While I rarely consider making alts in IRE games, I have been thinking about breaking that tradition in the distant future. In the meantime, I have a significant amount of planning to do while I work out the character I want to play.

What is the goal and design strategy of a warrior within Lusternia? I have heard of a few types of knights; damage, wounding, speed, and critical hit. To that end, I've been weighing and considering the type of character I'd like to play, and have settled on critical hits. Why? I like big numbers. ::grins:: I also thoroughly enjoy speed, making that my second priority.

The character I have in mind at this point in time is a Human Knight Axelord. So I have every intention of getting the biggest, nastiest, fastest two handed beast of a greataxe I can find and tearing into my opponents. This leaves me with more questions however. How does Evolution work? Do I get to choose where I wish to allocate my stat gains? If not, how are they allocated? Further, can I make the kind of character I want (an axelord critical hit specialist with a decent amount of speed)?

What about the other builds? How does one build to accomplish a damage knight, or wounding knight, or speed knight? What stats are important, or advantages? What disadvantages are acceptable and which ones are critical to the design of the character?

My apologies for the questions, but I truly wish to understand the class better that I might be better prepared in the future. Thanks in advance, as always!

I've never heard of a critical hit knight before. This is probably because you can't get critical hits on players, and it's entirely determined by levels and artifacts anyway. So first off, I think you're going to have to pick a different option there.

And while I'll leave the knight discussion to knights, I'll just say that no, you can't pick the way evolution goes. And it's at least partially randomised too, as demonstrated by changelings getting different changes when they morph.

There is NO randomness to evolution.

Hmm, well that's weird, I heard of a couple of changelings testing it out and coming out with different stats each time. That was right after humans were tweaked though, was it changed since?

No, there has never been any randomness to it. Perhaps they had some defs they forgot about, or if you are comparing one person to another the stats change based on things such as guild.

Awww...dangit! I wanted to make a guy with good charisma, dex, and strength, with at least decent intelligence. Really though, dexterity and charisma come first for this guy. ::mutters:: Ain't NO WAY I'll get that with the guild I plan on throwing him in...can we pweeeease make it more voluntary? With sugar on top?

/derail

Lots of questions! I can answer a few, let's have a looksee...

How does Evolution work?
---Starting at level 50, and then at every increment of 5 levels after that up to level 95, you'll gain a single point in a stat. The evolution is tailored to your archetype, so Mages, Guardians, and Warriors will see different stats. Where each point goes is supposedly random based on observation, however, the final evolution at level 95 is static...in other words, the stat gain is just random as it builds up toward the final, non-random end at level 95. Supposedly! All I can tell you from personal experience is that the evolution is static at 95, and that Lord Hajamin hotly declares it is static from 50 to 95 period.

Can I make the kind of character I want (an axelord critical hit specialist with a decent amount of speed)?
---As Shiri pointed out, critical hits only occur while hunting creatures, never against players. So long as you're clear on that, it is very viable to rely on critical hits for hunting, but only at high levels, essentially level 80+. However, the high speed, good damage weapons this build favors are ideally suited to killing creatures through plain, basic swings. So, you'll do about as well as is possible while you work towards leveling up a good critical hit percentage.

How does one build to accomplish a damage knight?
---Damage knights traditionally revolve around applying massive burst-type damage to their targets, as opposed to damage-over-time. To be effective, you will need 20+ strength, artifact elemental runes, and high damage weapons...one-handed weapons around 200 damage stat, two-handed weapons areound 400 damage stat. Now is a good time to point out that one-handed damage knights have an easier time due to the skills available to them, though two-handers are still viable. Speed obviously compounds the effectiveness of damage, but you'll find that most weapons this damaging are also rather slow. The alternative is the DPS knight who tries to maximize speed and damage, but this build is probably the least represented in the game for a reason: The appropriate weapons are extraordinarily difficult to smith.

How does one build to accomplish a speed knight?
---Speed knights are actually either damage knights or wounding knights at heart, though when most people say 'speed knight', they typically refer to wounding knights. Your primary statistic is strength followed closely by dexterity. Strength influences how much wounding you do, making increasingly devastating wound afflictions possible, while dexterity governs your actual chance to cause a wound affliction with each hit. Nearly all speed knights are a faster balance race, such as Aslaran or Shadowlord Faeling. In weapon selection, the idea is to pile on as much Speed as needed, and then fill in the rest with as much Precision as possible, leaving Damage a distant third.

How does one build to accomplish a wounding knight?
---Much of this was covered above with speed knights, but there is one special consideration here for two-handers...many two-handers opt for extremely high Pricision weapons with only moderate speed. This somewhat a function of the stat weighting for two-handed weapons, which for Damage/Precision/Speed looks like 2/2.2/1. This refers to the artifact stat cap of 463 points. In a two-handed weapon, 2.2 points of Precision are weighted to only count as 1 point towards that 463 cap, whereas 1 point of Speed counts for 1 full point as well. Essentially, you get more bang for your buck investing in Prec and Damage than you do Speed as a two-hander, so that's what people capitalize on.

The most important element to any build is really the weapon you are using. The right weapon will make something work where the wrong one would make it fail. Determining what, exactly, the right weapon for you should be is best done by asking around for the most competent weapon smiths in-game, and comparing their opinions. Experienced warriors can give the same advice, and my advice to you is to seek out as many of both as you can before deciding on something.

For critical hits you also have the Critical Hit Medals which will help a bit. And ofcourse the Great Runes for damage/wounding.

le sigh..
Hajamin my friend.. you must nerf them and your... 300 uber crits within 1 second from your lance needs to be fixed

Melanchthon has it pretty much spot on, however i'd like to make a point with a wounding knight.

You can be a high str race say taurian or orclach (one with no balance penalty) and still be a good wounding knight. You'll need to make high precision, medium damage and medium speed weapons to do so. You'll basically work off the ideal that no-one can apply health fast enough to keep up with your woudns. I was the above for some time.

i'm now a shadowlord faeling, and my precision on my hamers (speed weapons for bonecrusher) gets up to 250, while my speed on them is around 210-220. You'll find uber high precision to be your friend.

Another option is to go the wounding-damage weapons, which basically damage your enemy so he has to sip health instead of applying it to heal his deepwounds. I currently have a set of flails with lightning runes and high precision and decent speed for this purpose as well.

this may sound stupid but, is it worth having more then one set of weapons? does it actually help in the long run? ive always stuck with the same two

It is always worth carrying around a small armoury. Not only in case your weapons get stolen/knocked out of your inventory, but then you are more viable for different tactics - Damage warriors (non arty) have a bitch of a time trying to even scratch Narsrim or the like, so instead you have to work on wounding and afflictions to try and keep him down.

Weapons like those should have been nerfed when the ability to forge them was removed.

Agreed. I had always thought rapiers with over 200 base precision was excessive (same for damage), but a combination of high precision and speed is just too much.

My thanks for the replies thus far everyone, I truly appreciate the help. However, I do have a few more questions left in my bag of tricks.

Due to the way the game is played and the inherent differences between PvP and PvE, I intend to have one greataxe for bashing and one for players. To that end, I have to wonder...what are optimal choices based on each situation? What kind of artifacts/enhancements should be applied to one that should not be applied to the other? For that matter, what is a good spread of stats to worry about here? It was suggested that you check the best smiths and warriors to find these things, but how is a newbie like me going to know who these people are, much less speak with them? How about two handed swords? Twin swords? Twin blunt? Sword and shield appears to be a largely unused combat style, so I won't ask about that one. I don't like shields much anyway...

I want to gather as much data out of game as possible, as the character I intend to make will not be created in game for quite a while. He requires credits to play him the way I want to (at least 900 credits to start, anyway), and more are basically required since he is of the knight caste. Since I am currently unemployed, there is quite simply no point in creating the character until I can afford him. More time to feel the game out anyway, hey?