[X] My Assistant

I was prepared to abandon it, but I decided to go ahead with the son of blackjac idea. I discovered that all equipment links are timestamped. Just look at the item number in the URL. The number on the left is more useful as the one on the right increases too quickly. This aids tremendously in proving ownership and as a result, I could probably even relax the rules if I wanted to.

This is not engineering at NASA.

If the discussion starts drifting into calculus, ballistics trajectory calculations, and so on I'll consider the advice to tone it down relevant. As everything being discussed is simple arithmetic and low-level algebra, I think we're fine. Just because some people dislike math doesn't mean everyone does, and math is easy for those of us who like it. Just as writing is easy for those of us who like it, and walking is easy for those of us who like it.

We'll get someone to sew you a spacesuit if you keep cheering us on from the sidelines though.

That said, it seems the conversation is focusing on a few points.


Effort:

I don't think there's anything wrong in requiring a bit of effort from "newbies".

...

The real issue is that no one has ever compiled a list of those posts.

As others, like Fatal, mention, this really is the core of it, and my term for what is missing is a "guide."

Most suggestions have math calculations behind them or pratical evidence.
It's just that most things have been discussed over and over again, and no one wants to write about it again.
Pretty much, but if you search around you can find some in-depth discussions.
It's just not easy to do.

The ease of doing is subject to opinion. How much is fine and newbies (like me) ought to do that much or more? How much is too difficult, and throwing up your hands and asking or turning away is a problem?

If you want to improve you then need to do self-research while asking around.
Again, I see nothing wrong with that.

Any good player starts as a newbie, and is willing to do this to learn and grow out of newbie into expert. There are steps that can be taken to make this process difficult, easy, more comfortable and enjoyable, or less comfortable and enjoyable. How much change or additional information or organization is necessary or too much for any of that is open to discussion though.

well... personally i think wiki is a bit more for static things, and forums for more dynamic things. stat ranges belongs to the first, analysis of meta and its equilibrium/optimizations to the second.

A contrasting opinion: the forum is for discussing and collaborating on theories, collecting data, and suggesting experiments to test things. The wiki serves as a place to present a polished product that can be updated fairly easily, is easy to point to and serves as an obvious place for a newbie to say, "I want to find X. Does the wiki have X?" You can convert a discussion thread into something readable and digestible, a guide, on the wiki.

Digging through pages of a forum thread among many threads in a sub-forum, relying on often poorly-titled threads and getting through all the side-chatter, and no easy search-function compared to the wiki's search function. Though a guide could be published in a thread much the way scripts get their own dedicated (author-created) threads, and linked to by a "compendium" thread also.

Hard data belongs on the wiki for sure. Discussion belongs in the forums for sure. Something like a guide can exist in either place with advantages and opinion for either way. I just feel that something organized, digestible, find-able, and readable is missing.


My main point:

In my experience a lot of other game populations are that way, too.

My original post was an answer to the question "why do newbies do this?" and offering a detailed answer. It wasn't really a call to address the community and how it answers questions, but more why we newbies ask the same things. Because this is how it is in all games. I may be a newbie in HV, but I've been into gaming since the late 80's, and I've gone from newbie to pro/expert/end-game/hardcore in quite a few over the years.

As I mentioned, a lot of the "conflict" of "question vs answer" exists on every game. New players often not only don't know things, they don't know what questions to ask.

should always be your main question, yep.
if answer is yes, you may even start to think about how much you're actually earning, btw - and if such a gain is worth the price.
if answer is no, uh... what are we even speaking about?

This really hits the core of the topic.

Any idiot can look at two swords, see one does 10 more damage, and say, "yup. This is an upgrade." It gets a little harder when one has 5 more strength, but 7 less Dex, knowing that strength adds twice as much to the damage formula as Dex, but dex adds crit, accuracy, and some other goodies. With the overall community bias being "do more damage" it can be easy as a noob to make the mistake that 5 strength is worth a loss of 7 dex. It's +3 damage after all. Crit is, in many games, less important early on.

Figuring out what your earning power is in a game is never easy. There is an obvious gap between a starting player and a three-year veteran. What counts as an efficient upgrade differs to both. +10 flat damage on a base of 50 is a huge upgrade compared to a +10 flat increase to 8,000 damage. Conversely, a pricetag of 20 gold is expensive to a newbie who makes 1 gold a day, compared to the veteran who earns a million gold a day.

In many games, the end-game players gravitate towards DPS. Because they have access to all the options of the game due to being at or near max level, every location and option is unlocked, etc. They also have more buying power, and can build off of bigger level-based stats and such. So a +1% increase might matter more to them as it could represent thousands of damage difference. The price-tag of 7 million is a week's worth of income, and worth it. Faster clear times are indeed appealing to end-game. This is true of all games like this.

The newbie, in all games, gets killed by the low level goblins, kobolds, and slimes of the game. Telling them to go for damage might work. But maybe they just need more hp to live through a hit or two more and they can beat the opponent instead of dying.Maybe they need more speed/initiative to go first. Either might lead to winning the fight, even slowly, and represents more income/progress than losing. The newbie doesn't know how to ask if they ought to get more damage or more survivability, so the question is often, "what do I do?" not "what is a safer way to play?" "How do I play more safely" isn't a question often asked because those for whom it may be the best answer are ill-equipped to ask it.

By the time they learn enough to even ask that question, they're probably leveled enough and have seen the "more DPS please" mindset enough to think "I need more DPS too, like everyone else."

Again, this isn't directly a problem with how the HV community offers information. This is every game, every newbie, every community of veteran players.

Adding to this noise is the "sheep." They see what the learned veterans do, and mimic it. They jump on the bandwagon. They'll tell you sword A is better than sword B, because that's what Legendary Top-ranked player Bob uses, it's what they use, and look how fast they clear this dungeon isn't that impressive?

The sheep doesn't actually understand the why. They may be right. They may be giving the correct information. But they could be wrong. That top player might just be high level, it might not be the sword that matters, or various other reasons. They could just like the look of the sword and be powerful enough to use an inferior sword.

HV even for top players seems to somewhat lock you into choices. It is prohibitively expensive to just play around with different gear. In this thread, "years" for IW'ing an alternate main weapon to test between them is brought up. hundreds of millions of credits are spent at the top just to fine-tune your main gear. Working on side gear to try out different options doesn't appear to happen all that commonly in this game.

Some efforts to share the data, such as the 1h damage thread, are old by several versions now, and even when they were new, the response in that thread was, "so you said a lot of words to confirm what everyone is already doing?"

That mindset is toxic. "Don't question the community, just do what the top players are doing" is the problem if we want to address one.

Again, I'm a newbie in HV. I don't have all the core formulas and opportunity costs and options memorized yet. I'm still working on learning the jargon and acronyms people use. I'm still learning how this game does its DPS and other base mechanics. But I have learned many of these things over the years in several other games, and there are patterns to watch for, and a common trap is sheep parroting off things they don't understand.

I'm sure every person who posts answers in this thread are true experts, not sheep. But from the perspective of a newbie to this game, it can be difficult to trust and accept advice when it sounds like parroted information instead of learned information.

As for what could help a newbie, more than the "more DPS" advice is: at your level, you can afford this sort of stuff. Your income ought to be roughly around this range, and here are options that tend to remain in your price range and have big upgrade value to them." Also, "One of the struggles you face at your level is X. You need to invest in Y to help get past it."

Advice like, "value ADB first, parry, block next, mitigation less" for a build, the way Uncle Stu explains it, is excellent help. Advice like "the upgrade cost of materials for cloth/mage are many times more expensive than the materials for heavy armor/1h-heavy, and those upgrade costs are your important later-game consideration" help a lot. Because they explain that concept of "upgrade and cost to upgrade" rather than "it has bigger numbers so do it."

"Go rapier of slaughter, power armor of slaughter all slots" may be right, but it sounds way too simple, like the kind of one-liner information sheep parrot to newbies in every game ever. It doesn't take a genius to notice that the "raw damage suffix" slaughter will give you a weapon with more base damage. But most games I've played in, raw base damage isn't always the best.

And once again, fully back on topic, why does a newbie ask for an end-game weapon when they shouldn't? Because is a lot of games you can grab gear above what you can grind out on your own through trading, gifts from generous veterans, and so on. These give you a huge leg-up in skipping past the boring lowbie crap. It's also better to buy one expensive sword you'll use until the end-game equipment grind than to buy 15, try to resell-your castoffs, and end up working your way through tiny upgrades to get to that same "good" sword. When you don't yet know the specific limitations of HV, the generic cross-game plan is a default one.

So a guide for newbies would focus somewhat on backing up advice with hard numbers. So curious newbies like me can see the math. A guide should take into consideration how much less options a newbie has compared to higher level players. Advice like "don't go mage until 310 when you get access to zero-CD imperil" fits that bill. But it would help a lot if that advice also anticipated a lot of these common mindsets newbies enter the game with. A solid guide will say, "do this at first, and you'll understand why as you learn more about the game. Trust me for now." and then actually continue on to explain that why in the advanced section. And the big one is that if something like phazons or re-purposed actuators are something end-game players are competing to buy, the prices of those things reflect that and push them right out of the affordable range of a newbie. So advice that you give a newbie that involves them also competing for those things is just going to turn up a broke newbie who still isn't going to get the kind of results an end-game player gets.

The list of styles to progress through that Fatal suggested and many others have also said is a rudimentary guide. Some of the "and here is why" like "switch to 1h-heavy at this level because monsters start having spirit attacks and you need the durability to not die" are the why. One bit I wish I had been told alongside that is: you can switch personas, and each one can be configured with stats, AP, and in-battle setups like potions and skills on the quickbar. So you can build your stats and spend your AP to be ideal to a 2h-light/shade setup early, then just go to a new persona at the correct level and play 1h-heavy. Then later on, your third person can go Int/Wis and be built as a mage. Without any cost or loss to the other personas. So don't stress so much about going these builds, even if you really want to go mage.

To go further with that mindset, a guide would take things you, the expert, know about and take for granted, and suggest them. You know about personas, and how you can switch between them. And when you suggest someone play 1h-heavy, a guide could pair the information of "use personas" and "build 1h-heavy" into the same section. That is the value of a guide that is above and beyond the "ask the experts" thread and wiki offerings.

Newbies often ask about weapons. Because weapons do the damage. And every game values a damage boost. The best weapon is what every newbie wants. I've explained my theory on why. It differs from newbie to newbie of course, but my theory seems like the most broadly applicable one I can think of. So anticipate that. Instead of answering, "you can fuse a legendary weapon 100 levels above your own" explain "soulfusing is expensive, and even if you do it, the weapon scales down to your level. Instead just go for cheap, decent value upgrades." Then go on to help point out what to look for along that line of advice. Like "stuff that drops from your grind is basically free. Start with that. Look for a superior, then an exquisite, then a magnificent. Each of those will help make it easier to get the next, so they're worth doing." Other tidbits like, "just because ethereal is more expensive on the player market, don't bother with it. What is important to you is X."

The basic mindset is that "all the information is there, but it is scattered among three different places in the game's UI. As an expert, I make use of all three, and they work together this way." The wiki can show the individual pieces, but a guide would show how you fit them together. A guide can also suggest, "here is the damage formula. This much strength, this much dex, and this much ADB on a weapon translates to about this much damage in real combat. So an upgrade that shifts this stat by this much translates to this much real damage. So X is more important than Y. You want all of them, but this is about how much difference they make. Even through strength gives twice as much raw damage as dex, and even though dex does all these other cool things, it becomes exponentially more expensive to raise only one. So spread your upgrades across both stats for more total benefit."

I was prepared to abandon it, but I decided to go ahead with the son of blackjac idea.

and i'm still no sure it doesn't qualify as some form of abuse (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

This really hits the core of the topic.

Any idiot can look at two swords, see one does 10 more damage, and say, "yup. This is an upgrade." It gets a little harder when one has 5 more strength, but 7 less Dex, knowing that strength adds twice as much to the damage formula as Dex, but dex adds crit, accuracy, and some other goodies. With the overall community bias being "do more damage" it can be easy as a noob to make the mistake that 5 strength is worth a loss of 7 dex. It's +3 damage after all. Crit is, in many games, less important early on.

Figuring out what your earning power is in a game is never easy. There is an obvious gap between a starting player and a three-year veteran. What counts as an efficient upgrade differs to both. +10 flat damage on a base of 50 is a huge upgrade compared to a +10 flat increase to 8,000 damage. Conversely, a pricetag of 20 gold is expensive to a newbie who makes 1 gold a day, compared to the veteran who earns a million gold a day.

alright, let's be frank. i read only until here. i really, really suggest you a tl;dr when you write so much.

either way, your question is: "when an item overwhelms another one, it's all clear. but what to do when only certain stats are better than others?". answer is: you have to discern which stats give you the best ROI and thus, which are more suited for your build.

remembering that as a rule of thumb, the higher the roll, the better ROI, take a few examples:

- a 1H rapier can take use of high ADB, Parry, STR and DEX rolls. theorically even Crit, but its variance doesn't affect the build so much, so don't mind it too much. ITR and ACC, unrelevant. BUR can be appreciated. AGI, is more a minus than a plus.
- a DW mainhand, on the other hand, can take advantage of the AGI roll, and BUT/ITR should be avoided if possible. Parry is still a plus, but since on mainhand it doesn't affect build as much as offhand does, you can let it loose a bit. as for PABs, i'd say that all of them are good. DEX and AGI in particular
- a DW offhand has its ADB reduced by default. therefore, you don't need to be compulsory with it. Parry is very important here, and DEX/AGI rolls should be high here too - especially if they are already high to begin with, like in a waki. on the other hand, STR roll in a waki is really low, so even if it's a plus feel free to skip it
- let's take a mage: his playstyle focuses on attack and evade. therefore, the most important things to check are those which contribute to these ones - namely: EDB, prof, INT, WIS; Evade, AGI. mitigations and accuracy are completely useless. resist, don't know exactly. either way, what to prioritize here? probably attack at high levels and defense on mid levels.

and so on.

alright, let's be frank. i read only until here. i really, really suggest you a tl;dr when you write so much.

either way, your question is: "when an item overwhelms another one, it's all clear. but what to do when only certain stats are better than others?".

Frankly, this is a forum not Twitter. If someone is unwilling to read when a topic picks up several points and becomes complex, they aren't welcome to the conversation. "tl;dr" is one of the most insulting and disgusting practices that has become commonplace on the internet. Whenever someone requests or ask for it, I view them as morons not worth talking to.

As evidence: No that wasn't my question. That was an example to illustrate the overall topic. It was one common question that needs to often be answered. It is one I have asked in the past and been given an answer to, and I've seen others ask it and been answered.

More frankness: the entire response is insulting. Way to turn this hostile.

Assuming anyone participates, if Tenboro says it's bad I will stop. It would be easy to disable anyway, just make trophies untradeable. I guess that would prevent selling to blackjack too, though. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

Frankly, this is a forum not Twitter. If someone is unwilling to read when a topic picks up several points and becomes complex, they aren't welcome to the conversation. "tl;dr" is one of the most insulting and disgusting practices that has become commonplace on the internet. Whenever someone requests or ask for it, I view them as morons not worth talking to.

More frankness: the entire response is insulting. Way to turn this hostile.

Hmm, I agree with this u_u

Frankly, this is a forum not Twitter. If someone is unwilling to read when a topic picks up several points and becomes complex, they aren't welcome to the conversation. "tl;dr" is one of the most insulting and disgusting practices that has become commonplace on the internet. Whenever someone requests or ask for it, I view them as morons not worth talking to.

As evidence: No that wasn't my question. That was an example to illustrate the overall topic. It was one common question that needs to often be answered. It is one I have asked in the past and been given an answer to, and I've seen others ask it and been answered.

More frankness: the entire response is insulting. Way to turn this hostile.

Then, sorry, but I am moron then. Short and clean tldr is what I really need here. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

The core "problems" with current community-driven advice and helps are:
1. Players are lazy, and mostly, don't want to spend hours and more on reading manuals, guides and instructions. They have question? Then they want to get a short answer. (Should I switch to 1H? Yes, you should, next please). Only few folks want to understand mechanics deeply, find formulas, do some tests, and maximum optimise their gameplay.
2. Experts are lazy. They keep answering same questions and giving same answers over and over again. They have a specific mindset, prooved by months of playing, tyat was tested and works perfectly. They know how stats work and they know that some are important and others not. They want to save their time and give short, yer true answers. Sometimes, those answers are not complete and do not take all nuances, but the problem is that most experts do not have an idea how to play in the game in your correct level/build/case. It is been years ago when some expert was 100 level player or even 300 level and he has no idea what should one, strictly speaking, do. However expert knows the idea - the solely idea he cultivated while playing this game - he feels the game. And by this feeling he can give an overall advice: "do this, not that... Yes, I don't know all small details and do you really need them"?
3. Game is easy. Despite complex inner mechanics - the game is really easy and most time you are spending on perfecting your set instead of trying something new. There are only few nice suffixes and prefixes and people know what suffix/prefix is for. There are only few good potencies for every case and only few good set. It is not that hard to play this game after all, and one not need to dive deeply to play successfully. Yes, one may not know all things behind, and in short-term 3 dex is better than 1 str, but in long-term it doesn't matter will I have 8600 ADB or 8630 ADB - it will change nothing when I am fighting with 75,000 HP enemy. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

However, what we do really need, some good in-detail guides and more real-life instructions/hint/advice
The only problem with it - we are volunteers here - the whole wiki and forum are driven by enthusiasts. Noone is hired here and noone wants to spend great time on some explanation/theory business. Instead it is easy (and effective) to give broad guidelines as "light-2H -> heavy-1H -> Mage" that will definitely work.

And most important, probably the most important thing, - let's all not forget - it is a small minigame on a porn site, it is not engineering at NASA (oh, my, how I like this phrase), so all our meta-analyse is not that critical or important. More important are boobs we all came here for (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This post has been edited by f4tal: Oct 10 2017, 03:59

snip

parroting is a way to learn. but what you gain from parroting is up to you. will you be a zombified copy of the one you parroted or will you be the one who improved upon the existing strat and discovered something new?

people of a wide background play this game. most of the high echelon players you see will have something "special" that got them to where they are whether it's intellect, grind stamina, mechanic understanding, data gathering, substantial RL funds, abundant grind time, or pure perseverance of consistent activity.

HV is not a closed environment. there are multiple aspects to excel in it so no two players have the same circumstance for HV experience because of their own individualities.

what you decide you want from HV (killing 20 Random Encounters a day, leveling to lvl 500 as fast as possible, collecting full legendary gear, becoming "wealthy", etc) and how aware of your talents you are will determine where you get in the game.

you should also keep in mind that the game has mutated beyond comparison from when the "upper echelons" and "experts" first played the game. lvl1-300 x years ago was vastly different from 1-300 now. as an example: previous patches of HV had monster damage far too high so strategies were designed to kill them all before the player would die. or certain stats like endurance would boost physical mitigation in an unbalanced manner making a player nearly unkillable and making a specific gear superior to its peers in every way.

in order to find a solid up to date guide for optimal low level progression in today's patch would require:
a low level with decent HV support (HV funds) with strong mechanic understanding and abundant time + charitable personality + working knowledge of the english language. not something easy to come by.

most of the players that were "ahead of the curve" in the past were strictly either big RL wallets or the players with strong mechanic understand + abundant time. the (undeveloped) wiki back in the day and small discussions in forums as well as knowledge sharing with kindred spirits was sufficient enough to foster the "experts" that you see (and don't see) today.

i don't consider myself a powerful game mechanic theorist but to be honest, HV mechanics were pretty interesting and fairly simple to figure out. you just have to be willing to do some trial and error (there isn't much to lose)

edit: you're correct that this is a forum and not twitter. but i think it's important to be concise / objective in today's writing? the modern attention span isn't particularly long unfortunately so it'd help with response rates since more people are willing to read / write back with something constructive.

This post has been edited by Slobber: Oct 10 2017, 04:01

As for what could help a newbie, more than the "more DPS" advice is: at your level, you can afford this sort of stuff. Your income ought to be roughly around this range, and here are options that tend to remain in your price range and have big upgrade value to them." Also, "One of the struggles you face at your level is X. You need to invest in Y to help get past it.

My recollection is that income is hard to come by, outside of completing new arenas, until the 320s or so. Around then you can harvest GF arenas more regularly. That said, you're asking folks who never went through lvls 250-350 in HV 0.86 to estimate your income in a HV 0.86 world. Difficulties in arenas have changed with the last two changes.

Advice like, "value ADB first, parry, block next, mitigation less" for a build, the way Uncle Stu explains it, is excellent help. Advice like "the upgrade cost of materials for cloth/mage are many times more expensive than the materials for heavy armor/1h-heavy, and those upgrade costs are your important later-game consideration" help a lot. Because they explain that concept of "upgrade and cost to upgrade" rather than "it has bigger numbers so do it."

"Go rapier of slaughter, power armor of slaughter all slots" may be right, but it sounds way too simple, like the kind of one-liner information sheep parrot to newbies in every game ever. It doesn't take a genius to notice that the "raw damage suffix" slaughter will give you a weapon with more base damage. But most games I've played in, raw base damage isn't always the best.

In this game, my two cents. You go for power armors of anything initially, but more so, power armor of protection because often newbies don't have the 5m - 15m a piece that legendary power armors of slaughter cost. Legendary power armor of protection can be purchased in the 50k-200k range at auction, if you're careful. Legendary rapiers of slaughter with 80%+ ADB and 50+% parry are likewise also expensive. Low end was friggo, who got one for a little less than a million, iirc, and high end around 6 million. Good shield prices are all over the place, but high 100s minimum.

Now for the reason it's good advice. Protection armor is what I was aiming for into the 380s, but after a while, you overprotect, and pure damage output becomes king. The build in the upper 300s and low 400s has enough protection even with slaughter armor. Survival is no longer the sole object. I haven't been sparked in many days now, and rarely have to heal. I cast regen, and heartseeker around the halfway point and I have a "free" way to do it. That's it. (Note: this changes with IWs and Grinds, but that's a whole other story).

Why are you not getting consistent advice on which suffixes are best at your level? Because there isn't a single unified idea on what is best. Each high level has his own ideas on what's next best, whether protection/warding is a good mix, or whether balance is next best after protection.

Mu (.) (.) y

Then, sorry, but I am moron then. Short and clean tldr is what I really need here. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

And yet you still took the time it seems to read through and pick out several of my points. You're no moron, nor are you being insulting. "I didn't bother reading everything" is the insult. I'm far more interested in talking with you than with some other folks.

The core "problems" with current community-driven advice and helps are:
1. ...

Only few folks want to understand mechanics deeply, find formulas, do some tests, and maximum optimise their gameplay.

2. ...

and do you really need them"?

3. Game is easy. ...

However, what we do really need, some good in-detail guides and more real-life instructions/hint/advice
The only problem with it - we are volunteers here - the whole wiki and forum are driven by enthusiasts. Noone is hired here and noone wants to spend great time on some explanation/theory business.

...

(clipped the quotes down to the specific things I wanted to respond to)

The main point, yes, the game is easy, not many players care to go deep, few experts go deep, and nobody wants to write up an informative and easy to read guide.

That is perfectly fine, and no one is asking/demanding they do. Hell, I'm more likely to try to write one myself than expect anyone else to.

The level of enthusiasm differs from game to game. I've played games where players competed with each other to have the earliest, most accurate, most helpful guide possible. For some, that style of competition was more important to them than the PvP competitions. Being famous in the game community as the person who wrote that really helpful guide was the bragging rights they sought.

And none of that really matters too much for HV, and this was never a "why are there no guides?" post. It was more "man, players keep asking the same silly question, why?" and one of the reasons was a lack of guides. That discussion went on to a tangent of "well, we can't really do it..." when we can. It's more as you say, no one wants to do it.

Part of why no one wants to do it, I feel, is that some elements of the community seem to be rather hostile to people who might be interested. A lot of the attitude feels like, "stop talking about that thing you seem to be interested in talking about. Because I'm not interested in it so you shouldn't be. And it bothers me to see people use big words and paragraphs."

I've also noticed in some games that some "pro" players hold "secrets." They think that if they discover some strategy (like crit damage is better than base damage!) they need to keep it to themselves so they can be better. They're hostile to the sharing of information because if everyone knows the best strategy, they can't use it to their own advantage.

To put things into perspective though, HVToolbox is nearly 16,000 words long. Yes, it is code/script not a guide. But that still represents a comparable amount of work. [www.gamefaqs.com] This guide for Chrono Trigger, hosted over on Gamefaqs, is nearly 60,000 words long. But a lot of it is "wiki information" that exhaustively and in minute detail tells about the location, costs, effects, and stats of everything in the game.

I think there are players in the game, like you, who are a lot less lazy. Which I think everyone is very grateful for, including me. I don't think it is absurd to think someone else might be willing to put similar amounts of work into a newbie-friendly guide.

I'll have to learn a lot more before I could do it. But I know I'm capable of it once I've learned. I don't think the "we haven't been newbies for so long" really is all that much of a barrier.

Games are better when you try finding the answers to the questions yourself ヾ( ￣O￣)ツ

Wiki covers thing you need to know ASAP. The rest is better with trial and error. You don't have to add all meta in a guide and complaining about how people are giving advice in a topic about asking for free advice is not going to solve anything.

You spend 1 hour calculating what sword to buy at lvl 50. I spend 1 hour grinding and become lvl 60 and get the money to buy the sword you wanted to buy ╮(￣_￣)╭
New player game is very straightforward. Get a full set of equipment and hoover all your 80+ stamina points that your RL and draughts/potions allow you to. And change your difficulty to a higher one that you can manage ASAP because it pays off. At the point you break the "fighting to buy more health draught so you can fight more" point you can already invest in a full average set of another kind (1h+shield to 2h, by instance) so you are better off doing trial-and-error to see what you like more. It isn't like you are going to lose one week worth of work due to exp/proficiency penalty on death (damn, fuck you old Tibia lags (ノ°益°)ノ

And most important, probably the most important thing, - let's all not forget - it is a small minigame on a porn site, it is not engineering at NASA

HV, serious business ☆ｏ(＞＜；)○

Also,
Yes: Peace in the forums (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ
Not: Piece in the forums ︻┳═一 *pew pew pew*

This post has been edited by reality_marble: Oct 10 2017, 05:16

. Hell, I'm more likely to try to write one myself than expect anyone else to.

I'll have to learn a lot more before I could do it. But I know I'm capable of it once I've learned.

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/wub.gif)
It will be great. It will support many new players in making decisions
( As I believe more information is always better )
(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Have to admire how dcherry got pulled out of the woodwork to answer Cryo. Good job going there!

I understand where Cryo is coming from, but there certain contexts that hamper or make many findings or collaborations difficult to be 'relevant' or 'impartial'. This is because the most power stat in HV is not damage, its your connection speed. If your Turn per Sec is twice as fast as someone else, you can get by with half the damage and still see the same outcome (mostly theoretical exaggeration here).

Players are also banned from making alts, while version overhaul changes make it difficult to prescibe the utility of stats or items. Hell, even ensuring that your item is from the right version with the right rolls is a issue facing newer players! All of this mean that the only 'stability' in answers is proven by multiple examples of success, and what works out for the higher level players that stick around.

If Superlatinium was still around I'm sure he would craft a reply that would both address the community's point of view while also providing you with the type of advice and justification you prefer. But mechanics-oriented players have literally spent years deciphering the game and gotten bored or gave up. rip skillchip.

I am usually the most mechanics-oriented person in most of the games I play, but I have to play them seriously enough, and I'm too pitiful and poor in this game to be that person. :3

It would be nice if players were allowed to make alternate accounts to try again from level 1 and experience what it is like under the current version. Or maybe a feature can be implemented to let players lower their level for fun and testing. Oh yeah, and scan each other's monsters. ;)

I guess that might be abuseable because we might all die to our own monsters deliberately. There are already systems in place to limit that, though.

What's the general stat breakdown for heavy 1h? I know AGI and WIS should be relatively low, what about STR, END, and DEX? (Like order of importance, and ratios)

This post has been edited by Deathglass: Oct 10 2017, 14:58

What's the general stat breakdown for heavy 1h? I know AGI and WIS should be relatively low, what about STR, END, and DEX? (Like order of importance, and ratios)

https://ehwiki.org/wiki/HentaiVerse_Advice_...ced#Melee_Stats

That said, I keep AGI at level, INT at 350, Wis a bit above level, STR, DEX, and END the highest.

This post has been edited by Muddybug: Oct 10 2017, 15:04

And in conclusion to this page...


I like pie.

What's the general stat breakdown for heavy 1h? I know AGI and WIS should be relatively low, what about STR, END, and DEX?

It is not that easy question to answer, because there are tons of nuances here...
Overall (long-term) rule is:

1. STR - Level * 1,2 (and higher)
2. DEX - Level * 1,2 (and higher)
3. AGI - Level * 0,6 - 1
4. END - Level * 0,8 - 1,2 (and higher)
5. INT - Level * 0,5 - 0,8
6. WIS - Level * 0,7 - 1

However, as was said above, there lots of nuances here

1. It is good idea to keep STR and DEX equal - former gives you more *attack power* but less *crit chance*, latter gives less *attack power* but more *crit chance* - so they, in theory, compensate each other, so make them equal is a good call.
   In practice, when your attack power would be more than, say, 6,500 and you you will mostly play on PFUDOR - your *attack power* will mean less than *crit chance*, so you may try to make your DEX a little bit higher to increase your chances to kill enemies faster.
   
2. AGI is important until level 350 or so. At lower level your task is survive as long as you can, so any help would go: mitigation, block, parry, evade, resits, high HP and so on. AGI is good because it increases your *mitigation* (defense) a little, gives you chance to *evade* enemies' attack and increases your *attack speed*.
   However when you will be at high level, you, most probably, will have good equipment with high mitigation, good shield with solid block, good rapier with nice parry and tons of HP. With this been said - AGI is not that important at high level and better to invest more in STR and DEX. Also, because 1H counterattack enemies back - he wants to be hit by enemies and this make *evade* and *attack speed* not so useful.
   But this is, once again, at high level and high difficulties - until level 350 (or so) invest in AGI as usual, but keep it little bit lower than STR and DEX (your are melee after all).
   
3. END is important at every level, because it gives you *HP* and *mitigation* - so invest as many as you like. One can say that near level 350 1H has so much *HP* and so good *mitigation* so END is not that important - it is true, but more HP and mitigation will not make things worse - better safe then sorry, isn't?
   
4. INT is USELESS for melee, and in theory melee needs not a single point of INT. But there is a quirk here - every 6 points invested in any stat will increase your *SP*, so investing in cheap INT is best way to accumulate nice amount of *SP*. Most player prefer to increase their INT to 350 and do not invest anymore.
   
5. WIS is EXTREMELY important for 1H/heavy because it gives more *MP* and since 1H/Heavy has high *interference* stat - he need tons of MP to stand on, use buffs and cure himself. Your best friends here are *Better Mana Pots* and *Mana Tank* abilities - once you invest heavily in them (level 4 of former and level 9 of latter) you can stop investing heavily in WIS. Also, think about getting *Effluent Ether* hath perk (+10% to MP) and *Innate Arcana* 1-2-3-4-5 hath perks (auto-cast spells and decrease their cost). Near level 300 1H/Heavy stops using Shadow Veil spell and near level 370 stops using Haste spell - so your MP expenses will greatly decrease near those levels - this is when you should raise your WIS.

Also, do not forget that you got STR, DEX, AGI, END, INT and WIS from equipment too (melee gets no INT and WIS), so if you have shield that heavily boost your AGI, you can increase your STR and DEX instead. Also, there are few potencies you can get through Item World, like Juggernaut (up to +10% HP), Capacitor (up to +10% MP) and so on - so the game gives you lots of room here for customization.

And finally you have three Personas and each of them has separate stats, so you can easily "to start from the beginning" if you need quickly rearrange the stats distribution. If you have only three Personas by default, so use them wise.

My stats, btw:


This post has been edited by f4tal: Oct 10 2017, 15:47

https://ehwiki.org/wiki/HentaiVerse_Advice_...ced#Melee_Stats

That said, I keep AGI at level, INT at 350, Wis a bit above level, STR, DEX, and END the highest.

It is not that easy question to answer, because there are tons of nuances here...
Overall (long-term) rule is:

1. STR - Level * 1,2 (and higher)
2. DEX - Level * 1,2 (and higher)
3. AGI - Level * 0,6 - 1
4. END - Level * 0,8 - 1,2 (and higher)
5. INT - Level * 0,5 - 0,8
6. WIS - Level * 0,7 - 1

However, as was said above, there lots of nuances here

1. It is good idea to keep STR and DEX equal - former gives you more *attack power* but less *crit chance*, latter gives less *attack power* but more *crit chance* - so they, in theory, compensate each other, so make them equal is a good call.
   In practice, when your attack power would be more than, say, 6,500 and you you will mostly play on PFUDOR - your *attack power* will mean less than *crit chance*, so you may try to make your DEX a little bit higher to increase your chances to kill enemies faster.
   
2. AGI is important until level 350 or so. At lower level your task is survive as long as you can, so any help would go: mitigation, block, parry, evade, resits, high HP and so on. AGI is good because it increases your *mitigation* (defense) a little, gives you chance to *evade* enemies' attack and increases your *attack speed*.
   However when you will be at high level, you, most probably, will have good equipment with high mitigation, good shield with solid block, good rapier with nice parry and tons of HP. With this been said - AGI is not that important at high level and better to invest more in STR and DEX. Also, because 1H counterattack enemies back - he wants to be hit by enemies and this make *evade* and *attack speed* not so useful.
   But this is, once again, at high level and high difficulties - until level 350 (or so) invest in AGI as usual, but keep it little bit lower than STR and DEX (your are melee after all).
   
3. END is important at every level, because it gives you *HP* and *mitigation* - so invest as many as you like. One can say that near level 350 1H has so much *HP* and so good *mitigation* so END is not that important - it is true, but more HP and mitigation will not make things worse - better safe then sorry, isn't?
   
4. INT is USELESS for melee, and in theory melee needs not a single point of INT. But there is a quirk here - every 6 points invested in any stat will increase your *SP*, so investing in cheap INT is best way to accumulate nice amount of *SP*. Most player prefer to increase their INT to 350 and do not invest anymore.
   
5. WIS is EXTREMELY important for 1H/heavy because it gives more *MP* and since 1H/Heavy has high *interference* stat - he need tons of MP to stand on, use buffs and cure himself. Your best friends here are *Better Mana Pots* and *Mana Tank* abilities - once you invest heavily in them (level 4 of former and level 9 of latter) you can stop investing heavily in WIS. Also, think about getting *Effluent Ether* hath perk (+10% to MP) and *Innate Arcana* 1-2-3-4-5 hath perks (auto-cast spells and decrease their cost). Near level 300 1H/Heavy stops using Shadow Veil spell and near level 370 stops using Haste spell - so your MP expenses will greatly decrease near those levels - this is when you should raise your WIS.

Also, do not forget that you got STR, DEX, AGI, END, INT and WIS from equipment too (melee gets no INT and WIS), so if you have shield that heavily boost your AGI, you can increase your STR and DEX instead. Also, there are few potencies you can get through Item World, like Juggernaut (up to +10% HP), Capacitor (up to +10% MP) and so on - so the game gives you lots of room here for customization.

My stats, btw:

Yeah, was a bit unclear whether STR/DEX/AGI should be equal, or some prioritized more. I guess STR slightly over DEX, END lower, but enough to take the hits I need to, WIS for mana, and low AGI?
Why INT higher than AGI? Isn't the stat entirely useless, while AGI provides small bonuses to phys mitigation (since burden eliminates other bonuses), and would provide more spirit for the cost? Color me confuzzled
Is 350 some sort of magic number for INT?
Also, direct STR vs DEX? Is there an ideal ratio for 1h, or nah?

Yeah, was a bit unclear whether STR/DEX/AGI should be equal, or some prioritized more. I guess STR slightly over DEX, END lower, but enough to take the hits I need to, WIS for mana, and low AGI?

Yeah, pretty much, but AGI is important at lower level - do not underestimate it. Once you have good equipment, shield and rapier - you can forgot about AGI and even decrease it.

Why INT higher than AGI? Isn't the stat entirely useless, while AGI provides small bonuses to phys mitigation (since burden eliminates other bonuses), and would provide more spirit for the cost? Color me confuzzled

1H/Heavy has a nice bonus - he can counterattack enemies (after BLOCKING their attack with shield or PARRYING their attack with rapier), however, 1H/Heavy will not counterattack after EVADING their attack. AGI, on other hand, increases your *evade* stat, not so useful.

Also, AGI increases *attack speed* of player and this will make 1H/Heavy attack enemies manually instead of relying on counterattacks. In other words, with high AGI you will attack more by yourself instead of counteratacking. This is like playing a mage and do not use spells. Counterattacks are part of 1H/Heavy.

But once again, it is tactic for high-levels mostly, until, say, level 320-350 - invest in AGI as usual, because it will give you extra *mitigation* - very useful.

Also, I have lots of AGI from rapier and shield (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And I currently have 1,664 SP - even if invest 100 points in agility I will get like 42+ SP (formulas here are kinda messy) - not that much difference for me to care about (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Is 350 some sort of magic number for INT?

No, just regular number - no tactics behind. You can stay with 300, or 320 or 385 - your call.

Also, direct STR vs DEX? Is there an ideal ratio for 1h, or nah?

More 'nah' I think. Just keep them equal or one a little bit higher than another one - no super tactics here...

This post has been edited by f4tal: Oct 10 2017, 16:51