bgryph wrote:
Brief thoughts on Mipsy's skill points:
Pretty much everyone who's played the game on levels higher than Normal agrees the Innates are important for all characters, including Mipsy.
Obviously, you must also get one of either Direct Damage or Group Direct Damage for Mipsy. Most people seem to consider DD the one to get on the grounds that DD is more useful against Terask II than GDD. Also, note that DD does same amount of average damage as GDD does because it recharges twice as quickly - you can hit twice with DD in the same time it takes Mipst to hit once with GDD. However, some people give the nod to GDD as being useful against large groups of monsters, which it is.
So, there's three skills down: DD/GDD and the innates.
Now, a common procedure when playing NQII on Evil and Insane is to "max out" skills at 11 points instead of at the full 15 points, then count on using nifty +4 weapons and armor to bring the skills all the way up at the end of the game, saving all the skill points earned from Level 50 on to make up any shortfalls when you don't get the weapon or armor you wanted. If you do this, in theory you could max 5 different skills. (In practice, of course, you don't get +4 weapons and armor for every character, so you'll probably come closer to getting 4.5 skills per character.)
So, there are 4 other possible skills for Mipsy you could get, and you can only have one and a half of them.
Pretty much everyone agrees Slow is useless. Slow potions work better and any character can use them, not just Mipsy. (When you need to slow a boss you want to do it fast, you don't want to have to wait for Mipsy's turn to roll around again for a second attempt if the boss resists.)
One option is to get whichever of DD or GDD you don't already have. Downside: having both can be a bit redundant. How many big damage spells does one character need? Upside: You can use DD and the other character's attacks to lower enemies HP to the point where one hit from GDD wipes multiple enemies out at once, which is always fun.
Damage shields can be useful against anything that hits you with physical damage a lot: many bosses, including Terask; creatures that have Combat Focus; groups of 4 strong creatures like you find in Faerieland. They're also handy for finishing off weak opponents if you don't get GDD. But often they don't do more damage than Mipsy would have done if you used the turn you cast them to attack, instead.
Group Haste is handy because it only takes one turn to haste your whole party, whereas having each party member drink a haste potion takes four turns. However, even maxed it hastes a lot less than the strongest haste potions, so you'll often still end up using haste potions in boss battles -- the only time hasting is really vital -- anyway.
The bottom line: except for Slow, none of Mipsy's "second-tier" skills -- Group Haste, Damage Shield, and the second of DD/GDD -- is really bad. Each has advantages and disadvantages. People have won on Insane choosing any of them as skills for Mipsy. It really is just a matter of personal preference and game-playing style.
You are so cool!
By the way, you should probably submit this to IDNQ, if you havn't done so already. And then, write more!