The player gets to control the playing characters AND the dungeon master, and you choose what battles to fight. Because while the Thief's barrage does indeed need conditions on the enemy to be super kick ass, you can get up to max damage by level 25 or so because that's two different players using skills, so maxing them out in half the time it takes the Psion to max both of these out. 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. Reminiscences aside, there are 3 ways to get experience in this game. Which can be helpful with the low level enemies. Easily making first few levels a breeze, spells costing nearly no energy and restoring energy with some skill or another furniture. What places this firmly in the theater of the absurd is that he can keep adding to his Threat like this, every turn. So here's another one of those skills that is amazing when used right, and not really worth the skill points otherwise. "Gain +1 bonus to Escape rolls per level" - up to +5. This also translates to 224 overall damage, and that's pretty darn good. A bit like thorns though. I'd rather get in to the Bestiary later, but I do need to get in to it here just to explain what her skill actually brings to the table: 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. And you could also do a 3 or 4 person team, but I like extremes. It lets you use energy as health and, when that happens, makes you hurt enemies that attack you (for up to 80 damage, which is respectable, if you were foolish enough to max this skill out), and that as many times as you get hit in a turn (which, assuming you can survive it, can get up to 240-320 damage easy). I like the Hunter. That's the difference. Meaning you can score criticals. "Energy +10% per level" - up to +50%. This pairs well, actually, with the Warrior built for this team. Each of the classes has four skills, one or two (sometimes three) of which are passive. See, it's based on your Senses attribute. Another good skill for the Hunter! All good. And aside from the extra energy the Lab Rat provides, the four trinket slots can be put to good use by filling them with Spell Damage boosters, at least until the end when the exceptional unique trinkets show up. The only reason the is Fine instead of Meh is how annoying it gets to keep having to fight Troglodytes when you're passing through the Meadow even when you're level 40. For the low and high end ones, you'll find them pretty easily. As now this section of the guide is nigh unusable by those playing the PC version, for whom it is designed. The Mage needs to be the Lab Rat for a couple reasons, so either of the 2 players with 2 in Mind will do here. Just to say though that the natural compliment to this is Backstab. Once again, kind of like the Warlock, if there were twice as many skill points to go around you could take advantage of this "I can do it all" attitude, but there aren't, so you can't. In addition now you can spend slots for other benefits (like increasing critical chance) instead of applying all 5 conditions yourself. But that ability, that beautiful ability, which lets him ignore the armor penalties on your energy. That's up to 560 damage if there's seven unfortunate targets out there. With a Jock Dwarf your MP will be almost only half of your HP, but if you go with a Rocker Human, they'll be almost equal - so just 1 point in this and then you've come close do doubling the damage you can take, and in the process maybe get one or several free attacks. Shred some stuff up! This is your crafty woodsman, your archer supreme, your tree-huggin' turf-sniffin' beast-trackin' wild man. And then you'll start asking yourself why you brought the Hunter instead of the Mage or Warlock... or Thief, Ninja, Paladin... anyone else really. Ms. Goldberry the Paladin who sits First Chair- As I looked over the trophies, read the guide and comments, I knew it was essential to have a tank, so I wanted to make the best tank I could by using the right character and made the role my first acquisition. This, it goes without saying, is pretty fracking badass. Riposte pairs well with this so you have at least some Threat boost, or you could level Power Lunge as well so you're more versatile. About though, not exactly. If you use it on your big scary fighter, they should already have high Threat and decent to great Damage Reduction. The devs did us the favor of letting us have him even if we don't get past the Great Paywall. So, apparently being all bendy and agile appears threatening to the baddies, as you'll max out with +56 Threat on this one. The ability to harness the power of Chi and blow down small straw houses in one blow? There is some synergy here, but this team is not efficient. It's at least better than the Warlock's Life Steal, but that's a pretty low bar. Now this is something you won't find in every gaming world, and honestly I don't think Gary would approve. Here is, for once, a concrete reason to care about initiative. Really the only class you can build in this... relaxed kind of way. Threat is relative, so if everyone gets Threat -X, yes, okay your Mage at 10 Threat will go to 9-5 and your Warrior with (in battle) 50 Threat will go down to 49-45, so it's a bigger difference for the Mage. ), poster child for neutrality - the Druid. But with the addition of Druids vine stun and Knight's 98% critical hit stun, you will be almost guranteed to sudden death every turn! Don't let the 20 extra MP fool you, this is your specialist class. This is all true if what you're hoping to get out of this skill is some healing. Turn into a bear! So, at top level, this will hit all enemies (or all "adjacent" enemies if for some reason you forgot to set up your Board Games in the Game Room) for 56 damage. On the other hand, not using abilities is most of the times counter-productive despite the higher damage. This is key to the strategy section coming up. Or rather, I really want to like him. It increases your critical chance by up to 32%, but more importantly gives you an extra hit after a critical with the potential for more criticals and more hits. Meaning with the XL monsters there's a 33% chance this will be useless. For more than like 5 side quests. This is problem number two, and only gets worse with bigger enemies. Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is a free-to-play game, which means it also uses loot crate mechanics. However, by the end of a full playthrough, you'll have a couple to several thousand gold (depending on how profligate you've been), which carries over to your next game, so, long story short, any gold boost items or abilities are kind of a waste of space. While the energy regeneration here is lovely, really it's the damage boost that makes it great. While a Mage who levels Lightning first and then pours the rest into Arcane Flow will indeed end up having single target damage identical to Frostbite (minus the Stun of course), this is a more balanced Mage for this team, leveling both skills equally, in particular because there's a Warrior in the pack doing the exact same thing, and so you'll be superior to that other Mage for the duration of the game, not just be really cool right at the end. 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. Which will also mean another 3 quests, or 4 maybe can't recall, so more XP. One final note has to do with the sometimes invaluable quality of Criticals, as they are often the only way to inflict Conditions (like the hammer's Stun) on enemies that almost always resist the affliction when they have the chance. At level 5, this is moderately important. So being a Human Lab Rat Thief, just in this case, would be a very good choice. I've never come across any game that so reverently and irreverently encapsulates what that experience is, for single person enjoyment, on a dinky little phone much less a console or PC. It hits any row, and the damage is equivalent to the Mage's Frostbite. Also, this is going to make you more than tough enough, saving you the need to have a Second Skin. Hopefully the author will agree with my thoughts, as his information was really helpful for me. So, you're not gonna be Conan the Barbarian here. Anyway. You are for sure bringing this to the party if you brave the world of Paperos without a Cleric, and even if you have one, this is a great secondary skill to fill in the healing gap for the occasional high damage ur mewling little weak Mage gets. Make this the heart of your Monk's tactics though, and you'll think the enemy forgot their spiked clubs at home and brought over-cooked spaghetti instead. Because the shuffling is random but also not guaranteed. Completely useless against bosses, this one, but that's what the Monk's here for - and the Hunter just doesn't have enough skill points to diversify with any semblance of competence. Mostly useless I find myself resting very rarely but even then a single specialist will save you the trouble, still can be used in some cases. Will mark them with 1-5 score as 1 being least useful. Note: A few of them are only available in the Orienting Village Shop. Guys like that. Although it wouldn't be that dark, because Paladins have a tendency to wear shiny things, have shiny skills, and just be shiny in general. Now, after that's maxed, you have two choices: Build up Frenzied Strike so he heals every turn and is profoundly tankey but with a critical chance that doesn't get past 30%. So Technically it's possible to Sudden Death with Ninja Alone. The 1 point in each attribute makes him the obvious choice for any Swiss gamers, yet not so clear on how to use him. There is nothing wrong with this skill, it adds health and damage reduction. Is it the bald head? IGN Store: We got Tees for Spider-Man, Star Wars, and more! Well, this is what you need to do that. It is, however, the most fun solution to that issue, which is why it's great for me. Put together a bunch of monsters to make it a challenging fight and your rewards will be equally great! Well, I mean that's technically true, but actually more of a gimmick. Once you level up, maybe a few times, you'll notice you're not getting much from them anymore, so move on to the next stop on the main quest fun train. Both have their minor advantages, but I'd go with the Exchange Student for the extra HP from the Body point. Created by. At the end of the game. Still, more HP with that 1 Body point (although more Threat too - booo!). 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. In addition to just being a general all around challenge, you get to see what a Druid with 3 skills plays like, or just how badass the Barbarian can get with points in all of his skills. Energy is very useful, but killing your enemies faster is still doing the same thing as you mostly use energy to kill them anyway. The last category is in the middle-ground specialists are so fond of, the Thief and Druid, Hunter and Ninja. If only you could level up almost every couple quests instead of every five or six. Find out the best tips and tricks for unlocking all the achievements for Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Deluxier Edition in the most comprehensive achievement guide on the internet. But still, despite these minor flaws, hitting the enemy for a max of 392 total damage is nothing to laugh at. This team capitalizes on that, bringing the most potent builds that still work together well. It is however strategically inadvisable to block (Take Cover), ever, in this game. Bonuses to Attributes are the best bonuses you'll find, as they have multiple positive effects, and outside of this it's just the (kind of expensive if you buy a lot of them) rings in the game (with the {more expensive} Almighty Ring {that you have to craft} for a bonus to each attribute being the best) that can give you bonuses here. Also, make sure to give the Barbarian an Axe so that, combined with the Ninja who only needs Weakness to round out his Sudden Death approach, you have a reliable way to cause Sudden Death on anything you can get two criticals on, which will not be unlikely with 60% and 80% chances for each of these Critical monsters. This, right here, used to be how you got the highest possible critical chance in the game. Unlike the other two ways to get XP, what you get from mushrooms is precisely set - at 500XP (or 625XP, with the right Game Room choice). Stunned critters lack the ability to resist anything, so if you can time it right (like, ideally, with a bomb-crazed Ninja stunning the field all the time) then this will electrically boogaloo your victim to a charred crisp in the most glorious way the game allows for a spell for a single target (Thanks, Ekitchi, for educating us about this in the comments). Sort of unexpected since this guy is all about the Rage. That's nice. But that's pretty rare, as most often you'll be slicing your enemies into cubes before that happens anyway. Until they get hit. Leveling both skills at about the same pace is, like for most of the guys in this team, the best approach here. One fireball, and it's toasted jelly on the floor. There's a third kind actually, which is neither a spell or a weapon, which only the specialists (Thief and others) have and it's not a good thing. With one major exception, he doesn't get tougher, and that's the problem here. In this context, I would call it a blunder. "Initiative +1 per level" - up to +5. And your chances of getting hit are as low as programmingly possible because you're gonna have -32 Threat, which is ridiculous. If you can dig it, though, it is pretty sweet getting to level 84 (my personal best with a 2 man team) with 3 skills maxed and the last still at half mast. Like the Goth, you might want him because his attributes are the best option if you've got, say, a slew of casters in your team. Play this game feels like you are playing a traditional pen and paper RPG. I still remember the very first time I sat down to play D&D. Which, by the way, is like the Mage and Warrior Stun, not like the Ninja which is Senses based. Between the two of them and any other Condition inflicting skills your party has (including the Monk's flaming fist), and with the crazy high Threat, your Monk will get most of the hits and not feel a thing. Soon. A Warlock, say, really gets the shellacked end of the stick here, as the best bonus he can hope for is +14 spell damage. So, as nice as it is to set everyone on the field of battle on fire, this is your better all-round damage skill. Nothing. Share. But you might have noticed those zeros. Along with the Ninja, Hunter and Druid. No other class can do this. There are also numerous accessories which give +X% gold as well as consumable goodies. There's no real subtlety here, nor anything in the way of synergy for this team, just fry everything in your path. Once that's done you can do the side quests in pretty much any order. This is very significant, and applies to your Barbarian Jock with an axe Charmed against Weakness with a Paladin in the group laying on the Weakness all the time. And this can get to be pretty significant, if you have it on a whole row, or even two rows (with the help of your fur ball or two turns to work with), meaning everyone. Regardless of how you build him, the Druid is still very interesting to play and has a hamster. Never fear, this doesn't really impact the strategy I'm about to go into, but it does mean I'm not going to be able to be very specific. This skill gives him a boost to his attributes when, and only when, he's enraged. But it's worth it, for me at least, as you get to see what the OP version of every class is like. The only problem I see is that it competes with the Red Sofa (which provides +25% damage). This game is a turn based RPG that will require multiple runs through the game to complete. Or, perhaps, just misspoke. But most of the time, this is better. At the very end of the game with both skills maxed (compared to the Thief who gets to those numbers with one skill maxed halfway through the game assuming he has help from his team). However, he has the slickest looking headgear in the game, I think, this sort of macho tiara. And that "1 point ward" build is, of course, the best combo here, but unlike with the bear situation it doesn't make up for a weakness (the lack of bear toughness), so even though this skill is best used with that build, it doesn't change the value (or rating) of Grappling Vines. Kind of disappointing, ultimately. 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