"The Huntress starts with simple leather armour, a shortbow, 20 good wooden arrows, boots, and an elven cloak that provides some stealth." - In-game description.
The huntress is a ranged character class, capable of sniping at unsuspected creatures due to her slightly stealthy equipment, while her pet can finish off any creature that gets too close.
Her male counterpart is the huntsman.
Stats[]
Alignments and Belief[]
Belief System: Inner Power.
- Lawful Good;
- Chaotic Evil;
- Neutral.
Talents[]
- Beast Mastery;
- Commerce;
- Dweomery;
- First Aid;
- Gastronomy;
- Mycology;
- Nightmare Mode;
- Weapon Knowledge;
- Weapon Precision.
Starting Equipment[]
- Uncursed +0 bow (wielded in left hand);
- Twenty +1 wooden arrows (in quiver);
- Uncursed +0 suit of leather armour (being worn);
- Uncursed +0 elven cloak (being worn);
- Unursed pair of + 0 low boots (being worn),
Starting Skills[]
- Bow 1 Point.
Starting Pets[]
Strategy[]
The Huntress (and also the Huntsman for that matter) is a class that serious attention and can for some prove to be quite difficult. However, if care is taken, the Huntress can quickly become a powerful one man army.
The Huntress utilizes a bow and therefor obviously requires more DEX than others, since missing would be a real pain. The Huntress should learn to be quick on her feet already from the start. Running away from an enemy whilst firing the bow can be an effective way to deal with slow but powerful enemies. The Huntress should also always use her pet to stop enemies that come to close, as the Huntress can then back of and shot the enemy that is being held occupied by the Pet.
Other than focusing on DEX the layout can be up for discussion. Some may find it extremely useful to have high CHA, since it will allow for better use of the Beast Mastery trait. For beginners, it would be a good idea to max out everything except WIS and INT. The Huntress will usually be able to work without any magic (except for perhaps Create Monster ).
For Talents there are some very important things to consider. The possibly most important Talent is the Weapon Precision, since it increases your critical chances with bows. To be a real Huntress, it is also a good idea to max out the Beast Mastery talent, since Pets can help keeping people off your back. It is usually also never a bad idea to max out Gastronomy (since eating rotten food with no penalty rocks) and if you plan to run around with a lot of Pets, it helps when trying to keep them fed too. If you are at a point, where you need to spend a point in your Talents, but you do not know which one, you should consider Dweomery since it can help you determine whether it is safe to use something. For example, if you have a helmet you want to try out, you don't always need to idintify it, you can always unequip it, as long as you know ahead that it is not cursed. Dweomery helps with this. A single point should suffice. The same goes for Mycology , which actually is pretty crafty to have only a single point in. This is because you only need one point to create healing potions and while these might not be much use against big enemies, they can be used to revive dead Pets that might have died protecting you.
Some general tips:
1) Perhaps the best stragegy to use, is to run the game in windowed mode and instead of having the game filling out the whole screen, is should have considerably longer width than height. This allows for the Huntress (or any other character really) to see much farther on the screen and the Player will therefor be less startled by enemies and can prepare better. This is especially useful with a Bow, since it sometimes can shoot longer than what can be seen on the screen. Not if you use this tip, however!
In windowed mode.
Playing with default resolution.
2) Always retrieve the arrows that have been fired. While at first, 30 arrows might seem like a lot, they are going to be missed later on, if you do not remember to pick them up after use.
3) If you do not feel like using your Pet as a meat shield all the time, consider getting a spell (or the Harp of Lullabies) that can stun your enemies, send them to sleep or freeze them. For example, Wizard Lock.
4) If you have decent gear, some points in the Beast Mastery talent and a couple of Scrolls/Wands of Create Monster, consider taking on just a couple of Roman Archers, since these guys can carry around up to 30 Iron Arrows which are quite good to have as backup. The Wand or Scroll of Create Monster will only create Romans in the Fort and none of them will be friendly to you, however, they will not be friendly to the rest of the Romans either. They will kill each other and you can finish off the last one standing, leaving some loot for you to obtain.