Archaeology is one of the best skills there is. With it, you can freely customize your stats to what you want no matter what character you play as. Assuming you have the patience to use the skill ever 70 seconds or so.
Gonna keep it short since thread is already considerably long. Useless skills: All the crafting skills -> I spend less time on finding and buying better stuff Archery + Throwing -> only 3 skills each, ammo recovery rate way too little to base a character around it Wand Lore Necronomics -> can't for the love of Lutefisk find out how you're supposed to use it without killing yourself Golemancy -> lvl1 spell is pretty useless, Zombys are stupid and slow; I don't find pets to be very useful in general (have only had Zombys and the Lil' Dragon). Dual Wield -> not exactly useless but unfavourable because bugged Corpus Burst -> little dmg, corpses don't stay long enough Five-finger discount -> since Braxx seams to be rather buggy (CTD after attempted steal, he sometimes backs away from the door after you pickup an item and place one of the same sort back on the pedestal, also when he spawns dread collectors, there is no way to escape them, even if you kill hundreds). Magic Training -> not useless but very boring since it has only passive-passive skills (passive-active would be procs) this is in sharp contrast to extremely useful skills like Assassination, Ley Walker, Mathemagic, Berserker Rage etc.
I have to disagree with golemancy. In a monster zoo you can wall yourself up and use the purple spell to kill things (Ive seen this happen and done so myself) And the mustache golem is great for me. Personally i think none of the skills are useless, some just don't work with certain build/ random aspect of the game.
I'm not a big fan of Wand Lore, myself. I'm wondering if its bugged or what. I don't mind Throwing or Archery, but they are not as helpful, usually, as just about anything else. If anyone really likes Wand Lore, I'd love to hear the other side of it because I don't quite get it. On the other hand, the crafting skills (Smithing and Tinkering for non-magical builds, and alchemy for magical builds) are pretty decent. It's true, that sometimes you do find pretty cool items early on (but that's pretty rare). But even if you find yourself well-equipped before you get a chance to craft anything better, the stat bonuses from them can be very worthwhile (trap affinity, for example, should not be underestimated). I'd love to see the Mathemagics level 1 teleport skill get some love. The way it is now, it's generally only useful as a 'hail Mary' when you are out of all other options. And most of the time, it will only make matters worse, not better.
I've only tried Wand Lore once, but it doesn't seem too terrible. An infinitely reuseable Tentaclular Wand is no joke; it'll one-shot damn near everything in the early game, and if you don't rely on your wands too excessively and can maintain a large enough stock to rotate through you can get a lot of use out of it. The big issue with it is that no wand can ever be fired more than once without introducing some chance of burning it out and the cooldown on recharge is fairly long, so you need to be super-paranoid all the time to keep from destroying your most important items. If the second skill reduced the burnout chance to, say, entropy - burn rate (instead of just a flat entropy%) so that every wand could be fired TWICE safely instead of just once, and the cooldown on the recharge skill was reduced to maybe something more like 50-60, I think Wand Lore would become a lot more appealing.
Tinkering is far from useless, it governs both the output of smelted ore and crafted ammo output. Archery basically has to be used in conjunction with high level tinkering. High level tinkering allows your ammo supply to be pretty much indefinitely sustainable. Outside of an archer build it's useless though.
I haven't gotten past tier 3 yet but this is my fungal arts mushroom strategy that worked for zoo tier 2. Apparently my current build is horrible for bosses because it almost killed me until I started using Inky Hoglantern to heal myself. Quite tedious to get mushrooms, but the mushrooms are quite nice so far. Fairy Wodger+Grunge Ear+Fell Truffle+Greedy Blungecap at all times, and Inky Hoglantern is used to apply buffs/heal without getting damaged. I would say Fungal Arts is far from useless, crafting skills and vampirism are quite tedious I've noticed though.
I don't understand why so many people value Ley Walker so much. IMO, regenerating one Mana over 9/7 turns into regenerating one Mana over 6/4 turns plus a minor maximum Mana increase is not worth sinking three points in, and is almost negligible in combat compared to Blood Mage and Magic Training. I can only attribute it to people not fully understanding how Mana regeneration works. With regards to Wand Lore: as I said, if the entropy generation limit of 5 is removed I would find it far more useful, as at level 4 you essentially get permanent wands which you can freely change the type of. IMO that's perfectly balanced considering it is four points sunk.
I have found wand-lore to be a great filler skill on a melee char. Never took it past 1, but so many wands are good to use occasionally. (making walls with the stony wand, healing semi-quickly (much faster than food) with the coral wand, and pushing things back for an escape with the handy wand come to mind). I don't think it could ever be your primary source of damage, but as a 7th pick on a non-mage, it gives you a lot of utility.
My problem with it is just that: Wands are only useful if you use them occassionally, because even 5 Entropy is too high a chance of burn-out; you essentially have to recharge them after every use. But, if you're only going to use them occassionally... why get Wand Lore at all? You can do that without the skill. Really, the only useful Wand I found was the Zodiacal Wand, because its the only one that actually has a semi-unique effect, is not subject to the gimped power of wands compared to spells, and only needs to be used occassionally (but can save lives).
I would regularly use any wand twice before recharge if the need arose, and it only bit me once with a burn-out. Wand lore means occasionally is roughly one wand cast per room rather than a couple per floor (not to mention the ability to keep every useful effect available rather than relying on a ton of luck with drops).
I know Wand Lore has its uses, but really: does anyone ever put points into it? It seems to me people only use Wand Lore for the recharging skill and nothing else. What I'm saying is that it should be worth raising it to level 4, and IMO removing the lower limit on entropy generation would be perfect for that. If I sunk 4 skill points into it, why shouldn't I get unlimited but comparatively weak spells to use?
Wand Lore levels don't seem to actually impact the entropy gained on a wand - if the burn rate is 5, it stays 5 and creates 5 entropy.
It does. The problem is entropy generation never goes below 5 (as I said), which IMO is silly. If you Wand burns 18 then at maximum Wand Lore it will go down to 12, but if it is 6 it will only go down to 5.
Ah, that would be why then. It's still somewhat irksome, since even a small chance of burnout is really crippling - especially early in the game, when you don't have many wands...
Agreed. The first time I took Wand Lore I thought I could actually get permanent wands at maximum level. After finally getting level 4 and pulling out that (initially) 6 Burn Wand of Bling I've been saving for so long, I used it twice and... it burned out. <Insert SadPanda Here>
Actually, if the fourth level gave you a skill to 'unburn' a wand, that would work just fine as well.
While that would be better, I still don't much fancy my wand giving away mid-battle, especially since un-burning would probably slap on a nasty debuff on yourself much like charging does. I say that still doesn't make Wand Lore 4 worth it, the actual Wand spells are weak enough already.
re: Magic Training: it seems useful for Magic Power, if nothing else, especially combined with Blood Magic. Magic Power lowers your spell costs, so if you can get your primary damage spells to the point where they kill an enemy in one hit (or one hit + DOT turns) and get their cost to the point where every enemy kill recharges the mana you used to off 'em, you should be set to cruise through the game.
