Building Strength

[StormRaider]

Anyone know the fastest way to build the strength characteristic?
I have been meleeing my main character (female) hoping to increase her strength for armor class purposes. I had her in front but all It did was increase her melee skills to level 5 or 7 but she is still only 12 strength. Were as my other two characters which I am using as "tanks" (males) whom I had behind her are at level 14 strength. Is it because of the class? Right now she is a gladiator (melee, range, combat magic) (the males don't really use magic the dwarf's a solider and gyorn's a skirmisher). I have not been having her use combat magic alot because I was trying to build her strength. Her strength is going up but very very very slowly. And now I'm concerned because I have picked up some cool staffs but because I've been concentrating on melee for armor purposes she not bright enough for the better staffs. Is it gender? Most games don't take that into consideration (even though they should). Any helps appreciated. Thanks

[AngusThermopole]

You have the right idea, but it might not be accomplishing what you want. Melee attack gives the highest percentage of damage points to strength, but the key here is damage points. If your range attack characters are doing more damage and getting all the points then it does little to have your melee attacker up front. What you need to do is have your melee attacker take on some beasties by her/himself for awhile to level up that strength.

[StormRaider]

Hmmmm, Thanks

[Hippy Lettuce]

The Way to increase your strength is pretty simple. Use heavier weapons, ones that are as close to your strength as possible.

Hammers and axes may be slow, but they dish out good damage, and are always heavier style weapons.

Wearing heavier armor also helps.

[Eriknilsson]

read somewhere that fist-fighting (melee without a weapon) actually increases strength, but not melee skill, so you could have 0 in all your skills but a lot of strength (could get difficult after a while though)

not entirely sure about this

[Witness]

Actually, that you should use weapons closer to your strength is a rumor. Experience is mostly about how much damage you do. For each point of damage you do, you get a portion of the target's experience value. And true enough, usually weapons that have higher reqs do more damage, but it's not because it they have reqs closer to your strength value.

As for fist fighting, it doesn't level you up faster than the melee route, because str gain is based on overall experience gained, and fist fighting still adds to the overall experience count (just not skill experience).

[Breschau]

It's also worth noting that if you have built up a lot of a different skill (eg, you have got 20 in combat magic), it will take what seems like a lot of melee exp to get any noticable increase in Strength.

As I understand it, each point of stat you gain is like an overall level (uberlevel, most folks call it), so the xp required to gain a point in Strength is equal to the xp you'd need to gain another point of Intelligence, should you stick with magic.

Skills will level up fast when low, even if other skills are high. But stats are based on your total stats gained so far, across Str, Dex and Int. So while you may go from melee 0 to melee 10, that'd still be a small fraction of the xp required for a point of str if you'd already levelled magic up to, say, level 30.

Course, from what you (StormRaider) have said about current Str levels (12-14) you're still fairly low, so it shouldn't be as tough to switch or mix skills as if you had tried this further into the game.

At least, that's how I understand it from what I've read and been told (by folks who assure me they've been peeking at the underlying game mechanics via the appropriate editors and viewers) - it seems to hold up in practice, at any rate.

[AngusThermopole]

Breschau:

That is an accurate assessment. If you want your mage to wear some decent armor, you'd better do some melee fighting early in the game.

[StormRaider]

Thanks guys, but from what I've experienced since I made the post. The guy (I really should pay closer attention to handles) that said melee yes plus heavy weapon seems to be right. I was having my Gladiator melee like crazy but with a staff, (because the staff looks cool) and strength just dragged and dragged. But I switched her to an axe and shield at her then current strength level and wa-la, strength went up much faster.

I've had her melee solo versus with the tanks sometimes testing that suggestion but so far I haven't seen much of a difference in rate of increase. The biggest single increases in battle seem to come with "critical hits". Which seem to be quite random. Comments?

But anyway, I have her using a weapon and shield at her maximum strength level and its working well she's wearing much better armor now. I had to keep her in an enchanted, but weak for where we were heading, armor for so long and now I have options. I'm in the subterrean and the trogs drop great armor for this level. Shame I can only play on weekends.

Any one else notice that the crystalline thingees seem to die faster and cause less damage when beat to death as oppose to shot. With the barak mages it didn't seem to matter and with the ice archers distance seemed to help cut down on damage. But those crystalline thingees hurt from a distance. And then you go to pound them and they run away. The nerve

Thanks again

[[-Mortician-]]

yep

i had the same experience. My fighter was using a weapon below his current strength level. (i had him with a crusted gladius because i wanted speed over power) as soon as i switched him over to an axe, his strength skyrocketed.

[AngusThermopole]

Mort:

You don't think it had to do with the axe doing more damage, or was the melee damage lesser with the axe than the inferior weapon?

I just have not seen the connection with weight (heavy armor,weapon) adding to strength as opposed to maximum mellee damage. I think people get confused on the fact that if your using a weapon at your max strength level it is probably doing more damage than a weapon at a lessor strength requirement.

This all becomes mute the higher you level up. For instance, it is better for your combat mage to use his/her most damaging spell to level up strength than to use any kind of mellee weapon. See Breschau's post above for a good explanation.

Everything I have experience and read seems to point to maximum damage as the key for leveling in the three attributes: INT, DEX, and STR.

[StormRaider]

I disagree, simply because you can find some staffs that do a lot of damage as melee weapons. That's why I couldn't understand the slow strength advancement with my gladitor using a staff. But as soon as I switched her to an axe of lesser damage per hit and the same attack speed (both axes and staffs are slow) her strength increased.

That's what I've been seeing.

[AngusThermopole]

From what I experienced with staffs, though considered obviously a mellee weapon, they seemed to level up as if you were using a bow. Hence, more to DEX, INT, and much less to STR. You will notice that most staffs had INT requirements. Again, much relies on what level you are at.

[Phobos.{Z}]

Personally i found a special blade, it make damage from 55 to 221 with lighting damage... need 43 of strenght to use (i think) i start to use it at 43 and i use it right now... it inflict more damage with my 150 hero now i think it's the best blade i found right now!

To increase strength its better to use some magical item, blade, axe or hammer, with additional damage (light, fire, ice) your experience raise up faster!

I increase my power from 55 (finish solo player) to 150 in 4 week (~) with some friend help me with healing me during the heaviest fight, if you can arrive to level 80 for play with elite game, no more problem with any kind of enemy.

Hope to find a weapon need at least 100 strenght to use it, someone found it?

[StormRaider]

Angus,

I understand what you're saying, and if that's true then that's annoying. Because if a weapon is marked melee, and the way you increase strength is to melee, then to not increase strength with a melee weapon is misleading as well as annoying. I'm not saying that it doesn't make sense, it does make sense. But when you make a straight statement, melee increases strength. And that's what the game manual says. It does not say (but I'll look again to make sure) Melee increases strength EXCEPT if you use staffs, knifes, etc.

[C Elegans]

I have levelled up the streght of both my Archer and my 3 mages, and this is my experience:

The archer I levelled up early in the game, I went very fast and for each strenght point he gained, I gave him a better weapon.

The mages I levelled up considerably later in the game (after the Goblin dungeon), but it went relatively fast even if they were using staffs. Contrary to what Angus experienced, my mages hardly increased at all in dex and int using staffs, and the pace of strength increase did not go faster when I tried to use axes instead of staffs. However, they weren't strong enough to use axes or swords that dished out the same amount of damage as their staffs did.

According to this FAQ your stats develop according to the following:

_____M_______R_______NM____CM

STR__64%____25%_____9%____13%

DEX__27%____62%____18%____17%

INT___9%_____13%____73%____70%


M=melee, R=ranged, NM=Nature Magic, CM=Combat magic
I don't know if this is correct, but according to this FAQ, this is how your damage-based XP distribute among your stats.

[AngusThermopole]

Raider:

I thought it a little annoying myself. I am only going off my personal experience. I have not read anywhere that that is how staffs behave. I also found the manual to be almost useless, luckily the game play was similar to most RP games out there. Maybe that's why it was superfluous.