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Playing KOTOR as a true "SOLDIER".

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Darth-Kibbles
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Playing KOTOR as a true "SOLDIER".

Post by Darth-Kibbles »

The challenge:

Play Star Wars KOTOR as a true Soldier. In other words, no lightsabers, no Force Powers, Not even Melee weapons like VIbroblades. Just blasters, body armor, mines, grenades and medpacs and the like. So far I'm on Taris and I find it challenging but still doable on Normal mode.

What tips..tricks and strategies would you use for such a game? Do you think it's possible to win on Normal Mode like this and what about Hard diffculty?
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Jack Dell
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Post by Jack Dell »

well, are revan's robes allowed? (+5 str) if youre going for it you should really go darkside. Also, it really changes things if you are playing in the pc or not, because those amazing items in the PC really make a difference. The oh so great armors and melee weapons in the yavin space station will change things. Also, I think you should get lots of constitution and lots of strength, because really dex isn't that much useful anymore especially because you will be using heavy armor and it wont affect your defense or hit at all. So leave dex at 10. Really pump str and con and possibly some int if you want skills. But really if you are neglecting force powers and using armor, dex, char and wisdom are useless, period. So just make the most out of this pure soldier. Be sure to get double weapons and flurry and I think youll completely own the game anyway. Also, really consider critical hit instead of flurry, because with the insane strength you should be getting by placing every point into it and all the equipment, your stun should be near unsavable and with two weapons with 17 critical range (sanisiki's war blade and baragwin assault blade come to mind) no jedi or non jedi should stand in more than two attack rounds. It really shouldn't be hard and I think youll actually find it increasingly easy. Also think that critical hit has more damage potential than flurry, but it can also net less damage per round. Still with the insane amount of feats, you could get both. Thats about all I can say. Remember to get the most out of equipment, that means getting implant feats as well.
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Darth-Kibbles
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Post by Darth-Kibbles »

Actually, I have modified my own rules to mean "no melee" period. I am not using any swords or lightsabers but blasters only. The game is just too easy with lightsabers and force powers used appropriately. Therefore thre is no need for strength, Wisdom or Charisma. and DEX and CON are all-important.
If you think this is tough, so far Taris has been a breeze. The governor falls really fast to multiple laser blasts.
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Jack Dell
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Post by Jack Dell »

i should read more carefully and avoid writing insane amounts of ridiculous stuff. Well then concentrate on dex and buy armor that gives you the most armor rating. Its a pity that you won't use robes since you can get a higher ac with them. Light exoskeleton works nicely i suppose. All the dex enhancments you can find and rapid shot. If youre not going to immobilize them before shooting them you are going to need all the dex you can get. Combat sensor, dex boosting gloves, dex boosting implant, dex boosting belt, dex boosting armor. With rapid shot and two powerful blasters you should get a decent build. Constitution is important too. Well since you arent going to use force then i suppose you chose the guardian to use the most feats. Max implant, max toughness, max dual weapon, max rapid shot, max conditioning. Use the best blasters, cassus fett's pistol or admiral sauls pistol and the one on yavin.
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Post by nephtu »

Hmm...

If ranged attacks are your bag, you could probably make some good use of sniper shot duels, too. I used that strategy a lot in solo mode for clearing rooms full of enemies (when possible) - it was often possible to zap some poor Sith with a load of my best available Sniper shots, and gradually work my way around the room, popping back for the odd force heal now and again.

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Post by techoluvr »

You know soldiers also use melee weapons for close combat also
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Jack Dell
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Post by Jack Dell »

actually, sniper shot is pretty much useless since there are very very few weapons that have a natural 17 threat range and they are rifles, which means you only get 1 attack per round with a potential of 11-20 to get double damage. Its a lot better to just increase dex and use two pistols and rapid shot, this is the only way, without using force powers, of constantly doing considerable damage with pistols. Rifles and others are just not useful enough, they reduce your damage output severly with the loss of one attack. If you want to really do lots of damage you ought to use a scoundrel as starting class and then incapacitate enemies with the force powers of team members and get a great bonus with sneak attack damage.
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Post by Darth-Kibbles »

Well I was actually thinking more of a "Han Solo" type of character or a permanent "scoundrel", emulating how he fought in the original trilogy (though I know he didn't use both hands).

This is actually very easy. I want to assemble all of Cassus Fett's items on my lead character. The extra armor (instead of jedi robes) and rapid shot is pretty good. There are few enemies that can give me any difficulty though I have only covered Taris, Dantooine and Tattooine. Bendak Starkiller is a joke and so were all the Mandalorians on Dantooine, the White Horned Animal, the Governor and many others that I had deeper troubles with my Scoundrel-Consular.

I am wonderign if it would be better to go with 2 awesome pistols or sell the pistols and upgrade heavy weapons. The go with rapid shot heavy weapons and break up Cassus Fett's items.
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Jack Dell
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Post by Jack Dell »

it is proven that the best build is using two pistols, at least in terms of damage output. However if you think rifles are more stylish by all means try, but you would still be hindering you potential damage. The only other option, but im not sure cause I never tried it, is using repeating rifles. I heard that they get two attacks per round but that may be false. You could give that a try.
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Post by nephtu »

Well...

[QUOTE=Jack Dell]actually, sniper shot is pretty much useless since there are very very few weapons that have a natural 17 threat range and they are rifles, which means you only get 1 attack per round with a potential of 11-20 to get double damage. Its a lot better to just increase dex and use two pistols and rapid shot, this is the only way, without using force powers, of constantly doing considerable damage with pistols. Rifles and others are just not useful enough, they reduce your damage output severly with the loss of one attack. If you want to really do lots of damage you ought to use a scoundrel as starting class and then incapacitate enemies with the force powers of team members and get a great bonus with sneak attack damage.[/QUOTE]

Useless? No. I'll cheerfully grant you that they may well be a sub-optimal strategy, but so what? Beating the game is doable with virtually any non-absurd set of choices. The main merit of rifle attacks is that you can pick off your victims one by one at maximal range, which seems to work pretty well agains non-grenadier opponents. Damage output is really only critical in "kill-or-be-killed" type fights, which a typical sniper attack is not.

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Post by UserUnfriendly »

yeah, its a range issue...and the threat range of rifles, especially zaalbar's bow caster, is much better if you like sniper shot..

plus, there are some really cool rifles in the game, jurgen kalta's assault rifle, in dantooine, has a mixed bag of energy, physical, anti droid damage that is surprisingly effective...

now if your dex is really obscenely high, to make the most of your ranged abilities, you should avoid heavy armor, and get the genoharian light armor...looks good, and +7 to defense is not to be sneezed at, because you keep your dex bonuses, AND it adds +3 to your dex...mission got some really high defense with that armor... :D
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Post by Jack Dell »

I'm still not convinced. While I cannot question that you can beat the game with sniper shot and zaalbar's bowcaster, it doesn't mean its useful. It is more than sub-optimum. There are hardly enough situations in which the enemy is far enough to justify that range increase and losing two attacks (rifle and sniper shot = 1 attack). It is interesting though and i'd like to know cause I haven't tried it. Do repeating blasters have an extra attack per round? It'd be useful for getting that extra attack without having to use up 3 feats to eliminate penalties.
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Post by MalaksBane »

[QUOTE=UserUnfriendly] ...
now if your dex is really obscenely high, to make the most of your ranged abilities, you should avoid heavy armor, and get the genoharian light armor...looks good, and +7 to defense is not to be sneezed at, because you keep your dex bonuses, AND it adds +3 to your dex...mission got some really high defense with that armor... :D [/QUOTE]

The 'dex-limit' from armour is imposed on the bonus to defense you normally receive from dexterity. Attack bonus should not be affected.

If you cannot get the Genoharadan (DS / LS) armour, but have access to Yavin, the Light Exoskeleton is pretty good as well, when upgraded it has +8 to defense plus a +5 dex-bonus (+13 max defense bonus).

Sniper Shot is, I believe, the blaster equivalent of critical strike, and quadruples the threat range of your weapon, increasing the chance on a crtitical hit, which may double part of the damage. Since the threat range can never exceed 11-20, the chance to score a critical hit is never more then 50%, iow, you can never do more then 150%. With a single weapon. Rapid Shot simply gets two attacks, or (roughly) 200% damage.

With two weapons, Rapid shot gets three attacks, roughly 300% damage, Sniper gets 2 attacks of 150%, which might just be able to match Rapid Shot.

But, according to d20 rules, the 'double-damage' on a critical hit does not include the damage bonusses that result from a roll of dice, ie, a 2-12 bonus is not doubled, which reduces the usefullness of Sniper Shot and Critical Strike.

You do get a chance to stun though.


JT_Kruel has made some blaster builds, for solo-play I beleive, though they do use force powers: http://kotorbuilds.blogspot.com/
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Post by AVENGER »

Besides the fact that your going to have a lot of dexterity your going to want the nerve amplifing belt towards the later bit of the game and I would advise a sentinel more for this build. Because you may be able to take everything down up to your 2nd star forge(excluding dantooine) but manaan has a lot of dark jedi on it and also darth bandon will be no pushover without force immunity(especially if you take korriban as your third planet...you have to take bandon on solo and even as a consular I needed strategy for that because I didn't have force immunity yet). So as a sentinel one of your "given" feats that you automatically get as you progress is a force immunity feat that cancels out force immunity so you won't have to worry about it. This way you can easily take on the dark jedi towards the end of game without having to worry about their force powers and you just blast em like mad. Plus your not going against your "no force powers rule" which using force immunity would. Oh yeah I also mentioned the nerve amplifing belt this makes you immune to mind affecting things...which will be very useful along with the force immunity you get as a sentinel...Anyways that's my two cents :D
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nephtu
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Post by nephtu »

Umm..no.

[QUOTE=Jack Dell]I'm still not convinced. While I cannot question that you can beat the game with sniper shot and zaalbar's bowcaster, it doesn't mean its useful. It is more than sub-optimum. There are hardly enough situations in which the enemy is far enough to justify that range increase and losing two attacks (rifle and sniper shot = 1 attack). It is interesting though and i'd like to know cause I haven't tried it. Do repeating blasters have an extra attack per round? It'd be useful for getting that extra attack without having to use up 3 feats to eliminate penalties.[/QUOTE]

Well, there are about a zillion "Room full of a bunch of Sith troops" fights. In my experience (an awesome one play through, "I R l33t!"), you can do these two reasonably painless ways: use force powers for crowd control and grind the enemies down OR sit out in solo mode at range and pick them off one by one.

I wasn't using a repeater or Zaalbar's bowcaster, just a dumb old Blaster rifle, Ion rifle, or that Disruptor cannon if they were shielded. It may be slow, but so what?
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