The West (as of 3/09, Bat Country will be on World 8)

[Ghambit]

When I first started playing I'd always thought Builders wouldnt be able to build if they were KOed.   Seems a smart, natural game mechanic to me but of course, they can build their merry hearts out after they're KOed (and they actually WANT to be KOed).  If they simply didnt allow post-KO building you'd have much more interesting conflict in the game and smaller towns would have a shot at disrupting the larger ones, and larger ones would have a reason to kill other towns' fighters, etc.

After all, the whole point of the game is basically expanding the town.  If you cant disrupt that then there really isnt much to the game.

[Amarr HM]

When you have any bonus that means you can outclass most players offensive skill without even putting SP into it I would consider it unbalanced.The dueler bonuses are terrible a 10% speed bonus, a 20% bonus to motivation translates as one more duel every 6 days or 3 days if you have premium and the gold bonus is ok but you aren't guaranteed every person you attack has money, if you wanted to make real money go adventurer. Duelers bring absolutely nothing to the table that makes them distinctive a greenhorn is probably better at least you get a decent speed bonus. Anyway makes no odds to me I'll probably go adventurer when I get a horse.

[Musashi]

Is anyone else running Skype having this issue?  Skype seems to be interfering with my Dexterity line.  That little thing also works.  I don't know who it is, and I know nobody in France.  But if I ever want to get hold of him, all I have to do is log in the west.  This just recently started happening, and nothing noteworthy has changed on that pc.  It would be nice to be able to put points in dex when I level!  Wut does I does?

[Amarr HM]

After all, the whole point of the game is basically expanding the town.  If you cant disrupt that then there really isnt much to the game.

I totally agree with this point hence why I made this thread http://forum.the-west.net/showthread.php?t=19702 feel free to rip it apart

[Morfiend]

You guys still playing this? If so, can I join up?

[Prospero]

Post your character name and I'll send you an invite.

[Samwise]

I sent an invite to a level 1 guy named "Morfiend".  Hopefully that's him.

[Kageru]

The dueller bonus is actually better than greenhorn because it stacks with the 150% speed mount. And yes you do want to outlevel and outgear your opponents. That's what lets the copper guys happily punch through my soldier defences.

You want to know how much +tactics gear I'm wearing? Generally none. Since lots of people are going with a melee / toughness build you need a lot of shooting to punch through their defences.

I do agree with the builder issue. I actually suggested on the forums (but the dev's are all german and I'm pretty sure don't read the English forums) that a solution was to have building the town cost on the basis of construction points generated. That did a couple of nice things:

1) The main one is a low level or non pure builder can still contribute to building the town without feeling they are wasting money. At the moment a low level builder is obsoleted by a higher level one. If a builder wants to invest in some duel skills to be able to fight back it doesn't make them less useful as a builder.

2) It allows building costs to scale with town level. At low level they are too much and at high level noise.

3) It limits the ability of a really high builder to very cheaply build later towns.

[Morfiend]

I sent an invite to a level 1 guy named "Morfiend".  Hopefully that's him.

How did you KNOW?

[Hawkbit]

SPY

[Morfiend]

My level 1 just started a 6 hour trek to come fish next to Bat Country. Some one tell me quickly if thats a bad idea.

[Polysorbate80]

For any lowbies, new items in Trammel tailor:

Fancy Wooly Hat -
+5 Toughness
+10 Swimming
+5 Shooting
+5 Animal instinct

Fancy Cotton Shoes -
+1 Strength
+4 Stamina
+6 Reflex
+6 Setting traps
+6 Appearance

Black Clothing (farmer set) -
+5 Repairing
+10 Leadership

[Morfiend]

Can anyone give me some basic hints on what to do with my character if I want to kill other people?

[gryeyes]

If you click on the help tab and go into dueling. It will show the basics of how duels are calculated. And what stats do what. Aim,dodge and vigor or shooting being primary stats. Appearance,tactics for offense/defense bonus's. And toughness,reflexes for melee/ranged mitigation.

[Prospero]

Jack the hell out of dexterity and aim/shooting and get the biggest gun you can. Get gear with as much +appearance as possible. If you want to do quests too, just make sure to only put skill points into shooting, reflex, toughness, tactics, or appearance. They'll all help you duel in one way or another. These days I'm just pumping the hell out of shooting and appearance and it seems to be working.

[Amarr HM]

If you put all your Ap into dex you can do beaver hunting at about level 12 (you will also need about $1000 for the gear), this will also have a pretty good dueler base.

Beaver hunting pays about $42 an hour at 100% motivation.

[gryeyes]

Don't ignore dodge its far more important than appearance/tactics.

[Musashi]

Only if you're going to queue duels in succession, though.  If you maximize your ability to win the duel, it doesn't really matter how much damage you take if you're popping back into the hotel after every duel.  So going for a shitload of shooting/dex, and then adding some appearance/cha isn't a bad way to go either.  That's what I'm doing at least.

[Nebu]

Wouldn't the best way to minimize downtime be to decrease the damage you take each duel? 

[gryeyes]

Well your motivation is the real downtime. But taking less damage than you inflict is how you win. Dodge mitigates more damage by a substantial amount (based on observation). I have absolutely dick for tactics/appearance and have bounced from 30-50th place in rank.

And you cant even look up players level of dodge because it "greatly effects game play" but you can look up appearance and tactics.

[Nebu]

Well your motivation is the real downtime. But taking less damage than you inflict is how you win. Dodge mitigates more damage by a substantial amount (based on observation). I have absolutely dick for tactics/appearance and have bounced from 30-50th place in rank.

I see what you mean.  Min-maxxing your dueling ability then depends on finding the best combination of damage and avoidance.  I would think that avoidance would be more important with the way duels are decided as you have to go through a set number of attacks rather than fighting until the other person runs out of hp. 

Does that make sense?

[gryeyes]

Ya your doing it for exp it does not matter if you win by 5hps or 500. In fact if you KO the other guy you cant milk more exp from him. So its actually a determent to you (unless you are trying to take them out). But aim,dodge and then damage stat vigor/shooting are the primaries. The others give a benefit but not nearly as much.

[Nebu]

Thanks.  That helps.

[rk47]

Which is what i'm actually planning to do to complete this annoying lvl 35 Adventurer quest. The NPC Just hits too hard for non combat specced types. But I'm unsure whether to dump stat on mobility or dex. I'm just gonna put 2 points on dodge and 1 on shooting per level up while saving money/ luck drop farming for a decent gun . I've got plenty of appearance.

[gryeyes]

Ya im screwed my gear sucks have minimal funds and carving claims is my best job. With a dueling level 22 levels above my character. People try to instantly farm me for exp  . If im not in a hotel i will be KO'd within 30 minutes.

[Amarr HM]

I just made the mother of all fuckups. I sold all my shit from jobs and I was trying to make an extra few $ to go to rock ridge and buy some nice new gear but decided to do some river fishing in the meantime who would have thought river fishing could be so dangerous.

You fall off a canoe and catch a cold. You lose 199 health points.

You fall off a canoe and catch a cold. You lose 207 health points.

Dead faint    Your health points dropped to 0. You passed out and therefore you will receive no money and no experience points for this job. When you wake up you find yourself in a hotel room. During the accident you must have lost all of the money you had with you. You feel exhausted, all you need is sleep.

$1500 down the swanee, you should probably read this Morfiend :P

[Morfiend]

How do I bank money?

I already noticed that my money was listed as not secure.

[Musashi]

I think Aim/Dodging aren't available on the west stat lookup thingey not because they are weighted any higher than the other stats, but that someone with low dodge is extremely vulnerable to someone with high aim.  So one could look up players with low dodge and destroy them.

On the other hand, Appearance may be just as good or better when you're attacking.  While tactics may be just as good or better when you're being attacked.  So, if you're a soldier stacking cha is one way to go.

I wouldn't do it as a dueler though.

[Musashi]

Also, the bank is in town.  You have to physically go there to deposit/withdraw.  You probably don't have to worry too much about getting attacked your first few levels.

[gryeyes]

I think Aim/Dodging aren't available on the west stat lookup thingey not because they are weighted any higher than the other stats, but that someone with low dodge is extremely vulnerable to someone with high aim.  So one could look up players with low dodge and destroy them

That means they are weighted higher...if you know their value it confers a great advantage. Whereas appearance/tactics does not. If appearance/tactics had the same impact it would confer the same advantage knowing its value. But more importantly look at the people with very high values in appearance or tactics none of them are high ranked duelers.

Appearance/tactics only modifies your attack value which is based on aim. While dodge IS your defense value. No way a secondary stat has a greater effect over the primary.

[Pezzle]

appearance/tactics also modify your opponents aim.  They must.

[Prospero]

On offense:
If your appearance is higher than your tactics, their attack roll is decreased and yours is unaffected.
If their tactics is higher than your appearance, you attack roll is decreased, and theirs is unaffected.

So, it acts both to improve your attack roll( in that it isn't decreased ) and improve your chance to dodge. Based of their help it seems appearance/tactics are more useful than dodge.

[Amarr HM]

I reckon they might actually effect them in a big way it's not percentage based cause there's nothing to round them up against. So I reckon it's something like tactics/appearance and then a percentage of the differential is removed from the losers aim (I'll hazard a guess at 50%).

It only effects the losers aim according to the help file.

[Kageru]

No one really knows. It could easily be a +5 / -5 to aim based on who wins the appearance / tactics competition.

Another build people are using is pumping strength and vitality, investing a decent amount in aim and then largely not bothering with dodge, tactics, appearance. The advantage is that one strength stat will get you damage and damage resistance which a ranged dueller cannot do. You'll get hit more but take less damage and hit hard. You'll also get free health and access to some excellent early jobs (picking agaves is stupidly good for strength based duellers). It's even possibly advantageous to not bother dodging at all which gives you an aim multiplier and using that to focus on head shots, but I haven't seen many attackers doing that.

[gryeyes]

Aim=attack value

It only improves your chance to dodge in that your opponents attack value is lowered which is rolled against your defense value (defense value=dodge). For the points to be worthwhile they would have to give more than a 1:1 benefit to your attack. And that makes no sense. Its not really theory you can check those values on players compared to their dueling rank.

Just think about it this way. Aim and dodge  is used whether you are defense or offense. Putting points into either means have gained a universal benefit. The only way it would be worthwhile to put points in appearance or tactics over aim or dodge would be if it reduced a greater per point to losers  attack value than aim. Which is a 1:1 ratio which is then rolled against your defense value which is also 1:1. And even THEN only if your value is higher than theirs and even THEN only by the difference not the total value.  Does this make any sense?

@kageru the difference is not a flat benefit. Its based on how much higher whoever value is. With ranged 1 point in dex gives a point to your damage and aim. While strength is merely damage and resistance only to melee. The formula for how its figured out is in this thread,