Posted January 22, 2014
high rated
(Warning: If you know how to play, you may find the game is not very challenging. Perhaps that's why the Eschalon manual is so lacking -- it's an intentional game-play improvement. Also, I'm no expert -- I've only done one play through with a single character. I also made some blunders and made multiple course-corrections during that game, so my final character is not exactly maximally powerful, though he still spent a good fraction of the game feeling quite over-powered.)
Camping:
Camping in the game is arguably broken. If you just camp until you fully heal, you will tend to be awoken by attackers. Worse yet, these attackers scale with your level (or maybe just represent the toughest/last/? monster you've ever bested in battle -- but now instead of just dealing with 1 or 2, it's 3 or 4). It can get to the point where you start camping, you're almost healed, then you're attacked, you get badly damaged, you start camping again to heal, then you're attacked, etc. ("Fun" thing to do at low levels when thugs attack your camp -- camp outside of Aridell, when thugs appear lure them into town where the guard will make short work of them. You can even try to do a bit of kill-stealing, standing around until the guard softens them up and trying to sneak in the killing blow.)
There are two reasons I say that camping is arguably broken -- because of the monster leveling mentioned above (which will inexplicably spawn monsters that are not even native to the area), and because your sleep will never be interrupted if you keep it under 4 hours at a time. So if you're hurt and it's going to take 30 hours to heal, no problem -- just camp 3 hours at a time, 10 times in a row. (I've found that 1 second real time seems to correspond to 1 hour game-time when camping, so just count off 3 seconds before exiting camping and going back in. Be sure to use the 'c' key for camping so you can just leave the mouse cursor sitting right on the confirm button, then it's just 'c', click, count off 3 seconds, click, 'c', click, count off 3 seconds, click, repeat until healed and/or light/dark is as desired.)
Reduce how often you get hit:
Early in the game the easiest way to avoid getting hit so much is to make use of darkness. Choose to fight at night (and camp by day). In dungeons take the torches off the walls to create darkness. (Be careful not to get too many torches though -- they weigh 0.2 each and you can't get rid of them except by using them up over time.) If you run into enemies in a lighted area, lure them into the darkness. Make sure to get cat's eyes (divination) or (better yet) predator sight (elemental) so you get little or no darkness penalty while most of your enemies get heavy to-hit penalties.
Later in the game, get your alchemy skill to 9 and get a couple of +3 alchemy (Brew Master) rings to crank it up to 15. Collect spider silk from the start of the game, any time you see it in a shop. Once you get to the Ossuary, make sure to have a weapon with a bonus on it so you can hit the poltergeists and collect the ectoplasm they leave behind. Then put on your rings and max out your armor (ectoplasm + spider silk + armor => armor with +3 bonus). Do that to all of your armor and that will add +18 to your armor. Suddenly a lot of things that were dangerous are pussy cats. And for the most part you will no longer have any need to make use of darkness for fighting. (If something is still getting a 10% to-hit against you, feel free to throw in a few levels of leatherskin, or better yet stone skin to knock it down some more.) When you're walking around with 60+ AC (70+ AC with stone skin), you're just about untouchable (except for magic/curse, but there's not much of that in the game, and I played as atheist so even curse was neutered).
When facing lots of enemies, make sure to use terrain to your advantage. In a dungeon, head for the nearest door-way or other "1 tile wide" area. E.g., for a door-way, don't stop in the door-way, but rather go just one square past the door-way such that anything that wants to fight you has to stand in the door-way, blocking all others from attacking you.
Increase how often you hit:
If you are are using physical (not magic) damage as your primary attack, do put a good number of skill points into the one (or maybe two if you use a primary melee weapon but also use a bow sometimes, or vice-versa) weapons skill. (As I understand it, every other skill point boosts your to-hit with that weapon type, so it's much more effective for to-hit purposes than dexterity which only increases to-hit every 5 dexterity points.) Weapons skills are one area in this game where "jack of all trades, master of none" definitely applies. (And note that you can find high-end weapons of swords, cleaving and bludgeoning types in the game, so you can safely specialize in any of those three weapon skills. Short blade weapons do less damage, so only go that route for role playing purposes (or if you want to be magic-focused or other weakling-type and want to keep to lighter items). Ditto for unarmed, though unarmed has advantages when bashing things open. And I wouldn't recommend bow as a primary weapon [unless you can get very high dex, very high bow skills, and some good +toHit items so you get very high total to-hit score] just due to how many arrows you will go through if you miss a lot -- bows are OK as secondary weapons, picking off the occasional archer, monsters that try to run away, and acid grubs. My understanding is that thrown weapons are worse than bows.) And, of course, remember to actually use an appropriate weapon type. (My most common mistake is unequiping my sword so I can cast spells, then forgetting to equip it again. Then as I go around punching things with no unarmed skill I wonder why it's taking so long to kill things.)
If you can find (or buy) some +5 to-hit items (or even lesser ones), use them. For to-hit purposes, that's like having an extra 25 dexterity points. Multiple such items stack.
The nimbleness spell (divination, +5 dexterity per casting level) is also good for this.
Nimbleness potions (+15 dex) can also work, but costs resources so can't be used as frequently.
Finally, if you want to double how often you hit, just double how often you attack -- use haste (divination spell at 4 rounds/casting-level, or potion at 30/40/(50?) rounds for Haste I/II/III potions).
Recovering during battle:
If you need to recover health (or mana) during battle, potions is the obvious thing to do, but that uses up resources and you might be cash-strapped at points in the game, so...
Once you have gotten out of South Parish, there is a really cheesy way to fully recover in the middle of a battle. For free. And that is camping. How? Just walk to the edge of the map (towards an already explored area), and then cross the border. The monsters won't follow you across the border. Camp until fully healed (3 hours at a time), and then go back over the border and into the fight. The monsters won't have gotten any of their health back. (This is also useful if it's daylight and you want to postpone the fight until nightfall.)
A slightly less cheesy way to do it, but only applicable in darker areas, is to have the "Hide in Shadows" and "Move Silently" skills. I didn't do much with these myself (getting them only late in the game), but it seems they can be pretty effective -- you can be melee fighting someone, and then if you get too badly hurt you can just walk away from them. Even though the heal spell shows an animation which would seem to indicate there is bright light involved, that won't give away your position. So even if you can only cast heal at level 1 or 2 so it takes you many castings to get your hp back, it's no problem because no one is trying to bury an axe in your head between each casting. (Alternatively, just walk far enough away and you can camp.)
Assigning attribute points:
Note that the benefits of attributes are not all fine-grain -- many of them (like to-hit, damage, armor bonuses, hp and mana) kick in only every 5 or 10 points in a given attribute. So don't leave your strength sitting at 29 across 5 level-ups. Instead, at the first opportunity put 1 point into it to get it to 30 so you get that one extra damage point (which you can then benefit from for all of the battles across those 5 level-ups). Or another way of putting it is, if the main benefit you are seeking is increased damage, and your strength is already sitting at 25, you may not want to put any more attribute points into strength unless/until you plan on following through and get it to 30 at the next level-up -- otherwise you may be better off putting the points somewhere else where you will see immediate benefits, and then put points into strength later when you are prepared to take it all of the way to 30. (Example: If your character is sitting with 5 attributes at 24, that's basically 5*4 = 20 attribute points that aren't doing you much if any good, resulting in a character that is about as effective as a character that is 20/3 = 6 or 7 levels lower. That may result in the game feeling too hard to play. I think a lot of the people saying you have to stick to just 1 or 2 attributes have it wrong -- I was boosting over half my attributes and had no problems -- but by sticking to pumping just 1 or 2 attributes they are (completely obliviously) managing to avoid this "ineffective attribute points" problem. If you spread attribute points evenly (1 point at a time instead of 5 or 10 at a time) among all the attributes that interest you, you are guaranteed to hit this problem, and the game will be very hard when they are all at 14, easier when they are at 15, very hard when they are at 19, easier when they are at 20, etc.)
(continued below....)
Camping:
Camping in the game is arguably broken. If you just camp until you fully heal, you will tend to be awoken by attackers. Worse yet, these attackers scale with your level (or maybe just represent the toughest/last/? monster you've ever bested in battle -- but now instead of just dealing with 1 or 2, it's 3 or 4). It can get to the point where you start camping, you're almost healed, then you're attacked, you get badly damaged, you start camping again to heal, then you're attacked, etc. ("Fun" thing to do at low levels when thugs attack your camp -- camp outside of Aridell, when thugs appear lure them into town where the guard will make short work of them. You can even try to do a bit of kill-stealing, standing around until the guard softens them up and trying to sneak in the killing blow.)
There are two reasons I say that camping is arguably broken -- because of the monster leveling mentioned above (which will inexplicably spawn monsters that are not even native to the area), and because your sleep will never be interrupted if you keep it under 4 hours at a time. So if you're hurt and it's going to take 30 hours to heal, no problem -- just camp 3 hours at a time, 10 times in a row. (I've found that 1 second real time seems to correspond to 1 hour game-time when camping, so just count off 3 seconds before exiting camping and going back in. Be sure to use the 'c' key for camping so you can just leave the mouse cursor sitting right on the confirm button, then it's just 'c', click, count off 3 seconds, click, 'c', click, count off 3 seconds, click, repeat until healed and/or light/dark is as desired.)
Reduce how often you get hit:
Early in the game the easiest way to avoid getting hit so much is to make use of darkness. Choose to fight at night (and camp by day). In dungeons take the torches off the walls to create darkness. (Be careful not to get too many torches though -- they weigh 0.2 each and you can't get rid of them except by using them up over time.) If you run into enemies in a lighted area, lure them into the darkness. Make sure to get cat's eyes (divination) or (better yet) predator sight (elemental) so you get little or no darkness penalty while most of your enemies get heavy to-hit penalties.
Later in the game, get your alchemy skill to 9 and get a couple of +3 alchemy (Brew Master) rings to crank it up to 15. Collect spider silk from the start of the game, any time you see it in a shop. Once you get to the Ossuary, make sure to have a weapon with a bonus on it so you can hit the poltergeists and collect the ectoplasm they leave behind. Then put on your rings and max out your armor (ectoplasm + spider silk + armor => armor with +3 bonus). Do that to all of your armor and that will add +18 to your armor. Suddenly a lot of things that were dangerous are pussy cats. And for the most part you will no longer have any need to make use of darkness for fighting. (If something is still getting a 10% to-hit against you, feel free to throw in a few levels of leatherskin, or better yet stone skin to knock it down some more.) When you're walking around with 60+ AC (70+ AC with stone skin), you're just about untouchable (except for magic/curse, but there's not much of that in the game, and I played as atheist so even curse was neutered).
When facing lots of enemies, make sure to use terrain to your advantage. In a dungeon, head for the nearest door-way or other "1 tile wide" area. E.g., for a door-way, don't stop in the door-way, but rather go just one square past the door-way such that anything that wants to fight you has to stand in the door-way, blocking all others from attacking you.
Increase how often you hit:
If you are are using physical (not magic) damage as your primary attack, do put a good number of skill points into the one (or maybe two if you use a primary melee weapon but also use a bow sometimes, or vice-versa) weapons skill. (As I understand it, every other skill point boosts your to-hit with that weapon type, so it's much more effective for to-hit purposes than dexterity which only increases to-hit every 5 dexterity points.) Weapons skills are one area in this game where "jack of all trades, master of none" definitely applies. (And note that you can find high-end weapons of swords, cleaving and bludgeoning types in the game, so you can safely specialize in any of those three weapon skills. Short blade weapons do less damage, so only go that route for role playing purposes (or if you want to be magic-focused or other weakling-type and want to keep to lighter items). Ditto for unarmed, though unarmed has advantages when bashing things open. And I wouldn't recommend bow as a primary weapon [unless you can get very high dex, very high bow skills, and some good +toHit items so you get very high total to-hit score] just due to how many arrows you will go through if you miss a lot -- bows are OK as secondary weapons, picking off the occasional archer, monsters that try to run away, and acid grubs. My understanding is that thrown weapons are worse than bows.) And, of course, remember to actually use an appropriate weapon type. (My most common mistake is unequiping my sword so I can cast spells, then forgetting to equip it again. Then as I go around punching things with no unarmed skill I wonder why it's taking so long to kill things.)
If you can find (or buy) some +5 to-hit items (or even lesser ones), use them. For to-hit purposes, that's like having an extra 25 dexterity points. Multiple such items stack.
The nimbleness spell (divination, +5 dexterity per casting level) is also good for this.
Nimbleness potions (+15 dex) can also work, but costs resources so can't be used as frequently.
Finally, if you want to double how often you hit, just double how often you attack -- use haste (divination spell at 4 rounds/casting-level, or potion at 30/40/(50?) rounds for Haste I/II/III potions).
Recovering during battle:
If you need to recover health (or mana) during battle, potions is the obvious thing to do, but that uses up resources and you might be cash-strapped at points in the game, so...
Once you have gotten out of South Parish, there is a really cheesy way to fully recover in the middle of a battle. For free. And that is camping. How? Just walk to the edge of the map (towards an already explored area), and then cross the border. The monsters won't follow you across the border. Camp until fully healed (3 hours at a time), and then go back over the border and into the fight. The monsters won't have gotten any of their health back. (This is also useful if it's daylight and you want to postpone the fight until nightfall.)
A slightly less cheesy way to do it, but only applicable in darker areas, is to have the "Hide in Shadows" and "Move Silently" skills. I didn't do much with these myself (getting them only late in the game), but it seems they can be pretty effective -- you can be melee fighting someone, and then if you get too badly hurt you can just walk away from them. Even though the heal spell shows an animation which would seem to indicate there is bright light involved, that won't give away your position. So even if you can only cast heal at level 1 or 2 so it takes you many castings to get your hp back, it's no problem because no one is trying to bury an axe in your head between each casting. (Alternatively, just walk far enough away and you can camp.)
Assigning attribute points:
Note that the benefits of attributes are not all fine-grain -- many of them (like to-hit, damage, armor bonuses, hp and mana) kick in only every 5 or 10 points in a given attribute. So don't leave your strength sitting at 29 across 5 level-ups. Instead, at the first opportunity put 1 point into it to get it to 30 so you get that one extra damage point (which you can then benefit from for all of the battles across those 5 level-ups). Or another way of putting it is, if the main benefit you are seeking is increased damage, and your strength is already sitting at 25, you may not want to put any more attribute points into strength unless/until you plan on following through and get it to 30 at the next level-up -- otherwise you may be better off putting the points somewhere else where you will see immediate benefits, and then put points into strength later when you are prepared to take it all of the way to 30. (Example: If your character is sitting with 5 attributes at 24, that's basically 5*4 = 20 attribute points that aren't doing you much if any good, resulting in a character that is about as effective as a character that is 20/3 = 6 or 7 levels lower. That may result in the game feeling too hard to play. I think a lot of the people saying you have to stick to just 1 or 2 attributes have it wrong -- I was boosting over half my attributes and had no problems -- but by sticking to pumping just 1 or 2 attributes they are (completely obliviously) managing to avoid this "ineffective attribute points" problem. If you spread attribute points evenly (1 point at a time instead of 5 or 10 at a time) among all the attributes that interest you, you are guaranteed to hit this problem, and the game will be very hard when they are all at 14, easier when they are at 15, very hard when they are at 19, easier when they are at 20, etc.)
(continued below....)
Post edited January 22, 2014 by TheJadedOne
