Greetings Adventurers! With the changes to the Dwarven Brawler and Human Warrior the characters are more in line. Nonetheless I feel the Human still falls off a bit, but maybe I am just not good with playing the Human. I have some significant problems when playing the Human and hope to get some hints how to perform better. In my opinion the Human favors a very reckless playstyle. In most cases it's best to just close in and hit the enemy in his face. Parry is a valid option but more like a desperate measure - if parry is you best option, you are already in a bad place. Of course the Humand wants to fight one enemey after another to make use of his best modifiers. There are several problems to get that playstyle working: Crowded rooms are dangerous. You need to find a route where you don't get surrounded too much, 2 adjacent spots a doable, but with 3 or more you are in serious danger. If your defense is better than the opponents attack values you could just go for normal attacks taking a little more risk to suffer damage. Parry is a valid option here, not only because it raises your defense but also because you can kill more monsters per turn with counterattacks keeping that battle short (hopefully). An advantage of crowded rooms is your better chance to make use of press, giving you good modifiers for your attacks and counterattacks. Monsters with 2+ HP are unpredictable. Best case is a 40% chance to cleave a multiwound enemy, that's pretty strong but you can't count on it ( --> reckless playstyle). Most 3 HP monsters have high attack but low defense values, that makes parry a much less attractive option. It's nearly guaranteed to kill such an enemy with 2-3 hits as their defense is so low but still that means a high risk of taking 1-2 damage. Of course you could go for parry instead, but the high attack values lower your chances for a counterattack, so the attempt to play it safe can lead to even more damage in the end. I guess you should just swing your sword as long as you fight a single multi wound enemy. The Human has no tools to deal with ranged enemies. Now this is the real problem, when facing a lot of ranged enemies you can't do much more than just closing in and punch their faces. Parry doesn't help at all, every turn on guard is a lost opportunity to close in. With a strong bow you can try to shoot ranged enemies yourself, but this is a very bad idea as long as another enemy is in attacking range to you. The major problem when dealing with ranged enemies is the time you need to handle them. You need to hunt down one after another as they will flee in all different directions. That means ranged attackers will get many chances to deal damage. Mages deal damage way slower, but with the fireball needing no range they can flee far awy from you and summon can get out of hand really quickly. The last one is the Humans biggest probelm imo, but it gets much worse if you need to clear a room with a combination of these things. Multi wound mages take even more time to get rid of them giving them more turns to hurt you. Getting surrounded by multi HP opponents forces you to go on guard, which is a pretty bad idea as stated before. Even a crowded room with weak enemies can cause heavy problems, if there are some ranged enemies dealing damage to you, while you deal with the close combat enemies. You can try to go on guard, which potentially could shorten the fight while also raising your defense, but with some bad luck you can get to a dead end very quickly. Trying to break it down, I'd say the Humans biggest problem is his slow speed and relatively low mobility. The Elf just dances around all enemies killing one after another from a safe distance, her playstyle is very safe though she has less HP. The Dwarf is more comparable to the human, but he has way better options to deal with the Humans biggest problems. Charge makes him much faster and gives him some kind of ranged attack. He can cover ground while attacking at the same time, which reduces the battle length significantly. The worm is another kind of ranged attack helping a lot against isolated enemies. Also getting surrounded is no problem for the Dwarf, he even wants that to happen. How do you deal with these problem when playing the human? Is it just me or are the other characters indeed better to handle these situations? Do the other two have their own situations causing that much trouble to them?

If you have access to all three heroes, then you should definitely switch between them as appropriate. Why artificially restrict yourself to the Human, unless you want to quickly level him? But maybe you're interested in playing Tournament with the Human, not the most popular choice but I like it due to his damage output and predictability. (Even if you're not playing tournament, I recommend trying one or two games Elf-only or Dwarf-only so you can tell which rooms they're weak at.) Without going too far into the game mechanics (I assume you're managing those pretty well) one way to tackle the fear of these difficult rooms is to think of them as having a HP cost or scroll cost. You might not be able to clear the room untouched, but what if you're allowed to take 1 hit, or even 2? Maybe that ranged enemy becomes trivial if you throw a leap scroll at it. Is it worth using that scroll to avoid getting hit once? (The worst case is also important: what if that ogre just refuses to die? When do you run? Perhaps you should use a flame scroll for those gas spores rather than risk missing and having them move to a worse configuration.) With that in mind, consider leaving the room for later. As you probably know, opening up two entrances and switching between them gets you an effectively permanent sneak bonus (and is a kind of teleportation, which is awesome), so you should try to flank around crowded rooms. Some rooms don't open up new paths for exploration; is clearing them really worth it for the room contents? If all you need from a room is a weapon chest/potion, perhaps you don't have to clear the whole room for it. Or if you're really daring: sneak through the room and continue exploring the dungeon without the option to switch heroes. Maybe you'll get lucky with loot deeper down (don't forget to check the first lair room!), but maybe the rooms there will be even worse. One tip for higher-leveled heroes: you'll sometimes want to leave those weak monsters and summons alive because there's a high chance of scoring a feat on them. Feat chaining is one way you can kill a multi-HP enemy without rolling for defense, and you can also use it to chase down ranged/magic monsters.

First and foremost I want to level the human, because I think his last skill is one of his most important skills. With Riposte on 9+ you will counterattack about every 5th attack without going on guard, that is really strong and pretty important for the humans play style. I currently have him at lvl 13, both other chars are on 14 but I don't see that much need to max them out - they are already working pretty well. The enraged worm might be very strong as well, but the normal worm does his job sufficient. Also I rather ask for other opinions before I call him too weak, as that could also be just me playing the human wrong. Anyway, I feel mostly confirmed by your statements. You make some good points, but the thing is: All these tactics work for the other chars as well or even better. In comparison the humans seems highly dependant on things, which are just a bonus to the other chars (like feat chaining, the sneak attack through different entrances, scroll usage etc). I'm fine with the human beeing a bit weaker as he is the free starting character. In my opinion he still might be too weak in comparison, I wouldn't even bother to use him in a tournament (at least not for more than 10 dragons per game). His skills seem to me not that well rounded as for the other chars. Punt is pretty bad, I'd prefer a skill that doesn't have such a bad trigger or instead have a better effect (like just counterattacking regardless of free spots). Riposte is really good, but doesn't work well with guard, as these high rolls are successful def rolls anyway most of the time. Also I'm so jealous about the dwarves charge skill - the human would be so good, if he had that skill instead of punt. That would synergize with both full swing and press just greatly. On a more subjective note it feels pretty strange to me that the human is slower than the dwarf.

I guess I'm not so qualified to give advice then, since my elf is 13 and ~~the other two are 14.~~ *my dwarf is 14 and human 15! I have no idea how to explain that.* But as I understand the math you really don't need to worry about anything except dragons, because they make up the bulk of your exp. Human gets a bit of advantage against the Lich (always Press) and Specters (Press is easier to set up), which may be significant. In case you need any confirmation about normal ranged enemies: the dwarf can charge them down as you observed, but the elf gets to counterattack ranged during Evade! The human is definitely a pincushion compared to them if no scrolls are used. The luck-based part of the human skills isn't appealing to me either: punt/riposte/cleave occur so rarely in gameplay that it's not worth relying on the chance of them triggering for anything. But when it comes to dragons, human appears to be easiest to play (not easiest to win!) because there's basically just one strategy and therefore no serious tradeoffs to consider.

Ok, so I made some interesting experiences in the meantime. But first back to another statement: I wouldn't agree that only dragons matter. This statement is correct when talking about normal career mode, but it doesn't work for Tournaments or Daily Hunts. From these 3 modes the career is the slowest to rack up XP, because it takes so long to reach a high amount of dragons. At least that's for me the case: Playing Career I get about 40k XP from one playthrough against (currently) 20 Dragons. I killed more than double that number in Tournaments, but most of these XP went to the Dwarf or the Elf (more earlier on). A good Hunt (i.e. 50+ Kills) gives me about 90k XP. In both modes the normal monsters are much more important than in Career Mode, especially in Tournament it's a major drawback, if you have problems to clear the normal dungeon (cave, mine etc). The gap between Hunt and Career doesn't seem that big, but the Hunt plays a lot faster imo, so you make more XP in even less time. Anyway, stubborn as I am I am playing Daily Hunts only with the Human and was able to put some of your suggestions to a pracitcal test. In the meantime we had two Hunts for Ettins, one in the Tangled Woods (+9 Equipment in total) and one in the Enchanted Forest (+8 in total). I had the early impression that the best Hunts are for strong Monsters in a weak environment, this impression was confirmed over and over again. On my first try with the Human wih +9 I managed to kill about 20, but already noticed how Feat Chains became a real thing. I tried that Hunt again and killed 66 Ettins, with the Elf I was only able to get 35, the Dwarf managed 90 kills. On the second Ettin Hunt with +8 I got 80 kills with the human. These Hunts taught me a lot about Feat Chains and how to move the Human to maximize the use of feats. There were several rooms I cleared just in a single massive Feat Chain, the most important thing was to keep many enemies within 1 range (to always go for the highest feats) and to keep some monsters alive by purpose to use them for movement + feat attack. This way it was very possible to go for nearly 100% feats. Also Vanish Scrolls were very strong to initiate a new chain when the first broke up. The other experience was even more interesting to me: Ropers at the Old Graveyard for a total of +8 equipment. Though I didn't expect to do well I got 73 Kills with the Human, again thanks to massive Feat Chains. On that Hunt I wasn't able to clear that many rooms within a single chain, as the Ropers don't move thus making it harder to keep always the next target in range. Still the Ropers Attack of +4 isn't that much of a deal if you defend with +10 (+2 from Adrenalin). On that Hunt I was even able to use a summoned weak monster to initiate a new chain, that was a really good idea I didn't come up with myself. As said I tried one of the Ettin Hunts also with the Dwarf and have to admit he's way better with chaining feats. Again the Charge skill is just gold regarding Feat Chains, it raises the Dwarves range massively compared to the Human. The Dwarf didn't seem worse with initiating chains at all, as long as he is able to charge (that was the problem later on). He isn't that much better defensively anymore, but he is way better with counter attacks on guard, which ofc is very helpful. A big difference was the movement: The Human wants to have only one enemy adjacent, the Dwarf always wants 3+ adjacent monsters. With the Human I had to decide pretty often if I rather go for max bonus (i.e. 1 adjacent monster) or if I have to accept more adjacent enemies for possible better next moves. That was no problem as long as there was a 100% feat in range. With the Dwarf I didn't need to make decisions like these that often. Nonetheless his risk was much higher, because he always wants 3+ adjacent Monsters, but losing a feat chain in such a situation can hurt very badly. All this doesn't really help the Human with clearing Dungeon Levels but his big game hunter style plays our pretty well on hunts and is also enjoyable to play :)

It has been my experience that defending is almost always the strongest combat move with the human. As you mentioned, it can increase the number of attacks you make dramatically. What is equally important, however, is that it reduces the rate that damage is done to you, since defending gives you _at least_ a +2 bonus to defense, and the Parry abilities can improve that. The only times you want to attack a melee unit instead of defending against it is when its attack bonus is much higher than its defense bonus, so as to kill it before it can attack you. However, as you mentioned, many of those types of creatures have multiple hit points, meaning that there will already be some back-and-forth with attacks, so defending wins out again because attacking first is unlikely to decrease the number of times you are attacked. Additionally, defending is better if there is more than one creature attacking you as long as at least one of them is a melee creature. The defense bonus can help protect you against fireballs that can clear out surrounding enemies, block ranged attacks, and still allow you to attack. As you mentioned, the humans low mobility is his greatest weakness. However, non-melee enemies can almost always be chased into a corner, since ranged attackers will back away if they can. Leap and haste scrolls are very useful here, as well as sneaking in. The press ability is really the weakest of the humans skills; if you have a ranged attacker pinned, it probably won't survive for long anyway. When facing a room full of melee enemies, the best tactic is to shoot from as far away as possible to give yourself the greatest number of free attacks before closing to melee defense. Note that these are just my observations from playing, some of them might not be fully correct.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. As my point of view is the exact opposite (attack > guard) your post made me rethink my opinion. I made some calculations but still I think in the vast majority of cases you should attack instead of guard when fighting a single monster. An important thing you may have forgotten is the chance to kill your enemy right away before they attack, because this raises the humans chance to deny damage drastically. An extreme example could be wearing a sword +9 and a shield +1. Although guard gives you +11 defense compared to +1 without guarding, it also means you give the opponent a sure chance to attack at all. When you are on guard your chance to deny damage is just based your def stat, so raising that stat might seem like a safe option. However, as the Humand has a d12 for attacking and also several sword related modifiers, his hit chance is pretty good most of the time, i.e. above 50%. This practically doubles your normal def stat, as the monster has just a 50% chance to survive your attack at all. A practically doubled defense is way more than the bonus you would get from guard. Lets look at an example - Human lvl 12 with a +9 sword and +7 shield fighting a single Dragon (attack +11, def +10). We can make use of Full Swing lvl 2 (+2 sword, 40% cleave), Parry lvl 2, Riposte lvl 1 but no Press: While on Guard we have 55% chance to take damage, the Dragon will definately attack. On Guard we have a chance of 62% to deal no damage at all, a 38% chance to deal 1+ damage (cleave is possible) and even a chance of 15% to deal 2 damage right away. When we attack instead we can deal up to three damage in a single turn thanks to Cleave and Riposte. 1+ damage is 72% chance (good odds) and we could also deal 2+ damage with a chance of 32% and 3 damage with just 3% chance (at least possible). What's more interesting is our chance to suffer damage as it depends on the HP the dragon has left. With 3 HP we can't kill him before he attacks, so we will suffer damage with a chance of 85%. This chance drops massively when the dragon has just 2 HP left (57%) and even more with just a single HP (15%). I think against a Dragon with 2 HP or less it's better to just attack right away. The chance to suffer damage is just 2% higher compared to guard, but we have much better odds to deal damage to the dragon. When the Dragon is on full HP the choice isn't that easy and again a choice between some sure damage vs potentially no or way more damage. I think as long as I have the potions left and don't need to gamble my HP, I'd prefer to take the sure low damage to make the fight as short as possible. This 32% chance to deal 2 damage straight away is too tempting for me :) Another important thing is the duration of the battle, especially when facing multi HP monsters. A Burly Ettin for example has a very bad def stat (0), so every attack should be a hit while there is also a 40% per hit to deal 2 damage (needs Full Swing lvl 2). If we are really lucky, the Ettin needs just 2 strikes to go down, so he would only attack a single time. In an unlucky case we would miss maybe one time (veeery good hit chance), so we could also need 4 attacks to bring him down while giving him also 3 opportunities to strike us back. If we instead go on guard the Ettin gets at least 2 opportunities to strike (we could cleave with the counter attack), but as we need to successfully block before we even attack that fight could also take much longer. I think in this case we need to ponder how risky we should play: Attacking nearly guarantees us to suffer some damage, but it will be not that much. Guarding could potentially deny all damage but it could also make the fight longer and has a higher risk of taking much more damage, so it's pretty much the "high-risk / high-reward" option. Keeping the fights short is also a thing we should consider when fighting mages: So that stupid mage at the other end of the room just prepared a fireball. It's tempting to go on guard, but this also means one turn we are not closing in making the fight one turn longer. Most of the time I go on guard just for better defense but I remember rooms with several mages who were not casting simultaniously. After going on guard for several consecutive turns as anyone always was casting a fireball I decided to close in, but I think there wasn't much of a choice. This one is not too important but worth to keep in mind when fighting rooms with many mages.