Lords of Xulima is tough

fadedc · January 5, 2015

I found wounds and bleeding to both be really helpful. I'd actually say bleeding was much more helpful, because many late game enemies can negate all of their wounds with a spell. I never did the mana battery thing though, I'm not that patient (and it seems like in the time that would take you could just go back to town and restock on food).

wolfing · January 5, 2015

fadedc said:
I found wounds and bleeding to both be really helpful. I'd actually say bleeding was much more helpful, because many late game enemies can negate all of their wounds with a spell. I never did the mana battery thing though, I'm not that patient (and it seems like in the time that would take you could just go back to town and restock on food).

I hate going back to town, I wait until I really need to go. I can go for days and days without going to town.

Pessimeister · January 6, 2015

Tough eh? Interesting. How does its array of challenges compare to say Blackguards?
That was certainly interesting as far as unique puzzles in combat go.

I've got this on watch via Steam, think I might have to take a look for myself.

Edit: I didn't ask if the game was similar, I asked specifically how the difficulty compares to Blackguards.

joxer · January 6, 2015

Everything is completely different from Blackguards.
And it's not unforgiving if you pick "wrong" skill to upgrade.

The only similarity is that enemies on the map don't respawn endlessly.

Sir Markus · January 6, 2015

I think Lords of Xulima is outstanding. I'm about 10 hours in and can't wait to play again for a few hours later on so I'm completely hooked. Regarding the difficulty; I'm playing with the balanced default party which, for this game anyways, has made things a LOT easier. It's just a matter of seeing which weapons/skills each default character has to start with and focusing on advancing in those areas. I have no doubt that, with this particular game, if I had created my own party I would have had to restart and create a new party by now at least once.

fadedc · January 6, 2015

I don't like going back to town either, but it's just because it wastes time. But at the end of the day spending 2 minutes to go teleport back to town and restock on food wastes much less time then spending 5 minutes recharging mana on every fight.

wolfing said:
I hate going back to town, I wait until I really need to go. I can go for days and days without going to town.

wolfing · January 7, 2015

fadedc said:
I don't like going back to town either, but it's just because it wastes time. But at the end of the day spending 2 minutes to go teleport back to town and restock on food wastes much less time then spending 5 minutes recharging mana on every fight.

Well I didn't say I was spending 5 minutes on each fight to recharge, more like using divine prayer instead of attacking, but the other members still do their damage.

fadedc · January 7, 2015

Ah ok, I did do that too since my cleric had no real offence and nothing else to do when she wasn't healing or buffing. There was only really a limited window when it was effective though, since divine prayer only restored a fixed amount of mana, but spell costs were constantly increasing. Eventually the mana gain was pretty negligible. I remember regretting investing into divine prayer for my paladin, because by the time he got the skill it was already getting obsolete (and it cost him more).

wolfing said:
Well I didn't say I was spending 5 minutes on each fight to recharge, more like using divine prayer instead of attacking, but the other members still do their damage.

joxer · January 7, 2015

Cleric gets offensive divine ray later. Maxed, it usually instakills 1000 HP liches that are very annoying (constantly summoning mummies and vampires - you don't get XP for killing summons). In short, very effective against undead.

wolfing · January 7, 2015

fadedc said:
Ah ok, I did do that too since my cleric had no real offence and nothing else to do when she wasn't healing or buffing. There was only really a limited window when it was effective though, since divine prayer only restored a fixed amount of mana, but spell costs were constantly increasing. Eventually the mana gain was pretty negligible. I remember regretting investing into divine prayer for my paladin, because by the time he got the skill it was already getting obsolete (and it cost him more).

hmm… that may happen later. Right now I'm loving it. Since I don't use my paladin to heal (except using healing aura when the party is overall hurt by environment or hunger like in the desert), his wounding attack is mana-cheap so a few uses of divine prayer recover his mana.

fadedc · January 7, 2015

Yeah my paladin didn't heal either. He used stunning strike which was cheap or protection aura which was really expensive when maxed. Protection aura was the only reason to use a paladin from what I could tell. I could have attacked every other round with stunning strike, instead of attacking once a round with a normal attack, but I'm not really convinced that would have been effective. I would have had to pray 5 or 6 times to recover the cost of protection aura.

wolfing said:
hmm… that may happen later. Right now I'm loving it. Since I don't use my paladin to heal (except using healing aura when the party is overall hurt by environment or hunger like in the desert), his wounding attack is mana-cheap so a few uses of divine prayer recover his mana.

wolfing · January 7, 2015

fadedc said:
Yeah my paladin didn't heal either. He used stunning strike which was cheap or protection aura which was really expensive when maxed. Protection aura was the only reason to use a paladin from what I could tell. I could have attacked every other round with stunning strike, instead of attacking once a round with a normal attack, but I'm not really convinced that would have been effective. I would have had to pray 5 or 6 times to recover the cost of protection aura.

Yeah, I don't use protective aura. Mostly my paladin is there to tank and wound. As a tank he's great, since divine prayer doesn't recover a lot of mana, but it does heal a lot, thus saving my cleric to heal someone else.

fadedc · January 7, 2015

Ah I think it's a mistake not to use protection aura for the paladin. It really does add a ton of armor and evasion to your party, which can make a big difference. If your just using wounding strike and tanking then the soldier can do all of that much more effectively. The healing from divine prayer will become dramatically less useful in time just like the mana will.

The game also doesn't really have tanks in the traditional sense. The game has no agro system, so there's no way to force anyone to attack the guy with the most defense. So having one defensive guy isn't that helpful, you need to make sure everyone is survivable and that everyone has useful things they contribute beyond suriviving.

wolfing said:
Yeah, I don't use protective aura. Mostly my paladin is there to tank and wound. As a tank he's great, since divine prayer doesn't recover a lot of mana, but it does heal a lot, thus saving my cleric to heal someone else.

Drithius · January 7, 2015

This game is loooong

Tempted to start over, but I'll stick with my current party for the time being. Thief-Gaulen-Soldier-Cleric-Bard-Mage.

…I've read that the mage gets weaker and weaker as the game progresses, but I can't imagine playing without him for the first part of the game. Especially when dealing with enemies that evade 90% of your weapon hits.

wolfing · January 8, 2015

fadedc said:
Ah I think it's a mistake not to use protection aura for the paladin. It really does add a ton of armor and evasion to your party, which can make a big difference. If your just using wounding strike and tanking then the soldier can do all of that much more effectively. The healing from divine prayer will become dramatically less useful in time just like the mana will.

The game also doesn't really have tanks in the traditional sense. The game has no agro system, so there's no way to force anyone to attack the guy with the most defense. So having one defensive guy isn't that helpful, you need to make sure everyone is survivable and that everyone has useful things they contribute beyond suriviving.

Right, the paladin was a disappointment, but by the time I realized that, I had already played for like 10 hours, so I'm just using him as best I can. I don't use aura of protection anymore because in th round I cast it I could wound the boss of the group instead, and maybe I'm the unluckiest man alive but it seems enemies just hit me regardless of armor unless I wound them, so I prefer adding a couple of wounds and make the boss miss anyway. I only use aura of protection with AoE physical attacks (like some of the trees that release bees). So far my strategy is working fine, but the group is only 24 so maybe I'll have to change it later on.

SirJames · January 8, 2015

I recently started playing this too.

As much as I like deep character progression I actually found the simple party creation kind of nice because I always have to reroll anyway after I work out some of the games systems. I'm only around level 6, but it's been pretty enjoyable so far. I like the graphics and its very accessible for how challenging some of the battles are. I love meeting impossible enemies early on then coming back to defeat them later! Really helps you feel how much your party has grown in power.

My first party, which I didn't need to reroll, started out as:

Gaulen, Barbarian, Soldier, Cleric
Mage, thief

With cleric using Mace and thief using Bow.

After finding out Cleric isn't much of a front line fighter I gave her a Staff and changed the party layout to:

[open], Gaulen, Soldier, Barbarian
[open], Thief, Mage, Cleric

Quick question! Bow needs STR for damage, right?

Corwin · January 8, 2015

Quick tip, swap out the bow for shurikens with your thief; they're FAR more effective!!

wolfing · January 8, 2015

Corwin said:
Quick tip, swap out the bow for shurikens with your thief; they're FAR more effective!!

I actually prefer bow, and use shurikens only on bosses and back-rank casters. Since I don't go to towns frequently, I would run out of shurikens pretty soon if I used it as a main weapon.

fadedc · January 9, 2015

Agreed. The thief should definitely max the shuriken skill eventually because it's amazing when you can use it, but it can't be your only weapon skill.

wolfing said:
I actually prefer bow, and use shurikens only on bosses and back-rank casters. Since I don't go to towns frequently, I would run out of shurikens pretty soon if I used it as a main weapon.

joxer · January 9, 2015

You'll loot crapload of shurikens from thousands of invisible thieves' groups. So many that I was actually selling them later.

Lords of Xulima is tough

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