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Lost Boy
Guest
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| How do I build the perfect Fighter-Mage ? |
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To make Morowind the best experience ever I'd like to not screw up my character, but I have no idea what the perfect Fighter-Mage's 10 skills should be...And how do you join house Telvaani?
btw, Morrowind is mind blowing.
800 mhz
256 meg, win 98
Ati radeon 64mb 7000
800x600 - slider at half distance |
Thu May 09, 2002 3:57 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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The thing about Morrowind is you CAN'T screw up your character... you can only slow him down. All characters get all skills regardless of attributes etc. Yes, it can be a pain in the butt to level up a rank 5 restoration skill with a 30 willpower Argonian (you have to buy a healing spell, then use spellmaker to create a 1 point healing spell so you can actually cast it on a regular basis without spell failure) but it's entirely possible.
If you want to go for a levelling type fighter mage... easy. Pick skills you'll actually actively use (weapon type, armor type, favorite classes of spells) and put them in the primary slots. Put everything else you use less often but often enough and want to have at a decent level in the secondary slots.
So if you want a big, bad death and destruction sword wielding maniac ...
primary
Destruction
Heavy Armor
Longblade
Restoration
Alteration
secondary
whatever you want.
or you can choose the built in battlemage class which is pretty much identical to that.
For a sneaky mage/fighter you might swap out Destruction for Illusion, longblade for shortblade, heavy armor for light (or none, since that will level quickly if you choose magic as your focus)... whatever.
Or you can choose Nightblade, which is pretty much identical to that.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Thu May 09, 2002 4:04 pm |
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dagoo7
Guest
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Also pick skills that have primary attributes that you want/need to level. Skills that are likely to lvl fast can help raise attributes quickly. Also make sure you have easily levelabe skills for each attribute that you plan on increasing.
Some skills lvl easier than others, armor goes up quickly w/o doing anything, weapon advancement is relatively easy to control, others you have to work. Alteration will go up very slowly unless you create low cost, essentially useless spell, and repeatedly cast it. |
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Thu May 09, 2002 5:19 pm |
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yeesh
Keeper of the Gates
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 113
Location: Unofficially representing Queens |
It seems to me that the only way to even come close to hobbling your character in the long run is to follow the advice given here, i.e. make primary skills of all your favorites. Due to the way the advancement system works, this will yield a character who levels really quickly, but gains little benefit from leveling. The multiplier you get to add to your attributes is based on how many points you've gained out of all of your skills (including misc). To get the max bonus (3*5=15 attribute points), you'll need to get 10 skill points each in skills controlled by 3 different attributes, a total of 30 skill points. If all of your points are being accumulated in Major/Minor skills, you will come nowhere near to this, as 10 points will get you a level. Say you were to gain 4 points in heavy, 3 points in blade, and 3 points in destruction. Congrats you just made a quick level, very nice. Problem is, you get a 2x on Wil, a 2X on Str, and a 2X on End. This is a total of 6 points, 40% of the max you could get. 10 levels later, your stats have gone up 60 points, while a better build has gotten anywhere from 120-150 depending on how exacting they've been.
Especially considering the huge impact End has on your hitpoints gained per level (and the bonus sure isn't retroactive), you're far better off placing your favorite skills as misc skills so you can advance them consistently to maximize stat gain without leveling up too quickly. Remember that the monsters level up with you (I believe the mechanism for this is their diseases. You've noticed that a rat with black-heart blight hits like a $#@$#'n hammer?), there's nothing to be gained by pumping your level, and a whole lot of attribute points to lose. |
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Thu May 09, 2002 5:52 pm |
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Solude
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That interesting Yeesh. Now put it into practise. How you would you build a heavy armour, weapon of choice fighter with restoration and alteration?
Try to include what skills to pick, the best race, favored stats the whole shabang. Basically what you said is neat but hard to visualise. Not seeing how slow raising skills could help speed up stat gain. And wouldn't you just end up a mega stat, low skill char?
Solude |
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Thu May 09, 2002 6:27 pm |
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Solude
Guest
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Ah just read the manual section on leveling. Putting your favorite skill per stat in misc is certainly the best way to get the most stat gain but your skill will suffer as will you level since without skills that increase in your major and minor you won't level, ever.
It would be tough to balance and probably kill the fun of it but if you could build a character with that had skills that rose in major/minor and your heavy usage skills in misc with a spec in those minor skills you could probably keep misc skill leveling fast enough to give close to max stat gains while major/minor skills leveled at a good pace. That said you have many more skills to cap than stats.
Solude |
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Thu May 09, 2002 6:48 pm |
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dagoo7
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Yeesh, I think your being somewhat anal. From a roleplaying perspective your character should be defined by the skills you like, therefore pick them as your major and minor skills. I don't need to have my attributes maxed by level 10. Where is the sense of progression there? If you pick your favorite skills, you should easily get 2x-3x for three attributes. Even worst case scenario where you average only 6 attribute points a lvl. With at least 70 levels thats a minimum of 420 (70X6). With starting attributes averaging around 40 for 7 major stats. IF you do the math thats 60 points per attribute allowing you to easily max your attributes (40+60+100) over time.
The only attribute which seems to matter if you get earlier is endurance, and you can focus on this during early advancement, and or pick endurance as class attribute, or pick the lady sign for endurance boost. Relax, in your apparent effort to avoid power-leveling you essentially are obsessed with power(attribute)-leveling. |
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Thu May 09, 2002 6:58 pm |
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dagoo7
Guest
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Yeesh, I think your being somewhat anal. From a roleplaying perspective your character should be defined by the skills you like, therefore pick them as your major and minor skills. I don't need to have my attributes maxed by level 10. Where is the sense of progression there? If you pick your favorite skills, you should easily get 2x-3x for three attributes. Even worst case scenario where you average only 6 attribute points a lvl. With at least 70 levels thats a minimum of 420 (70X6). With starting attributes averaging around 40 for 7 major stats. IF you do the math thats 60 points per attribute allowing you to easily max your attributes (40+60+100) over time.
The only attribute which seems to matter if you get earlier is endurance, and you can focus on this during early advancement, and or pick endurance as class attribute, or pick the lady sign for endurance boost. Relax, in your apparent effort to avoid power-leveling you essentially are obsessed with power(attribute)-leveling. |
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Thu May 09, 2002 7:00 pm |
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yeesh
Keeper of the Gates
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 113
Location: Unofficially representing Queens |
There are two factors that affect how quickly a skill levels up (well, not counting how often you use it heh heh): is it maj/minor/misc? and is it in your specialization (magic/stealth/combat)? We can use this to even out the advancement of our favorite skills and attributes. The only stat that you absolutely need to raise quickly is End. You can gain 20 levels with an INT of 30 and then run it up and buy level 30 you'll have the same amount of Magicka as someone who ran it up their first ten levels and let it sit the next twenty; this is true of all attributes except End. The HP you lose by gaining a level with low End are never refunded to you, and considering that it's possible to put together a character who gains as few as 3 hp per level (just in my own tortured experience), this can really gimp you in the long run. Boy is there a big difference between having 75 hit points and having 130.
So, on a fighter/mage, I'd specialize combat skills, which will increase the rate at which those 9 skills advance. You'll note there's a healthy 3 skills based on End, and 4 based on Str. Agi and Speed are also represented. End being a top priority, I make spear a major skill. Med armor I make misc, as they will constantly be raising (this is my favorite type of armor). Hvy I make a minor skill, so I can use it both to drive levels and to advance End (it'll be very easy to advance later on, possibly after End is maxed and I just need it for levels). Longsword is LB's preferred weapon, so we put that in misc. This way we can use it constantly when we want to without having to worry about gaining levels until ready. Armorer goes into minor opposite longsword because it's annoying and expensive to raise.
Magicwise, we won't have the ease to advance because it's not specialized, so we try to give a boost to the preferred spells. So things aren't too tedious, Destruction gets major (now if you are going to be using dest more than long blade, switch the two), and we use it as the primary level driver. Dest is a Wil skill, but there are 3 others to boot. Opposite Dest in misc we put Restoration, which we'll wanna use alot. Mysticism or Alteration go in minor depending on whether you're more interested in trapping souls or casting shields. Enchant gets major, as it's a real pain to raise, and so important for items.
Speechcraft gets major, Security gets minor. The rest is up to you. Looks like this:
Race: Dunno, but start with End of 40 or even better 50.
Class: Custom
Gender: Follow your heart
Skillz:
Maj: Enchant, Destruction, Speechcraft, Spear, +1 other
Min: Alteration (or Mysticism), Security, Armorer, Heavy Armor, +1 other
Misc: Definitely: Restoration, Long Blade, Medium Armor. +a whole bunch.
Early on, a level looks like this (example):
5-6 skill in Destruct, 3-4 in restore, any other to bring WP skills to 10
7 in med arm (you'll get hit alot...), 3 spear
6-7 in sword, some in armorer
That's ideal, you don't have to get 3*5 attributes every level. If you're not a Maxer you can aim for at least 10 without slowing yourself down too much. You'll still have twice as many attribute points per level than someone who's advancing 3 major skills simultaneously and getting 2*2 and maybe a 3. That person will level faster, but what do they get? If you raise your End by 5 each time you'll have the same HP at level 12 that they have at level 22. Freaky, isn't it? |
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Thu May 09, 2002 7:42 pm |
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yeesh
Keeper of the Gates
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 113
Location: Unofficially representing Queens |
quote:
Originally posted by dagoo7
Yeesh, I think your being somewhat anal.
I resemble that remark! It's true, I'm bored at work so I'm writing manifestos - man I'd rather be home playing Morrowind. I'm just trying to illustrate some game mechanics. However, there's definitely something to be considered as far as the monster scaling. If my own experience is any indication (and the character I'm playing now is in no way a product of my thinking. He's Mr. Started-with-30-End, and gained 3hp/lvl for his first 9 levels (mighty lvl 12 now, btw)), an unoptimized lvl 22 will have some serious problems with mega-rats who'll have mega-blight and hit for 30hp a shot. But only time will tell. I will say this: 70 levels is a long time to max stats you could have maxed by level 30... but it is possible as you said. |
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Thu May 09, 2002 7:51 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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Well, I'll just plow onwards with the thinking that if my character is supposed to be good at something, it's going to be a major skill. I can see the logic of putting a weapon to misc and then just swinging like mad until it gets good enough to hit to get a nice fat multiplier... but I'm happy with my dwarf (I wrote a plug-in which put dwarves in the game as a player race. Built on the same schemes as the other races... they have a healthy resistance to disease and poison and recover stamina quicker than other races, as well as have a nice hearty 60 base endurance. In the process of figuring out how to drop an island in and populate it with NPC dwarves). Mostly levels by way of axe and heavy armor, I've found... probably screwed once those two hit a hundred. Probably should have dropped a second weapon into the minors...
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Thu May 09, 2002 8:12 pm |
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Sude
Guest
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| Re: How do I build the perfect Fighter-Mage ? |
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quote:
Originally posted by Lost Boy
To make Morowind the best experience ever I'd like to not screw up my character, but I have no idea what the perfect Fighter-Mage's 10 skills should be...And how do you join house Telvaani?
You can always buy 'Bind Longsword' and then create a spell for a zero duration. Each time you cast it, your longsword skill goes up 5 or 10 points, and does not go away. Same applies for the other bind spells. Boots for instance raise your speed (don't go too high or navigating is difficult). The healm does the different armor skills (except maybe unarmored).
If you just want to train in Conjuration, make sure you put the duration to 1 second so the effect of those buffs are temporary. |
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Thu May 09, 2002 11:11 pm |
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