Well, this is being written because a few people are asking if being an opifex keeper is viable at higher levels. In short, it is. The long reasons for this are included within this post.
This is not a random “my breed choice is better than yours” type of document. It’s not open for discussion and I don’t plan to get drawn into the why’s and wherefore’s of which breed will be more successful. This simply maps out the reasons why opifex is a decent choice.
First off, a little information which I am showing the experiences that I discovered during my time as an opifex keeper (level 214 at time of writing).
In Teams:
It’s hard to find a fault with this, the ability to run many of the better nano’s mean that teams in general enjoy my presence. A keeper at high level (and low level of course) retains the ability to lessen the downtime of any team considerably. The increased damage output by the keeper damage aura offsets the fairly poor damage which the keeper himself gives out.
Soloing:
Keepers were built to solo as well as team. With access to our healing, combined with our excellent defences, an opifex keeper does very well indeed alone. I am able to solo pretty much anything which an atrox/soltius keeper of the same level can solo. Arguably slightly better at soloing as a result of evades, but that’s a debatable point.
PvP
Here I have few complaints. Soldiers, enforcers, adventurers, fixers, martial artists, all fall fairly easy prey to a well set up keeper. With the ability to self weapons easily and the low cost of IP, an opifex keeper can easily maintain a secondary ranged weapon without too much trouble. This can make a vast difference during mass pvp where infantry based professions traditionally run into problems. An opifex keeper has more than enough spare IP to be able to raise bow or rifle and aimed shot. This also can give us an edge in 1 on 1 duels. With raising dimach a little for our heal, we find it necessary to raise martial arts. This gives us access to some of the martial artist specials, and means that when we swap weapons we can use that “unarmed” few seconds to drop a couple of nice MA specials. Blessed with thunder is my personal favourite, mixed with brawl – heavy stun chance.
[Edit - OOPS! "Blessed with thunder" is a DD/DoT based on parry, it's "Bright, blue, cloudless sky" which is an MA based stun, apologies]
IP Cost Benefits.
Skills which get greater than 50% trickledown from our core abilities (sense/agi):
Dimach (80%)
Riposte (100%)
Fast Attack (100%)
Bow (80%)
Aimed Shot (100%)
Melee Init (70%)
Nano Casting Init (100%)
Dodge Ranged (80%)
Evade Close (80%)
Duck Explosions (80%)
First Aid (70%)
Skills which get 50% or less trickledown from our core abilities:
Martial Arts (50%)
Parry (50%)
Runspeed (40%)
Psycho Modi (20%)
Time and Space (20%)
Treatment (50%)
As you can see, we get a lot of skills slightly cheaper and some skills –considerably- cheaper than many other breed types. The difference is most markedly obvious when compared with atrox.
There are some notable and important exceptions. 2he skill and Brawling are both strongly strength/stamina based and represent one of the biggest problems for us as all our primary weapon choices will be 2he, and some use brawling.
Ok so that’s the “We’re a lot cheaper on IP” side of things out of the way, let’s examine weapons.
Common misconception among the uneducated is that opifex keepers suffer a great deal from not being able to equip 2he weapons as easily as atrox or solitus keepers. This is *wildly* inaccurate for one main reason…
Implants.
Opifex remain the breed of choice for tweaking into the higher ql implants nice and early. Because of the insanely high agi and sense, and the lovely cheap trickle down for treatment, any opifex can twink into considerably higher ql implants than anyone else. This is a fact, and it more than makes up for the loss of 2he skill from having low str/sta at lower levels. There are some items which atrox have access to (legchopper gloves) but solitus suffer the same loss on this front and really don’t suffer badly.
What this amounted to for me, was that I was able to get into FBR/Abyssal Desecrator/Permafrost just as soon as I’d have been able to had I been atrox or solitus. Yes I suffered a minor AR loss for being opifex, but this really didn’t make any difference to me at the time, especially when you consider that after 1,000 AR we have a nastily steep modifier against us, and all the majority of weapons tend to have MBS (maximum beneficial skill) caps.
Ok so on the subject of implants, let’s look at a fairly traditional symbiant setup for a high level keeper. I’m going with the idea that the keeper will be wearing Support brain/eye/ear and infantry everywhere else. This may not be 100% accurate in all cases, but will give a rough idea (and it’s the setup I currently use).
Body Part Stat Req Stat Req Stat Req
Brain Agility Intelligence Sense
Eye Strength Agility Sense
R-Arm Strength Agility Stamina
Chest Strength Agility Stamina
L-Arm Strength Stamina Psychic
R-Wrist Strength Stamina Psychic
Waist Strength Stamina Intelligence
R-Hand Strength Stamina Sense
Thigh Strength Stamina Intelligence
L-Hand Strength Agility Stamina
Foot Strength Stamina Psychic
Ok so looking at that table, one might assume that atrox is the obvious choice because so many are strength stamina based – right?
Well it certainly means that atrox only tend to have to buff one stat, and will hopefully have no problems with the other stats, -however- remember that strength and stamina remain absolutely the easiest buffable stat in the game. On top of that, we as keepers have access to our very own +40 strength stamina buff!
Just on buffs alone… how much can we buff str/sta by? Well 27 from essence, 40 from guardian, 12 from basic buff. That’s 79 points without even thinking about it! Add to that some fred sleeves (44 for a full set) and a couple of pillows (+16) and we’re up to being able to buff +139 points with relative ease.
How easy is it to buff sense/agility/intelligence/psychic by 139 points? Simple answer really “It’s not easy.” Personally I like having access to the abilities which have little buffing items through breed choice because it means that the str/sta requirements of things can be buffed into without a great deal of thought.
All of this adds up to the fact that opifex can get into some nice symbiants probably faster than the other breeds. The way that symbiants work means that when we squeeze into each higher ql symbiant, it makes squeezing into the next one that much easier (prime example being 220 brain symb, the moment you get into that, everything becomes easy from a treatment/psychic/intelligence front. Oh and of course that brain symb is agi/sense/int based – guess which breed is gonna find that easy to equip!
Advice? From Traj!? Surely not!
Now here’s my advice to any budding opifex keepers. First of all, opifex isn’t the easiest choice in the world. The HP difference and the lower 2he can all be compensated for in items, but it does all take a little work. If you’re a casual player you might not want to put that work in, so it’s worth seriously considering. Also, ensure that you have 2 bags in your bank at all times. 1 contains all your medsuit stuff (buy a full medsuit, rule 1 and never lend it out). The other will contain all your buffing items for str/sta. Everytime you see a piece of armour or any item, take a look at it, does it buff stats? If so, pick it up, and put it in your “buffbag”. Only remove it to either wear it or replace it.
Low level armour suggestions:
The new omni tradeskill armour is really good – especially so for opifex. It’s purely agi/sense based and adds to all inits and all evades. Can’t argue with that in the slightest. It’s not –that- difficult to get ahold of – just need some omnifiers, and some steel ribbed armour (oh and find a friendly fixer to make it for you).
Other option would be omni carbonum – this is sta/agi based – remember… stamina is easily buffed, and you can twink into slightly better implants to make up for that problem. Again, need an omnifier, but it adds to hp/ncu/nano/nano init – and has a reasonable spread of armour classes, certainly suitable for pvm.
Weapon Choices:
Well, I’m a boring person, so I’d probably recommend just going the usual route…
1-40ish Just get whatever you can equip that does a little damage.
40ish-90ish Grab a frost scythe from temple (or a styg if you have the time)
90-125ish Best longmoon you can equip – don’t forget your buffbags to get in better implants for this !
125+ FBR is going to be key for quite a while. It’s boring and repetitive and looks awful, but it’s also pretty easy to obtain (I’ve let many rot simply because no one was around to take), and it does solid damage.
Conclusions
Well no one ever said opifex was the easy choice. It’s not, but we do have some nice advantages, which in my opinion make up for the disadvantages. No one can say to you “Oh… that’s a gimp breed!” without showing their ignorance.
Nothing wrong with atrox or solitus (I’m still dubious about nanomage) either – just making sure that people realise that opifex is a more than viable choice for a fun profession. I really enjoy being a keeper, and am still having fun wandering around RK killing mobs which used to wipe out raid teams! So go now young opifex! And do your thing with your little grey spikey head held high!