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Beginners Tips: Combat

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Beginners Tips: Combat Empty Beginners Tips: Combat

Post by framer Fri Feb 08, 2019 7:53 pm

Beginner Tips for Combat

This is not intended as some definitive guide on Combat for lower levels: I don't know exactly what is best in every situation and Combat is one of the more volatile aspects of TGL with a lot of the mechanics having changed (and still changing) over the time since I started myself. Where I give my opinion on what I prefer or would focus on is how I would start out on my own skills if I had to start over with my current understanding of the game mechanics.

These tips are intended for beginning players. Seasoned veterans with more robust combat and personal skills may benefit more from the advice on combat here:
https://thegraillords.forumotion.net/t1315-axel-s-guide-to-combat-equipment-skills
And this overview of how most of the combat mechanics work:
https://thegraillords.forumotion.net/t1103-combat-updates

Note: The tips listed here are for combat with enemies on the map. Combat in combat events uses different mechanics which will usually be explained in the event itself.

Getting better at Combat

Your proficiency in Combat is essentially determined by 4 things: Your Personal skills, Combat skills, Equipment and the Tactics you use.

Tactics

1: Combat in TGL is very difficult when you are just starting out: this is not an RPG where you slay hordes of enemies to grind out combat experience. You will have to choose your battles carefully because a single higher level opponent can easily defeat you in combat.

2:: Do not let this deter you from traveling! Travel on the map can be 100% safe in two different ways: You can choose to flee from any enemy encounter (this will increase your Cowardice skill, which has its downsides) or you can hire the Udgar Tha Cook follower. He will make sure you will encounter no enemies on your travels at all.

These two options are great for the casual traveler with no interest in combat, but are not recommended for aspiring warriors: Cowardice is not a good skill to level and you will need enemy encounters to be able to gain combat experience.

3: The best way to pick your battles is to always engage the enemy and use the Retreat option if you think they are too strong for you (only exception may be if you are low on health and the enemy is strong enough to 1 shot you, then fleeing is the safer option). Even against the fastest enemies you should have at least 3 retreat attempts with a base chance of 50% to succeed before they come into range.

When starting out the easiest way to judge an enemies strength is by their combat level.

4: Combat is turn-based, but depending on your own and your enemies initiative values one of you may make multiple moves in a single turn. Use this to your advantage!

If you notice that you can move twice in a turn against an enemy, you will want to move up to them, hit them once, then take a step back on your second move. The enemy will waste their full turn on movement without attacking. You can repeat this and get multiple free hits in until you are back on the left of the battlefield. This tactic can prevent a lot of damage and makes high initiative incredibly valuable!

A lot of my tips and advice in this guide are centered around the above tactic: combining high initiative and high damage while neglecting your defense values and aiming to end a fight with the first 5-6 hits. Since combat mechanics can change in the future, you will have to decide for yourself how far you want to take this specialization.

Personal Skills

1: These Personal skills affect your combat ability:

Agility, each point adds 1% to your chance to hit
Constitution, each point increases your maximum life points by 1
Physical Resistance, each point reduces damage taken from hits by 0.4%
Speed, each point adds 0.5 to your initiative
Strength, each point increases your min dmg by 0.5 and max dmg by 1

Honorable mention: Regeneration, each 4 points give 1 extra life point at daily resets. Useful to recover from your fights.

2: My (biased) recommendation is to focus on Strength above all else, with Agility a distant second. Regeneration is great to train early, it requires stamina instead of food to train so can be done alongside the other personal skills. Speed would also be a top choice, but since it requires Mushrooms to level I will disregard it in this guide.

Explanation:
Strength gives a flat bonus to damage, which is incredibly valuable when starting out: with just 3 points of Strength a complete newbie will already have doubled their starting damage (based on having Bandalf's staff equipped). The same 3 points in Agility would only increase your damage by 3%. Only once your damage values are already very high will the percentage bonus from Agility be better than the flat bonus from Strength.

The increase in damage will also make fights much shorter, thus decreasing the damage you take from enemies by a larger amount than any of the defensive options would.

Combat Skills

1: Changing combat skills later is very cheap, do not worry too much if you spend a few points "wrong" or if you want to change weapon skills later.

2: First strike is my absolute top choice in combat skills at any level, the flat bonus to initiative is great and will have a larger effect on combat on the map than any of the other options.

3: Close second are your Main weapons primary skill (Axe/Dagger/Mace/etc Fighting) and Melee. Melee falls off a bit at very high levels of Strength, but the flat bonus it provides is great at lower levels.

4: You should be able to train 2 more Combat skills at every level-up, some decent choices are: Critical Strike, Dual Wielding, Two Handed Fighting, Shield Fighting, Charging (better if you have a Warhorse), your Main weapons secondary skill and possibly Arms Master (I don't exactly know the effect of Arms Master, but it often comes recommended by more seasoned warriors than myself Razz)

Equipment

1: Better gear comes mostly from events (and occasional quest) rewards. Getting a cheap quality piece in each slot is generally better than 1 higher grade in 1 slot: most of the event gear has very good base values. You should be able to fill all your gear slots with just 1 or 2 Combat events. Until you are able to get some event gear, Fur armor pieces are decent placeholders if you can get them cheap.

2: Your combat equipment does not lose any durability in normal combat, so you can safely ignore the durability stat when comparing different options. Only during Combat events will your equipment lose some durability, keep an eye especially on your main hand during those.

3: Do not overestimate the effects of Equipment: you are usually better off spending your money on food ingredients to increase your personal skills than to buy the more expensive pieces of gear.

For reference, on the left of this image are my combat stats while wearing my best gear worth multiple gold, on the right are my combat stats while completely naked - the vast majority of your stats will come from your Personal skills at higher levels. This should also show how highly I value initiative on my own equipment.

Beginners Tips: Combat Swccwb10

4: There are basically 2 ways to mitigate the damage you take in combat through Equipment: either go all out on protection value or go all out on initiative. Gear with very high protection values is generally a lot harder to get than gear with decent initiative values, so I recommend the second for newer players.

The cheapest and easiest way for an early initiative boost is turning 2 cheap Butcher Knives into a Left and Right handed dagger in the equipment chest in your residence. You can use a Butcher Knife of ANY durability for this, even an almost broken one.

5: Another bonus to look out for on gear is a bonus "To Hit", each point increases your chance to hit an enemy by 1%.

I want to repeat my earlier warning that most of the advice here is aimed towards a high initiative, high damage build with little defense as I think it gives the best results for the smallest investment at this time.

If you have the personal skills and the funds to heavily invest in Physical Resistance and Protection, that will probably be a better all-round option for both events and real high level enemies on the map - this guide is all about killing the enemy in the first few rounds.


I have probably missed, forgotten or gotten things wrong, feedback is very welcome here!

Good luck on the Battlefield!


framer
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Registration date : 2016-02-02

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