They've said the races are not supposed to be balanced.
I'd say the weak races especially elves are a lot stronger than the muscular races, the extra learning, pp and dex for ranged combat is HUGE.
(hurthling aren't so hot a weak race and drakeling are quite nice strong race but thats just my preference....).
Sure you need some more grind a bit more on potentials to get up there but 20-25 isnt really an issue using !strained, blessed potion of potential and ogre corpses.
I think that the strongest races suffers way more with a high initial str potiential which is soo difficult to make use of, the possibilities to train str diminish at 19? and after that it's corpse hunting all the way, add low important stats (esp learning but also pp) that wont get decent until midgame at best.
Last edited by blunk; 03-21-2015 at 10:52 AM. Reason: typo
A wizard will most likely find one in Library, if not before. And you'll almost certainly find more than one if you're scumming a bit for spellbooks in ID If you're doing a speedrun, then it might be an issue. But then again, it's not difficult to get St high enough to carry everything you need (if you think carefully) without any spell and without a certain girdle. You may want to use certain talents to help you in that.
I can't tell you how many times i've scummed for days (ingame) without finding the SoA book . SoA is very important to me, since i like to haul everything i find. It's so important that i will dump the low stat chars without the spellbook from the start, i will only play a wizard without the SoA book if he has great stats (LE, MA, PE >20)
The new system is interesting and doesn't seem unmanagable, but the trouble is it makes you completely reliant on the rng to give you stat potential potions. I think it would be nice if at least training with Garth would raise potentials.
In my most recent game, my dark elf was stuck with really low toughness score. My HP was simply too low to survive certain attacks and I refused to do TOEF with a health score where I wouldn't survive a single energy blast. I was farming wraiths in nonnak's place for ages and got TO from about 13 to 17 with the help of morgia root and corpses (good thing I was chaotic and didn't mind the alignment hit) but it was so grueling and boring that I gave up. I would have probably returned to that activity at some point though if I didn't run into any more potential toughness potions.
Honestly having higher starting potentials doesn't seem a bad idea with the current system either.
Another idea would be to have corpses that otherwise would have raised your stat raise the potential by TWICE that amount. Would make things slightly less grindy, and the maximum effectivity would stop it being exploitable as it does already.
Oh yeah, dark orcs: I was whipping out my battle axe of hunting every time I saw one. Pity hunting weapons only give a very slight bonus to the chance of corpse drop, I certainly didn't notice much of an effect. Hmm, a thought just popped in my head: wonder if dual-wielding two hunting weapons stacks the effect?
And another thought: anyone know of any plans to add 'shortcuts' to quickly change equipment? I was doing more weapon-switching than ever before in my most recent playthrough, pity I couldn't macro it or something. Wonder if it's worth an rfe.
Last edited by auricbond; 03-21-2015 at 02:23 PM.
My idea was to rename "potentials" to "aptitude" and allow actual values to become greater than the aptitude. Instead, "stat aptitudes" would serve as a training limiter - i.e. "Strained!" strength training would lose effectiveness not at completely arbitrary number that is 18, but at "stat aptitude +2". Or actually not lose it completely but instead have a reduced efficiency (i.e. your chances to get an increase will be 1 in (stat value - stat aptitude)*(stat value +1 - stat aptitude)/2, similar to the current effectiveness reduction for corpses). Same for all other training and stat boost methods - corpses, herbs, crystals, Garth, athletics.
Last edited by SinsI; 03-21-2015 at 07:58 PM.
What I don't get (though I may have asked this before but don't remember the answer) is why there are 25-point hard caps on herbs, etc. in addition to the potentials, even though the potentials are themselves hard caps now. Why not do away with the 25 herb limit? Would make it easier to recover from certain types of stat drains from monsters.