Analysis of Grimrock

[Greco]

Skills

Assassination

Strengths

• The Reach Attack feat enables melee attacks from the back row.
• The Quick Strike feats (25% and 50% faster attack speeds with melee weapons) are very useful for increasing the tempo of battle with the hope of ending it more rapidly.
• The Improved Critical feat doubles the chance of a critical hit.
• The Master Assassin feat ensures that backstab hits are instant kills.

Weaknesses

• Some skill points are wasted on increasing Strength.
• Taking advantage of backstab attacks can require a fair amount of manuvering work.
• Accuracy is not increased for any weapon.
• Attack Power is not directly increased for any weapon.

Overall Rating: Moderately Poor, up to skill level 23; Poor, beyond skill level 23
Analysis: The improved attack speed offered by the Quick Strike feats is very worthwhile. Unfortuantely, it comes at the expense of developing good offense with a weapon. Also, the Master Assassin feat, while extremely powerful, can only work in a limited set of circumstances and requires sacrificing development of skill with daggers or in unarmed combat. Investment in this skill up to skill level 23 (Quick Strike I feat) split with Daggers 33 (Flurry of Slashes) is probably the only circumstance under which it is particularly useful. If you intend to have a party member performing melee attacks from the back rank, then investing to skill level 12 may also be sufficient.

Very good analysis overall, but I disagree on this point. Assassination is the best by far feat in the game. I spend many points on it, though not from the beginning. First of all you reach pretty soon the ability to use melee weapons from the back row, which is very useful, since It enhances a lot your offensive power as a team. Next you gain faster attacks and critical hits, which further enhances your damage potential. But when you reach level 50 and gain master assassin feat, then this is the ultimate weapon. You can backstab everyone and kill him instantly. The only exceptions are the the Wardens on the last level. The only difficulty is to how to backstab. And here comes for help the mage of the team. You just require two spells, to make you life easy for backstabbing.
First the frostbolt (not even the enhanced one), which is gained pretty soon. You can freeze your enemy move behind him and bang ... assasinated ... and torn in pieces with a single hit. Later on you can achieve the same effect with the invisibity spell, which is even better since frost bolt may fail, but invisibility never fails. You just move behind the foe and ... assassinated! Superb!

[LiamKerrington]

Hi.

@Greco
- I happened to encounter the situation that Invisibility does not work with every opponent. On my first play-through I experienced them not to work against the blue dinosaur-beasts as well as against the cthulhoid mage-creatures of doom, which is why I stopped using the spell again ...And no: They did not see me because I attacked and hoped not to be attacked in response; I happened to learn that they "saw"/ "recognized" my invisible party even from the distance with me having not attacked the creatures ...
- About the value of "assassination, though, I agree with you.

All the best!
Liam

[Darklord]

Later on you can achieve the same effect with the invisibity spell, which is even better since frost bolt may fail, but invisibility never fails. You just move behind the foe and ... assassinated! Superb!

Nice!

Daniel.

[athanatic_cube]

@LiamKerrington, @DarkLord, @Greco: Thanks for the kind comments.

Greco,

You make a very interesting point about the synergy between the Invisibility and Frost Bolt spells and the backstab attacks. I wonder, though, that in cases where you are faced with swarms of Scavengers or Herders, whether having the boost from Daggers might be more beneficial than Assassination, or do you find that the increased speed and criticals from Assassination compensates for the Accuracy and Attack Power that you are not getting from Daggers? (I ran a rogue who invested up to the Improved Critical feat and was not particularly impressed, but I also did not take advantage of the backstab attack more than a couple of times, just to try it out.) Also, since you apparently had a least one mage in the party, did you just have one backstabber in the back rank or did you also use them in the front rank as well? And, if you used them in the front rank, did you find the need to invest in Dodge?

Thanks!

Skills

Assassination

Strengths

• The Reach Attack feat enables melee attacks from the back row.
• The Quick Strike feats (25% and 50% faster attack speeds with melee weapons) are very useful for increasing the tempo of battle with the hope of ending it more rapidly.
• The Improved Critical feat doubles the chance of a critical hit.
• The Master Assassin feat ensures that backstab hits are instant kills.

Weaknesses

• Some skill points are wasted on increasing Strength.
• Taking advantage of backstab attacks can require a fair amount of manuvering work.
• Accuracy is not increased for any weapon.
• Attack Power is not directly increased for any weapon.

Overall Rating: Moderately Poor, up to skill level 23; Poor, beyond skill level 23
Analysis: The improved attack speed offered by the Quick Strike feats is very worthwhile. Unfortuantely, it comes at the expense of developing good offense with a weapon. Also, the Master Assassin feat, while extremely powerful, can only work in a limited set of circumstances and requires sacrificing development of skill with daggers or in unarmed combat. Investment in this skill up to skill level 23 (Quick Strike I feat) split with Daggers 33 (Flurry of Slashes) is probably the only circumstance under which it is particularly useful. If you intend to have a party member performing melee attacks from the back rank, then investing to skill level 12 may also be sufficient.

Very good analysis overall, but I disagree on this point. Assassination is the best by far feat in the game. I spend many points on it, though not from the beginning. First of all you reach pretty soon the ability to use melee weapons from the back row, which is very useful, since It enhances a lot your offensive power as a team. Next you gain faster attacks and critical hits, which further enhances your damage potential. But when you reach level 50 and gain master assassin feat, then this is the ultimate weapon. You can backstab everyone and kill him instantly. The only exceptions are the the Wardens on the last level. The only difficulty is to how to backstab. And here comes for help the mage of the team. You just require two spells, to make you life easy for backstabbing.
First the frostbolt (not even the enhanced one), which is gained pretty soon. You can freeze your enemy move behind him and bang ... assasinated ... and torn in pieces with a single hit. Later on you can achieve the same effect with the invisibity spell, which is even better since frost bolt may fail, but invisibility never fails. You just move behind the foe and ... assassinated! Superb!

[PeyloW]

Your work with compiling this information is much appreciated. Detailed but not overly wordy, i love it.

[Merethif]

After four full playthoroughs and fifth almost completed I agree with most things in your analysis but the one thing I really can't understand is an underrating of Missile Weapons and Throwing Weapons. These are very efficient weapons in terms of damage and survivability (dealing damage from distance). I totally disagree and although I may be biased and overrate ranged combat I'm convinced you underrate it greatly.

[PeyloW]

After four full playthoroughs and fifth almost completed I agree with most things in your analysis but the one thing I really can't understand is an underrating of Missile Weapons and Throwing Weapons. These are very efficient weapons in terms of damage and survivability (dealing damage from distance). I totally disagree and although I may be biased and overrate ranged combat I'm convinced you underrate it greatly.

I found missile weapons to be good if combined with enchanted fire arrow (and ice arrow for enemies with fire resistance). Non-enchanted missile weapons are quite poor though.

Like how it require one character to boost another.

[Merethif]

After four full playthoroughs and fifth almost completed I agree with most things in your analysis but the one thing I really can't understand is an underrating of Missile Weapons and Throwing Weapons. These are very efficient weapons in terms of damage and survivability (dealing damage from distance). I totally disagree and although I may be biased and overrate ranged combat I'm convinced you underrate it greatly.

I found missile weapons to be good if combined with enchanted fire arrow (and ice arrow for enemies with fire resistance). Non-enchanted missile weapons are quite poor though.

Like how it require one character to boost another.

Idk, in my first party there were unarmed melee character and throwing weapon ranged character. The melee one had Attack Power 66 and Accuracy 69, the ranged one had Attack Power 67 and he always hit and always did double attack. So, with every attack, it was "a chance of hitting with 66" vs "two guaranteed hits with 67 plus all standard merits of fighting from the distance". And Unarmed is rated as very good skill by OP (I don't object that, I find it very good as well).

[athanatic_cube]

After four full playthoroughs and fifth almost completed I agree with most things in your analysis but the one thing I really can't understand is an underrating of Missile Weapons and Throwing Weapons. These are very efficient weapons in terms of damage and survivability (dealing damage from distance). I totally disagree and although I may be biased and overrate ranged combat I'm convinced you underrate it greatly.

I found missile weapons to be good if combined with enchanted fire arrow (and ice arrow for enemies with fire resistance). Non-enchanted missile weapons are quite poor though.

Like how it require one character to boost another.

Idk, in my first party there were unarmed melee character and throwing weapon ranged character. The melee one had Attack Power 66 and Accuracy 69, the ranged one had Attack Power 67 and he always hit and always did double attack. So, with every attack, it was "a chance of hitting with 66" vs "two guaranteed hits with 67 plus all standard merits of fighting from the distance". And Unarmed is rated as very good skill by OP (I don't object that, I find it very good as well).

Thanks for the good feedback, PeyloW and Merethif.

Merethif, if I get around to posting my suggested party builds, I do have a Missile Weapon character in two of them (but regard them as suboptimal ). So, I don't totally discount the use of missile weapons. (And, I completely agree with you that more ranged attackers is better. A problem is whether you want to go missile attackers at the expense of mages or whether you want to develop a missile attacker in the front rank, presumably with some points in the Dodge tree....) When I was experimenting with parties, before I buckled down to play for real, I did try some missile weapon characters. The main drawbacks, as I see them, is that you have to kill an enemy to get back your missiles (and then you have to go to where they were dropped) and that the use of missile weapons is dependent upon available ammunition plus some amount of Energy (am I wrong?). But, it is good to see the numbers you posted as it allows for comparison against similarly developed mages. (Improved Fire Ball with Zhandul's Orb will often do more than 200 points of damage and I've seen very close to 300 before.)

Part of the reason I dinged Missile Weapons some in the ratings had to do with poorer synergy with its attribute boosts (Dexterity, in particular) than some other skill groups. Also, the need for two hands to use a missile launcher plus hold projectiles, iirc. I don't doubt that it is sufficiently effective to do some serious hurt at a distance, especially once you have the Volley feat. The problem with my somewhat subjective ratings sitting around by themselves is that they don't tell the full story, as you demonstrate with your example. (I really should post my suggested builds.)

[Darklord]

Part of the reason I dinged Missile Weapons some in the ratings had to do with poorer synergy with its attribute boosts (Dexterity, in particular) than some other skill groups. Also, the need for two hands to use a missile launcher plus hold projectiles, iirc. I don't doubt that it is sufficiently effective to do some serious hurt at a distance, especially once you have the Volley feat. The problem with my somewhat subjective ratings sitting around by themselves is that they don't tell the full story, as you demonstrate with your example. (I really should post my suggested builds.)

I made a front rank Minotaur Archer she was pretty lethal, the Dex directly improved her dodge which was nice.

Daniel.