Took me a while to write this, but I wanted to share an update on my party from earlier in this thread (Game name: Pratchett) now that they’ve finally reached the end of E2A1 and are just lounging around waiting for new content to show up. (Vraes, “Are any of the new roads open yet?” Kjartan, “No. Go Fish.”) I’ll start with a snapshot of my team and then go into my thoughts.
Tamilin – Level 25
Attributes
• Strength = 5
• Dexterity = 16
• Constitution = 5
• Willpower = 4
• Intelligence = 6
• Knowledge = 4
Skills:
• Blades = 1
• Bows = 16
• Lore = 5
• Security = 3
• Stealth = 7
Talents:
• Aimed Shot = 1
• Silent Stalker = 1
• Ranged Onslaught = 1
• Farsight = 2
• Disarming Touch = 1
• Deadly Intuition = 10
• Blacknight = 3
• Precision Pick = 1
Weapons, Armor and Gear:
• Small Sword, 1AP, 5 Accuracy, 6 Parry, 21 – 29 Dmg
• Reinforced Ironwood Bow, 3AP, 8 Accuracy, 41 – 86 Dmg at 7 range
• Bandit’s Shadow, 16 Armor, +3 Evasion, +4 Stealth, +8 Max HP, +8 Max SP
• Boots Reborn (Boots), +3 Dodge, +5 Stealth, +5 Security
• Bone Finger Ring (Ring), +1 Accuracy, +8 Dmg, 5% Critical
• Mantle of the Smith (Cloak), +4 Armor, +20 All Elemental Resists, +4 Security
Vraes – Level 25
Attributes
• Strength = 16
• Dexterity = 5
• Constitution = 6
• Willpower = 5
• Intelligence = 5
• Knowledge = 3
Skills:
• Blades = 16
• Hammers = 3
• Polearms = 3
• Leadership = 5
• Lore = 5
Talents:
• Crushing Blow = 6
• Savage Sweep = 1
• Stone Skin = 1
• Natural Mastery = 10
• Phalanx Shield = 1
Weapons, Armor and Gear:
• Basked-hilted Broadsword, 2AP, 4 Accuracy, 7 Parry, 44 – 81 Dmg
• Steel Rimmed Shield, 7 Parry, +62 Max HP, +2 Armor
• Breastplate, 56 Armor, -2 Evasion
• Folding Tread (Boots), +1 Move Point, +2 Dodge, +2 Stealth
• Waning Mantle (Cloak), +24 Max SP, +2 Parry, +6 Armor
• Stalking Widow (Ring), +8 Dmg, 4% Critical
Kjartan – Level 25
Attributes
• Strength = 3
• Dexterity = 4
• Constitution = 4
• Willpower = 7
• Intelligence = 6
• Knowledge = 16
Skills:
• Polearms = 2
• Sorcery = 16
• Conjuring = 5
• Lore = 2
Talents:
• Firebolt = 1
• Firestorm = 2
• Choking Ash = 7
• Pureflame Shield = 2
• Burning Blades = 7
Weapons, Armor and Gear:
• Blazing Staff, 2AP, 3 Accuracy, 4 Parry, 9 – 20 Dmg, +28 Max SP, +1 Ranged Accuracy, +8 Fire Dmg, +4 All Elemental Resists
• Striker’s Robes, 30 Armor, +2 Evasion, +12 Max HP, +24 Max SP, +2 Ranged Accuracy
• Left Fist of Fire (Bracers), +1 Ranged Accuracy, +12 Fire Dmg
• Flame Weaver’s Tread (Boots), +3 Ranged Accuracy, +12 Fire Dmg
• Band of the Flame (Ring), +1 Ranged Accuracy, +16 Fire Dmg
Fyona – Level 25
Attributes
• Strength = 15
• Dexterity = 4
• Constitution = 7
• Willpower = 5
• Intelligence = 5
• Knowledge = 4
Skills:
• Hammers = 16
• Invocation = 2
• Leadership = 4
• Lore = 3
Talents:
• Zealous Strikes = 4
• Reckoning = 1
• Blessed Aura = 3
• Shield of Cortias = 7
• Righteous Fervor = 3
• Hammer Blow = 1
Weapons, Armor and Gear:
• Clawed Warhammer, 2AP, 6 Accuracy, 4 Parry, 53 – 70 Dmg
• Steel Rimmed Shield, 7 Parry, +62 Max HP, +2 Armor
• Cuirass of Harrow, 46 Armor, -2 Evasion, +60 Max HP, +20 Max SP, +6 All Resists
• Mantle of the Guard (Cloak), +10 Max HP, +3 Parry, +3 Dodge
• Myshana’s Necklace (Amulet), +80 Max HP, +2 Holy Dmg
• Eightfold Tread (Boots), +65 Max HP, +65 Max SP, +4 Parry, +10 Armor, +16 Fire Resist
So far, I still really enjoy playing this party! Sure, they’ve died 32 times to get to this point (25 in the Underforge… 12 of those in one specific battle in the Underforge where I just got on a streak of really bad dice rolls), but they’ve always been fun and it never felt like a slog (even in that one battle).
In general, I feel that I’ve found some pretty good balance and synergies between the four of them and they really function well as a team now. In fact, instead of breaking them down individually, I’m going to try discussing them as a group across Attributes, Skills and Talents:
Attributes:
Accuracy was the focus across everybody. With the exception of Fyona, where I pumped 2 points into
Constitution early to help with her early-game tanking, I basically pumped every single attribute point into the one attribute that contributed to their accuracy (e.g.,
Strength for Vraes and Fyona,
Dexterity for Tami, and
Knowledge for Kjar) until it hit 16. Once that was maxed, I’ve been focusing everyone’s Attributes toward
Intelligence for more SP. However, for Vraes, I’ve also branched into
Dexterity to help his dodge ability, especially as I now plan to make him into a Berserker and I want to further supplement his defense given the negatives that come with Berserk Rage. More on my evolving Vraes strategy in the Talents section below.
Skills:
Like in Attributes, Accuracy was the focus across everyone here too. (Can you tell that I hate to miss?) With minor exceptions, I pumped the skill that governed each person’s attack immediately and exclusively until it hit 16. The minor exceptions were that I bumped
Conjuring for Kjar early so that he could cover the entire party with one casting of each buff and I added a point (or 2, I can’t remember now) into
Stealth for Tami so that I can ensure that I got initiative most of the time. Now that everyone’s main combat skill is maxed, I’ve been focusing on
Conjuring for Kjar and
Leadership/Lore for Vraes to help build the duration of their buffs. For Fyona, it has also been
Leadership for prolonging her buffs, but I now have an eye for
Invocation because I’m going to start investing her in Holy Strickening (more on that next). As for Tami, I’ve been lucky enough to find equipment that supplements
Stealth and
Security so I’ve been able to get away with putting only a few points in
Stealth and none in
Security. When she’s fully buffed/equipped, she has 20
Stealth and 12
Security and does quite fine in both. I’d say that she wins well over 90% of the initiative checks and has not met a lock/trap that she couldn’t bypass. I will probably still put points into
Stealth for her because I like leading with her and getting the first round of any combat, but I’m also going to be bumping up her
Lore so that her buffs last longer (especially Deadly Intuition, which has a particularly short lifespan).
Talents
To start, I just want to say that I officially LOVE
Natural Mastery and am no longer sure that I can ever go back to doing a Vraes build where I’m not maxing that out first! Combine that with a focus on Strength and Blades, and Vraes virtually never misses with his sword. Ever. Even when using
Crushing Blow with its very limited To Hit bonuses. Even when his enemies haven’t been cursed with
Choking Ash. He swings, he hits. OK, he does miss once in a while, but it is fairly rare. As a secondary benefit,
Natural Mastery also noticeably helps his melee defense, which is evidenced by the fact that both he and Fyona usually have around the same Parry bonuses, but Vraes gets hit significantly less.
Now that Vraes is maxed on
Natural Mastery and focused on using a 1-H sword and shield, I’ve branched him into
Phalanx Shield to take advantage of the bonuses there. I’ve also poured points into
Crushing Blow so that it’s officially his primary attack. This has also gotten me to rethink my original plan of moving him down the Juggernaut path. While Juggernaut is pretty cool, it nullifies all of the investment that I’ve put into
Crushing Blow since it’s a separate empowered attack. As such, I’ve decided that I’m going to start him down the
Berserk Rage path instead. As a self-buff,
Berserk Rage is a much better complement to
Crushing Blow because it adds more damage and Crit % to each swing. I anticipate in the later episodes, my Vraes will be doing serious amounts of damage. Already, thanks to
Burning Blades and his Stalking Widow ring, he’s got an 8% Crit chance (which currently equates to 200 – 300 points of damage when he Crits). As both his base damage and Crit chance go up, he’s just going to be annihilating anyone he meets.
To counteract the negatives of
Berserk Rage, I’m planning to max out
Phalanx Shield. However, since the armor bonuses of
Phalanx Shield will not keep up with the armor negatives of higher levels of
Berserk Rage, Kjar will also be maxing out
Pureflame Shield to help keep Vraes’ armor at steady-state. I’ve already started down this path with Kjar in prep and he’s going to be alternating between
Pureflame Shield,
Firestorm and
Choking Ash until they’re all eventually maxed out. In general, once I made the initial decision that his main attack will be
Firestorm, Kjartan has been pretty simple and straightforward to build out. Once he got
Firestorm, his Talent Points have been rotated between that,
Choking Ash, and
Pureflame Shield. I’ve consciously stopped upgrading
Burning Blades at Level 7 since Level 8 is not at all cost effective as it only brings 2 additional points of fire damage. I’ll go back to
Burning Blades once the other three Talents are maxed out.
In regards to focusing on
Firestorm, I’m pretty happy with it (and definitely like it better than Immolation because it hits more with only a point in it). I find myself using it more to soften enemies up as opposed to it being the killing blow, but it has been quite effective in making mobs more manageable. Going forward, to help make
Firestorm even more effective, as well as
Burning Blades and Fyona’s Holy damage attacks, I’m going to begin focusing Fyona on
Holy Strickening as a complementary power to
Choking Ash. I didn’t see this when I did my initial party design, but the ability to combo stripping armor with stripping magical resistance is going to be integral to my mid- to late-game party design.
Beyond this new focus on
Holy Strickening, I’m also going to have her max out
Zealous Strikes (as her primary attack) and
Shield of Cortias (as her primary party buff). She has
Reckoning as a secondary attack, but with my decision to add
Holy Strickening as a focus, I’ve decided to keep
Reckoning at Level 1 instead of putting more points into it like I originally planned. My reasoning for this is that the self-buff benefits of
Zealous Strikes will also help
Reckoning. Also, I’ve re-thought my need for -AP curses, in that I’ve decided that killing enemies quickly is the best -AP curse and I can do that better with
Zealous Strikes. Basically, I’ve realized that I’m constantly doing mental math when its Fyona’s turn to attack and deciding whether it is better to strike with
Reckoning (and take 1AP away) or just double-down on
Zealous Strikes and try to kill the enemy off in that turn (and thereby taking 2 or more AP away). More often than not, I find myself doing the second.
Reckoning is still very useful (especially against boss monsters), but not enough for me to prioritize upgrading it over other Fyona Talents.
As for Fyona’s other Talents, I currently have
Blessed Aura healing 105 points and I’m not sure if/when I’ll put more into it. My party is pretty potion dependent in fights as it is (mainly because I’d rather Fyona use her 3AP for attacking) and I’m not sure if that’s really going to change much even if I did drop a few more points into
Blessed Aura. At this point, I basically use it as a party buff right after I cast
Righteous Fervor and raise everyone’s HP to match their new max HP. As for
Righteous Fervor, I have no complaints, but if I were to do this build again, I’d probably put only 1 point into it (to get the initial +4 Armor bonus) and not upgrade it further until much later in the game. Otherwise, Level 3 is a good place to stop because Level 4 is the least cost effective level as it brings only a measly +6 Max HP (along with the standard +2 Armor and +2 Unholy Resist).
Meanwhile, last but not least – Tamilin. I effectively consider
Deadly Intuition to be her “Natural Mastery” talent and I cannot imagine ever doing a Tami build that doesn’t involve maxing this out as quickly as possible. It not only helps her general accuracy (because, as I’ve established, I hate to miss), but as
TeeWee so well describes in
this post,
Deadly Intuition’s Crit % buff is the perfect complement to
Ranged Onslaught. Add in
Burning Blades and her Bone Finger Ring and she has a 36% chance for a Crit! If she hits 3 or more enemies with
Ranged Onslaught, she’s almost guaranteed that she’s critical-ing at least one enemy. What that ultimately means is that Tami is the terminator. With just two shots of her bow, she can often wipe out mobs single-handedly. It’s actually gotten to the point where I will sometimes purposely NOT attack with Tami so that she doesn’t hog all of the experience point bonuses for making the killing blow. It’s also created an interesting conundrum with
Silent Stalker. Prior to getting
Ranged Onslaught and maxing out
Deadly Initiative, when I won initiative, I would use
Silent Stalker to attack the closest enemy. The thing is, even with a Crit, there’s still no guarantee of an insta-kill. And, even if it is an insta-kill, it’s still just one enemy at a time. Now, with
Ranged Onslaught, I can literally wipe out, or severely wound, a whole mob before they even have a chance to react to my party’s presence. As such, I find myself using
Silent Stalker much less now. I pretty much only use it when there’s just a lone enemy in range at the start of combat. Otherwise, I’m always firing
Ranged Onslaught into the crowd.
Going forward, I plan to max out
Ranged Onslaught for the reasons mentioned above. On the flip side, I’m deprioritizing
Silent Stalker and probably won’t put any additional points into until the late game. Instead, I’m going to pump up
Blacknight alongside
Ranged Onslaught so that I can maintain my Stealth benefits and keep Tami hard to hit. As mentioned above in Skills, I’ve been lucky enough to find equipment that really pump up her Security, so I’ve had no reason to pump up either
Disarming Touch or
Precision Pick and I don’t see any reason to put any points into them anytime soon.
And… that’s it! (Until more content is released, of course!)
Based on your description, you’re not only going for a DEX Vraes, but you’re going to focus on single-wield 1AP light blades? Very interesting. I have to agree with your logic that for this to work, he needs both Crushing Blow and Berserk to generate enough damage from a 1AP weapon to punch through enemy soak. The other thing that could really help here is to have Selen build up Punishing Blades in order to debuff enemy armor, but it looks like you have Selen going in another direction. 
