Coded blue.

Tuesday 10 September 2002

Screenshot DAoC

Pic of the day: Watch your knees! The pint sized Champion strikes again!

DAoC: Dex defender

I have tried this in the past, but I missed a crucial bit of information. In the massive multiplayer online role playing game Dark Age of Camelot, the damage inflicted by most weapons depends on your strength. However there is an exception for thrusting weapons – big needles, if you want. Daggers, stilettos, rapiers, that kind of weapon. They do damage based on an average of strength and dexterity.

The last time I tried to make a shield Champion, I did not know this. I used a Lurikeen, a small and weak but very fast and agile race in the realm of Hibernia. While a human starts with 60 points in each attribute, the Lurikeen has 80 in dexterity and quickness, but 40 in strength and constitution. Blocking, whether with shield or parry, uses the dexterity attribute as well as a trainable skill for each defense. For this reason, a Lurikeen can be an incredible blocker; but because of the frail constitution they die more easily when they miss a block. And because they are weak, they do little damage. In a group, a Lurikeen shield Champion would be in the front taking incoming damage, with a healer in the back to fix him up when he eventually is hit. The group then needs someone else to dish out damage, for instance a spellcaster. But on your own, you are pretty much restricted to hunting greens. (Critters two levels below your own.)

My problem was that of course I had chosen sword as my primary weapon. Actually I did more damage swinging my shield, but that was very tiring. I did not know that there were weapons that were at least halfway based on my primary attribute, dexterity. Now I know.

Another thing has changed too. As a part of adjusting the combined classes up to match the rest, Champions got a spell to increase strength and constitution on themselves only. It is not permanent, but must be cast again every now and then. But it further reduces the need to invest points in strength. Each new character gets 30 points to spend on attributes, so I spent 10 each on dexterity, quickness and constitution. (If you spend more than 10 points on one single attribute, you only get 1 point for each 2 you spend over that limit. For instance spending 20 points on dex, tempting as it may be, would only have given me 95 rather than 100. But a dex of 90 is still 50% more than your average human, meaning I should block 50% more too. That is bound to be a good thing.)

***

Why am I telling you this? Because 1) you want to know what I am doing, for some reason, and this is it. Or 2) you are playing DAoC too and you are interested in unusual character types. Or 3) you typed "lurikeen shield champion" in your search engine. ^_^ Yes, for some reason strangers stop by here. Usually they have the wrong number, I'm afraid, but there are truly a lot of different things to read at the Chaos Node. All of them interesting to me, obviously, but not necessarily all to you. Take your pick.


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