DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
NotSerfs
HTML https://notserfs.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Basics
*****************************************************
#Post#: 275--------------------------------------------------
On Talents - A short guide
By: Jessica Date: July 10, 2013, 9:28 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Since just recently someone stated that all the talents that
didn't add directly to your strength were useless, I felt like
elaborating on what I think the talents can do for you and
perhaps help you make the choices that suit you best.
Generic Talents
Every one of the three actions of all three traits has 5 talents
that work exactly the same way.
Let's start with the 3 that add to your strength, namely Lvl 1
(+3% to attack per level of the talent), Lvl 20 (+3% to defense
per level) and Lvl. 60 (+2% to actions per level).
The attack bonus is obviously a strong choice because it helps
you in quests, adventures and PvP. Even if you are not
specializing your traits it could be a good idea to at least
back up your fealty bonus with additional strength so you can
excel there even more. I do not know for sure if this also
boosts the damage you deal in challenges.
The defense bonus on the other hand has very limited use. It
only applies to PvP attacks that are launched against you and in
some cases like barter, aid or bribe, spending points on defense
would be close to outright ridiculous. I would only even
remotely consider the talent if I new in advance that I was
going to be attacked a lot with a particular action and even
then I'd need to have a high base stat for the percentile bonus
to do much good. But if I am under attack, it's likely that they
attack me where I am weakest.
The bonus to actions reads (+2% to actions, +2% to attack, +2%
to defense) and there is some discussion about what that
actually means. Some people assume that there are 3 different
boni here. the only sound interpretation of what a bonus to
actions would do is that it is a distinct bonus that applies
expressly to challenges. That would also mean that the attack
bonus doesn't work on challenges.
The other interpretation is that "bonus to actions" is just
another way of saying that it applies to attack and defense
simultaneously. The added description of bonus to attack and
defense would then be redundant and is probably just there for
clarification (or for confusion depending on your stance). I
personally believe this one to be correct. Some gold items have
recently been reworded (perhaps you remember the list of boni
not fitting on the card earlier). The official explanation for
the rewording was that they wanted to remove redundancy in the
descriptions and that lends itself well to the assumption that
the talents deserve a rewording, too.
Regardless, it's a good talent to boost you further in a certain
area but I'd only recommend taking it for actions after you have
maxed out on the attack bonus because the basic talent gets you
more bonus per talent point and the additional defense bonus
doesn't quite make up for that.
Then there is Lvl 30 - perform actions 3% per level faster. This
will reduce the time you take to complete a quest, an adventure
or a PvP action using the specific action. It will not however
make your actions refill faster after using the skill in a
challenge (don't deny that you had hoped it did). I like the
speed reduction generally because I get my swords back sooner
and might just send them on another journey before I go to bed
when otherwise I wouldn't have wanted to stay up another 30
minutes just to wait them out. The time save is biggest for some
of the late quests which can take about 8 hours. Those would be
reduced to about 6 hours.
However there is some cases where time saving can be more
crucial. One prominent exception would be the aid action. If you
want to aid someone who is under attack, your action would have
to resolve before the attack does. I'm not certain if this is
actually even possible without time saving but in any case you
would gain a few precious minutes by your aid resolving faster.
The same holds true if you want to sabotage the attacker to make
his attack on your friend weaker. Your sabotage would have to
resolve before his attack does, so time is of the essence here.
Since I barter a lot with Alliance members I also gain a lot of
mileage from by barter time save talent because it's just an
action I do very often.
Lvl 30 sworn swords heal from wounds after performing the
specific action 3% per level faster. Now that one is fairly
useless, okay. Don't be afraid of wounds, it's wickedly
difficult to even try and kill one of your swords intentionally,
they won't die on accident. The only nuisance is that their
stats are reduced while they are wounded and even that decreasse
is quite minor. Just send your sword on a long quest or
adventure and they will probably have healed already before it's
finished. I can't even think of any reason or specific situation
where you'd be happy to have invested into that talent.
Specific Talents for certain actions
Fight
Spoils of War Gold gets you 3% per level more silver for
successful fight actions. I would have yet to try it out but I
have a feeling that this only applies to PvP. If you use fight
in PvP to reliably increase your silver income (like farming an
inactive friend with low stats), you will see a nice boost to
your income. If it's worth the gold and talent points depends
mostly on how much you do it. Just as an approximation: If you
bought silver for real money you'd get about 3.000 silver stags
for the 2$ it costs to buy the 10 gold required to unlock the
talent.
Lockbox Gold is the other way round since it saves you 3% per
level in losses from PvP. Mind you, it only saves you from
"Fight" actions so it doesn't help against harass, steal or
swindle. If you find yourself in a situation where other players
fight and win against you so much that you'd consider buying
this, you are probably in deeper trouble than any decisions on
the talent tree can save you from. An easier remedy would be to
always spend your silver to stay below your protected value
which reduces losses by 100%.
Harass
Salt the Earth increases losses to the attacked player by 3% per
level. If you use harass to hurt someone else, this will make it
hurt more. However I am skeptical of its actual use since you
probably won't know if the other player really had silver to
lose or if he was already down to his protected value and
couldn't lose anymore. Spying won't help either since it only
tells you the player's attributes and not his wealth.
Concerted Attack Gold will increase the timer of an enemy fault
by 5% per level. Faults are the debuffs that result from
successful sabotage attacks. If you have the option, applying a
new fault with a 100% timer will probably be more efficient than
increasing the timer by only 40%. Well and then there is other
uncertainties... does he really have a fault? Right, your
teammate sabotaged him just recently but the fault could have
been healed instantly by a bribe or swindled away. Also it would
be difficult to time - since the fault only lasts 3 hours you
would have to make sure that your attack resolves before that
time is up. This will probably force you to attack before the
sabotage has resolved and you don't even know if it was
successful. And finally we don't know for sure if you will add
40% of the original time or just increase the remaining time by
40% which - depending on your timing - can make a huge
difference.
Raid Gold gets you a common resource with a chance of 5% per
level for each successful harass. That's a nice bonus if you
harass a lot but chance are that once you are strong enough to
harass with enough reliability and often enough, that lack of
common resources won't be holding you down anyway.
Aid
Encampment makes the defender virtue you give another player
last 3% per level longer. Instead of 3 hours, it will last 3:45
or something. This would be good if you aid not so much against
a specific attack (which is too troublesome for the small effect
anyway) but to make a player stronger in general. Why and in
what cases you would want to do that I'll detail sometime later
in another post.
Generous Host Gold works like Encampment just the other way
round. Aid you receive will last 3% per level longer. I don't
know if it will stack when you are a Generous Host and the other
player has Encampment but I see no reason why it shouldn't. So
you might find yourself enjoying the bonus for up to about 4:30
hours. Of couse you would have to have some kind of contract
with other players to reliably send you aid on a regular basis
to make the investment reasonable.
Return Favor Gold will give you 10 silver per level each time
you aid another player. I don't know if the action must succeed
for you to get those up to 80 stags but I'd guess no, since the
recipient gets the defender virtue regardless of how good you
rolled your dice. If you aid others a lot, it wouldn't be
morally wrong to get something out of it for yourself, would it?
It's still a small bonus and bartering might be better overall
if you are in it for the money. So just take it as an added
benefit to the aid actions you would have performed anyway.
Barter
Mutual Benefit makes the trading partner of your barter actions
earn 5% per level more silver. I consider this one to be a very
good talent. Frankly, bartering is usually an act of kindness.
Sure, you get the silver, too but most of the time you would
have something more profitable to do for your swords.
Adventuring get's you resources or rare items on top of the
silver and most are quicker than bartering with someone else and
plundering weaklings nets you much more silver. The only real
reason to do it is because the benefit is dependent on your own
level and not that of the recipient and that he or she gets
silver to build up without having to take an action with their
own swords. Now that we have that one clear - barter is about
helping the other not about gaining silver for yourself - the
talent makes a lot more sense than if you look at it from the
egoist's perspective. 5 of your merchants will now hand out as
many stags as 7 would have done without the talent maxed out
which is a good thing.
Update: I am now certain that Mutual Benefit will also increase
the gains of anyone who sends merchants your way. That means
that you could advertise yourself as a worthy trading partner by
maxing this talent and making it known.
Negotiator Gold works like Mutual Benefit but now YOU will get
those 5% per level extra coin. Note that they say "successful
barter action". Is the action unsuccessful if you lose? I think
not, so this would just be a case of bad wording. It's not wrong
to get more for yourself for helping others and you might even
come to think that with 40% bonus bartering is almost as
profitable as the harmful PvP-actions. Since barter could easily
be the single most often employed PvP-action for you, I'd
consider it sound to invest here. But max out Mutual Benefit
first since it is what bartering really is about.
Swindle
Realization makes you learn when you have been swindled after
the fact. Now I don't really know how this should work. It
clearly refers to the fact, that swindle can sometimes appear as
barter to the target. Chances are that they would realize even
without the skill when they notice that despite having received
a barter they now have less silver than before. And they
probably are suspicous when they have received 7 swindles and 2
barters in a row from the same player. It doesn't take Sherlock
Holmes to figure out something here. Still if you receive
barters a lot from outside the alliance and you care about it,
you could sink a single talent point here, no big deal really.
Unseen Costs Gold gets you 3% per level more silver each
successful swindle. The same thoughts that have been given about
the similar Spoils of War talent for fight actions apply here.
If swindle is kind of a primary form of income for you, okay.
Otherwise hardly worth the investment.
Bad Deal Gold gives you a 4% per level chance to transfer one of
your faults to the target of your successful swindle attack. Now
this one could be nasty. Someone out there to sabotage you? Send
them 5 charlatans that swindle them and they will suffer the
fault themselves - take care of timing but you will figure it
out. It's a remedy for faults that doesn't rely on others
helping you with a bribe. But on the other hand - are those
faults really hampering you so much? They are minor if applied
in solitude and if you suffer many, then getting a 32% chance to
rid one of them is only one third a solution.
Bribe
Oppurtunist Gold gives you 5 coins per level for a successful
bribe action. That's a whooping 40 stags after you are maxed out
on it. Really? How often do you bribe someone anyway? It's only
reasonable when they are targeted with sabotage and suffering
faults and the point is about helping them out, not gaining
something. Gaining isn't wrong but it's so little for an action
so rare.
Staying Power Gold tries to make bribery useful by offering you
a common resource at 5% chance per level. Still no deal. A
common resource at 40% and 40 silver stags make bribery still a
waste if you aren't healing faults. And you probably won't have
enough faults to heal to see a return on your investment here.
(Okay, assuming we have a prolonged conflict with another
alliance who always make sabotage attacks AND we elect players
from the alliance whose sole responsibility is to heal faults by
bribing everyone who has been under attack THEN perhaps IF you
are one of the official bribe specialists you might want to
consider investing here...)
Spy
Counter Intelligence gives false info to the enemy if you
successfully defend against their spy attack. Sounds good.
Probably sounds better than it is considering how spying works.
If you haven't spied on your opponent, you will see the
chance-of-success-bar for PvP-actions but not know the exact
defense value and thus can't calculate the exact chance of
success in advance. Now with some experience, you can
guesstimate you opponent's values at about +/- 10% accuracy. Now
if that "false information" clearly contradicts everything else
(like it saying you have 20 combat when you actually have 400)
it's useless because the enemy immediately knows, the info is
false. If it is false in a believable frame, it's useless too.
Or what is the advantage of having someone commit to an attack
with supposedly 55% probability of success when it's actually
only 52%?
Things would be different if the probabilty bar would adjust
according to the (wildly off) false info but if that were the
case, no one would ever spy because he risks having worse info
than before.
Sabotage
Accomplices makes your faults from sabotage last 3% per level
longer. Since applying a fault is all there is to sabotaging,
having them last longer is good. They will still instantly go
away with a bribe though and if the player doesn't do anything
during those hours because he or she is offline, it doesn't do
anything. But still if you are really into the saboteur's
bussiness, you might want to have this.
Relief Effort Gold makes faults you suffer go away 3% per level
sooner. Like other sabotage countermeasures, this one probably
won't do much for you unless you suffer such attacks constantly.
Theoretically you could get the same effect by waiting half an
hour before you go on quests, adventures or PvP-missions.
Second Strike Gold gives you a random resource with a 5% per
level chance every time you sabotage someone. It doesn't say
random "common" resource like the harass-talent "raid" does. But
that's probably just a case of inexact wording and you won't
gain uncommon resources from this one either. As for the rest,
it's just like raid - if you already intend to do plenty of
sabotage, then it's a nice addition but nothing too fancy.
Steal
Sticky Fingers Gold gets you 3% per level extra silver from
stealing. In that it works like the buff talents for fight and
swindle and is just as useful. Or useless, depending on how much
you are going to rely on stealing.
Hidden Pockets Gold makes you lose 3% less per level when being
stolen from. As always there might be cheaper ways to protect
your silver that work better. Using the approximation from the
beginning, you would have to lose 12.000 coins from steal for
this talent to save you the 3.000 stags you could have bought
instead of the 10 gold to unlock the talent.
(To be continued...)
#Post#: 276--------------------------------------------------
Re: On Talents - A short guide
By: Jessica Date: July 10, 2013, 9:29 am
---------------------------------------------------------
(Since the forum wouldn't let me post my not-so-short guide in
one post, here's part 2)
Fealty Talents
Surprisingly enough, the fealties have talents that work all the
same. Let's look at those first.
The lvl 1 skill bonus gives you 2% per level bonus to your
house's special skill. Since you can stack it with the skill's
boni your house might easily determine your specialization. It's
a good pick even if you don't intend to use the skill for PvP
(like the Stark's lousy choice of aid or the Targaryen's spy).
You will still enjoy a good boost for questing and adventuring.
The lvl 13 special building unlock is a must. This talent alone
is the prime reason why most players reincarnate.
At lvl 17 you get to increase your protected silver storage by
150 coins per level. Thus you can have up 2.000 coins in total
protected which is good if other people want to take your
silver. It is bad if other people want to give you silver
because a bug prevents you from gaining money from barter if you
have less than your protected amount.
At lvl 90 you get additional command point. More command points
allow you to do more adventures and PvP actions at once which is
good. It's only one point but it also will cost you only one
talent point, fair enough. Don't take if you are not into having
many swords do many things at once.
House Stark
Winter is Coming makes your swords recover from wounds 3% per
level faster. If wound recovery wasn't so insignificant, this
talent would beat all the skill-specific recovery talents.
Probably still not worth your talent points though.
Descendants of First Men makes you produce units 2% per level
faster. If this is good for you, solely depends on your crafting
activities.
Bran the Builder Gold makes building construction and upgrades
2% faster. Since you definitely build a lot over the course of
the game, this will be used a lot. However it's questionable
whether you will actually get much out of those buildings being
finished faster. Just monitor your game and find out how often
you wish for an upgrade to be completed about 15% quicker.
House Lannister
All the Lannister talents let you save 2% silver per level when
producing weapons, armor and units respectively whereas the
units talent requires Gold to unlock. I never found the silver
component to be really significant in crafting but if you are
not just giving the Lannisters a quick visit for reincarnation,
you will end up crafting many many things. And then many many
many more things, so eventually it might add up to be something
usefull. Perhaps.
House Greyjoy
We Do Not Sow increases the losses other players suffer from
your fight, harass and steal attacks by 3% per level. It doesn't
increase swindle losses because trading just isn't a Greyjoy
thing. The talent only makes your opponent lose more, it doesn't
add to your gains so it just serves to take other players down.
Like the similar harass-talent Salt the Earth, you might see
your efforts wasted if the other player just didn't have any
silver to begin with or just less than their protected value.
Arms of the Kraken speeds up your adventuring by 3% per level
and many people think it is the best fealty talent at all. This
is due to the fact that high level players who are done
reincarnating adventure a lot. Adventuring can get you uncommon
resources for legendary crafting and rare drops like the crystal
sword. You can also occasionaly find an item that's used in the
crafting chain to get a dragon. That's why they care about
adventuring so much and hold this talent in high regard. If your
style doesn't include a lot adventuring, this talent is not for
you, of course. But most will want it.
Iron Price Gold increases silver gains from PvP encounters by 3%
per level. This will help you gain money from fighting, stealing
and swindling. But just in case it works as worded, you would
also receive the extra coin for trading regardless of who
initiated the barter and who won the roll since you get the
silver for encountering and not just for winning. A solid choice
if you see a lot of PvP action.
House Baratheon
Ours is the Fury increases your chance for improved crafting
results for units by 2% per level. This one is great if you
intend to stick with the house for a while. Improved crafting
results can be very impressive and every bit of extra help will
be great. Moreso, I do suppose that a higher chance not only
increases your chance to get a good result but only tilts the
odds in your favor as to how powerful a bonus you will receive
so the talent would do you double good. Of course everything
crafted will be distributed to the seven when you reincarnate so
its use is limited to those who want to move on someday. (The
dragon is theoretically a unit... if the devs didn't code an
exception there, you you might end up becoming famous as the
only player with a superior dragon)
Victory March is a laugh. You can replace your dead sworn swords
2% per level faster. Have you had a sworn sword die? Ever? Do
you have a friend whose sworn sword died? That should answer any
questions about the usefulness of this talent.
Decree Gold decreases the cost for building upgrades and
construction by 3% per level. Since you will always build and
upgrade a lot, you will definitely see some return on your
investment here. Granted it is just silver and that probably
won't be your bottleneck anymore later in the game.
House Targaryen
Fire and Blood increases your chances for good crafting results
on weapons by 2% per level. This puts in on par with Ours is the
Fury from the Baratheons with just a few exceptions. For
starters, units/companions are only available for gold so having
a superior unit could be a viable item for your Lord or Lady's
companion slot. A superior weapon on the other hand will
probably not be strong enough to even replace the Obsidian
Dagger which everyone can get for free. So while better weapons
are always handy to have, they are just a tiny bit less
desirable than armor or units.
Blood of the Dragon reduces your PvP losses by 3% per level. The
wording is different from the similar fight and steal defensive
talents as it implies that you will also lose less when you make
an unsuccessful attack instead of just an unsuccessful defense.
Still I'd say that losing silver in PvP shouldn't be so common
that you'd feel inclined to spend talent points to get a 24%
reduction. Mind you though that in contrast to the
skill-specific talents, this one doesn't cost Gold to unlock. So
if you are of the correct Fealty and have points to spare you
might as well sink them here as a precaution as long as you have
nothing more important to do.
Red Flame Gold will give you 3% more silver per level for
quests. Since quests are one of your primary sources of income
in the early game, this may look like a good idea. However your
quest income diminishes the more you advance in the game. New
content is slow to add and later quests often take more time
without having much greater silver rewards. Eventually you will
run out of content and only get the bonus quests (the random
ones where you choose a friend). Since it costs Gold to unlock,
it's a no-go for reincarnates and the other's might be
disappointed at the returns they get out of the talent.
In summary, yes, there are a lot of fairly useless talents out
there. Some look good but fail to live up to expectations. And
then there is some that actually are better then you would have
thought at first glance. Still there is enough in the pool of
sound choices to force you to make meaningful decisions. And
that's what a good game is about after all.
#Post#: 865--------------------------------------------------
Re: On Talents - A short guide
By: Vigilchau Date: May 24, 2018, 1:48 am
---------------------------------------------------------
What you post will be useful to others who have read.
#Post#: 867--------------------------------------------------
Re: On Talents - A short guide
By: Onimadi Date: May 27, 2018, 11:16 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
These data are very well suited to the needs I am looking for.
#Post#: 869--------------------------------------------------
Re: On Talents - A short guide
By: fontthai Date: May 31, 2018, 1:43 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I think that this question is very good.
#Post#: 883--------------------------------------------------
Re: On Talents - A short guide
By: Surachaii Date: November 29, 2018, 1:33 am
---------------------------------------------------------
The story is very fun.
*****************************************************