Pair with any of the 5 straight up combat (fighter) classes. For the record that's the Paladin, Warrior, Barbarian, Monk and Knight. The Body boost is the highest there is (3), so your damage, health and threat all go up. Not to mention your Body resistance rolls (for traps and conditions and opening chests). The Big Hands ability is the selling point here, as it lets you increase your damage by 50% or so. Or you could use a shuriken with your giant 2 handed hammer which allows you (kind of unexpectedly) to reach the back row. Or, if you're a Monk, it gives you +27 instead of just +18 damage using bare hands with the right skill maxed. It also lets you use the one 3-handed weapon you'll find in the game if you investigate the Graveyard. Compared to the weapons you'll be crafting this giant weapon will be a let-down, but if you aren't crafting or just like the idea of 3 hands on a weapon, it's there for you.
Codebreaker 9.2 Cracked Elf Down
Basically the Bestiary lets you know more about your opponents, such as their attributes and vulnerabilities, which can actually be really helpful if you take the time to research it all (like a proper Bookworm) so you know what abilities to use on them most effectively and stuff like that. Granted, it would be a little peculiar of you to bring a Druid with Grappling Vines just so you can do 50% more damage to Beetles. Meaning, you're gonna level the skills you're gonna level, and every so often an enemy will take more damage from them, but at least this way you'll know which of your skills will be most effective in any particular fight. So you get to know the baddies better by slaughtering them in large numbers. Isn't that nice? Whatever happened to a friendly conversation over a cup of tea? Without the Bookworm it takes 28 kills to learn all there is to know about a beast. With her it's half, obviously. I think the idea there is that if you have your game room set up so that you can plop 7 monsters on the field per fight, it's only 4 (or 2) full fights and you're there. Most of my teams need other perks though, but still at 5 per battle that's only 6 (or 3) fights and you'll know all there is to know. Unless of course it's a Large or X-Large beast, who still need 28 (or 14) kills, which can then get pretty tedious as you can't fit too many on the field at once - nor can you necessarily handle 3 XL beasts at once, depending. And then there are the few beasts that you can't set up fights with, like Cave Bats that are only in the Nearby Cave, meaning you have to wander through that cave until you find enough of those bats - so that's a little annoying too. Worse still are the few monsters you only encounter once or twice, like Brass Beetles, and they never show up in quests or random encounters again. The good news is that, with the last update, there are 3 new caves with 3 levels each, and each of those corresponding to a range of levels of monsters. All the monsters (outside of bosses and certain special encounters - neither of which show up in the bestiary anyway). For the low and high end ones, you'll find them pretty easily. But the mid range ones, of which there are just way too many, you may well have to wander through those caves, over and over, trying to find those doppelgangers or swamp bandits that you only encountered once or twice by following the story. A (kind of) lame trick you can use, in particular with doppelgangers (since they change to something else on their first turn and then the kill is for whatever it changed into), is to kill as many as you can once you find a room with them in it, then escape the fight. They might bop you on the way out with a single hit, then down a potion or two if you need to and go back into the same room. You'll encounter another group of monsters (often not the one(s) your looking for), but it's better than wandering through all the traps and empty rooms on the one level those elusive beasts you're hunting are found. But anyway you get a bonus if you max out your knowledge for every critter, as the last thing you get is +2 damage against it. Which can be helpful with the low level enemies. But even with the Bookworm you'll have to set up battles to kill enough of some of them to get the bonus. If you just follow the story you'll be moving on to higher level beasties before you fill out each entry. But that damage bonus remains at +2 for everything, which is really just symbolic with any beast above level 10. But again, while the damage boost ultimately is just a nice gesture, knowing more about them helps your gameplay if you let it and it's also just fun to know, I think. More concretely, there's a series of quests later on (at lvl 25) that involve filling out the Bestiary, up at the Laboratory, which leads to some fairly challenging group boss fights (and you'll need that Doppelganger entry filled to get the second and third fights), so there's that. But by the end of a full playthrough - which gets you to about level 45 now - where you just follow the story without stopping for extra slaughtering time, you'll only get about halfway through the Bestiary entries for almost all the critters without her. With the Bookworm, again just following quest to quest, most of them will be complete. That's the difference.
So, your choice of race has the least impact of your 3 choices. Nevertheless, it's a choice, you need to make it, so let me break it down, with the obligatory rating (i.e. opinion) attached. I will say part of the fun is just what they look like. A Cheerleader with a thick beard just makes me chuckle.
So here's a cool one that can be devastating with the right build. It's good if you want to just put 1 point in it. It turns on automatically at the start of battle, makes you a little less threatening and gives a little boost to critical. Now it's SAKA if you max it out and combine it with the Shadow Chain skill. See, it's all about the criticals. This, right here, used to be how you got the highest possible critical chance in the game. The Knight has changed that, and while I'm very impressed with him for that, I'm a little miffed he's dethroned the Ninja here. The Ninja is still the king of Criticals though, and you're about to find out why. Maxing this skill gives you +64% Critical chance until you get hit. And your chances of getting hit are as low as programmingly possible because you're gonna have -32 Threat, which is ridiculous. Bunch of dudes can raise their Threat here; the Ninja is the only weirdo who has even thought of going negative with it. Do note that your Threat will never get below 1, unless you Take Cover. If you do get hit, by a group attack like Lightning or something, you waste a turn switching the skill on again, and that can be annoying. But that's pretty rare, as most often you'll be slicing your enemies into cubes before that happens anyway. And your base critical chance with all the perfect items, weapon, and a Rich Kid Elf is 22% (19% if you stick to Almighty Rings, but that's a whole other story - and 15% if you're hunting for Sudden Death and have all the condition trinkets). Which means you'll be traipsing about with 86% (or 83% or 79%) critical. By the end of the game, with better items, than can get up to about 90%. Which is only the third of it because your 3 attacks with the Shadow Chain skill each have the same chance. Which means that you're statistically more likely to score a critical hit on every attack than not - with the not wholly unlikely chance of 3 critical hits. This, it goes without saying, is pretty fracking badass. The runner ups in the critical category are the Barbarian, Thief and Monk (in that order), who all max out at about 45-50% (65-70% with the Barbarian, if you know what you're doing), and don't have multiple hits (except the Barbarian, kind of, more on that later). The Knight, who I'm still grumpy about, can actually get to a full 100% chance if you really want him to. But really that's just a gimmick that you won't be using, probably ever, as it would require everyone else to Take Cover in a turn (as if they were, like, sitting down by a tree as a group, pulling out a pipe and sharing it among the four of them while they lay out a picnic, at which point they glance over at the Knight facing 5 Ice Trolls, telling him: "You got this, man"). The only caveat here is that if you level this and Shadow Chain, you've got nothing left for stunning with your Smoke Bomb. It's just a question of either/or, and each build is pretty awesome. Good thing you can play through this game more than once!
So, you're not gonna be Conan the Barbarian here. I mean, you are - in fact when you unlock this class you're fighting what looks exactly like Ahhnold's Conan, plus some Terminator shades. It's very much that kind of game. But that dude is crazy. He's got like 4 extra skills your barbarian doesn't have and he gets 2 attacks each turn, for some reason. One of the toughest battles in the (pre-dragon) game, actually. So you're not that barbarian. You're more like Thrud the Barbarian. And if you get that reference, then you grew up with me in the 80s. Anyway. Take the Warrior, strip him down to one active skill and make him a regenerating critical powerhouse and, voila. Barbarian. The Barbarian is unique in that his skills are mostly passive, which are all valuable and usable at any level (unlike skills that cause conditions on enemies for example, which you want to max out to be effective). So it's pretty much a given you're going to max out his one active attack skill, but then you have free reign to spread the points around his 3 support skills. Really the only class you can build in this... relaxed kind of way. Sort of unexpected since this guy is all about the Rage. But however you build this guy, he's going to kick some major behind. And the front. The front too. He's gonna kick that too, 'cause he's enraged after all.
So there are two ways to use this skill, one which is really effective and one which pretty much makes your Barbarian immortal. This skill gives him a boost to his attributes when, and only when, he's enraged. Sounds pretty good, but in fact it's spectacular. Fully maxed out (level 24, for a skill, is the max, by the way), he gets +32 Body and +16 Senses. That means +32 Damage, +32 Threat, +a shucks ton of (potential) HP, +16 initiative and +16% critical. The HP boost is kinda weird, actually, as when you get to higher levels you'll think your Barbarian just sliced his arteries open and lost most of his blood as he enrages, but really it's just that his max HP went up. Way up. At level 40, that's about 40 x 32 (1280) more potential HP. Which is about 3 times his normal. But don't be tempted to try and fill that up with healing, at least other players healing him, because as soon as he loses his rage he goes back to his normal but still substantial HP. However, there's no logical build with the Barbarian that doesn't include that one active skill, Frenzied Strike, which is the thing that gets you enraged, so really if you're doing the Anger Management thing you have two ways of going about it: First is the great way which is to respect the Barbarian's innate dullness and try to keep up the Rage as long as possible, in the process using as little MP as possible. So long as you don't add any Mind points to this Barbarian, he only has a 10% chance of shaking it off each turn. This is the build that makes the Cleric not welcome in your party, at least one that's purging conditions every turn. But the only advantage to this option is how it makes your Barbarian sip MP. Option 2, the SAKA way, has you make your Barbarian a Surfer, ideally, or failing that invite that Cleric to purge purge purge, and also maybe be a Rocker or Hipster or something that'll bring that Mind up so he can shake off the Rage a little better. Because the synergy here is amazing. See, Frenzied strike makes you heal yourself in addition to enraging you, for 104 HP at best. And, remember, when you enrage your max HP goes up astronomically. But really you only need to get this skill up to mid-level to take advantage of this magical healing loophole. Because, in effect, this means that when you can use the active skill every turn, you have a 104 HP buffer. The enemies need to do more than that much damage to actually bring your non-enraged HP down at all. And even if they manage that, they need to do it every turn or Thrud here will just keep healing back up to maximum. The only thing to fear then is running out of MP. Which won't likely be an issue if that Cleric is at your back, and even if he isn't, one regular 75MP potion gets you back in the fight for a few turns. While the next two passive skills are good, you could skip them easily and just focus on this one. And it would be unwise not to put any points in this one at all. 2ff7e9595c
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