Project Gorgon: Under the Knife

Things have been a bit dicey so far in the level 70 range. But let me get right to the point. Like this guy . . .

After getting my bee pet I started thinking about all the differences there are in the pets in this game.

One of my new pets has a special trick that makes an enemy vulnerable to poison damage and strictly does poison based attacks. 

Basically Buzzter likes to poison things

I did a quick search of my options for taking advantage of this and I came upon the Knife Fighting skill. Actually, my choices seemed to really be Spider, Druid, and Knife Fighting.  

As cool as being a spider is (seriously, you can hatch spider babies inside your enemies), I don't know if I want to go through the whole animal experience just yet, and as amazing as all the things that come bundled with the druid are, hmmm I can be a duck, meh . . . just not feeling it.  Fighting with knives on the other hand is sexy!  Am I right? It's my fight-like-a-Stingite, sting-like-a-bee style!

So, just like that, I'm now working up my Knife Fighting skills. It's a big grind back up to 70-80, fighting all the stuff you already fought once before. Great re-tread on the part of the Developer, but ultimately a touch boring for the player since there are only a limited amount of alternate leveling location options in the game.  

So far, my thoughts are that using knife fighting exclusively for its poison skills seems to severely limit you, but hey, I'm still figuring it all out.

Many Worgs are gonna die to poison damage today

As far as I can tell, combat plays out a bit like this:

Open with Animal Handling skills that really get the taunt and damage for poison going. Then apply Poisoner's Cut, followed by Backstab (if the mob is taunted correctly by my bee), followed by Venomstike, followed by Poison Blade (which is an Alchemy Combat Skill) or other knife attacks.

The three main skills from Knife Fighting (and Alchemy) are these: 

• Poisoner's Cut -- A distracting motion whose main aim is to give you time to add poison to your blade for your next maneuver. On your next attack, gain a poison Damage over Time bonus.
• Venomstrike -- This is Damage over Time Poison attack that is classed as "a Nice Attack."
• Poison Blade -- Jab a Poisoned Knife into your target, dealing instant Poison damage.

I'm not a huge fan of Poison Blade, however, since it's a constant drip for Alchemy supplies. Every time you use it, it subtracts one vial of poison from your inventory. Personally, I'd rather see Poison Blade be modified to be a short duration buff that's slightly less punishing to maintain.

The other huge constant drip from Knife Fighting is that if you want to use throwing knives (Knife Fighting has a really really good ranged snare ability with a massive 90% speed debuff), you also need to take the Blacksmithing skill to make your throwing knives.  Finding metal isn't necessarily easy, which would require me looking more and more into the Surveying and Mining skills. Or alternately using Ice Magic to make Ice Knives, which only works in non-hot environments.

That's how Project Gorgon rolls . . . one skill leads to two more skills, which leads to two more skills, which leads to not really wanting to pursue those skills, to then leveling ten other skills.

The other downside here to my knife fighting build is that there is a good number of poison-resistant enemies in the game, but I always will have the option of breaking out my fire magic. Right?

So, I'll be spending a lot of time hanging out with my new knife training buddy Rick Snapley in the great cave city of Gazluk known as "New Prestonbule."

Yeah, it's basically six people living in an ice cave.

But hey! Farming wolves here for skins is great money and a great way to practice my new Knife Fighting at the same time.

Happy Dueling