I am not too clear on how guardian combat works especially with the combat overhaul underway. I just don't want to pour resources down the "wrong" skill tree and get frustrated. Can anyone give any guidelines for a Hallifax Researcher? What qualities/stats are important? (I gather that equilibrium is important). I gather that Tarot is more offfensive, Healing defenseive, and Astrology a mix of these two + utility. Also what skill is a mercantile skill for a Researcher? I actually like that Researchers seem to not be very populous right now, but can I ask why that is? To me it just gives me more of a chance to make an impact in my guild.
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Intelligence will help you do more damage with your attacks.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
As others have stated, it is likely best to focus on your primary and secondary skills first for a while, and then make a more informed and experienced choice of your tertiary later. From my (limited) understanding of combat mechanics, healing researchers are difficult to kill, tarot researchers have some nasty tricks they can play (also tarot has some really nice transport utility), and astrology is weird and can be incredibly effective in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing when the alignments of the constellations are good. If you're putting lessons into rituals/aeonics or cosmic/harmonics, you are not putting lessons down the 'wrong' skill tree. Though you may want to look into putting a few (32ish) lessons into some of the other common skills (particularly dramatics, influence, aethercraft) if you want to explore some of the non-hunting methods of levelling up/snag some useful utility skills like squint.
Ultimately, people have been effective researchers with all of the tertiaries. Neither prismatic nor cloud trill will handicap you particularly in combat. If you really want to min/max race, you should message/talk to the guild champion about it. If you want to learn a lot about your skills, you should collar people and play around in the Arena. Combat is very much balanced around at least guild trans, though there are things that you can do to be effective/helpful without maxing your skills out.
You can looks at your SKILLCHOICE LIST which should show all the tradeskills you can pick. As a highmagic user, you won't have access to any sort of alchemy/poisons/herbs, but you do get access to enchantment. Trade skills are not the best way to make money. If you want it primarily for the usefulness and simplicity of being able to help out/make your own whatever, that's well and good, but don't expect to earn money with it. To maximize profit, you should focus on skills that will help you hunt or influence. There's a CHELP file that lists who has what trade skill in the city (it's likely somewhat out of date) but it can give you an idea of which trade skills are likely to be more in demand/who to pester with questions about a particularly trade skill you might be interested in.
As to the size of the institute, Hallifax in general is one of the smaller nations, which means that all the guilds tend to be on the smaller side. Researchers do seem particularly on the small side just now, and the only real reason for it seems to be because that's the current way it is. It may also be that your playtimes are slightly off from the playtimes of the rest of the guild. Possibly it's that the Institute lends itself to a very focused on the scientific side of Hallifaxian roleplay, where the roleplay of the Aeromancers is seen as more flexible. The Insitute has also had changes least recently (the symphonium is the newest Hallifaxian guild, aerochemantics and the cavalier spec were added to the aeromancers and sentinels, nothing has really been added to the Institute on a skill level since they came out aside from various nerfs/buffs/tweaks.) Ultimately though, I think the small size is just small gameplay population. Researchers are effective in combat, have a solid rp identity both in themselves and their role in Hallifax, and a cool group of leaders, so there isn't too much to be concerned about.