Grimrock

Hey,

you probably know or tried the 4 rogues party. People say it's most effective ever. Maybe you tried lizard tanks with +5 protection percs with 2 rogues on the back with assassination and backstabs to dance around and backstab for high damage.

But, I think I've found a character build which cannot be beaten. But this is gonna spoil you day.

Lets start slowly. In a party you deal damage and you tank damage. You can't max both. So because most of the time you tank with front row, you front chars are trading damage for max tank and on a back you try to maximize damage. Some say you need less tank some want more. Some tank on evasion with rogues and dodge, some try with HP and heavy armor. But the fact is - you have to tank and to do that you front row has to be either fighters with armor skill or rogues with dodge. If you make 4 mages you will will after the first fireball salvo and staff defence skill is nowhere near armor or dodge.

Second part, you need to deal damage. You can have normal weapon, ranged (throw and archery) or magic attacks. Magic attacks are pretty, but you will see that mages run out of energy faster than needed, even if you max in willpower. Once you kill a mob or two with mages you need to rest to restore energy to cast again. And on top of evertyhing it takes 3-4 click per attack vs one click with other weapon to cast a spell. Not very effective.

Now lets proceed to normal weapon. It is affected by strength and agility. You need to miss less and then you need to hit hard. This is how 4 rogues party tanks - value of high agility is used both for evasion and for high chance to hit. All ranged weapon on the other hand uses only strength and always hit if the monster is on the line of fire.

Now, lets look at the skills closely. If you examine skills to normal vs ranged weapon you'll see that normal weapons get special attack which increase alha damage (hit per attack) or negate armor. But the ranged weapons only get DPS increase (faster firing rate). Also ranged DPS bonus is less than weapon attack bonuses - archer will get only 100% to rate of fire while axe will get triple damage. You can say that axe can miss (true) and special attack is applied not on every hit (true). This is why again 4 rogues are so good - consistent high damage with dodge tank... If only those rogues could have heavy armor and probably hit heavier from front row... but well you have to trade something for something.

Well, apparently you don't. Behold the ultimate no tradeoff Party of Titans:

First, Minotaur Fighter all point to strength, rest in vitality. Perc whatever you like... The rest are - 3 Minotaur Fighters all point to strength, rest in vitality.

That's right, a party of 4 maxed out on strength /vitality fighters. And this is how you'll use it:

- Front row skills in armor first, than athletics
- Second row skills in athletics first armor second
- Front row uses throw weapons, last row is bow and crossbow

If you still don't get how awesome it is let me explain:

1) Throw and archery uses only strength attribute and never misses - you have max possible strength, and athletics maxes it out even more. You do huge damage. It never misses
2) You don't need agility because you always hit with your weapon and you evasion is boosted by armor skill very fast to negate the penalty
3) You have huge vitality and armor skills - you tank is maxed
4) You can switch front and back fighters as you wish and you still have max tank on the second row. You can be hit from any side, all sides, magic, from behind - and it will go on your tank characters, because they all are.
5) You tank on high protection and large HP - magic attacks will own dodge rouge tanks, but not yours
6) Athletics very soon will give you bonus to food, so you wont even have minotaurs food penalty anymore
7) Since all of your fighters are ranged damage you can kite twice better than any normal party, you deal full damage right away at a distance for huge amount and never miss
8) Bonus: Imagine how much load you can carry with 4 of these beasts + athletics "porter" perc


So here you go. Max tank, max damage, best kiting damage, never missed, no weak sides, switchable front and back rows. You have no tradeoffs. Your armor and athletics will boost your strength and vitality sky high and in case you ran out of your ranged ammo... you can kill a lot of stuff with just bare hands with such high attack bonuses.

And you thought those 4 rouge lizards with their dodge and daggers were good...

Wait, you put all your skill points into defensive skills? They are going to do incredibly crappy damage. I suspect you would run out of ammo in some fights with that set-up.

EDIT: You do realise that weapon skill also increase their damage. Strength bonus is inconsequential compared to that.

I suggest you try it an see how good it is.

If you think that rogue with archery skill outdamages in real game maxed attack bonus minotaur - you are wrong. Rogue will fire faster, yes, produce more damage - no.

Ranged weapon with just plain maxed our strength does huge damage.

RedOwl wrote:... - Front row uses throw weapons, last row is bow and crossbow. ...

I believe this small part of your post is the main reason why your party is so good: ranged combat is just really, really good in this game.

1. Ranged attacks cannot miss.
2. Ranged attacks don't get a penalty in close combat.
3. Ranged attacks are fast, shooting arrows with your bow is almost as fast as fighting with a dagger. Throwing weapons are even faster than bows.
4. Ranged attacks use only strength as attribute, nothing else.

I also run a 4-rogue team and the range users of that team outlevel the dagger and the unarmed guy.

Yes ranged weapons are way too good + fighters with armor athletics + minotaurs have way too high strength (only attribute that affects damage of ranged weapon) and vitality in exchange of low wisdom I dont need and low agility and I don't due to ranged weapon always hit.

Basically my charachters are max in attributes which gives me both max attack and max HP and my skills are maxing tank and add strength which boost ranged damage. This is the only combination which has everything to the max both tank and damage and can attack 100% from range

RedOwl wrote:I suggest you try it an see how good it is.

If you think that rogue with archery skill outdamages in real game maxed attack bonus minotaur - you are wrong. Rogue will fire faster, yes, produce more damage - no.

Ranged weapon with just plain maxed our strength does huge damage.

I think you missed one key element of boosting a weapon skill. If you raise your weapon skill not only will you get the listed bonuses on the side but also increase your accuracy with each point (not with ranged weapons obviously) and damage with every 3/4 points invested in weapon skill.

EDIT: On a closer look it might not be that much for ranged weapons at least. /end edit

That means if you max out a weapon skill (say missile weapons) at 50 you will get 37 extra attack power from just that. Then add +50% boosted attack speed and double arrows with every shot. Strength only give +1 damage per 2 points and laughably bad method at increasing damage. You should take a minotaur rogue for your ranged character but their extra strength is not going to matter too much in the long run.

RedOwl wrote:I suggest you try it an see how good it is.

If you think that rogue with archery skill outdamages in real game maxed attack bonus minotaur - you are wrong. Rogue will fire faster, yes, produce more damage - no.

Ranged weapon with just plain maxed our strength does huge damage.

As the second poster said, I think you need to look at the game's mechanics more closely. Weapon skill is much more important than strength. Overall, strength is a really poor stat in that it only adds .5 attack power per point. It's major effect is 3 Kg of carry weight. It's fine for backrow, but I'd go VIT over STR for the front row, in terms of stats, simply because the ability to soak a bit more is more important than a few measly points of attack power and who needs four mules when two are more than enough?

If you want to go with an all ranged party, that's great (see fourth poster). There are better ways to construct such a party than what you've laid out. Hell, if you're going all-out ranged, focus on offense rather than using so many points in defense.

If you know the game mechanics in such a fine detail. Maybe you tell me what is the damage bonus for say level 25 archery skill? This hidden damage bonus, not rate of fire bonus?

Ok. I might have overstated the effects of weapon skill to the attack power. It definitely boosts it but not nearly as much as I stated (3/4 per skill point). I don't know where I got that number. I can't test it now so maybe someone could give me a hand here.

That very simple to check. Take you party whatever you have mid game and give ranged weapon from skilled char to unskilled. Basically you should see that you skilled archer on high level hit for may more than "attack bonus from strength * weapon multiplier * ammo multiplier" and your unskilled char with highest strength hit for way lower than skilled with a bow.