magic users suck: a discussion

[PronkD]

So I played my first medium difficulty long game intent on rounding out my final party with a few magic users.

I got an acolyte as fast as I could for the healing bonus and then I accidentally turned him into a dark priest, thinking that I could get a necromancer soon after that. This brings me to my first problem:

Necromancers require too much fame.

In this game, I turned off town raids and king's requests and I also died... once. Due to these circumstances, I had no way to gain fame outside of killing enemy strongholds. Getting enough fame to invite a necromancer required me to demolish 85% of the map in order to get enough to hire a LEVEL 2 necro.

As an aside, I used a dark priest in my party for a long time but eventually retired him because I just couldn't figure out what he was doing. Sometimes it seemed he was doing damage, but other times, he just turned the enemy a weird color or made me glow. I didn't seem to lose any effectiveness by removing him from my party.

Dark Priests: wtf and misc. sentiments.

By that time I only had one space in my party because I had to level up a farmer melee and a doctor in order to continue progressing. Furthermore, there was really no point, as you'll see in a moment. But anyway point...

Wizard Tomes are too rare.

I got my tome 4 strongholds before the end and because tomes are only one use items, you only get one chance to try and make a wizard. (Wizards don't visit town and you can't create another wizard tower without a second/third/etc. tome) So I made a wizard, hoping to at least see what he was like (he was level 2-- a joke I thought) before the game ended. After delaying the end until my necromancer was ready to go (another point here in a second...) I finally put him (my necro-- we'll get back to the wizard in a moment) in the party and got ready to move.

Well, I loaded my necro up with some good +attack equipment at level TWO. Yes TWO. Then I took him out to fight some level 11 giants with us. The party consisted of me (level 10), my melee farmer in awesome equipment (level 8), and a healer at level 4 in end-game stuff. The necro researched for a while before coming and had two level 13 skeletons with him. As soon as we attacked the first giant, all 4 of us went in to melee and the monster turned, walked around us and one-hit-killed the necro. Brings me to my next point...

Necros need to level in town and/or generate less threat with their attacks or curses, or whatever they use.

I mean, I assume he, himself hit the monster with something, but it happened so fast that I couldn't tell what it was.

With the necromancer finished, I went back to town and grabbed my wizard. The wizard was no better. At level 2 with a bunch of +attack, he pulled every single monster off the two melee attackers in one shot. Usually, because pathing is so bad in this game, the monsters would get stuck trying to turn around and just die. However, anything that got close enough (or was ranged) to touch him once would send him back to town with critical injuries. After ping-ponging back and forth for about 10 minutes between town and one camp (I had to go back after every monster and wait for the wizard to be usable again) the wizard eventually died in two hits and I hired another necro to try out.

This necro I told to just start summoning minions (I only had 2 camps left and didn't want to draw the game out any longer) thinking that the earlier research would still apply. I waited about 10 minutes and then went back to town and found this level 4 necro with 2 level 2 skeletons. Suffice to say, I left him in town.

Necromancer research should apply to the building, rather than the individual necromancer. And it should be more verbose, seeing as there seems to be an infinite amount of research one can do to get higher level minions. (It seems just like raising dragons though-- completely and utterly silent with absolutely no info on what's going on; reused code?)

Finally, something that really annoys me is the slow leveling of healers. Give them some more xp per "attack" (heal) or something. Especially considering that if they pull creatures due to the way they spaz out sometimes and walk around the whole perimeter of the screen looking for a new healing spot, they're usually so low leveled that they're one-hit-killed or critically injured instantly.

[Laclongquan]

Research apply to each person is obviously the logic course.

We are not at the age of corporation and nations where researchers can access knowledge from a common pool. Hinterland is in the age of medieval or earlier, where knowledge gained is knowledge own. YOu either study/experiment on your own or you apprentice to another researcher, assist him many years. In return you may learn what he know. So if a necro research 13th level skeletons, his replacements of course dont know how.

Mind, if they use the apprentice system and make the apprentice inherit that knowledge it would be wonderful.

Apprentice of Smith, of Wizards... Hm

[walkstheplanes]

I think the fame restrictions are fine. They reward you with the ability to hire higher level followers with the difficulties you tack on with town raids and requests. Also, the fame death penalty is also there for this reason -- it rewards you if you do well.

I do agree with your necro level problem. This occurs with the dragoneer as well. However, I just use them strictly for defense (if you order your follower to run, their pets won't run, but will actually go out and attack raiders). Also, I think what happened when you sent your level 2 necro out against 11 should be expected... Leave some lower level areas intact next time if you want to level your lower guys.

Leveling your healers is easy enough, actually. Just equip them with fighter gear and keep them alive. They'll increase in defense and offense, which I like (though others prefer attack+ only healers). Against mobs that are 2 levels higher they'll level fairly quickly.

[Mierk]

Just keep your weakest bows from early in the game... the 1 and 2 damage ones. Then when you're out fighting with the weaker level casters, give them these weapons. They'll typically stay out of melee range and not do enough damage to get/keep aggro. In cases where they do get aggro before you because their arrows hit the targets before you, just make sure you get a shot in on the mob before they make it to your caster.

[PronkD]

I think the fame restrictions are fine. They reward you with the ability to hire higher level followers with the difficulties you tack on with town raids and requests. Also, the fame death penalty is also there for this reason -- it rewards you if you do well.

I do agree with your necro level problem. This occurs with the dragoneer as well. However, I just use them strictly for defense (if you order your follower to run, their pets won't run, but will actually go out and attack raiders). Also, I think what happened when you sent your level 2 necro out against 11 should be expected... Leave some lower level areas intact next time if you want to level your lower guys.

Leveling your healers is easy enough, actually. Just equip them with fighter gear and keep them alive. They'll increase in defense and offense, which I like (though others prefer attack+ only healers). Against mobs that are 2 levels higher they'll level fairly quickly.

While you might say that the high fame restrictions reward you if you play well, I say that it makes the necromancer pretty much pointless in most games. He's already a specialized caster who is not at all required (at least in medium level games) to progress... Which tells me that he's supposed to be a fun caster... Only, besides the high priest (whose role also eludes me, since she doesn't having better healing apparently) He's also the only caster that requires an insane amount of fame-- this, compounded by the fact that in almost every game I've played I've found a source of "souls" within level 1-3 areas at the start, is just odd. I mean, why put ancient tombs so close to the starting areas if the necromancer himself requires such a high amount of fame?

What makes it even stranger is that he is really the only townsperson that requires a major fame investment to procure. Only when I'm specifically trying to recruit a necro do I even bother looking at my fame. Which means that 90% of the time I just ignore the hundreds of necros that come to visit because there isn't really much use for them.