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[Japo]

Whoah that was awfully unlikely, that the Wild Hunter lived to knock down all your men but one, and then didn't live to knock the last one.

By the way exploring those pagan sites guarded by wolves is pointless. I don't want to spoil anything but the key to the witches lies elsewhere... (Maybe you've found already.)

[Robsie]

In fact the Wild Hunter knocked down all my warriors that were not in full plate (despite one of those 3 had a upper armor in plate though, got from the 1st raubritter i removed from power) at an incredible speed i must say (even the 1st raubritter did not knocked down my troops as quick when my party was even less armored and experienced)

The last man standing was my leader that had the full plate armor from the second raubritter i got rid of (and the higher edged weapon skill too).

But even if he was victorious, he was very close to eat the dirt himself as each of the blows of the Wild Hunter were very damaging.

Attacking every witchcraft worship place and the wolves guarding them had some kind of impact actually : getting my warriors weapon skills higher

In term of progress, i am satisfied with the achievements of my party.

Finally, the heroes can read, as before they always asked Posen townfolks to help them understand what was wrote on each news boards.

The monks were greatly helpfull in making the brains of those proud warriors functionning in a better way with long teachings sessions while the party was taking residence in the inn.

"Heidi the bow woman" is now very capable of fending through bandits, in the early days of our adventures she was really terrible at this basically she was running around when some enemy targeted her, only her bow accuracy and wilderness knowledge (and charisma) were helping the party in specific situations.

Money does not seem to be a problem anymore when sleeping or healing at the inn, taking out 2 raubritter certainly was a righteous fight, but the result was in righteous amount of florins

The tales of those unknow local heroes will soon spread through that haunted german land, at least if those brave warriors survive long enough to tell them

[Japo]

Of course the Wild Hunter is a more powerful foe than a raubritter, for me raubritter are, at the start of the adventure, (unwilling) providers of armor, primarily, :P so no wonder that they're possible to take on with medium armour, otherwise they'd be impossible to take on at all.

However once all your guys and gals have full plate or plate/chain, not even the Wild Hunter will be able to score on them when he's banded by the four at the same time. Well I guess weapon skills are a factor too, but they go up fast and armour's a bigger factor, armour's crucial in this game as I've said before...

[Borodin]

The Wild Hunter does seem somewhat underpowered, once you've goten a few healing potions and fitted up at least one party member with plate. I just put them slightly forward and allow them to absorb the brunt of the attack, while bringing in the rest of my party from the sides. This works equally well if you've summoned a demon at a magical clearing to cleanse it.

[Japo]

Magic is such a poor substitute for iron... :P When I said "score" I didn't mean "kill", but "hit" at all. If the four are in plate and they band forward, none of them will lose a single point of STR against 9 out of 10 Wild Hunters.

[Borodin]

Originally Posted by Japofran

Magic is such a poor substitute for iron... :P When I said "score" I didn't mean "kill", but "hit" at all. If the four are in plate and they band forward, none of them will lose a single point of STR against 9 out of 10 Wild Hunters.

The problem (as I see it) with having a character in plate is that if they do take a couple of hits, you have to remove the plate and substitute something else. That's assuming they already have the highest allowable strength and endurance combination based on the start of the game. (It's possible to go a pointhigher, later, thanks to an event.)

What's more, if you have a character who can wear plate, then they have to sacrifice something else to get all that strength and endurance. Because if you want an effective alchemist or cleric type, you'll be trading off against strength and endurance--both when you select attributes, and when you decide the length of training that your character goes through before starting out on the world. Sure, you can send on an alchemist with next to no skills. It's just going to be very, very hard to make them amount to anything, in my opinion.

[Japo]

Firstly, from my experience with heavy laden characters and from what the manual itself says, the disadvantages of being so are negligible on their own (since Agility is worthless), and of course compared to the dire disadvantages of not being fully armoured. I did complete the game with four guys in full plate, and of course one of them was an alchemist, another one a cleric, and the other a non-academic "PR" representative, and none of them could be improve further in these fields since long before ending the game. No doubt they couldn't have as much Str and End as the other warrior guy when created, but enough to be no more than heavy laden if in full plate and even somewhat injured. It's not hard to find this spot during character creation. It's only that for an alchemist for instance, in my opinion Str and End are still more important than any other attribute except Int; at least that will make an able warrior of him, without making him any less of an alchemist.

Secondly, when a character is so heavily wounded that he goes from heavily laden to more grievous penalties, even though I don't use magic that much, then of course he's reached the point where healing potions or saints are called for. (Besides if I recall correctly potions heal more points the lower Str and End are, so it's better to wait until characters have serious wounds to heal them.) That's how I see it, combat potions are too expensive when compared with the far more effective approach of four ironclad axe-throwing men, but on the other hand Essence O'Grace and healing saints sure are useful (indispensable in dungeons). And if magic weren't available for some reason then it's of course time to rest.

And as for Alchemy, once you have money it can be improved in no time (same as other skills), and before you have money you won't be able to buy lots of ingredients after all, and you can pray to a saint that increases Alch big time (who were for me some of the most useful saints until the later stages of the game). As I said in my long post, my alchemist had exactly 20 at the start of the game (if I remember right), since that's apparently the minimum rating that you need to even find an alchemist in town to exchange formulas for free. Once you have Alch 20, for a would-be alchemist Speak Common is actually more important, since it can't be raised through study unlike Alch, and it gives a bonus when dealing with town alchemists. When creating a future alchemist it's of course more important the Int attribute than the Alch skill, since the latter can be increased until 99 if you have the money, but the former is immovable. If you add 20 to the bonus that the best alchemist saints provide, you have a decent rating until you can pay for Alch lessons.

The same applies to weapon skills of course, you don't need very high initial values in any of your starting characters, since they will go up relatively fast--and for free, unlike Alch.

[Robsie]

As it is out of question in my roleplaying of the "good" current party i am guiding in their adventures, i can't test for now.

But as einartass mention evil deeds, i wonder if you play "evil" characters is it possible to actually destroy a city/village/hamlet, or conquer it a bit like what you can do to those raubritter ?

If it is possible, i think once my "good" party will end their heroic adventures, my next run with new warriors walking on the Darkland world will be a rather busy one.

[Borodin]

But as einartass mention evil deeds, i wonder if you play "evil" characters is it possible to actually destroy a city/village/hamlet, or conquer it a bit like what you can do to those raubritter ?

If by evil, you mean a separate path that is purely selfish and allows you to conquer towns and villages, and ultimately make a deal with the other evil forces in the game, then the answer is no. There is no path like that in the game, unlike, say, Fallout 2. You can't side with the bad guys under any circumstances. You can either attempt to kill them, or be killed, or ignore the various quests you're offered.