HI!

I am planning of starting a new party today and I wonder what the "1 lvl rogue to max yer stealth" trick is.
How can you max. stealth in just 1 level?


I think I will take some of these (gonna try profs and races I dind't play yet):

1 lizzy fighter (always wanted some raw muscle power!)
1 feary or felpurr ninja (I wonder if this is the real killer everyone is talking about)
1 monk (feary or felpurr perhaps, any suggestions?)
1 bard (not sure which race to take: hobbit, human, ...?)
1 mook ranger (sounds impressive)
1 felpurr samurai
1 rawulf valkyre
1 elf bishop
1 dwarf priest
1 rogue (hobbit i think)

Due to the importance of portals in the game I plan to have at least two chars able to cast Set and Return ASAP.

Jeez, party assembling is hard work. ;)

Usually i take level 4 or 5 to get stealth. Some chars do it as Ninja, some as Rogue, depending on whether i want to build Mace/Crit ofr Shield along with stealth. The safest, easiest, and fastest way is to stand in defend mode (with weapons swapped to the shield set if you want to work them) at the edge of a group of seekers' range, and let them miss you for about 3000 rounds of combat. (if you're lucky, you'll run into a group of six and it'll take less time--or even two groups totalling 10, but it's harder to take a break from 2 groups) To take a break, put them all to sleep (Poet's Lute, Fairy Dust, or the spell) and save when combat ends because they're asleep and you're defending. After about 20 pts in Stealth, and if you have any good armor, you can leave the computer completely, have dinner, see a show, and come back to find out how far they've gotten. I usually sleep, and wake up every couple hours so they don't keep standing there after they've maxxed. Other dangers include that when you get past 70 or so, the seekers themselves may break off combat, wander close to you, and then notice you again and start shooting from closer, maybe hitting you now. Or maybe some Swarming Roaches wander by...
If you're already past the levels at which you meet a lot of seekers, try milipedes.

(edit) for Monk, Elf or Human.

[ 11-23-2003, 03:13 PM: Message edited by: Scatter ]

Hi Ghoul,

for a bard I usually take races with natural high speed ( felpurr or fairies ).
I want to play the important instruments early.
In my parties they're in the back row, so they don't need much else than speed and senses. They fight with ranged weapon mostly . I make them female to use the stamina regeneration items ( always two ).
I also tried a mook bard (I sometimes have two bards in my party ) and switched him to fighter ( with giantsword ) later.

Greetings

Speed has nothing to do with how fast you learn Music, and your Bard level doesn't go up any faster, either. For the fact that Felpurr have 10 Attribute points fewer total than Hobbits (15 fewer than Humans, but they waste a lot more on Pi...) and incredible lack of Vit, which is very important if you want to play more than 3 times before passing out...
Even worse is Faerie, which have no Strength, and even if they did, they can't carry as much as an equally strong char of any other race. And the instruments are heavy.
If you put as many points as you can in Speed, alright, the Felpurr have a big lead there. But if you start with more Dex, Vit, and Str, you can add Speed every level without sacrificing performance starting at L1, and have a viable fighter and musician and trap remover and door opener (all of wich require dex more than speed...)
If your Bard is your primary Haster, her speed is still not important until L8, the first level you can use the Haste instrument regardless of race, then you have as many as 24 points to add to your Speed, bringing the total for Hobbits to a possible 88, which is plenty sufficient. And if you put that many points in a Felpurr's speed, then they'll be very deficient in Vit or Dex; even when they've maxxed Speed, they'll still be way behind in Stamina and Attack Rating.

Interesting, Scatter.

But I never had problems with my female Felpurr or Fairie bards. Strengh (45) always was high enough for me, because they stood in the back ( only sling ). I created them with Vitality max 50 ( sometimes after a few levels ). The rest I put into speed and senses. In my magic parties I always was able to cast Stamina or Rest All and even without that she could use her instrument three times.

The music skill was never a problem. I always spend 3 points for that skill and because my bard rarely fights, she uses her instruments very often so even with lower Dex she learned well.

My bard was always meant for highest speed ( Haste, Bless, Heal All ) and she is mostly designed for throwing ( Bombs, Canned Elementals ) .

In my current party without magic users ( 2nd run ) I took a female dracon as a bard ( this time with more strengh and dexterity and higher close combat ability )

So I think it depends on the party or gamestyle of the player what attributes are most needed.

Greetings

i think high speed with a bard has the benefit of higher initiative, meaning the bard's buffs get in earlier in the round during combat.

another benefit would be running up speed to match the other characters in the party (say you are running all monks, rogues, and ninjae) so that when you hit run your party can go further, faster.

of course, the bard's haste drum makes this somewhat unnecessary - but there are still strategic reasons to do it. and the beauty of wiz 8 is that the game's balanced enough to make it worth your while to do it either way - as long as you leverage a strategy to take advantage of the way you choose to go.

Hi Sultan,

I think, we're somewhat "off topic" now but I want to know, why is high speed for a bard with Haste unnecessary ? I always thought, that a reaction with max speed and senses + snakespeed + haste must be so quick ( especially with doubleshot sling and medusa stones ) that he can paralyze or kill a monster long before it knows that it is hostile to me :D .
Is there an upper limit for speed ? If yes, I can spare skill points for other attributes.

Thanks.

[ 11-26-2003, 12:05 AM: Message edited by: Loudhy ]

hi loudhy -

good question. full credit goes to eew and gimli (eew did a fair bit of testing and development on the back of some work gimli did on haste).

basically, the idea is that you give your bard a speed of 55 (say, 45 natural, 10 from a certain bard item ;) ). then, the first thing the bard does in every fight is play their haste drum. when their music skill is high enough, this will always be haste level 7 which will add 70 to everyone's speed. for the bard, this means a 125 speed (125 is the max for any stat).

this means you can (potentially) ignore natural speed development for the whole party.

the beauty of it is that all of your skill learning during combat is as if you had 125 speed. in other words, you get all of the benefits of *natural* speed for the duration of the haste.

however, there are some drawbacks to the strategy. first, you are still slow in the first round. so if you are counting on high initiative to get in things like spell shields or other temp buffs (eg guardian angel, body of stone) then you might still want to push speed and senses on you spell casters.

second, your bard will always be casting haste in the first round. this means they wont be doing other things AND they will have to use a big chunk of their stamina right off the bat each time (the haste drums are relatively expensive to use, in terms of stamina). but, yeah, stamina is cheap.

third, you cant do it underwater. nuff said.

fourth, you cant do it until you get the darn drum!

in all, the freedom to put development points elsewhere can make a huge difference. for many, the drawbacks described above are minor in comparison. but, as always, wiz 8 is balanced enough to accommodate either approach without favouring one or the other greatly. [img]smile.gif[/img]

for more details, i'd ask you to search for bard development - i know it's been referenced countless times in the past, but you're likely to come up with the original posts without too much trouble.

Thanks Sultan, I'll search the original posts.

Well, having to play in the first round is not such a problem, because instead of Speed i build Vit, so i can use plenty of Music. Initiative in the first round isn't much of a problem anymore once you get X-Ray. You can develop a feel for when you can initiate combat and have surprise, but still actually be engaged (not "nothing to fight"). You can throw ball spells around corners from pretty far, so while the Bard drums, the caster can toss a Death Cloud (okay, fireball...) before the opponents even know you're there. Then you can throw your buffs while they line up their attack positions in the next round.

[ 11-26-2003, 01:22 AM: Message edited by: Scatter ]