Got this game recently, and jolly good fun it is too. Well, it would be if I had not come to a dead stop at my first attempt. Seduced by some of the offerings on the Ranger tree I skilled and statted up accordingly in Dex and then added a fair bit in Int plus spririt plus poisoned arrow, stun and fireball primarily. I got completely scuppered at the meeting with the dragonslayers at the Maxos Temple. Level 12 I was with lvl 4 fireball, poisoned arrow and stun delivered with Ranger's Rest, but I was defenceless against the two bows and the sword - the bows just stunned me whatever i did and the sword chopped me to pieces at liesure. Admittedly this is probably becasue I had been too free with the Dex at the expense of Vitality, but that's the way I play stealth/ranged/mage type charcters usually. In Fallout/Morrowind/OB it works - here it apparently doesn't
. I also always play on hard and i don't like turning it down to get past awkward situations.
Anyways I started again with a warrior type and decided to go dual sword with the intention of upping the magic incrementally as things progressed. I've played through to level 7 with this build and I have to say it is more fun to play and in most situations easier than with the bow. Winkling them out at a distance (when you can) with a bow can be a long winded and at times tedious process i found (presumably until you get exploding arrows at lvl 15). As warrior I can rush a group, slaughter them, rush the next group etc and it's over in a jiffy.
It seems more fun jumping and rolling about chopping them up that click,strafe,click,strafe etc etc etc so I'm not on the whole unhappy about this outcome. The killer though is the cut scene set battles where you start right next to the enemy with your bow on your back. Not funny as a ranger.
Anyway some questions:
Currently I'm L7 and have dual weapon 2, whirlwind 2, rush 2, battle rage 1, magic blast 1, locks 3, str 12, int 8, spririt 4, vit 10, dex 1 (roughly)
1. What would you spend your next five skill points on?
2. What are the defence options against archers stunning and poisoning you (I know what they can do, I've done it myself). I'm thinking of those black ring jokers spread out all over the place.
3. I've read you ought to have a ranged attack option as a warrior and magic missile is suggested since it uses int rather than dex and you need int anyway. It looks pretty weak unless you allocate a lot of points to it which makes it hard to justify. Is it really necessary and if so when would be a good time to plan several levels to load it?
4. It seems to me that a general rule is if a mindread cost is high it's worth doing, otherwise not. Would you say over 200? 300? 400?
5. If there's one thing I hate more than exhaustively searching for something I know exists but no means of deducing the location it's exhaustively searching for something that
might exist, and if it does will be cunningly hidden in the most irritating manner contrivable within the constraints of the engine. Is it a general rule that each location has one major bonus secret, that you can count on one being there, and that once you've found it you can move on?
[edit] 6. One more. If a weapons deals both physical and magical damage, is the physical damage modified by Str and the magical by Int, i.e. if you have a lot more Str than Int you are better off with a purely physical damage weapon? [end edit]
Sorry, this has turned out a tad longer than I intended - thanks to anyone patient enough to read it and any tidbits of advice would be very welcome.
