Aric's warrior guide extracted from the old forum
I've been playing a warrior for over 30 levels and hopefully I'm doing something right. After all the helpful responses I've gotten whenever I've had a question I thought I'd type up a quick helper guide to players making a warrior and give back some to the Larian community
Now assuming that you will beat the game at level 50, you can max out 12 skills. Here are the essential warrior skills: lockpick, identify, wisdom, magic barrier,---- expertise (weapon expertise of your choice), shield expertise (if you're going one handed style), augment damage, repair, stun, augment defense, spiritual damage, death strike
Important Edit: You can beat the game successfully and easily using the above skills. However in retrospect some of them aren't really the best bang for your buck. If you want to play a straight up warrior go ahead with these. If you don't mind stretching the mold a bit consider dropping shield expertise, stun and death strike for one of the following class kits
warrior summoner- max out demonic aide, the passive summons' enhancer, put one point in the aura so you can get him to follow you. Also note that all buffer spells work on summons so if you wish you could drop even more combat skills for buffers that would work on both, you and your summoned. If you must drop more I suggest the following - wisdom and augment damage.
Also keep an eye out for intelligence charms, so you don't have to train intelligence.
Asassin- poison weapon and traps. You can pick up poison weapon even as a regular warrior and you don't need alchemy, as poison potions are everywhere. As far as traps go they are extremely powerful, so if you like things difficult you might want to avoid them.
Do not train lockpicking past 3 or identify past 4. You will learn these through play. Put these extra points into charms. 3 points in charms are all you will need. Also keep an eye out for items that give +1 to charm skill. I have found two while looking.
Wisdom contrary to popular belief is an excellent skill for warriors. Why? quite simple. It's only a waste of a skill point if you had something else better to train. There is no skill worth training besides the ones I listed (heh, I can imagine the responses to that comment). Also wisdom is not a trade giving up a skill point for 5 stat points. Because you will gain more than one extra level using it. I have it maxed out and I don't regret it. One thing to remember though, ALWAYS train wisdom whenever you're allowed if you let it slide a level, all the exp you gain is exp wasted.
Lockpicking is an acceptable warrior skill. Plenty of adventurers and mercenary warriors need to know how to pick a lock or two. As far as pickpocketing goes though, you don't need it. If you want to solve the plague quest and cure all 3 victims, just find/buy 2 items that give pickpocket bonus. Or if you're evil like me, just kill one of them after solving their quest and give the potion they drop to the other two. Same thing with the thieves guild, to rob that bum all you need is pickpocket at one, I kept an amulet of such for just this purpose.
As far as magic goes. Well, first of all I have 3 points in restoration, 2 in banish, 2 in summon skeleton, and 1 in almost all the mage spells and I never trained any of them. Books to learn mage spells are everywhere and can even be bought. Besides if you put points into spells you will feel pressured to train intelligence which would be a big mistake.
Which brings me to stat training. Never train intelligence. I put one point in it after the vampire quest because I ended up with an intel of 9 and it was damn ugly. Strength is important. You want to use good equipment, don't you? Me personally, I always prefered the high agility just don't get hit, warrior. I trained to the following tune- I got my strength to 65 thus allowing me to use pretty much everything. When I found the well I put the +10 into strength, getting it to 75. At that level I could use every armor and one handed blade in the game (didn't beat it yet but I'm wearing plate and using a bastard sword, so I doubt I will find anything that requires more). At 65 I stopped training strength. I got my constitution to 50 (not all at once though). With over 300 hitpoints I am confident that nothing will kill me in one hit, specially with magic barrier being trained. As long as I have 1 hp left I can always drink a potion. And now I am pouring all my stat points into agility. Level 33 monsters have a 46 percent chance of hitting me and I have only just started training agility. My method isn't the end all be all though, you can play around a little with your agility-strength-con. Just don't train intelligence.
Don't use a weapon that does frost damage. Why you ask? Simple. I used a frost blade for a while and the problem was this: I never got hurt and never drank a potion. I ended up with over 150 healing potions alone not counting the other potions. This was bad because the damn potions were weighing me down. Also without needing potions I never had anything to buy. I now have over 500,000 gp! And this is after buying my house and spending 10,000 at the well. Its nice to need to buy something occasionally
Anyway, frost damage also just makes things too easy. I'm not a glutton for pain but it's just too much. I play a warrior to go toe-to-toe with a critter, to whirl in the dance of blades and when I win, to savor my victory knowing I defeat yet another incredible foe in hand to hand combat. I found a unique cutlass which actually had a few more points of min damage, then my bastard of frost as well as life drain. I started using it right before I went on the uber hard quests for the warriors guild, and I was victorious. The victory was all the sweeter with my new blade. Now before I get stoned to death, if you want to use a frost blade go ahead, there's nothing wrong with using it if you wish.
Another thing - don't throw away your magic potions. Keep them in a safe spot, after the dark forest quest you learn alchemy level 1. This will allow you to mix potions and make restoration potions which heal better then healing potions. And they recover mana so you can cast restoration and heal yourself some more
meat-don't dump it, eat it, fool. Boar meat, wolf meat, dog meat, human meat. Meat is meat and it's good for you. Bread too. They are free healing potions that you're only allowed to use occasionally. I have about 500 pounds of meat in my house
General tips
Do every quest. Every single one. Monsters don't respawn and exp is precious. Kill everything that looks at you funny. Kill things that smell funny. Go over every inch of the map. There should be no fog of war anywhere unless it's an area you can't go like a pond.
quicksave and quickload are your friends
Just because you're loaded doesn't mean you should stop caring about gold. Never know when you might need some. Also in the beginning, when money is actually scarce, loot and sell everything. But try not to upset any merchants. Most merchants move around and they have terrible eyesight.
Don't kill cats
Do quests in logical order or they will never leave your quest log
Leave notes on the automap. When you get a quest they may mark their map but they dont mark their location. After you finish their quest you're going to be scratching your head, wondering where that person was. Make it routine- every time you get a quest stick a note on their head.
after every level read your traits page-it's fun
If you want to be an archer you can still use my guide. Just take points from strength and put more in agility. Also, all my melee skills listed, move them to the appropriate archery skills.
You can speciallize in any weapon you want but remember: male warriors start with a point in sword speciallization.....
The pyramid stones: You can use them strategically in battle if you're an archer or mage to teleport to different corners of a room, but personally I find they have a far better use. Leave one in your house. Claim George's house as your own until you buy one. Now many people say, you should leave one next to your favorite merchant (can anyone say Rivertown marketplace?) And for a while I lived there, even made a bed of hay right in the middle of the road. But I realized it was kind of a waste. There is a teleporter right smack dab next to Ars Magicana, so it takes but a moment to get there. When you buy your house it is a 15-30 second run to the teleporter in the park. Better to leave it in your home because.....storage! Previously I just left items on the floor until merchants earned enough gold to buy them. It was a terrible mess and I kept accidently grabbing stuff belonging to people when trying to pick my loot up. It was annoying to say the least. In your house you have a chest, cupboard, and 2 barrels, not to mention tables... use them. When you want to make a selling run use your stones to teleport to your house, grab your loot, run to the teleporter and sell at the marketplace as usual. Yes, it takes about half a minute more, not to mention the loading time but it really is worth it. And when you max out in repair you really will have no need to head to the marketplace every 15 minutes.
The AC of an item isn't the most important end all be all. It is more than worth it giving up 10 or even 20 armor class for another item which has a gaggle of special abilities. Up to a point of course going down 100 armor class for + 2 to defense and +10 to fire resist isn't the best of deals. A good general guide are merchants. If you're not sure about what to use, see which item a merchant is offering to pay more for. Keep in mind, merchants gauge item worth by all its abilities including things that are of no use to you (like intelligence bonuses for me).
The cutlass I acquired has a life drain of two and I believe it's one of those rare uniques that were talked about. It's called the Cutlass of Tuto something or other. I was surprised how effective life drain is. With a rating of two I find my health consistently recovering on its own. Definitely a nice replacement for frost.
Only use gold charms for items. Maybe silver but no lower than silver. Unless you KNOW your going to replace this item in the future and just want a quick fix. Or you're at endgame and haven't found any good charms. I have found that orcs are excellent droppers of charms (orc camps not orcs in the beginning area)
The best armor I've ever seen is sold by the elven bow merchant (ironically enough he's a bowman wearing leather). I've been everywhere cept the dwarven halls so I can't say for certain he's the best armor merchant period, but his stuff is mighty fine.
Enchant weapon is useful. I said, train it 3 times, using the skill points left over from taught skills. That plus never selling items that give pluses to enchant weapons give you all the charm power you need.
One thing that cannot be argued is the fact I am currently right before hitting the gong. I am level 40. I have completed every single side-quest except the treasure map and have killed everything and anything everywhere that looked at me funny. Without frost. I slaughtered the succubus and laughed at the dragonrider in the warriors guild. Hopefully I have a clue or two in the right direction.
Okay, I'm not one to talk out of his ass so I went and did some experiments. It has been widely said that summoning is useless. I decided to test it out. I loaded my save prior to ringing the gong so I did it again and boom had 6 skill points. I put 4 in demonic aide because to max out in it ya have to be level 48, quite stiff, indeed. Anyway, I put 1 point in that aura thing so they follow you and 1 point in passive enhancement for summons.
I summoned my level 38 deathknight I believe and sicced him on an Imp. He killed it with minimal damage to himself. Now on one hand those imps give me over 5000 exp and I'm level 46 so that's pretty impressive. On the other hand demonic aide is the best summoning spell out there and I wasn't even able to max it out. Considering that he should have waxed the imp in seconds. When it battled an imp chieftan he was promptly killed and I had to summon another one and help a bit to kill him. Again though, it takes even me a while to kill one of those chieftains.
Also, I did some other experiments and much to my delight I can cast restoration to heal my deathknight, I could even cast bless and spellshield on him. And a mage or summoner warrior at my level probably would have had that passive summoner enhancer maxed out by now while I only had 1 point in it. I assume the ressurection thing is for bringing a summoned back to life, though unless it costs a fraction of the mana, I see no reason to do so instead of just summoning another pet. Also putting more points into deathknight didn't let me summon more than one.
In conclusion after much playing around I would have to say, if all the other summons are as effective as the deathknight in the wasteland in their respective area (skeletons in the starting town etc.) then summoning really isn't so bad for a mage. In essence, a summon would keep the critter off the mage, so he could blast it, thus not having to worry about training constitution and strength in order to survive a melee.
As to the question of whether or not a warrior would profit more from dropping some of the skills I listed and replacing it with summoning........
It would be a viable and probably successful (not to mention cool) idea to drop stun and deathblow and go for demonic aide and that passive summoning enhancement. And put 1 point in that aura thing so the deathknight doesn't just stand there but actually follows you.
