Skipping rage skills?

[Zhuangzi]

IMO:

Rock dude:


Smashing Sword is good early but useless later.
Rockwall is pretty useless (others disagree)
Rockfall is horrible.
Underground Blades are excellent when upgraded properly.

I use the first and last a fair bit but ignore the other two.

Sleem:

Poison Spit is useless.
Evil Shoal is extremely good early on, but weak later.
Cloud of Poison is pretty bad.
Glot's Armour can be useful at times.

Evil Shoal is essential early on but Sleem isn't so hot later in the game.

Lina:

Chargers are really, really stupid.
Gizmo can be useful, but ultimately is quite weak.
Ice Ball can be devastating if used correctly (from long distance).
Ice Field or whatever it's called is crap.

In general I use Lina the least.

Reaper:

Soul Drain is THE BEST RAGE SPELL. PERIOD.
Rage Drain is nice, but it interferes with Soul Drain so I don't use it much (unless there are no souls to drain).
Time Back I haven't learned to use properly.
Black Hole seems great initially, but it uses so much rage and you get it so late that you will be facing huge stacks in the later part of the game, so it isn't as good as it seems.

Reaper is the best.

My order of preference by level 20 or so:

Soul Drain
Underground Blades
Ice Ball
Rage Drain
Glot's Armour
Smashing Sword
Evil Shoal

and that's all I use.

[Namel]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Rockfall is horrible.
Underground Blades are excellent when upgraded properly.

Rockfall is horrible at start. But later you can upgrade to hit 9 squares and then 17. (3 across and 5 across). And damage is pretty near same as with underground blades. Problem is that blades hit everyone from start and you don't need to waste 2 levels for more area. So blades are better choice. Going to skip rockfall totally now and concentrate on blades every chance that is given.

[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.

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.

[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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