General questions on skills.

[Amaron]

As I finally found out theres a stinking manual on the cd I've been reading through it and I've a few questions for the vets at this game.

The first one is how do I get the 2nd weapon skill and is this really much better than a shield? From what I've read most of the damage later is spells so a shield is useless in that respect?

Also I was wondering if theres any reason to increase athleticism for later on in the game? Do I need to increase it for every char to be able to run faster and jump further?

Is leadership any good or should I just skip it?

Finally Im curious about kung fu. I'm about to get a monk soon and I don't want to waste points on kung fu if a weapon will be much better. I can settle for my fist not doing as much damage as the ungodly sword of slaying or whatever but I dont want to find out its useless near the end of the game. Perhaps not having armor affect its damage too? Anyone ever test the claims that monks do better in robes?

Also Wyvern I know your just a moderator but is there anyway you can get in touch with someone who will fix the search feature? It works right now but even if you select "any date" it will only search back the last 30 days. I hate asking questions Im sure were discussed half a year ago that are in those 140 pages of posts.

Amaron

[Wyvern]

Hi Amaron!!!

SEARCH - not certain but this may help you out - go into your profile and reset your defaults to the most amount of time. I think the default is 30 days but you can set it higher and maybe (wings crossed) that will cause the search feature to look through more. Give it a try, if it works, let me know!

Having one person (your lead) high in athletics is a good thing and will come in handy. Some folks have said don't bother upping it past 12 which probably will cover most situations.

A shield can help protect your characters but by the time you've gotten to where most attacks are magical you'll probably be pretty strong and might prefer being able to take an extra whack or two on the baddies.

I'll see if I can find the post that was on KungFu a while back. Folks were having difficulty getting their characters to actually use it until they equipped something into their shield spot, then they were kicking up a storm.

Leadership can be good is you up it on your primarily lead character. They get targeted more often but take less damage from weapon attacks which can help protect some of the other characters.

Wyv

[Jazzid]

concerning the second weapon skill... you'll learn it as you advance in quild level. I can't really remember exactly at what level, but you'll learn it from the Warriors quild when adventuring around Ishad N'ha.

Kung-Fu is cool, but I haven't used it much. A decent enchantable weapon like the Wizard's dagger, or a short sword+2 will do more damage if you've damage-enchanted them. If you pair that with the double-strike ability and a spells like heroic might, bloodlust etc you'll easily be able to dish out more than a hundred points of damage per weapon!

//Jazzid

[Jason Leonard]

2nd Weapon - comes from getting up guild level (doing quests) in the different guilds. Is a really neat skill, for your non-magic people. Shields are nice to have early in the game, but more and more creatures use magic later in the game, and it seems less important to have shields. So what do you do with the other hand? Attack! The unfortunate thing is, unless you build it pretty high, you won't ALWAYS get a 2nd attack off after your first. But it does do the second attack automatically. And there are some REALLY nice 2nd Weapons in Brimloch Roon area of the game - Main Gauche +2, Wazikashi +2 (if you join Bushi Guild). that can do almost as much damage as first hand weapons (without enchanting, of course).

Athleticism - building it up to 12 seems pointless unless there is a purpose for it that I don't know of. I've found that at level 3 and 4, most falls only do 1 damage to the characters that have it. Yes, it only helps characters who have it. And yes, it does help you jump a bit better in addition to reducing fall damage. I would try to get it for everyone if you could, but I've never seen a reason to have it higher than 3 or 4.

Leadership - probably should skip it. I don't know. I can't seem to tell if it makes any difference. I do know that "Natural Leadership", the intrinsic trait for humans, makes that person the biggest target when it comes to monsters. But the Leadership skill...I haven't figured out.

Kung Fu - well, it's a neat way to do damage without weapons. It's not necessarily better than weapons, but it's not worse. The difference is that you won't do near the kind of damage you can do with enchanted and bloated weapons, because you can't enchant and bloat up your fists. But those types of weapons aren't necessary for beating the game anyhow. Most of my people with good kung fu were doing almost as much damage as the people with regular weapons. I had no enchanted weapons, save for the Mavin and Staff of Death post-Black Fire. Personally, I just think Kung Fu is neat.

[swavek]

I could be wrong, but perhaps the reason that most people don't stick with kung fu is they that don't advance it far enough. With kung fu, you've got twice as many things to attack with (2 legs and 2 arms) and you've got the chance of making a lethal blow. with weapons, you've only got 2. anyway, the place where the two balance out is that with kung fu you'll be making more attacks at once.

[choking]

I have a question about both Kung Fu and 2nd weapon. Can a monk or ninja use 2nd weapon and Kung Fu together. So a monk may attack twice with hands and feet if they have the 2nd weapon skill? Hope i hve explained that clearly enough.