[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by verax:
I'm starting to learn Arco now and am trying to employ a Nataraja SC pretender strategy. I was cooking along pretty good Last night until about turn 33 when my Nata got swamped and ran out of endurance.

Encumbrance is the bane of most SC's. What you need is either enough reinvigoration items to exceed his encumbrance. Multiply this by two if he has quickness. The number of weapons he uses has no effect on fatigue, as only the base encumbrance matters each time he swings them all. The other way to reduce his fatigue is to give him a life draining weapon. These are the wraith sword (2 death, construction 4, two-handed), the hell sword(2 blood, construction 6, two-handed), and the blood thorn (3 blood, construction 6, one-handed). I prefer the blood thorn in most of my SC builds, except for the occasions when I want the berserking that the hell sword provides. Put one of these weapons in his loadout, and the Nataraja will have no fatigue problems against any living opponents. The other way is to give him death 3, but this requires you to research alteration 6 for soul vortex.

As for the rest of his equipment, there are a few ways that you can configure him. The goal here is to give him as many resistances and immunities as you can so that he will walk over normal troops. This means that you want him to be ethereal, quick, have a MR well over 20, have elemental immunity or resistances, have a protection between 20 and 30, and have as many damage shields as you can fit as well as any other effects. The equipment that I would probably put on any Nataraja would be:

Hand Slots:
Blood thorn, faithful, charcoal shield. These three give you life drain, luck, and a fire shield, as well as some fire resistance. The fourth slot can be any other kind of weapon or shield that you like. A sword of swiftness would be good to improve his defense, but there are a number of weapons with interesting effects that you can try out here.

Head slot:
Starshine skullcap. There aren't a lot of choices that you can make with regards to headgear, and the improved magic resist that the skullcap provides is always very useful.

Armor slot:
Your choice here depends on what magic paths you have taken. A robe of shadows is good if you have earth magic to provide etherealness. Without earth magic, you'll need some sort of high protection armor. The Elemental armor is a good choice here, as it provides immunity to all the elements and has good protection. Another choice is hydra skin armor if you really need regeneration.

Feet slot:
Your choice here depends on whether you have water magic or not. If you do, then use winged shoes. If not, use boots of quickness. If you are going up against undead troops, you'll probably need to use boots of the messenger here.

Misc slot:
You'll almost certainly want to put an antimagic amulet here to protect the investment you've made into the Nataraja.

Magic skills:
There are any number of magical paths you can choose to help your Natty along. Air, water, earth and nature all have very good combat boosting spells.

Air magic is a good choice because the nataraja tends to have a high defense stat. This works well with mirror image to keep you from being hit in the first place. Mistform is also always extremely useful on a SC.

Water magic provides you with both quickness and breath of winter, which frees up a boot slot and gives you another damage shield.

Earth magic provides you with iron will, invulnerability and summon earthpower. This is very useful to allow you wear a robe of shadows and still have high protection.

Nature magic provides you with personal regeneration and elemental fortitude. The Natty only has one misc slot, which is almost certainly going to be used for an AMA, so he really needs a source of regeneration to cut down on the afflictions he will suffer, and improve his survivability. Arco might be able to get away with just healing the afflictions, but I'd rather they didn't show up in the first place.

Let's say that you've chosen to make your Nataraja with air 3, earth 3, and nature 3. This will give you access to mistform, mirror image, invulnerability, elemental fortitude, and personal regeneration. That's 5 good buffing spells, and you have some flexibility to change your script depending on your opponents. You also can suffer a single death without losing access to your most important buffs. Let this monster loose with the equipment described above and you can watch the blender in action.