Skipping rage skills?

[Shd]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

You answered your own question there, Namel. The more you use something, the more chances to upgrade it you will have. So if you leave Rockfall alone you will have more opportunities to upgrade Underground Blades.

Afaik its untrue. Chance to get certain skill upgrades not depending on how much you use that skill. There is very good table about skills in fan manual and about mechanics i already translated most important part in other thread:

For lvl 3 evil shoal you need your rage spirit at least lvl 8. Mechanics works like:
If you reach all prerequisites (in this case lvl 8 and 2nd level of evil shoal) then one of the choices will be lvl 3 evil shoal (of course if at that point you dont have reached prerequisites for 3 skills. In that case it may not propose you to upgrade that skill, but such situation is almost impossible). So you dont have lvl 8, you hadn't lvl 2 shoal when reached lvl 8 or you just missed it... If you missed it or didn't had lvl 2 shoal at lvl 8 then next chance to get it is completely random.

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Still, by the end of the game, ANY 'fixed amount of damage' type of spell/rage loses its power. Even Black Hole. This is when you need things like Pain Mirror and Soul Drain.

Totally agree. Especially in hard/impossible. And then most important rage abilities is Stone wall/poison cloud/gizmo/time back

[Tibster]

Poison cloud can be exploited to the point of

[Writhan]

Poison cloud is NAAASTY.

Does SO much damage.

Can be dangerous to use though, as it can hit your own units.

[bugmenot]

I'm becoming a huge fan of the swamp spirit.

One thing I will mention though, when you first get poison cloud it has a Rest of 4, and the cloud lasts 4 turns (90% sure of this, but I don't have a save to check).

After an upgrade the Rest is reduced to 3, but the cloud now only lasts 3 turns.

I'm also a bit of a fan of Poison Spit.

At lower levels I heavily used the Sword spirit, but now the enemy stacks are too large for physical damage the poison spit works quite well.

The Swamp Spirit poison reduces enemy attack by about a third, lasts 3 turns, only costs 5 rage and has a Rest of 1 (when upgraded). The actual damage done by the spit is negledgable.

It also stacks with normal poison from snakes / alchemists.
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VMX1200

[bman654]

cheap tactic with poison cloud: Since it triggers at the start of each unit's move, you can deal a whole lot more damage by using Wait on each of your unit's turns. This causes the cloud to trigger once when first visiting your unit and again when your unit is revisited! I only have my cloud upgraded once so far so it does something like 30-60 damage. But in one turn using this tactic against an enemy with 5 stacks, the cloud triggers 15 times! == 450 - 900 AOE damage per turn. The way I handle the danger of damaging myself is to use Royal Snakes as my primary melee unit. They are poison resistant and I use the Archmage defense spell to increase their defense. They typically take 0-1 damage when they are inside the poison cloud.

[mythofillusion]

Hi, I'm new to this forum ...

Poison cloud is wonderful. My cheap trick ... Shaman's Totem + Poison Cloud. This trick really help me soften the enemies threat, especially after you have upgraded Poison Cloud skill. I often use this trick when the battle is going to be tough and long.

[bman654]

what does shaman's totem do?