I've been reading through the first impressions thread and it looks like plenty of people are having trouble with combat. That was to be expected, but several people seem to be getting rather frustrated so I decided to write up this guide that should get you started on your warrior career path.
I'm going to intentionally avoid going into too much detail because figuring stuff out on your own is one of the main points of playing a game. My intention is not to give you a recipe for victory, I just want to point you in the right general direction. And the first thing required for that is a proper attitude.
1. ATTITUDEIn a typical modern RPG you start as an unskilled wuss, but somehow you're still slaughtering enemies from day one. Age of Decadence is not like that. Combat was intentionally designed as the hardest path through the game. And if you think of it, that's realistic. There's a reason why in real life people usually try to avoid mortal combat - it can quickly get you killed!
A freshly made character is not going to be a good warrior. Let's repeat that a couple of times, so it will really sink in. A freshly made character is not going to be a good warrior.
A freshly made character is not going to be a good warrior. A FRESHLY MADE CHARACTER IS NOT GOING TO BE A GOOD WARRIOR.Sorry, you are simply not someone who has trained for battle their entire life (or if you are, something happened to make you lose most of your skill). At best you'll be a talented amateur. A one-on-one fight is going to be a challenge, going up against superior numbers is suicidal. But you can become a great warrior if you take the time and effort to acquire the necessary skills and equipment. The equipment part is pretty crucial, but more on that later.
The assassin and mercenary you get to fight in the inn are both intentionally difficult opponents. But it's also possible to avoid fighting them. You'll find easier prey later on, so if you can't defeat them it's best to just let it go. Avoiding the fight is easier when you're a Mercenary (just agree not to fight), but even as an Assassin you can avoid it if you don't use Charisma as a dump stat or if you have enough Dexterity and Critical Strike.
A final piece of advice in regard to attitude is to be flexible. If you are doing something and it doesn't work, try something else. Normal attacks aren't doing enough damage? Try power attacks. Can't hit your opponent? Try fast attacks. Opponent always blocks? Try using an axe, even if that isn't your main skill. And so on.
2. FOCUSThey say that graveyards are full of average warriors and that is very true for Age of Decadence. If you wanted to make a character that is equal parts warrior and diplomat, I have bad news for you: this game requires at least a moderate amount of specialization. It's perfetly viable to play a diplomat with a shield or a warrior with a bit of non-combat skills thrown in for good measure. But if you try to be equally goood at combat and diplomacy, you'll just end up being bad at everything. Which is to say you'll be dead.
3. OFFENSE VERSUS DEFENSEThe best way to win a fight is by not getting killed. In a one-on-one fight you may win by simply dishing out damage faster than the other guy, but whenever you find yourself outnumbered it's a whole different story. Think about it. If you are fighting two enemies you will attack once and defend twice. If you're fighting three opponents you will attack once and defend three times. And the more opponents you add into the mix, the more important defense becomes in compare to offense.
You have three lines of defense: defense skill, armor, and health. We'll explore them in the following sections.
4. DEFENSE SKILLSBlock and Dodge are your first line of defense and they rival armor for being the most important. There's not much to tell here, other than explain the differences. Just pick one and put skill points into it, it's as simple as that.
Advantages of Block:
1. It's not limited by armor. You can wear the heaviest armors in the game without any penalty to your defense skill.
2. Shields give you a bonus when defending from ranged attacks.
3. You can bash enemies with your shield to push them away or even knock them down.
Advantages of Dodge:
1. Bigger chance of counter-attacking. This makes it especially useful against melee opponents.
2. You can use two-handed weapons without reducing your defense. Alternatively you can also combine one-handed weapons with nets or bolas.
3. You don't have to worry about axemen destroying your shield.
As a rule of a thumb, Dodge is better in a duel vs. a melee opponent (especially an axeman) while Block is better when you're fighting groups of enemies that include archers.
Personally I prefer Block because I like to wear the heaviest armors and because all the most challenging fights are against multiple opponents and there's always at least one archer among them. But those same fights are purely optional and a dodger should be able to get through all the mandatory fights just fine.
5. ARMORGood armor is crucial. In a world where a basic Bronze sword does 3-12 damage, a set of Bronze Imperial armor that reduces all incoming damage by 8 points is going to make a huge difference. Without any armor that sword would hurt you for 7.5 damage on average. With that armor the average damage you suffer drops down to 1 point. That's more than 85% less! Even a basic Bronze Auxilary armor would reduce damage from that sword by 52%.
Another thing about armor is that the more DR you have, the more each additional point is worth up to the point where enemies can only hurt you if they score a critical hit. This is because if an enemy can do a lot of damage, 1 point doesn't make much of a difference, but if they can only do a little damage, 1 point can be a significant percentage.
You'll be able to buy some decent armor or get it as a quest reward, but if you want the best protection you'll have to make it yourself. You actually don't have to invest any points into Crafting at all in order to create the strongest possible Bronze armors, it's only a matter of finding enough Bronze equipment to decompose. Of course the strongest possible crafted Bronze armor is only a little stronger than what you can buy, but every bit helps. Check the bonus section at the end of the guide for more detailed information on Crafting.
6. HEALTHHealth is your last and weakest line of defense. As long as you get hit more than 5 times during a fight, an extra point of DR is going to do you more good than an extra point of Constitution. Additonally, the base health is fairly generous. A character with 10 Constitution will have only 2x as much Health as a character with 4 Constitution and the more Consitution you have, the less each additional point is worth.
But there is one reason why having only 4 Constitution is risky: critical hits. They always do at least 5 points of damage and they can damage your attributes. If any of your attributes drops to 2 you automatically die. So if you only have 4 Constitution, you can get killed by two lucky hits.
Despite that it's still a bit of a dump stat. It's useful to have some points in it, but an average value is plenty even for warriors. It will be a stronger stat in the full game, where it will be checked when exploring ancient ruins.
7. SUMMARYAnd that's it on the basics of playing a successful warrior. A short summary:
- sometimes it's best to avoid fights
- if whatever you are doing isn't working, try something else
- in order to survive as a warrior you'll need to actually focus mostly on combat
- defense is more important than offense
- armor and defensive skills are more important than Health
8. BONUS: DETAILED INFORMATION ON CRAFTING IN THE DEMO8.1 Metalworking and multiple techniques.You'll need to reach certain levels of Crafting in order to create equipment out of a specific material. Bronze requires 20, Iron requires 35, and Steel requires 50. Steel is the best material available in the demo.
Material used is important because the power of techniques used depends on the base material. Even with 100 Crafting using the Hardened technique on Bronze armor will only improve DR by 1 point.
By default you can only use one technique. Once you reach 50 Crafting you can use two techniques. This makes the biggest difference for weapons because it allows you to make weapons that are both Masterwork and Hardened. For armors it's only really significant if you have 60 Crafting and are making Steel armor that is both Hardened and Lightened.
8.2 HardenedThis is the most important technique for crafted armor since it improves DR. When used on a weapon it gives vsDR, which reduces the DR of an opponents armor by the specified amount. Effectively that's the same as improving damage, but it has no effect if enemies don't have any armor.
+1 DR or +1 vsDR: requires 20 Crafting and Bronze or better material
+2 DR or +2 vsDR: requires 40 Crafting and Iron or better material
+3 DR or +3 vsDR: requires 60 Crafting and Steel or better material
Note also that in the demo Steel is very rare and it will be challenging to find enough of it to craft your own armor, especially if you want it to be heavy armor.
8.3 MasterworkThis is the most important technique for weapons because it directly improves damage, making it equally useful against both armored and unarmored opponents. On armor it reduces Dodge and Sneak penalties, which sounds more useful than it actually is, because it doesn't reduce them by much. For example if armor gives you a 50% penalty to Dodge and you apply a Masterwork technique that reduces penalties by 20%, the armor will now give a 40% penalty to Dodge.
+[0-1] damage or -5% peanlties: requires 20 Crafting and Bronze or better material
+[0-2] damage or -10% penalties: requires 30 Crafting and Bronze or better material
+[1-2] damage or -15% penalties: requires 40 Crafting and Iron or better material
+[1-3] damage or -20% penalties: requires 50 Crafting and Iron or better material
+[1-4] damage or -25% penalties: requires 60 Crafting and Steel or better material
+[2-4] damage or -30% penalties: requires 70 Crafting and Steel or better material
8.4 Lightened and BalancedThe Lightened technique is only available for armor. It increases max AP of an armor by 1 and requires 60 Crafting and Steel or better material to be used.
The Balanced technique is only available for weapons. It requires 75 Crafting and reduces AP cost of using a weapon by 1.
8.5 Major benchmarksThere are three major benchmarks when it comes to Crafting:
40 Crafting: You can make the strongest Iron armor.
50 Crafting: You can make the best Iron weapons. As far as weapon damage is concerned, going from 40 to 50 in Crafting is like having 2 extra points of Strength. As an extra you can now also craft Steel items.
60 Crafting: You can make the best possible Steel armor, but it's a challenge to actually find enough Steel for that. This is mostly for over-archieving gods of war like Vahabyte.
You can also make significantly improved Steel weapons, but increasing skills above 50 costs twice as many skill points.