Kleech's Unbiased Skill Selection
Nowadays you always hear the same things: Fire Magic stinks! Or people always favor only a couple of skills, without really trying the others. After much thought, talking to many people, and thinking on my own, I am here to make a breakthrough statement. Any combinations of skills work. No joke! If you know how to spend them, and what works with what, you can win in anyway possible.Now, keeping in mind that all skills are equal in the perfect setting, let‘s take a look.
• Fire Magic: The magic of pure offense. How can your enemies hurt you if you are dealing constant damage?
Overall Pros: You can deal extra damage with Fire Weapons and Walls of Fire, and Firepower can work well with it. Fireball to mix into your constant fighting will leave your opponent burned.
Overall Cons: With all that extra damage, you are leaving yourself open for attacks. Also, Fire is magical, meaning any monster with high Fortitude will be hard to defeat. Also, bosses might prove to be a burden against you, because they all have a resistance to magic, and the resistance grows higher to each boss.
o - Fire Weapons: The start of the fire skill tree. This skill can boost your attack a bit with some extra fire damage, leaving your opponent burnt. This skill can’t stand by itself much though, so you might want a little more power to help it along.
o - Firepower: This can work well in your Fire skill’s set. It gives you extra damage on Fireball and Fire Weapons, making your fights quicker and easier. But it doesn’t give you a lesser chance to get resisted, so that is still a problem here.
o - Fireball: The only castable skill of this tree; it gives you a nice attack to go along with your skills. At the beginning, it’s very good because it hits higher than your normal attack, but after awhile you grow out of it. It’s a nice change none-the-less! It's easily resisted though.
o - Wall of Flame: Oh, a very fun skill. Your opponents will fall before they’ll know what hit them! This skill deals damage to an opponent who attacks you with any normal attack! This doesn’t factor into magical attacks, and it can be resisted though.
• Ice Magic: The magic of offense with a chilling twist. You’ll carry the hardest hitting attack of all the skills, while freezing all in your path.
Overall Pros: This is an awesome tree to use in combinations. It can’t speak by itself, but if you combine it with Fire for more damage and Spectral for some defense, you’ll find endless possibilities. Glacier Strike is the skill you’ll want, and Ice Ball is the perfect skill to use while you’re charging. Heart of Ice can disable those monsters of their normal attack, giving you the defense you’ll need.
Overall Cons: Heart of Ice only disables normal attacks, so even if you land it on a boss, they still might pull out a magic attack and catch you off guard. Snow Ball can’t be casted every round, so you’ll find yourself not doing anything while Glacier Strike is charging. Absorption and Fire Ball can help you out though. Ice Weapons only gives a few bonus points but is less effective overall when compared to the other skills.
o - Ice Weapons: Just like Fire Weapons, this skill adds bonus ice damage to your attack. It can be resisted, but its extra damage at least!
o - Heart of Ice: Heart of Ice lets you block your opponent’s normal attack. While it doesn’t block their magical attack, it might give you the squeeze defense you need to pull through to let off Glacier Strike.
o - Snow Ball: Snowball is a castable magical attack. It might not deal the best damage, but it hits a bit higher than Fireball, and it also can use up that turn needed for Glacier Strike. It takes a few turns to recharge itself, so you’ll need to have a backup plan while not casting this.
o - Glacier Strike: The god skill of this bunch. It takes 3 turns to cast it (I only count it as 2 though) but deals loads of damage. You first have to click it to wait for it to recharge, and then the 2nd round you can cast a spell or keep on charging it. If you cast a spell, it will automatically recharge for you. But if you do a regular attack, the recharge will stop and you will have to charge it all over again. Then the 3rd round you can unleash its madness and wreak havoc on all monsters. It smashes down for about 3 times your normal attack, but it can be resisted. The higher you raise it, the less likely that it will be resisted!
• Shock Magic: The magic of offensive defense, you’ll stun your opponent with your skills and deal damage at the same time.
Overall Pros: The first skill of this sphere, Shock Weapons, will allow you to randomly stun your opponent. Disable lowers your opponent defenses, so you can get into them and attack them hard. Then comes Fortitude, which gives you defense to magical attacks! That in itself leads up to Shockwave which stuns your opponent while damaging them at the same time!
Overall Cons: Shock Weapons has a lesser change to hit if you aren’t holding a Shock Weapon, so that might cause a problem. Disable needs a good amount of skill points to really be effective, and also, Shock is more of a magical tree. So like most skills, the biggest drawback is that high Fortitude monsters will render your attack useless! Shockwave’s damage is counted as magic, meaning even that could be resisted.
o - Shock Weapons: This skill is the start of the Shock weapons. Allowing you to randomly stun your opponent, you can kill them before they can touch you! This, like most skills, can be resisted though, so watch out.
o - Disable: After a far amount of skill points, this skill will start reducing your opponent’s defense. That way, you can quickly go in and blow them all to dust! Yet, it’s a random skill, and it might not happen when you want it to.
o - Fortitude: Fortitude gives you defense from magical attacks! It’s the only defensive skill of this bunch. It’s not a 100% guarantee though, so don’t rely on it to save yourself all the time! It is a random skill so it’s a win/lose situation. You might be able to resist their magic, or you could die a most painful death.
o - Shockwave: Shockwave is a double bladed sword. It damages your opponent and then stuns them on the same turn. Both the damage and the stun counts as a ‘magic’ attack, so bosses with high magical resistances can, well, resist it.
• Spectral Magic: The magic of defensive offense, you’ll dodge your opponents’ attacks and throw them right back at them!
Overall Pros: It’s defense, so you can stay alive longer. You have some offence in there with reflex, so you can have a huge attack if you hit it with a Glacier Strike or a Shockwave for instance. You’ll gain health, and you’ll dodge attacks. There are passive and active skills in this bunch, so you’ll get some of each.
Overall Cons: Although Reflex may seem very useful, keep in mind that it only works when the attack is not resisted or blocked. There isn’t any proof if the first skill really does anything, because it doesn’t say “you defend” so you just have to believe it. But most of all, these skills are useless under the power of magic! You’ll need to find a way to be able to survive all the magic at the end of the game if you stay with these skills.
o - Spectral Weapons: This skill is different than all the other skills. Instead of giving you a bonus on the other skills, it boosts your defense. It gives a little bit better of a chance to survive the attacks at the same time though. It might not seem like it works, but you can decide that yourself.
o - Evasion: The real start of your frontal defense. This allows you to randomly dodge your opponent’s melee attacks. It can be a good help when you want to have fast battles.
o - Absorption: The healer of your fort. This skill, when activated, will absorb your opponent’s melee attack and heal you. It heals you more as you give it more points, but a free round is always a bonus! Of course, it’s magic so monsters can resist it.
o - Reflex: The secret weapon of this set. Gaining more chance to hit every point, this skill will randomly reflex your opponent’s attack on them! So that means that you don’t receive any damage, but your opponent has a chance of receiving about x2 as much! Of course, it can only reflex melee. And the chances are very low at the beginning too, which is a pity.
• Life Magic: The magic of pure defense, you’ll heal so much you’ll almost never die!
Overall Pros: To start with, Life Weapons adds +1 hit points to every potion. That can make it quite useful in the beginning. It also allows you to have a greater chance of healing while walking around. Field Medic heals you 1-3 hit points, and Life Steal goes up to 10. Resurrection can well, resurrect you at 50% your health. But you shouldn’t be dying now, right?
Overall Cons: Resurrection is only by chance that you’ll get healed, and even at level 10 you could still not get resurrected. Field Medic needs to get a hit to work, and you need to be wielding a life staff for Life Steal. Also, the name is very deceiving, as it doesn’t steal life from your opponent, it just gives you more.
o - Life Weapons: The starting skill, and it’s worth it. It brings up your potion healing power, and lets you heal while walking. Yet, the effects of walking only work when carrying a life wand.
o - Field Medic: Healing! Yummy! Grabbing those extra hit points might not seem that much, but a high hit point monster or a long battle will prove to help. But it only heals you if you hit your enemy, so it doesn’t look too nice if you are under leveled.
o - Lifesteal: More healing. This tree is filled with healing of course, and though this skill sounds awesome, it’s almost the same as Field Medic. It gains 1 hit point healed per level, with a maximum of 10 hit points. It works much better with a Life wand, and it doesn’t even hit 100% of the time once you have one.
o - Resurrection: The skill praised by many InSaNeR’s, as this skill can save you from restarting the game or even for normal/evil players, it helps you from a long walk. Although 50% hit points is nice, but at level 10 it’s not even 100%... So is it really worth it?
So, as a final note, I want to go back to what I said at the beginning. All skills are useful. If they weren’t, why would Neopets put them in the game? You just have to find what fits you. There is only one perfect skill selection: What you choose it to be.
Ha, but later I’ll go totally against this and make a guide for Neoquest I. I’ll look forward to comments! Neomail me at Kleech131 or Personal Message me as Kleech on the Neoquest Mania forums.
~Editted by Moon and Lewie, and Ecjebe looked over this. Props to Ahchoo for the inspiration and the first comments on it. :)