If you are not leveling alchemy on your main character, don't craft any healing salves until you have Ismael. Using the shitty ones you find early game is fine but don't waste alchemy supplies crafting shitty low level stuff (except anti-venom if you need it).
Well, I had 3 in Alchemy before I crafted any healing potions because the game required that much to even pick all the Alchemy plants. Three in crating means your healing pots are worth 15 HP, even waiting for Ishmail means they will be worth just 25 HP each. You'll need to use some at 15 HP each & I was soon at level 4 in Alchemy in order to craft bombs, which means healing pots were worth 20. So, yes, I did indeed pretty much wait until the pots were worth something proper & barely ever used them before finding Ishmail. As an example of how fucked up the drops are after a fight: I went into a particularly hard bug fight with no Salves left & about 20 rations, upon completing the fight I was rewarded with about 5 rations. Likewise with the Forge fight, there were no salves or healing roots as a reward, just a few rations, about 40, which wasn't enough by that point to heal the entire party, even though I defeated the Forge boss with zero bombs, zero Liquid Fires & still came out with only about 50 damage all round among all 4 characterss, meaning I had to go into the Enforcer fight with one character at half health. No healing pots after a fucking Boss fight? For real? But even still, even at full health, my swordsman with the best armour in the game at that point dies 1st turn as does Roxanna, Ishmail to a bombardment of attacks from 4 enemies & Roxanna to a bomb. Even if I avoid the bomb first turn & have Ishmail survive the first turn, I'm hanging by a thread for the second turn with no means to net up 6 mooks & no bombs or fire to lighten the amount of incoming assaults & acid is too slow.
But this is all meta-knowledge, a first time spoiler-free run would not know any of this to make these kind of decisions, even if the basics are common-sense, the actual reward structure has no discernible pattern or routine you can learn as you go, in fact it fools you into thinking that there is a routine by having more normal and expected healing rewards after big fights, but then just stops doing it at some point.
Pre-buff all non-ranged characters with anti-venom before any fight with poisonous critters.
Yes, as soon as I realised you can pre-buff anti-poison this is what I was doing, I had no issue with the amount of anti-poison consumables, there's plenty of that. I still have about 7 of those left at this point. Even here, in the early game it would be great if pre-buffing was made clear as an option to the player, because normally one uses Antidotes in games
after one is poisoned, that's what the word means, you rarely pre-buff poison resistance unless it's called a
Resistance Potion. So, bad communication here. Still, it's something I managed to figure out anyway.
It sounds like you are using bombs/fire during the right fights but maybe too many? Killing alchemists before they can throw their stuff at you will net you more consumables than it costs. One bomb plus crossbow strikes should be enough to kill any alchemist. Softening up bosses with bombs is fine but not necessary all the time. Don't forget to use nets. If you save your bombs, you can use them to bomb the toughest bosses to death, making those fights so much easier.
Yes, that's right. I never used my bombs first try at a battle & only if I felt I had to on reload X. By this point in the game I've probably had about 6 bombs? Maybe 8? And this goes back to what I was saying earlier, after you do the Roxanne fight you start getting bombs & your own Alchemy skill is now high enough to allow you to craft them, you then start getting bombs quite regularly, as Ishmail has some & then you start killing Alchemists who have them. But then the game suddenly stops giving them to you, so, much like the Healing Pot problem, the game is suggesting to you a reward structure & then removing it once you're used to it.
And again we're back to meta-knowledge, a first time spoiler-free run would not know any of this, but, duh, yeah, as soon as you've played it once you'll know what you have at your disposal for the next run. It would be great if the devs could confirm how many bombs you get before the Enforcer fight in the current version, or are available & whether they have nerfed them over the years etc. Like I said to the other guy, either they're part of the tactics of the game or they're not.
& yes, my nets were my only means to win the Forge fight. I had about 3 nets left going into the Enforcer fight, but I barely had a chance to use them.
In general you want to be taking no more than 40 damage per fight. For most routine fights, it should be less. For touch fights, 60-70 is acceptable but these are exceptions.
Yes, that is pretty much how it went.
If you're not leveling crafting on your main character, you'll want to get Heiron up to level 6 crafting. You can do this by taking him into two easy fights. The first is the 1st Roxana fight, which is the fight immediately after you find him. The other is the optional scorpion fight in Rock Bottom (the one where you have to climb down the cliff to find them). Skip that fight until you get Heiron if you are not crafting with your main character. Getting Heiron to level 6 crafting makes a big difference. You don't want to take him into the 2nd Roxana fight because you'll have to do the next fight with him too and that is a tough one. If you're leveling crossbows on Roxana, don't forget to give her two loaded hand crossbows in her belt slots (you find hand crossbows in a chest by where you get Heiron).
This is all meta-knowledge & stuff I've already said I'll be doing on my next run. Though I've no doubt some people gave it a shot on their first run because they assumed they'd never bother with points in crafting at all.
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