If I ever have a chance to scrounge up some credits after transing my essential skill trees, I might start investing in artefacts. Questions from a Troll Paladin:

1. Should I prioritize weapons over defense/stat/miscellaneous artefacts or the other way around?

2. If weapons take priority, what are recommended weapons for speed knights? damage knights?

3. If defense/stat/miscellaneous artefacts take priority, what are recommended artefacts that give enough bang for the buck?

You should buy arties that make the game more fun. I suggest a gem of transmutation or eagle wings.

only artie weapons worth buying are lvl 3s. I suggest two lvl 3 rapiers if you're going to buy that.

I always remember hearing that lvl 2s are the best for the price ... I may be wrong.

Weapons I think it is level 3 or nothing, just because of how good forged weapons can be.

For most other artifacts I do think that getting a larger amount of level 2's is probably a better strategy. For your main offensive artifacts you still might want to go for level 3's to maximize damage.

Strictly speaking, lvl 1s are the most 'bang for your buck', but artefact weapons are a bit different. Forged weapons can completely out class lvl 1 and lvl 2 artefact weapons, so you get lvl 3's or you have someone forge you 1000 rapiers/axes/etc.

Edit:

For Infernals lvl 1 or lvl 2 rapiers are just fine, as you will be killing with vivi and not damage.

The credit price raises way too much from lvl 2 to lvl 3, thats why people generally went for level 2s. As a knight, artie weapons are really the last things you need to worry about since forging produces some nice quality stuff.

Complete tangent but anyone remember Degar's scims?

No, I didn't play when Degar did. I came back on the very tail end of his career when all he did was sit around and talk about how good he was. (Kinda like me now, I guess).

Artefact weapons last for a Knight. *well, besides girdle*

Sip rings and regen rings are the best bet to start off with. Really change the small things about combat that add up to make fights last a lot longer. Wings change your life.

Get Bracelets before Girdle, bracelets stack with everything, really make a difference adding on to runes and etc. Girdle just makes you fall to the %damage attacks

Goryllin, what would be recommended starting levels should I choose to go sip rings? Can I start with level 1 and work my way up? Same goes for Bracelets.

If you have 18+ con, bracelets are better in every way than girdles. They're much cheaper, give more health than girdles of the same level, and give extra mana as well. At 16+ con, the health is pretty close, and they're still much cheaper and give mana.

The only time you should ever get a girdle before a bracelet is if you're a high level (85+ for level 3, 90+ for 1 or 2) with low con (under 13), and you don't need more mana. And you can afford the extra cost.

You can upgrade artefacts for just the price difference, so you have nothing to lose by buying a lower level artefact now and upgrading it later.

When I Was buying artefacts, there was no upgrade thing, so I just saved until I could buy 6k credits at a time. I remember once buying a 20k credit package at once-because I knew that eventually I would want the best out there and hated the idea of taking the loss of trading in and then buying again.

With the change the harm of buying early and upgrading up is no longer there. Most definately get the sip and regen rings (both health and mana are awesome) buckawns and wings before you go into more artefacts.

Weapons are really not needed artefacts until you have gotten everything else and are fighting the elite and need a boost.

As I said and Sena went into more detail, get bracelets over girdle any day. Its amazing how well they stack, and you arent as affected on the max health percentage attacks.

on the rings, go all of the way. Each difference is amazing and the rings dont cost nearly as much as level 3's anything else.

How so? Anything that increases max health, whether it's by adding con or a percentage increase, will increase the damage from attacks that use a percentage of max health. The attacks use max health directly in the calculations, not constitution. So if the bracelet gives more health, then you'll take more damage with the bracelet.

yeah, I was afraid that was coming across as confusing. In my experience I did not gain as much health from the bracelets as I did the girdle being a level 50 horkval. But I felt the health benefit from the girdle just made me hurt more, while the bracelets being smaller health increase had a greater benefit. Now that I think about it, I was just being silly so disregard that part of my above post

As troll Paladin you have everything, damage tankiness utility. The only thing you lack is speed. And you can get that only with two piercers.

For any Paladin first artefact should be a pipe and then a fork.

Out of curiosity, what are the main draws of scimitars compared to rapiers? I see some people using those.

Scimitars are sexy.

True(though I have a nagging feeling that I might become infected by the Drizzt-clone virus), but combat-wise...?

Eh, I got two pipes and then a collar of lupus. Swiftmount is awesome.

cleansing w/fork is win

Scimitars do more damage but are slightly slower. They also take less hits to break a limb.

If you have trouble with Paladin combat, you should talk to Destar, Zhozoru or Ellodin. These three are uber.

Yeah, putting fork on the list, if only for that fact.

For a Paladin, the first thing I would get is the tuning fork. Rites are an essential part of your offense and defense, and anything that makes them stick around longer(in this case, twice as long) would be first on my list. Secondly, I would purchase a mount(trans riding first) and a collar of lupus, or perhaps forgo that and just buy an artefact mount. Swiftmount affords a helpful bit of defense in addition to preventing you from being knocked down by certain skills. Pipes are also essential for combat. After this I would buy these in any order:

Girdle
Sip Ring(mana and health)
Mana Regen Ring
Bracelets

And then focus on something offensive, like say weapons. Weapons are the most costly, yet are easily overcome by forged weapons. Strength gauntlets actually dont help a whole lot when it comes to dsl so I would definitely hold off on that. But with the basic set up I've given you, you should have no problem tanking any attacker(often more than one) and can easily kill your target with a good set of rapiers. This is how I do it as an Infernal, and how I would've done it as a Paladin had I bought artefacts when I was one. Just to note: I do have a gem of reincarnation and I have used it to test this setup extensively with all of the races.

Edit: Send me a PM if you'd like and we can go over artefacts, what I've purchased and why, to a better degree.

Trans your skills first, including avoidance and such

Buy a legend mount and collar it

get a tuning fork

get sip rings

then look into +con and bracelets

You can buy at lvl 1 as you can and upgrade now so do that. lvl 2 is probably your best value for credits spent, and once you have all the artifacts you want you could probably look at upgrading to lvl 3.

I wouldn't recommend weapons, or definitely leave them for last.

Also take your time and maybe just pick up a few credits every sale or so, earn a few in game and just buy/upgrade as you can.

Lvl 1 artefacts are the best value per credit spent.

well yeah, technically

lvl 1 gives the best benefit to credit ratio, but the least benefit

lvl 2 gives more benefit while still at the best benefit to credit ratio.

lvl 3 gives the best benefit but at by far the worst benefit to credit ratio

so it is a matter of opinion, I think lvl 2 is the best of both worlds, it is the most benefit you can get AT the best cost.

When you are considering +STR artefacts, remember that 15 is the softcap for strength. Any STR added after that will be more or less wasted. Paladins already have several skills that increase strength? Don't they? Just make sure you strength doesn't go above 15 adding all skills, and in exchange you can get a faster balance race.

Concerning weapon speed you have to ask yourself: do I want to beat herb balance or not? If beating herb balance is not important (or very difficult) to you, then the only thing which matters is the amount of DSL's you can fit between 2 razes. Losing one of those DLS's will make your damage drastically drop. In that light, the difference between apiers/scimitars can be rather small, and scimitars could be prefered because of the higher damage. My advice is if you find a good scimitar, use it, if you find a good rapier use it, ...

Well, I'm a troll Paladin, and yes, Chivalry Fury(+2 STR) and Devotion Inspiration(+2 STR again), and I doubt that I'll be changing race anytime soon(EDIT: Because I already reincarnated once).

With that said, Trolls can still work on being relatively effective speed knights(at least, if I remember the replies in a previous thread of mine regarding this matter) with a good pair of rapiers/scimitars.

Does strength make a big difference when disemboweling? I remember sparring with an Atavian Runewarden and she said that she was at 2k-ish HP when I killed her with disembowel. Is this normal?

The difference strength makes depends on the amount of damage done. If it affects disembowel at all, it affects it the same as any other attack that uses strength.

I disagree with the claim that any strength above 15 is wasted. The increase from 15 to 16 isn't that much less than the change from 12 to 13, for example. The diminishing returns don't get very severe until around 18+, and even then, you'll still always do more damage than you would with less strength. Even going from 24 to 25, the percentage increase is still about 60% of the increase from 12 to 13.

I remember testing it with some stuff, and the increase after 15 was drastically reduced. I must say I actually tested it for INT based attacks near 17 INT, so it -might- be different.

If I remember right, the increase from 15 to 16 is about 6.5% of the base damage, as opposed to 7.69% for 12 to 13 and before diminishing returns. It's still about 85% of the original bonus.

Alright, so my shopping list for now would be, in order of priority:

Transing essential combat skills
Tuning fork
Pipes
Sip rings
Girdle
Bracelet
Legendsteed and collar

Secondary question, not related to combat: If I choose to earn my credits ingame, that would involve plenty of ingame coin-earning. Is forging worth transing(and quite possibly, saving for Hammer of Forging), and is it an effective source of income, or are there better alternatives?

EDIT: Also, yeah, there's Artisanals, but that's another matter.

Did you add that up yet?

forging sucks

All I can say to answer that... Good luck, and more power to you if you actually can manage to earn that many credits IG. As for forging, unless you get a constant supply of bulk orders, or have really good luck, you're better off bashing for the gold. Yeah, every now and then you see someone sell a rapier for 100+ credits, but I'm told that comes along about one in every couple thousand rapiers, and without a hammer it would take about 300 hours to forge up that many of them.

Your best bet is to get a side job at a local burger joint; just setting aside fifty bucks a week will net you a little over 8,300 credits over the course of a year. That's enough for a level 3 of everything on your list, not counting transing out the skills. Assuming you don't live in some impoverished nation, even the crappiest minimum wage job pays better per hour than bashing/forging/fishing/etc.

This is what i'd do.

Transing essential combat skills
Tuning fork
Elm pipe
Legendsteed and collar
Sip rings
Girdle
Bracelet

I'd get the legend steed and collar before the girdle and bracelet as well.

also you won't cry if you don't have a skullcap and valerian pipe, but they are so cheap it barely matters

Mm, yeah, impoverished nation-dweller here. Strange that I call my country impoverished, considering that even the slum-dwellers have better cellphones than I do.

Wouldn't a Ceylonese bracelet be better then having to buy 2 sip rings? Do Ceylonese bracelets not increase your sip as well due to increase health and mana?

I was thinking the +2con girdle and ceylonese bracelets as my first purchase. That leaves 300 credits....Any recommendations?

EDIT: I can't use the fork, the pipes are like a secondary thing once your fat and happy, and the collar is not a big deal to me. I could save for sip ring or trans avoidance and then some.

Extra health (either from the girdle or bracelets) will increase your sip, but not as much as the sip rings. Extra health will also increase the damage you take from most adventurer attacks, though it will be a smaller percentage of your health.

Lay down, black gives way to blue. Lay down, I'll remember you.

Artifact pipes have the most utility and are the best bang for the buck out of any artifact that IRE offers to Achaea. I always reccomend them first to anyone looking to buy artifacts. 50 credits to know that I won't have to worry about my elm pipe going out when fighting an Occultist/Jester/Shaman? Yes please.

As a minor Arti Whore Druid, I use the following arties adn I have found them quite usefull

Diamond Vials (hold 240 sips off of 2 fills) 50c eachx10
Arti Pipes (no worries about relighting) 50c eachx3
Logo Ring (improves sip amount by 30%) 2000c
Logo Braclets (increases health and man by 15%) 1400c
Girdle of Aegis (+3 Con) 2000c
Logo Gauntles (+3 Str) 4000c
Spiked Knuckles (+20% to maul) 1600c
Custom Amnesia Pet 1300c

That gives us a grand total of 12950 Credits Which if I estimate for a bulk order 25 cents a credit means I have spent $3237.50 on my arties alone. My god....All that money. Thats the first time I have actually added it up. Geez

Yeah a set of Tier 3 is expensive as hell. But worth it IMO

EDIT:

Also if you are going to buy a bulk order or credits outside the realms, I would advise that you wait untill they have the 10% Bonus Credits Sale. It may not seem like much when you just buy a couple at a time, but in a bulk order it really adds up.

If that's minor, I can't imagine what a major arti addict is.

Yah minor....lol

Batang just needs a veil to even the set out.

I still have a want list....

Clasp of the Animal Spirit: 1000c
Shackle of Garash: 600c
Hood of the Sphinx: 2000c
Buckawn's Amulet: 800c
Ring of Draconic Vigor: 850c
Aldar Diadem: 850c
Atavian Wings: 2000c
Gloves of Harvesting: 300c
Hammer of Forging: 400c
Lupine Plinth: 300c
Orb of Suppression: 500c


So l still have 9600 creddies to go.....After that I will be a true artiwhore....

Logo gauntlets are 2.5k credits, not 4k. They -should- be 4k though.

They were 4k at one point weren't they?