Former GS3 warrior looking for GS4 advice

[The-Cemm]

Heh.

So I'm wanting to return to GS4 with my old warrior but am feeling pretty overwhelmed by the massive changes to the game and warriors in general since I was last active (I'm not really sure at this point when that was, but it was definitely before the launch of GS4).

I still have my 30 day period to, I assume, make changes quickly. My understanding is that that is better/faster/more efficient than the old way of having to train through all of one's levels over again from 0. I can't even recall what that process was called anyway. Heh. Oh! Reallocation! Is that something I'm going to need to do too?

I would sincerely appreciate any help and advice anyone has to share. Here is a capture of INFO and SKILL from ingame with my warrior which remains unchanged since before the launch of GS4:

>info
Name: Typhus Marcolin Race: Giant Profession: Warrior (shown as: Soldier)
Gender: Male Age: 58 Expr: 500793 Level: 20
Normal (Bonus) ... Enhanced (Bonus)
Strength (STR): 100 (40) ... 100 (40)
Constitution (CON): 96 (33) ... 96 (33)
Dexterity (DEX): 96 (18) ... 96 (18)
Agility (AGI): 96 (18) ... 96 (18)
Discipline (DIS): 76 (13) ... 76 (13)
Aura (AUR): 75 (7) ... 75 (7)
Logic (LOG): 54 (-3) ... 54 (-3)
Intuition (INT): 52 (1) ... 52 (1)
Wisdom (WIS): 56 (3) ... 56 (3)
Influence (INF): 40 (0) ... 40 (0)
Mana: 1 Silver: 0

>skill
Typhus (at level 20), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 142 42
Shield Use.........................| 96 22
Combat Maneuvers...................| 141 41
Edged Weapons......................| 144 44
Two-Handed Weapons.................| 144 44
Brawling...........................| 144 44
Multi Opponent Combat..............| 82 18
Physical Fitness...................| 142 42
Dodging............................| 126 33
Survival...........................| 20 4
Perception.........................| 40 8
Climbing...........................| 35 7
Swimming...........................| 35 7
First Aid..........................| 20 4
Training Points: 0 Phy 99 Mnt (142 Mnt converted to Phy)

I have a vague recollection of a new skill (at the time I was last playing) that made multi opponent useful and allowed a multi-strike attack. I think 40 ranks were necessary for the top most amount of strikes? Dodging and Surviival are completely new to me.

Anyway, if I can swing it...I'd love to still be able to have my warrior using 2HE, OHE, and brawling for his Voln-Fu attacks (assuming those still work/exist in GS4). Of course, tripling armor to get into full plate sometime before the endgame would be nice too as I'm more of a casual player than ever before (a couple of hours a night maybe a couple of nights a week is all I'll have to play).

Looking at the SKILL read out, I'm a little confused. I seem to have more ranks in some skills than should be possible for my level (42 ranks should be the max for 21 trainings in skills that allow a max of 2 ranks per level, right?). If I'm looking at the above correctly, armor and physical fitness are fully doubled for 21 trainings (20 levels plus level 0), I'm short 1 rank of fully doubled in CM, and I've got 2 extra ranks in my weapons.

Ah well, I'll check back tomorrow in hopes of early holiday presents from some of you experts on getting started with sorting all of this out.

Peter

[TheEschaton]

I'm mainly a magic user, but let me try and remember something about my younger warrior characters:

Firstly - doubling in three weapon skills AND tripling in armor will probably be impossible, just off the top of my head. You seem to be decent in terms of doubling the armor instead.

Dodging is now part of the defensive system - now, when a creature swings at you, you have a chance to dodge, parry, or block. Block is based on shield use, which you will only have when you're going OHE. Parry is based on...weapon skill? Dunno exactly. Dodging the swing is based on Dodge ranks. If none of those three activate, then it's the old AS vs. DS formula.

Survival - I'm still not sure what it does. I know it's part of skinning now (FA + survival) to skin really well, I believe it helps you survive random weather scripts, like they have in Icemule and on the glacier, and it might help with blood recovery? I know Physical fitness is the direct factor for redux, so most warriors at least double, I know some who triple, I think (is that possible?)

LAstly, you have more ranks because you're now allowed to train a skill between levels. So, the old max was (# times allowed per train) * (level + 1). So, if you can double a skill, your max was 42. Now, when you're 20, you're allowed to work for skills for your 21st train before you actually turn 21, you earn TPs as you gain experience, the total being accrued when you finally turn 21. Thus, if you're allowed to double, you're allowed two extra ranks, for a total of 44 ranks. Those extra two are considered "interlevel" ranks.

-TheE-

[Latrinsorm]

Originally posted by The-Cemm
I have a vague recollection of a new skill (at the time I was last playing) that made multi opponent useful and allowed a multi-strike attack. I think 40 ranks were necessary for the top most amount of strikes?Multi-Opponent Combat. The most amount of attacks possible now requires much closer to 200 ranks. MOC also factors into Force on Force (FoF) defense. If multiple monsters are attacking you within a given period of time, your DS will go down. MOC negates extra attacks at 10 ranks, 25, 45, and every 25 thereafter.
Dodging and Surviival are completely new to me. Dodging does two things: Provides DS and increases your chances of Evasion in the Evade, Block, Parry system. EBP prevents an incoming attack from making an AS/DS check, and is altogether quite neat. As you want to use THW, Dodge is a good thing to have. Dodge DS is hindered by large shields and heavy armor, but not catastrophically so.

Dodge is also (someday) going to factor into maneuver defense instead of the Combat Maneuvers. This would be an incredibly stupid change, and I hope Warden reconsiders, but it's out there.

Survival factors into: some climb/swim checks, some terrain obstacles (swamps, ice, etc.), weather damage (Icemule stuff), foraging, and starting fires. Survival does not factor into Hit Points.
Reallocation! Is that something I'm going to need to do too? Reallocation refers to stats. It's not really possible to make an unviable stat plan, and yours will put you in good stead for things like TPs. Do note that stat growth will cease at level 100 (the cap), so if you wanted to get all 100s eventually in GSIII, you will have to jockey your stats some. It's no longer possible to have all 100s, and honestly it's a matter of style whether you decide to go for it or not. You will lose a small (relatively speaking) amount of TPs going for maxxed stats, but you will be able to gain TPs faster post-cap on account of having better stats.

If you have fast skill migration, use that. If you don't, and you want to make lots of changes to your skills, type FIXSKILLS in game and follow the instructions very carefully.
I'd love to still be able to have my warrior using 2HE, OHE, and brawling for his Voln-Fu attacks (assuming those still work/exist in GS4).It is absolutely possible to have a viable warrior with 3 weapon skills. Voln-Fu still exists.
Of course, tripling armor to get into full plate sometime before the endgame would be nice too I strongly recommend that you only hurry to get into Metal Breastplate (AsG 17 at 80 ranks). The differences between MBP and Full Plate aren't that great, and you're going to be tight for TPs with 3 weapon skills.

General notes:
I would recommend dropping the OHE. Voln-fu is a superior onehanded attack form, and there are plenty of brawling weapons to choose from if you want a onehanded weapon style. Doing so would allow you to fully double in shield, CM, dodge, PF, brawl, THW, and armor with quite a few points left over.

If you want to keep OHE, you have to make sacrifices somewhere.
1) CM now allows access to the CMAN system, which essentially allows us to use maneuvers without having to go through months of work in the guild. Every physical warrior should 2x it without fail.
2) Armor is still pretty much the same, only there isn't any more MAvA to train off. MBP is a marked improvement over chain armors. That being said, being able to take a hit doesn't really become crucial until later on. You could very well hold off on this. Just be careful wandering into invasions.
3) PF is the lifeblood of redux. It has a ton of other effects, none of which are really all that important given that you're a Giantkin with a bajillion health anyway. Balance this with Dodge. Given that you don't have armor, you either want to ensure that you will not be hit as much (via more DS and EBP) or not get hit as hard (via more Redux). Absolute bare minimum of 1x for PF and Dodge.
4) You can use a shield with very fast weapons (compared to the ginormous THWs) so you could probably get away with less training here, given that you can stance dance much easier.

I think that about covers it.

[The-Cemm]

Firstly, thanks very much for the very informative and helpful responses.

I’ve been sick as a dog the last several days so haven’t actually logged in to start playing again yet (also why I haven’t responded yet).

It looks like the thing to do here is take your advice and drop OHE, at least for now, so that I can triple armor at least for a while and also make sure I’m fully doubled in dodging and CM and the others.

My main twohanders are a claidhmore and a greatsword. I noticed in another post elsewhere that it was mentioned as being necessary for there to be a combined bonus of 38 between Dexterity and Agility in order to swing a claidhmore at 5 seconds. My current combined bonus is 36 so I’m guessing that means I’ll have a 6 second roundtime.

Is it still possible for returning players to reallocate in the character manager if they never used those that were offered before the move to GS4 (at least my vague recollection is that some were offered) in a similar fashion to how I still have my 30 day migration window intact? Is that something I should do to fix my stats up a bit?

What would be a good stat placement scenario for the short term growth to 20th level? Outside of the basics that mentals grow slowly for giantmen, I can’t recall much about how all of that functions. I do know that I’m certainly going to be an exceptionally casual player (a handful of hours per week) at this point with no aspirations at all of EVER hitting the level 100 cap. In fact, I’ll be thrilled if I ever reach level 50 (and possibly be the only Gemstone player that can claim it took them over 12 years to accomplish that with their main character…heheh).

So I definitely don’t want to try to plan for that distant goal that so many do and pay for it with my gaming experience now in terms of stat growth and my warrior’s ability to do various things in the short term. I suppose all of this is a moot discussion if whatever reallocation attempts I never used have been removed over time, but if they haven’t, my main goals in stat placement would be to hopefully have a lot of training points available to afford the training plan already mentioned and swing my twohanders at 5 seconds. Having no stats with negative bonuses would be nice too, but I’m not sure if that is possible anymore with the updated character manager (referencing the old one that could be set to roll for hours until it hit a total of 680 or some such).

Given that I’m not likely to ever not be playing the game outside of this weekly experience enhancement for short time players, I’m assuming that having relatively low mental stats won’t keep me from advancing at a reasonable rate for my gaming time invested?

P.S. Just thought of this: Is armor still set up so that if you're wearing a metal breastplate (covering torso), the rest of the 'uncovered' body areas are assumed to be covered by chain hauberk?

[Fallen]

P.S. Just thought of this: Is armor still set up so that if you're wearing a metal breastplate (covering torso), the rest of the 'uncovered' body areas are assumed to be covered by chain hauberk? >>

Correct. Also, if that Breastplate is padded, all of your body receives the coverage of the padding.

[The-Cemm]

Thanks for the quick response Fallen.

Adding further to the P.S. query, if I continue on and add bracers, greaves, and a helm that themselves qualify as plate armor (not sure how even to check for that at this point), would the result be similar to wearing full plate without having to have the skill requirements?

[TheEschaton]

It will now have full plate penalties, I believe they rolled out a whole partial armor fix awhile back specifically because people were doing this.

-TheE-

[Latrinsorm]

In terms of Crit Divisors and skill required, MBP with greaves is identical to Full Plate. There are a few well-educated folks who insist that 130 ranks are all that are required for piecemeal full plate, but I'm taking GM Solli's word on it: 140 ranks.

However, you will still have the MBP AvD, CvA, and (most importantly) Base Weight. This won't be much of a problem for a G-man, but MBP with greaves/helm is worse for encumberance than Full Plate. One big advantage to using MBP with accessories is that if the accessories do something cool like spike flares. These are still rare, so I wouldn't bank on getting accessories with them if I were you.

Also, saying that MBP's "uncovered" areas are treated as hauberk is not quite accurate. The Damage Factor is Plate, the Crit Divisors are Chain.

The way to get max TPs is to max your prime stats from the beginning. Depending on which mangler you use (text based or graphical based), this means put either 100 or 90 in Str and Con. If you have 660 points available, put 100s in Str/Con. If you only have 640, put 90s. As you'll want PTPs the most, tank those mentals. For Agi and Dex to be 98 each at level 20 (giving you a 38 combined bonus) you have to start them at least at 93.

Hope you feel better.

[The-Cemm]

Gah, I’d completely forgotten there was a new front end for the game now.

Hmm. Anyone willing to offer a short glimpse of the pro’s and con’s over the Wizard? I am certainly the most comfortable with the Wizard as it is what I used last, but if there was ever a time to try something new, then I suppose this would be it while I’m still mostly fresh and looking at things with somewhat new eyes again.

So I’ll want 90 (100) in both STR and CON, and 93 in DEX and AGI. That leaves 274 points for DI, AU, LO, INT, WIS, and INF (a stat I don’t have any memory of whatsoever for some reason). Heh. Things are looking grim for the no negative bonuses goal on the bottom of my list.

Can anyone suggest a good updated explanation of how the stats are meaningful and/or useful in relation to warriors in GS4? I understand that STR and CON are the big players in providing training points now. But I have vague memories of DI having other direct importance to warriors that is escaping me at the moment and AU was responsible for how many spirit points someone had (more being better than less, right?) in addition to how much mana could be earned per training? LO and INT determined how big the learning pool was and how quickly it emptied? WIS I’m drawing another blank on though magical defense keeps coming to mind, and Influence is a utter mystery to me. Mind fart on that one I guess.

Thanks by the way, I’m feeling much much better today. The last two were positively miserable, but I think I’ve definitely turned the corner on this bug now.

[The-Cemm]

Charisma! Heh! Is Influence a new name for Charisma?

Hehe, it didn't strike me that Charisma was missing until I actually wrote out all the stats and started pondering how far 274 points would go among the remaining spots.

I guess it was like riding a bike after having done that so many hundreds of times years ago.

[Latrinsorm]

Quick stats rundown:

DIS nebulously affects lots of things, but most directly plays into Berserk. Berserk is much improved over the GS3 version, and I advise you to try it out. The reps aren't that bad, and it can be quite useful in the field nowadays. DIS adds to mental and physical TPs, so keep this fairly high (50-60).

AUR does affect spirit points to the tune of Stat/10. More is better. Mana is no longer given automatically at level up. Instead, one must train in Harness Power to gain mana points. Aura does affect TD of some kind, elemental maybe. Aura also affects mental and physical TPs, keep this higher too.

INT makes a negligible contribution to DS and probably affects locksmithing or something. It's not going to kill you to have it low with your goals in mind.

WIS also affects TD, I think spiritual. CS spells aren't guaranteed instant death anymore, so don't worry about having a low-ish TD, especially at the low levels.

LOG affects how much you absorb per pulse, experience wise, and bucket size too, I think. Keep that one 40 at least, if you can manage it.

Influence is indeed a new name for Charisma, and affects the same stuff Charisma did. Tank away.

Another thing I should bring up: Stamina. Both the CMAN list I described before and the Warrior Guild maneuvers rely on Stamina. Disarm is 12, Feint is (uh) 5, and so on. Being a Giantkin and doubled in PF should put you in pretty good stead with regards to Stamina. Just keep an eye on it. If you go below 0 stamina, your muscles will "pop". You'll be unable to maneuver at all and I think you'll get AS/DS penalties until 10ish minutes have passed or an empath casts Adrenal Surge (1107 I think) on you. As you can imagine, most empaths have 7 mana to spare.

I reckon I should get into mana to, now that I've brought it up. As mentioned before, characters no longer gain mana by levelling up. Training in the Harness Power skill will yield 3 mana per rank less than or equal to level and 1 mana per rank beyond level. More importantly, there is no longer one Mana Share skill. There are three "flavors" for lack of a better word: Mana Control Elemental, Mental, or Spiritual.

The net result is it's much, much more difficult for a warrior to send mana these days. I dunno if you were into that in 3, but if you want to continue, the best bet is probably MCE or MCS, as Mental is not a warrior's sphere and as a result costs more.

Now, StormFront. StormFront has a slightly more robust scripting language, a maddeningly poorly designed window scheme, incredibly annoying highlighting options that default to on but can be turned off (luckily), a Stamina meter (which Wizard does not have), a window that will display your active spells, and a Point and Click (PnC) function that will allow you to open various fairly neat things by clicking on a word.

You can absolutely live without it. Once customized, it isn't that bad to look at. The Stamina and spell active graphics can easily be duplicated by typing "stamina" or "spell active" in the Wizard (or SF, for that matter). The PnC menus can be really helpful if you're playing "guess-the-verb" with an item, but they aren't universally comprehensive.

[The-Cemm]

Okay, I think this is starting to come back to me a little now.

The minimum the new character manager will allow a stat to be placed is 20, right? And it will grow by 1 each level up to 40, and then start being affected by racial modifiers? At least that is how I’m thinking my charisma/influence got to be 40 in the INFO from my first post.

I’m guessing STR, DEX, and AGI were at 90 and CON was somewhere in the 80’s, that AU and DI were set at 70, and LO, WI, and INT were all 50 with CHR at the minimum.

Hmm, if I set STR and CON at 80 each to start, they’ll both likely be 100’s by level 20, but I’ll miss out on a lot of Training Points in the interim right?

STR 80 (+10 = 90)
CON 80 (+10 = 90)
DEX 93
AGI 93
DI 70
AU 70
INT 50
LO 50
WIS 50
INF 20

If I start with the above, by 20th level I’d end up with 100 in STR and CON, 98 in DEX and AGI, around 75 in DI and AU, and 55ish in INT, LO, and WIS with INF tagging along at 40?

I guess the question is if I can afford 3x Armor, 2x Shield, Combat Maneuvers, Two-Handed Weapons, Brawling, Physical Fitness, and Dodging while starting with 90 in STR and CON. I’d definitely would need to pick up ranks in Swimming, Climbing, Perception, and First Aid along the way too and it sounds like I need to try to 1x Multi-Opponent Combat as well. I think I left Survival out there after all of that. Sheesh, lots to fit into the plan somehow.

Hmm, there used to be training simulators that helped show growth over time if I recall correctly. Not sure if they allowed for training costs too. Are there updated versions of that sort of thing for GS4 that can be played with?

Thanks again for all the help and advice. I'm starting to inch toward being able to wrap my head around all of this again. I'd forgotten how intricate some of this could be! I've just been excited to finally get logged in and set back up so that I can go find a frost giant to turn his head into red spray. Heh.

[Latrinsorm]

Originally posted by The-Cemm
but I’ll miss out on a lot of Training Points in the interim right? Not a LOT. If you don't like how low your stats are looking with maxxed Str and Con, knock Str and Con down a bit.

http://tsoran.com/venura/gs3/

That's a good site for seeing how stat plans work out.

On the main website (tsoran.com) there's the Tsoran Spreadsheet, which does training plan calculations pretty well. I can tell you that the core plan you want is not doable for you at level 20 (and also your stats don't add up exactly right). I'd recommend dropping shield to 1x or 1.5x until you can get it up to 2x. Voln-Fu is really fast, so you should be able to dance ok if you choose to use it.

Speaking of intricacies and shields: there are now multiple sizes of shield. Small, medium, large, and tower. Go with a small or at most a medium, as you'll have either equal or more dodge than shield, depending on how you shave things.

Also, a number of creatures changed relative position with the 3/4 switch. I know frost giants were one of them, I just don't remember what they used to be in 3. They're level 38 now, so might wanna steer clear of them for a little bit. They're not too bright, but they do have battle axes.

[The-Cemm]

Thanks for that link! I was adding up for 660 and needed to be adding up for 640. Shaved off some points and got it fixed up so that it would work in the calculator.

Will have to wait until I get home to play with the Excel training spreadsheet though. Security settings won't allow the macros to work here.

Here's what the stat growth calculator came up with after some more tweaks:

Level 0 20
(CON) Constitution 90 - 96
(STR) Strength 90 - 100
(DEX) Dexterity 96 - 100
(AGL) Agility 90 - 96
(DIS) Discipline 68 - 74
(AUR) Aura 70 - 75
(LOG) Logic 50 - 54
(INT) Intuition 42 - 53
(WIS) Wisdom 44 - 51
(INF) Influence 20 - 40
(CON) bonus +30 - +33
(STR) bonus +35 - +40
(DEX) bonus +18 - +20
(AGL) bonus +15 - +18
(DIS) bonus +9 - +12
(AUR) bonus +5 - +7
(LOG) bonus -5 - -3
(INT) bonus -4 - +1
(WIS) bonus -3 - 0
(INF) bonus -10 - 0
(TOT) Totals 660 - 739
(SP) Spirit 7 - 8
(PTP) Physical 55.75 - 58.125
(MTP) Mental 36.25 - 38.625

Hopefully that negative bonus to Logic won't be noticeable while I'm playing under the weekly bonus (3x exp bonus right?).

[Latrinsorm]

The XXX bonus is 3x for 3 hours, then 2x for 3 more hours. Good hunting. :)

[Skirmisher]

Those Aura and Dis stats are lower than I would want them.

[The-Cemm]

How much higher would you suggest raising the AU and DI and which stats would you lower to pull points from to do so? Would it be done to get more training points?

[Ardwen]

Not much to offer trainingwise but welcome back Typhus. If ya ever wanna become a mutant warrior look me up heh.

Ardwen

[Gigantuous]

As far as skills go...you're probably going to want to think about investing some TPs into Arcane Symbols and Magic Item Use eventually.

Just so you can wear a spell or two into spellburst areas, if for nothing else.

[Drew]

Originally posted by Latrinsorm

Survival factors into: some climb/swim checks, some terrain obstacles (swamps, ice, etc.), weather damage (Icemule stuff), foraging, and starting fires. Survival does not factor into Hit Points.


Not to mention that along with first aid it's the skill that helps you skin.

[Warriorbird]

Well, Con and Str being prime stats has been pointed out. Unless you are in Voln, I'd drop brawling completely too. I'd reccommend doubling Physical Fitness due to it being the prime redux skill. If you're using two handers and or brawl I'd reccomend ditching first aid and survival and maybe tagging the points into 2xing dodge and getting some magic item use/arcane symbols.

My warrior was something on the order of 2x 2 handers, 2x CM, 2x dodge, 2x armor, 2x Physical Fitness, 2x MO, and some splashed points in climb and swim. I'd planned on getting arcane symbols and magic item use in later levels.

4x heavily crit weighted katanas are available for a nice quick 2 hander for mstriking use.

[Edited on 12-16-2005 by Warriorbird]

[The-Cemm]

Thanks for the welcomes back and much advice. I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around all of this new stuff and have yet to really dive into getting an understanding of all the new CMANs. Gah, which weapon to bond with too!?

Unfortunately, since I logged briefly a handful of times over the last two years and more, I've apparently lost my chances to reallocate stats and my fast migration of skills period too. All my other characters still have both, just not Typhus. Ugh.

So I have my one shot of FIXSKILLS to resitutate things I guess. Here's to getting it right the first time! Heh.

[Latrinsorm]

Bonding is a special case of CMAN in that it doesn't just work right away. The weapon has to gain experience in a manner of speaking by being in hand when you kill stuff, though it doesn't actually have to do any of the actual killing. To get to rank 5 will take a lot of hunting, probably a good 3-4 levels.

As for which weapon to bond to, that's really up to you. You could go with a blessable weapon for smashing the puny undead, or you could rely on Voln-Fu for favor hunting and use a real weapon on the living. Obviously if you happen to be rolling in silvers, this is less of a problem as you could afford a powerful blessable weapon.

I can assure you that your training plan will be viable. Tactics can salvage pretty much any training plan in GSIV, and we get another fixskills every year on May 20thish. I've heard of a guy who doesn't even double weapon skill (not that I would recommend that).

[Landrion]

You mentioned the wizard and Stormfront. Heres an executive summary.

Stormfront has some more scripting features and some new windows but has performance problems. Stormfront also has hotlinking to allow you to click on an object in your screen to get suitable actions for it or move them around. For example dragging the underlined dagger in the room description to an empty hand will save you the trouble of typing "get dagger". This is more useful than it sounds when you want to get items on a merchant table full of different daggers. By the way, the performance problems merit a double mention - some people utterly hate the thing because it is so damn slow.

The wizard is more familiar and faster but is not always updated with new features (like the spells active window). It is also more flexible in how you place/size certain things.

Personally, I used Stormfront. It required some tweaking to run decently but I liked being able to identify what things in a room were actual objects and what were flavor text.

[Edited on 12-20-2005 by Landrion]

[Warriorbird]

What I liked best about Stormfront was the ability to use skins for it as well as strip it down to being nearly as quick as the Wizard, but with the extra features you want.