augment research

[arachnophilia]

augment research

hey guys, new here. i know there's a ton of augment threads already. but most of them are basic questions. and i wanted to share some research i've been doing, trying to figure out the exact mechanics of how augments work, and ask for some help in confirmation. i've been in a discussion on the official boards with one member who just does not see what i do, and it would be nice for more independent testing.

i guess first i'll go over the basics, the stuff we all should know by now:

• duplicate augment effects do not stack.
  • you gain no benefit by having two similar augments on one weapon.
  • this does not apply only to identical augments, but the augments that combine effects as well.
• (most) augment effects only work while you're using that weapon.
  • duplicate weapons don't do anything either.

which, i guess, brings me to my contentious points:

• some augment effects are active when the weapon is equipped but not drawn. these definitely include the armour effect, and the "take less damage" half of the luck effect.
  • damage taken decreases from the control (no augments on either weapon) to around 70% with the armor effect.
  • damage taken decreases to around 72% with the luck effect.
  • damage taken decreases to 50% with both.
  • it does not matter whether the augmented weapon is drawn, the other unaugmented weapon is drawn, or both remain undrawn. the benefit is given regardless
• the damage counter in the game is not a good measurement of weapon effectiveness.
  • some augments increase damage, and some only effectively increase damage.
  • the luck effect and the skill effect both increase damage according the stat.
  • the flame effect, the shock effect, and the anti-good/anti-evil effect do not increase damage according to the stat, yet consistently kill enemies fewer hits.
• flame and shock seem to work regardless of established weakness, and kill all enemies faster. {edit: this is probably not accurate. still testing.}
  • this effect probably works as a damage multiplier added after the "damage dealt" stat and before the individual creature's "damage taken" stat.
  • other suggestions include modifying the creature's base HP, or that all enemies have an established "weakness" to each element built in.
  • i did not test to see the effect is permanent, or can disappear mid-fight. ie: if you strike an enemy with a flame augment and the remove the flame augment, does the effect vanish as well? this could help decide between the above suggestions
• the following damage increasing augment effects all stack with one another:
  • luck
  • skill
  • flame
  • shock
  • anti-good/anti-evil (not sure about together)
• ghoul only gives you health, and has no additional damaging effect. the effect might be related to how much damage your weapon does.
• flourishes do at least 3x the damage and effective damage as normal strikes. this includes all augment effects. aimed shots from the gun remain untested

so, the highest effective damage output augment effect combination (six effects, in four augments, any number of ways) are the following.

for melee:

1. ghoul
2. luck
3. skill
4. flame
5. shock
6. (anti-scarring)

and for ranged:

1. armour
2. luck
3. skill
4. flame
5. shock
6. (anti-scarring)

i did not include the anti-good/anti-evil effect, because i haven't sufficiently tested it to determine what it works on and what it does not work on. if the anti-evil effect, for instance, makes it harder to kill bandits or hobbes, it's not particularly useful to me. anti-scarring is included because it so easily combines with skill, flame, or shock.

if you would like, i could elaborate on my testing measures.

 

[Digital 0sm0sis]

Re: augment research

Nice work and thanks for sharing the information you have gathered i'm sure it will be of use to alot of people on here.... hopefully this new DLC coming out has some new augments to mess around with. +rep

 

[Arld]

Re: augment research

Thanks for sharing this useful bit of information, Arachnophilia. I actually didn't take that much interest into augments. But now that I see some useful effects, I might want to reconsider my decision.

 

[arachnophilia]

Re: augment research

thanks to both of you!

there just isn't enough good solid specific augment information out there, and the developers chose only to give us vague descriptions. somebody had to break down and test this stuff. if anyone else would like to help, please feel free to contribute. as i mentioned earlier, i'm currently in an argument on the official lionhead boards with someone who just doesn't believe my data (and i've been posting actual raw data there, to back most of this stuff up). the few other people there have been able to anecdotally confirm some of the above, so i know i'm not the crazy one.

hopefully this new DLC coming out has some new augments to mess around with.

i think we probably have enough augments, personally. but there's just a few combinations that don't exist that would make it easier to toss a few more effects onto a weapon.

for instance, if ghoul + armour augment existed, that would mean not having to take advantage of the "constant" effect, and adding a ghoul effect to the ranged weapons. it's not particularly needed (ghoul is way better for close-combat) but it wold be nice. it might also be nice to be able to cram an anti-evil effect on there. but i still have to test that to see what it affects positively and what it affects negatively.

 

[j4ckst3r]

Re: augment research

nice information you have gathered here. i may check some of these out later. thanks.

 

[arachnophilia]

Re: augment research

nice information you have gathered here. i may check some of these out later. thanks.

please, please do. these are all things that my (careful) observations and my data have shown to be true, but it's always possible that i have made an error somewhere, or have not accounted for something. independent confirmation helps.

i expect that if you check these (especially the flame/shock effects as it relates to hit-count until enemy death, and the armor effect being passive) you'll find the same things -- but you find something else, we can describe our tests and see what's different.

thanks in advance!

 

[Aions]

Re: augment research

i have:
luck and life
lucky charm
devastation
mighty oak
augs on a master cutlass and master clockwork rifle its what i use and i can kill most any thing in like 3-4 hits, that beeing said i wish you could name your weps like in oblivion

 

[arachnophilia]

Re: augment research

i have:

• luck and life
• lucky charm
• devastation
• mighty oak

augs on a master cutlass and master clockwork rifle its what i use

lucky charm is a wasted slot. the luck effect is already part of mighty oak and luck and life. you might as well remove it for something else, it's not doing anything. the armour effect on mighty oak also, btw, carries over from one weapon to the other, so you really only need it on one weapon.

and i can kill most any thing in like 3-4 hits,

i trash balverines in 3 hits with a katana. 2 with anything bigger. sometimes 1 shot with the blunderbuss.

that beeing said i wish you could name your weps like in oblivion

yeah. the whole game takes a lot of the creativity out of the RPG genre. on the one hand, it makes gameplay a lot more simple. on the other, i can't make named swords.

on my oblivion character, i have several LOTR-named swords (sting, anduril, glamdring), swords named for charlemagne and his knight's swords (joyeuse, durandel, curtana), and swords named for beowulf (naegling, hrunting). i don't reall use any of them (well, sometimes i use sting) they just sit in cases. the sword i use most is a katana designed for maximum rapage.

 

[Aions]

Re: augment research

ok how about
luck and life (+dmg and healing -dmg taken)
devistation ( +dmg)
flame (+dmg)
shock (+dmg)
will that work?

 

[arachnophilia]

Re: augment research

ok how about

• luck and life (+dmg and healing -dmg taken)
• devistation ( +dmg)
• flame (+dmg)
• shock (+dmg)

will that work?

yeah, that's actually the highest damage and most balanced combo i can find. i personally thing that the ghoul effect (healing) is a lot more necessary on melee than ranged, so i put that on melee and mighty oak on ranged.

however, someone on the other board suggested that some enemies might have (positive) resistances against flame or shock, making it harder to kill some enemies with those augments. i don't think that's the case, but i still have to check. will keep you posted.

 

[Aions]

Re: augment research

yeah, that's actually the highest damage and most balanced combo i can find. i personally thing that the ghoul effect (healing) is a lot more necessary on melee than ranged, so i put that on melee and mighty oak on ranged.

however, someone on the other board suggested that some enemies might have (positive) resistances against flame or shock, making it harder to kill some enemies with those augments. i don't think that's the case, but i still have to check. will keep you posted.

wow thank you so much i look forward too what you find out in the future+rep
p.s this was my 666th post :O

 

[arachnophilia]

Re: augment research

wow thank you so much i look forward too what you find out in the future+rep

i think i'm really hoping i can find some nice technically minded people here who are willing independently confirm (or disprove, for further complicate) any of these. if anyone's willing to help, i would be immensely grateful -- the web needs this kind of info, and needs it to be right.

 

[Aions]

Re: augment research

i think i'm really hoping i can find some nice technically minded people here who are willing independently confirm (or disprove, for further complicate) any of these. if anyone's willing to help, i would be immensely grateful -- the web needs this kind of info, and needs it to be right.

the only way i can think of testing weps/augs it to get a rusty katana with 4 aug slots and see how many hits it takes to kill a balverene with what augs on (after i see how many it takes with no augs) but w/e

 

[arachnophilia]

Re: augment research

the only way i can think of testing weps/augs it to get a rusty katana with 4 aug slots and see how many hits it takes to kill a balverene with what augs on (after i see how many it takes with no augs) but w/e

this is actually more or less what i did. a bunch of times. i found that (in general) master weapons were fine. but i might have to use the rusty ones to get more precise readings on somethings. see, math is funny. you can only kill an enemy in an integer number of hits. 1, 2, 3, etc. you can't kill a balverine in 2.5 hits, can you? so there's a rounding up process.

now, balverines have about 1400 health. i figured this out by comparing the damage it took to kill one with several different damage increasing augments, assigning each one a range of:

(hits - 1) * damage + 1

to

hits * damage

basically, because it might not be taking all of that final hit to kill it. comparing several different damage outputs, i was able to nail the figure at 1400 (+25 or -13 margin of error).

now, with a master katana (71*3=213 damage), you do not see an improvement with both luck and skill augments:

• with no augments, 7 hits @ 213 damage does 1617 total damage. 6 hits just barely does not kill the balverine.
• with skill, 6 hits @ 255 (~120%) damage does 1530 total damage.
• with luck, 5 hits @ 285 (~134%) damage does 1425 total damage, and just barely kills the balverine.
• with luck and skill, 5 hits @ 342 (~160%) damage does 1710 total damage. 4 hits just barely does not kill balverine.

but the skill augment is clearly doing more damage. so you can't use hit-count as definitive proof that something doesn't work, only that something does. if it doesn't, it might be a false negative caused be a weird alignment of the numbers and the rounding-up error.

this error would be decreased by using the rusty weapons. which i should have done in the first place. but since i'm like 99.99% sure that the effects work as i described in the OP due to what i have been able to observe and record, i leave that for other people to try. (lowering strength will also lead to more accurate numbers. that * 3 will go away.)

though i suspect i will have to try that when i'm testing the anti-good and anti-evil effects to see what they work on, and perhaps when i'm verifying that flame and shock work on everything.

 

[Aions]

Re: augment research

wow you really did your homework on this, very impressive! but as you say yes the anti-good/evil thing could be a bitch to figure out. also what 'star' lvl strength was your character when you did this? 1 i suppose

 

[arachnophilia]

Re: augment research

wow you really did your homework on this, very impressive! but as you say yes the anti-good/evil thing could be a bitch to figure out. also what 'star' lvl strength was your character when you did this? 1 i suppose

no, that was at max. but like i said, i could have gotten more accurate results by lowering that.

 

[Aions]

Re: augment research

ah i see shame, but oh well 90% of peoples characters have 5* str lvls so i guess it dosent matter

 

[Black Phoenix]

Re: augment research

very nice work!
+Rep

this will be a good way to experiment with weapons
keep up the good work =D

 

[arachnophilia]

Re: augment research

ah i see shame, but oh well 90% of peoples characters have 5* str lvls so i guess it dosent matter

well, i think i'm gonna have to go back and test everything with the lowest strength rating, and the lowest class weapons. better sample iteration that way, more accurate results...

the other person i'm discussing this with on the lionhead board keeps managing to find examples where the flame or killerwatt effect doesn't apply, and i strongly suspect in those cases it's just hiding in the rounding error.

but you never know. so i have to test it.

 

[Aions]

Re: augment research

in what monster does the the flame or killerwatt effect not apply?