A slew of game mechanics questions

[Shinkuu]

I will number these to make it easier to respond to them. Thank you to anyone who responds in advance.

1) I can Tech Binding Crystals with Ice Snare which slows the target's movement for 30 Seconds. This seems to be automatic not a chance based thing. My question is does Ice Snare ACTUALLY work with Binding Crystals? I am not sure I have ever seen an effect. Does it get canceled out by IC's Rooting ability?

2) Besides allowing you to use higher level shields what does the Shield Skill actually DO for you?

3) Besides allowing you to use better weapons what do the Weapon Skills do for you?

4) Besides allowing you to use better Spells what do the Magic School Skills do for you?

5) What is the best way to make coin in the late Tier II's? I have been running out badly going into Tier III because of the ENORMUS cost of Forms and with Trophy/possibly all Quest cash rewards cut in half since the patch I am at a loss to figure out where to get money. I already know Crafting loses you money instead of making it. Even cut in half are Trophy quests still the best bet or is there a more lucrative source?

6) Which is more important for a Tank more HP or more Armor and why?

[Chasing]

1) I can Tech Binding Crystals with Ice Snare which slows the target's movement for 30 Seconds. This seems to be automatic not a chance based thing. My question is does Ice Snare ACTUALLY work with Binding Crystals? I am not sure I have ever seen an effect. Does it get canceled out by IC's Rooting ability?

Don't know the answer to this

2) Besides allowing you to use higher level shields what does the Shield Skill actually DO for you?

Shield skill is used as part of the block check during combat. The higher your shield skill the better the chance of you blocking an attack.

3) Besides allowing you to use better weapons what do the Weapon Skills do for you?

Weapon skills are used during the chance to hit calc and also during the damage dealt calc. Therefore the higher the better.

4) Besides allowing you to use better Spells what do the Magic School Skills do for you?

Same as weapon skills except they are used for magic chance to hit and damage dealt.

5) What is the best way to make coin in the late Tier II's? I have been running out badly going into Tier III because of the ENORMUS cost of Forms and with Trophy/possibly all Quest cash rewards cut in half since the patch I am at a loss to figure out where to get money. I already know Crafting loses you money instead of making it. Even cut in half are Trophy quests still the best bet or is there a more lucrative source?

Don't know havent done tier 2 for a long long time

6) Which is more important for a Tank more HP or more Armor and why?

Debateable, you could say more health as you can tank longer, however you take more damage therefore would your health go down quicker?

Personally I prefer to boost armour as it reduces damage received and you can add resistances to it for more reduction.

You might find the following useful
http://www.crimson-dawn.org/index.php?p=33#combat
and
http://community.istaria.com/forum/showthread.php?t=545

[Dhalin]

As for money in Tier II, I'd have to say do the new quests (what few you can solo; I've seen some of them that are pretty questionable). If you've already done those, then I'd highly suggest stopping, and taking Blacksmith to 100 (you may need a little help).

If you take Blacksmith to 100, you can do things like make/PB tools.

Getting Blacksmith to 100 is easy-peasy; just do Stone Tools all the way up to 100. You can get to 100 fairly easily by going Slate -> Granite -> Obsidian, and there are zero mobs to fight if you use the correct places.

Getting BLK to 100 also raises some of your stats, Strength being one of them. This means that you will do a lot better in combat, and you can wear things like Level 100 jewelery (as long as it doesn't say "Requires Current Adventure School 100" or something like that), capes, and Padded Cloth Armor. Not sure how long one can wear Padded T5 armor, though...

I say to take BLK to 100 because I feel it is the most beneficial of the schools to do so. You can make most (all?) tools yourself to raise your _other_ crafts up, and it is certainly one of the easiest to level and gives you a decent range of gathering/processing skills (Metal, Stone, Wood).

Said gather/processing skills could easily be used to give _fast_ levelups on your other crafts.

For example, I did BLK to 100, then Scholar to 100. The very first disk-full of Obsidian gave me 20 levelups. The second, I was nearly 25 in two disk-loads.

[velveeta]

if you can't do construction yourself, see if you can find a builder to team with - you make the basic resources and the builder makes the finished resources....

if you were on blight, you could make a lot of shinys working on my plot....

plus, a little known secret - you can really clean up playing in the casinos, after you sell the stuff to the pawnbroker......

[Shinkuu]

@ Chasing Thank you very much for the answers to the things you knew about. That will help in some decision making as I go forward. I was always curious as to the nature of those combat skills because they fail to ever say what they ACTUALLY do and yet it seems like everything tells me I should get more of them.

@ Dhalin I am a Blacksmith among other things but the grind is...Mind numbing to say the least and as you go up you need to buy more and more forms & gear which cost a ton of money. So that actually will LOSE me money not help me make it.

It is one of the best crafting schools though. That I agree with but Crafting = -Money not +Money. The best I could do with crafting would be to use Jeweler/Miner and go get gems and pawn them but the return for the amount of time and distance and possibly disk tele fees is not exactly mind blowing. Despite their downgrade the Trophy quests are still more efficient considering you often get a few extra things to sell even if they sell for practically nothing.


@ velveeta I can do construction myself but it is another money loser. Disk fees slowly eat away at funds and the Plot itself never generates any money. Me and my mate both own and work a plot but right now it is a bit on hold due to lack of funding. I cannot afford to be wasting cash paying for tele fees to work on my plot sadly...

I am on Order so no go on working your plot for you otherwise I would consider it depending on the amount offered.

Casinos? You mean the Gambling Halls? I tend to be VERY unlucky when it comes to RNG's and I tried one of those halls just to see and just lost money as predicted...I think I will stick to reliable income honestly.

[velveeta]

i understand your reasoning, and felt that way myself until i realized that at maximum (highest level and largest disk), i only pay 1.2 sp to port a full disk from anywhere i can craft to my home plot.
even the lowest level construction work will earn you some nice coin, even taking traveling distances in mind (for instance, the longest run between resource/workstation and portal is prolly acul for steel or dalimond for elm) after you apply a load of finished resources on a building......
but that's just me, the eternal noob, talking!

[Frith-Rae]

Yes if you can stand the extra crafting (I can't hence why I dont work on others lairs) then working on someone ELSEs plot who is paying you for each piece you place can be a good way to earn good amounts of cash. Ask on the Order MP or post here in the forums asking for plots that are needing the craft-tier you can do; I know that's how many dragons choose to make their money (lairshaping for others).

Farming *groups* of coin dropping mobs that you can take out without too much dying risk is also one of the good ways to make money if you hate crafting. Then you can also sell/use the forms/techs/trophies/hoarde items etc. to make additional money. You may not get any experience from it as the *groups* of mobs is more key (so you're taking out 5-10-whatever number of coin dropping mobs in each pull), but if you just want to farm cash that's about the only way I can think of.

There's no "great" way of making cash in the game anymore (though I've not been tier II myself in years) as most of the craft-pawn-dumps that use to pay out a lot have been "fixed" as they were not working as intended .

I'm a poor player myself as I don't hunt much - spend most of my time just laircrafting - so at the end of 6+ years in game I have a grand total of 500 silver to my name in the last couple of years (has stayed consistent since I've done almost nothing but crafting lol) - so I'm certainly no money maker.

But that's what I can think of - heh.

[Dhalin]

@ Dhalin I am a Blacksmith among other things but the grind is...Mind numbing to say the least and as you go up you need to buy more and more forms & gear which cost a ton of money. So that actually will LOSE me money not help me make it.

It is one of the best crafting schools though. That I agree with but Crafting = -Money not +Money. The best I could do with crafting would be to use Jeweler/Miner and go get gems and pawn them but the return for the amount of time and distance and possibly disk tele fees is not exactly mind blowing. Despite their downgrade the Trophy quests are still more efficient considering you often get a few extra things to sell even if they sell for practically nothing.

I leveled my blacksmith with next-to-no "gear".

I looked at the consigners and occasionally found cheap stuff, *just enough* to keep me at 2:1 with my resource, or to get to be able to make a new tool at 100% efficiency as soon as possible.

I did have to ask for a cargo disk or two, and/or backpacks, but you will need those no matter what you do.

Otherwise, I didn't have to buy much of anything, except for:

Beginner Stone Brick
Beginner Stone Tools (various tools, I forget which ones exactly...)
J-man Stone Brick
J-man Stone Tools (same as the beginner ones)

I think the whole shebang cost me 50 silver or less to get to BLK 100.

Once BLK 100 is reached, though, it is possible to... say... make 50 or so stone tools, and take em to a PB and dump em. Wouldn't really take long, either, and you'd make 10s or so. keep doing that and the money _would_ add up.

Now, fortunately, I have a dragon, and dragons have... unique... things they can make. A full diskload of said items nets me 75 silver roughly.

[Xarog]

I'm going to elaborate very briefly on the armour vs. health thing. From the other thread :

Damage: Weapon/Spell damage + Strength/Power * Attack Delay + Attack Skill * Attack Delay - Target's Armor * Attack Delay

From this formula, you can see that armour reduces a more or less static amount of damage.

Now, in situations where you are dealing with a large number of mobs that do relatively low damage, armour is absolutely wonderful. It really will make it so much easier for you to handle the mobs without seriously risking death.

On the other hand, if you are taking on epic mobs which generally deal huge amounts of damage in sporadic attacks, you are far more likely to survive if you focus on increasing your health instead of your armour. Fafnir is a good example; his scorch ability deals 3500 damage. It doesn't matter how much armour you have, you aren't going to bring that down by too much. On the other hand, his normal attacks aren't that terrible. By aiming for health instead of armour, you're far more likely to survive the scorch if you're caught unawares, giving healers the opportunity to heal you back to full health instead of having to res you.

There is one other thing to consider : in most cases, heals restore your health by a set amount. If you increase your health, you're only increasing the buffer which you have until you die. If you increase your armour, however, you're indirectly increasing the effectiveness of your heals, which also improves your survivability.

So I'd say go for armour, but bear in mind that there are situations where health is obviously a better choice.

[SwordMage]

The other thing to keep in mind is that if you are buying forms from the trainers you are spending much more than you would waiting for Jman forms on the various consigners. It will take a few months to get most of the forms; however, they do eventually show up and not everyone over-prices them.

From my point of view, I have (at level 30 crafting) started collecting the Jman forms I will most need (40-50 armor/weapons/spells for my schools and tools). I figure I can fill in the rest as I go along. Now all I need are a couple of mule characters to store all the forms I can't yet scribe.