The Mog Blog

Today I bring to you Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Tips #2. Last we talked about Characters and Skills and how it fits into the whole of things. You can find the previous post here. Pretty much, a good number of things are useful to a point with Lockpicking being totally useless. Today we jump into your abilities and what the hell exactly are destinies.

For those of you who have ventured past the tutorial, you get that free level at the end of it all and you’re looking like “What the hell is this?” Not a problem, the leveling system they use for KoA:R is actually pretty spiffy. It allows your character to be customizable to a high degree. On your path to level 1-40 you will gain 120 points (+3 from start) to spend between Might, Finesse, and Sorcery.

Might can be expressed as your typical Warrior role, Finesse is your Rogue, and Sorcery is your Magician. The unique part of it is that you can mix and match between all 3 classes. You aren’t particularly tied to any specific group. However, each offers something that could be of help to each of the other classes.

Before you sit down and try to plan out all your points out, lets cover one of the first things you’ll ask yourself, “What weapon am I going to use?” The weapons in Amalur are each spread across each of the 3 types. Figuring out which one to use to use will determine where some of your points will first end up in order to make your character more effective.

The weapons are as follows in order of fastest to slowest:

Might

Longsword – Close Range Weapon. Average Speed and Average Damage.

Great Sword – Close Range Weapon. Slow Speed, has good damage output. Good weapon for grounds.

Hammer – Close Range Weapon. Slowest Speed but Highest Damage.

Finesse

Daggers – Short Range Weapon. Fastest Weapon, Crits often, can be used for stealth kills.

Faeblades – Short Range Weapon. Fast Weapon, hits multiple targets at once. Damage is lower than Daggers and stealth attacks are weaker than Daggers.

Longbows – Long Range Weapon. Able to hit enemies at long rage with variable attack speed if you choose to charge or rapid fire.

Sorcery

Staff – Close – Mid Range Weapon. Average speed, 3 hit combos but range varies on hit. 3rd hit causes wave of elemental damage.

Chakrams – Mid – Long Range Weapon. Fast attack speed, great range, and hits everything in its path.

Scepters – Long Range Weapon. Fires energy at enemies and can be charged to fire multiple projectiles. Uses mana during attacks.

Personally, I go with a Dagger and Chakram Combo due to my style of play. I like to go stabby and the Chakrams feel unique to this type of game and are very fun to play and can deal with crowds effectively. The good thing is that during the tutorial level, you get a Longsword, Dagger, Staff, and Bow to play around with. You’ll eventually run into the other weapons soon enough and you have plenty of time to get acquainted with them.

The other thing I’d want to point out is this, if you plan to use Great Sword, Faeblades, and Charkrams, the mastery skill (for damage increase only) for each of those sit on the second tier of each tree. This may be a problem if you are dual or triple classing because you’re required to put in 5 points into the tree before you even get access to them. Great Sword is not much of an issue because you can dump 5 points into Skillful Defense which will benefit all classes. Honestly, whatever your build is, I would suggest dumping 11 points into Might just for Skillfull Defense and Hardy Constitution. These two skills will surely help you survive longer in those long fights and not have to heal so much.

Once you have played around a bit of and found a weapon or two you like, time to fiddle around a bit with which Destiny you want to follow. This will most likely just end up being based completely on what weapons you choose to use. Destinies are pretty much what your class is going to be. They don’t really do much besides damage bonuses at Tier 1 and 2 but once you hit Tier 3, you start getting some nice or unique stuff.

It all boils down to if you either want to beat things in the face, backstab things, blow things up with spells, or maybe some of everything. KoA:R rewards whatever your play style may be. You can go all Might, Finesse, Sorcery, or any combination of the 3. With 123 points to distribute between each of the classes, you’re only required to spend 109 points to reach Tier 6 in a single class. 55 in two classes for Tier 6 multiclass, and 37 in all classes to get Tier 6 Jack of All Trades. This gives you a bit of leeway to spend the rest of the points in other areas to help round out your characters. The following will give you an idea of what each destiny focuses on and what you gain.

Single Class Destinies

Brawler – Might

• Melee Damage Increase
• Block Efficiency Increase
• Tier 3 Stun Duration Increase
• Tier 5 Chance to Stun Increase
• Tier 6 Last Stand – Auto-Revive with 20% health, health drains until enemy is killed

Rogue – Finesse

• Ranged Damage Increase
• Damage Resistance While Dodging
• Piercing Damaging Increase
• Tier 3 Critical Chance Increase
• Tier 5 Evasion – Causes an attack to miss you
• Tier 6 Assassination – 300% Critical Hit after Evasion

Acolyte – Sorcery

• Elemental Damage Increase
• Mana Cost Reduction
• Tier 3 Mana Regeneration Increase
• Tier 3 Blink – Short Range Teleport – replaces Dodge
• Tier 4 Duration Increase - duration abilities only
• Tier 4 Adds Ice Damage to Blink
• Tier 6 Echos of Fate – spawns Fate Ally from defeated enemy

Dual Class Destinies

Duelist – Might/Finesse

• Melee Damage Increase
• Ranged Damage Increase
• Tier 3 Critical Chance Increase
• Tier 4 Piercing Damage Increase
• Tier 5 Increase Damage in Stealth
• Tier 6 Cut Throat – +15% Physical Damage Increase, +1% Chance to Steal Life, and 20% of damage done drops as gold for 5 seconds when hitting knocked down enemies

Disciple – Finesse/Sorcery

• Elemental Damage Increase
• Piercing Damage Increase
• Tier 3 Critical Chance Increase
• Tier 3 Dread – Auto-Critical on panicked enemies
• Tier 3 Blink
• Tier 4 Mana Regeneration Increase
• Tier 4 Adds Poison Damage to Blink
• Tier 6 Critical Hits Restore Mana

Guardian – Might/Sorcery

• Damage Taken Converts to Mana Restoration
• Elemental Resistance Increase
• Tier 3 Melee Damage Increase
• Tier 3 Blink
• Tier 5 Armor Increase
• Tier 6 Harmonic Overload – Chance to produce elemental shots from each kill

Jack of All Trades

Seeker – Might/Finesse/Sorcery

• Melee Damage Increase
• Range Damage Increase
• Magic Damage Increase
• Equipment Requirements minus 25%
• Tier 2 Skills Increase
• Tier 3 Damage Resistance Increase
• Tier 4 Critical Chance Increase
• Tier 6 Master of Arms – Unlocks all Weapon Mastery Skills

As you can see, each class gains a fair amount of bonuses as you focus on them. There is however a downside to all of this. If you choose to multi-class then you run the problem of not being able to reach the highest tier of abilities. This doesn’t make you less effective as you have more methods to deal with situations but it can really be felt when you’re doing Jack of All Trades and you can’t go above the 4th Tier of abilities. This makes me a sad panda. However, due to the fact that as long as you have the points, you’re free to change your destiny in the menu at any time.

To give you an idea, if you meet the requirements for a tier 2 hybrid build and tier 2 jack of all trades destiny, you are able to pick between the two at any time because you have satisfied the requirements to use the destiny. This can be used to your advantage if you’re just starting out. Being a Jack of All Trades type of character in the start gives you the option to make some good money as well as figuring out what basic skills you’re most fond of. Once everything is set, you then hit the Fateweaver and reset all your abilities/skills and create a build you like. The price to respec isn’t much and its a great thing that developers allowed you to actually do this as often as you liked as long as you could satisfy the cost.

At the end of the day, the one thing that really matters is that you have fun. KoA:R is a really huge game, very lengthy, and being trapped in a set role would begin to get on many peoples nerves I’m sure. You aren’t stuck with your choices, besides quest stuff, and its really encouraged that you just get out there and experiment. There’s nothing like having the option to just drop the sword, respec into a spell slinger, and be just as effective as you would have been as if you followed that path from the start. All you have to do is make sure you have the gear to back it up and with the ability to get housing and store items there, you have little problem with making it happen.

Well, that’s all I really have for today. I’ll catch you all next time either picking up from here if there’s anything more discuss with KoA:R or something completely different. Until next time, happy questing and stab something for me my fellow rogues out there.