Goon Stone Warden Guide 1.1.5
Guide
Stone Vines is a 5/5 skill. The rest of the tree needs to be picked up ASAP, but can be left at 1/1. Stone Vines is the core of your mobility and while I wouldn't rely on Rockwalk for healing or Rockswallow for damage, there are a ton of cases where smart use of them will make your life easier by giving you the ability to effectively manipulate the field; I have rescued Melinda something like 6/6 times I've reached her with Stone Wardens simply because Rockwalk & Rockswallow allow for so much field control. There's likely an argument for leaving the whole tree at 1/5, but I think the passive damage from Vines being 5/5 adds up over the course of the game. Especially since once an enemy is grabbed, you can break LOS and it will still keep ticking the passive damage each turn until the effect ends or they break free. At the endgame, I was effectively getting free, passive, 60 damage-per-turn in an 8 radius.
The Earthen Power tree I went 5/5/1/5 and even spent a category point getting it to x1.50 - Stoneshield gives you 75 Phys Power and a 61% damage boost to your shields. Stone Fortress at that point makes your Resilience of the Dwarves absorb 125% of your armor value from all non-physical attacks. I didn't worry about Shards, since a single counterattack per turn isn't _too_ huge when I'm getting most of my damage elsewhere. Eldritch Stone is mandatory 5/5, While the shield number(339 at 97 Will) seems low, it's another _full absorb_ and is your best source of resource replenishment. The damage upon expiration is kind of just an added benefit.
It's worth taking a moment to talk about the kind of weird way that Stone Warden resources work. They're a class that uses both Equilibrium and Mana, but is locked to never have natural regen on the latter - so manasurge runes won't work. You end up with three 'actual' ways to regen that mana, and you need it for your utility skills:
- Eldritch Vines gives you passive regen whenever your vines deal damage. Unfortunately, even at 5/5 it's only like 2 mana - which isn't worth it because it costs you 4 class points to get to that level and then forces you to idly sit around waiting for Vines to tick.
- Stoneshield gives you up to 12.50 mana back once per turn, so long as you're taking damage. But it also means you've got to be soaking quite a lot of damage and the Stone Warden burns through mana a hell of a lot faster than 12.50 turn when things get hairy.
- Eldritch Stone, however, allows you to absorb a sizeable amount of damage and then, when the shield ends, regen that damage into your manapool. Endgame this means letting it absorb a few hits and then watching your manapool regenerate all at once.
I toyed with a number of combinations of the other trees on various wardens but what I think really made this one work the best was:
- The Stone magic tree, mostly for Crystalline Focus 5/5. A huge amount of your damage is physical, so getting a 10% damage and 50% penetration buff from that is just crazy. That skill seems balanced around spellcasters whose only real Physical damage come from a few specific spells, so when you're able to pick it up on a melee class like Stone Warden it's just overpowered.
- 5/1/5/5 in the Eldritch Shield tree. You get a high-damage Stun, a high-damage Daze, and a 6-radius AoE. That stun went critical and hit one of the Sorcerers for something like 3800 Arcane, and that's before taking into account all the other damage types added to the hit.
- I ended the game at 5/5/5/5 Eldritch Stone tree, but spent a good amount of it being more like 2/1/2/2 - It is tempting to look at the skill and think about all the stacking damage, but my feeling is that you're using this for the status effects. Healing Reduction, Disarm, and Silence all in a cone AoE? Yes, please. This is what makes the Orc Ambush a joke.
- I totally ignored Dwarven Nature, I never found the clones to be durable enough even in the midgame to be useful, and my recollection of my last attempt at using them says that the caster can actually hurt you with its AoE. Avoid.
- I ignored Deeprock Form. I think the best of what you get from it: Physical Damage and Physical Penetration, are better gotten from Crystalline Focus
- 5/5/5/1 Racial tree. Resilience being 5 is mandatory because it gives you a huge damage absorb with a >30% uptime.
- Armour Training should be 5/5 as soon as possible, because it feeds back into Resilience's absorb. Mostly through equipment I ended up with 5/5 Thick Skin, and I grabbed 5/5 Accuracy out of a lack of other options.
- Heightened Senses to 5/5 should be done dependent on gear. I don't like buffing Cun just to get this skill, but having it at 5/5 gives you vision at the same radius as your Stone Vines begin to latch on.
- I also like Nature's Touch and Earth's Eyes to 5/5, the former is a nice panic button heal, the latter is just nice to be able to see the shape of the dungeon to better find things.
Wardens dying in their 20s is about the point where they're at their weakest. The best suggestion I've got is to just try to complete everything in the West before going East: I don't have any trouble saving Melinda with Stone Wardens, nor taking on the Elven Ruins so long as you go very slow and cautiously. The Master is really the first big thing that makes life hard - but the usual "do some damage then teleport away" works well enough if you don't get lucky enough to land a silence/stun combination on him.
My quick level 1-10 starter guide would be:
- Don't use the Default skillset. Take Vines 2, Stoneshield 2, Eldritch Blow 1, Resilience 1, Meditation 1, Accuracy 1. Dump your stats into Willpower.
- Activate Vines, don't bother turning it off while you're in Reknor.
- At level 2, pump Vines, Resilience, and Willpower.
- At level 3, pump Vines, Resilience, and Willpower.
- Brotoq should go down easy. Pop Resilience, your Wild Infusion, and Regen as necessary. Eldritch Blow him as soon as he's in melee range.
- After Reknor, you'll be able to grab Nature's Touch as a panic-heal then go do Bellow. Play LOS games with The Mouth and it will be super easy.
- Put a point into Eldritch Vines when it becomes available, as well as Stone Fortress, but otherwise focus on Stone Vines and Stoneshield getting to 5/5.
- Leaving the Dwarven Start, you should be level 7 - go kill the Lumberjack, and you should hit 8.
- Do the Derth Arena, if you can do so safely find Agrimley and pick up his quest for Focus.
- I like doing Scintillating, Rhaloren, Kor'Pul in that order to get the most annoying of the T1s out of the way first. If you haven't run into any adventurer parties, then you should either hit level 10 or be on the verge as soon as you kill The Shade.
At that point you should have enough survivability to sleepwalk through the rest of the T1 areas and make good progress into T2s.
Tips
I built up the Dwarven Nature category first, the Elemental Split skill doesn't list it but also increases the Earthen Missiles skill of the Crystalline Half, and once you add Power Core and Dwarven Unity to the mix it works well for clearing early rooms. Generally stuff should be dead before your buddies time out. Earthen Vines was the next category I spent heavily in, I did pick up some of its skills earlier but it doesn't really get powerful until you max out it's first two skills. That'll give you surprisingly good mobility, so long as you avoid moving normally since your movement speed is cut in half.
Stone Fortress, Shards and Eldritch Stone (The skill not the category) are also worth picking up shortly after you can. They're all fairly powerful talents with just a single point invested. I personally felt I made a mistake in picking up the Eldritch Stone category, the skills in the Eldritch Shield category look a lot better in hindsight. As for it feeling really weak around Dreadfell, that's unfortunately just the way it is. That's the point in which enemies get strong enough for your Elemental Split buddies to not be guaranteed room clearers any more, but you won't have picked up the Eternal Guard prodigy yet for a gigantic boost to your survivability.
Also one thing which I personally didn't notice until Dreadfell since this was my first character using a shield was that the Block skill will block all damage types that your shield(s) have resistances for in addition to always blocking physical damage. So having shield(s) that can block darkness and cold damage is really handy for the Master, etc. and its worth checking if any of the stores stock a "of Resistance" shield since that'll cover fire, cold, lightning and acid damage. Finally it's also worth noting that while Stone Vines needs line of sight to initially grab an enemy, you can then run around a corner and it'll keep damaging the enemy until it breaks free, it also seemed to be harder for enemies to break free as I put more points into the skill, but that could just be because of other stat increases I don't know for sure.
Statwise I focused mostly on willpower early on (In addition to the obligatory 1 con per level). Once I hit the relevant minimum stat requirements for the willpower skills I started putting points in strength for equipment requirements, and magic so I could get the Spectral Shield prodigy when I hit 42.
