Just started CB? Let me share an idea with you! (in General)

So, I am some old guy been around too long. You are hopefully some new person, just walked in and want to know what to do. You will ask a bunch of people and get 50 different opinions. I am a min/max 'er. I look for the most bang for my buck. It's how I now enjoy CB. So, here is what you do.

You start with three minions.
The first minion is a UC minion, he trains HP ST and DX and a little bit of UC now and then, will depend on how fast you can add certain gear as to how heavy you will need to train UC.

The second minion trains HP, a base Armor Proficiency, and say 1/3 of the exp into AMF.

The third minion trains HP and about 1/4 into Phantom Link.

Now you can believe me or not, but this is essential. Get a loan, buy these two pieces of gear. A Base Combat Gi and a base RoBF.

Get a base crossbow, EXBOW even better give it to the UC guy.

If you can start your three minion team with this gear, the money you will make because you can challenge people so much higher than yourself, you will make it back in no time. These items at base are not very expensive.

So OK. Right off the bat you have a UC of 11 (at base the Gi adds 10 to your UC but Zero to your PR *wink*) and an unavoidable damager with rounds that go to what...50 now? Piece of cake. You will cake walk through your peer group and crush everything around you for a long long time.

There you go. You start like that, and look out! Now EVERYONE will tell you, go single minion!!!! You will grow faster. This is not ideal. Faster growth means you reach the WOW I need a lot of CB cash to do this fast growth thing now. Which usually means you reach for your wallet. Three minions will take longer to grow than one. But you will be making large cash and large chunks of XP because your challenge bonus will be 100% for your entire fight list, for a long long time.

As you grow your three minions and have all this extra cash to spend because as long as you are growing that tattoo and bumping the UC now and then, you wont have to spend money on anything, not even ammo, how cool is that? Back in my day....hahaha just kidding.

So what to do with your cash....prepare. Wait like a spider for these items at base to pop through the auction system at 3am Central time or whatever, and get them as cheap as possible.

Exbow (why not its free ranged attacks and you are training ST and DX)
Shadow cloak
Displacement Boots
Helm's gauntlets (these should be added first!)
Helm of Ecthelion
For the UC guy, in addition to the Gi.

The RoBF guy is fine really do what you want to him, add leather boots, leather gloves, a cabasset, and a buckler if for nothing else why not. To really tank him out, go for giving him AC.

The last guy the phantom link guy, he basically needs AC or....Magic reduction. Now listen, you can do it ONLY equipping the UC guy for a long time, add a TSA and a MgS to the phantom link guy and watch you explode. You will hear about walls or plateaus, hit one, add MgS, poof, that wall is gone. MgS are the opposite of cheap.

So there it is. Let the frenzy begin. Tell me how wrong how right I am, ask your questions about why it works, or what the heck I meant, or if you can have any of what I am on. I am bullet proof. Let the games begin.

I would use a SoD instead of an exbow. And a HoC vs a HoE depending on the damage the SoD does.

He makes a great point I mean the SoD rocks! But thats a bigger loan, that exbow or base crossbow is chickenfeed. To be honest, you do not want the the UC guy to do tooooo much damage. Le Gasp! you say. Well we went AMF, GA will not hurt your RoBF dude, but your UC guy can die from it. So, well, the longer the front guy is alive, the longer the middle guy will be alive. The longer the middle guy is alive, you win.

I'm with you all the way on this one. This is an ideal setup for a newbie.

Personally? I think the Exbow is the way to go. SoD is a lot of damage, but the Exbow allows you to knock out the entire physical damage source.

Glad to see you back and posting, Sefton :)

Those QBs just can't stay away. ;)

sorry to break up the convention. sefton, i hope you are going to put this in the wiki under the game strategies. novice has one for starting as well, perhaps we need a section called "starting guides"?

ok so yeah im a nub, aka a newb but i like seftons idea and i kinda wanna try it out


hmm maybe i should no?

Not a bad idea, oh and new people, who read and go, what is UC huh? RoBF whatchamacallit where? Ask! If not here in your new player forum. If not there in chat. Somewhere, ask. Why is the middle guy with the tattoo...Ask! You will gain so much more than just your answer. -smile-

Definately add this in the wiki Sefton :P

ya it will help alot of ppl..=) i hate the spell check now i jave to write more than needed

I would however, think that the exbow needs to be fairly high on the x side before a noticable strength drain occurs.

Anyone have info on what x one would recommend.

i created the page and just c & p'd the text into it. it does need to be wikified and linked up but maybe someone else can do that if you cannot.

In order for the exbow to be feasible though it would have to be a decent size probably as big as the encumbrance on a new character will let it be.

like x500 +? whatever the +th needs to be (I'm not an archer, just a forger)

okay, what's a robf and is it worth starting this and dropping durago, my mage, or should i just grind through with him, mind you, everything he has is rented atm.

Yah and honestly, he doesnt hit those people often. Now that ranged lasts longer you might get lucky. What usually happens is you do some minor damage to some phantom linked dude's already pitiful ST score. Its just some free easy damage on teams without evasion, and if they happen to toss say a little bit of ST on a wall with a weapon, you will target him. You can run it without ranged to be honest and do pretty well, just free damage is free damage. But not tooo much, there is nothing like watching your greatly over matched UC evader dodging blows in melee while your RoBF eats fire damage and hurt people without fail, without much reduction and without any sort of rebounded damage. Win!

don't start an NCB character quite yet...save up some cash and buy the items that Sefton recommended and then ya start a new one up. Wait until you have the basic items before starting it.

I'm sure if you post a request nicely some vets will help you out with the items you need :)

RoBF is a Rune of Balrog Flame, check your wiki on its full effects. It is by and large the KEY to this strat, the UC pop from the Gi is very very helpful, but without the RoBF this wont work. With the RoBF, you will be amazed.

Good luck dodging completely with UC. Evasion no longer reduces the base CTH so you are guarenteed to be hit by an ELB among other things unless you have the dex advantage.

After like 500k MPR and you're trying to keep 100% challenge bonus, you're not going to have the dex advantage.

Also worth noting that with the damage nerf, MM isn't as huge as an issue as it was before. SG is more popular at the moment and you should consider stacking magic reduction in the front or on the RoBF minion (RoBF + MgS = own).

my two cents

your two cents is more than welcome!

Here is what you are up against:

Score 1,303,851
Power 658,914
MPR 507,203
Net Worth $18,312,454

That is, without much effort, as in take a look at the gear on my minions, the tat is like 300K less than max and almost all the PR. I got no magic reduction equipped, basically nothing but the UC bumpers and some leather.

I dont want to dodge those people who SERIOUSLY spent a lot of energy so they would hit me, just, avoid completely those that did not. With phantom link, if the evasion eats one attack, the elbow strikes once instead of twice that round, this is what you are looking for, get me to melee, and well Game on!

P.S. I just fought that SG thing, nice! thank goodness it waits until the last ranged round. You will be fine though, you will see.

I mean this with respect...

This idea will almost never work. Why? Because you can only be ripped off by a new player so many times before you either A) Stop sticking your paw in the trap or B) Are broke.

And I'm not even saying that people aren't trustworthy. The player could request the loan with the FULL intention of staying and playing. But things happen... Players drift away. Stop being interested. And they leave without concerning themself with repaying an ingame loan.

Hell, even vets do it. "Sorry, I'm bored with the game and don't give a dead rat whether or not I made promises to people. I'm done."

I don't know. It's only like... hmm... 600k? 800k at the most. But how many times should I gamble the money?

Even as I write, it doesn't seem like funding a new player would be -too- hard as long as the loan was very small... But it seems to me that I shouldn't have to do something the game itself should be taking care of. Simply supplying new players with a tattoo and a decent amount of starting money (especially useful with the tutorial having them waste money on rentals and wasting BA on FORGING) would allow for this kind of thing WITHOUT the need of finding someone trusting enough nowadays to loan money to someone.

Aha! The practical side. Ah the camping days, when you could just wait for it to show up. I did not even think of the difficulty in securing loans, god knows I would hate to try and administer one, so I wont. Heck I cannot promise I will log in tomorrow. I can promise you this, I got money, you got a keyboard and can speak relatively well and want to try my strat, then I might GIVE you the money. Maybe I do that, and you, rock, your love it your hooked, some new player comes along looks promising, you say, hmm why dont I GIVE him this money, some one did it for me once, long ago.....

Rinse repeat a better shinier CB for all!

Not to change the subject, but Sefton asked me to post my idea for a nice starting strat:

Single minion junctioned familiar.

Using a HAL or Damage one.

With the AoF one gets a massive boost in the DD damage familiar's level.

Using AG or NS helps a lot.

The single minion can cast AMF vs DM and AS. With just that minion and the familiar it casts for a lot of HP boosted by the AoF. A win/win.

Simple and quite cheap to run.

My character:
Score 2,934,683
Power 1,629,735
MPR 1,107,911
Net Worth $48,588,670 of which 41M is my familiar. Only 7M or so of true NW.

Some intangibles to this strat. It doesnt need gear, but gear can improve it, in some cases greatly without getting into the ARMS race. Once you rely on a weapon to do your damage, the arms race is on, and it ends well it ends with those weapons you might drool over if you look at the top of their kinds in the help section.

Still you can tweak the gear, is this bump to UC better than this massive bump to AC. Can I use only the bonus from my UC gear to mitigate penalties for wearing these massive CMLs to make the AC worth while how long before I actually need some EXP based UC to keep this moving?

Wow, bonus I just snagged the massive SoD for a song, what kind of havoc could it cause?

I hate this dude on my list, rented a MgS for a week, -dark chuckle- he is going to LOVE me!

But you are broke and got nothing? RoBF and Gi to open and you are golden for a long time.

One guy IS training HP ST and DX, and not a lot into UC if you did want to switch to the arms race later...

One is a Mageshield wall, the other a tattoo bearer. We got flexibility Jim warp to lightspeed! Change RoBF guy to ToE guy? no problem really, just ramp up Mr UC guy and have at it. It has places to go and gear to buy but, you dont have to for it to work.

This is not the win CB strat, auto pilot to the top strat, this is the ideal beginning strat. Only you can take the top spot, and you will have to know more than I to do it (or have more time to kill, not sure which)

An idealist, eh?


It would be great if I thought that could work. But it still brings us back to my original point. How long can one keep that up until they're broke?

And I've started community based things like this. People always give rather well for awhile until funding drys up and you're suddenly out of money for it.

No offense, Sefton, but it's easy to say volunteer money when you're both not playing much and not playing competitively. I am NOT trying to tarnish your past contributions (which were as many as they were great) and I'm sure if you were back you'd do everything you could to help new players. And I'm not happy to admit that as much time as I'd be willing to give to help new players out, I am so against giving players money that it shocks me. We're in a game were 500k a week could eventually knock a player out of competition for the top.

And the game promotes that sort of cut throat activity. No support for players who get ripped off with loans, sharp learning curves for new players and a general atmosphere and a game that requires using all of your resources perfectly. Re-trains and Disenchanting are so heavily frowned on they're rarely down accept with great reason. And that's great for the hardcore part of the game.

But the hardcore players are the ones who make the most money. And they're the ones who can't afford to do anything great with it.

There is no real casual part of CB. Are are common types of gear (which are garbage) and rare types which are expensive but necessary for any sort of play. And the really kind people, the ones that make gaming commuities great, are the ones who would do a lot for new players. But they can't as well as they would like. They don't make the same kind of money others do, and what they do can't be spent on whatever happens to catch their interest because they know their strategy will hurt later for it.

I know, this is a bit more than you were asking for here :P This is just what happens when you come on forums ^.^ Give me an inch to rant, and I'll rant your ear off. But it ALL ties in to why loans and why new players have such a hard time of it.

The game has become a shark pool. Every BA, every CB must be spent PERFECTLY. And the people who don't agree with that have grown so tired of watching the same sharks fighting with each other about these things.

I could go on. But I won't. To sum it up... The game does not encourage generosity. Indeed, it almost discourages it.

And honestly? I don't feel like giving a new player my time, money and hope when the game itself does so little for them. Unreasonable learning curves, a horrible low game (I'm SO sick of explaining to new players that rewards are totally broken lower and that they simply MUST expect to lose most of their fights until they have a better grasp of the game and more fights under their belt. What kind of game starts players off in surrounding they can't thrive under?) and a tutorial which may serve the purpose it was made for but doesn't even come close to doing what a new player EXPECTS it to do (and isn't that what matters??)


Welcome back, Sefton :P

Thank you Ranger, I encourage any and all to add ideas of their own to start with, heck, if it gets too hot, we will spin it into its own thread. People say no one talks about strat any more. I think they just dont do it outloud as often as they might have used to. Me, I lack the shy gene, and have severely impaired shame gene, so I am always loud.

at 800K I could do it 4 to 5 times with the current cash. The gear laying around, not in use, adds another 3-4 times, complete and total canabalism, dont tempt me.

Never cared for the competition and yah, I will wreck havoc on hardcore competitors with my off the wall ideas and willy nilly gifts, and yah, well nothing bothers me really, certainly not a bunch of whining down arrow enterers. I am just as likely to hand out 500K gifts in a thread tomorrow as to log in, but you will have to tune in to find out, now wont you.

Dude you can spend your BA perfectly, if that works for you, more power to you. Just remember we PLAY games to have FUN. If you arent having fun, you are doing it wrong.

All opinion large or small are welcome in my thread. I hope you post more of yours, I wont be shy with mine.

Hi Sef.

Have you considered moving the RoBF Minion to the Front, and sticking an AoI on him?

That would let Physical hit the Evasion of your UC minion still, but it would leave SG hitting the reduction from AP (and open you up to using heavier armour on that minion - as long as you can take the hit to your AMF with AP reducitons - to lower incoming DD damage before your PL picks the rest up).

Nicely done GL! I had not considered that, because well, I was only worried about CoC which is to say I was not worried, but this SG, a single concentrated attack front to back, that has my attention. I will grab an AoI from my Sefton char just to see how it goes, who knows, I could annoy a completely different set of people in the 1.2 to 1.4mil score range with a simple switch like that!

The fun!

;)

Glad I could help, and thanks for getting me posting about strategy. :P

Next up, how about using a SoC on your UC guy? it will lower your UC by the normal Shield penalty, but give you more physical reduciton, and let you return the stored up damage with your UC.

If you'd like to test it, I've got a SoC you're more than welcome to borrow. ;)

Well borrow I would have to do, SoC...shield of capacity I would gather, sounds like a good item to snag from auctions! Ill play with the first change and we can go from there!

Third!

Moving the RoBF minion to the front would mean you won't get any use out of the AoL.

But you could stick Boots of Fortitude on the AoI minion instead, and free up something like an AoM for your UC dude.

AS, AS, GA minion with a familiar of some type, AS

GL, does not the AoF aid UC? Why not try GL's idea but use an AoF instead? It'll hurt you against heavy EC teams, but is that not what the RoBF is good for?

Yeah the AoF does work on UC. Doh! Forgot that!

Scratch the AoM and get an AoF on your UC guy right away!

Let see Ranger and GL posting strat...check.

New people expressing good opinions....check.

Different opinions without insults....check.

SoC showing up randomly in the armor store....still dreaming.

Sorry, I know, that horse is so beat, not even I can kill it more.

Never was a big fan of pure spell driven strats. Heck not much of a fan of super focused strats. Your list might be full of AMF casters only. I would rather beat 10 people of different strats with less Score bump than one person cause they went totally AMF and my strat owns them. However, AS, AS, GA+TAT, AS is certainly cheap and should do pretty well against certain types of opponents. Single Skill retrain for flexibility and low gear NW requirements, do NOT discount the idea, just because its not my favorite, it could be yours!

1st minion : Rune of Solitude + base AP + 100% AS and no weapons
2nd minion : base AP + 90% AS, 5% ST, 5% DX, ranged and melee weapons
3rd minion : Trollskin Armor, 75% HP, 15% Phantom Link, 5% ST, 5% DX, ranged and melee weapons
4th minion : 50% GA, 50% Shocking Grasp and no weapons
Spellboosters + Cornuthaum + Amulet of Focus optional but welcome on all minions.

Yes, I am aware PL-ed damage is not returned as GA :)

Nice I like it. That 5% is exactly why my UC minion works in the RoBF strat. Looks like one single serious damage point, in the back though. I know he is linked into the third dude, but without AMF wont MM eat him up? You protected yourself from DM nicely of course, but a strong AMF and good magic protection...anyway, its all talk and I like it. Seriously though, make it. That is the absolute best AND funnest thing to do in this place. Find a crack in the wall and see how far you can lever it. You can run for the top if you want to, or show us all your 3X PR to Score ratio with a MPR of more than 400K.

So some testing. Nothing long an complicated, just an overall feel. Moving the RoBF forward and dropping the AoL for an AoI there, added a MM damage dealer to the list I was crusing. I could generate the same effect by beefing up the Magemaster with the MgS.

The Shield of Capacity appears to work such that, it wont discharge if your minion doesnt hit and it lowered my UC five points, so it added what appeared would be about 1/3 of his normal attack damage randomly into the battle but he missed more often. I could likely beef up the UC some to accomodate, but overall, didnt seem the help much.

I could not get the AoF to make my UC minion better at UC, maybe I am not looking for it right, or I misunderstood.

For grins I grabbed a bunch of stuff off Sefton, and loaded him up. I didnt want to mess with the AMF too much, so I didnt beef the RoBF at all.

I tanked out, mageshielded out the magemaster and stuck the AoL back in front on the UC guy, basically my old set up with Sefton's gear and I was able to add like 4 guys to a list I couldn't fight before.

Not bad really! Still the best part is it was fun to mix around with.

P.S. some one asked earlier, I am using this:

An Enforcer's Crossbow [4x28] (+15)

Tremble!

The AoF increases skills by 3% per +. Sticking a +10 on your UC guy should have shown an instant 30% increase to your UC.

Is your UC still base? I'm not sure that the AoF would increase the faux UC skill levels granted by a Gi/HG.

Wouldn't surprise me to find Seft's UC isn't much trained; it's a Sefton trick to get the most out of little, like naming a weapon early on to make it big (for early stages) without adding any NW.

Welcome back Seft.

CB seems like it's starting to get fired about strategies and such... I like it. ;)
Welcome back Seft!

Yah, I am sure that is it about the AoF. It is only +5 and I only have my UC naturally trained to like 3 with an actual affect of 28 from all the gear. The 15% increase on the 3 UC didn't make it 4.

It is definately part of my trick. At some point, you have to get serious about training UC because the gear bump is no longer impressively great to keep the UC effective, but, I dont think the strat is quite there yet at my MPR. The truth is, the UC is not there to kill he is there to look important, but hide the RoBF guy. Many many fights, the last 20 rounds is often spent with the bad guys ineffectually trying to hurt the RoBF dude while his RoBF damage is applied one round at a time like a skin eating virus.

Got me score up to 1,409,352, a nice bump from the 1.2-1.3 I was fluxing in prior to this post, so keep it coming.

Hey I just realized this is about my strat! I've been using it since like... forever, on Miami Vice. The only exception is I use a Jig.

But erm, carry on :)

You might want to consider a small VA somewhere in the mix. UC does very little damage and relies more on many small hits rather than a few strong ones.

What does that mean? VA works great with you with small investment and GA works great on killing your UC guy.

Since your UC guy is meant as a form of damage reduction having him killing himself is counter-intuitive

So maybe
1. Train VA to help cancel out GA or gain a small HP edge.
2. Train almost no str and pump up dex and UC to reduce damage output (and hence backlash) to nothing, while maximizing your dodgy.

How's that sound? :D

Sounds pretty good! To be honest, as it is now, he does like 20K a hit in melee, something like that. I can see the VA helping, but well his design is to be able to hit, meatshields, walls, enchanters, magical familiars and mages. I just need to help whittle them down for the RoBF, but as you say not tooo much. VA I like more so when multiple minions benefit from it. Like the GA I am trying to counter, I want VA to help more than one guy, or I am not really interested. The other idea about making him a dodger not a damager, is basically how I started, but in the beginning of the strat, you get a massive boost from the gear in UC ability, and the only way to leverage that, is with decent ST and DX. It also allows for flexibility in changing him to a true weapon wielder later.

Thank you for the suggestions though! Keep um coming!