How strong is archery/psionics?

I recently bought this game and I'm having a blast.

My current success story is Corin, my Archer/Psionics/Deadshot/Bloodmage/Tinkereer/Archeology/Perception.

And by success story, I mean he's just hit dungeon lvl 5, medium difficulty. (previous 6-7 guys all dead between 1-4)

My current tactics are focusing on using the Psionics knockback, followed by shooting any high priority targets a few times before knockbacking again. Then, when just weak stuff is left, relying in my melee attacks (To save up bolts for the later levels).

Ofc, for this to work, I've had to skimp entirely on amour that actually protects from melee, in favour of getting my knockback spell cost down to 2 mana, with a few points of regen. (Eg, Pumpkinns are doing 12 dmg per hit (18 crit) on my 55 hp)

So I'm wondering if there's any level from 5 onwards that will give this guy huge trouble. (say, in the form of knockback immune melee mobs)

 

I think any of them can resist, but it shouldn't be a problem. If you haven't already maxed Tinkering, then you need to. You should have a steady supply of bolts, even if they aren't of great quality.

My first win was with an archaeologist archer. That was in the previous version, before archaeology was nerfed, though. Between traps, and arrows, I never had a problem killing everything!

 

I haven't heard of anyone making a dedicated archer work, but I suspect that's mostly because nobody's mentioned having done so (up 'til now with Vykk ).

Even if monsters resist the knockback from Shove, they'll still not move on that turn, so you can keep spamming Shove at them until some space is created.

Apparently currently if you're wielding a weapon that you aren't familiar with, then your crossbow damage will tank. I haven't tested this myself so you probably should; if that's the case then you should definitely be going dual-shields (or rerolling and swapping out Perception or Deadshot for a weapon skill).

 

Success. That's Dredmore down for the first time. On DM/PM at least.

Though I have to say, it wasn't so much Archery/Psionics as much as Psionics alone. As soon as I got Shove down to 1mp It was more or less all I used from dlvl 6 to like dlvl 9. Shove is just pants-on-head-retardedly stong compared to, well, any other ability I've used so far. A damaging AoE knockback with 1 turn of stun? For 1mp? Really?

Though, just to make Archery not feel like a complete waste, I did kill Dredmore with 4 Bolts of Mass Destruction

Btw, so far as I could tell, the damage from my x-bow was the same, whether I was wielding a weapon I was unfamiliar with or not.

Also, I ended the game with a mage staff with 1 mana regen, 5 magic power and I was doing 55 dmg a hit with it. (Guess that isn't too bad for an unfamiliar weapon wielded by an archer/mage ) Kinda wish I could hand it down to my next character

 

Imho, archery kind of sucks as a skill, mostly because taking the skill doesn't make much of a difference. Psionics, though, is kind of OP. I honestly never used it extensively until my very last run, where I completely depended on it. Hell, I also had Mathemagics, but as it turns out, the only thing I really needed from it was the teleport, and that would only be if I somehow got surrounded (Which was rare what with telekinetic shove). I actually tried using Zenzi when I first got it, then realized quickly that it was totally moot and a waste of mana, with Psionics.

 

In that build, Zenzi is worthwhile mostly for boosting Recursive Curse -- a triple zenzi buff will bring the cost on Recursive Curse way down and increase its power significantly, which in turn will make killing deep enemies much quicker than Shoving them to death. It can also pay for itself if your mana regen isn't that high, since it includes a regen boost.

 

My main point was that I really didn't NEED Mathemagics with Psionics. Of course Zenzi is an awesome ability combined with some other stuff. But the game didn't last long enough for me to take Recursive Curse (I was bored with the game so I rushed to level 10 at some point.

 

I only recently learned that crossbows get the things like magic steel buff without decreasing the counter. Does it work for the hand buff too? Is this going away in 106? I'm tempted to try it.

 

you get like 6 damage for a 3 lv and a skill tree.......

It was only useful back at 1.03 when you can stack hand 3 times and have like 12 fire damage.

 

Poop.

 

Archery is pretty terrible. The best bow does like 20 damage. Cruelly barbed bronze arrows only add like 7? Unarmed will hit much harder. And if you are going caster spells blow archery out the water. Archery really needs to benefit from melee power. Until you can hit for 50 damage or so, it's just a waste of time. But to be fair, it can help as a melee to have archery as a back up. But it's pointless to take as a primary focus especially since you then have to also take tinkering and will spend a fair amount of time making arrows.

With the next patch, alchemy will provide melee with all the healing and offensive consumables they'll need. I don't see a reason to waste skills on archery.

 

Yeah, by the end, I was doing nearly twice as much damage per turn in melee as I was at range, and I didn't even have the weapon skill for the staff I was using. Kinda made me wonder why I was carrying around that big clockwork stringy thing at all.

 

Well, I was using archaeology before it was nerfed, so it may have made my crossbow op. I didn't abuse it, as I didn't know of the bug/feature(?) at the time, but I did re-roll it if I didn't like the stats. And I put only it on EVERY krong anvil from the first floor to the eight, twice. ^-^;

Basically, I was doing a crap ton of damage no matter the bolt.

 

Well, without krongs/archeology which doesn't work anymore bows are pretty mediocre in the damage department. A dual wielder will easily be hitting in the 70-90s late game and a one hand melee user will be hitting for 60+. Casters can kill things before they get to them because it takes one or two casts to kill enemies with a dot. Archers can't, so archery at best would serve as a secondary skill to a melee user. And if you are using archery that way, why bother investing any skills into tinkering or archery.

 

Lol funny thing is archery is gonna get nerfed again on 1.06, so it will no longer work with unarmed damage. As if archery isn't bad enough in 1.03, it has to get nerf over and over.

The only thing I use xbow for is to roll stats on anvils.

 

It's my understanding that it's bow use, and not the skill, that is being nerfed. Big difference. Bow use without the skill is definitely overpowered, possibly partly due to the unarmed damage bug. It's always been my contention that BOW USE without the archery skill needs to be nerfed, while the archery skill itself needs to be buffed to make it worthwhile to take. Right now, bows are so overpowered that taking the actual archery skill does not bring enough to the table to make it worth taking.

 

Bows are OP? I can't see how you come to that conclusion.

Unless you mean the few spell casting bolts that don't really care what you have. Regular damage bolts are not worth the inventory space for most characters.

 

It's OP because, without taking a skill, even wooden and plastic bolts can do 30+ damage at range towards the end of the game. That's pretty good for no skill slot and no points. I actually was doing 54 points per hit MINIMUM in one game due to a lucky artifact bow gain from a quest, again with terrible bolts and no skill, and simply leaping away when mobs got too close.

If I was doing 54 points and I actually had the archery skill, that would be different. But no skill? That's not right.

 

Like you already said, you got lucky and got a good artifact bow. I don't think you can use that kind of highly luck based event as a benchmark. Certainly picking up an uber artifact bow is not a reliable strategy. And when you don't, firing normal bolts kinna sucks with or without skills.

The reason why xbow skill isn't picked because it adds about nothing....... Piercing damage isn't even affected by bad weapon penalty, so you lose a few crushing damage at best. Critical don't boost piercing damage either, and the 5% bolt return per point is just silly.

 

Doing 30+ points was with a common stock weapon and bottom-tier arrows and no skill. I put too much emphasis on the artifact run, so you lost track of my point.

If I was doing 30+ points per turn with a single-target spell that cost 0 to 1 mana, that would be equivalent to this, except that I would have had to actually invest points to get that spell.