Lords of Xulima is tough

Playing in medium difficulty and it's tough!
First, my party composition: mandatory Explorer (I wish they let me pick this one, I wouldn't have gone for explorer), Paladin, Thief, Mage, Cleric, Bard.
My front line is Explorer, Paladin, Thief. I find thief to be VERY weak, at least so far (level 5). She's using a dagger and it's only doing 3-4 points of damage, and doesn't feel like she's going that much faster than others. I might change her to use a sword instead for more damage, but was thinking a thief would get some benefits from using a dagger, so far it seems to me dagger is weak. Since I'm adding speed/accuracy for her, her strength is low so melee damage will probably go weaker and weaker as I haven't seen any mechanism like in D&D where STR is not that important for a thief as most of the damage comes from backstab multipliers. The bard so far is also underwhelming, she has a song that adds 'to hit' bonus, and that's about it, still at level 5 it's just the one song.

I also find many enemies using area attacks since like level 2, while I'm still at level 5 and so far it's only single target attacks. Also I've found several enemies with attacks to which I have no counter (spell-wise)… confusion, poison, etc. So a lot of fights is basically reload until I'm lucky (or not unlucky).

Usually I like challenging games but I feel like enemies are just consistently more powerful than my group and I don't have enough tools to fight them (except the 'reload' magic power).

When do I get nice spells and/or abilities?

A few tips :

You should only go for simple fights for now. Don't ever go above Challenging until you feel very comfortable.

Don't forget items (spells and potions)

Thief will be faster than most others and has some speed attacks later on.

Mage gets Flames and Blizzard later on which do AoE.

If you want an easier game, choose two mages. They're going to outdamage the rest of the party for a long time. I find having a cleric and a paladin is pretty difficult. My party was barbarian/cleric/useless up front and Mage, Mage, DS in back. I make Gaulen my thief as he gets envenomed weapon eventually. I'd love to drop the cleric completely, but I'm not sure you can. The DS allows you to change your group tactics based on the needs of a particular combat.

I don't think it's too hard, I am also playing second difficulty and I am playing without mage.My party:Explorer, solider and barbarian as front line,divine summoner, arcane warrior and cleric in back row.

I actually deleted my first party because I though paladin and bard aren't useful enough.On the other hand summoner is more useful than I thougt, melee summon does nearly same damage as solider and barbarian and healer summon(2 default ones) is nearly as effective as my cleric.

Also don't forget to stack blesses at local priest they can mean a lot especially earlier

Nameless one said:

I don't think it's too hard, I am also playing second difficulty and I am playing without mage.My party:Explorer, solider and barbarian as front line,divine summoner, arcane warrior and cleric in back row.

I actually deleted my first party because I though paladin and bard aren't useful enough.On the other hand summoner is more useful than I thougt, melee summon does nearly same damage as solider and barbarian and healer summon(2 default ones) is nearly as effective as my cleric.

Also don't forget to stack blesses at local priest they can mean a lot especially earlier

Click to expand...

you can stack priest blessings? didn't know that (though I'm somewhat poor always).
I'm now level 6-7, restarting game is not an option so my party will have to work. The bard has now 3 songs (to hit bonus, damage bonus, and group stun) though I find the group stun is rather weak. I noticed my thief was over her weight limit so her advantage (speed) had a penalty, so now I notice she's really faster than everybody else. Also she got a better knife so I can see her stacking bleeds. The mage now has a fire spell that attacks 'stacking' enemies, though it's hard for me to see which (or when) an enemy is behind another.

I also feel enemies have a huge 'to hit' bonus, they almost never miss! even with the paladin's aura of armor they hit like 90% of the time while I hit like 60% (I know I know, probably bias confirmation, but it seriously feels that way, especially when the enemy has a sliver of health left, I miss 3 times in a row and he goes and smacks me silly one last time before dying himself from bleed).

Oh yeah, I suggest marking the food places on your map. This way you won't waste money on food. (I often only buy two days' worth, then get the food at the west gate and the food north of the east gate. Gives me 3 days of food...

Also, don't buy more than 2 days worth of food at a time until you have tons of money. It costs exponentially more.

I don't think armour changes chance to hit, but I might be wrong. I think all it does is reduce physical damage...

So paladins are crap in this game?
Finally!!!

I'd like to play with soldier, thief, cleric, mage and divine summoner. I'm thinking about if I'll put either the cleric or the thief into the front row together with Gaulen and the soldier.

Is there any soginficant problem with one of these two line ups?

Morrandir said:

I'd like to play with soldier, thief, cleric, mage and divine summoner. I'm thinking about if I'll put either the cleric or the thief into the front row together with Gaulen and the soldier.

Is there any soginficant problem with one of these two line ups?

Click to expand...

I didn't try thief but cleric can't be the front line as he doesn't gain much hp per level and even with decent constitution he will have half of soldiers hp and incising armor and bodybuilding would cost too much skill points on him.

Also we talked about tactics but what are your impressions of game itself?I am level 12 and loving it so far, my second favorite game this year(first is D:OS ofc)

Well, crpgnut tried it.

crpgnut said:

My party was barbarian/cleric/useless up front and Mage, Mage, DS in back.

Click to expand...

Nameless one said:

I didn't try thief but cleric can't be the front line as he doesn't gain much hp per level and even with decent constitution he will have half of soldiers hp and incising armor and bodybuilding would cost too much skill points on him.

Also we talked about tactics but what are your impressions of game itself?I am level 12 and loving it so far, my second favorite game this year(first is D:OS ofc)

Click to expand...

I'm liking the game, but it has several (to me) flaws that I don't like:
- Lack of options: I'm level 8 now and I still have no counter vs. poison, confusion, freeze. When a black widow spider hits your 45 health tank for 18 and adds a 18/round poison that you can't cure with spells (only with antidotes which are limited and 'hope-you-remembered-to-buy' far away), you can only heal the poison damage each round with a heal, until you run out of mana, which makes the cleric basically a heal-bot. I also only have one AoE attack (which only hits 2 targets instead of 1) when enemies have been AoEing me since level 2.
- Lack of crowd control: Stun, Freeze basically push the target's attack 2 spots, for the amount of mana they consume, it's almost always better to blast a target or heal someone. There is no 'sleep' or something longer lasting that lets me get a better tactical control. I feel like I'm always playing the black pieces in this game of chess.
- Spell upgrades makes them cost more: In some cases I actually don't want to upgrade spells, as DPS or HPS (healing per second) gets worse. For example, a level 2 fire spell may cost 4 mana and do 10-15 damage, while the level 3 costs 6 mana and does 12-17 damage, I'd rather keep it at level 2, or better if the game let me choose what power rank I want to cast the spell at, do I want more damage and waste some mana? Tactical choices = good.
- Lock picking: Unless I'm missing something, losing picks is basically a flip of the coin even on trivial locks, as you get a choice of 2 squares with the same # of steps, so you have a 50/50 chance of losing your pick. (Luckily there's always the super-powerful quick save/quick reload).

Other than that, I'm liking it, just hoping that as I get more levels I'll have more tactical options during fights.

I'm currently at an enemy that seems really difficult for my party, only fought him late last night once but he kicked my arse and I only got him to like 60% health...

What do you do against those floors covered with insects? Are you supposed to just go over them and take the damage? I've found two so far and didn't find a way to clean them.

Don't forget enemies have resistances so, while your damage per mana might be slightly lower, the total damage is still worth it...
But be careful not to take all spells. Some spells that come later you'd want to upgrade rather than the old ones.

Also, don't forget you can get poison resistance (or organic or whatever it's calleD) amulets and stuff like that, which should help when fighting spiders.

Gave it another go on release, but now playing on 'easy'. Way less stressful (perhaps a bit to easy now...) than the second option. I foolishly used the default party though. I regret that - didn't know enough about character creation... my damage output is not that great...and the mage seems to be best at dishing out damage, if he goes down things go pear-shaped. I also miss AoE fighter attacks - which better enemies seem to have no lack of! Unless I have missed something? No 'whirlwind' attack or similar? Seems kind of unfair if so. But finding it quite enjoyable overall.

I'm still waiting for news on my boxed edition, and hope that they're still tweaking the balance a bit in the meantime.

Party:

Barb, Gaulen, Barb
Cleric, Bard, Mage

playing on Veteran difficulty. I got along well but now without a dedicated lockpicker/ trapspringer plus the nasty fights make me get stuck in Nengorth's Castle.

I second that the Stun Song is a major disappointment. I should have focused on buffing alone. Also my party is ill-suited to take out spellcasters in the back row. I'm thinking about restarting with this party:

Arcane Soldier, Barb, Thief
Cleric, Paladin, Gaulen

The thief using shurikens and the Arcane Soldier potentially using a bow.

Sacred_Path said:

I'm still waiting for news on my boxed edition, and hope that they're still tweaking the balance a bit in the meantime.

Party:

Barb, Gaulen, Barb
Cleric, Bard, Mage

playing on Veteran difficulty. I got along well but now without a dedicated lockpicker/ trapspringer plus the nasty fights make me get stuck in Nengorth's Castle.

I second that the Stun Song is a major disappointment. I should have focused on buffing alone. Also my party is ill-suited to take out spellcasters in the back row. I'm thinking about restarting with this party:

Arcane Soldier, Barb, Thief
Cleric, Paladin, Gaulen

The thief using shurikens and the Arcane Soldier potentially using a bow.

Click to expand...

OP here. I'm like level 30 or so now (too lazy to check it out at this moment). Battles are much better now. The explorer is actually very important to my group now, as I discovered using wounds is the secret for my success. He uses a big axe that adds wounds. The paladin is also good, with his wounding strike. The thief is the damage dealer, with her shurikens and stacking bleeds. The mage's 'hammer of something' adds lots of wounds (I just wish she had the equivalent of 'divine prayer' that my cleric and paladin have). The bard's super important too, between her sleep song and her fear song I can tackle big groups of enemies with ease, she also uses a big bow that adds even more wounds. And the cleric is the cleric.

I've tried to make Gaulen not a liability, but to no succes so far.

What out of wounds, bleeding and stun would you say is most useful? I've had my barbarians wield hammers and it ocassionally helped a bit, but it's very rare for opponents to actually miss their whole turn. And Stun Song is resisted too often to do any good.

The castle is a problem only because I run out of food. Between the tough fights and hours wasted on breaking locks/ walking into traps and resting, my reserves run low even going in with 6 days worth of food.

Gaulen was very weak for me in the beginning because I was always maxing out herbalism and perception which didn't leave many points to make him useful in combat. It was probably worth it given the ridiculous number of bonuses I got for the rest of my party with herbalism though. By the end he was better, though still one of my weaker combatants.

My others were a soldier, paladin, thief, mage and cleric. I was least impressed with the paladin, other then his protection aura (which probably was pretty good) I didn't feel he added much to the group. His spell progression was delayed, meaning spells felt already absolute by the time he got them, and they cost more then normal, making them often not worth spending points on. My dagger using rogue was weak for awhile until I learned to start putting points into shuriken, then he was amazing for boss fights.

My cleric stayed in the back and had almost no offensive ability. She was still the most essential member of my team. I liked my mage but he ran out of mana really quickly even with the meditation skill and getting every energy boosting barrel or plant. I'm not sure I would have wanted 2.

Been enjoying the game but had a question for anyone that's progressed to the end with a demon summoner: which heralds are best to focus on? I have Golot for money... but what others are worthwhile?

Sacred_Path said:

I've tried to make Gaulen not a liability, but to no succes so far.

What out of wounds, bleeding and stun would you say is most useful?

Click to expand...

I found wounding to be most useful by far as it works even on the strongest enemies. As Gaulen goes, i concentrated on herbalism, hunting and knowledge of terrain in non-combat skills and equipped him with one-handed axe and a shield. As far as combat skills go i maxed out axes, immunity and envenomed strike with couple of levels in meditation (so he can do both wounding and poisoning at the same time) and it all worked out very well together with soldier and barb in front row and with mage, cleric and thief in the back.

Sacred_Path said:

I've tried to make Gaulen not a liability, but to no succes so far.

What out of wounds, bleeding and stun would you say is most useful? I've had my barbarians wield hammers and it ocassionally helped a bit, but it's very rare for opponents to actually miss their whole turn. And Stun Song is resisted too often to do any good.

The castle is a problem only because I run out of food. Between the tough fights and hours wasted on breaking locks/ walking into traps and resting, my reserves run low even going in with 6 days worth of food.

Click to expand...

Wounds by far. Enemies immune to it are very few (I think I maybe found one so far). It reduces everything on the enemy. For example, at first an enemy may hit you for 30 damage, and special for 8 (special being bleed, poison, wound, whatever), and be ready to attack you again soon, and NEVER miss. With each wound they do less damage (normal and special), lose accuracy and slows them. After a few wounds they're just mana regeneration batteries for my cleric and paladin, as they never touch me and they can use divine prayer to recover mana. At the end of the fight, my paladin and cleric are almost always full mana and the group is full health.