I thought I'd try my hand at providing an AAR, which may help folk who are even newer to the game than I am (I've been playing for about 5 weeks, give or take).
I suffered an embarrasing defeat in a MP Friday night where I learned that dual-bless pretenders, which work nicely in SP games, will kill you in MP due to the bad scales you have to take to get them. Zen was gracious and patient enough to explain to me in detail (using lots of comparisons and a Socratic-style method of asking probing questions) just why this is so, but that's a topic for another thread. He was thoughtful enough to guide me through the design of a new pretender, that should have a far better chance of putting up a credible showing in my next MP game. Not having anything better to do until such a time, and being possessed of a highly-developed sense of curiosity (that's a polite euphemism for 'impatience'), I decided to begin a SP game to 'test' this pretender, and what is for me a radically different approach to playing Dom 2. More on why as we get into the game itself.
Without further ado, we begin:
I have loaded the mods for
Improved Light Cav (I won't be using any, but this should give the AIs and the Indies a minor boost towards making my life more challenging),
Mighty Militia which converts those arguably useless militia into religious fanatics, which are more useful, and can be quite tough to face (as we will soon discover), the
Temporary Caelum Cold Fix which I hope is self-explanatory, and Lastly, the excellent
Ashikaga Shogunate mod which replaces T'ien Ch'i with what I consider a much more challenging Japanese nation (the Samurai are
tough).
The next step is to begin the creation of the pretender. Following the discussion I had with Zen, I select the nation of Jotunheim (one of the 3 nations I'm most familar with) and I select the Wyrm (one of my Favorites) as my pretender. Saber Cherry's
Melee Power Rankings Chart ranks it as the 'best' combat pretender (a score of 99.1%), and for good reason as I've come to learn on my own over the past few weeks. The Wyrm has the following stats:
- 160 HP (excellent!)
- 11 Protection (mediocre, but we can overlook this)
- 17 MR (good)
- 26 Strength (excellent!)
- 18 Attack (good)
- 8 Defense (sub-par, but we can overlook this too)
- 50 Leadership (he'll be mainly a SC, but high ldr doesn't hurt)
- 2/10 movement (not as good as the Son of Niefel, my other favorite, but we'll have to make do)
Special Abilities are:
- Regenerates
- Causes Fear (+0) (we will be boosting this)
- Amphibian (will come in handy versus the sea nations, eventually)
- Poison Resistant 100%
- 2 fang attacks with lethal venom
Slots:
Slots are pretty much his only weakness, especially as a SC. Since his attacks will be biting, the loss of the 2 hands isn't so bad. Not being able to buff him with armor or boots is a minus, but not as bad as one might initially think, once he's properly tricked-out with the right spells. Still, I'll miss those Boots of Quickness I'm rather fond of.
I name the critter 'Jorgun' as I'm in a hurry, can't think of anything better, and desire to get on with twiddling scales and such.
continued next post
[ April 18, 2004, 02:24: Message edited by: Arryn ]
Jotunheim:Utgard AAR
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