I blogged yesterday about the article which pointed out the optimized party based around Mana regeneration and decided to give my version a try. The biggest question to me was whether or not I could change professions at level to accomplish this feat. In brief, the answer is absolutely! As a result, I put my last party on ice while beginning to level up the new party.
To start off, I had to spend time creating four more characters that would replace my last party. The new starting party ended up being:
- Male Dwarf Priest
- Female Elf Priest
- Female Elf Alchemist
- Male Felpurr Mage
- Male Rawulf Priest (from old party)
- Male Faerie Mage (from old party)
In only one instance, I managed to hit a magic 21 bonus roll which was the Felpurr Mage. In the remaining cases, I hit 18 except for the Female Elf Priest whom I think ended up with a 17. Considering how arduous this process was and that I could not obtain the CF utility to patch the game, I think these characters were fine to start.
Before commenting on my current situation, let me briefly address the CF utility. The CF utility is hosted on a Google shared drive and is considered “malware” probably because of the way it modifies (or patches) the binary and a few other files. Because of my general paranoia for ancient files that are hosted in odd areas on the internet, I ended up leaving it alone. If I get a new computer, I might consider giving it another shot. But just to enhance the starting character creation process seems like too high of a risk. But it does infuriate me that GOG has decided not to patch the game further (there are a few key fixes that I think are in place but those are selective).
And if you’re wondering about this CF utility, it is a program that patches the game in a few instances such as fixing the carrying capacity “bug” and the issue with “kill all” type of high level spells like Nuclear Blast. There’s a few of these in the game that are super annoying. I think GOG at least fixed the “kill all” spell problem as I had no issue with those spells (outside of the frequent fizzles). The character creation patch merely updates the minimum bonus rolls so that you start from 18 and can hit up to 26, which makes select the ideal character far smoother.
Given how irritated I was by not having access to this patch, I ended up going through the pain of rolling the new characters. Without the patch, I figured that swapping to the ideal starting class from the “optimized party” would not be possible and I ended up using BaneEdit.exe to update the starting stats (as well as fixing the starting carrying capacity of each character) so that I could swap into the class I wanted. Once I changed classes, I would save, reload BaneEdit.exe, add better starting gear and update my stats and skills so that they felt more reasonable.
So a few things if you want to try this thought experiment out without going through BaneEdit.exe.
- You will absolutely need to spend a crap ton of time to generate a solid starting party if you do not have the CC utility readily available
- In some cases where a race has low vitality, you will need to balance that aspect out with the character you want to swap into as you may not have the minimum stats for that class
- If you don’t start off with a Faerie Bard, you won’t have access to a Lute. If you do start with a Faerie Bard and keep him, you will suffer on the armor side for a while
- Your gear will be crap since you will be loaded up with low AC robes, sandals and staves
- Your hit points might be low since you start mostly with priests and mages
- The only non- Pole & Staff type of weapon you will be guaranteed to receive is the Sword of Striking from the early chest.
- You will have some tiny amount of starting spells. If you’re insanely lucky in terms of starting an Alchemist with an incredible bonus roll where you can swap into say a Ninja, you will have an okay starting advantage as a Ninja with basic Alchemy spells compared to a starting Ninja who won’t get to cast any Alchemy spells for a while.
- Most likely, you will have almost no Skulduggery. This will supremely suck at the beginning unless again you chose to go with a Faerie Bard and don’t mind being near naked for a good chunk of the game.
- If you did something like me where you only intended to keep 2 of the starting classes, you will have really bad stats for a long time and most likely will go through reload hell whenever you level.
- Only do something like this if you’re an absolute masochist and want the most hardcore leveling experience with a slight edge in mana regeneration.
- Mana regeneration still sucks so you’re not getting a massive benefit overall.
As you can see, I think this situation is only ideal if you’re one of those exceptional min/maxer types that enjoy the hardcore grind but will do so with the goal of setting up the ultimate party. Or you can be like me and short cut the whole situation with BaneEdit.exe to get around the suckiness of some bad design decisions in the game (especially if you’re on your millionth or whatever play through and don’t care about cheating)
So let’s evaluate the party here:
- Male Dwarf Priest -> Lord
- Female Elf Priest -> Valkyrie
- Female Elf Alchemist -> Ninja
- Male Felpurr Mage -> Bard
- Male Rawulf Priest (from old party)
- Male Faerie Mage (from old party)
When I switched the Dwarf from a Fighter to a Priest with the intention of making him a Lord immediately, the main effect I noticed was a far slower pace of leveling. Now, it is the Valkyrie who experiences the biggest level gains. On the other hand, the swap from Priest to Lord/Valkyrie allowed me to have two starting Priest spells and a tiny bit of Oratory. Also, that small amount of starting spells helps enable one to begin building up their spell pool a little earlier.
With the Female Elf Alchemist/Ninja, I started off by dumping all of her initial skill points into Alchemy and selecting Poison and Acid Splash for her initial spells. The problem with having a Ninja is that there’s a lot of good skills that you want to invest in early on but every level will most likely devote skills automatically into Ninjutsu (until 51+). So as you’re leveling, you’ll have only a very small set of Alchemy spells for a long time. The only way to correct this issue is to force your Ninja to continue hiding in shadows each round until you get your score up to 51+. But this is very tedious and in the early part of the game almost impossible depending on which slot this character is placed in.
For the Male Felpurr Mage/Bard, I got supremely lucky with the 21 bonus roll. Now, you may ask, “Doesn’t that mean you have no starting Lute?” I do have one and a few other items 
That said, I think more people would have simply stuck with the Faerie Bard. However, I contend that the Faerie Mage is the better choice as the actual starting Mage because you can get the highest spell regeneration from that combination even if you don’t edit your starting party. The Mage -> Bard portion simply helps give an initial boost to the Bard’s spell regeneration and starting spells.
The Rawulf Priest becomes an interesting thought experiment in this new optimized party world because of all the early class transitions. One idea would be to redo this character into a female so that I could transition her into another Valkyrie. If I went this route, I probably would not use a Rawulf but either a Dwarf or an Elf, maybe even a Human. Then the Elf Alchemist/Ninja would probably change into a different race and flip the gender. You would lose one level of spells but for all intents and purposes the leveling experience would feel almost the same except be more fighter intensive. Or I could keep the same party and change the Rawulf into a Lord. Leveling would be slower but the existing Valkyrie would take over healing/buff duty. That does mean that my front line up would have two Lords, which in truth feels redundant. Also, there will be more competition for gear early on.
The one class I highly do NOT recommend switching to anymore for the Rawulf is a Bishop. One Bishop switch will be sufficient in this party and that character will probably be the Faerie Mage since Faeries cannot use many armor and weapons, which make them weak fighters outside of Monks and Ninja hybrids. And if you do plan to swap your Rawulf Priest to a Bishop, it’s much better to do that at level 9+ to race towards Cure Poison and building up your Theology before focusing on Thaumaturgy. My argument against swapping to a Bishop is that it’s a very lengthy process where it feels better if you only swap one character (the Faerie Mage). What I found was an imbalance for either the Mage or Priest portion of spells. Also, keeping track of which side would receive the Mage or Priest spell upon leveling was problematic which meant I might miss a key moment and assign the other school more skill points than the side that would get the spell. In turn, having two classes take forever to level up means that I would miss out on switching to a class with Ninjutsu earlier. With Ninjutsu, you really want to obtain that skill as early as you can as having a whole party hidden means avoiding annoying mechanics.
The Male Faerie Mage I kept even though I think it would’ve been better to recreate him from scratch to devote more points into Vitality for the starting spell regeneration. But the main comment here is that Faerie Mages are great due to having one of the best overall spell regeneration abilities. If I was more of a purist at this stage, I would’ve continued using the old Male Felpurr Bard to gain the precious starting Lute, despite having lower spell regeneration. The goal of the Faerie Mage is to eventually transition him into a Bishop mid game. I do this to race his Thaumaturgy as high as possible and keep him as the primary damage dealer in the group once he obtains Fireball, Iceball and Deep Freeze. With the Rawulf Priest becoming a Bishop in the past, I could balance the two for their transition as the Rawulf Priest would become a Bishop at level 9 and begin quickly assembling his offensive Mage spells. By that point, much of the healing could be done via the Valkyrie or Lord. The only sensitive spot might be Silence spells which you want to work reliably. Dispel Undead is critical too but not in the mid game.
One comment I do have about a starting Faerie Mage vs Faerie Bard is that if you do want to play more “ethically” with a pure/long term party, you would want to provide one point into Ninjutsu from the Bard side. That little point will go a VERY long way especially once you switch into a Bishop (like I plan to) as you can level Ninjutsu as any class on the go. I often times would find my Mage with a lot of downtime as I await the regeneration of his spell points. Mostly in those cases, I would just Parry -> Rest. But that alone does not offer a great deal of rejuvenation of points. The better option would be to use those opportunities to Hide. So in that situation where you go from a Bard -> Mage (which may sound odd), you at least have a tiny advantage with Ninjutsu.
A few other thoughts. Why not do a Psionic -> Monk type of transition? The Psionic’s only advantage with regards to spell point regeneration is having 4 for Mental. But there’s only three significant Mental spells and in my experience aren’t great in the end game. The only reason to start with a Psionic at all is to acquire their Shadow Cloak, which ironically they cannot use. Monks are better end game classes that you transition into rather than start with.
What about switching the Felpurr Mage into a Samurai? Samurai are great front line fighters especially in the early game. Gear becomes very problematic in the mid game because there’s not many boots or gloves they can wear. They shine once again near the end game once you obtain their high end armor and a Muramasa Blade. The reason I prefer Bard -> Samurai is to compensate weak armor by having access to Ninjutsu. Depending on when you transition into a Samurai, you can place such a character in the 4th slot for a little added protection behind your front melee characters who have better AC (which may include a Ninja and/or Monk!) If you do swap a Mage into a Samurai, you can scrap together reasonable gear from Queequeg and to a lesser degree Smitee that’ll take you far enough through the mid game and into the early part of the later game.
As usual, I’m still theorycrafting various scenarios and trying different things out. I might play around more with that starting party just to see what other ways I can swap around classes and races for that ultimate optimized party notion.