Orcrest | Build Guide

Build Guide

Overview

This page serves as a set of general guidelines to help people plan out their builds. This page is intended to act as a springboard rather than an exhaustive breakdown of the system, and there is plenty more depth to explore for those who are interested! For those who aren't, the Builds tab below features builds that are viable at all stages of progression that can be used as is.

Don't worry too much about messing this up, builds made with intention following these guidelines will almost always end up in a decent spot, even for those without familiarity with the system. However, if you find yourself not liking your build or regretting a choice, there is a respec potion available. Be warned, it is not cheap, but it is achievable. In addition, characters who are level 1 or level 2 get one free respec, just ask a member of staff!

Example Builds

These builds are not representative of the most optimized builds in each of these categories, but are good, viable builds that will be able to perform at all stages of progression. Talents are intended to be taken in order, but feel free to vary the order as your priorities dictate.

Example Build - Striker

Abilities: 4 Physical or Mental, 3x Free

Expertise: Attack, Defence, 4x Free

Talents: Elemental Channelling, Push Through, Burst, Tenacious,

Well Prepared, Economical

Trinkets: Grim Trinket, Resourceful Trinket

Function: Damage and Expose enemies, use Swift poisons.

Example Build - Healer

Abilities: 4 Physical or Mental, 4 Spiritual

Expertise: Attack, Defence, Healing, 3x Free

Talents: Mend, Sheltered, Vanguard, Steadfast, Purge, Restore

Trinkets: Swift Trinket, Adept Trinket

Function: Heal and Protect allies, Purge negative conditions.

Example Build - Tank

Abilities: 4 Physical or Mental, 3x Free

Expertise: Attack, Defence, 4x Free

Talents: Vanguard, Push Through, Warden, Tenacious, Retaliate, Cleave

Trinkets: Enduring Trinket, Adept Trinket

Function: Soak damage, Protect allies, Frighten enemies.

Example Build - Crafter

Abilities: 4 Physical or Mental, 3x Free

Expertise: Defence, 5x Free

Talents: Armourer, Fortune Seeker, Artisan, Inventor, Wright, Tinkerer

Trinkets: Enduring Trinket, Adept Trinket, Resourceful Trinket

Function: Non-Combat, craft equipment for profit.

Example Build - Buffer

Abilities: 4 Communal, 3x Free

Expertise: Defence, Assist, 4x Free

Talents: Inspire, Sheltered, Purge, Quick Witted, Steadfast, Malleable

Trinkets: Surefire Trinket, Pure Trinket

Function: Rouse allies, Purge negative conditions.

Example Build - Debuffer

Abilities: 4 Communal, 4 Spiritual

Expertise: Defence, Insight, Influence, 3x Free

Talents: Intimidate, Sheltered, Unnerve, Quick Temper, Steadfast, Malleable

Trinkets: Grim Trinket, Generous Trinket
Function: Dismay and Frighten enemies.

Overview

This section will walk through the guide step by step, crafting two example builds to show how the guide can be put into use.

Step One: Build Goals

We will be using two goals for this walkthrough: a Healer and a Striker.

Step Two: Main Plan

Healer: There's only one way to provide healing from Talents, so our main plan involves Mend and Restore.
Striker: Strikers have many options, but we combine Elemental Channelling and Burst to give us our primary offensive punch.

Step Three: Maximizing Efficiency

Healer: We add Steadfast to act as a health gate that still allows good healing, Vanguard as a Quick Action to protect an ally, and Purge to spend our advantages.
Striker: We add Push Through to stop one shots, and Elemental Channelling already offers excellent Advantage spend options. We can use poisons with the Swift tag to give us Quick Actions to use.

Step Four: Rounding Out

Healer: We only have one slot left, and nothing else reinforces our healing. Instead, we focus on defence, picking up Sheltered to give us more staying power.
Striker: With three slots left, we can reinforce our defence with Tenacious, and look towards improving the poison plan with Well Prepared and Economical.

Step Five: Abilities and Skills

Healer: We take 4 Spiritual for Healing and 4 Physical or Mental for Attack and Defence.
We take Expertise in Attack, Defence, Healing, and three others.
Striker: We take 4 Physical or Mental for Attack and Defence, and 3 points in other abilities.
We take Expertise in Attack, Defence, and four others.

Step Six: Order

Healer: We take Mend and Sheltered at level 1 to be able to heal and have some defence. After that, we proceed into Vanguard, Steadfast, Purge, and Restore. While Restore is excellent, it is also less important than patching over our deficiencies.
Striker: We take Elemental Channelling and Push Through at level 1, giving us a solid core. From there, we get Burst, Tenacious, Well Prepared, and Economical, focusing on expanding non-consumable capabilities first, as we can't afford them early.

Step Seven: Equipment

Healer: We take a trinket with Adept to improve our defences, and one with Swift so if we need to we can use Mend twice in one turn, potentially saving a fight.
Striker: We pick up a Grim trinket to give us a potent Quick Action when we don't want to use a poison, as well as a Resourceful one so we can freely use at least one poison a fight without losing all our money.

Step One: Build Goals

Making sure you have a clear goal is the first and most important step. What do you want your character to be able to do, and how focused on that goal do you want to be? Do you want them to be the person doing damage, healing, disrupting, soaking damage, or something else? Do you want them to be entirely focused on that role, or do you want them to be a hybrid, able to do multiple things but being a little worse at each?

Step Two: Main Plan

Once you have a goal, working out how to do your main thing is the next priority. If you want to be a damage dealer, look for talents that boost your offensive potential. If you want to be a healer, look towards the healing talents, etc. Your main plan should only require two or three talents to get to an acceptable performance threshold.

Step Three: Maximizing Efficiency

The next step is to look towards efficiency. While it is not a hard and fast rule, builds tend to perform better when they have:

Something to do with their Quick Action.
Something to do with their Advantage.
A defensive effect to stop a one shot.

All three of these things have options in the Talent selection, but all three also have options that can be achieved via equipment. It is often a good idea, depending on the build, to outsource one or more of those three guidelines to your equipment selection.

Step Four: Rounding Out

If you have Talent slots left over after planning this far, this is the time to reinforce what you can do already, or else hybridize into something new.

Step Five: Abilities and Skills

Now that we know the shape of our build, we can look at what Abilities and Skills we need to actualize it. Most every build (even non-combat ones) want an Expertise in Defence, and every build that wants to attack ever will want one in Attack. To make use of that, builds will need 4 in either Physical or Mental, unless they are using one of the Talents that offer other options (Sheltered allows Communal to govern Defence, and Soulshift allows Spiritual to govern both Defence and Attack).

In addition, builds running Mend or Intimidate will want 4 in Spiritual (and Expertise in Healing for Mend or Insight for Intimidate), while builds running Inspire or Unnerve will want 4 in Communal (and Expertise in Assist for Inspire or Influence for Unnerve). Everything else is to personal preference.

Step Six: Order

Having planned your build out, you must then consider the order in which to take your talents. You want to do part or even all of your main plan early, while shoring up deficiencies as quickly as possible. Remember that anything that has a prerequisite can not be taken at level 1, even if you take the prerequisite at level 1 as well.

Step Seven: Equipment

While equipment can be subbed out much more easily than Talents (which require a full respec), planning around your equipment is often key to the success of many builds. Some trinkets offer good to have buffs, while others can transform a build a great amount. Runes are typically minor buffs, but can offer Advantage spend options for those who don't get any from their talents. Of course, consumables can make a large difference as well, but are expensive to use repeatedly.