My wizard is basically used to cast the mindrazor spell (with enough juice for a double shot once per quest) for a nearly-guranteed 25 damage per round to my target of choice. The 50 damage double is good enough to drop even a great shaman, if the elf helps with a hit.
Reading theses posts makes me realize how much variation awaits. It seems the value of a character will be deeply influenced by which skills are unlocked at level up and what gear is found. My Maurader has a skill that lets him turn all melee attacks into ranged ones, but still has low BS and a crappy bow (bleh) and another skill that gives a free attack only when a monster is spawned right next to him (meh).
It seems like the ironbreaker is meant to hit hard but slowly and soak tons of damage. But I dunno if that’s actually workable. I know when mine hit level two he got Deathsong, which allows him to keep fighting after hitting zero wounds, with at least one more hit required to take him down and an unspecified chance such hits wound be ignored, which is pretty badass, if you ask me.
The game allows too much free movement (I believe pinning is only determined at the beginning of the relevant phase) to truly allow for good tanks. Monsters can simply walk right pass my dwarf to get to my backline. Instead, I go about killing the greatest threats first. Truly, offense is the best defense in this game.
The Marauder deals out more damage than the Dwarf on average, but the Dwarf is more reliable (no Berserker meltdown). Since your warriors really only die when things go wrong (often multiple things), I prefer less, more reliable damage.
We have different dwarves…
When my dwarf hit level 2 he got a berserk ability. It may be the most Warhammer Questy skill in the whole game. It’s completely ridiculous.
Every round there is a small chance he will get an extra 1d6 attacks, a small chance he’ll freak out and get his normal attacks with a reduced chance to hit, and a big chance of carrying on as normal.
Now, 1d6 attacks sounds good, and it would be if you choose when it happened. But it’s almost always useless. Because as soon as you make your first attack, you’re rooted to the spot. By the time your base attacks and deathblows are all done there’s hardly ever anything near enough to spend those 1-6 extra attacks on. You’re basically hoping it kicks off when you’re standing next to a boss. Which, of course, it never does.
So far, I’ve had the extra attacks kick in three times (only on one of those occassions was I in a position to use them) and the loss of accuracy kick in 6 times, so the skill has been a net reduction in usefulness.
I still love my dwarf. I want to love him because he’s a badass, but instead I have to love him because of his recurring PTSD.
I wish there was a way to retrain skills by spending gold, or something. Not by spending real cash. That would be evil.
Have you tried working your turn order to ensure that he’s well-placed? E.g., move him before attacking and, if he’s unpinned, using your warriors to clear space around him so that he can park in front of the major monsters?
Yep. One of my favourite things about the game is the fact you can break your heroes’ turns up however you like. Move a bit, switch to someone else, make an atack, switch back, use an item, move again.
But even when he’s parked next to the big monsters there’s only a 1 in 6 chance it’ll kick in. And an equal (?) chance he’ll crap out. Fights just don’t last that long. It doesn’t activate on your first turn, because monsters have to be on-screen before it’ll do the roll. So when you first open the door and go through there’s no chance it’ll activate - and lot of damage gets done that first turn. It’s very rare for a fight to last more than 2 turns.
If it was a once-per-adventure thing, like the Waywalker’s accuracy power it’d be great. But alas.
My dwarf has the same ability. I ain’t saying it’s great (due to the randomness), but I’m happy when it kicks in and can usually take advantage of the extra attacks. It seemed like you were saying it’s “meh” even when it does kick in because extra attacks aren’t all that hot.
I am, I guess. I mean 6 extra attacks is totally overkill. Could you ever use that many without needing to move between them? I’d rather have 1 extra attack every turn than an extra 3 to 6 every once in a blue moon. Especially when there’s no indication said blue moon is due.
It’s also totally prone to the laws of chance - we may have totally different impressions of the skill because for you it’s kicked in a few times when it’s useful. But that varied experience is a downside of such crazily random skills. A percentage of your players will have awful experiences with them because dice are uncaring.
My first dwarf had an ability that did extra damage on a crit. Now there’s a skill.
I think there’s two things going on, there. The choice you raise (1 extra attack every turn) isn’t in the game and is a no-brainer, so it’s not really a basis on which to judge the perk. But, I don’t agree that 6 extra hits is overkill: i.e., unuseable. On the blue moons that the skill does process, I’ve been able to use the extra attacks. Heck, all you need is two of anything (trolls, bosses, or shamans of any kind) other than trash mobs. Admittedly, my dwarf didn’t get the perk until level 4 or so, when bigger monsters were pretty common.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of the perk because of the downside: the chance to go wildly inaccurate. I’m fine with the upside and don’t find it to be waste (when it does happen), is all. As I’ve mentioned, the dwarf’s been the worse for me, by far.
That gives me hope I’ll find it more useful - I got it at level 2 and have only just hit 4, so an just starting to see rooms with 2 or more boos-types in them.
Really hope they port this to PC. I’ve got Warhammer Quest (And even original Hero Quest) in board game form and I’d be all for some randomized dungeon crawling Quest-style.
Of course they probably WON’T port it to PC 'cause that’s how these things go, but still.
While I’m really liking the game on iOS, I’ve got to admit there’s not enough there to make for a solid PC game.
I’m curious: Is the 16GB iPad mini at $329 too expensive for you? I understand that it certainly is not a trivial purchase, but iOS, and the iPad in particular, is becoming a really spectacular gaming platform in its own right, for a certain type of game. And if you want to play WHQ, then you’d certainly want to play other iOS games. In a way, I see an iPad as a new type of portable game system, albeit one with a lot more utility than the typical Nintendo 3DS or PS Vita.
I’ve got characters running from level 4-6 and a lot of the monsters now take 2 hits (or more), so in the long run, I think you’ll find it comes in handy. Even the Rats and Bats have gotten upgraded to Vicious Rats and Vicious Bats that are basically the same, except they take 2-hits in many cases to kill. There are a fair number of rooms which consists of many (4-6) Orc/Goblin “Bosses” which take some 40-50hp and then a Big Boss who takes 60+ hits.
If any of you have long commutes and want to kill 30 minutes there’s a nice lengthy interview with Rodeo Games out on Bad Dice. A few random tidbits:
[ul]
[li] Patch will hopefully be out next week (if it makes it through Apple). Focus of the patch is taking care of any crashes people are having.
[/li]
[li] They plan to release relatively large DLC less frequently rather than small amounts trickling out. Hopefully the first DLC will be coming out in a roughly three month time frame and should include new characters and a new region.
[/li]
[li] The game is actually heavily instrumented so they know how we are playing it (is that normal for an iOS game?).
[/li]
[li] The most popular DLC character purchase is the Warrior Priest, although not by much. The first character dropped from the party if DLC is bought is the Dwarf Ironbreaker.
[/li]
[/ul]
It’s too expensive for something I don’t particularly give a shit about. The two iOS games I’m interested in are this (And not dying for it, just hope they port it) and the cleaned up version of King of Dragon Pass (Which probably won’t get put on PC because I guess the developer doesn’t know what he’s doing, but the original is still fine).
And the only time I’d particularly want to play WHQ would be while I’m at my PC anyway. I ended up with a 32 gig HP Touchpad as a Christmas gift (When they were getting rid of them) and I’ve put Android on it and messed with it and barely use it as it is for non-gaming and never use it for gaming. I don’t have a 3DS, Vita, PSP, cell phone, and only have a DS Lite because I was given one and I don’t really play that, either.
Man I’ve gotten pretty lucky with this new party. In the first two dungeons I found a Ring of Regeneration +2 and another at +1. My healing needs outside of boss fights has gone way down. Then I found an orange ring that anyone can use that lets out a 5 - 30 blast of damage to a single target. And overall my gear feels a lot better this go round.
I have to say that so far I value all four of the starting characters. Rolls are random enough that on any encounter a particular warrior will prove to be the best or worst. I had a marauder miss 6 attacks on a troll, but in another room he cleared 8 monsters in one attack! The grey wizard can’t do anything this turn due to only getting no magic, but that other turn he got 8 and gave the dwarf an extra attack and then healed the waywatcher and kept him from dying! They can all do great things when the dice roll well and they can all suck when the dice don’t.
I’d just like to remind folks that one of the DLC characters (the trollslayer) is also a dwarf so if you’re talking about the ironbreaker you probably want to refer to him as the ironbreaker.