Elder Vitae

[pip]

Does the "elder vitae" that one is able to purchase at golden lane in the gypsies place give you permanent mental stat and skill increases or is it only temporary?

It is very expensive, so I was considering whether to save up money for it.

Temporary, unfortunately.

[pip]

Okay, thanks Buck

Any recommendations on what disciplines to invest in? Should I focus my investments for each charactor (i.e have Christof concentrate on prescence discipline while erik concentrates on bestiary disciplines etc or should I invest experience in skills more rather then disciplines? I guess that may depend on playing style.

So i'm looking to see if any one found a good balance for increasing their party's attributes and disciplines with thier earned experience.

[Aegis]

I found Dominate an indispesible skill to have in the game. High domination, with high feed, and you'll never be short for blood. Also, later in the game when you gain the Path of Blood disciplines, theft of Vitae is a good one.

The Blood Rituals and Serpentis disciplines are my personal favorite, simply because of Prison of Ice and Tongue of the Asp. Before you have either of these, however, you'll want to have one character at least somewhat proficient in Walk the Abyss and Awaken. This will keep you from having to use scrolls all the time. For all characters, I highly recommend maxing out Celerity, Blood Healing, and Feed.

If you want to make things easy on yourself, load one of your characters up with the Manipulation skill. This will allow them to purchase weapons and armor at lower prices and sell them at greater prices. In fact, if you get above 90 in Manipulation, you can purchase items from a vendor and sell them back for more (thus infinite cash). Very lame and cheesy, so you may only want to hit 80-85 Manipulation to just make it a lot easier to equip everyone with good equipment.

Other than that, it's basically personal preference. I focused on Strength for just about all coterie members, simply because it allows you to use better armor and do more damage in melee.

[pip]

Thanks Aegis and Buck for the feedback, I mainly use christoff while the computer controls my other NPC's. I gave the dominate tome discipline to Erik because he had descent wits and manipulation stats, and I gave the Blood ritual discipline to serena. I figure I will only have so many experience to allocate for each party member, so I did not want to give every discipline to Christoff who i mainly control in combat.

[Aegis]

@Buck: I never really liked the Sepentis path. It had it's perks and all, but you get it so late in the game, that it's really not worth developing. Usually, by that time I have five points in Theft of Vitae, Five in Dominate, Five in Feed, and Five in Feral Claws (Another indispensible one) For the other things, I usually kept them at about two or three points.

Oh, and for Walk the Abyss, you only one Point in it, same with Awaken. Those are jsut a few EXP. savers I picked up on my thrid run through the game.

One last thing, The Manipulation thing really isn't cheesy, as it takes a while to even reach that high a manipulation, and plus, if someone really is that manipulative, they would use. It's people's call and all, thats just my feelings.

[pip]

To Aegis

I noticed that you invested five points in feed. why did you max this out? Does haveing more slots in feed give you more blood in return when you feed?

Originally posted by Aegis:
<STRONG>@Buck: I never really liked the Sepentis path. It had it's perks and all, but you get it so late in the game, that it's really not worth developing. Usually, by that time I have five points in Theft of Vitae, Five in Dominate, Five in Feed, and Five in Feral Claws (Another indispensible one) For the other things, I usually kept them at about two or three points.</STRONG>

True, Serpentis is really only used in the New York scene, but it's still a great group of disciplines. And becoming familiar with them helps when you try a little multiplayer.

I know a lot of people like Feral Claws, but I never really used them. I'd rather cast Celerity and hack the baddies with a conventional weapon =).

Originally posted by Aegis:
<STRONG>Oh, and for Walk the Abyss, you only one Point in it, same with Awaken. Those are jsut a few EXP. savers I picked up on my thrid run through the game.

One last thing, The Manipulation thing really isn't cheesy, as it takes a while to even reach that high a manipulation, and plus, if someone really is that manipulative, they would use. It's people's call and all, thats just my feelings. </STRONG>

Yep, one point in Walk the Abyss and Awaken is plenty.

I still think a high Manipulation is pretty ridiculous. You can have full platemail for every character by the end of Vienna if you want to. I was hoping they'd patch it with 1.10, but they didn't.

No matter how manipulative someone is, how are they going to walk into every single store, past or present, and convince the store owner to sell them everything, just to buy it back at a 20% markup 5 seconds later?

[Aegis]

@Buck: I agree that there is a bit of logic there. But Gold is used very little past Prague, and is doubtful many people would use it much more. Also, if they aren't selling what people want, they people aren't buying, and the only way for the merchant to start selling the more expensize stuff, if to have more money. So, the high manipulation is kind've a dual bonus.

For the feral Claws thing, I too when I first started playing the game, used a lot of celertiy and regular weapon (Sword of Ainkurn) hack'n'slash. But that only goes so far as your only doing lethal damage. As a White Wolf RP'er, Lethal damag doesn't cut it (Get the pun?). Feral claws, with five points in it, does Aggrevated damage, which is basically double that of lethal. It's far more effective.

@Lorsadon: The more points you have in feed, the easier it is to grab people (Like the gaurds in Prague) and feed off them. You also drink less of their blood, but get more for yourself in return. There is also less chance of killing them if you drain them to about 1/4 blood level.

[pip]

I see, I'll invest more in feed then. The Ainkurn sword does aggravated damage however (at least in the description in the game I'm playing) I don't know if I'll still have it in 1999.

[Aegis]

Here's a tip. Before you travel to the modern era (The end of Viserade Castle) give anyting that is remotly magical to Christof. With that done, anything he was carrying that was magical will be brought with him, and you'll have access to when in the Society of Leopold, and for the rest of the game. Besure to have the Heart Shield, as it will be invaluable as for the amount of stakes that come your way...

[pip]

Great, I stashed the ainkurn sword in Christoff's sanctuary safe and when I woke up in the modern era it was lying on the floor for me to pick up. However The full plate that I stashed away in that same safe did not make it through the centuries. I guess it rusted away.

[Aegis]

The reason the full plate didn't make it was because it wasn't enchanted. Like I said, only magical and enchanted weapons go with you to the future.