new character building approach...feedback desired

[mortification]

I'm trying out a new character development program...let me know if you have suggestions.

The basic idea is to play each of the 6 characters solo in the early going, to develop them to a high enough level quickly to "guild-hop" and get the stats high enough to be eligible for each role. Then, once the character is ready (around level 5, with 10 in each stat, and in all guilds) reset the game and use the next character, and so forth.

Once all characters are "prepped", reset the game, assemble the party, and go at it. An option is to go ahead with role changing prior to the reset. I've noticed that reset seems to retain the skills, and the experience, but only the most current role and level will be displayed in the journal window. It's kind of wierd to have a Paladin with pick locks ability (or even to start the game with a level 1 Paladin!)

The optional role-switching involes reseting every time you start in the level one of the new role. This makes the levelling process super-fast and not boring (see below).

I've discovered that you can easily get a solo warrior to Level 5 by the following:

1. Roll good stats. I shoot for a total of at least 70 points, which is not too hard to get (that's sum of all stats plus bonus points). One guy had 80 points to start, another 59, so there is wide variation.

2. Work to get all stats to 10 for role switching ASAP, so that you can train in all 3 guilds. Also go for the all-important 16 INT for skill points. Note that you need some 12's if you want to be a Barbarian (and I'm tired of the lowly thief, so Barb's are a must).

3. Remember that you can train INT, STR, and SPI, so bump the other stats with your levelling points.

4. Quests/experience: do the following easy quests to get level 5 super-fast:
a. Skeleton Bounty quest (once is enough)
b. kill the big skeleton that guards the crypt entrance
c. kill the bandits by the horse. Smash the chest in and loot.
d. Give the poition to toad-face quest.
e. Kill the Armory thief quest.
f. Donate to the temples.
g. About 2-3 random encounters. That's it! Level 5 (usually)!
These take about 15 minutes.

5. Choose the new role and reset the game. Rinse. Repeat.

Right now I am about halfway to construction of the following (starting!) party:

Completed:
Warrior 5 - Barbarian 5 - Ranger 5 - Paladin 5 (thiefly skills specialist)
Warrior 5 - Barbarian 5 - Ranger 5 - Paladin 5 (spirit specialist)
Warrior 5 - Barbarian 5 - Paladin 5 - Ranger 5 (vine specialist)

Pending:
Wizard - Warlock (plus some fighter classes mixed in) (sun/moon specialist)
Wizard - Warlock (plus some fighter classes mixed in) (stone/fiend specialist)
Priest - Warlock (plus some fighting stuff mixed in) (vine/spirit specialist)

I want to end up with 3 Paladins/Ranger with super-skills, plus two offensive Warlocks and a defensive Warlock. The end point of the Paladins/Ranger is so that they can study some magic at no penalty until other classes are available.

The main question to answer is what is the best cutoff for leveling purposes, especially for the spellcasters? They need to max their spells before switching to any fighting class (unless the Warlock penalty relief is retroactive, meaning that as long as they end up a Warlock the early going doesn't matter).

Also level 5 is an arbitrary cutoff since it is easy to get (see above). Does any body have the chart of XP verus level? My suspicion is that when soloing, you could get to level 7/8 pretty quickly as well, just by doing some stuff in the Crypt. Heck, Rumpy alone probably levels you.

The other point is that for the fighters, soloing is easy, but for the magic guys, it is really tough when you run out of mana.

Finally I am shooting to do all of this prior to finishing the Crypt for conveninece, and so as not to spoil the story too much with mindless repitition.

BTW my original party plan (first time) was:
Anxiety - Gourk Fighter - Barbarian
Mortification - Whiskah fighter - Ranger
Nonplussed - Dwarf Priest - Paladin - Valkyre
Disingenuous - Oomphaz Wizard - Warlock
Supercilious - Ratling Thief - Ninja - Assasin
Superfluous - Elf Wizard - Warlock

Thoughts? Comments? Sorry again for the longish post....

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[Sazerac]

I have a chart of XP versus level, but it's easier to compute it:

Each level's XP= current XP + 1/2 of current XP + base XP.

For example: A wizard has a base XP of 1100. It takes 1100 XP to get to Level 2. To get to level 3, take 1/2 of 1100 (550), add this to 1100 (1650), and add 1100 on top of that. (2750). Voila...the amount needed to get to 3rd level.

This only works up to about level 15 or 16...it then becomes linear (like 250,000 XP per level).

I'll pull out my chart and put it into the Best Hints thread.

-Sazerac

[mortification]

OK...I've had a chance to do more research on this and here is what I found out:

General Comments:
This approach to playing takes a lot of fun out of the game, IMHO. Basically after the third iteration your character becomes untouchable (at least in the early going). This process also relies on the Inn/Gold cheat heavily to be fully utilized (but you can play a toned-down version without cheating).

You also tend to max out stats pretty quickly (at 18, the natural max) and also skills quickly behome prohibitively expensive to train after about level 5.

Finally this is much more tedious than I thought it would be, and the motivation to create 6 "super" characters is somewhat low since 1 seems to do the trick quite nicely.

I also collected the following XP data (this may be common knowledge but I thought I'd write it down just in case):

XP gained for (in solo mode):
crypt bat - 43
F'Lokis Ra - 1479
slime ooze - 62
graveyard skeleton - 87
worgur - 26
Juba Thobers - 2545
highland rogue - 195
Troll Guni - 49
Troll Snik - 263
Troll Mangu - 537
giant tree spider - 1647
River raptor - 2042
5 skull quest bounty - 50
Juba Thobers quest bounty - 200
Potion to Mekdawa quest - 200 XP
Donate to temple - 500 XP

You can see that levelling while solo is pretty darned easy. Killin Juba, F'lokis, a couple of tree spiders, and the raptor (plus the miscellany required to get to these spots, and the easy quests) takes only about 10-15 minnutes and gives you 7 levels pretty easily. You could also return the amulet to the windmill-girl, and get the ring of saints for the temple for more easy XP.

Note that you have to be careful when levelling, since you never want to gain more than one level at a time in order to maximize training (this assumes that you have enough gold). Also, I used the reload technique when levelling for the sole purpose of obtaining at least 2 ability points each level (except for the few times when penaly-levelling and it just didn't seem worth it).

I was able to take a human warrior from scratch to LVL 6 warrior, LVL 7 barbarian, LVL 1 Ranger in about one hour with no problem. All stats above 10, with 3 18's. Dagger, Leadership, Athletics, Pickpocket, Artifacts, Gallantry at LVL 3. Traps at LVL 4. Sword at LVL 8.

Specific Comments:

Barbarian - note that you have to end on this in order to be able to use lockpicks. Your pick lock skill still works though. I left mine at level 4, pickpocet at level 3. I went ahead and made the change to ranger at level 7 (I took 2 levels of regular advancement to get the benefit of the high barbarian HP - another advantage to ending on Barbarian). I put all of my levelling points into Gallantry and the theif skills which cannot be trained (at least early on). I trained the 3 stats and Sword and Dagger (I was going with dual-wielding, since the bow or shield just don't seem worth it).

Warrior - no real point to levelling in this other than to get some HP early and max the skills. I went to 6 "accidentally" since I was ready to convert after level 5 but found out that the kill counter for the Barb quest only starts AFTER you officially accept the role (and cancelling the role resets the counter also).

Ranger - IMHO the point here is to develop Vine magic to the max, unless you are ending on Warlock. Also, you can develop Scout and Bow if you are interested in these. My opinion is that range weapons are a waste of time (given that you have spells) and that scout is useless - I'm always going to choose to fight the monsters anyway, so who cares if I know they are coming a little sooner? Maybe I'm missing the point of Scout. There is no reason to ever end on Ranger IMHO; why not go to Warlock? I think that you need 5-6 levels to get to LVL 7 vine with careful management. You'll need LVL 14 Vine if you are not ending on Warlock. This would take 10 levels I think.

Paladin - Here the point is the Spirit magic. Again, develop it fully before switching. If you've got money, and a high INT for skill points, with careful management you can get to LVL 7 in 5 character levels I think. 10 levels for the max of LVL 14 vine. This is another character that is not good to end on unless you don't have the patience to max Spirit magic first.

Warlock - If you are patient and pull things off properly, you can end on this, and then spend the rest of the game mazing spells in all the schools. If you are headed here, you can just blow thorugh Paladin and Ranger on the way. One problem with ending here is that later on, when Monk, Samurai, etc. are available you can't switch without spending a lot of time to increase your spells to the max first.

The end result is that I think that the best progression for solo preparation is:

Warrior - Barbarian - Ranger - Paladin - Warlock (for well-rounded)
Warrior - Ranger - Paladin - Barbarian (for max HP and lockpick use, plus the option of doing the other classes and then ending up at Warlock)

I suspect that for the other classes it goes:
Thief - does not work since there is no guild early on
Priest - Paladin - Ranger - Barbarian - Warlock (max spells)
Priest - Paladin - Ranger - Warlock - Barbarian (max HP and lockpicks)
Priest - Ranger - Barbarian - Warlock - Paladin (if you need Paladin for later)
Wizard - Warlock (traditional, and max spells)
Wizard - Barbarian - Ranger - Paladin - Warlock (a good choice to max HP and spend time developing all of the spells early on)

After all of this I am probably just going to solo, or maybe 2 characters, since, like I said, the concept of playing with all 6 supercharged characters just isn't as much fun.


OK I promise no more really long posts. Don't want to wear out my welcome.

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[Ryanamur]

Good plan, but if you plan on getting your stats to 10, it might be quicker to just reroll at creation.

Anyway, to add to your XP list:

the Spirit of Rumphy should give you about 6500-7000 points.

Very good for level up.

Have fun.

[mammawlin]

Me, I don't go in for the prepping and starting again. Takes out too much of the challenge and is too time consuming. But others do it and seem to enjoy it that way. I just dive in and try to kill things and do quest and then once I finished the game through, I started again with just my Zenmaster and Valkyrie. And I don't want to miss a thing!! Cool game, isn't it!! Have fun,
Mammawlin

[mortification]

Wow! Rumpy is level-up city. And he respawns! I have to agree that some of the fun is removed by the laborious preppring process though. Still, a lockpicking, moon-casting, fury-inducing, warcrying, bow-weilding, superfast Paladin is kinda fun to play.....just like a baby Zenmaster. Just wait until he grows up to be a real Zenmaster

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[Black Knight]

Hmmmm . . . maybe I'm just a RPG purist, but I don't like playing with Super Characters. I like to play it for what it was designed for, you know? Fumbling around and doing what I think a 'real' character would do. I'm not saying that I'm not going to move back and forth and pick different classes to be, but I think it takes away from the quality of the game to use all the restarting, gold cheats, etc. Especially the first time through. I like to prove to myself that I can do it before I use cheats. Not that I haven't rerolled a character in my day, but there is something to beating a game on it's terms. This is, of course, just MHO. I'm not saying if you are into that powergaming stuff, not to. If you enjoy it, go ahead. Have fun. Tell me about what you've done. I think it is cool. But just not my cup of tea.

BK, getting off his soapbox.

[Sazerac]

Hear, hear, BK! That's the way I like to go at it as well. Gradually build them up. It makes for a better storyline, IMO.

But then, there's no "wrong" or "right" way to play. It's like eating an Oreo--do you chomp right in, or do you separate the cookies from the cream filling first...to each their own. As long as one is having fun with it.

I will admit I do roll my eyes a bit over excessive "munchkinism" but that's something that one must put up with in any gaming arena.

-Sazerac

[Sazerac]

Oh! Just in case anyone would possibly take offense...I wasn't referring to ANYONE on this board as a "munchkin"...far from it! I was thinking of the USENET gaming boards and others I've been on. Everyone here is totally cool and I'm thrilled at all the great feedback we've been getting!

Just to clear up any potential confusion! Believe me, after the last week I've had, I know!

-Sazerac

[mortification]

In case anyone was still wondering how the super-party is going...

I gave up. It's just no fun; everything dies before they even realize you are standing there. Yuo can kill stuff instantly that is supposed to be very hard to heighten the dramatic tension.

So now what I am doing is going with two characters only: the fighter super-character and the wizard super-character. This gives me coverage of all the spells and pretty much all of the skills. So far it is still pretty easy but I expect that the later parts of the game will be much more challenging.

Also I've played around with cranking up the difficulty settings and that is rewarding as well (more XP). A fun challenge: has anybody soloed on maximum difficulty setting, without "cheating" for gold? I imagine that this would be quite the challenge, but you'd get to ridiculous levels pretty quick.

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