Higher level questions

[MostlyHarmless]

I'm playing the master quest now, which is to say I imported my party from the original game and now that I'm about half way through my people are around level 19 - my fighter has maxed out swords, my unarmed rogue has maxed out unarmed combat, my minotaur missile rogue has maxed out missiles and my mage is pretty much evenly split on air, ice and spellcraft with enough point in staff defense for light armor.

Questions:

1. How does evasion work and does it have diminishing returns? My unarmed guy has around 120 evasion with lurker gear, shields, etc. so should I just keep going in that direction (more points in dodge), or is it time to give him light armor, and put the extra points into assassination?

2. I put my minotaur rogue into all ring mail and she went into "rage" (+10 attack, -10 evasion). Her evasion is -42. I think I like it. Anyway, I found plate gauntlets and with them equipped the rage went away. So how does this rage mode work? Do minotaurs just get pissed if you dress them up in all ring mail or do I get it back if I can give her all plate armor too? Does evasion -40 as opposed to -30, for example, make any difference? (I could just give her light armor and not incur any evasion penalties fwiw).

3. Can you "backstab" with missile weapons? i.e. do you get the backstabbing bonus if you go for assassination with a missile rogue?

4. Armor or athletics for fighters who have maxed out their weapon category and put enough points into armor to wear heavy?

thanks.

[Dr.Disaster]

1.
Evasion offers a non-percentage based chance to evade non-magical attacks. You can try different armors and see what difference it makes.

Regarding Assassination: to make use of all listed special attacks your rogue has to use Daggers. The Unarmed skill and all usable non-Dagger melee weapons allow you to use only normal Backstabbing, Reach Attack and Quick Attack but not the improved Backstab/Pierce/Crit or Master Assassin.


2.
In Master Quest each armor set offers a specific bonus when worn like Mail Armor offering "Rage". To get the bonus you have to wear the full set: helm, body armor, pants, boots and gloves. If you want to keep the bonus stay with the set, otherwise switch parts or sets.

Negative Evasion increases the chance to be hit by non-magical attacks. Perhaps you should improve the armor skill of that minotaur to get rid of the armor penalties.


3.
Assassination requires melee weapons to work. In addition only Daggers give you access to all it's special attacks.


4.
Armor 25 and Athletics 20 are landmarks you can aim for. Past that it depends on the fighter what benefits him most.

[MostlyHarmless]

Thanks for the answers. I guess I should have gone for daggers and assassination instead of unarmed combat with my rogue, but with 19 levels behind him it's too late now... (didn't think far enough ahead when I started the game).

Does anyone here know how your character's chance to evade an attack is calculated or roughly how it works?

My back row minotaur rogue can wear light armor from the dodge skill tree. I think heavy armor is only available to fighters. So now I have to decide whether to give her regular light armor and incur no evasion penalties, or just to say f--- it and make her a back row tank in heavy armor. Usually when she gets hit in the back row it's either in crowded combat (fighter's challenge, etc.) or AoE spells like fireballs from Uggardians... I could give her all the Chitin armor, but I dunno... seems like a waste on her.

And same with my front row rogue but opposite direction, his evasion is already so high that I'm not sure if it's worth getting more evasion by wearing lurker clothes instead of Chitin or regular leather armor.

SpoilerShow

fwiw, my team survived the first two waves of enemies in the fighter's challenge, although the back row mage and rogue were difficult to keep alive. then in the spider room they died quickly, while the fighter and especially the evasion-unarmed combat rogue in the first row excelled.

[Eobersig]

...

My back row minotaur rogue can wear light armor from the dodge skill tree. I think heavy armor is only available to fighters. So now I have to decide whether to give her regular light armor and incur no evasion penalties, or just to say f--- it and make her a back row tank in heavy armor. Usually when she gets hit in the back row it's either in crowded combat (fighter's challenge, etc.) or AoE spells like fireballs from Uggardians... I could give her all the Chitin armor, but I dunno... seems like a waste on her. ...

I don't think armour (the protection value) has any effect on damage taken by spells - evasion and the elemental resists mitigate damage from spells. Personally I never use heavy armour on backrow members.

[MostlyHarmless]

So I finished the master quest and I think all characters reached level 24. Below are a few observations, may contain spoilers.

End game stats
Play time: 33 hours (I'm slow, I know I know)
Secrets: 115/120
Treasures: 7/7
Skulls: 5
Perel's note: all
Melee attacks: 1558
Ranged attacks: 1746
Unarmed Attacks: 1180
Spells cast: 1320

1. I gave most of the wisdom books and extras to my mage so he ended up with 50 in spellcraft, 14 in staff defense and 30-something in air and 40-something in ice. In the original game I used ice the most, but air does more damage so I found myself using it about evenly with ice in master quest. I think staff defense up to light armor was a good idea because it stopped the mage from dying easily (also gave him one of the tome's of health), and spellcraft 50 halves magic costs so it makes a huge difference. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to build up two elemental schools; I think the biggest advantage is that you get elemental protections for your party in those two schools, but I saw some guy on youtube with fire at 50 and he was dealing a lot more damage than my mage, except that his mage also died all the time. In terms of spells cast, it would have been higher but my mage ran out of juice easily until I got spellcraft up to 50 and also spells are inconvenient to click out in the midst of combat.

2. My minotaur rogue was the busiest member of the team until she ran out of ammo, but if you keep both a crossbow and regular bow ready at quick switch then you essentially double the ammo. But even then she ran out in fighter's challenge - I should have kept the slingshot as a tertiary weapon; the rocks weigh a crapload, but they don't stick to enemies like arrows so you can pick them up in the middle of the fight. As for enchanting ammo, it's not worth giving up auto-pickup imo. I know you can make your mage hold regular arrows or bolts, but then he can't hold a staff/orb/shield/bombs or a fire/lightning sword. My missile rogue reached 50 in missiles in the original game, so I put the rest of the points in dodge and later suited her up in Chitin (nice set bonus). That was much better than having her in plate/chain with massive hits to evasion.

SpoilerShow

The poison gems ammo for the slingshot was also a great addition towards the end of the game.

3. My unarmed combat rogue used to be faster and more accurate in the original game, but after my fighter got swords to 50 she was faster, and as accurate with Sword of Nex, and of course did more damage.

SpoilerShow

After she got full armor of valor she was essentially twice as fast as my fist fighter.

Still the fist fighter was a resilient bastard that would often outlast all the other members of the team because of high evasion (around 160) combined with immunity to fire/shock and high resistance to ice and poison. I decided to go with lurker armor, initially so that I could save the Chitin for my mage and missile rogue, but later also because the set bonus for lurker armor is too good not to use:

SpoilerShow

invisibility for your full party, although the invisibility icon only shows up on the wearer of the lurker set.

Of course I had to give up my pit fighter gloves (the only weapon for unarmed fighter) so that's why I suspect a rogue specializing in daggers, dodge and assassination might be better. Dunno. The reason he's lagging in unarmed attacks performed, probably has to do more with how I fight than his usefulness. I like to attack with both front row guys one right after the other before moving away or going to missiles/spells, and I do it so quickly that I don't stop to see if the first character's hit (sword fighter in this case) kills the enemy.

4. My fighter was awesome. Armors to 16 first to wear heavy, then swords to 50, and the rest of the points I spread pretty evenly between athletics and armors just to keep getting strength, health, protection and other bonuses. Towards the end she was too fast for me to take advantage of her properly during the flow of combat, so I gave her Dismantler instead of Sword of Nex and a bracelet that increased attack power but slowed the cool down. That way she was closer to my fist fighter (who had the bracelet to quicken cool down) so I could attack with them in unison.

[Komag]

Nice build, thanks for the write-up. Yeah, things change with higher levels, it's very different from playing the original game at lower levels, fun to min-max the party like that. The Lurker bonus is a little OP perhaps, but I think it's fun, plus most people don't use invisibility enough, so it gives a chance to really see what that's like.

[Neutronium Dragon]

I don't think armour (the protection value) has any effect on damage taken by spells - evasion and the elemental resists mitigate damage from spells. Personally I never use heavy armour on backrow members.

It also depends on what's hitting them. You can't evade ranged attacks or party-wide melee attacks (ogre's charge) AFAIK, so heavy armor is better there, as long as the character isn't becoming encumbered because of it.