I bring to the community a drawing I just did. It is how I understand the relationships between attributes, charms and classes until now (don't expect perfection, I'm just a lvl6 5-days-of-playing beginner !!).
You can see the 4 attributes with their game colors (
int,
dex,
con,
pow).
Charms are in relation with 2 attributes, but one is a bit more important than the other. Melee charms and classes are pink-red and magic charms and classes are pale-blue.
You can see that every relationship between two attributes has its melee and magic type of charm, and lead to a tier 3 class specialization.
On tier 1 (at lvl 20), you choose one attribute. So everything in relation with this attribute is related to you : your good at using these charms and you can go to any of the related class.
On tier 2 (at lvl 30), you specialize on melee or magic. It means you prefer these types of charms and that you can no longer specialize to the other type of class on tier 3.
On tier 3 (at lvl 40), you choose another attribute to specialize. It can even become your main attribute. This choice leads to one particular tier 3 class.
Exemple (my carreer plan !):
I'm an adventurer. But I would very like to become a slayer ! Because they are so cool with their shifting attacks ! So, I can see that the slayer is a magic user, because she is blue (you didn't think all slayers were guys, don't you
).
Being on the
dex-
int line, she prefers lightning and twinblades. And being a magic-user class, she'll prefer lightning. There are two magic users that can become a slayer : the one on the
dex side (shaman) and the one on the
int side (sage). Even if
int is the dominant attribute of the slayer, I can chose the
dex/scout/shaman path, start with
dex as main attribute and keep in mind that I want to develop
int and become a slayer... Guess what, this is what I'm going to do.
And then how do I become a shaman ? Take a look at the green sphere, which is the the color of
dex, there are the shaman with the rogue and the scout. The rogue is my melee specialized sister : we both specialize from the scout.
Being working mainly on the
int-
dex line, it will probably be more difficult for me to use the weapons and spells on the
pow-
con line, they are kinds of opposites since they share no attribute in common. You can see that fire is opposite to frost, shadow is opposite to holy, therefore lightning must be opposite to earth, and twinblades to axe !
Ok, I don't want to be able to use only twinblades and lightning, and I know that the weapons and spells in relation to the others attributes require to build up these attributes as well. And I might not be able to be good at everything, because compared to specialized players of the same level (comparable sum of the 4 attributes), I will be bad at everything ! So the trade-off I'm ready to do is to favour one of
pow and
con over the other, but to keep
dex and
int higher.
Guess which one of
con and
pow I'll favour ? It's
con of course ! I'll tell you why. It's because I have values, like respect, friendship and solidarity. I am personnally engaged against exploitation of women by men, of non-white by white, of non-hetero by hetero, of poor by rich...
You'll tell me : "what the hell is any of these ideas have got to do with the attributes in Estiah !?! And you want to be a 'slayer' anyway !!
" Ok, I assume I'm playing a war game, but there is some place for solidarity in teamworking (is this convincing anyone ??
). But what is more important is the set of skills you need to become assassin, death knight and inquisitor : they need to be cruel and remorseless !! That is real evil
. You can go somewhere fighting for your rights or fighting for a cause, but you'll go nowhere close to respect and solidarity acting evil !
So I don't want to develop much the
dex-
pow line with its two evil caracters, I'll prefer the way of the paladin
. And now, with
con as my third best attribute, I guess I'll be quite good with the holy and frost magic, and the mace and spear weapons.
Edit :Ok, 9 days have past since I first posted. I'm now lvl 12, so I've learned a little more and I want to go back on the last part, about my third best attribute. I said
I guess I'll be quite good with the holy and frost magic, and the mace and spear weapons.
Experience showed me it is not true. In fact, I'm good with frost magic, I can use lower level holy magic, but I'm not good at using spears and maces.
So, what do we learn from this
? We have to pay close attention to the strong attribute of the type of charm !
As you can see by looking at the picture, spears and maces are closer to
con than to the other attributes, which means that they need higher
con than
int or
dex to enable their use in battle.
For exemple, lets look at the lvl 12 attack charms we can craft with Soul Fragments, excluding those using
pow. By the way, you get Soul fragments in Player vs Player (PvP) battles, and trade them in a safe city, where PvP is not allowed
. Have a look on the wiki (
http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Fragment_Trader) for the complete list
! :
| dex-int : twinblades & lightning |
| this charm... | requires... |
| Brawler's Daggers | dex 43, int 31 |
| Brawler's Lightning Scroll | int 43, dex 31 |
|
| dex-con : spear & frost |
| this charm... | requires... |
| Brawler's Lance | con 41, dex 33 |
| Brawler's Ice Scroll | dex 45, con 30 |
|
| int-con : mace & holy |
| this charm... | requires... |
| Brawler's Hammer | con 43, int 31 |
| Brawler's Holy Scroll | int 38, con 36 |
And now, lets use a bit of maths
. You get to lvl 12 with 125 total points. To use all these charms, you need
dex 45,
int 43 and
con 43. Sum = 131. 131 > 125, so you can't use them all right away, it's impossible
.
What you can do : before you reach the next level, you can get 19 more attributes points, so you can use them all before lvl 13
.
But... you will get the chance to develop skills, which give you attribute points when you master them. You will probably get some
pow points this way. And for the first levels, you don't have a lot of charms to choose from, so you might want to get some more
pow to be able to use all types of charms. In my case, I got 15
pow at lvl 12, so from the 125, I have only 110 in
dex,
int and
con :
dex 40,
int 40,
con 30...
Which means I can't use any of these charms right away
! I'm very close to twinblades, lightning and frost, a little less close to holy, and not much close to mace and spear. My mace and spear stronger charms will always be a couple lvl lower than my stronger twinblades and lightning.
There are different strategies for building attributes. But as you can see, you can't be the best in everything !!
Edit :Tobliz adds an interesting point of view. It seems your caracter can grow so strong that, in the end, you can use the best charms in a charm category not being your specialty.
It should also be noted that once you get high enough, you can start using endgame charms of other types. I include Blade of Betrayal, one of the highest level sword charms in the game, in my deck and I'm a con/dex character.
Tobliz (2009/04/05)