[Kel]

Originally posted by Boron:
what do i need to do to have a good pretender for early expansion from turn 3-5 on ?

Well, there isn't a single formula but you can find most of what you need in the alteration path by Alt-3, to start with. There are other things you can do, and you should experiement with, but the base I usually start with is E/A2/W and script quickness, ironskin, mistform, mirror image. That alone will suffice for most indies.

There are a variety of other spells that are handy (breath of winter, soul vortex, invulnerability, fire shield, strength of gaia, regen, etc.) but they will vary, depending on nation, pretender chassis, points and the strat you want to use.

Some general notes:
If you are looking at a very large fight, you will need to worry about the encumbrance of your pretender as well. Against most indies, it isn't really a problem as they will turn and run long before you have to kill them all but in especially large fights, encumberance can get you killed.

Pretenders with low slots and high HP tend to be more fitted to the early game, for their price.

There are a lot of handy astral spells that are low level and path but having a small amount of astral will make your pretender extremely vulnerable to any astral mage with the mind duel spell so it is usually avoided.

perhaps i should try the vq but the most useful nation for her is ihmo ermor because she needs a lot of points but ermor may not use her anymore .
i'll maybe give her a try with abysia .

I still use her with some nations, the ones that I play with sloth/death, mostly. Order and magic are often the only scales I see in the positive numbers but that's just me.

That said, if you have less points to spend, there are definitely other good choices, especially since the re-balancing of the VQ (which was quite well done, imo). Most of what you want is fairly obvious (good base hp, in built abilities, slots, initial path/dominion, etc.), Encumberance is the only thing that might deserve special attention.

- Kel

[ July 03, 2004, 23:48: Message edited by: Kel ]