Barbarian Question

[KGB]

I haven't started that many games yet under 0.8 so I haven't had a chance to take the Barbarian out for a spin.

Anyone used him to search a ruin? If so, does his 3rd (or 4th) hit count when searching ruins? I would think it would, making him more likely than ever to survive higher level ruins but I wanted to be sure before I started using him in that manner.

KGB

[hatchfactory]

It currently does, I don't know if he's supposed to, but my barbarian has 3 in ruins.

[SnotlinG]

It does count.
However Barbarian starting UL has been lowered to 6 to compensate this. In lategame the Barbarian should be able to be quite a good ruinhunter with his high hp, if you feel you can spend the abilitypoints on UL despite getting only an increase by 2 UL per abilitypoint that is

[LPhillips]

I'm not so good at this whole dice math thing. Is he good or not for level 1 at level 1 then?

[KGB]

With the 8 he was a beast.

With the 6, not so much. He's 50% better than a Valkrie/DK

KGB

[Moonknight]

Just put a few UL blessed crows with him, that should do the trick

[Solo]

Playing DLR I often preferred hit points than strength. I think one additional hit point is better than about 5-10 points of strength. So I started to use barbarian as a ruin searcher even if he has not enough UL as for paladin for the same level of ruins.

Thus barbarian is a rather good hero especially if we could combine him with morale and/or fear units (putting them behind barbarian) like crusider or yeti. Unit with hp=5 and str=70? Yes, I want it, give me please more such units.

Only thing shadows me. It is assasinate. I meant "ambush". We could upgrade our barbarian to very high level and then one cheap ambush unit (like orc, volf rider, ... well, ghost or meduse) could kill him very easy.

[LPhillips]

I made the suggestion previously that the Ambush skill just take 3HP. KGB dislikes this because he's in favor of seeing "Trample" in action later, and he thinks they're too similar. I disagree completely; anyway it's open for discussion right now. That would make Ambush still effective, but a level 1 Assassin with a stack of scouts would not necessarily be a death sentence. The only units to escape would be a well-leveled barbarian or a Mammoth, tho both would be heavily damaged by Ambush (and still very much dead when a real ambush stack comes along). It wouldn't do much of anything to reduce the effectiveness of Ambush really; just save the very high HP units from instant death.