Grimrock

I haven't really seen a cohesive discussion on the boards about maxing character potential and / or game mechanics. I've made a few discoveries, and read a couple of things for those of you who are interested:
1) Vitality and Willpower do not grant retroactive bonuses to HP / Energy. Therefore, the earlier you put points into Vit / Willpower, the more Hp/Energy you will have in the long run.
1a) I believe the +2 Vitality / Willpower Trait options during character creation are flat out superior to the +15 Health / Energy Traits. Over time, you'll get more HP/Energy from picking the +2 Vit/Willpower.
1b) Its best to put skill points into your "core" (Athletics / Spellcraft) tree for each class first, and prioritize "damage" trees (Weapons / Magic Schools) second. For instance, if you are going to put 10 points into Sword and Athletics, its better to do Athletics first, then swords. A few caveats are: 1) Doesn't apply to Rogues and 2) You can successfully handle enemies and can dump points into non-damage skills.
1c) I restarted and did the following with my mages: put 2/4 points in Fire or Air and dumped the rest (about 22-26) into spellcraft (Although I put 2 points at char creation into spellcraft to get +1 Willpower). Then dump points into Fire / Air until you can get the 2nd level nuke. Then a bunch into spellcraft, etc. With this method, my spells at lower level may not be as powerful, but I essentially have infinite Energy (in the sense that my energy rarely runs out before I need to rest so my Warrior / Rogue can regen HP).

2) There are a limited number of Human Skulls in the game. Therefore, it isn't a good idea to get two Minos with the "Headhunter" trait.

3) Earth Magic seems to suck, when compared to the other schools. Ice synergizes well with melee.

4) Missile weapons always hit.

5) Damage is based purely on strength, even for missile weapons. High Dex gives you a better chance to hit only. From my experience, a rogue with high strength ends up being better than a rogue with high dex. I'm not too sure how dex factors into backstabbing or special attacks, though.

6) Experience is gained, to a certain degree, by actions taken. I'm not entirely sure if its purely based on damage or simply attempting to strike.

I've been focusing on Earth magic with one mage, and I think it works really well. It's thoroughly useless against the undead, but I've been having a good time with it on other mob types. I agree on Ice magic's synergy with melee. Especially how Ice Shards can hit multiple enemies in a line. Great for corridor battles with a lot of enemies.

I'm experimenting with a melee-centric front-line rogue, at the moment. Really focusing on moving him away from the back-row/ranged/reach type I've seen a lot of people conversing about. So far, been really pleased. Many of the rogue skills bestow +Strength at regular intervals to keep the damage going up.

1c) I think you're correct there, all I'd say is I find ice a nuisance compared to fire to cast, that's really a UI issue which I think will get patched or modded sooner or later. However I do like my mage doing less but often than wiping out one enemy then being useless.

5) I'm finding str to be not such a great stat. For my front row fighters dex is way way better. It has two tangible effects, dodging and accuracy. While strength only affects damage and encumbrance, and encumbrance can be managed. I'm finding my fighters don't do less damage if I pump dex rather than str, which isn't what I had expected. Accuracy is affected by weapon skills, as far as I'm aware, so dex is more useful if you're not intending putting many points into weapon skills. From what I've seen I don't think I'd put so much into weapon skills, especially as there's not that many skill points relative to the 50 needed in each list. My fighters are primarily tanks, so I don't see myself having skill points for many weapon skills for them.

6) There's a thread with a bit more info, but as far as min/max is concerned it means give your mage some rocks to throw so he gets full experience. What's yet unknown is if the experience is wasted or if it's split between the rest of the party if someone doesn't participate.

Regarding XP, i read somewhere on this forum that the person who kills the mob gets extra xp, but everyone does get some xp even if they do nothing.

During a normal game, I've had an Rogue going all out into the unarmed tree, and given them all of the evasion stuff I can find, and they have been untouchable. - started with evasion trait and high dex.

Regards to warriors, Armors seems a much better tree then athletics for survivability, however if you have an ice mage who needs survivability? :p

Devil wrote:Regarding XP, i read somewhere on this forum that the person who kills the mob gets extra xp, but everyone does get some xp even if they do nothing.

Both parts of that are wrong, we've been testing in another thread.

Devil wrote: Regards to warriors, Armors seems a much better tree then athletics for survivability, however if you have an ice mage who needs survivability? :p

Agreed. Plus of course it lets you wear armour. One thing that reminds me of though... what effect does negative evasion have? Is a huge stinking penalty from wearing heavy armour the same as having evasion 0? Intuitively you would expect that if you have evasion at 0 you're going to get hit regardless, and -30 would be the same... ?

I'd like to challenge the Vit +2 is better than +15 hp. From my testing, hp gain is your Vit bonus, which is +1 for every 2 Vit over 10 with 1d3 added per level-up. Which is unfortunate for me because it means many save/reloaded when it is leveling time to make sure I get mostly the +3 mods.

To elaborate, a character who has 14 Vit will get between 3 and 6 hp a level (14 vit = +2 then +1d3). 22 Vit (+6 bonus) will gain between 7 and 10 hp a level, and so on.

From what I've read, people finish the game at around level 13, so +2 Vit will add +13 hp spread over the course of the game vs. getting 15 hp front loaded right at the start.

The only other thing to consider is that +2 Vit comes with a small boost to two resists as well, but speaking strictly hp, the +15 hp has more value and again, is front-loaded at the start of the game, vs getting 1 of your +13 hp each level.

Interesting....

However I feel the way the game is the characters are only mid-level by the end of the game, I would imagine they'l be some kind of expansion, or user made dungeon where we'll take our level 13 characters to... so that's when the extra vitality points would come in handy.

Just shows you that the devs have yet again made it difficult to choose!

Halk wrote: 5) I'm finding str to be not such a great stat. For my front row fighters dex is way way better. It has two tangible effects, dodging and accuracy. While strength only affects damage and encumbrance, and encumbrance can be managed. I'm finding my fighters don't do less damage if I pump dex rather than str, which isn't what I had expected. Accuracy is affected by weapon skills, as far as I'm aware, so dex is more useful if you're not intending putting many points into weapon skills. From what I've seen I don't think I'd put so much into weapon skills, especially as there's not that many skill points relative to the 50 needed in each list. My fighters are primarily tanks, so I don't see myself having skill points for many weapon skills for them.

Devil wrote: During a normal game, I've had an Rogue going all out into the unarmed tree, and given them all of the evasion stuff I can find, and they have been untouchable. - started with evasion trait and high dex.

i agree. my rogue is untouchable... this guy just doesn't get hit
and while his base damage is lower than that of the fighter... he is faster and hits more frequently ( = overall higher and more reliable damage output, even when i equipped dismantle with the fighter)

my tank on the other hand goes down all the time.