The Age of Decadence! Best RPG you'll play about post-apocalyptic semi-Romans in a sci-fi/fantasy setting!

I figured I would throw this quick guide together to give everyone a rundown of the basics of the game. You won't get complete character builds (Yet, I may make some recommended starting characters later on) but I will give you some tips about the stats, skills, combat, and general gameplay so you can get rolling yourself and have an easier time learning the game.

First things first though, don't be afraid to make a new character in Age of Decadence. It's a relatively short game per-playthrough, but makes up for it by having massive replayability due to the reactivity and choices and consequences in the game. If a character you made is having an excessively hard time of it (And even well made characters will have hard points and be unable to do everything) consider making a new version of the same character with the knowledge gained the first time through. Age of Decadence doesn't hold your hand, and it's wise to follow the Dwarf Fortress adage of "Losing is fun" while you're getting started.

You have 8 backgrounds to choose from in the beginning. They adjust your starting reputations and stats, but you aren't locked in to any of them like a class in another CRPG. You could start off as a loremaster and become a merchant, for example. It might not be ideal, but it's worth keeping in mind.

You also want to bear in mind that you can adjust your starting stats on the backgrounds, if you want to build to your strengths. Stat points are always 1 to 1 in Age of Decadence, so you don't have to worry about a higher stat costing more points than lower ones.

Finally, you'll notice the "Faction reputation" numbers change based on your background. While these aren't too terribly vital to consider, I'll give you a quick rundown.

• House Aurelian is the house led by lord Gaelius in Maadoran, the second city you visit in the game.
  
• House Crassus is the house led by brother Meru in Ganezzar, the third city you visit in the game.
  
• House Daratan is the house led by lord Antidas in Teron, the first city you start at in the game.
  
• The Boatmen of Styx is the assassins' guild, found in some degree or another in all three cities.
  
• The Commercium is the merchants' guild, found in all three cities.
  
• The Imperial Guard is an army not affiliated with the great houses with the stated purpose of keeping the peace. Found in all three cities and two relatively large side-areas.
  
• The Forty Thieves is the thieves' guild, found in all three cities.

Straight up fighter. How you want to set yourself up is up to you, but a weapon skill and a defensive skill (Dodge or block) is highly recommended. While there are non-combat skillchecks for a mercenary, the majority of your adventure will be thumping things. This will be most difficult in Teron at the very beginning before you're particularly skilled or well equipped, but stick with it and you'll turn in to an unstoppable killing machine capable of taking on 10 people at once and surviving.

The most recommended route for a mercenary would be signing up for the Imperial Guard, though you could be a thuggish thief or assassin if you were so inclined it would be notably more difficult.

Quite probably the most dialog-heavy background and guild. You'll have a bear of a time in combat, so be sure to focus on pertinent dialog skills. It pays to specialize in Age of Decadence, so remember not to spread yourself too thin.



These are "More advanced" because they're less directly focused than playing a dude-hitting mercenary or a word-hitting merchant. An assassin, for example, has to spread himself more thin over both combat and non-combat skills, and still has to focus enough that while he can't make every skill check offered he can confidently make the ones he specializes in. These tend to work better after you've played a while and know the ropes, though diving in and learning and then remaking works too.

Assassins are out in the open and a relatively honorable profession in the Age of Decadence setting. Unfortunately for you, your marks will still put up a hell of a fight. You'll have to be a decent stand up combatant as an assassin because even though you'll have many skillchecks throughout your adventures, you won't be able to instantly kill everyone unawares. You'll also want to dip in to your civil skills fairly heavily. Some alchemy is incredibly useful for an assassin (Reaching the 5 damage poison is a key moment) for straight up combat, but streetwise and impersonate are also worth considering. Don't be afraid to use consumables like nets, bolas, and poison to even the playing field.

A dialog-focused background without guild affiliation. You have a blank slate as far as starting reputations go and your stats are heavily focused toward civil skills. What you decide to do with him is up to you, if you want to join one of the existing guilds like the merchants or just try to work in the background and do your own thing.

Unlike the assassins, nobody likes a thief. While not as combat focused as an assassin you'll still want to be able to handle the occasional scrap, but focusing on your civil skills is a good idea. If Garrett has taught us anything it's that thieves aren't murderers. Right? Right guys? Guys?

Similar to the grifter in that you're a blank slate with no reputation or guild affiliation, but drifters are the blankest slate of all. Your stats all start at the minimum of 4 and you're given 16 stat points to spend among them as you please.

A mix of talker and fighter. You work as a special agent for the nobility, as such you're expected to both be able to survive in a fight and not pick your nose in public. It is however entirely possible (And a hell of a lot of fun) to play a non-combat praetor. The change of perspective by starting in a position of relative power and influence compared to the other backgrounds is really interesting and enjoyable, though you have arguably a little less freeform freedom.

You're focused most on civil skills, and more specifically the lore and crafting required to find, identify, and make ancient artifacts, knowledge, and machines! Since loremasters aren't their own major guild and thus don't provide too much in the way of quests by themselves, you'll have to decide if you want to sign up with another guild (Such as the merchants) or try to play somewhat as a free agent. While it might be tricky, you'll finally be able to learn about all the ancient artifacts that other characters will just stare at in incomprehension!

First thing to know, all the stats are checked at various points in the game, beyond just their mechanical gameplay uses. Giving you threshold recommendations to achieve specific goals is beyond the scope of this guide, but keep it in mind when you're comparing that 9 to a 10. A 10 might let you do something really ridiculous down the line.

Each point at character creation increases your combat skill points, your carrying capacity, damage modifier, and directly improves the axe, hammer, and block skills. Worth considering going for axes or hammers if you're going for maximum power weapon and shield fighter.

Each point at character creation increases your combat skill points, your action points (More actions points means more movement/attacks/actions per turn, always a plus), and sequence in combat (Get your swings in before the enemy!). It also directly improves the dagger, sword, spear, and dodge skills. Heavier armor puts a limit on your maximum action points, so be sure to check the max AP on whatever armor you're wearing if you're playing a high dexterity character.

Each point at character creation increases your combat skill points, your character's hit points, and your ability to resist poison and "Other bad things". It also directly improves the block and dodge skills. It might sound marginally less useful than the other stats, but keep in mind that you don't gain hit points naturally while playing Age of Decadence. Your starting HP cap is it barring outside events. Poison is also relatively common and very deadly, so if you're playing a character that gets into combat some poison resistance is not to be sneezed at.

Each point at character creation increases your civil skill points, and directly improves every weapon skill by the largest amount compared to any other stat, improving bow, crossbow, and throwing the most, and also improving your range modifiers for ranged weapons.

Each point at character creation increases your civil skill points, and increases/gives you a bonus to all skillpoints gained by completing quests while playing the game. Skill points are direly important in Age of Decadence, so making intelligence a dump stat for even a fighter may be a poor idea.

Each point at character creation increases your civil skill points, and "Determines reaction and reputation modifiers". It's well worth talking for dialog heavy characters as it's used during dialogs fairly regularly, but as for determining reaction and reputation modifiers I'm fairly unsure.

Skills are the bread and butter of Age of Decadence. Since it has no experience system or direct leveling system, character power is based entirely off of equipment, stats (Which are almost entirely static for the entire game), and skills. You'll never have enough skills to be able to do everything that you're offered, so a key aspect of AoD is coming up with a basic framework and sticking to it.

A decent rule of thumb for initially building your character is while you're running around in Teron doing your initial quests, see what skills come up and focus on a few of those. Teron is short enough that even if you massively blow it during character creation, making a new character is quite easy.

All the combat skills have a "Level" and a "Rating". Level is almost always only gained by spending skill points, raises the skill's rating by 10 points each time, and is used to gauge how many skill points it will take to raise again. Rating is the actual effective part of the skill, and can occasionally be raised by use (Rarely) and also occasionally be raised by learning from an NPC (Also rarely). So as a basic example, a character with a 4 strength but level 2 rating 10 axe skill would be worse at swinging an axe than a character with level 10 strength and level 1 rating 18 axe skill.

It's also worth mentioning that block and dodge don't work in tandem, so it's highly recommended you focus entirely on one or the other if you're going to take either one.

Finally, most weapon skills have a synergistic skill rating bonus. For example, each time you raise the level of your dagger skill (And increase its rating by 10) you also gain 3 rating in sword, 1 in axe, 1 in hammer, and 1 in spear. AoD rewards specializing your character so you usually want to stick to your strengths but it's worth keeping in mind that your un-leveled weapon skills may actually have a decent rating if need-be.



Gains rating from the dexterity and perception stats. While they tend to do less damage than the other weapons, they're fast and accurate.
The unique ability of the dagger is an additional bonus to critical strike if you make an aimed attack (Something other than fast/regular/power attacks). Extremely useful for abilities such as arterial strike (Making your opponent bleed) and debilitating your opponent even more with leg and arm attacks.

Gains rating from the dextery and perception stats. There's some good variety in the swords of AoD, from a fast gladius to a big honkin' two-hander. So much so that it's hard to pigeonhole swords to a certain archetype.
The unique ability of the sword is a chance to cause a minor bleeding wound every strike. As far as weapon special abilities go this is on the low-end (3 damage a turn for 2 turns isn't a ton) but bleed effects do stack so it is deadly at a high skill rating. If you reach enough sword skill that the bleed chance becomes common you can leverage it to your advantage with area of effect attacks like whirlwind to try to make a group of opponents bleed at once.

Gains rating from the strength and perception stats. Slower and more damaging than most swords, axes are for dishing out damage and not being fancy. There are both one-handed and two-handed axes, depending on your preference.
The unique ability of the axe is a chance to land a savage blow which deals 30% more damage every swing. Much, much more powerful than the sword's bleed attack if you're a high strength character and you're using a big axe, and it all hits at once instead of being spread over a few turns. It has less situational use than the critical strike bonus of the dagger, but it's ideal for when you just want to make things dead.

Gains rating from the strength and perception stats. The other slow whomping weapon, hammers also are available in one and two-handed varieties.
The unique ability of the hammer is a chance to reduce your opponent's damage reduction by 1 every swing. What this means is that while a skilled axe user may be doing more damage per-attack, against a heavily armored opponent a hammer user may get the kill first. Armored enemies are extremely common in AoD, so being able to bludgeon your opponent's armor into a wreck is entirely welcome.

Gains rating from the dexterity and perception stats. Just like everything that isn't a dagger, you can get one or two-handed spears. The biggest advantage of the spear is that it's both a reach weapon (One-handed spears can attack diagonally unlike most weapons, and two-handed spears can attack an extra tile in distance) and has a nice unique ability.
The unique ability of the spear is a chance to get an attack of opportunity (A free instant attack) each time an opponent enters your attack range. AoD already has attacks of opportunity when leaving melee attack ranges, but the ability to poke people who try to get close to you is pretty handy, and can even stagger them back and push them back out of melee range.

Gains rating from the perception stat. Good well rounded ranged weapon. You don't have to wrestle with reloading like the crossbow, but you still manage greater damage (Generally) than the throwing skill. There's also a variety of ammunition for you to use to give yourself an edge.
The unique ability of the bow is a chance to increase your opponent's movement cost. Not catastrophically devastating, but if you're a ranged weapon user anything that prevents people from getting in your face is a good thing.

Gains rating from the perception stat. Not as fast as the other ranged weapon skills, crossbows make up for it with raw damage. As mentioned by Echephron in the comments, crossbows are also the only regular weapon not to gain a bonus to damage from strength. No matter how hard you pull the trigger.
The unique ability of the crossbow is a chance to both knock your opponent down and knock him back a space or two. While this won't slow him down much, the main advantage is that knocked down opponents have massive defensive penalties, even to ranged attacks. If you have the action points to get a few hits in while your opponent is down they're almost guaranteed to hit.

Gains rating from the perception stat. For the person who values speedy attacks over all else. You have some options (Throwing axes, javelins, throwing knives, etc) but less damage and range than you would get from a bow of some sort.
The unique ability of throwing weapons is a chance to bypass damage resistance from your opponent's armor entirely. It's a fairly small chance, but if you're pelting someone with knives you'll get a few tries.

Gains rating from the dexterity and constitution stats. Works as a defensive skill (See the combat section for more).
The unique ability of dodge is a chance to get a free counter-attack after you dodge a melee attack. Extremely useful since it doesn't cost action points.

Gains rating from the strength and constitution stats. Works as a defensive skill (See the combat section for more).
The unique ability of block is a chance to block all damage of an attack entirely. Using block also means you'll be using a shield, which can give additional benefits such as damage resistance and improved defense against ranged attacks.

CS doesn't gain rating from any stats. Check the combat section of the guide for an explanation of how CS is calculated. CS also is heavily used during dialog for instant-kill surprise attacks, more than any other skill for dialog-kills.
The unique ability of critical strike is a chance to cause bleeding on a critical strike, beyond whatever else the crit gets you.

For non-combat skills their level is their effectiveness, there is no rating. However unlike combat skills they'll often be checked in combination with other civil skills or your character's stats. The mechanics behind each check might be different (It might look for a total score of the two skills combined, it might require a threshold on one or both skills, etc) so keep that in mind if you fail a multi-skill check. Some skill uses in dialog only show up if you reach a certain threshold too, so there may be possible skill checks you aren't seeing yet.


You can pick locks. There aren't lockpick items in AoD to be concerned about, so it's based entirely on your skill.

You can be sneaky. Sneak has no combat application in AoD, it's entirely used during dialog skill checks. Heavier armors can also apply a penalty to the sneak skill, so check your armor if you're playing a stealthy character. It could throw off your skill checks.

Also doesn't have an application out of regular skill checks. There's no pick pocketing every single NPC you find for rusty daggers and pocket change.

Your skill at identifying (With perception generally) and/or disarming traps. Traps aren't terribly common in AoD, but if they do show up they're almost always instant-killers. What good is a trap that just hurts someone, right?

Your ability to impersonate others. Sometimes you'll be using disguises as well, but without the impersonate skill you won't be able to successfully convince others that you're actually an imperial guard and not just a schlub wearing the uniform to get somewhere he shouldn't. Used pretty often!

Polite and proper behavior. Doesn't come in to play much if your character isn't hanging around well to do characters, as proper behavior isn't much of a concern to the world at large.

Convince others you're right without outright lying! A more middle of the road dialog skill. Not as fancy as etiquette while being a little less common and vulgar than streetwise.

A combination of both the ability to tell when someone is manipulating you, and used very commonly as a rougher form of persuasion. The best baseline dialog skill. Won't get you through everything, but it's used more than persuasion and etiquette.

Brew potions, poisons, healing salves, and make explosives! While it's an extremely useful general skill, skill points are so precious in AoD you really have to decide if it's worth taking. It also lets you gather some free materials from plants scattered throughout the game world, and buy materials from alchemists to make your own concoctions for less than what pre-made would cost.
While it's probably not a skill you'll max out, you may want to get it to a decent midrange point if you're going to take it. Reaching the point where your poison can do 5 damage a turn is a good spot.

Similar to alchemy, it's an extremely useful general skill you have to carefully consider. Crafting will let you craft entire items and upgrade existing ones, improving their attributes. It is also used with lore fairly regularly if you discover ancient artifacts and machines, because having the academic knowledge of lore might let you identify what something is, but the practical skill of crafting allows you to understand it mechanically enough to use it.

Speaking of which, lore! It's entirely possible to play through the game with no lore skill, and you'll even be able to bumble through some ancient ruins and use some ancient items without it, but to get the most out of the ancient post-apocalyptic ruins and knowledge floating around you absolutely will need lore. As mentioned in crafting, lore is the academic knowledge and crafting is the more practical knowledge, should you find an ancient broken machine.

The basic gameplay use of trading is getting you flat better buy and sell prices from merchants, but it can also be checked during dialog. Most often to haggle for better pay. Checked relatively few times during dialog, though unsurprisingly can get you both more money and reduce the cost of some special items.

The first thing to keep in mind is not all paths in Age of Decadence require combat. If you're playing a merchant, avoid combat as much as possible. Even a couple beggars wearing rags and wielding sticks are a deadly threat to you. This is just a general overview of how combat is handled in AoD, but it is completely possible to play it and avoid combat in most backgrounds and storylines.



The basic formula to hit something is attack skill rating -defensive skill rating +50%. So a character with 18 dagger rating who is wielding a dagger takes a swing at another character with 36 dodge rating. He should have a 32% chance to hit him, barring any other penalties/bonuses to either character (Such as attack type). This isn't drastically important to know in the hour to hour gameplay since when you hover over an enemy you can attack while in combat it will list your THC percent against that opponent, but understanding how it works helps.
For example, to achieve rough attack skill to defensive skill parity your defensive skill should be a bit higher to help counteract the 50% baseline chance to hit the attacker gets. It isn't an absolute rule (Better attack skill can mean more effective use of targeted shots which can cripple your opponents to the point where defensive skill is not an issue) but depending on how defensive you want to be it's good to keep in mind.

Speaking of attack types, you can right click your big weapon icon in the main game screen to view a selection of attacks you can make with it. Be sure to read the tooltips on each, as it will explain the specifics and each weapon may have different attacks available. Fast attacks cost less AP and give a bonus to hit chance but deal less damage. Power attacks cost more AP and give a penalty to hit chance but deal more damage, etc.
An extremely important rule of thumb for attack types is basing it on your opponent. If you're dealing with someone who doesn't have a shield, he's most likely using dodge. Aimed shots to the leg will add up a penalty to his dodge skill which can make him easier to hit with your regular more damaging attacks. Similarly if your opponent is using a big two-handed weapon and dishing out a ton of damage, aimed shots to the arm with reduce his accuracy letting you more easily dodge or block his attacks and whittle him down.

The basic check to see if a critical strike occurs is the attacker's critical strike rating minus the defender's armor's versus-critical strike rating. So an attacking CS rating of 40 against a defending vCS rating of 20 would have a 20% chance, on a hit, of being a critical. There's also a minimum chance of 2% to get a crit, so even if your chance would normally go under that you'll always have 2%.



I briefly mentioned this in the combat skills section, but dodge and block don't work together. You'll use whichever skill has a higher skill rating, assuming you're equipped with a shield. The damage reduction you get from armor applies to hits that strike you no matter which defensive skill you use however. Similarly, most armor has an "Armor penalty" associated with it. Armor penalty reduces your defensive skill's rating by that amount, so you can't as easily dodge or as quickly bring a shield up when you're weighted down with bulky gear. The trade-off of course being when hits do get through they deal you less damage.

How do you take down a heavily armored opponent that has a shield, you ask? This is a bit hard to answer without knowledge of your character and weapons, but here are a few tips. If your your character has poison, even a 0 damage (Due to damage reduction on armor) scratch can hit your opponent with poison. If you're a critical strike based character, arterial strikes can cause bleeding damage even if your opponent is wearing a helmet if you land a critical strike using that attack. If you're just a heavy weapon using character, aimed strike to the torso (Which reduces opponent's damage resistance) may be the way forward, or just power attacks and plowing through.

Speaking of heavy armor, early on (Usually all of Teron) consider not wearing a helmet and using a light shield if you're a block user. Heavy helmets and big shields come with fairly significant THC penalties, and early on before your character is sufficiently skilled they can actually make your life noticeably harder. Once you've got more weapon rating under your belt you can start tanking up even more, but if you're having a hard time hitting your enemies remember to take your helmet off!

Don't be afraid to use consumables. Nets may seem expensive but in the grand scheme of the game they're really not, and being able to throw a net on a difficult opponent for a few turns of advantage is well worth it. Poisons, whetstones, bombs, all can give you an advantage in a difficult encounter.

And finally, speaking of poison, if your character is taking the alchemy skill don't underestimate the power of your own poisons. While it might not sound heroic, bear in mind that a high AP character can poison an enemy (Or group of enemies, whirlwind is good for this) and then run away squealing and let the poison do all the work while they chase you. Qualms about fighting fair may go out the window once you find yourself against 3 heavily armored legionaries while only holding a dagger and wearing clothes.

Most characters have the hardest time in the beginning of the game in Age of Decadence. While your adventures in Teron will mostly be easier than ones you'll have later in the game, you'll also be the most poorly equipped and have the least skills. Once you make it in to Maadoran you should start to hit your stride, and by focusing on your chosen strengths have a generally easier time of it.

There are hidden skill checks in the game. If you come across a quest/encounter that looks like it only has one solution, there is a huge chance that there's an alternate solution available based on your skills or stats (Or even reputation). It might not be feasible for your character due to the requirements, but there's probably another way through. And by "Hidden skill checks" I mean some don't even show up in dialog unless you have a certain amount of a stat or skill.

Consider sitting on a cache of unspent skill points instead of spending them immediately. Both because you'll sometimes have to save skill points to be able to increase the level of skills you want, and because you never know when you'll hit a situation where one point of a skill makes a difference. If you're playing an assassin and focusing on daggers, dodge, critical strike, impersonation, alchemy, and streetwise, if you just spent all your skill points on daggers and your next mission has an impersonation check that would let you avoid combat entirely, getting that point of impersonation may be more important. It's a tricky balancing act in AoD, but having enough unspent points may free up your options down the line.

Not all quests/areas can be completed by all characters. AoD is an incredibly replayable game, and there are some quests and areas that some characters just flat out cannot complete or reach. Don't drive yourself crazy because you can't do a certain quest. To take the previous example of an assassin character, say you find an ancient machine. You don't have lore or crafting and you can't do anything with it. You absolutely do not want to spend the skill points necessary to work on the machine as that would set you back massively in the quests that are more important to your character. Namely murdering people. Just like a loremaster most likely won't be an unstoppable killing machine, but put him in front of a rusty piece of junk and he's in heaven.

Set the combat animation speed to max! Since it's a turn-based game you won't be falling behind because of it, and even at 2X speed it's easy to follow what's happening on the screen while dramatically decreasing the time it takes to play through large combat encounters.

Replay the game! Not only are there large questlines unique to the different factions and guilds, different skills can open up new options in quests, and the choices you make can change the game in noticeable ways. To top it all off, characters are content to lie and/or manipulate you without the game specifically telling you in AoD, and seeing the same overarching storyline from other perspectives while playing other characters can fill in large gaps and increase your enjoyment, even of characters you've already finished the game with. While many of the quests in the game will be completed or attempted even if you aren't offered them (Just because your character isn't Generic Guardsman Number Three doesn't mean they couldn't find someone else to be Generic Guardsman Number Three if you're playing someone else) there are some events that will only kick off based on your actions, which is another neat aspect of the game.