- The Pet Pal talent seems to open new dialog lines, is there any other skill, talent, trait or attribute requirement that does the same ? (also, i've read that it was best to give Pet Pal to a mage because their other talents are not that good, is it true ?)
There is no other skill that leads to directly altering the dialogue options, however depending on your charisma and intimidate, charm etc. abilities you might talk your way out of a fight sometimes. (Personally I don't find them useful)
The pet pal talent does indeed suit a caster character the best because looking from a min/max perspective their talent options are kinda limited. Basicly lonewolf/Glass cannon/Far out man/Know-it-all are the best 4 to take and after that most people trade it the other talents to a demon you meet later in the game. (Keep in mind lonewolf prevents you from taking an npc and know-it-all is only considered decent because it let's you go 1 point over the attribute softcap of 15.) Personally without lonewolf I would start with: far out man and pet pal, pick up glass cannon @ level 5 and then save the rest of my talents and feed them to the aforementioned demon. That is how good I think the talent choises for pure casters are. To me there is no merit in know-it-all since I do not value 1 extra point of intelligence more then I do value +2 attribute points.
The demon lets you trade in a talent for 10 ability points, and lets you trade 5 ability points for 1 attribute point. Basicly 1 talent is 2 attribute points and that is how I measure talents in the game. If the benefit outweighs the +2, I will take the talent. Otherwise it is demon feeding time.
I've read somewhere that there is a merchant that sells skills and attributes books that regenerate each time your characters hit a new level, is it still true with patch .132 ? If yes, do they respawn each time one of your characters hits a new level, or when your entire party has hit a new level, and is it worth to try to get to this merchant as early as possible (level 5 or maybe 4), or do you have to skip a lot of content to which you cannot go back ?
Yes, by the time you unlock the 5th room in your homestead, a merchant will be there who sells a +1 attribute book and a +3 ability point book. Starting prices are 12,5k gold and they will respawn on the level up of your character with the highest amount of experience points.
It is not worth it imo, since you have to do various tricks in order to obtain it, for experience reasons the tutorial dungeon is skipped. (which I do not recommend doing on a 1st playthrough) So it might be a fun thing to do if you ever do decide to do a 2nd playthrough. However you will get to it around level 9-10 normally.
- I intend to go pure melee rogue and mage for Scarlett and Roderick, and to take the 2 "fleshed out" companions (a mage and a warrior if i remember). Do any of these guys need to increase perception ? (i've read that earth summons have a lot of perception and could be good replacements to find secrets)
Need? No there is no real need to increase perception on non archer chararters from a min/max perspective. You will find gear that increases perception aswell other stats so it is unlikely you will be stuck with 5 perception. It is however possible to miss optional things due to lack of perception. There are places where if your perception is lacking the secret button will not appear and you can not go on a looting spree. The summon spider seems to have a lot of perception indeed, and can be used to spot hidden suff, however if you do not know where that stuff is, you have to keep resumming your spider every 30 seconds. So that stuff works a lot better on a 2nd playthrough when you know where the secrets are and just summon the spider when you need it to find stuff. If you really want to have a character with perception then having an archer is the best option.
I'm also looking for a good pure rogue build (nearest possible to min/max in the first playthrough). I think i have an idea on how to develop the two mages, and warrior seems simple enough, but i'm struggling with the rogue.
I personally am not a huge fan of the "rogue" build, mostly because when I played one, I had issues finding a decent weapon for him and due to the sneak mechanics he is kinda useless without having 5 sneak. Apart from already being fairly useless he becomes more useless once you realize that chapter 1 is filled undead and they take less damage from piercing damage. After that chapter (around level 10) the rogue will start to shine. However since a pure rogue class lacks versatility it annoyed em greatly during the 1st chapter and he will remain a one trick pony during the whole game.
That being said and shoving my opinion aside the way I would build a pure rogue looking at min/max perspective. (without lonewolf)
Str5, Dex8, Int5, Con5, Speed7, Per5
Scoundrel1, marksman1, sneak2
fast track, walk in shadows, tactical retreat
Bully, guerrillia
why marksman?
Because it also uses dex as prime ability and it has a few great versatility skills, like: tactical retreat(1), 1st Aid(1), treat poison(4), Doctor(4) Because of the low level requirements even with only 1 point in Marksman they won't cost a ton of AP to use.
@ level 2 increase Con+1
@ level 3 save your talent point
@ level 4 increase Con+1
@ level 5 use the saved up talent point for Glass cannon
By now unbuffed stats look like 5 8 5 7 7 5, which translates into the following:
max AP 14 7+con=max ap
Start AP 8 (speed+perception)*0,5 rounded down + 2
AP/turn 14 (speed-1)*0,5 rounded down +4)*2
Should aim to get boots/headgear that increases sneaking+1 and don't invest more then 2 points into sneaking, you can grab the rest from gear/void essences.
With glass cannon, never let your AP/turn > max AP
@ level 6, divide atribute point to dex most likely, from here on you flesh out the rogue so he can start shining after chapter 1, but he does need to be able to hit stuff to do that, so dex is relevant.
As far as ability point spending, do what you like, but keep in mind that willpower, bodybuilding is pretty useless as once sneak is 5 they should never be able to target the rogue, so the only chances they have is when they act 1st or when the rogue is caught in aoe. The Scoundrel skills are the worst in the whole game, with 13 skills total they still manage to have over 50% of complete horrible choises. With Scoundrel3 you can take all the skills you need, however due to AP penalties you might want to take scoundrel4 or 5. I personally wouldn't because the thing you will be doing is:
stealth, go to enemy, backstab (repeat) make sure to allways leave 1 AP so you can end your turn in stealth. Make sure your rogue and your fighter have the two pyramids, it allows for some great interaction later in the game.
Rogue will most likely act 1st goes to enemies, pew pew die. Warrior uses pyramid and teleports to rogue location and next turn it's dust devil+whirlwind madness or any other variation of pain bringing goodness.
This is all being said, it would not hurt to somewhere along the way make sure the rogue gets like 8 int and 1 point into each caster school so he can be mister versatile aswell.
And that ends the "short" explanation.
With kind regards,
Rashar.
