Training stealth and Shield

[Starfire]

Could someone please explain to me how this is done? I want to run an all stealth party and have never figured out how to train these. The party will be as follows

Rogue (hobbit)
Samurai (dracon)
Monk (Human)
Ninja (felpurr)
Ninja (Faerie)
Bishop (Elf)

This is going to be my assassin party so I am going to have my rogue do a few levels as a sammy for the critical strike, would it be better to dual the rogue to a different class for the critical strike, if so any suggestions? I want all party members to have critical strike and stealth and I was going to train shield for the bishop at first because it will be at least mid game before we can go for diamond eyes in the mountain wilderness. I was going to have my bishop dual wield the mauler/diamond eyes in the future. I was thinking of starting the bishop off as a mage, then dual to a ninja for the critical strike and stealth. Start the sammy off as a mage to get a good base for his mage spells and then dual him to a rogue for the stealth. I am not going to dual the Monk, or ninja's as they will already have the stealth and critical strike capabilities. The faerie ninja is a no brainer, I want the CoC! lol

Do any of you have better suggestions on dualing the bishop, sammy and rogue? bearing in mind that my theme is to have critical strike and stealth for all party members?

[Ziggurat]

Starfire, I'm not sure if I could help you. A critical strike and stealth party sounds fine but I think it may harder than you think to get them useful. I tried a smaller party (Monk, Ninja, Samurai and Bishop) and it took a long time before the criticals kicked in. Sure was fun after that, tho! On a similar note, I have a party of 4 in Arnika:

Felpur Rogue
Human Monk
Mook Ranger
Elf Bishop

I'm seriously considering changing the Ranger to Bard. I tried both options on leveling (without going anywhere) and got stuck in some blackhole of doubt. He is lev 7 on the cusp of 8. I see advantages to both, there's a great sword later on for the Ranger so I could always change back, but Bards have some great "spells" as well. Has anyone dualed to Bard from Ranger, and maybe changed back?

Edit: fixed a typo

[ 10-16-2003, 11:59 PM: Message edited by: Ziggurat ]

[Starfire]

I tried an all stealth party once before and I know what you mean about the criticals not kicking in right away lol The only difference between this party and the run I ran before is I did not have a bishop or any pure casters. My previous party was all rogues, ninja's and monk. The biggest problem with the previous is the lack of the mage's and priest's buff spells and as you said their criticals take a while to kick in. I Figured taking a bishop this time around would allow me all the needed buffs.

I'm not fond of dual classing because in wiz 8 it is not as effective as wiz 7 and a dualed character takes quite a bit of time to develope properly. I've been thinking, rather than dual the bishop I would leave her as a bishop and just train shield for the time when she ends up being target practise lol I may end up not dualing any of them and go with the following instead:

Rogue
Rogue
Monk
Ninja
Ninja
Bishop

As added protection for the bishop I may develope intelligence and vitality first, then go for piety and speed or senses. My poor little bishop will end up taking a lot of heat with all the other party members having stealth so I am looking for the most effective way to develope her so she won't get toasted constantly lol Bishop's take a long time to level up anyway so I'd rather not dual her if I can keep from doing it.

Thank you for responding to my ziggurat [img]smile.gif[/img]

starfire - there's some excellent posts about training stealth and shield, including some tips in scottg's beginner's guide (on the main thread page).

the party you are suggesting is going to be a real challenge. having the bishop to get all the buffs and do the healing will be a help. but the other 5 characters all have the potential to do pins and needles damage making fights last a long, long time.

to compensate for this, plan on building strength for at least 3 of them (eg faerie, monk, sam and 1 rogue in your original config), so that what strikes they do get will have a significant impact.

good luck!

edit: new avatar

[ 10-17-2003, 02:27 AM: Message edited by: sultan ]

[dplax]

Sticking to the original two questions:

Could someone please explain to me how this is done?

For stealth and shield get into defend mode against some seekers in upper monastery and wait a few hours, then quit the battle heal up, and maybe repeat. I haven't done any training myself, but from earlier posts I think it takes a night to get up to the 80s 90s. On continous combat of course.

Do any of you have better suggestions on dualing the bishop, sammy and rogue? bearing in mind that my theme is to have critical strike and stealth for all party members?

Maybe start the bishop as a rogue, train up stealth and then switch to bishop. The rogues and samurais should fit the party theme quite well.


P.S: Sultan I got the same avatar just a day earlier

[Starfire]

Thank you Dplax and sultan. Your suggestions were quite helpful [img]smile.gif[/img] I will give stealth and shield training a try. I'm not the most patient of people when it comes to this sort of thing, so I don't know if I will be able to sit at my pc for an entire day training lol

On a side note...I just wanted to thank everyone here for always being so helpful, you people are the greatest! thank you so much [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ChaosTheorist]

You don't want to use a Ninja level to train your Bishop; you want a Rogue:
1) You want to work on Stealth, Shield, Mace, and Dual Weapons
2) You'll basically never get a Bishja up to meaningful Critical Strike anyway; it takes melee swings to raise CS; it takes thousands of them to raise it to levels where it does any good
Find mace-type weapons, or buy them from Burz. A hammer fits in the Secondary weapon slot.

The same comment about CS applies to the Rogue; I'd just give him/her a sword and a dagger and let fly.

For Stealth, the best options are
1) A group of 2 or 3 Green slimes; they won't conk out on stamina nearly as often as spiders
2) The 6 spiders near the switch that raises the door to the Upper Monastery. 1 or 2 of them will succumb to "friendly fire" fairly early on, but the remaining 4 or 5 will shoot at you for as long as you're willing to stand there. Just back down the hallway until you're at max range, then go watch Seinfeld reruns. All of them.

Put your guys 2/2/2 across the middle, have the Rogues hold shields, put everyone on Defend. Listen for the occasional damaging hit, heal as necessary.

To raise melee skills as rapidly as possible, play on Expert; the opponents are harder to kill, so they last longer, so you get more swings. If you level up, you'll start getting groups of Metallic Slimes; you can wail away at them for dozens of rounds (at least until CS starts kicking in for the Monk, Samurai, and Ninjas).

[Killer_Rogues]

Starfire -

A stealth/CS party is a great idea, but unless you raise the stealth on your bishop or give him/her seriously good vitality and armor, he will get crushed by midgame. the tips given above, as always, are excellent and if you want to run this party, you MUST make all the people have high stealth. you will also want to raise the dex of any character that doesn't have as high of stealth and open reflection asap. I'm currently running a stealth party of three (rogue/monk/ninja) and by the time they were around level 10 i couldn't use any NPCs because they would be the only ones attacked by creatures and just get mauled. i suppose if i had picked up rfs earlier in the game he could've been useful, but i didn't and he quickly became scrap metal when i got around to him. Best of luck with the party and definately keep us updated.

[Halsey]

Starfire:

Welcome aboard. There's a bunch of good information in the above posts. I'm currently using a party of four (three bishops and a Bard) with stealth as their primary atibute. As you have probably noted in previous posts, many people start out with characters that have stealth capability, and then change over. This was the case with my three Bishops and Bard. The easiest place to 'practice' is in the lower monestary with either the little crabs, or the little slimes. It took about three hours to work them all up to about 50 plus in stealth, and overall about five to get them to 80+. The key is to eliminate all but one of the little critters and just sit there in defend mode as the stealth rises. Again, the above posts are accurate, it gets pretty boring, so I usually have a couple of things going at the same time (I never saw much of Seinfeld, but I guess it would work)
The point is that without steath, a party with Bishops couldn't even make it to Arnika - and Bishops take so long to develop - and only 'nibble' at their opponents. Also note that monsters will tend to attack party members with the lowest stealth, hence NPC's must be protected at first.
I know it seems like a lot of time, but you'll probably be playing with the party for months...perhaps a reasonable investment of time. Good Luck!

[Starfire]

Thank you so much for all the tips, it is greatly appreciated. I decided to re-arrange the party a bit. I am going to switch one of the Rogues to a Samurai once his stealth is maxed out, I want the benefit of another character with critical strike capabilities with the added bonus of being high in stealth so he doesn't become target practise lol I've changed one Ninja into a Ranger, I will keep him a ranger for one level then switch to Ninja to max out stealth and then switch back to Ranger. I like the auto search capabilities of the Ranger, detect secrets never lasts long enough and I hate having to run around with search on all the time as there is an increased chance of being surprised by enemies and until the critical strike starts kicking in on these guys they DO NOT need to be surprised lol I will start my bishop off as a Rogue as was suggested to max out her stealth and shield and then switch to Bishop so I will have all the magical buffs I need. After training ends this is what my party is going to look like:

Hobbit Rogue
Dracon Rogue/Samurai
Human Monk
Faerie Ninja
Mook Ranger/Ninja/Ranger
Elf Rogue/Bishop

Now I was wondering what stats I should max out first. I was thinking of going with Strength and speed first then Dexterity and Senses, except on the Ranger and Bishop, I was going to go with Strength and Senses for the Ranger and Intelligence and Strength for the bishop. The reason for going with Strength first is I was thinking these guys are going to need to deal out as much damage as possible to be able to survive till mid game, is this a bad idea? Should I perhaps be going with dexterity and speed with the Samurai, Monk and Ninja instead?

I really appreciate all of your suggestions and tips, you guys are great! [img]smile.gif[/img]