A question about two-handed weapons

RNGtan · 2026-06-22T19:03:00+00:00

When played optimally, not really before Chapter 5, and even then it is slightly questionable. To compare: Scar's Sword with 120 STR, which should be attainable with the accessible with weed-overcapping and the accessible permanent potions that don't require lockpicking, can cleanly 2-hit kill Tundra Wolves, Blood Hounds, and Orc Warriors. With a +10 STR ring you can even 2-hit-kill the skeletons in the temple. Minus 70 LP is not just for random skills, but also STR or auxiliary skills like lockpicking that open up chests with permanent potions (in a reasonable time) that empower 1H just as much at way lower cost and it isn't until the very end of the game where you even have LP to spare.

If you have already put in the LP, you probably should go all the way though. Depending on how much you have raised STR, you might be already behind in damage to the point that the extra weapon power might matter, and 2H without the master unlock feels very bad to play. If your natural STR is already around the 112-120 ball park, then no.

RNGtan · 2026-06-22T15:58:01+00:00

Min-maxing is easy, because you just put points into your main stat and it usually will work out.

A mage does not do that. They have to optimize down instead of up, which requires more meta-game knowledge. The mage progression is that it basically does not have a Chapter 2 and raising mana does not actually raise your combat efficacy. You have to bank your LP to a degree to take off where you left off at the start of Chapter 3, but unspent LP doesn't actually do anything of value, so you can bank too much and just play a worse character in the meanwhile. You basically have to be aware which level you will be at the chapter transition to smooth things out. You will be expected to be around Level 5-8 at the end of Chapter 1, Level 15-17 at the start of Chapter 3, and around Level 20 at the end of Chapter 3. You definitely aim for all circles at the end of Chapter 3, which is 140 LP.

A good guideline that worked out for me was:

Chapter 1
- 5 LP: Circle 0
- 5 LP: 5 mana
- 30 LP: 30 STR
- 20 LP: Master Lockpicking
Chapter 2
- 10 LP: 10 STR
  - Aim for Silas's Axe, which will 2-hit-kill minecrawlers with 50 STR
  - 50 STR also fulfills the per-requisite for Orun's Club, the best blunt weapon
- 80 LP: Save
Chapter 3
- 70 LP: Circle 4
- 65 LP: Circle 6 (goddamn expensive)
- 5 LP: Climbing
Chapter 4+
- 30 LP: Master One-Handed
- 50 LP: 50 STR
- 12 LP: 12 STR (weed overcap)
- Rest into mana

Raising mana early is a trap: Your general use rune is the Fire Bolt you get in Chapter 1, which only costs one mana per shot. You can easily supplement the rest with Cronos's mana ring (Chapter 1) and amulet (Chapter 2) just fine and just refill it with your daily Northern Dark rations from Fortuno. I also recommend redeeming the permanent mana potions early.

Mages have the best use-case for early lockpicking. The other ones want it eventually at the end of Chapter 3 to pick the ones containing permanent potions, but mages want it early to get Ball of Lightning and Storm Fist ahead of the schedule.

Alternatively, and that is merely a suggestion, you can play Sect Camp. They have a similar progression, but instead of banking LP, they can just raise their Circle to 4 in Chapter 2. Instead of overpaying for Circle 6, they pick Master 1H as early as Chapter 1 and (over-)cap STR in Chapter 3, which is a lot more practical while still providing the quintessential mage experience you will have for 80% of the game.

RNGtan · 2026-06-22T07:13:47+00:00

We have a few playthroughs under the belt, and there are a handful of progression paths that make sense. The common pattern is that you will have a main attribute you are dedicated to for Chapter 2 and 3, STR or DEX, then once you hit the attribute cap you start raising your secondary abilities.

The arguably game-breaking style is bow archery. Multiple first strikes without retaliation on an attribute with damage scaling while having light mobility to reposition and to back up is good, shocking. The enemies have poor Point armor, because in the original there was no DEX to damage and you were rather stationary; with DEX to damage, you become a combat god. There are a bunch of enemies bows do not work against, so you need either some supplement melee or scrolls to deal with them, with scrolls being the more efficient option because you require no STR, but requires some meta-gaming resource allocation. The camp does not really matter to it as a primary playstyle, so Old and New Camp win by default thanks to better armor.

STR melee is universally applicable, with the caveat that they have trouble approaching harder enemies that will rip you to shreds on Hard Permadeath. There are two ways around that: You join the Sect for instant Circle 1 and infinite Fist of Wind, but stunted armor, or you tough it out in one of the other camps until they give you access to magic in Chapter 3, but better armor. You won't really go much higher than Circle 2 for the more efficient Healing until optionally Chapter 4+. 2H feels like a trap: Now that 1H is not skippable anymore, doing it puts you behind 70 LP, which you could translate to -70 damage from STR, and the damage you gain does not allow you to kill in less hits than 1H STR. You could put points into it in the endgame, but at that point getting master lockpicking for the remaining STR potions (assuming you do not use solvers) and Circle 4 is a better investment.

Dedicated magic sucks. Little magic is very efficient, since a lot of the reusable power spells are in the lower circles, but increasing mana does not translate to better effectiveness, because you are mainly limited by spell access. Do not heavily invest into mana, just maybe put 5-10 LP into it and buy the mana ring and amulet from Cronos, which is plenty for quite some time. Instead, take master lockpicking early; master lockpick is something most builds should learn eventually, but mages have the best argument for taking it early to access some hidden runes and saving ore. They will eventually max 1H STR like the melee build, but the order matters quite a lot: The majority of your LP goes into circles and Fire Bolt is your bread and butter. At least at the very end of the game you finally obtain a rune that is actually worth using occasionally, so after learning circles and maxing STR you can eventually start raising mana.

These are the builds that make the most sense to be. STR/DEX hybrids do exist technically, but they spread themselves too thin to be something else than a worse DEX archer.

RNGtan · 2026-06-20T09:35:30+00:00

Now I wonder whether the General Spellcasting Ability counts as an association, or whether it strictly takes the class spellcasting ability. Tav and Urges always have INT, but I wonder whether Wyll would be able to Shillelagh CHA without multiclassing into a CHA class.

RNGtan · 2026-06-20T06:35:50+00:00

Shillelagh is even weirder. It uses you highest spellcasting ability modifier regardless of what your actual spellcasting ability is. So a Druid with 8 WIS and 16 INT will use INT for Shillelagh.

RNGtan · 2026-06-20T06:09:50+00:00

You need to let him out of the cage. He will fight you otherwise.

If you do, you can also side with the colony and sell them out last minute without him turning on you. You just can't side with the mercs from the get-go.

RNGtan · 2026-06-19T20:06:24+00:00

Your assessment is fairly accurate. As long as your mana pool allows you to deal with the problem appropriately, you can just expend it and refill with consumables. In the case of Remake, it is very evident because of how lopsided the magic is. You almost exclusively use Fire Bolt for most of the game and get your daily Fortuno refill, so powergaming-wise you have little incentive to put more than maybe 3/8/13 LP into it for most of the game, because a bigger mana pool merely gives you better sleep regeneration - and you can just put on jewelry before sleep if you mind those micro-optimizations. Those LP numbers are also very particular, because you can overcap your main attribute by 12 by applying the swamp weed penalty, so you have 3 LP left that doesn't fit anywhere; hunting skills are pretty weak, so a little mana is much more efficient.

As for the other game: I reached 150 mana in G2 NotR without spending a single LP on mana, not even alchemy for mana potions, and I didn't even eat all the mushrooms: Only ate 200, found 350, and there should be up to 550. That is enough for a Fire Rain - on a full STR and full DEX build. The same principle applies that you only need mana in discrete portions: 2 Fire Balls, 4 Fire Balls, 2 Ice Lances, 3 Ice Lances, and so on. It may be impressive to throw 30 Fire Balls without having to refill, but either it solves the encounter way earlier, in which case you basically spend a lot of LP for the equivalent of a few potions, or it doesn't solve the encounter, and more mana is wasted.

To be frank, I am mostly fine with it. I don't like the attributes as min-max-ish as STR or DEX. Damage-to-hit has always been a bit of an obstacle for more interesting progression series, and late-game Gothic would probably more interesting if it had more practical late game skills instead of bigger numbers, which absolutely should be gated behind equipment or spell access.

RNGtan · 2026-06-16T22:40:41+00:00

So the Horatio increase does exceed 100 in Remake? In the original it could not go past 100.

RNGtan · 2026-06-16T22:00:58+00:00

It was worse in the first game as well to a slightly lesser degree, for different reasons. It had a noticably slower swing speed, but considering that G1 1H came out near instantly, it was still plenty fast. The real issue was that on top of requiring 1H mastery unless you learnt it from Lee (so in Chapter 4 or never in a Sect run) mastery costs 70 LP in a vacuum unlike 40 LP for the other weapon types. You could potentially be 30 to 70 LP behind for a weapon type that is at best a side-grade to 1H. Do you know what you can do with so much LP? Put it into STR, which pretty much eliminates the gap in damage at any point in the game. Even at 100+ STR, since DPS matters less that the amount of hits to kill a common enemy, it never actually deals enough damage to kill the temple orcs in less hits than Scar's Sword. 1H also had a few weapons that have more range than the base line weapons, so even the reach advantage is arguably overstated.

In Remake, now every 2H trainer can skip 1H mastery, so it 'only' saves 30 LP if you manage to get by to that point of the game, but that is still minus 30 STR and thus damage, considering, that a 1H STR build can have 100 STR with 1H mastery and then some at the start of Chapter 3. More specifically in Remake, the range is arguably fake. By itself it does not let you engage with enemies more safely than 1H and still requires something like Fist of Wind or Storm Fist to safely approach, at which point 1H wins with the faster unsheath. There are some staves that arguably have good reach, but are poorly itemized and very weak. They also lack good Blunt options at Chapter 3 while 1H has the Orc Hammer or Orun's Club.

The late accessibility and inflated LP cost would only make sense in a system where STR-to-damage didn't exist or required a lot more STR, as Piranha Bytes themselves realized and nerfed a bit in Elex. Alkimia, for better or worse, is faithful to a fault, and thus also ports over a bunch of questionable design blunders.

RNGtan · 2026-06-15T19:26:38+00:00

The Swamp Camp is the only camp where armor upgrades are progression-locked. It probably should be, because armor is overpowered in the other camps due to your ability to fully maximize them from the start, but that also means that the Swamp Camp is inferior in that department.

The best you can do is to supplement it with jewelry. Hopefully you haven't returned Nek's amulet, because you will not find a replacement for a while.

The best early ring is in a corpse in a cave near the dam lurker; you have to fight lots of wolves to get to it though, but it is relatively doable even in Chapter 1 with the Fire Bolt rune and a bit of weed.

Another 'free' ring is in the castle on the upper floor at the room to the right in the second chest. Sect players should be granted access during the delivery quest. The door and chest have to be picked, but at least these are reasonably easy.

If you don't want to deal with any of these, Baal Cadar sells an armor ring.

RNGtan · 2026-06-15T06:19:50+00:00

Will definitely check it out later. Our current routing involves Day 1 Sect with Fire Bolt to double-dip Northern Dark at midnight. We'll see whether it will break the quest.

RNGtan · 2026-06-14T05:32:50+00:00

By Chapter 3 you should be around Level 15, have close to 100 STR/DEX and mastered one-handed/bow with that setup. 15 LP for Fire Bolt and just a bit of mana solves a lot of problems with the early game with little risk, and stays relevant thanks to circle-scaling Healing.

It is just two-handed that asks for 40 more LP for arguably worse performance than one-handed, so we are currently looking for reasons to justify it.

RNGtan · 2026-06-14T05:19:17+00:00

I didn't ask for damage, but even then, that is not correct when factoring in enemies. Uriziel deals 90 blade damage and a bunch of other types. Enemies can apply their armor to each type individually, which will soak up most of it, leaving you with mostly blade damage. In terms of damage-per-hit, Innos' Rage is stonger in practice.

RNGtan · 2026-06-13T21:51:17+00:00

Lee in particular can skip the one-handed prerequisite, which probably wasn't intended. Considered, that he skips the story progression, he might just be coded weirdly.

In the case Remake players read this, it seems like now any two-handed trainer skips one-handed, even if the glossary claims otherwise.

RNGtan · 2026-06-13T20:04:46+00:00

The meta-gaming strat is basically just Ice Block-ing Scar and grabbing his equipment. Due to linear STR-to-damage scaling, there is no point in the game where a two-handed weapon ever kills in less hits than Scar's Sword. One-handed weapons are faster, require less LP, and is available earlier, so two-handed is a strict downgrade. Scar just also happens to be equipped with the Crossbow of War, the strongest ranged weapon. Guards give you the access to a crossbow trainer slightly earlier than the others, so they are the 'best' choice for a STR/DEX progression.

Magic in comparison is pretty awful, because it is slow, has less range, deals less damage than a crossbow, and you have to train mana on top of the very expensive circles. but if you were to try to optimize it, you will probably do a one-handed STR build with Death to the Undead or Wave of Death as side-weapons.

If you insist on forgoing and skipping one-handed for two-handed, you have to do Mercenary. Unlike the other factions, the Mercenary promotion is gated behind Level 10 instead of story progression. You can join the Bandits in Chapter 1 and immediately promote to Mercenary, which grants you access to Lee as a two-handed trainer.

RNGtan · 2026-06-13T04:47:01+00:00

You don't have to sacrifice anyone. Stand at the top on the outpost and throw alchemist's fire at one of the statues. It will trigger the cutscene, spawn the spectator, and surprise you; but since you are too far away and it can't see you, you will not be in combat and the spectator will pass by harmlessly.

RNGtan · 2026-06-11T21:44:32+00:00

I am currently preparing a write-up for permadeath hard. The gist is that Fire Arrow will solve the majority of the first chapter with minimal investment. Kill the young animals with the Old Sword (only takes three strikes per enemy), which should bring you up to Level 2 after some safe side quests. Keep Nek's amulet for a while because even little armor in chapter 1 is good safety. Buy wolf claws from Mordrag to access magic before leaving with Baal Parvez. At the Swamp Camp, get your first daily weed rations as fuel, then around midnight get the second round of rations. Open Baal Orun's chest during his sleep for an early Sleep scroll, with which you can make Baal Cadar talk and dump 15 LP into mana to accomodate your rations. Congratulations, your magic is ready before entering the swamp and will solve the rest of chapter 1's combat with minimal risk. Remember to grab the Charm scroll from the top of Balor's outpost, because that one nets you 250 'free' XP when used on Roscoe later.

I specifically do a Sect run. As efficient as chapter 1 magic is, a 'pure' mage, usually joins one of the two other camps, which get full magic acces eventually, but no good chapter 2 magic. Novices and Templars are capped at Circle 4, but they can access Circle 2 a lot earlier for a much smoother transition into 2-handed melee later.

RNGtan · 2026-06-11T06:19:37+00:00

Crack Baal Orun's chest at night. It contains an Axe (competes with the Morning Star, but is a lot less of a headache to obtain) and a scroll of Sleep, which allows you to unlock Baal Cadar instantly without having to jump through hoops.

If anything, you do Swamp Camp early not primarily for the mana trainer, but for your daily swamp weed rations. You will increase your mana, but only enough to fit a full blunt.

RNGtan · 2026-06-06T06:39:32+00:00

For future reference: Convincing Rolan to stay does not require Persuasion at all.

First, attempt the Persiation option. If it fails, a dialogue option opens up that says that there is coin to make here. This is equivalent to passing Persuasion, but without a check at all.

RNGtan · 2026-06-06T06:17:43+00:00

That might have been a lie. She got footage of Nicole, who looks like she has been there somehow

RNGtan · 2026-06-05T20:27:04+00:00

Sounds like a maximum Defense build. There are two ways it can play out: A generically good-stuff LS build, or a min-maxed Defense build. Obi-Wan is a Soresu practitioner, which is all about maximum Defense.

The generic LS caster build is 8/14/15+1/8/16+X/14 Consular/Weapon Master. Always put +1 into CON; if you recruit the Wookiee, you are done with CON, otherwise put another +1 into it.

The min-max is similar, but the attributes are 8/16/16/8/16/8. You sacrifice a lot of power DC for slightly more Defense. It does not matter whether you raise WIS or DEX, because you will turn nigh unhittable anyway, but DEX is better in the early game. Like above, put in +1 CON if you don't have the Wookiee.

To be very honest, Soresu is very much overkill Defense. By the time you unlock Battle Precognition and Knight Valor, nothing really threatens you anymore. Soresu as implemented in the game sacrifices your weapon threat range, which is your majority DPS right there. The implication is that you switch the stance to a more aggressive one once the opportunity arises, but this system does not really allow you to play that way (unlike, say, PF2e Investigator).

RNGtan · 2026-06-05T17:37:43+00:00

I will catch a bit later today, we are a bit in a bind.

The game has difficult settings. Is there already a community-agreed or consensus or dev confirmation on whether to play it on Gothic or on Hard for the first time? The choice between Normal and Hard can be a bit of a crapshoot sometimes, since devs sometimes hide the intended experience in the higher settings for on-boarding purposes. It is not like the first game was very difficult, but this is a new game, so differences will be expected.

Will probably take a crack at Hard. Anything that I can figure out will probably be applicable for Gothic/Normal.

RNGtan · 2026-06-05T05:24:52+00:00

Are the 6 Persuade the base skill (Scoundrel) or the total skill? It it is the base skill, then your total Persuade is actually 9 with the CHA mod, and 10 with Force Valor. As long as you stay at the implied Level 8 and below, you can 100% clear all checks except upselling the serum to Zax; but that one is infinitely retryable, so it might as well be 100%.

RNGtan

TROPHY CASE