solo char question

[dplax]

I am thinking about a solo character, whom I would want to join many classes, but I would like her to be most of the time a bishop. So I wood like to ask what skills get improved even if your character does'nt have them normally?

[TINKER_TINKERMAN]

It is my understanding that when you change from one profession to another the skills that aren't used by the new profession are locked. ie. If your bishop changes to a rogue you can still use existing spells but they will never improve and you can't get new ones. The same holds for skills as well. If you were a rogue and had 20 pts in stealth and then change to a bishop you will get the benefit of that 20 pts but it will never rise unless you change to a class that uses that skill.

[Ziggurat]

Spoiler alert!
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Tinkerman is correct. You may want to start out as a bishop and switch to rogue on first level up, but you must have the stats to be a rogue. So you can create a custom bishop, say, with enough skills to be a rogue. Or vice versa, starting as a rogue who can become a bishop (better armor but weapons which a bishop cannot use). Race may be important here. Once you are a rogue, there is a trick I heard where you kill all enemies but one and then click on the shield for Defense (and then you can click on Continuous battle to speed things up). If the enemy is relatively weak, it will keep attacking and your Stealth will increase quickly and only occasionally will you need to heal. I haven't tried this but others swear by it if you are trying solo.

Don't level up to max before you get to Arnika if you want to enhance your survival, although you can't avoid certain hard battles (Gregor and the 2 wasps, for example). If you do level up every time, I tend to do a coupla circuits of the Monastery (with resting in safe places to generate more monsters) to get more battle experience before leaving the Monastery. You may be able to reach lev 7 or 8 before hitting the Arnika Road if you are solo.

I did a two party (lord and bish) which finished the game, but you definitely need strategies like these to make the experience bearable.

Others may recommend other strategies and professions, but I wouldn't recommend more than three professions total, with rogue being one of them for Stealth. You can stay at low levels and keep building up rogue skills and save your lev ups for when you switch back to bishop.

Once you are a bishop and leveling up, you can hold off choosing your spells 'til the final level up, thus choosing from the best you can get. The longer you are bishop the better, overall. Some will switch to mage for those special mage protections and quicker level ups, but will be weaker during that time.

[ 08-19-2003, 10:14 AM: Message edited by: Ziggurat ]

[Scatter]

I've finished 3 solo parties the normal way (not having a dead 2nd member) and my favorite was Human: L1-4 Lord (get some HP and fighting skills) lucky enough to get a mace right away from one of the slimes. Stayed L4 for a while driving up the Dual and Mace skills. L5 Rogue (Locks/Traps to 50 and stealth to 100). L6-10 Bishop pushing Div with Charm and Alchemy to 30 by mixing, then to 50 by knocking and then 80-something by mixing again. L11 Mage to push Wizardry to 90 by knocking. L12-16 Bishop (to get Portal while continuing to get more green dots for Element Shield and Magic Screen) L17 to the end i went back to Lord (Infy Helm, Golden Breastplate, etc.)
Even without the Stealth and Knocking, this would be my recommendation anyway.

[Dyntheos]

Classes you need for an all round character.

Rogue
Bishop
Samurai
Fighter
MUST be female.

Rogue for Stealth
Bishop for all magic
Samurai For Critical Strike
Fighter for Berserk and Infinity Helm / Heavy armour and weapons.
Female for stmina regen lockets

Ok first up you should take human. Why? Because as a solo character you want all your stats to be well rounded, having low levels in some stats will hamper your character. That being said what class to take first?

Well you'll need to switch to rogue VERY early to train stealth so why not take it first? You could take bishop but taking a human rogue at first level allows you train stealth using the crabs on the beach.

What to do?

Kill all of them but the last crab, hit defence, and train, train, train in continuous combat. You will die often to begin with, but when the crab runs out of stamina it'll become unconcious, and you can run to the door, open and close it, and the combat will end. Save the game. Repeat.

Train stealth to around 80 at this stage. You will switch back to rogue 1 more time to get the last 20 percent, but getting to 100 on the crab is only for the truley insanely dedicated. ( I went to 85 or so )

Kill the sucker, and take your first level up on the slimes at bats leading up to the King Crab. You want to be level 4 when you leave the monestary. Make sure you grab the ring of protection from the rapax prison cell.

Next kill the crab or run past it. You should be able to kill it if your stealth is high.

Next is gregor. Forget trying to kill him, or seeing the trinnie merchant. You want to start combat at gregors chamber opening leading up from the king crab and RUN. Every round just RUN, all the way up to the spiders guarding the porticullus switch. Gregor should leave you behind halfway up the passage.

The spiders can be hard but you'll get there.

Now once you have raised the porticullus go back down and gregor should be back to his start position. If you hug the right wall of the corridor that leads to his chamber you can creep up to the opening. Again enter combat and run past him, and then hug the wall next to the switch that closes the porticullus. You should be able to then hit it and lock gregor in. Run up to level 2.

This can be tricky but you'll have to kill the rats in the first chamber with the crates. After that go right and head out. Once you get to the great chamber with the rogues and the statue of phoonzang, you use the enter combat and run tactic, to hide behind the pillars that line the walls in this chamber. By doing this you can avoid this combat entirely and then exit the Monestary.

Once you can exit the monestary you're home free. You CAN run all the way. It's hard but hug the right hand side of the first open area outside the Monestary to avoid the crabs. From here just run past every fight. After 3 turns of running you will generally have your enemies behind you so far that they start retreating.

Hide behind the Big House on the way to arnika and repeat your dashing to the city.

Once you get to arnika you need to level your bishop up to 30 points in alchemy. Once you have that get knock knock and raise your alchemy skill on the bank vault door. Always use knock knock level 6, and you will never open the door.

You should pump Divine over psionics and Wizardry.

Wizardry you can use several damaging combat spells to raise it, and ego whip and psionic fire raise Psionics fast using them in combat. Divine on the other hand raises slowly till you get lightning, so pump 3 points into divine on level up. Don't let wizardry get higher than alchemy before you train on the door or wizardry will go up and not alchemey when you train on the vault.

Why pump alchemy and not Wizardry on the door? It's harder to raise alchemy using combat and buff spells.

Continue to pump wizardry, psi and divine on level ups, allow all other skills to train themselves.

In arnika grab the lockets of stamina regen and as many spellbooks as you can, make sure you grab BUFFS first, then attack spells.

Once you're done make sure you have 12k and it's a long run to croc. Run down the Trynton road past all fights like we did on the arnika road and through to the swamp. Once in the swamp you can run all the way to croc. With the stamina lockets (even 1) you can run without tiring.

Now we go to croc for 1 thing. The amulet of health. We need the regen. Buy 1. And race back to arnika. Make sure you have detect secrets as a spell.

Once in arnika you need to run back down the arnika road and onto the northern wilderness. All the way to the Umpani camp. You can either buy books here or SAVE your cash for a cloak of many colors from bela, because after we stop here it's onto the mountain wilderness and diamond eyes or the staff of doom...

To get over the bride lure the golem out and then run past. SAVE just before you hit the end of the map. Now enter the mountain wilderness. The trick here is to get a good monster load on the path down the mountain. If it looks too hard reload from your bridge save and try again. What you want is either no monsters or ones you can run past. Halfway down the path you can drop off the edge just above where the heater shield rests. Once on the mountain wilderness "floor" you are set.

Now you can either go for Diamond eyes, or the staff of doom. If you were a solo fairy ninja you'd go staff but as you are a human who is trying to max out solo, go for diamond eyes in the crypt. The Staff is behind the waterfall (lure out the golem and run past), and diamnond eyes is in the crypt. Head to the crypt and then do the old enter combat run trick with DETECT SECRETS up. Doing this will allow you to steal the mace (and the Mitre de sanct) right out from under the undeads nose. If you're good you can grab the bard instrument on your way out aswell, without getting into a fight.

At this point you should have decent armour, and a round shield, diamond eyes, and armorplate buffs up, as well as a decent stealth skill. Your amror class should be AT LEAST 30, coupled with the amulet of health and a cloak of many colors from bela.

TIME TO WOOP ASS.

You are now geared up and ready to kill stuff! All that running around has now given you enough equipment to take on the monsters a little easier. From here you can run up the path (usually hard) or take the southern wilderness route back to the swamp (alot easier but a longer run).

Once you are back in the arnika area find some forest mites to finish training stealth. You can find these on the trynton road or in the arnika road cave (past the hogar to the right just before the northern wilderness). With the amulet of regen and the stamina locket you can virtually have 10 of these critters attacking you. When they do hit, you'll regen any damage. Sit back and watch TV, till you hit 100 stealth (hold a level up ready to switch to rogue for the last time for this).

From here it's just levelling up your bishop, keep at it till you have seventh level spells. DO NOT TAKE ANY SPELL PICKS. Save them all, for 6th and 7th level spells. The rest can be found at vendors in books.

Once you are happy with your bishop levels, switch to samurai for 1 level. This is to train critical strike, sword and dual weapons. I did this in the northern wilderness rerto dungeon, with the coal golems, they miss alot and have alot of hit points. Make sure you saved a wakasashi and a low hitting sword for this, as you don't want to kill them fast, just use them as punching bags.

Get your crit strike to 75 (any higher and it'll take too long).

Switch to fighter. You can now beserk.

What does this give you?

Well you have a character that can now use a lightsword and diamond eyes beserking and critical hitting, has an awsesome armour class when you are noticed (due to high stealth), and can cast all the spells in the game. You can also wear all the heavy armour and use the infinity helm (5 SP regen)

Once I was at this point, I saved level ups so I could take 1 level of bishop and 1 level of fighter at the same time. This allowed me to continue using my gear and gaining magic increases as well as any spell picks I may have missed on low spells.

The only thing this build misses out on is ranged crits, but you have spells for that. I also grabbed (luckily) a frontier phaser for those times I was too lazy to cast spells.

All in all pretty much THE most devistating build you can make solo.

After playing this, party play seems almost too easy.

[Ziggurat]

I'm impressed. Lots of strategies here I didn't try. Takes a certain mindset. I don't mean anything neg about this, but seems like a way to make an uber character without really savoring the action until later. Doesn't seem to be for everybody who wants a solo, but it is a neat way to get ahead!!

[ 08-20-2003, 01:32 AM: Message edited by: Ziggurat ]

[Scatter]

The safest way to train stealth is at L4 or 5. Drag some Seekers (you might get a couple groups of 4-7 at L5) into the ramp room and back up until they can spread out around the upper entrance and accross the room. They'll shoot from their max range and if you have at least AC 10 they'll almost never hit, and then only do 1 HP. Once you get to the point where you're not getting hit at all, you can leave it run while you do something else for a couple hours.
Cautions for this include:
Other mobs that can hit you might wander by.
Once your Stealth is in the 70's, the Seekers might start retreating--in all directions--and start shooting again from right up next to you, and blast you off the screen.

(so, then you go to the Garden next to the Phooney statue, Sleep or Fairy Dust your way back out of combat so you can close the door with yourself in the room: they'll always restart combat from the back of the room if you stand in front of the door to Altheides' room)