Incline Age of Decadence - Tips, Tricks and Spoilers

[Ihavenoidea]

I did another run as a imperial guard and I feel like game's biggest problem is gated content, while the rest is barebones.
Take Aemolas for example. If you help Feng and get word of honor, and pay the fee to gate guards you're presented with another location giving you the opportunity to earn skill points. However you need to go in this exact fashion, since word of honor is rare in Teron, and if you let Aemolas in first (which is easy to do and seems like a logical choice - get armor, go further), you lose sp opportunity. Same with getting into bulidings - you need to know which are open, what skills you need before a check closes the opportunity etc. The 3d doesn't help. I still love the game, but there is not a lot of sidequests in Teron, and the lack of skill points snowballs for new players.

Feels like Colony Ship with "skill used, skill better" will help more. I just wonder if you'll still get skill points for falling, in case you'd want to switch to a talker, and won't be able to make any check.

Also my axe idiot was swimming in skill points late game, because I knew where additional content was. The sword favoritism (good axes like area champion's or quantari were all 2 handed - I had to make do with Maadoran +21% thc most of the game, which still was strong but there was no progression), was really strong. And when I woke up Agathoth and brought Gaelius to him, we were stopped for one last fight - in which my idiot had a change of heart and threw 2 strong bombs at Gaelius, who escaped unharmed from both of them.

Not being able to betray my trusted ally in combat is decline.

Great game, will go for Miltiades the Right Hand of God ending next

 

[madrigal]

However you need to go in this exact fashion, since word of honor is rare in Teron, and if you let Aemolas in first (which is easy to do and seems like a logical choice - get armor, go further), you lose sp opportunity.

No you don't. Get armor, don't ask about village until you have word of honor.

 

[Technomancer]

However you need to go in this exact fashion, since word of honor is rare in Teron, and if you let Aemolas in first (which is easy to do and seems like a logical choice - get armor, go further), you lose sp opportunity.

No you don't. Get armor, don't ask about village until you have word of honor.

It will be too late if you leave Teron and go to Maadoran. There are 3 ways to gain HoF in Teron: kill loremaster for Feng, ask raiders to assault aurelian mine and pay the leader and another one on Boatmen aurelian spies early quest.

 

[madrigal]

It will be too late if you leave Teron and go to Maadoran. There are 3 ways to gain HoF in Teron: kill loremaster for Feng, ask raiders to assault aurelian mine and pay the leader and another one on Boatmen aurelian spies early quest.

I just went to Maadoran, came back and the option to find out about the village was still there.

 

[Technomancer]

It will be too late if you leave Teron and go to Maadoran. There are 3 ways to gain HoF in Teron: kill loremaster for Feng, ask raiders to assault aurelian mine and pay the leader and another one on Boatmen aurelian spies early quest.

I just went to Maadoran, came back and the option to find out about the village was still there.

Did you receive the quest to find the village in Teron?

 

[madrigal]

Did you receive the quest to find the village in Teron?

Yes, did not have quest before leaving Teron, went to Maadoran came back and was still able to obtain quest.

 

[Johannes]

Sometimes after combat you get the +1 to hit in all weapons. What triggers this?

 

[CappenVarra]

Sometimes after combat you get the +1 to hit in all weapons. What triggers this?

every X combat XP gained, the exact value of X escapes me at the moment...

 

[Johannes]

Thanks. Another thing I'm wondering about, is it really impossible to buy steel arrows? Haven't seen any for sale in Maadoran, only got some I stole from a merchant table. Wouldn't really want to pump crafting just for that... I know the economy in this game is as silly as in any rpg but seems like a retarded oversight.

 

[CappenVarra]

Thanks. Another thing I'm wondering about, is it really impossible to buy steel arrows? Haven't seen any for sale in Maadoran, only got some I stole from a merchant table. Wouldn't really want to pump crafting just for that... I know the economy in this game is as silly as in any rpg but seems like a retarded oversight.

sorry, i don't play archers so i have no idea

i think the Community Edition mod changes the Maadoran blacksmith's inventory to steel, maybe that would help?

 

[Absinthe]

I did another run as a imperial guard and I feel like game's biggest problem is gated content, while the rest is barebones.
Take Aemolas for example. If you help Feng and get word of honor, and pay the fee to gate guards you're presented with another location giving you the opportunity to earn skill points. However you need to go in this exact fashion, since word of honor is rare in Teron, and if you let Aemolas in first (which is easy to do and seems like a logical choice - get armor, go further), you lose sp opportunity. Same with getting into bulidings - you need to know which are open, what skills you need before a check closes the opportunity etc. The 3d doesn't help. I still love the game, but there is not a lot of sidequests in Teron, and the lack of skill points snowballs for new players.

The sidequests in Teron include infiltrating the palace (instead of doing Dellar's missions), Dellar's missions, Feng's mission, helping Aemolas get settled, Aemolas's gold, get robbed at the kabob seller, get robbed in the slums, get mugged in the slums, get mugged in a building pursuing a lucrative business opportunity, con Antidas with Feng's fake ring, explore the squatters' tower (also an easy source of bodycount), con the noble lady in front of Antidas's palace, and repair the smelter (which some players will advise you not to do since the power tubes are worth more than the SP you get from it since the smelter subplot goes nowhere, but really it depends on how many power tubes you anticipate obtaining and using in a game).

There are also a lot more opportunities for SP and training in Teron than that, including Feng's training (7cha or loremaster background), Cassius's training (you can get both by letting Cassius slip by you, collecting Feng's training, and then getting 10 HD reputation for Cassius's training), Antidas's training (7cha only), Dellar's training (7cha only), the boxes (with high perception) in Feng's backroom (10 civil SP to lockpicking), the lore documents in his backroom (10 civil SP to lore), stealing a ton of shit (+1 civil SP each time), breaking and entering in places (+1 civil SP for lockpicking and whatnot), and I think there is some blacksmithing SP to obtain from breaking into the blacksmith's residence, some etiquette training to be had from breaking into right parts of Antidas's palace and reading a treatise on conduct befitting courtiers, and I think there is some minor SP to be had from the Thieves' Guild sidequest when bribing the guards turns into you going to Flavius to steal his promissory note in order to clear his debt and another training to be had from sending the thieves in the slums to join the Thieves' Guild and then collecting Livia's training.

There are a few more stunts to get SP as well. But yeah, given the right build and foreknowledge you can get a massive amount of SP in Teron. And without that kind of foreknowledge the opposite can occur as well, where you have very few SP.

Feels like Colony Ship with "skill used, skill better" will help more. I just wonder if you'll still get skill points for falling, in case you'd want to switch to a talker, and won't be able to make any check.

It's an open question how well Colony Ship will handle hybrids. I suspect not that well. In AoD all the skillchecks were escalating so getting by with a modicum in any skill is a fool's venture as all the skillchecks to tend to scale too high for that skill to be of any use if you haven't been pumping it.

Also my axe idiot was swimming in skill points late game, because I knew where additional content was. The sword favoritism (good axes like area champion's or quantari were all 2 handed - I had to make do with Maadoran +21% thc most of the game, which still was strong but there was no progression), was really strong.

Generally speaking the best weapons tend to be crafted anyway. That's all the more the case for axes, where with 8 crafting you can make a Blue Steel axe that has THC, crit, and weapon mastery bonuses and slap a whetstone on top that gives +4 damage for 40 strikes (+5 for 50 strikes if it's meteor ore with 10 crafting).

And when I woke up Agathoth and brought Gaelius to him, we were stopped for one last fight - in which my idiot had a change of heart and threw 2 strong bombs at Gaelius, who escaped unharmed from both of them.

Not being able to betray my trusted ally in combat is decline

I think by that point your character is fully enthralled to Agathoth. I wonder if having the Mind Shield power changes any of that (of course, you can't bring Gaelius that way), but I suspect it probably doesn't.

Great game, will go for Miltiades the Right Hand of God ending next

Definitely one of the most entertaining endings, for sure.

 

[Johannes]

Yeah I'm just doing a run maximising my SP gains by doing everything possible. Had to restart now because I forgot to speak to Miltiades in Teron after killing his thugs, and now having gotten the bolter which still didn't really make me like the ranged combat gameplay.

But I'll switch stuff up anyway since I learned from here now that you can take the Aemolas quest later too (though I'll have a few fewer SP to use in late Teron / Maadoran due to not being able to visit the farm / sneaking there a bit, will only get them later). Plan is now to instead of sending Esbenus to the outpost, to get Word of Honor, to go to the outpost as a loremaster to join Gaelius and to get the tomb / helmet quest. But I wonder how high a charisma I need to get to receive both Feng and Cassius training, without getting Daratan rep from the outpost. Will see.

 

[Johannes]

Thanks. Another thing I'm wondering about, is it really impossible to buy steel arrows? Haven't seen any for sale in Maadoran, only got some I stole from a merchant table. Wouldn't really want to pump crafting just for that... I know the economy in this game is as silly as in any rpg but seems like a retarded oversight.

sorry, i don't play archers so i have no idea

i think the Community Edition mod changes the Maadoran blacksmith's inventory to steel, maybe that would help?

How is the mod in general?

 

[Johannes]

Has anyone had any success with using a hybrid combat build? As in, training more than one type of weapon and mixing them up in combat based on the situation. Seems cool and fun in theory, but in practice seems p. useless - or is there a niche case? I'm putting 3 in throwing for the CYOA stuff regardless of my actual main weapon of choice, but it seems it's a useless investment later on as far as pure combat is concerned (unless I main in a ranged weapon, but then either I won't be switching between 2 ranged weapon types).

 

[Absinthe]

Johannes, I reckon you can do something like axe+dagger+block+crit+crafting 9-9-4-10-4-4 and stick a solid dagger in your belt so you can vary up your attacks. You get no real synergy bonus, but you do get THC from crafting, 10 perception, and 9 stat and both weapons let you plow through enemies differently depending on your critting needs.

Any time you go for more than 1 weapon you generally want high crafting or high alchemy and 10 perception for the THC bonuses. If you're going for throwing, definitely high crafting since you want that weapon effect (and you'll want a melee weapon with a weapon effect that doesn't care for crit, like swords, or maybe spears if you enjoy keeping enemies at range while pelting them). IIRC throwing boosts your bolas' and nets' hit chance. 8-8-6-10-4-4 with swords or spears can pretty much demolish enemies, just doing swords/spears+throwing+block/dodge+crafting. You can play around a bit with these stats, really.

One thing to note is that you usually leave your weapon skill a bit lower with these builds because you are leaning on 10 perception to basically give you 30 more THC than your average 4 PER build which means you can afford to sit on lower amounts of weapon skill, and that in turn lets you spend those SP on other things (like Crafting) as you skill your weapons more slowly. Since you're using multiple weapons, 10 PER tends to be really valuable to enable your build. And obviously a crafting build loves whetstones. Buy every whetstone you can get, but forget about actually using them until you have at least steel (preferably blue steel) weaponry.

Anyway, this stuff reminds me, it's possible to get absurdly high THC with ranged weapon synergies if you feel like going down that road. Once it costs 20 sp to upgrade Throwing, you should just put 5 SP into bows and 5 SP into crossbows for the synergy bonuses.

 

[shizmoo]

I dont see mixing weapons working, your THC will be abysmal

 

[haraw]

Oh god after playing underrail this teleporting to locations feels like heaven.

 

[Johannes]

Any list of what are the highest skill checks for each skill, and where are they? I'm wondering if there's any use whatsoever for having 10, or even 9, in most non-combat skills. Crafting and alchemy obviously benefit, and there's some Lore 10 check probably, better Trading has an effect but obviously nobody cares about a bit of extra gold at that point... But what do I get for having 10 etiquette or 10 sneaking?

 

[Parabalus]

A good amount of checks are compound with other skills and attributes, so a 10 somewhere can carry weakness elsewhere. Pmuch all straight 10 checks are flavour or have alternatives. Rarely worth it tho, usually late game you can hoard SP and spend it if you fail a check.

 

[Absinthe]

I dont see mixing weapons working, your THC will be abysmal

Speaking from experience, it works quite well. You just want stats geared towards extremely high THC and Crafting skill. The difference between 10 perception and 4 perception is that at 10 perception, all your weapons functionally behave as if they were 3 ranks higher when it comes to hitting stuff, and crafting can net you another rank's worth of THC on both your weapons (Alchemy can net you +25% THC with eagle eye neurostims, but you need around 10 alchemy for that). If you're mixing in a throwing build you can also totally screw enemies with nets and bolas. If you're using nets, spears may be preferred if you want to melee your opponents after netting them, but you can also just throw daggers at them.

 

[d1nolore]

Has anyone had any success with using a hybrid combat build? As in, training more than one type of weapon and mixing them up in combat based on the situation. Seems cool and fun in theory, but in practice seems p. useless - or is there a niche case? I'm putting 3 in throwing for the CYOA stuff regardless of my actual main weapon of choice, but it seems it's a useless investment later on as far as pure combat is concerned (unless I main in a ranged weapon, but then either I won't be switching between 2 ranged weapon types).

I’ve done a sword/block/throwing hybrid before. Keep throwing lower skill as a supplementary attack. Use poison on your throwing and use before they close range. Worked well enough to complete the arena with a bit of alchemy tactics.

You could consider a bow/dodge/dagger hybrid. Using the dagger to poison and finish off.

Towards the end you’ll have enough points to raise these all up.

keep in mind with sword some of the smaller swords fit in a belt slot so you can use a larger sword as a main and switch to a smaller lower AP sword for leftover AP or poison.

Overall with AoD you don’t need to fight every encounter so you can do hybrids.

 

[Ol' Willy]

What about sword+dagger hybrid? These two synergy each other, maybe allow for some cool combos

 

[Johannes]

Is one of the enforcers in the final battle of the "defend the tavern next to the arena" questline the only enemy to use a bola? Or somebody else somewhere too?

And offensive alchemy users, there's Azra in Inferiae with acid bottles (you can loot these when you nuke the village btw), same question, is she unique?



Also what kind of characters are suitable to winning vs Agathoth without bola or bombs... If any? It's so easy with them it almost feels like cheating, but seems extremely hard to pull off reliably without those.

 

[Marat]

There are enemies that use bolas though I haven't played the game for too long to remember the specifics(Hundred Swords or some raiders maybe). As for alchemy NPCs only use bombs. I don't remember a single enemy apart from Azra throwing acid or liquid fire.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Also what kind of characters are suitable to winning vs Agathoth without bola or bombs... If any? It's so easy with them it almost feels like cheating, but seems extremely hard to pull off reliably without those.

Try axeman