Grind, grind, grind... I need some advice

[Mino]

The catch with damage resistance is it doesn't help against actor conditions like poison, the deadlier Irdegh poison, bleeding wound, fatigue, chaotic grip, stunned, etc.

So even if you don't take any damage, you could die from stacked poison or bleeding wound. The Jewel of Fallhaven, by giving you more attacks per turn, gives you a chance to kill your enemy before they can inflict anything on you. For the same reason, I don't recommend the Jinxed ring of damage resistance simply because it doesn't boost your AC at all, which would help more in the "kill first" strategy.

Later on, when you've leveled up more and can get to other towns, there are some good equipment in Remgard that offer DR but also a decent amount of AC or BC with it.

[Wyrmspawn]

DR is the most powerful thing in the game, in my opinion. With just three DR, you can grind ceaselessly in the boar trail without having to rest. With seven, you can grind through the entire dog cave again and again. With 8 damage resistance, my lv 12 character took on Blackwater mountain, and came down at lv 19. Damage resistance is the quickest way to success, though the success it brings might not be as secure as other options. DR is better than quick strike, trust me, I tried the quick strike build. It's also a great success, but a couple of plague striders forced me to resort to save cheating and hit-and-run tactics.

[sdevaney]

DR is the most powerful thing in the game, in my opinion. With just three DR, you can grind ceaselessly in the boar trail without having to rest. With seven, you can grind through the entire dog cave again and again. With 8 damage resistance, my lv 12 character took on Blackwater mountain, and came down at lv 19. Damage resistance is the quickest way to success, though the success it brings might not be as secure as other options. DR is better than quick strike, trust me, I tried the quick strike build. It's also a great success, but a couple of plague striders forced me to resort to save cheating and hit-and-run tactics.

Maybe we can come up with an actor condition that affects DR....feels like some sort of acid type condition or something....

[Wyrmspawn]

Damage resistance will suffer soon, though, as status effects can still get through it. In v0.6.12, status effects will be there on every turn, meaning that poisons and the like will all harm you each turn, which damage resistance cannot stop.

[Antison]

DR is the most powerful thing in the game, in my opinion. With just three DR, you can grind ceaselessly in the boar trail without having to rest. With seven, you can grind through the entire dog cave again and again. With 8 damage resistance, my lv 12 character took on Blackwater mountain, and came down at lv 19. Damage resistance is the quickest way to success, though the success it brings might not be as secure as other options. DR is better than quick strike, trust me, I tried the quick strike build. It's also a great success, but a couple of plague striders forced me to resort to save cheating and hit-and-run tactics.

Maybe we can come up with an actor condition that affects DR....feels like some sort of acid type condition or something....

Scott,

I believe there already is.

[Styro]

I thank you all for your helpful replies.

Though it seemed like my build was a pretty good one, I decided to start over just to try out the unarmed/AD build.

I must say that I am amazed at how much easier the game is. My new character is only level 4 but he is almost in the same position my old one was - he can clear the first few snakes in the snake cave. AD and three attacks makes a HUGE difference.

The game is much more enjoyable now, but this is the most counter-intuitive build I could imagine. That may be something for the devs to consider. If making logical choices in the game (buying a really good weapon and getting a variety of AC/DC/etc on level-up) is the worst strategy and leads to a less enjoyable experience they may want to consider changing it.

I would suggest not nerfing unarmed because in my mind this is how the game should play - faster and more fun. Instead they should look into ways to boost normal weapon combat so that it is at least as good as unarmed.

So is there a point where weapon combat catches up with unarmed in effectiveness? Or is it always inferior?

[fiernaq]

It gets worse, actually

Or rather, unarmed gets better. The more AP you get (Combat Speed skill, Cleave, etc..) and the more AC and AD you get the better unarmed is going to be. The other nice thing about unarmed is that you can completely ignore crit chance and crit multiplier on an item and just look at the rest of the stats.

Don't get me wrong, a high crit character can easily do just as well as an unarmed person once they have enough stats and a high BC character can likewise do very well but it just isn't the same. DR, while great for low lvl areas, quickly starts to weaken as you come across more and more actor conditions that have damage over time. BC starts out worse than DR but quickly surpasses it in value due to those actor conditions.

[Mino]

DR is the most powerful thing in the game, in my opinion. With just three DR, you can grind ceaselessly in the boar trail without having to rest. With seven, you can grind through the entire dog cave again and again. With 8 damage resistance, my lv 12 character took on Blackwater mountain, and came down at lv 19. Damage resistance is the quickest way to success, though the success it brings might not be as secure as other options. DR is better than quick strike, trust me, I tried the quick strike build. It's also a great success, but a couple of plague striders forced me to resort to save cheating and hit-and-run tactics.

When you were in Blackwater Mountain, you didn't get hit by Fatigue and find that it slowed you down? Or did you have the cure potions?

And have you fought the Izthiel or Irdegh creatures yet? DR won't help much against bleeding wound or Irdegh poison (worse than regular poison). And the Iqhan creatures have the combined power of inflicting Chaotic Grip and having critical hits. Unless you also get the condition resistance skills but it takes a lot of leveling up to get the Max 7 for each of them.

As I mentioned before, DR is not as powerful against creatures that can inflict conditions that continue to affect you even after you kill them.

Maybe we can come up with an actor condition that affects DR....feels like some sort of acid type condition or something....

Scott,

I believe there already is.

Yes, there's Chaotic Grip which reduces DR by 1 for each multiplier, and also Kazual Rotworms which has a constant -1 DR effect.

PS. I love the new quick comment system since it also allows multiple quotes

[Wyrmspawn]

Unarmed combat, or quick strike builds, as some call it, does not offer you as much as the ROL. There are excellent weapons out there, and those weapons are far superior to unarmed or quickstrike daggers.

[Mino]

I'm not denying the power of the ROL, but its a Legendary item, meaning it could require a lot of grinding, and those Kazaul imps can often gang up on you. So to go after it, I would still recommend a low attack cost build (like Quickstrike), along with at least 1 level of Cleave, and preferably 2 levels of Combat Speed. Regeneration and Corpse eater would also help since once you get though the darkness, its a pain to have to go back for potions.

I use different weapons for different purposes. My main game uses ElyR which offers good AC & AD, and with Cleave, the +2 on my max AP gets some use. The Balanced steel sword is a good weapon offering a good AC & AD and only 4 AP attack cost (3 with JoF). The Dagger of the Shadow priest is great if you're going for a critical hit build. And the Gutsplitter just sounds cool.

But for my newer game I'm using Quickstrike dagger because I want more chances to attack per turn. And so far I have Evasion level 2 so I can get first attack more often.