I will speak from my experience only. I think you don't really need that much STR and CON to be successful in combat. I would use 2 points from each to boost INT: 6/8/6/8/8/4.
I never boosted CS above 6 and alchemy above 4, but alchemy is vital in the beginning. I would also recommend you using shields (block) instead of dodge. It's also a powerful combination with spears.
I ended up having 8 points in persuasion and 4 points in streetwise. CHA is not really that important.
Seems like a good advice, I'll dump some STR and CON.
Yeah, I heard that spear+shield is the way to go, but I don't want to have it too easy and will probably settle for swords or axes + dodge ]:->
If you have enough Lore, you will be able to... unlock great properties of a certain item that will allow you to boost STR and DEX. Lore and Crafting should be your main civil skills as they unlock really great things. There will be also a place where you can permanently increase one of your physical stats. Normally it should be CON.
Spear has a passive ability to hit and push away whoever is trying to get close to you, but there must be 1 square between you and them. So, if they got close, you bash them with a shield and your passive ability will have a chance to work again. It really helps when facing multiple opponents.
We worked on Ganezzar for a year so we definitely didn't cut any corners there. It has as much content as any other city, if not more, but the content you get is filtered down by past choices and events. If you don't go looking for Elias when prompted by zealots, you miss the entire fork (4 quests) with quite a few characters, including Miltiades. If you don't side with Marcus, you skip the power armor quest. If you don't become the arena champion, you can't fight in the fort. The faction quests have forks too (side with Hamza or with Varro, recruit Carrinas to break the siege, etc).
I wish you made an expansion for the game instead, similar to Expedition and patch some things while doing this. From what I understand there was suppose to be some kind of a city above Maadoran. I don't think it would have sold less than DR.
We kept patching things and adding minor improvements for 2 years after release. An expansion adding some mid-game content like the hub above Maadoran wouldn't have sold much (10-15k copies tops). An expansion adding some post-ending content would have been receieved as well as Ganezzar: the content would have been split between factions and choices within each faction (Did Paullus side with Gaelius or Meru? Did Carrinas break the siege and betray Paullus or not? Etc), giving you 15-20 min per playthrough and creating much outrage.
Not sure what you mean. Like any other city Ganezzar has over 15 faction quests ('over' meaning quest forks), which is a big chunk of work, plus the side quests I mentioned earlier. That "one" quest you mentioned consists of 5 quests, more if Miltiades get involved.
I disagree about the sales, since people who bought Dungeon Rats are the same people interested in AoD. They would have bought any additional content.
Maadoran has 6 districts: The main area where you get the arena quests, the protection quest, a massive fight in the desert, one or two encounters involving a trader; the slums, which have 2 big fights, the package quest and the awesome well adventures; The Abyss; the trading district which has the monastery quest, the gem quest and a crazy loremaster (which technically isn't a part of any quest, but still important); the noble houses which have only one quest that involves the armor. All of this are side activities.
It's the city architecture. It feels cramped, tight. A plan city, with more space between buildings and the same quests, would be more enjoyable.
Idiot.
That was done on purpose. It was supposed to be cramped and overrun by the gathering zealots. Not saying it was a great idea or that it was executed well.
I actually like Ganezzar's overall design, because after both Teron and Maadoran which were mostly on ground level, Ganezzar has you scale upward the city to explore it. Verticality is rather rare in many isometric RPGs I've played (which is why I'm so fond of Underrail), so a city like Ganezzar is more than welcome, despite of being cramped and tight. I'd like more side content not bound by factional quests and decisions we made earlier, though, even if only 1 or 2. Especially in those residential area right in front of the palace, because I don't remember there being *anything* important there, other than you pass through there to get to the palace or the flying fortress.
The more STR you have the bigger the bonus to a weapon's damage output. Smaller types of weapons have less damage, which means lesser bonus (or lesser penalty). The opposite is true for bigger weapons. So you should choose depending on your STR. Axes, hammers and spears are generally a good choice.
I think forgoing mental stats (PER-INT-CHA) and put all points into physical stats is pretty much my first playthrough, something like 10/10/8/4/4/4 or even alternating between only 9 STR or DEX so you can put 9 CON and 10 into your preferred stat that modifies your offensive-defensive of choice (say, if you prefer Axe-Block, 10 STR; if Sword-Dodge, 10 DEX). Heck, I even beat the final boss *without* the Power Armor, nets, and bolas at all. Only a combination of the best armor I can craft to accommodate maximum defense capability, that artifact-tier bomb you activate through Crafting as first strike, and then using meteorite weaponry to bleed him to death (since I was Sword-Dodge + CS at the time).
Never used nets and bolas much, but bombs are beyond OP and thus hard to come by. I kept them for tougher fights. It's worth to put 4 points into alchemy just for bombs and poison.
Iirc, the sneak penalty was never checked, it was kind of cut-content or something. Need Vault Dweller to confirm it. Although, whenever I played a sneaky character, I always made him wear light armor, although I probably played one wearing power armor at some point, so I wouldn't exactly notice if heavy armor affect sneaking at all.
