FATE The Cursed King – Mercenaries Overview, Mécanique, et stratégie

Are you frustrated with your hired assistance not carrying their fair share of the workload?

Basics and Mechanics

Ah, the hired mercenaries. While they are a defining aspect of Cursed Kings, they could certainly benefit from some improvements. Laisser’sois honnête, ils’re not very impressive. On an average day, they behave recklessly, as their AI instructs them to charge towards the nearest enemy and attack. toutefois, with the right approach, you can still derive some usefulness from them. Before we delve into strategies for optimizing your hired allies, laisser’s clarify how they operate.

You are granted three mercenaries, unlocked at levels 10, 20, et 30. You can either recruit retired characters, paying the standard fee along with the cost of their equipped gear, or you can hire random individuals who start with empty packs and high aspirations. Dreams of taking on dragons head-on.

In terms of mechanics, you have a loose level of control over your new allies by setting their combat stance. By clicking on a party member’s nameplate, you can switch their stance between aggressive (indicated by red lightning), défensive (indicated by a gold shield), and support (indicated by a blue heart).

The default stance is aggressive, which functions as you would expect. Mercenaries rush towards the nearest enemy and engage in combat until the target is defeated. This stance is typically the most effective for a mercenary.

Defensive stance, d'autre part, is essentially useless. As Fate lacks any form of taunting mechanism, selecting defensive stance only results in mercenaries rushing forward without attacking. Dans toutes les situations, the aggressive mode is preferable. Even in hyper-defensive or damage reflection builds, it is more advantageous for mercenaries to attack.

Support stance is more intricate. Dans ce mode, mercenaries attempt to stay closer to you while still engaging nearby enemies. toutefois, their relentless pursuit of creatures to the edge of the screen is curtailed. Plus important encore, this stance allows your mercenaries to cast defensive spells, dans une certaine mesure.

It is worth noting that mercenaries are not proficient spellcasters. They sporadically cast one of their learned spells at random, with a slight inclination towards their currently selected spell. In aggressive or defensive stances, they choose from their offensive and charm spells. In support stance, they not only cast offensive spells but also defensive spells, further diluting their spell selection. They do not prioritize casting buffs, guérison, or any other supportive actions unless it is their only available spell. Heureusement, ils ont gagné’t recast a spell that is already active. Dans l'ensemble, you can expect mercenaries to unleash their least opportune spell at the most inopportune time.

En outre, caster mercenaries face limitations due to fixed cooldown periods between spell casts, regardless of significant enhancements in casting speed and mana regeneration. Donc, attempting to exploit their spellcasting speed to render the random spell selection irrelevant is futile. Finalement, mercenaries cannot effectively fulfill the role of casters, whether in offensive or supportive capacities.

Their Areas of Expertise

Abandon the notion of creating a well-rounded party with each member serving a dedicated role. Mercenaries are ineffective at tanking, have limited spellcasting capabilities, and are recklessly aggressive melee fighters. toutefois, they excel in one area: ranged combat.

The most advantageous approach is to build mercenaries as fragile but high-damage archers. Since their AI does not charge forward when already in range, they maintain their position and display exceptional accuracy. With three well-equipped archer mercenaries, an entire room can be cleared before a human player even assesses the enemy’la présence. toutefois, achieving this level of performance with your murderbots requires some grinding.

The Optimal Build

Avant tout, prioritize strength to maximize damage output, while adjusting dexterity as necessary to meet equipment requirements. Regarding skills, bow skill should be your top priority. Although critical strike may seem tempting, building around critical hits can prove challenging.

When recruiting mercenaries, look for individuals with high strength and dexterity, and allocate points to bow skill, possibly critical strike as well. Nothing else holds significant importance, including the mercenaries’ course. Mercenaries do not benefit from the same racial bonuses as player characters, so their race is purely an aesthetic consideration. Il’s worth mentioning that unlike other shops, which require a save and reload to reset their stock, the pool of available mercenaries refreshes each time you open the recruiting menu, making it easy to search for your desired candidates.

Maintenant, laisser’s discuss equipment. The most effective strategy is to focus on attack speed, ce qui est relativement facile à réaliser, even in the early stages of the game. Simply ensure that their bows are up to date to maintain high damage output. Feel free to sacrifice armor values and even enchantments in favor of slots. Outfitting them with mediocre gear embedded with 12-15 superior jades (which can be purchased from a magic vendor within a short time frame) will grant a significant 200+% attack speed bonus, essentially transforming the bow or crossbow used by your mercenaries into a rapid-fire weapon. When the individual arrows become indiscernible, and a solid white line connects your mercenary to their target, you can start looking for other useful enchantments, particularly knockback. Even a minor knockback effect can push enemies into corners due to the sheer rate of fire, greatly aiding in narrow corridors where the range advantage would otherwise be lost and your fragile archers could be at risk.

Once you have secured attack speed and knockback, you can consider enhancing damage and bolstering your mercenaries’ defenses. toutefois, since you have three rangers to equip, it may be a good idea to specialize their builds slightly. Par exemple, you can focus one on raw DPS, another on critical strikes, and the third on heavy knockback to distribute gear drops more evenly.

Néanmoins, maintaining attack speed should always be your top priority. Keep in mind that there is no limit to attack speed, and your mercenaries can shoot as fast as your computer’s framerate allows. Donc, keep stacking speed. It only gets more amusing.

Enhancing Your Murder Bots

Jusqu'à présent, we have explored ways to make mercenaries useful by optimizing their archery skills, vitesse d'attaque, and knockback. toutefois, we can further improve their performance by infusing a touch of magic.

While mercenaries may not excel as spellcasters, providing them with a carefully selected set of spells can enhance their effectiveness. When choosing spells, consider a few factors. Premièrement, exclude defensive spells, as they are unreliable. This leaves us with attack and charm schools of magic. En outre, we want spells that do not require investment in the magic stat or any casting skills, enabling us to allocate all points into physical attributes and bow skill.

Heureusement, basic debuff spells such as slow, frailty, and web have their duration as the only scaling factor, not the strength of their effects. The same applies to summoning spells. I recommend equipping each mercenary with the highest-level summon spell they can cast upon recruitment. En outre, assign one mercenary the spell slow, another frailty, and the third mercenary either frailty or web, Selon vos préférences. This setup ensures that your mercenaries reliably apply crowd control and weaken enemies’ defenses independently, enabling them to swiftly dispatch even the most formidable bosses with minimal risk.

But why assign two spells when the primary issue with mercenary spellcasters is their inconsistency in casting? Ne’t it be more effective to have the debuff spell as their sole spell? Bien, comme mentionné plus tôt, mercenaries will not recast an active spell. While this means that each mercenary will only summon a single creature, it also ensures that they consistently cast the debuff spell exclusively for 60 seconds until the summoned creature disappears. Even a low-level summon can buy crucial seconds for your archers to line up their shots, as enemies are distracted by the summoned creature. En fait, là’s an argument to be made for equipping all your archers with the basic summon rat spell, which has a low cost and summons three rats. This swarm can effectively create a meat shield between your vulnerable archers and their adversaries, blocking their path with adorable squeaking rodents.

En résumé, to make mercenaries truly useful, focus on archery, vitesse d'attaque, revers, and debuff spells, along with summoning spells.

Regarding your own character, I would strongly advise against playing as a fourth archer, as competition for gear among your mercenaries will already be challenging. Plutôt, consider a build that complements your mercenaries, such as a defensive mage specializing in buffs and protecting your allies through abilities like « dervish » et « firerate. » This choice opens up a whole different set of strategies.

I hope this guide provides you with inspiration and a reason to revisit this often-overlooked gem of a game. Enjoy your renewed adventures!