Starting out soon- Combat, Support and Crafting class synergies?

[Don Bonnigan]

Hi, as I said, I just downloaded this mod, and am going to start later today. I just have some questions about what classes to choose.

I want to go with the skirmisher line. In general, do skirmishers make better medics or engineers? I assume the higher speed lets them medic better, but I'm not sure. If I do go with medic, should I then choose the alchemist as my crafting class, or would black or armor smith better for DPS /defense?

I just want to know if synergy really matters much, or if I should just choose what I like.

Thanks.

[Slayer]

Pikeman - Master Peltast - Medic - Alchemist.

[clickeverywhere]

Hey Don, I'm glad you decided to ask. I've been playing the game for a while so I may be able to offer you some insight.

Currently, the optimal team compositions for most maps have 3-5 commandos, with the rest being ranged DPS classes (crossbowman, archer, pikeman). The commandos block the bots from getting to the damage dealers. Support items (specifically Short Heavy Barricades  [abbreviated as SHC] [Engineer], and Explosive Barrels [barrels] [Engineer], Resurrection Tomes [tomes] [Medic]) are crucial for a teams success. Without these items, Ragnarok mode would be nigh impossible. Hard mode and normal mode are still possible without Tomes and Barrels, but would require much more careful play.

For the optimal team, you'd want two or three medics with tomes (so that more tomes can be spawned in), one barrel bringer, and 12 people bringing in SHC. This way, you have infinite barricades/tomes/barrels and you can efficiently tome in SHC to prepare for waves like Thor and Odin.

Now let's talk about pricing. Short heavy barricades cost around 300,000 gold. Explosive Barrels are likely in the range of five to six million gold. Resurrection tomes can cost seven to eight million gold. Obviously, this is a huge price discrepancy. You'll generally need more players who can bring SHC into a run than those who can bring tomes or barrels, which is why it's best for newer and poorer players to go down the path of engineer. By doing so, you can be more helpful to the team earlier on. Almost every run benefits from having more SHC.

My explanation thus far has only focused on high end items. Let's look at some lower end support items that medics can bring. The medic box is a very powerful tool (if actually put in use). It is equippable by a T2 medic, has 3 charges, and heals 40% of all teammates in a 10 meter radius. Medic boxes and other healing equipment can all be refilled at the ammo box, which means if you have an ammo box in a safe place, you can give your team infinite life. The unfortunate side is that many players who choose medic never have any intention to use medic boxes to help the team. They spawn them in and drop them on the floor, where they do nothing and despawn. They're not barricades, people. You can't just deploy them and forget about them. But anyway, I digress.

The most suitable class to become a medic is probably the archer or the crossbowman. This is opinion based, of course, but the way I see it, archers and crossbowmen need to refill their ammo anyway so two birds one stone. Not to mention, they can carry a lot more ammo than pikemen can. You may think that pikemen would be great medicbox users due to their increased throwing skill, but Pikemen are terrible medic box users because their ammo capacity sucks. If I were to carry a med box, I'd have 28 shots. If I forwent the use of a melee weapon, I'd have 42. not a good number, especially when most late game enemies require 2-4 shots (to the face). For a good example of the archer-medic, see the player Banterin_Mk2. The worst class for using medic kits is the commando. The ammo refill isn't really the preferred hangout place for commandos.

For more information regarding the medic class, check out my forum thread: http://forum.nordinvasion.com/index.php?...909.0.html

So in conclusion, my advice for you if you're going to play skirmisher: choose engineer. Even if you don't go skirmisher, when you are starting out you should just choose engineer. It gives you access to one of the most vital items in the game at a good price. As for crafting class... you can just skip it. You could just ask others to craft things for you via the forum (or if you join a house). It's a huge investment to level up your crafting and it's better to put your resources into buying better gear.


TL;DR: Skirmisher-Engineer-Nothing

[Slayer]

Hey Don, I'm glad you decided to ask. I've been playing the game for a while so I may be able to offer you some insight.

Currently, the optimal team compositions for most maps have 3-5 commandos, with the rest being ranged DPS classes (crossbowman, archer, pikeman). The commandos block the bots from getting to the damage dealers. Support items (specifically Short Heavy Barricades  [abbreviated as SHC] [Engineer], and Explosive Barrels [barrels] [Engineer], Resurrection Tomes [tomes] [Medic]) are crucial for a teams success. Without these items, Ragnarok mode would be nigh impossible. Hard mode and normal mode are still possible without Tomes and Barrels, but would require much more careful play.

For the optimal team, you'd want two or three medics with tomes (so that more tomes can be spawned in), one barrel bringer, and 12 people bringing in SHC. This way, you have infinite barricades/tomes/barrels and you can efficiently tome in SHC to prepare for waves like Thor and Odin.

Now let's talk about pricing. Short heavy barricades cost around 300,000 gold. Explosive Barrels are likely in the range of five to six million gold. Resurrection tomes can cost seven to eight million gold. Obviously, this is a huge price discrepancy. You'll generally need more players who can bring SHC into a run than those who can bring tomes or barrels, which is why it's probably best for newer and poorer players to go down the path of engineer. By doing so, you can be more helpful to the team earlier on. Almost every run benefits from having more SHC.

My explanation thus far has only focused on high end items. Let's look at some lower end support items that medics can bring. The medic box is a very powerful tool (if actually put in use). It is equippable by a T2 medic, has 3 charges, and heals 40% of all teammates in a 10 meter radius. Medic boxes and other healing equipment can all be refilled at the ammo box, which means if you have an ammo box in a safe place, you can give your team infinite life. The unfortunate side is that many players who choose medic never have any intention to use medic boxes to help the team. They spawn them in and drop them on the floor, where they do nothing and despawn. They're not barricades, people. You can't just deploy them and forget about them. But anyway, I digress.

The most suitable class to become a medic is probably the archer or the crossbowman. This is opinion based, of course, but the way I see it, archers and crossbowmen need to refill their ammo anyway so two birds one stone. Not to mention, they can carry a lot more ammo than pikemen can. You may think that pikemen would be great medicbox users due to their increased throwing skill, but Pikemen are terrible medic box users because their ammo capacity sucks. If I were to carry a med box, I'd have 28 shots. If I forwent the use of a melee weapon, I'd have 42. not a good number, especially when most late game enemies require 2-4 shots (to the face). For a good example of the archer-medic, see the player Banterin_Mk2. The worst class for using medic kits is the commando. The ammo refill isn't really the preferred hangout place for commandos.

For more information regarding the medic class, check out my forum thread: http://forum.nordinvasion.com/index.php?...909.0.html

So in conclusion, my advice for you if you're going to play skirmisher: choose engineer. Even if you don't go skirmisher, when you are starting out you should just choose engineer. It gives you access to one of the most vital items in the game at a good price. As for crafting class... you can just skip it. You could just ask others to craft things for you via the forum (or if you join a house). It's a huge investment to level up your crafting and it's better to put your resources into buying better gear.

[Image: Pokerface.jpg]

[madjsoh]

Hey Don, I'm glad you decided to ask. I've been playing the game for a while so I may be able to offer you some insight.

Currently, the optimal team compositions for most maps have 3-5 commandos, with the rest being ranged DPS classes (crossbowman, archer, pikeman). The commandos block the bots from getting to the damage dealers. Support items (specifically Short Heavy Barricades  [abbreviated as SHC] [Engineer], and Explosive Barrels [barrels] [Engineer], Resurrection Tomes [tomes] [Medic]) are crucial for a teams success. Without these items, Ragnarok mode would be nigh impossible. Hard mode and normal mode are still possible without Tomes and Barrels, but would require much more careful play.

For the optimal team, you'd want two or three medics with tomes (so that more tomes can be spawned in), one barrel bringer, and 12 people bringing in SHC. This way, you have infinite barricades/tomes/barrels and you can efficiently tome in SHC to prepare for waves like Thor and Odin.

Now let's talk about pricing. Short heavy barricades cost around 300,000 gold. Explosive Barrels are likely in the range of five to six million gold. Resurrection tomes can cost seven to eight million gold. Obviously, this is a huge price discrepancy. You'll generally need more players who can bring SHC into a run than those who can bring tomes or barrels, which is why it's probably best for newer and poorer players to go down the path of engineer. By doing so, you can be more helpful to the team earlier on. Almost every run benefits from having more SHC.

My explanation thus far has only focused on high end items. Let's look at some lower end support items that medics can bring. The medic box is a very powerful tool (if actually put in use). It is equippable by a T2 medic, has 3 charges, and heals 40% of all teammates in a 10 meter radius. Medic boxes and other healing equipment can all be refilled at the ammo box, which means if you have an ammo box in a safe place, you can give your team infinite life. The unfortunate side is that many players who choose medic never have any intention to use medic boxes to help the team. They spawn them in and drop them on the floor, where they do nothing and despawn. They're not barricades, people. You can't just deploy them and forget about them. But anyway, I digress.

The most suitable class to become a medic is probably the archer or the crossbowman. This is opinion based, of course, but the way I see it, archers and crossbowmen need to refill their ammo anyway so two birds one stone. Not to mention, they can carry a lot more ammo than pikemen can. You may think that pikemen would be great medicbox users due to their increased throwing skill, but Pikemen are terrible medic box users because their ammo capacity sucks. If I were to carry a med box, I'd have 28 shots. If I forwent the use of a melee weapon, I'd have 42. not a good number, especially when most late game enemies require 2-4 shots (to the face). For a good example of the archer-medic, see the player Banterin_Mk2. The worst class for using medic kits is the commando. The ammo refill isn't really the preferred hangout place for commandos.

For more information regarding the medic class, check out my forum thread: http://forum.nordinvasion.com/index.php?...909.0.html

So in conclusion, my advice for you if you're going to play skirmisher: choose engineer. Even if you don't go skirmisher, when you are starting out you should just choose engineer. It gives you access to one of the most vital items in the game at a good price. As for crafting class... you can just skip it. You could just ask others to craft things for you via the forum (or if you join a house). It's a huge investment to level up your crafting and it's better to put your resources into buying better gear.

you're so wise click, also...

a big part of the game that often goes unmentioned is the community. be a nice guy who not only does his best to help the team but also realises his boundaries (don't take a better slashers spot or pick up weapons which another class/person could use better). These things will get you noticed as a valuable team member and a guy worth having in runs. Whether it's fair or not, if you want to get ahead in this game you have find a community of players to do runs with (unless you want to stay in normal mode for the majority of your playtime). If you don't create a strong network of friends to both invite and get invited to runs with you'll find this game impossibly slow.

click has given you a great idea on where to start, but you'll pick up so much more by playing and learning in a group of skilled individuals. find that group, become a part of it and you'll zoom along in Nord Invasion.

[Don Bonnigan]

Wow, thanks for going to the effort of typing all that out for me, clickeverywhere. I'm the type of guy who gets really into making my characters as "optimal" as possible (which, as you can imagine, makes games like Fallout a bit more tedious), so having all that info in front of me helps a lot. I do agree with you, I think it's probably best to go through engineer, at least until I have more experience playing. I didn't even know I could skip the crafting class, which I'll probably do, at least until I'm more leveled.

I like that idea as well, Slayer. If I end up enjoying throwing weps enough that I go onto Peltast, I might respec into medic.

And finally, madjosh, I'll keep that in mind. I'm in a small steam group, and we often play Mann vs Machine and Killing Floor while talking over Mumble, so I know the difference having a well organized team makes over pubbing. Unfortunately, they don't play NordInvasion (or much Warband at all), but I'm sure after I level a bit I could find a house in my region willing to take me in.

Thanks, for the help, everyone!

[Soviet]

Skirmisher is the best starting class imo because of the cheap gear and the simplicity in it.

Yes, skirms an use med kits faster because of the throwing WPF, and is therefore the best class for spam healing (which isn't all that useful on normal mode). Like click said, if you're not going to be spam healing, you should choose archer / crossbowman.
I would recommend going engineer and saving up 60 Hardened Metal to craft a SHC.

What Madjosh said is very important. You won't get anywhere without contacts.

And for crafting, I would recommend going armorsmith, because in the beginning you should focus more on being able to take a few hits before dying. Play a few rounds, craft recruit armor, try to level up and craft foreign cap and leather gloves.

[Sosruko]

I would say the most needed character type in this game right now would be a medic who actually uses the medic boxes he brings in and moves with the shield wall. For this type of character of course speed never hurts and like others have stated Skirmisher is very affordable to gear up at tier 4. Also while you level up and are tier 1/2/3 until level 39 the most useful thing you can do for the team would be indeed healing rather than dealing sub par damage. So if this kind of description feels at home for you go for it and gain reputation and admiration of your fellow players very quickly!

[Mr Killer]

Also there is plenty of people who can craft in any of the crafting classes, all you have to do is look at the thread for which item u want to craft and post a WTC (item) and someone will probably want to craft it for u for free

[Slayer]

Master Surgeons Kit + Master Peltast = No one dies.

Best tip i can give ya