Which are the most useful skills? Is stealth useless?

[TT1]

Survival and stealth are useless.

[JONNIN]

stealth is only useful for a stealthy group.  If the entire group has high stealth, you can posiiton right up on them without being detected, or walk into a room, take the loot, and walk out without bothering to fight annoying trash.   One character can steal loot, but the whole team needs it if you want to position. 

 

mechanics: one character needs very high in this to detect hidden loot, deal with traps, and deal with locks.  Also setting traps can really swing a tough fight your way.

 

athletics: every character needs *at least* 3 in order to not need to rest all the time after fights.  5  for each character might be a better long term goal.

 

lore: use scrolls.   I like to put healing scrolls on various non-healers for emergency use.  And you can put damage or crowd control scrolls on your healer in case your wizard/cipher went down.

 

survival:  find more plants, supposedly?   It also helps duration of a few items that have a duration like regen potions.   This can be very handy on anyone, if you craft/have enough potions/scrolls/food.  

[TT1]

lore: use scrolls.   I like to put healing scrolls on various non-healers for emergency use.  And you can put damage or crowd control scrolls on your healer in case your wizard/cipher went down.

Lore is VERY important. I'll go even further: lore is all the player needs to make a Spellsword or mage / thief. scrolls are the key.

[Crucis]

Survival and stealth are useless.

 

Stealth useless?  Untrue.  Very, VERY untrue.

 

Survival useless?  Not true, but also not absolutely necessary either.

 

 

 

 

stealth is only useful for a stealthy group.  If the entire group has high stealth, you can posiiton right up on them without being detected, or walk into a room, take the loot, and walk out without bothering to fight annoying trash.   One character can steal loot, but the whole team needs it if you want to position. 

 

 

Aside from a good high stealth scout/thief, you don't necessarily need HIGH stealth on the rest of the party to position for a fight.  Of course, it does depend on what you mean by "position", or rather how aggressive those positions are.  If you just want to be able to get the entire party into ranged weapons range, you don't exactly need HIGH stealth on the entire party.  A moderate amount of Stealth will do.  But the key is that you need it on everyone.  If you have 5 characters with decent stealth and one with none, the no stealth character will stand out like a light house at night to the enemy.  Regardless, you don't need a high amount of stealth for it to be reasonably useful for getting your entire party into a useful combat position prior to initiating combat at range.  (OTOH, if one's idea of a good position to start combat from stealth is to be in melee range, well then you probably need very high stealth for those characters.)

 

 

 

[TT1]

Just use one companion with very high stealth as a scout, shot at distance and bring the fight to a better enviroment, using doors and corridors to hold your position with pikes in the second line and range weapons in the third line.

 

There is no need to put stealth to others companions.

 

Athletics: >= 4

Survival: 0

Stealth: one companion very high. Others: 0

Mechanics: same as above

Lore: very high

[Crucis]

Just use one companion with very high stealth as a scout, shot at distance and bring the fight to a better enviroment, using doors and corridors to hold your position with pikes in the second line and range weapons in the third line.

 

There is no need to put stealth to others companions.

 

Athletics: >= 4

Survival: 0

Stealth: one companion very high. Others: 0

Mechanics: same as above

Lore: very high

 

Not everyone wants to fight that way.  I prefer to bring my party stealthfully just into ranged weapons range before unloading with a tull team salvo, usually on just one or two enemies.

[Omnicron]

Like it has been said, stealth can give you a very powerful 1st round since you can position you character within range of their abilities and even kill  a few enemies if you know who to focus giving a big advantage in the fight. Heck I have even 1 shot phantoms with my backstab rouge and hence avoiding combat or pulling other enemies. 

Doing another playthough and focusing only on stealth I noted that it is possible to complete the Temple of Eothas without triggering a single encounter with 10 stealth. So if you want to avoid combat you can actually finish a large number of quests without fighting, so I feel stealth has a place. 

Edited May 4, 2015 by Omnicron