"Master of Spirits" skill - waste of runes?

[maltz]

I am a newbie warrior. I know what the skill does and its benefits.
But it seems to me that the skill "+EXP for rage spirits" is not very useful despite some thread recommend it.

From the default game completion high-score list I see the spirits were regularly leveled to Lv10-20 (max level is 30 but nobody ever reaches that, right?). Since more experiences are required to level up later, the +Experience skills will not give you 30% more levels (e.g. for level 17, 5 more levels) - but only about 1-2 levels.

It will simply suck if the extra level is not about to give you an upgrade of an important rage skill, which happens unfortunately more than half of the time. So basically you are throwing in a total of 15 might + 3 mind runes to gamble for a chance to make your spirit rage a little more useful. I think this is a pretty bad deal. You can invest those runes into other things that make more difference during the game.

Also I wonder whether these +EXP skills (learning and master of spirit) backtrack. For example, if I have accumulated 10000 EXP, will picking up the 10% EXP bonus instantly give me 1000 EXP? If so it is slightly more worth taking - at least you can save the game and see if what you get is worthwhile.

[Ryastar]

Having played a full game as warrior, from my experience, i found it fully worth while. Setting aside the whole cost deal (i had ~30 extra might runes at the end, and nothing to spend them on cause i had everything useful maxed), i disagree with your take on how far spirits level. I fully leveled (or nearly) both reaper and zerock (the two i ended up finding most useful) and lina and sleem were only a few levels behind. This is on NORMAL difficulty.

I say, get first level early, even as a mage. It makes a difference. A mage needs all the help he can get if he wants to improve the rage spirits, and a warrior, who relies more on them, should try to get master of spirits maxed pretty soon. Not soonest, but fairly soon.

Each level adds +10% gain, which is HUGE. It isn't retroactive, sadly, but that's all the more reason to get it soon. A lot of people rush to get the rage chest so that they can level them early and quick, and Master of spirits will only help.

[maltz]

I also heard that by end game Warriors will have an excess of might runes (especially if you have a few more levels than characters in impossible). I am just wondering whether the limited runes in early and mid game can be spent on things that makes a difference.

I just checked the exp levels for rage spirits. For example, (normal difficulty):

Lv20: 5800 EXP
Lv21: 6510 EXP
Lv22: 7280 EXP

Let's say one reaches the highest level of Master of Spirits as early as possible and get a good 25% boost from the base 5800. The spirit at level 20 therefore has 5800 x 1.25 = 7250 EXP. Exactly like my guess: 1 to 2 levels more.

Since I am still early in the game all of my analyses are hypothetical. After I complete the game maybe I will have a different opinion (not likely from the evidence above, anyways).

A similar skill "learning" concerns the EXP of the character. Although it also implies only 1 or 2 extra levels of the character, the extra 1500 Leadership from 2 extra levels seems pretty sweet. I know Mind Runes are rarer for Warriors, so maybe it is still out of option.

By the way, not being able to backtrack just makes the skill even less appealing. As a result I fully understand that if one wants to have maximized stats by the end of the game, one should take these +EXP skills ASAP. But on higher difficulties there might not be such an luxury anymore. One has to make inferior choices to buff themselves all the time to pass the challenges.

[Gatts]

There is no way how to use runes, other then in skill tree for skills.
Yes, warrior suffers the lack of mind runes.
And yes, it is wise to invest in "learning" skill ASAP (at least I do so), most efficient is the first level: +10% for 1/5/1... where the second level is only +15% (hence +5% increase only) for 1/6/1 runes... much less efficient.

[Calinda]

Knowing the spirit XP system will help you more than the skill if you want to level your spirits. And level 30 can be achieved even on impossible; here is a screenshot of the best spirits I ever made:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachment.php?attachmentid=457&d=1229069682
I did use the skill then, but it is not a skill that you want to hurry to invest into.

[Gatts]

Actually on impossible is leveling the spirits more possible:
1. Your enemies ranks are match, overpowering and more (what gives more XP to your spirits)
2. You fight longer (you can't finish the battle with just one or two fireballs and some shots) that means it is normal, that you use each kind of active spririt twice, thrice sometimes even more (but watch out for rounds, after round 10 you get only half of XP, after round 20, you get no XP for your spirits)
3. You strongly rely on your spirits as support, on easy/normal I can easily forget to use my spirit as I do not need to, on hard/impossible this rarely happens

On easy, even if you need less XP, you get less XP as well... so if you fight efficiently you will level up your spirits with quite impressive speed.

But as Calinda said, you better know all your (even future) spirit abilities well. Not only well, but perfectly, would I say. That can prevent you from choosing not as useful levelup combinations... but knowing what a skill does is only half of the needed knowledge... how to use it in battle is the second one. The second part could be learned on this forum, as here is a lot written about the usage of the most useful spirit abilities (time back, gloth's armor...)

[Calinda]

You have to add:
0. On impossible spirits XP is multipled by 0.7
Also 2. is not correct, XP has nothing to do with rounds, its only the rage.

[maltz]

Thanks for the tips.
Now may I have a link to some thread discussing useful/useless rage skills? :)

My current favorite is Evil Shoal (still early in game). I know it is going to be obsolete later on.

[Calinda]

If you ask for the late game, I find myself still using stone wall and glot's armor from the first 2 spirits. Still you don't urgently need to upgrade these 2 skills, as they work pretty well even when not upgraded.
Once you get the other 2 spirits, you will want to use their skills mainly.

[Calinda]

OK I decided to reveal some "secrets" here, as I am a bit bored and don't know what to do atm ... So here is something that can even help Gatts improve his play :)
These I read from the russian fan manual (I am lucky to be able to read russian lol), and I have tried them, and they work pretty well.
Before I said XP has nothing to do with turns, and this is so. But what is the thing that determines the amount of XP then? Actually, two or three things that have not been mentioned yet, but certainly they are the most important.

1. The amount of the total leadership of the alive enemy army remaining when you use the skill. So if you use a rage skill when the enemy is "almost" destroyed, you will get "almost" no XP for your spirit (or zero). Better use the skills as soon as the battle starts, when the enemy army is still intact, and first use the spirit that you want to level faster.

2. The number of uses of the same spirit in the same battle. Each subsequent use of the same spirit reduces the XP gains, and usually after second use the XP gained is already insignifficant or close to 0. The conclusion is - for best total XP, use each of the spirits once, then use the first one second time, if the battle isnt over.

3. The level of the skill that the spirit uses. Higher level - more XP. For each skill there is one type of upgrade that is considered "main". For the damage skills it is usually the upgrade that increases the primary damage of the skill (and the cost :S).

4. If you use a skill that causes damage, the more and the higher level of the creatures killed by the skill, the more XP he will gain.

5. The relative level of the spirit to your hero level - if your spirit level is below the hero level, he will get XP bonus, if he is higher than the hero, he will get XP penalty. This helps the third and the fourth spirit to level faster at the start.

First 2 of these things are certainly the most important. And if you know them it will help you level your spirits faster than the XP talent, as I said before.

[maltz]

After finishing the game on normal (warrior) and hard (paladin), I have the following conclusions:

(1) For warriors: you will have too many Might runes anyway, so you will end up maxing this skill. Also, since your rage accumulates quickly, you will have lots of EXP for the rage spirits anyway, too.

(2) For non-warriors: you will have a shortage of Might runes, so spend these precious red stones on something else. Your rage points are too little to level the spirits up fully, so the extra one or two levels won't help too much anyway.

On high difficulty, your priority on rage skills shifts to troop conservation (as you can't kill them off fast enough), so Stone Wall, Glot's Armor, Time Back, Ice Thorn becomes much more frequently used than Underground Spikes, Evil Shoal/Poisoned Rain, Ice Ball and Black Hole. The latter rage skills require a high skill level to be effective, but the earlier don't - so extra levels aren't very important.

Therefore, I maintain that Spirits of Rage is not very useful. You can always use the "spirit 30" code to map out a good level-up route to get the most desired skills at the lowest possible level. That alone should be more effective than this skill, which mostly gives you 2 extra levels.