Do I suck or is it something else?

OK, so I can’t seem to take on too many enemies without getting killed.
I might be able to fight a lone wolf but 2 I’m going to die. Anything stronger than a wolf and its pointless.
I’m thinking my fighting skills must suck really bad since I can’t seem to win too many battles.

Here are my stats:
Level:40
Offense:

  • Stamina: 136
  • Bonus Stamina from Girt: 30
  • Passive Stamina Regeneration 54/s

Melee:

  • Total Melee Damage: 10
  • Melee damage from weapons: 8
  • Bonus from strength: 2

Ranged: 0

  • Everything is zero at this point

Defense

  • Total Health: 360
  • Bonus from vitality: 160
  • Passive Health regeneration: 0/s

Attributes:

  • Strength: 13
  • Agility: 6
  • Vitality: 20
  • Accuracy: 12
  • Grit: 10
  • Encumbrance: 20
  • Survival: 5

Armor:
Medium Cap

  • Armor value:27

Medium Harness

  • Armor value:47

Medium Gauntlets

  • Armor value:13

Medium Tasset

  • Armor value:34

Medium Boots

  • Armor value:13

I can’t think of anything else to provide.
What should I look at changing or should I just practice fighting more?

Cheers

Weapons:
Two-handed steal sword

  • Health damage: 34
  • Armor Penetration: 20%

Steel Mace

  • Health damage: 31
  • Armor Penetration: 24%

Steel Heater Shield

  • Health damage: 24
  • Armor Penetration: 12%
1 Like

Try a different type of weapon e.g axe+shield and time your attacks. Get a follower (pet or thrall) to help.

2 Likes

I think you are new in the game, get level 60 as fast as possible.

Then use this for stats :
30
10
30
0
30
22 (+5 encumbrance armor)
0

It is a good starting point for fighting, running and farming.

3 Likes

Sword and shield till your 60.
This is spark81s basic attribute load out. It works great.

First
enc to 10
grit to 10
agil to 10
vit to 10
str to 10
then
grit to 20
agl to 20
vit to 20
str to 20
then
vit to 31
str to 37
a pot will make you 40 str, armor will make you 40 vit

This is from the start, since your already to forty.
Drop a yellow lotus potion and redo your whole set up.
@ 60 in a pve server this has worked for two years now.

final is:
Str 37
Agl20
Vit 31
grt 20
enc 10 (with noob armor you can get 15-19 until you switch to the lvl 60 spec.

2 Likes

I’d say that it looks like you have a lot of points in Accuracy considering you didn’t list a bow among your weapons, suggesting you maybe don’t use it much? I’ve been finding it quite useful leaving Accuracy at zero, so I can spend those points elsewhere. Strength, Vitality and Grit are probably the priority stats for melee, although the others do also offer benefits - going for at least 10 in as many as possible can be useful.

Weapon-wise, I’d say the biggest deciding factor should probably be what you’re most comfortable using - the weapons you enjoy are going to become the one’s you use best. I like both two-hand sword and one-hand mace (especially good against skeletons I find), but my usual preference is for daggers, axe (with or without shield) or Two-handed Hammer. The hammer does take a bit of getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it can be really good against multiple attackers.

My biggest tip for combat is to spend extra time fighting weaker stuff that you know you can beat - take your time and experiment with weapons and attacks, get used to the weapon animations and the way opponents telegraph their attacks. Have fun with it - take on Imps barehanded, antagonise a croc and just try to time your dodges (and pick the direction you want to go) - whatever seems like it could be a fun, but not overly dangerous, so you have time to play around with the situation. (You could also maybe try deliberately letting yourself get injured so that you can get used to how much space you need in order to take an aloe potion.)

I hope there’s something helpful in there :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Ask 10 people and you’ll get 12 opinions :wink:

Here’s what I do for PVE (since I’m not really good at PVP):

  • Push to level 30 as fast as you can – you can usually get there within a few hours of playing, without any special in-game knowledge. Just kill and farm and craft and explore. Completing journey steps helps, but not nearly as much as it used to.
  • Focus on vitality up to level 30. Once you hit level 30, you’ll have 30 vitality, which gives you a respectable health pool and passive regen.
  • As long as you’re wielding stone weapons, sword is a must, and so are daggers. Too many people ignore daggers in PVE, to their own detriment. Each heavy attack with daggers inflicts the bleeding debuff (damage over time). It stacks up to 20 and can be kept going with an occasional swipe of the dagger.
  • Once you can get an axe, it’s really worth it. It’s harder for your enemies to interrupt you and the 3rd and 4th heavy attacks apply bleed. A typical PVE tactic is to stack up 20 bleed with daggers, then switch to the axe and keep doing damage and refreshing the bleed.
  • Don’t bother with accuracy unless you’re actually using ranged weapons.

Also, make sure you learn how to deal with the new healing system – that’s something even some experienced players are having hard time getting used to:

  • Carry bandages and use them outside the fight, to patch yourself up and prepare for the next one. They’re not for use during a fight or even close to enemies, because they lock you into a 10 second animation you can’t interrupt.
  • Eating food will give you the “sated” buff with slow and small passive regen that stops as soon as you take damage. It’s not going to keep you alive in a fight, but it helps you regen without getting locked in an animation. Better foods give better healing. Cooked abysmal flesh, for example, is much better than grilled steak, and cooked pork feast (once you get a recipe drop for it) is a whopping 15 health every couple of ticks.
  • Aloe extract (and other healing items like it) are your go-to measure for getting patched up during the fight, although you can’t use them while you’re tightly engaged. You get slowed down during the animation and if anything hits you at that time, you just wasted the item. On the bright side, if you manage to quaff it, it gives you regen that doesn’t get interrupted by damage.

My preferred combat spec for PVE (e.g. for running dungeons and fighting bosses):

  • 31 strength, 10 agility, 30 vitality, 0 accuracy, 20 grit, 28 encumbrance, 10 survival
  • heavy armor with strength bonus (e.g. guardian or Pictish warchief)
  • daggers and axe for melee on foot
  • spear for mounted combat
  • Gravebane for the undead, because screw those guys :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh, and as soon as you get the chance, get yourself a greater bear or a greater sabretooth – they’re both awesome for running vaults. Now that rocknoses can’t be bled, I’m gonna try to get one and see if it’s even better for PVE.

4 Likes

First of all keep Vitality as high as possible. Then Grit. I dont advice going for Strength first. Armor and total health is allways more important then pure damage. (PvE)

Vitality. Bring it to 20 and Grit 15-20 and Encumbrance 15-20 and wearing Medium and Heavy sets. Dark Templar set is one of the best protection early-mid sets and requires medium set pieces to craft. Crafting it is pretty much easy. (Furnace-Blacksmith-Tanner-Iron/wood/Hide/Tree Bark) But it counts as Heavy set at its weight and stamina cost. So stats above are important. Then there is Stgyian raider armor at higher lvl.

Travel, build, scout and have fun with lighter armors. Fight only when you have the right equipment to fight; which is heavier armors (sadly!) and pike, bow, two handed sword combo. Keep adding more Strength and more Vitality after you get 20 grit and encumbrance. Your performance will be much better with this set up compared to a build that load strength first.

You can start with bow to pull the target (only 100 flint arrows and you dont accuracy) then swap to Pike when the target is about to reach at you, start attacking befoe it starts attacking (Stygian spear, is actually a pike, is easy to craft and pretty usefull before steel) and kill spamming right click on npcs. With its bleed and cripple effect and stunning effect it will be pretty easy to kill solo targets. You can move back 3 seconds when npcs are crippled and bleeding to fill your stamina bar and keep applying hits)

Only If you re surrounded swap to two handed sword. Focus at a single enemy and dont try to wound them all. If you lower than half health just move away. Try to lvl up the targets you can pull solo and try to kill them fast with heavy attack of Pike.

For shield style I prefer cutlass line while blocking (doesnt let you refresh stamina) and combo attack in between. Anyhow Pike and keep moving and keep spam/stunning oppoents seem to be more fluid compared to shield style.

I use food/bandage combo only after the fight is over. Also carry the ingridents to craft bandages and craft when you have less than 7-8 of them. Dont craft too many of them since the crafted healing tiems weight more. Avoid encumbered state (even yellow color) for all times when you re fighting or climbing. It kills your moving speed and stamina bar. (Combine that with lag)

2 Likes

Try to learn the attack patterns of the enemies and dodge their attacks, no amount of amor or health will save you if you are not able to dodge enemy attacks efficiently. If you learned those patterns it also becomes a lot more easy to interrupt their attacks by timing your attacks better.

4 Likes

Both stunlocking and Strafing also helps without wasting stamina at dodge. The combat system is based on damage reduction and and health/stamina bar.

2 Likes

All the answers people gave here on the forum are right. Even though they are slightly different.
What I can say is that you always have to have at least 30 vitality.

Stats Spec:
An easy build for you at level 60 is:
Str: 30 (you can raise it with your armor set and buffs to 40)
Agi 0
Vit: 40 (the more vit better)
Acc: 0
Grt: 21 (21 grit gives you 63 bonus stam which is more than enough) 30 grit Perk is useless
Enc: 20 (20 encumbrance reduces cripple effects, it’s very important)
Sur: 0

Craft a heavy armor for you:
A normal heavy armor has around 300 armor which means 54% damage reduction

Axe:
Is a good weapon to deal against enemy groups because they won’t interrupt your attacks and the last 2 attacks from heavy combo makes the enemy bleed and the last one has knockdown (useful against humanoide enemies)

Daggers:
Are nice against solo enemies and bosses, it’s strenght comes from bleeding stacking… so it’s useless against some kind of creatures like undead.

2H sword:
is fun to use against groups of humanoid npcs, it’s not the best one, but you can use it.

Spear:
Spear is the more versatile weapon in the game. it’s useful for everything. at PvE you may use it against bosses that you don’t want to come near you. You can use the terrain to attack opponents while they won’t attack you.

Ah… another tip.
If you are playing on exiles map, go kill white rocknoses (C8) or monkeys (around N5)
If you are playing Siptah island, go kill mammoth north of the black tower. you can level up from 1 to 60 really fast (3~6 hours)

1 Like

at your current level you should respec to:
str: 22
Vit: 25 (+5)** = 30
Grit: 15
Enc: 10

Craft a vitality heavy armor for you like Yamatai or Argossean if you have DLCs. If you don’t have any DLC, go for:
str 15 (+5)
* = 20
Vit 30
Grt: 15
Enc 10

***Craft a strenght heavy armor for you like Hyperborean Slaver or if you have some DLC, Pict, Guardian Set are strenght.

**** Respec: If you don’t know yet, you can craft a yellow lotus potion at cauldron. it clears your attributes and feat points, so you rebuild.

1 Like

On level 40, can’t you just make a stronger weapon in the first place?

Use shield and axe on wolves, it perma staggers the wolf to death, but keep an eye on the second for back attacks
For Rhino’s use spear and dodge in time (spears seen to deal the most damage for me)
For bears… I really have no clue whats best, what works for me is wait for the right moment to attack
Rocknoses use something like a hammer or a blunt

The shields though… a lot of times when I hold down CTRL for shieldblocking it does n’t work (■■■■■■ me off)

2 Likes

Doesn’t matter. You can get through all PvE content with a spear.

1 Like

@Kholdenn - you’ve mentioned checking the dev kit before (at least I think it was you), so maybe you know the answer to this - what does the third grit perk actually do? (5% damage reduction, something like that?)

From what I’ve seen ingame, it gives at least 15 flat armor points, which is a joke.

I think this is a remnant from the old armor system in early access where silent legion got up to 100 armor points.

2 Likes

Ouch. And I thought putting a durability kit on a shield was pointless (7000 durability gains an extra 150, woohoo!) - that perk may actually be even less worthwhile than that.

I certainly hope you’re right about the perk being a leftover - if not, that would imply that someone actually thought it was a good idea with the current system - which would be worrying :wink:

What armour you use and what build to get through in PvE with spear only.
Even with light armour I’m not able to dodge most of the bosses attacks with spear, especially the fast demon dogs.

(if its the stand on a stone out of reach tactic with spear that explains the all spear PvE xD)

Light or medium preferably with the following stats:

S: 40
A: 30
V: 40
A: 0
G: 20
E: 20
S: Rest

Thanks, will try again then haha

You may enjoy the humble build I wrote.

It canbe upgraded with same mentality and item bonuses after reaching the noted perks there. Then it is simply giving more points in to strength and vitality (10-20 agility is optional after that point).

The gear will be upgraded suitable to that build. Mobility, stamina and basic armor defense is very important since Conan exiles has huge lag issues and dodging attack doesnt work as well as intended. Strafing and stunning also works solid.