| On the Physical shield:
As no doubt many have read, getting the Physical Shield can be really helpful in keeping your Combat Modifier high, and hence, getting a lot of XP. What I haven’t seen mentioned is that if you go this route, it means you don’t have to worry about Armor. If you have Physical Shield activated, the damage you take is unaffected by your armor. Go ahead and try it for yourself. I had to experiment with one guy who I let put me in a corner. I’d put on the Shield wearing Plate armor, let him hit me a couple times, and see how much damage it did. I’d heal up, then wear nothing but my British Drawers, let him hit me the same number of times and find that the damage done to my Will power was the same.
This means that for most of the time, you can wear whatever clothing (or lack there of) you feel like without handicapping yourself. The only time I ever worry about armor is when I expect to take enough damage to drop the Physical Shield before I’ll have time to react. This usually only occurs at the final battle with Jack the Dragon by which time I have Archon’s Armor on. Otherwise, I run around in Will User attire.
It’s important to continually improve your Physical Shield. If you are gaining XP at the break neck pace I describe, you’ll be going up in renown and the enemies will start getting stronger fast. I usually raise Physical shield and Mana Power with all my general XP because otherwise the damage you take will be too much. I usually have two levels in PS before doing the Escort the Traiders quest, and mastered PS before Finding the Bandit Seeress.
The other reason I like Physical Shield is that it is very synergistic with this character build. You’re buying as many Will potions as you can find, so you have plenty of reserves. I tend to use two handed weapons, which also work well with the Shield because you don’t get stunned when hit. Physical Shield also opens up a nifty way to get a lot of Will XP. You get 5 XP times your Combat Modifier every time you activate the shield. One thing that works well is that after you’ve cleared all the enemies out of a given area and raised your CM, you can rapidly turn your Shield on and off. Near the beginning I’ll do this anytime my CM is around 20+ and until it runs down to about 15. You’ll have to use a lot of Will potions to make this work, but thankfully you probably have 200+ so it should be just fine.
To master the Physical Shield you have to get pretty ‘Good’ in your morality. I usually take Protect Orchard Farm, Escort the Raiders, then Hobbe Killing contest, and the Hobbe Cave twice with a Hero save. This gets me ‘Good’ enough to purchase level 4 Physical shield, but not too good. You don’t want to get too good, because the best spell I’ve found to complement Physical Shield is Berserker.
Some people have said they like Slow Time to complement Physical Shield. I like it, but I usually go for Berserker first. Slow Time doesn’t work as well with my combat style. It delays the XP orbs from coming out of guys, and it sometimes will let you take all the Hit points from an enemy without actually killing them. I’ve had too many instances where in the Arena Whisper just taps somebody I already hit in Slow Time mode, denying me the XP. I still will buy Slow Time, but I use it less often. So I have since taken up the fast and furious assault of the Berserker. You don’t have to wait for Orbs, your combat goes quicker, you tend to get higher Combat Modifiers, you swing great weapons with one hand, your enemies can’t block your shots, and you get decapitations all the time. Pretty fun.
The problem with Berserker is it can be a pain to master along side Physical Shield, because the Shield wants you to be good, and the Berserker wants you to be bad. Don’t get me wrong, you can do just fine with Berserker 3, but I like to get it mastered with as little effort as possible. In a little bit, I’ll tell you how.  |