I've seen a lot of complaints about the scavenger class being too weak - this guide is to show why I actually welcome them to my team with open arms.

I have to say also that part of the reason I have so much fun playing Thea is that the game forces you to work with what you've got, and what you've got is often not the most powerful. I enjoy the challenge of overcoming all the hurdles Thea throws at you.

That said, I think scavengers make pretty powerful mages. They are not quite as powerful as witches, but since witches are intended to be a rarer class and they can only be female, scavengers do a good job filling in the mage role in most parties.

Below is my video on Youtube showcasing this build:

https://youtu.be/Wh0m5uWEapg

DESTINY:

Scavengers start with decent Destiny stat and get the level-up option for it pretty consistently.

The best spells that scale with Destiny are Ground Shake and Chain Lightning (and Ancestor's Voice for Mental / Spiritual challenges). Summon Demon also scales with Destiny, but it is very difficult to obtain a maxed out (5 bars) Summon Demon.

As of the current patch, essence scaling on Codexes have not yet been fixed. As you can see in the screen shot below, currently you can craft a Legendary Codex for Chain Lightning / Ancestor's Voice with only 44 essence (full Fur leather will achieve this). However, these are the same numbers as the 1-Handed Scrolls. The 2-Handed weapons are supposed to require more essence because much more material goes into them. Taking the same ratio from greatswords as an example, it is SUPPOSED to require 70.4 essence to craft the weakest version of this Legendary Codex. This means that once the essence scaling is fixed, you will need full Mythical Leather to craft a codex with Chain Lightning (x1.5 damage) / Ancestor's Voice (x1.0 damage). That said, this is still the most powerful Destiny-based weapon once you are able to obtain the materials.
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It will be far easier to obtain a Ground Shake Relic, which you can easily craft near the beginning of the game with Quartz and any Tier 2 Leather (Scaled, Fur, Enchanted). Ground Shake hits all enemies and even delays them slightly if they haven't acted already. The screen shot below is with only the 1-Star crafting recipe unlocked; the damage multiplier is x1.3 with the 2-Star recipe:

The Strength of the Swarm skill is the real reason that Scavengers are able to compete for the mage role.

Strength of the Swarm boosts your character's stats for every card that you place onto the battlefield AFTER it. As long as you place your character with Strength of the Swarm onto the board before any other characters, you will notice quite a dramatic attack power increase - this will allow Scavengers to make up for the stat gap between them and Witches. In addition, the buffs will PERSIST to the next combat round, making it extremely powerful for longer battles! Be sure to take this skill any time you're offered the choice on level-up.
In the current patch, the tooltips for Strength of the Swarm DO NOT accurately reflect its effects. It shows a 1.0(0.1) at every level, but once you trigger it in battle you will find that your attack is increased by much more than 0.1 each time. Additionally, higher ranks of Strength of the Swarm do increase the multiplier, though you would not know from the tooltips. Also, the skill does not affect delay at all, even though the tooltip says it does.

Some additional notes in regards to Strength of the Swarm:
- Placing a clone of the character with Strength of the Swarm will NOT cause every future card played to trigger it twice.
- Summoning two creatures at once, such as with Summon Unliving, WILL trigger the effect twice.

Trash Attack provides a passive Gathering bonus, and can stack with the Gatherer skill to make Scavengers very effective gatherers.
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Scavengers can learn Soul Tear, which also scales with Destiny. It is a relatively powerful attack that will be very useful for conceptual spiritual challenges, in which you cannot use weapon skills.
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Scavengers can also learn Weakness, which is a very useful skill that can be used in all challenges. Its debuff potency scales with Wisdom, but even with relatively low Wisdom, it can be used to delay two selected targets with one action point.

I hope you enjoyed the guide! Let me know if you have any questions, and I would love to hear your comments / opinions as well. Let's show the iconic scavengers some love! Thea is their world :)!