to the wiki guys and other veterans

[Dlightfull]

Hi guys,

Now i'm trying to start some other R/C combo to see if i would like it, and used the wiki a lot for their description and for the star sign and i noticed that the new classes (Duelist and Chaos Knight) aren't included anywhere in the star sign suggestions.

Also, in each class description there are suggestions for some good races, but there is no suggestion for the star sign, with some description/arguments, and it would be awesome to have them.

I would do that myself, if i would've been an expert in the game :).

Also, the raven star sign doesn't suggest the barbarian as a good class for it. Maybe i am wrong, but i think raven is great for barbarian, since a lvl16 barbarian with RCT sounds like a serious killer and the extra speed and doppelganger resistance is also awesome. Would love your thoughts on the matter.

By the way, what's a good star sign for a duelist and why? :)

[Cactus]

For a Duelist, try any melee-oriented star sign. Since your class powers depend on your weapon skill, Sword and Dragon are nice. Also, Cup is very good here especially in the early game because of the awesome skillset Duelists have.

[Joe]

Raven is good on basically any character (imo) and can save your life several times before becoming buff enough to take your fate in own hands. Early trident is a nice bonus but extra speed is just very good. I like it also much on weaklings like thieves and merchants (to get a guaranteed decent weapon a bit earlier and stay alive till that time).

Duelist is fairly strong of itself but has a little weak early game so I'd prefer a sign that enhances early game survival, like Tree, Candle or Raven. Cup is also nice; Sword & Dragon become better later on comparatively so if you play a bit more careful at the start and stay alive they get better and better. You could also try something unorthodox with Book, trying to learn basic spells from lvl 15 onwards as a bonus to your awesome melee skills. Due to Concentration duelists are quite decent at spellcasting compared to most other melee classes. Ofcourse it makes sense to choose some Elf in that case =)

[Blasphemous]

Raven is notably not good for a duelist.
The main advantage of this starsign is the early trident, but duelists suffer severe penalties from using two-handed weapons and if you decided to use it as a thrown weapon, they also train missile marks 10 times slower than other classes.
The speed bonus is not as necessary either - duelists already have to run around unburdened or again suffer severe penalties. This means that they will rarely drop to low speed due to encumbarance.
Otherwise candle is great for duelist while sword and dragon not necessarily - duelists already train weapon marks very fast and later benefit from class powers that negate benefits of sword or dragon starsigns altogether, at least those related to the speed of obtaining weapon marks.
Also, both sword and dragon offer some bonuses to tactics but duelists won't benefit from those that much because they already gain considerable bonuses to DV via their class skills and that effect is much stronger than one offered by either starsign.
I'd say even book is a better starsign for a duelist, especially if you picked a race with low learning.
Duelists have plenty of nice skills to improve and that starsign would get you to 100 a bit earlier, even with Le around 9-10.

Though forget about learning spells. Not on a duelist.
They suck at spellcasting even worse than mindcrafters, especially early on (as in levels 1-20).
Later, around lvl 20 you can hope to learn perhaps light or magic missile from a spellbook but that's it.
Some people here seem to suggest duelists are decent spellcasters because of concentration.
They are not and I speak from personal experience - their class doesn't permit that and it's a hardcoded behavior independent from their skills.
I played gray elven duelists with 20+ learning, 100 literacy and 100 concentration.
They were absolutely terrible at learning spells, even from blessed spellbooks, which kept exploding, disappearing or confusing.
I'm talking about spells like light, darkness or slow monster. Things like fire bolts or teleportation... beyond their grasp.

Overall I think the best choice for a duelist is candle, because more healing from the very beginning can save your life much more effectively than any of the boons offered by the other starsigns.
It never stops being effective later either, while the same cannot be said about sword or dragon.

[Dlightfull]

Thanks a lot Blasphemous, now this is info that should be in wiki ;).

[Dlightfull]

Btw Blasphemous, or others, what about Barbarian? what would be a good sign for them?

[Joe]

Barbarians are good as is and don't need a starsign! Weapon skill reduction is good on them though, as well as tactics (Sword/Dragon). You'll be a brute force melee tank with some archery support anyway so better train your best weapon asap. Candle and Raven also are always good (imo), as the speed and trident fit Barbs well and they always take alot of damage so healing helps =)

I'd never think that Duelists would be that much worse at learning spells. I don't speak from experience but supposed they would have about the same penalties as archers, with which I definitely have learnt dozens of spells including teleport on later levels. Light and MM around lvl 20 is quite easy in my experience on them (although learning a spell is always tedious and you get always limited castings so you'll never become a wizard king).

I also disagree on Raven not being good on them. It's true that the Raven bonuses are alot better for most other classes, but the same goes for all other starsigns really. If the +10 speed saves your life twice in early game (if only to safely outrun a wilderness encounter) that makes the sign a good starsign to me. Healing/Candle is also good obviously, and so is the hp/PV boost from Tree. My point was, to reiterate is slightly, that middle and lategame for Duelists is just quite easy so I'd pick the starsign that makes the survival chance in early game the biggest. Raven definitely improves it, more so than, say, Falcon or Book. Even if all other bonuses are useless, the +10 speed, even when becoming negligible later on (which also takes a while, 10 speed is just quite much!), is a great boon early on.

[Dlightfull]

Barbarians are good as is and don't need a starsign! Weapon skill reduction is good on them though, as well as tactics (Sword/Dragon). You'll be a brute force melee tank with some archery support anyway so better train your best weapon asap. Candle and Raven also are always good (imo), as the speed and trident fit Barbs well and they always take alot of damage so healing helps =)

I'd never think that Duelists would be that much worse at learning spells. I don't speak from experience but supposed they would have about the same penalties as archers, with which I definitely have learnt dozens of spells including teleport on later levels. Light and MM around lvl 20 is quite easy in my experience on them (although learning a spell is always tedious and you get always limited castings so you'll never become a wizard king).

I also disagree on Raven not being good on them. It's true that the Raven bonuses are alot better for most other classes, but the same goes for all other starsigns really. If the +10 speed saves your life twice in early game (if only to safely outrun a wilderness encounter) that makes the sign a good starsign to me. Healing/Candle is also good obviously, and so is the hp/PV boost from Tree. My point was, to reiterate is slightly, that middle and lategame for Duelists is just quite easy so I'd pick the starsign that makes the survival chance in early game the biggest. Raven definitely improves it, more so than, say, Falcon or Book. Even if all other bonuses are useless, the +10 speed, even when becoming negligible later on (which also takes a while, 10 speed is just quite much!), is a great boon early on.

I have the experience of learning spells with Archers and i have to say i was surprised how bad they are at learning them. I could learn teleport only at around level 30 with bulging cranium corruption and crown of science, before that corruption, although i had about 30 learning, i had difficulties at learning even the simplest spells (of course i had literacy and concentration at 100 both, and almost 30 mana, around 30 Wi, if that has any importance). Spellbooks oftentimes exploded on me or confused me or drained health/PP. But i didn't really use those spells anyway, really no need for them on an archer, on a duelist though, i don't know. Spells for a duelist are almost mandatory, as i see it, karmic beings have to be somehow dealt with, as well as oozes early on, vortexes etc.

I, for example, always try to get the star sign that would benefit me most over the entire game. Early game depends a lot on player luck and it's a very small part of the game, so if a char dies, it's easy to roll another, i never get anything that would only benefit in the early game, that's why i mostly ignore the Tough skin route, unless i am a mist elf and need immune to pain.

[_Ln_]

Starsign suggestions are IMHO useless:

1) Stat bonuses mean much less than random stat variation.
2) Most specific bonuses are marginal and/or actually don't matter much (such as weapon mark discounts).
3) Candle, Raven and Tree are superior to everything else and work the same way for pretty much all chars (except RCT for Duelists and Trolls).
4) The only exception is probably Salamander for casters and mindcrafters, but it's really not that hot anyway.

Nowadays I reroll only to get 15+ Le, specific amount of talents and to avoid Dragon and Candle completely.

[grobblewobble]

3) Candle, Raven and Tree are superior to everything else and work the same way for pretty much all chars (except RCT for Duelists and Trolls).
Exactly. Most starsign bonuses are very small, Candle / Raven / Tree are the only ones that really make a difference. So if you're rerolling for best starsign, it's a choice between these three, no matter your R/C. For duelist raven is not that hot, so candle or tree.

[Dlightfull]

Starsign suggestions are IMHO useless:

1) Stat bonuses mean much less than random stat variation.
2) Most specific bonuses are marginal and/or actually don't matter much (such as weapon mark discounts).
3) Candle, Raven and Tree are superior to everything else and work the same way for pretty much all chars (except RCT for Duelists and Trolls).
4) The only exception is probably Salamander for casters and mindcrafters, but it's really not that hot anyway.

Nowadays I reroll only to get 15+ Le, specific amount of talents and to avoid Dragon and Candle completely.

Why Tree?

Also, why not Book for semi-spellcasters? Why not Cup for spellcasters?

Salamander for mindcrafters because of 20% PP bonus?

And the last question, why avoiding Dragon and Candle?

[_Ln_]

Why Tree?

Also, why not Book for semi-spellcasters? Why not Cup for spellcasters?

Salamander for mindcrafters because of 20% PP bonus?

And the last question, why avoiding Dragon and Candle?

Because Tree gives 1 PV, which can be a big deal for 0 PV starting R/C combos.

Because semi-spellcasters and casters are already reasonably good at reading books and casting spells. If we delve into actual absolute numbers, Sword and Dragon are much better for spellcasters than melee characters precisely because they deal in percentages. In any case, your overall benefit is hitting weapon level 12 after, say, 40k turns, instead of level 13. Which is pretty marginal.
Same is true of Book and Cup bonuses. Melee chars can't learn spells for shit, while 10% increase in spell knowledge is not going to be the defining factor of your success with a (semi)-spellcaster.

On the other hand, 10 extra speed will allow you to escape pretty much any encounter going badly, while absurd HP regen is obviously powerful. 1 PV may be not much, but I'll take it every day on some shitty bard, merchant or so.

I dislike Dragon for a guaranteed Willpower discount. Almost every other starsign gives a net increase in stat average, while Dragon simply exchanges Wi for St and To. I find this a pretty bad design. In fact, the more I think about it, I find Dragon the one starsign which is tailored more for melee fighters, as in your original question. Maybe I just dislike the very point of starsigns being better for different R/C combos.

I reroll Candle every time, because it makes the game too boring. Druid/Elder quest choice essentially becomes obsolete, you can disregard weaknesses of various R/C combos etc.

[grobblewobble]

Because Tree gives 1 PV

And 2 points of toughness. And the willpower bonus helps to get the Immune to Pain talent easier / faster.

[Dlightfull]

Because Tree gives 1 PV, which can be a big deal for 0 PV starting R/C combos.

Because semi-spellcasters and casters are already reasonably good at reading books and casting spells. If we delve into actual absolute numbers, Sword and Dragon are much better for spellcasters than melee characters precisely because they deal in percentages. In any case, your overall benefit is hitting weapon level 12 after, say, 40k turns, instead of level 13. Which is pretty marginal.
Same is true of Book and Cup bonuses. Melee chars can't learn spells for shit, while 10% increase in spell knowledge is not going to be the defining factor of your success with a (semi)-spellcaster.

On the other hand, 10 extra speed will allow you to escape pretty much any encounter going badly, while absurd HP regen is obviously powerful. 1 PV may be not much, but I'll take it every day on some shitty bard, merchant or so.

I dislike Dragon for a guaranteed Willpower discount. Almost every other starsign gives a net increase in stat average, while Dragon simply exchanges Wi for St and To. I find this a pretty bad design. In fact, the more I think about it, I find Dragon the one starsign which is tailored more for melee fighters, as in your original question. Maybe I just dislike the very point of starsigns being better for different R/C combos.

I reroll Candle every time, because it makes the game too boring. Druid/Elder quest choice essentially becomes obsolete, you can disregard weaknesses of various R/C combos etc.

well, i had some problems learning spells with an early game paladin with star signs other than Book.

The extra speed means less experience which is not always good too. On a wizard, for example, i find early game easy enough to not need that 10 speed. My wizards always die because of my overconfidence or stupid mistakes, never because a lack of speed or PV.

Also that 10% more spellcastings is pretty neat to have in the early game and is not that bad later too, if i don't find enough spellbooks of some type, especially on a priest or paladin, since finding ball spells for example on them is pretty difficult.

[Dlightfull]

And 2 points of toughness. And the willpower bonus helps to get the Immune to Pain talent easier / faster.

is immune to pain really needed or that good on a char other than a mist elf? To be honest, i never went the immune to pain route.

[Soirana]

.
I, for example, always try to get the star sign that would benefit me most over the entire game. Early game depends a lot on player luck...

Problem is by mid game, star sign effect is next to non-existent. So it is like picking effect for early game or none at all.

Personally if I am bothering to roll star sign for effect it is Raven all the time.
If xp loss is bothering you can bloat char to negate speed bonus. Overall more speed is always welcome [speed also helps as pseudo alertness to dodge magic bolts, IIRC].
I would still take Raven on duelist and train thrown spears. Sure they have problems with missile training, but instead watering marks between bows/xbows one can work on guaranteed slaying weapon which arrives just in time for Ravens.

Candle is meh after nerfs and Tree is improved, but these are good mostly cause other signs give next to nothing.

Regarding wand/salamander -- http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3014
As far as I follow current interpretation of that code snipet is that every time char gets some PP they divided by 10 or 5 and result is rounded down. Remaining part is sign bonus -- sadly it looks most time that result is zero.
Most likely sign bonus is not applied to total PP at any time. [description of signs make to believe that if wizzy would had 100PP otherwise he would end with 110 and 120 respectively, but apparently that is not case and that is not intended to be the case].

Weapon mark reductions never gives more than 1 level of extra weapon proficiency [due to rapidly increasing needs in weapon marks as proficiency rises]. Mid gamish that is probably couple points of DV and couple points of damage, which is not much better than 1PV/some extra healing and early on sword sign gives very little.

Dragon makes sense on something like troll barb cause if char starts with St and To in 30ies it is tough to train further on. Other than extreme cases most chars would rather take some potential rises I guess.

Cup is cute for something like ironman wizards or if you choose/roll dumbass casters [like orc necros and so on]. [-xp, +Le, +castings goes long salvaging some whacky race/class combos].
Book - personally I got no clue what is bonus to reading worth after balancing Literacy and spellbook readings, it used to be reasonable choice for something like elven archers, but borderline casters might be nerfed through the ground.

So bottom line if choosing - either know WTF you are doing or choose Raven. Most likely just choose Raven.

p.s. Unicorn totally makes sense for heavy orb usage - primary archmages [throgh mana orb] and wizzard speedruns[water orb healing] .

[blunk]

Candle is meh after nerfs and Tree is improved
What where the changes and in what build?

[Soirana]

What where the changes and in what build?

Quoting wiki:


The healing effect of Candle is extremely powerful. Prior to version 1.2.0 it allowed the PC to recover 2 hit points every 12 turns healing (looking at it the other way, the healing skill at 100 was 75% as effective as the candle star sign).

As of version 1.2.0 2 hit points from Candle are recovered only every 20 turns, making the Candle star sign 80% as effective as the healing skill at maximum (or roughly equivalent to a healing skill of 80); still roughly comparable, but no longer more effective.

Change was before last public version [p23].

[_Ln_]

is immune to pain really needed or that good on a char other than a mist elf? To be honest, i never went the immune to pain route.

Personally I pretty much never bother with it, because by mid-game it doesn't matter a lot. In some cases (mist elf, continuous damage from order/chaos ammys) it may be interesting. The best part of it is that the official description, as well as Thomas himself believe that 1 point of damage is dealt in all cases, which is not true. Naturally, this "bug" is the only thing that keeps the talent from being Charged-level garbage.

Willpower has a crapload of other applications in the game which I consider highly important, so I don't like getting it cut for some reason.

To Soirana:
That RFE looks mighty hilarious. I'm somewhat inclined to believe Thomas that the full code of that method actually does change PP max -- a check for armor of power probably follows and then the updated value is stored in the global variable for PP max. But again, we'll never know, especially since your live results show some bad numbers.

Sometimes I wish the sources went online or at least to a team of dedicated fans. 2 pairs of eyes are not enough to catch all the bugs.

[Soirana]

But again, we'll never know, especially since your live results show some bad numbers.

Problem is PP per level is very random [from notes from that discussion period - wizard with 25 mana can get anything from 4 to 15 PP on levelup]. Couple of bad rolls can drown +10% effect very easily.

That "not the case" point arrives from generating wizards with very close stat line and artificially giving them xp to drag to lv50 - they ended in same ballpark not like one having 500ish and another 600ish PP. [the idea was that at 49 rolls statistical oddities should even out and giving huge pool of PP 20% effect should be more clear.]

[_Ln_]

Problem is PP per level is very random [from notes from that discussion period - wizard with 25 mana can get anything from 4 to 15 PP on levelup]. Couple of bad rolls can drown +10% effect very easily.

That "not the case" point arrives from generating wizards with very close stat line and artificially giving them xp to drag to lv50 - they ended in same ballpark not like one having 500ish and another 600ish PP. [the idea was that at 49 rolls statistical oddities should even out and giving huge pool of PP 20% effect should be more clear.]

Interesting. However, 4-15 seems to be a big enough range to cause level 50 to introduce huge deviations. Just curious, what was the number of wizards you generated and how do you define "very close" for the stat line?

[Soirana]

Interesting. However, 4-15 seems to be a big enough range to cause level 50 to introduce huge deviations. Just curious, what was the number of wizards you generated and how do you define "very close" for the stat line?

2 wizards [one raven, one salamander] leveled up to50 multiple times [no clue how many - as I have just averages]. Very close was like 1 dif in willpower.

4-15 does not have uniform distro, I did not run analysis tool at time but notes has guess of it being 2-3 dices with +x [+x presumably comes as bonus from char mana].

If you have doubts you are welcome to duplicate test with higher number of wizards.

[_Ln_]

2 wizards [one raven, one salamander] leveled up to50 multiple times [no clue how many - as I have just averages]. Very close was like 1 dif in willpower.

4-15 does not have uniform distro, I did not run analysis tool at time but notes has guess of it being 2-3 dices with +x [+x presumably comes as bonus from char mana].

If you have doubts you are welcome to duplicate test with higher number of wizards.

Thanks.

I don't have experience with ADOM memory modification (I presume some needed for fast-levelling) and I am not sure I can automate existing tools. Exploration mode in the recent version might be of some use though.

So far statistical-wise I have entertained myself with generating thousands of chars and checking .vlg files. These things at least allow to life-approximate some code-dived things to a certain extent. One day, when I will have extreme computational capacities, I will finish char biography message analysis!

[Soirana]

For the sake of meaningful discussion I dowloaded 1.1.1 [at moment I have no clue how to max out skills in current version and certainly I am not advancing skills for 2k levelups by hand]
and made series of experiments of leveling to wizards to lv50 20 time each

Both wizards had willpower of 16 and mana of 21:

Series A [Falcon born] final PP scores:
385/432/429/436/357/457/449/406/477/454
405/496/483/432/439/400/460/447/461/412
{357 is just 71% of 496 so RNG factor is very high indeed}

Series Q [Salamander born] final PP scores:
443/444/446/469/424/452/460/425/427/416
466/439/438/443/379/463/428/417/450/458

Given variance in each series I am not even sure there is significant difference in results at all.

Given last thought I tried giving max stats two couple of A's and couple of Q's:
460 into max stats 1881
412>> 1833
450>> 1871
471>> 1892
All time differential is 1421 which supports theory that Ma and Wi give stable bonus. Salamander apparently gives nothing to Wi and Ma based PP increase....

Well, it would not be first time memory editor acting weirdly so for one last Q I raised Wi and Ma via wished up pots.
So lv50 Salamander bown Q had 464PP and after drinking Wi and Mana to 99 he had 1885 same difference of 1421.

So at moment I would call Salamander giving anything at all rather doubtful. Not sure if I want go argue with TB code citations with my memory edition based results although.

[_Ln_]

All time differential is 1421 which supports theory that Ma and Wi give stable bonus. Salamander apparently gives nothing to Wi and Ma based PP increase....


If I am not delusional, this alone combined with the expected logic of the code snippet posted by TB indicates that there is a bug. If there is not a bug, there is at least an error in the starsign description which seemingly talks about Salamander increasing the global PP score. Which is not the case.

And this can be reproduced manually with two characters without memory modifications. We just need character saves (Salamander/non-Salamander) with Mana-boosting items of the same bonus in inventory (ToTRR would be best I guess).

[Soirana]

And this can be reproduced manually with two characters without memory modifications. We just need character saves (Salamander/non-Salamander) with Mana-boosting items of the same bonus in inventory (ToTRR would be best I guess).

Exploration mode - wish for mana pots 3 times and staff of magi that is total of +12 mana.