A mini-faq for Fate on deep descent.
This guide was written for verison 1.21 of the game. This is probably the final version of this guide, barring requests for clarification or greater detail.
Game Overview
Fate is a game published by WildTangent. If that name gives you pause, then you should know that yes, it is THAT WildTangent. Fate is something of a popcorn game, designed for casual play, and very clearly a derivative of Diablo 2's interface and gameplay, only without the plot and multiplayer.
I'm not especially interested in making a full fledged fansite for the game, but some basic tips would be in order for the new player. The game comes in four difficulties, and as far as I'm concerned, the only one worth talking about in terms of strategy is the highest: Legendary. The other difficulties are easy enough that pretty much any sane character build can make it's way down to the boss without too much hardship.
Legendary Characters
Attributes
Every time your character advances in level, it gets five points to add to it's attributes. Some description of these is in order to help a player make a better choice.
Strength
Your strength attribute helps wield you better weapons and wear the best amours. When attacking, each point adds a percentage damage bonus to all attacks done with weapons. It never diminishes in usefulness for melee characters. Mages need little or no strength, because they have access to armour that needs the magic attribute. Mage robes and armors are not quite as good as the strength based armors, but most of a character's defence comes not from armor class but from enchantments that take a percentage off of all damage received.
Dexterity
Dexterity is needed to use some weapons, especially spears and bows. It adds a flat bonus to your chance to hit and your armor class. Wether or not dexterity becomes less useful as the game progresses is debatable, but the majority of players prefer to get attack bonuses from spells and items and to ignore this attribute completely. Most of the dexterity based weapons are not as good as the strength based ones. Dexterity is essentially useless to mages.
Vitality
Each point of vitality adds a flat bonus to health and to stamina. This attribute is considered the most useless of the four. If you find yourself dying from a small number of hits, it is much wiser to get equipment health bonuses and with damage reduction enchantments rather than waste attribute points on a small number of extra hit points.
Magic
Magic is the primary attribute of mages. Each point adds a flat bonus to mana, and a percentage bonus to all damaging spells. Mages will want to put every point they get into this attribute. There are attack and defensive spells which fighters will want to make use of, so there is some debate as to how much magic a fighter character should take. Since increasingly powerful items can be found deeper in the dungeon which add lots of points to the magic attribute, melee fighters can put no points into this attribute and still expect to eventually be able to cast the buffs and debuffs they want to use. On the other hand, putting no points into magic makes the early levels a great deal harder. If one is simply looking to win the basic quest, putting 20-30 points into the magic attribute very early on will make life much easier for the average fighter. Only those fighters looking to descend past level 100 should consider putting no points at all into magic.
Damaging enemies
All characters in a game like this are chiefly concerned with how they do damage to their enemies. There are seven possible methods of doing regular damage: Bows, Weapon + Shield, Two Weapons, Two-Handed Weapon, Charm Magic, Attack Magic, and Ringing Blast. A quick analysis of these is in order.
Bows
Use a bow in two hands to assault your opponents from afar. You can use either dexterity based bows or strength based crossbows. These weapons aren't especially great due to low damage.
Advantages:
- The biggest advantage is of course being able to attack from afar.
- One can combine ranged attacks with lots of knockback effects for especially safe combat.
Disadvantages:
- Very low damage.
Weapon and Shield
A good setup for Legendary. You do decent melee damage, and you get a shield, which you can think of as an extra chance to completely avoid damage from most attacks. Your chance to block is capped at 50%.
Advantages:
- Though you don't benefit from two weapons, you don't suffer the heavy penalties either.
- Shields are nearly as good as an extra 20-30% damage reduction once shield battle skill is trained.
- Shields also offer extra armor in and of themselves.
- Battle shields offer up to four sockets, which exceeds many of the one handed weapons.
Disadvantages:
- With 75% damage reduction, the extra protection might not be needed, at least for the basic 50 level quest.
- You lose the extra damage type(s) that a second weapon would offer.
Two Weapon
Wield a melee weapon in each hand for some serious slicing and dicing. Looks cool, but isn't nearly as tough as you'd think, especially to begin with. In theory one could use two different types of weapons, but there isn't really any good reason to do this.
Advantages:
- You attack twenty percent faster, even beyond the normal attack speed cap.
- Two weapons with different elemental damage enchantments on them gives you more varied damage types.
Disadvantages:
- Two weapon users do 25% less damage with their primary weapon, this penalty can be reduced with a skill.
- Two weapon users do 50% less damage with their secondary weapon, this penalty can be reduced with a skill.
- Without good damage reduction, the lack of a shield will hurt survival chances against monster packs, such as ogres.
Two-Handed Weapon
Pick up a big polearm and swipe at the enemies. This setup is currently too underpowered to be worth serious consideration.
Advantages:
- Higher damage than single handed weapons.
- Polearms have more range than other weapons.
Disadvantages:
- You lose an entire item slot, meaning a devastating loss of valuable magical bonuses. Not even counting normal enchantments, you'd probably get more damage than polearms give out of a weapon and shield by slotting lots of damage bonus gems in the shield.
Charm Magic
Charm magic is for summoning monsters of your own to help you fight. You can have up to six at once at your side.
Advantages:
- Very powerful early on.
- You have a source of damage which also protects you.
Disadvantages:
- Slowly becomes more and more useless as the game progresses. Eventually summoned creatures stops being worth anything, not even providing a decent meat shield.
Attack Magic
Blast your enemies with spells. Attack magic is much better than it used to be, and seems to be significantly stronger than melee now. There are a number of utility attack spells that can help out a hybrid melee character, but a true attack mage will probably not use those all that much.
Advantages:
- Attack magic offers area attacks.
- Spells always hit, though some have a set miss chance, and some need to be aimed.
- Most spells have good range or radius, so you can snipe and use hit and run tactics.
- Spells tend to get significantly more extra damage per skill point than weapons.
- Staves which add a large amount to attack spell skill are very common.
- The best mage robes look much cooler than the stupid "football uniform" strength armor.
- There are some useful utility attack spells such as web.
- Spells which do damage now benefit from damage enchancing enchantments on equipment.
Disadvantages:
- Spells are somewhat slower than weapons, this is less of a problem once you get gems to fix this.
- Spells do not benefit from elite, legendary, superior, or flawless grades.
- Spells eat up mana, and you can simply run out and be unable to attack. This is less of a problem later on.
- Monsters with large or perfect elemental resistance are common. In the later levels, you will be totally unable to fight these.
- Monsters which disable your spellcasting ability are uncommon but do exist.
- The mage robes and other gear do not protect as well as the metal armor.
Ringing Blast
The defensive spell Ringing Blast is a potential way to kill monsters quite safely. It's normally used as a last ditch "get away from me" spell to let you escape from huge mobs of foes, but the determined player could turn it into an interesting primary attack form. This would probably not be all that viable in the long run, but who knows?
Advantages
- Very unorthodox, this alone will appeal to some players.
- In spite of low initial damage, ringing blast scales up as quickly as fireball, getting +2 damage per point of defensive magic skill.
- Ringing blast has a large area of effect, big enough to use as a primary form of attack.
- Ringing blast has a six point knockback effect, so if you can cast it quickly enough, most monsters won't be able to reach you.
- You'll be able to cast defensive magic buffs with insane durations.
Disadvantages:
- The ultimate one trick pony, you only have one damage type.
Weapon selection
Weapon slection is a relatively tough issue, due to the complex nature of stat requirements and other modifiers. Hammers, swords, and spears are relatively good compared to the other weapons however. Currently I'd say that hammers are probably the best weapons due to their high damage at the cost of a little speed, but my opinion on that may change in the future.
Shields
To use a shield or not to use a shield: that is the question. Wether 'tis nobler in the game to suffer the slings and claws of outrageous foes or to take up a half inch of steel and in doing so, ignore them.
Mangled Hamlet aside, someone with good skill in shield battle has a nice chance to block the vast majority of attacks, and over time this amounts to a defense nearly as good as an equal percentage of extra of damage reduction. The only gaps in this usefulness are that it won't help against enemy spells, and won't stop the hits that do get through from instantly killing you the same way true damage reduction can. In general weapon and shield users outclass two weapon users in Legendary difficulty, since they can stand up against a crowd of monsters twice their level much more safely, an important ability when it comes to a lot of the quest monsters and their minions. Shields add a bit to your armor directly.
Enchantments
Getting lots of nice enchantments on your gear is very important to your success in Legendary, where the monsters tend to be more than twice your level at any particular point in time. Some particularly useful effects include the following:
Damage taken reduced
Getting percentage damage reduction enchantments is an important goal on legendary, because it allows you to slug it out with big bad monsters safely without wasting any attribute points in vitality. Do your best to get as much of this as you can, it's probably the most important effect you can go after. Remember that you can't benefit from more than 75% damage reduction, and that spectral armor adds 25%. I prefer to just get the full 75%, purely for convenience.
Improved Chance of Block
For shield users, this is a close second to damage reduction, and unlike the shield battle skill, doesn't have stupidly high diminishing returns.
Combat bonuses
As you get deeper, hitting and hurting monsters becomes a real problem for melee characters. You'll want lots of bonuses to your ability to hit, do damage, and to your attack speed.
Life Steal
Draining life from your opponents lets you stop using healing charms every five seconds. 12% should be plenty for the first twenty levels, at least once you start hitting for hundreds/thousands of damage every second. Still, it's more useful to not get hurt in the first place, and this doesn't work well if you can't hit for lots of damage, so it doesn't come close to being the most desirable enchantment, unlike in Diablo. You will eventually want at least 20% life steal, this is because many monsters at around level 30 and below start casting a spell that gives them 20% damage reflection, and you will kill yourself on them without something to compensate.
Attribute Points
Attribute points are tight early on, especially for spear users, but you get more leeway as the game progresses. The only attribute I would always avoid putting anything into is Vitality, one should instead get lots of damage reduction, and eventually you should be getting more than enough extra health from your gear. If you're not going to cast attack spells as a source of damage, you don't technically have to put many or even any points into magic, because +magic equipment gets increasingly powerful as the game goes on, though it's much harder to deal with this in the short run than to deal with no extra vitality. I personally like to have 45 magic so I have total freedom when it comes to equipment, but no one anywhere would say this is the most effective use of attribute points for a hybrid.
Skill Points
When in doubt, dump skill points into your primary combat skill. For weapons, this adds +1 to hit and +1 to minimum damage and suffers no diminishing returns, spells tend to get about +2 average damage per point, though this varies. Primary combat skills also play very well indeed with enchantments that add percentage bonuses to hit and to damage.
I usually play melee, and as a rule of thumb, I put half of my skill points in my weapon skill, a quarter in defensive magic, and spread the rest evenly, usually in shield battle and critical strike, which aren't worth putting up extremely high due to their diminishing returns. Also, critical strike is not really worth much if one is not already hitting pretty hard, and I for one prefer to get my normal hits nice and powerful quickly. It is rarely worth it to put more than 15 skill points in skills that have diminishing returns, get any extra you want from gear, especially shield battle skill, where you can just get +block equipment. As for defensive magic, one eventually wants to have dervish and battle fog running continually. I tend to think 40 points gives dervish and battle fog enough duration that I don't find them dropping annoyingly soon, anything else can come from equipment. If you decide to go as deep as you can in Legendary, you will eventually want some spellcasting skill and attack magic so you can hose your opponents with spells such as blindness, frailty, area slow, muffle magic, and web. You can of course get points in thoese skills from either equipment or skill points.
Keeping the Pet Useful
Keeping your pet useful in Legendary is a daunting and ultimately futile task, but you can give it a big boost by giving it an amulet and two rings with +10 health regain gems. Since it can't die, it will quickly gain back enough health bounce right back into the fight time and time again after only a brief pause. Since your pet doesn't earn experience while fleeing, this method also helps it advance much faster in levels. Some prefer to use only one health regain gem, and to put stuff like knockback and life leech in the other slots. You'll have to experiment to see what you like. Watcher (from goldfish) is the only really good form for pets, because they cast a large selection of spells from a distance, whereas the other forms just do inconsequential melee damage and tend to get beaten up a lot.
Descending past level 100
If your goal is to go as deep as you possibly can, you may wish to design your character differently. This is because you will be getting many great items with huge bonuses on them, for example +100 or more to a skill. Anticipating this, you won't want to put anything into attributes or skills which have a cap or diminishing returns. To that end, you'll only want to put points into strength if you are melee, and magic if you are a mage. No points in magic will make your game a little harder as melee early on, but eventually your equipment will put you well over any required levels to cast the spells you want. Similarly, you will only want to put points into your attack skill or the magic skill you are using, nothing else. This is because these are the only skills without diminishing returns. Everything else you can expect to eventually have huge bonuses for on your equipment.
On the other hand, since the equipment bonuses are so large, the importance of your attribute and skill distribution diminishes steadily as time goes on. Once your character is level 99, it won't be advancing any further in level, so equipment will quickly take center stage, as a result it might not be so important to fret over every last skill point.
Links
- The official Fate website.
- The official Fate discussion board.
- Nice site with lists of items and spells.