Legends of Amberland II – Game Mechanics, Party Builds & Gameplay Tips

Damage formulas, stat scaling, item ability impact, changes from LoA 1, & other key info not found in the manual (or elsewhere), along with some general tips.

Damage Formulas

On the status screen, you can see the range of damage your attacks will deal. This is accurate, but how each factor affects it is not explained. Here it is:

Average Damage = (Level Bonus + Stat Bonus) * Weapon Factor

Level Bonus:

• 1.33 x Level (Warriors, Troll Slayers)
• 1.11 x Level (Knights)
• 0.88 x Level (Archers, Champions, Mage Knights, Battlesmiths)
• 0.66 x Level (Bards, Troubadors)
• 0.44 x Level (Healers, Wizards, Sages)

In other words, a warrior’s average damage goes up +1.33 per level, before weapon mults.

These correspond to the x2 through x6 mults in the manual.

Stat Bonus:

• 0.38 x Stat (at levels 1-9)
• 0.56 x Stat (at levels 10-19)
• 0.75 x Stat (at levels 20-29)
• 0.94 x Stat (at levels 30-39)
• 1.13 x Stat (at levels 40-49)
• 1.31 x Stat (at level 50+ — not reachable on Insane difficulty)

Thus, your Strength contributes more to your damage as your level rises. This keeps it relevant. This uses the same scaling as other stats.

Weapon Factor:

This is as listed in-game. For serious weapons, this ranges from +90% to +170%, i.e. x1.9 to x2.7.

Armor that increases damage is applied here, additively. For example, if you equip a Sword (+100%) and a Spiked Shield (+15%) you’ll deal x2.15 damage.

The Battlesmith “Sharpen” spell is also applied additively here, which unfortunately makes it much, much worse than it sounds. Because weapons have such high mults to begin with, you’ll get an actual damage increase of between 3-5% out of it (5% early game, 3% late), not the 10% that you might hope for.

Other Offensive Effects

Critical Hits:

Crits deal x2 damage, so they are a pretty big deal. There are very few sources of crit chance:

• +10% base chance
• +10% dwarf wielding an axe
• +10% archer wielding a bow
• +33% weapon of Slaying
• +0.5%/point of Knowledge (warrior types only)

Unfortunately, Knowledge crit scaling is the one use of stats where there is no scaling for level range. This means that Strength will always be preferable to Knowledge for warriors.

The dwarf axe bonus is nice, but as you can see, using a weapon of Slaying makes a much bigger difference — in fact, it’s the single biggest way you can boost your damage. And while there are no axes of slaying, there are 150+% maces, swords, and bows of slaying.

The archer bow bonus is also nice, and there are slayer bows. However, this +10% is not enough to make up for the damage penalty archers face compared to warriors.

Accuracy:

Despite the name, the Accuracy ability has nothing to do with hitting. Instead, it lets you roll twice for damage and take the better roll. I did the math out, on average you’ll deal about 11% more damage with Accuracy present. This isn’t game-breaking but it’s the next best way to increase your damage output, after Slaying.

Weapon Type Bonuses:

The axe bonus — ignoring some enemy armor — sounds good. However, enemy armor stays dramatically lower than your damage potential, even late-game on Insane, so this isn’t a meaningful effect.

The sword bonus improves your hit rate 25% of the time. Your hit rate should generally be pretty high even without any investment in Dexterity, so the impact here is also minimal.

Bow Penalties:

Using a bow in one of the front 3 slots (the 3 in the center) incuirs a flat -20% penalty.

Wizardry:

Like Accuracy but for damage spells. However, the impact can vary a bit more since not all spells deal 1x to 2x damage. For the 1x to 4x spells (which tend to be weaker) the effect hits +20%. For Thunderstrike, with a narrower than 2x range, the bonus is around 5-6%. Still worth using, of course.

Other Defensive Effects

Armor uses similar scaling to stats. Early on this is useful, but later in the game, even on Normal, armor becomes less impactful. On Insane, this happens quickly.

Protection:

The Protection item ability gives you best-of-two on armor rolls, and so is subject to the same math as Accuracy: on average, it will increase your damage reduction by around 11%. This means that with an Armor total of 8, adding Protection is about as effective as adding +1 Armor. With an Armor total of 16, it’s as effective as adding +2 Armor. So in reality, it’s not an exciting ability at all.

Evasion:

The math on hits and misses is opaque. It might be a ratio; it might simply be subtractive. Whatever it is, even boosting your Evasion as much as possible doesn’t result in an easily measurable increase in opponent misses, nor in your own hits. Not worth investing in.

Displacement:

OTOH, a flat 1/3 chance to dodge anything physical, that doesn’t require any investment beyond 1 accessory slot, is the best defensive effect in the game.

*New in LoA 2:

Invisibility:

Just as good as displacement against many enemies. Apparently this does stack with displacement, despite the apparent contradiction.

Vitality:

Incredibly powerful early on, when damage numbers are low. Later in the game, it’s kind of like +1 to +2 Armor, albeit that it also works against spells and other effects. Not that impressive.

Heroism:

Saves you from death at 1 HP, once per combat. Nice to have, but not nearly as good as Displacement or Invisibility.

HP:

Fighter types will have plenty of HP by default. On Insane, you’ll still get one-shot in the late game. However, you can’t really add enough HP to consistently survive all these hits, either. And since higher max HP has no impact on healing spells, its effect is minimized in any battles with lots of healing.

Because the MT damage that hits end spots is usually less extreme, though, it can be worth topping up healer (or wizard) HP totals. A high level healer will get more than 2 levels worth of HP from 1 point of Toughness. However, this is less crucial than in LoA 1 due to the Bodybuilding skill, which is +30% HP once maxed.

Healing:

Speaking of healing, Mass Power Heal is so much more efficient than everything else that once you get it, you should abandon other heal spells whenever possible. This even goes for regular Power Heal — if you have even 2 PCs worth healing, the Mass version is better.

*In LoA 2, Mass Power Heal has a higher arcane requirement. 500 gets you level 4 instead of maxing it out. Hitting 1000, even with the new arcane items, is almost impossible and probably not worth it.

Classes

It’s widely recognized that a lot of the classes in Amberland are not great. This is still an understatement in LoA 2, but the class comparison has shifted slightly.

Essential Classes:

• Warriors are still the gold standard for damage and still have no drawbacks.
• Healers are obviously necessary for healing. You probably want two to make your life easier, especially on higher difficulties. Mass Power Heal is crucial. Healers also bring the Iron Skin buff (which allows you to stop using slots on Paralysis/Petrification immunity items). Of note, their combat special ability has been mildly nerfed — it still heals the party and revives unconscious members, but the unconscious members sit at 1 HP instead of being healed up.

Also Viable:

• Wizards are better than in LoA 1, in part because their damage has been souped up, and in part because the endgame bosses don’t all resist every element. A good wizard can often do about twice the damage of a warrior when on full blast. There are a few trade-offs: they can’t do this consistently when fighting hordes of mobs; you have to manage their MP and rest more often; and finally, wizards have much lower HP (and encumbrance) than warriors.

Although they have MT spells, their primary use isn’t crowd control so much as trying to take down dangerous bosses quickly. On Insane, their lower HP is less relevant since even knights can get one-shot. (You’ll still want to top up their HP as much as possible so they don’t die to MT attacks.) Wizard buffs are OK but less helpful and relevant than they seem (see below).

• Sages are basically Wizards with slightly lower MP and none of their buffs, who can cast Mass Power Heal. (And a few other healer spells, but that’s the important one.) They don’t replace healers due to the lack of Iron Skin and Restoration, but they are a viable choice for a second or third healer. Their biggest drawback is that they are stuck being Elves, which further compounds the HP disadvantage they are at.

Not Worth It:

• Bards deal less damage than warriors, but boost the enitre party’s physical attacks by a very small amount, and have some ability to be a backup ST healer. In LoA 1, they earned a spot thanks to their unique Heroic Ballad buff. Without that, there’s not much reason to use one. They are the only class that effectively removes fear, and they have an OK buff against confusion/mesmerize, but it’s pretty easy to protect against these ailments (especially fear) with items.
• Troubadors are nearly identical to Bards, but gain more Knowledge over time and less Dexterity — making them worse archers. They learn some healing spells a few levels later, and have lower MP cost for their buffs.
• Knights trade a chunk of a Warrior’s damage (about 12%, come endgame) and a bit of HP for… a higher encumbrance limit. There are times this is convenient — there are some nice plate armors — but it’s never essential, especially on Insane.

Strictly Worse Than Other Classes, Period:

• Troll Slayers have almost the same damage potential as warriors. They autocrit trolls — but trolls aren’t the most common, or the most threatening, of enemies. In exchange for this bonus, they lose two equipment slots. In theory, you could get by with a Troll Slayer in slot 2 or 6, but it’d be taking on a penalty for no gain.
• Champions are knights that deal extra damage to enemy wizards, but less damage to everything else — and give up a bit of max encumbrance. In LoA 2, one of the endgame bosses is actually a wizard, but wizards nonetheless tend to be some of the less threatening opponents generally.
• Battlesmiths are a bit like Bards, trading a chunk of the warrior’s damage potential for a party-boosting buff. Theirs is weaker, though, and they don’t have any healing functionality.
• Mage Knights trade a big chunk of the warrior’s damage potential for mage spells, mostly just direct damage ones — and they don’t have the Knowledge/Arcane to use them effectively. Pretty bad.
• Archers trade away a big chunk of a Warrior’s damage potential, but all they get in return are direct damage spells. Their bow crit buff isn’t enough to make up for their damage loss; warriors actually make better bow users than archers do. Pretty bad.

Races and Heritages

Total stat impact of each race/heritage at level 45:

• Human A: +1 Level, +30 HP, +5 Knowledge, +2 Dexterity
• Human B: +1 Level, +45 HP, +5 Strength, +3 Dexterity
• Human C: +1 Level, +50 HP, +18 MP, +1 Encumbrance

• Half-Elf A: +45 HP, +6 MP, +4 Strength, +3 Dexterity
• Half-Elf B: +69 MP, +5 Dexterity, -1 Strength

• Elf A: -1 Level, +57 MP, +5 Dexterity, +3 Knowledge, -2 Strength, -1 Encumbrance, Resist Poison +10
• Elf B: -1 Level, +57 MP, +5 Knowledge, +3 Dexterity, -2 Strength, -1 Encumbrance, Resist Confusion +10
• Elf C: -1 Level, +81 MP, +5 Dexterity, +3 Knowledge, -2 Strength, -1 Encumbrance

• Dwarf A: +85 HP, -12 MP, +7 Strength, +1 Encumbrance, Axe+
• Dwarf B: +30 HP, -12 MP, +6 Strength, +3 Encumbrance, Axe+
• Dwarf C: +50 HP, -12 MP, +2 Strength, +3 Knowledge, +1 Encumbrance, Axe+, Resist Fire +15
• Dwarf D: +40 HP, +6 MP, +2 Strength, +1 Encumbrance, Axe+, Resist Cold +20

How do these options look for the good class options?

Warrior: Axe crit chance is a nice backup for when Slaying weapons aren’t available, but they are pretty much always available in LoA 2. If you really want a warrior to use a bow, you could consider a Human, but barring that, Dwarf is the way to go. Either Dwarf A for HP, or Dwarf B for Encumbrance.

Resist Fire +15 is not as useful as LoA’s blanket Resist Fire, so Dwarf C is probably out.

Healer: Healers don’t really need MP or Knowledge in LoA 2, so they probably just want HP — and they might not mind some extra Encumbrance. Go Dwarf B for that, or Human C for a slight HP lean.

Wizard: Wizards will likely need to invest in Knowledge, and they also want Toughness/HP, so those are pretty fungible for them. They also start with painfully low Encumbrance so any boost there is a real boon. I suggest Dwarf B for this reason; you could also go Dwarf A, trading away 2 Encumbrance for 5.5 Toughness/Knowledge.

Sage: Here we see the real drawback of the Sage, stuck with Elf options. The Encumbrance loss is painful. Elf B is easily the best of the bunch. But compared to a Dwarf, you trade away 4 Encumbrance for only 2 Toughness/Knowledge.

How much is Encumbrance worth? There’s a very rare accessory worth 10 Encumbrance, but what you’ll likely find multiple copies of are the 3 Encumbrance accessories. So in accessory terms, 3 Encumbrance compares with 6 Toughness or Knowledge (or whatever stat).

Class Stats

Besides the freely assigned points (5 at creation + 1 every 3 levels), each class begins with and gains its own unique set of stats. At level 45, classes have the base stats listed below, before race and heritage adjustments. (HP and MP totals include points gained from Toughness and Willpower.)

Stat Scaling

The amount you get out of each point of your 5 main stats goes up with your level:

Stat Scaling Multiplier for Strength, Dexterity, and Knowledge:

• Levels 1-9: x1
• Levels 10-19: x1.5
• Levels 20-29: x2
• Levels 30-39: x2.5
• Levels 40-49: x3
• Levels 50+: x3.5 (note, not reachable on Insane difficulty)

Strength

• One of two main components of melee attack damage (see next section)

Dexterity

• One of two main components of ranged attack damage (see next section)
• Hit rate up +2 to +7 per point
• Evade up +1 to +3.5 per point

Knowledge

• Arcane up +1 to +3.5 per point (doubled for healers/wizards)
• Hybrid types only: Evade up +1 to +3.5 per point
• Fighter types only: Crit up +0.5% per point (no scaling)

Stat Scaling Multiplier for Toughness and Willpower:

• Levels 1-9: x1
• Levels 10-19: x1.25
• Levels 20-29: x1.5
• Levels 30-39: x1.75
• Levels 40-49: x2
• Levels 50+: x2.25 (note, not reachable on Insane difficulty)

*This is reduced scaling compared to LoA I.

Toughness

• 5 HP to 11.25 HP per point (10 HP at level 40-49)

Willpower

• 3 MP to 6.75 MP per point (6 MP at level 40-49)

Arcane

Healers generally want to end up at 500 Arcane, to get the Power Heal spells to level 4. Assuming you give them staffs, this is pretty easy to hit, and you won’t even need to allocate any Knowledge points manually.

Wizards will want to reach 660 Arcane to max out Thunderstrike. They probably want some manual points for this, but you can also use items to get there.

Resistances

These have been revamped in LoA 2. Note that even though the tooltips list level 50+ enemies, you won’t ever see any. The final boss is level 45, and the other big bads are level 40+, but only one regular enemy (Eyes of Morgol) hit level 40.

Early on, you’ll see a lot of items offering +10 or +15 to a resist. These multiply by item tier, so tier 3 items mostly offer +30 or +45.

Elemental resists cap at 60%. Having a resist level equal to your enemy’s experience level, you’ll be at 50% resist. This means that early on, 10 resist is plenty, and 20 is sufficient for the bulk of the game.

Status resists cap at 100%, and this is also achieved by having a resist level equal to your enemy’s experience level. Again, this means that early on, 10 resist is plenty, and 20 is sufficient for the bulk of the game.

Elemental Resistances:

Acid resistance from LoA 1 has been replaced with Sorcery resistance, which spellcasters will get some free points in based on their Will.

Status Resistances:

These are important, but not for everyone. There still seem to be no enemy attacks which can afflict PCs in the rear (spots 1, 7) with statuses. And the central 3 slots will get hit more often.

• Paralysis/Petrification is very important in the early midgame, but you can ditch it as soon as you get the Iron Skin spell. If for some reason you’re playing with zero healers, you WILL want your 5 front slots fully armored for Resist Paralysis.
• Confusion/Mesmerize is important as soon as it’s available. It’s not deadly, but it can interfere with your damage output, and that can be deadly. That said, because it’s not deadly, you don’t necessarily need to hit 100% resist for everyone.
• If you have a Bard, Fear resists aren’t crucial. If you don’t have a Bard… actually, I have literally never seen Fear get applied in LoA 2. Possibly this is because Fear resists seem to be on every other item.
• Poison doesn’t act too quickly and can just be healed, though preventing it is convenient. I guess if you have no one who can cast cure poison, you need these resists.

Equipment and Shops

You can find 176 crystals in the game (for the magic shop).

For the guild shops, there’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 330k gp in the game. About 60-100k will go to fixed costs (like boats and skill teachers). Training will cost about 41k on Normal, or 81k on Insane (3x cost, but fewer levels gained). On Normal, the remainder is probably enough to buy whatever you want. On Insane, with triple prices, you’ll need to be pickier. However, there’s also significantly less amazing stuff guaranteed to be in shops than in LoA 1.

Chest treasures and guild stock, including which top-tier items show up, and how many of them, can vary significantly between games. There are also a handful of very good fixed items.

On Insane, specifically — because this is so random, and the game is unforgiving — you might want to consider save scumming game start for the guild shop in Timberhaven. If you get, say, 4 displacement armors to show up, that’s a massive boon that will potentially last all game, seeing as you aren’t guaranteed to find any anywhere.

Flails of Slaying are available from the regular (non-random) shop. They aren’t top-tier but they are “good enough” to make do with, through the game if necessary.

Speaking of weapons, if you take into account all stat/damage/crit effects, the best weapons in the game are (in order, assuming tier 3 versions):

1. Grand Flail of Slaying (x4.92)
2. Mighty Mace of Slaying (x4.88)
3. Sword of Slaying (x4.64)
4. Battle Magic Staff (x4.46)
5. Flail of Slaying (x4.27)
6. Lord Gerdon’s Sword (x4.18) – unique, guaranteed, also provides Heroism
7. Grand Whirling Axe (x4.14 for Dwarves)
8. Mighty Whirling Axe (x4.11 for Dwarves)
9. Slayers Bow (x4.03 with investment in Dexterity)

Gameplay Tips

Character Creation

On Normal you can probably be successful with any party that includes at least 1 Healer (preferably) or Sage. 2 will be more consistent (and convenient). But it never hurts to optimize further!

Insane: I recommend the following min-maxed party:

• 3-5 Dwarf Warriors (Heritage A)
• 2 Dwarf Healers (Heritage B) or 1 Dwarf Healer + 1 Elf Sage (Heritage B)
• 0-2 Dwarf Wizards (Heritage B)

Fight enemies one at a time whenever possible (and it’s almost always possible). Sometimes this means dancing around a bit before you fight. And do fight everything; you want all the XP you can get.

A lot of quests don’t actually require any combat to complete, and can be quite generous with rewards.

If you have multiple healers, keep 1 healer in the middle row (spots 2/6) and 1 in the back row (spots 1/7) so enemies will act in between them. Note that this isn’t actually possible if you cast Haste — enemies will then act before the 4 middle/back spots, and after the 4 middle/back spots. Serious downside to Haste.

The Red Dragon’s treasures can be raided without defeating the Red Dragon. You can do this as soon as you get across the desert, and there’s some great stuff there. It is impossible to do that with the Black Dragon, this time around.

When you do want to take on the dragons, pay 10,000 gp to the knight in the inn of the castle south of the Red Dragon (phew) for dragon-killing secrets. These dramatically increase all damage dealt to dragons, including with spells.

Spells Learned by Level

Healer

• 1 – Heal, Mass Heal, Cure Poison, Regeneration
• 5 – Restoration
• 10 – Cure Paralysis
• 25 – Iron Skin
• 30 – Power Heal, Mass Power Heal, Cure Petrification

Wizard

• 1 – Magic Arrow, Power Fist, Fireball, Coldball, Magic Shield
• 10 – Lightning
• 15 – Chain Lightning, Cleansing of Mind
• 20 – Fire Blast, Cone of Ice, Haste
• 30 – Fire Storm, Calling of Blizzards, Molten Blast, Resist Elements
• 40 – Thunderstrike, Lava Storm

Sage

• 1 – Mass Heal, Magic Arrow, Power Fist, Fireball, Coldball
• 10 – Cure Poison, Lightning
• 15 – Chain Lightning, Cleansing of Mind
• 20 – Regeneration, Fire Blast, Cone of Ice
• 30 – Fire Storm, Calling of Blizzards, Molten Blast
• 35 – Mass Power Heal
• 40 – Thunderstrike, Lava Storm

Bard

• 1 – Heal, Inspire Courage, Song of Courage, Inspiring Ballad
• 15 – Restoration
• 20 – Cure Paralysis, Adventurer’s Ballad
• 35 – Power Heal

Troubador

• 1 – Inspire Courage, Song of Courage, Inspiring Ballad
• 5 – Heal
• 15 – Adventurer’s Ballad
• 20 – Cure Paralysis
• 25 – Restoration
• 40 – Power Heal

Archer

• 1 – Power Fist
• 10 – Fireball
• 20 – Moonlight Arrow
• 30 – Fire Blast
• 40 – Moonlight Blaze
• 45 – Molten Blast

Battlesmith

• 1 – Spark, Sharpness
• 10 – Fireball
• 20 – Reinforced Armor
• 30 – Fire Blast
• 45 – Molten Blast

Mage Knight

• 1 – Power Fist
• 5 – Magic Shield
• 10 – Coldball
• 15 – Lightning
• 25 – Chain Lightning, Haste
• 30 – Cone of Ice
• 40 – Calling of Blizzards
• 50 – Thunderstrike