Shattered Kingdoms

I don't really want to wait more than 24 hours for my question to be even posted in the Build forum, so I'll ask here!

I'm super interested in scout, especially that I see that they can sell herbs and make superskins to sell! FinneyOwnzU had a good guide that really made understanding how not to make a trashy character stat wise, but he recommended against certain classes and so didn't focus on them. I'm trying to adopt this to scout, but I'm not sure where to start.

Some cursory searching seems to suggest DEX and CHA are my main stats?
What about movement?
Is STR necessary for ranged damage?
Is there a recommended limit on how many stats(STR/DEX/CON/etc.) to enchant for?
Do any of my stats affect tamed pets?

Thanks for the help!

dexterity is ur main stat as a scout, increasing ur accuracy with ranged weapons - find a good archery bow later on and use battle arrows, but level with a battle spear or ahlspiess.

there is gear in the game that can raise your attributes. u can also enchant/consecrate jewelry to increase ur stats - suggest reading the rules for how endowments stack

as a scout, i would prioritize stat trains in the following order: max moves, max hp, max str, max dex

u can use enchants/gear to get ur con and cha to racial max

What Finney said.

To answer your other questions, while STR doesn't affect your ranged damage, it does affect your carrying capacity and there's a mechanic in the game where if you're carrying over half your max capacity you take hits to your combat rolls and lose more PE on movement, so that's why STR is among the first of stats he recommends to train.
Movement is determined by CON and move trains for your max moves (And training Move severely increases your move regen, same with HP) while having high DEX will also mean that you lose less PE per room you travel.
Charisma is important as a scout primarily for assisting in tames, but I would advise against maxing charisma naturally. More on that later.
None of your stats affect tamed pets, they're all the same strength once they're tamed: However, I do believe that your success rate with tame is dependent on your CHA so you'll eventually want to max it through an enchanted jewelry piece.

As for stats:
You have a total of 7 slots for enchanting stats, two rings, two necklaces and two bracelets, plus your container. The reason that I do not advise maxing your CHA is that as long as you can find a sorcerer, you can find yourself getting a reasonable boost to your CHA score that can't bypass your maximum dependent on race. If you ask around in-game you'll get a pretty good idea of what's "easy" to enchant versus what's usually considered the "best" in that regard. As a scout, I'd recommend keeping three pieces of jewelry to enchant for fort, will and reflex, which leaves you four other pieces to enchant for CON, WIS, CHA and INT. INT is probably the stat you can afford to dump the most, although I believe herbalism is related to INT, it's not the worst skill to lose out on.

Welcome to SK!

Ah, so very similar to the mercenary/barbarian strategy, with some twists. Thanks for the help you two.

I've played a little before, just sort of had life get in the way and other things. Here's hoping for a solid round 2 try.

I would say Finny is close to spot on as far as where you want to end up putting your stat trains, however I wouldnt say that maxing move the most important to do at low levels. Scouts really do not have a lot of skills that require PE at low levels. Dirt kick is their only active skill to drain it outside of second attack. Honestly Im not even sure that a scout needs to max out PE it is very nice if you want to spend hours of real time herbing. Also there is a level distinction between what kinds of herbs you can find in an area. So being able to walk a long way at low levels still is inferior to leveling up so you can find the better herbs. That being said the main reason why training HP and move (and mana on chars that need it) is "more important" than other stats is because of the extra bonus you get from having them trained. A trained HP ME Move stat will give you extra regeneration in that area (its not huge but its there) a enchantment of the same will not.

As far as ranged combat size of your character has a significant impact on what damage you can do. It also can make it a pain in the backside to get "special" arrows. Do not level using a bow unless you want to spend a lot of time not leveling but fletching. To say you will use arrows by the hundreds to train high ends levels is not an exaggeration. I know on my character it would take near 1000 arrows to get a level. With this in mind having near max or max strength is important because you will be most likely leveling via using a spear.

Int has an impact on success rate of herbalism and skinning. However if you have maxed out your move and con you should have little trouble with endurance and pathfinding as a grand master being mounted and traveling a long way to look for desired herbs. So it is more a matter of time rather than requirement. As for skinning it might mean you need to kill a few more things but most of the time it is a matter of persistence to be successful on skinning. Also on the skinning note dwarves get a bonus on their skins that makes dwarf skinned skins better than every other race. However dwarves do not really make the best scouts due to almost all of their other stats being not ideal for it. Knowing this get some int items to boost it up, it really isnt that useful to have doing anything than actively herbing or skinning.

Taming is impacted by charisma in an important way. Tame is based off your level then modified by Charisma if you have below average charisma when you will only be able to tame weaker things. Above average you will be able to tame stronger things. This has the biggest impact while in the mid level area because a high charisma will let you tame a pet stronger than you should have at your level. Once you hit max level a slightly above charisma covers all the best tames I know of in game. Getting higher can save in tame attempts, you sometimes need to make in excess of 200 attempts to land a successful tame. My best advice to a player who is unsure where to find good loot is aim for a mid charisma and keep a charisma enchanted item on you for taming.
Charisma also affects the lag from the order command. However as a scout most of the time in combat you will not be using order so it doesnt play a significant roll. At least since order all bash is very unlikely work for all of combat.
As a new player finding the best point for your trained charisma at low levels is important because natural charisma helps you train faster so you dont want to be having to spend points in it as you near max level.
Side note on tame tame has two skills one makes an aggressive creature passive. The other is befriend it. So you will be able to "tame" stuff you will never befriend. This is important to remember when you first get tame because you probably are not going to find an animal to befriend.

I would strongly advise a new player against playing a scout if you want to PvP much it is unlikely you will have much success outside of a group. My assessment of scouts PvE, they can do some nice things solo once you really think about what you can do. However if the PvE group is not planning on skinning something my personal feelings as a player (of a scout), Id rather give my herb bag to the group and log over to an alt merc/barb/priest if it wasnt against the rules. Because I know that would contribute more.

Playing a scout is more about having fun with what you have than pushing end game content although it can be done it is easier with other classes. Although Ive found they can recover from losing all of their stuff fairly quickly due to tame and skinning.

Is there a way to tell if a beast is tameable so I don't have to spend forever trying to figure out? I'm apprentice(3) trying to tame this yak, and I get this:


> A mountain yak is starting to enjoy your company.

That means it's tameable by me? I just have to spam it enough for it to work?

That text seems to show that a pet is calm able. It can be shown for animals that are not tamable. Spamming it a lot of times is the only solution short of knowing. As a general rule of thumb if they consider as no match there is a good chance you can tame them with a middle of the road charisma. Another good way to figure out tames is to constantly try to upgrade using the consider command. For example consider a mouse then try to tame it. Then try a buy able pet. Then try something stronger than one etc. Sometimes tame can take 100 or more tries on something I know I can tame so persistence is the only way to know for sure. Another good "rule of thumb" is that you can upgrade your pet every status advancement. These rule of thumbs are not perfect answers but they good guides. Keep in mind that not all pets that consider a higher challenge make a better tame for a scout to use. They are different.

u can't tame anything until veteran status.

I've been taming plenty of things throughout journeyman. None of them can climb but I have pets!

There are not pets that have mastered climb it is frustrating I wish climb would add a bonus to followers so that if I have it mastered I could guide my pets. Then again once you have it mastered you have flying herbs for them anyway.