its enough to know that at least some one else saw a major difference when Int was high. :D

Heh..never mind testing like that, i just proved Int to myself with Brilliant Helm. I went back to an old save of Lisa and got in a fight with 6 Juggernauts, using Enchanted Katana so i'd need more swings to kill them. I fought it twice, once with 100 Int and once with 120, then repeated for control. With the Helm: 14 and 12, mostly 5X. Without: 5 and 8, also mostly 5X. The X must depend on something else, dunno how much is controlled by Attributes, and how much by Skills. But Int is most definately in there for improving the chance of LS's. (i also noticed that Stamina didn't seem to make a difference--sort of accidentally got on that when i saw it was getting dangerously low while i was distracted counting LS's)

[ 08-20-2004, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: Scatter ]

Hmmmmmm... maybe its just random? And game designers have lots of fun watching us all searching for those "great secrets"... Btw. do you remember the Aletheides' voice in Wizardry Gold? I like the way he said about "great secrets" (in the intro). :-D

No, it's not just random. There are definately controllable aspects.

I'm sure Rattus knows more about this... :-D

OK, just got back again, and it also certainly looks like once you start getting multiple swings/round that the LS's taper off. I'm not gonna fool around with this much more, i'm pretty happy with the way i build Sams now anyway.

Flamestryke! pretty awesome to see you post!
How the heck did you get all that info, on everything? Was is all testing or are you able to see it by the software design?

The Sam has always been a whimp to me. The last time I used 3 (andonly 3 in the whole party) I put all the points into magic. They were my best Sams ever. I got the idea from the Rapax Sams magicing the crap out of me!

A woman never tells her... oops! Answering the wrong question here. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

Many hours of playing and researching other's findings.

The Item location info is due mainly to 7Heaven. The %chance of finding the random items is solely Klarius' work taking 7Heaven's research a few steps further. The monster info was DrHead's work. Which btw you can see on the Thank You! page at the site.

So in truth I was merely a vessel through which the hard work of others was brought together to help us all. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 08-21-2004, 01:03 AM: Message edited by: Flamestryke ]

EWAXX passwords are the most interesting thing, since you're the only person who knows them all. :-D Pity that they don't do anything interesting... :-D

In all my years of play, I have never touched EWAXX.

Actually, I shouldn't have said that I found the secret to LS, it may just be luck. Basically I just balanced high DEX/SPD/SEN, made sure stamina was always near-full, and never went past white encumberance. DEX/SPD/SEN weren't exactly the same, but were all within 2-3 points of each other. INT was reasonable, STR was pretty much untouched.

Note: Even without Bloodlust, LS rarely hit more than once during the 5 or so attempts. I really missed Bless and Enchanted Blade in the early game.

Weird thing was with the Sammie who did so well, even when her encumberance was in the blue she still got LS often. It was decreased by one swing was all. That was another thing I found pretty fascinating about her.