Dead Island: Riptide Characters – Xian Mei (Overview)

Dead Island: Riptide Characters – Xian Mei (Overview)

Stats:
Health – 90
Speed – 100
Stamina – 100

Perks:
Backstabbing grants more damage, Fast Rage Regeneration, Additional Critical Effects with Bladed Weapons, More Effective Healing

Expertise: Blade Weapon Expert
Xian Mei is outright the most frail of the cast. Even at max level her health will be trailing behind the others. This is offset though very nicely by her ability to heal and her expertise with bladed weapons. When in her rage, she is most effective in close so she can just hack and slash her way through the horde. Xian also offers a unique Tier 1 as it ties very closely together between Combat and Fury. She will be able to Rage a good bit early on and this will be a big help so you can just slice through things. She is unique in that she inflicts more damage when striking an opponent in the back. This shifts game play some to have something of a stealth flavor to it. Just keep in mind that it is still a good paced action game you are handling.

Skill Trees
Combat
“Blade Fighter” starts things properly by raising the damage of her preferred weaponry. After that you can drop right into Tier 2. Immediately invest into “Flawless Blade”. Bladed weapons are surprisingly frail so you need to get all the damage you can from them. Follow that up with “Maintenance” and you will be able to swing the blades that much more before needing to repair them. Save “Flying Strike” for when you have spare Skill points.

Moving into Tier 3 you will find “Effortless”, “Backstab” and “Deep Wounds”. All of these are great skills: Cutting the Stamina Cost for Bladed weapons, increasing the Backstab damage and giving a chance to inflict bleeding respectively. Start off with just 1 level in each and move on. There is a lot more to invest in. Still, keep “Effortless” and “Backstab” in mind. It is very easy to Backstab with thrown weapons and cutting the cost of attacking with blades is always a good thing for Xian.

Getting into Tier 4 you will find “Blade Expert” which augments the boons of “Blade Fighter”. It will also add in Stomp for Xian to use on downed foes. From there you can get into Tier 5. “Serrated Blade” works very well with “Deep Wounds” as both focus on bleeding. Still, when you aim to decapitate, it is better to go for “Telling Blows” to up your critical chance and make it easier to simply get a quick kill. Save “Poisonous Fumes” for last as it can damage you as well if you stand over the corpse. In Tier 6 you will find “Stroke Of Luck” which gives an instant kill chance. Focus on that. The others are nice and help, but not nearly as much.

The final skill in this tree is Blade Master. It finishes Xian's specialization and just makes her that much more deadly. Try to get it quickly and you will find she is a whirlwind of steel that nothing can match.

Fury: Bloodrage
When you want a whirlwind of steel and death, you want to use Xian Mei's Fury, “Bloodrage”. Once active, the world slows down around her. Just start and keep moving: aim, cut, move on. Let the first body fall and by the time it hits, preferably many more are dead. One of the first skills in Tier 2 to consider is “Assassin's Guile”. This increases Xian's health while she is in Fury. This is a great skill for people new to the series or who tend to take a lot of hits. The slowed time aspect of this makes it easier to avoid the incomign damage through simple evasion. Think on how you play and what tendencies show while playing this before investing into “Assassin's Guile. Otherwise focus on “Grim Inspiration” “Lightning Moves” to gain more Rage and move even faster in your Fury.

After those tiers you hit Tier 3. Immediately get “Boiling Bloodrage” to increase your Fury time and ramp up your Fury in general. Aside from that, you have her Group Fury: “Group Fitness”. Save that for when you are doing a multiplayer game. From there move onto Tier 4. Here you will find Xian has “Volatile”, “Flowing Strikes” and “Rerage”. “Volatile” makes it easier to trigger Fury by lowering the rage cost. After that “Rerage” gives you a chance to recover Rage when exiting Fury. Finally “Flowing Strikes” gives you Rage from getting critical kills.

The final tier gives you “Burning Bloodrage” this is the cap for her Fury growth. It makes the Fury last the longest and ensures the highest damage and intensity you can get out of it. That brings the best out of the Whirlwind of Death that is Xian Mei in a Fury.

Survival
As Xian Mei has the lowest health, the starting skill of this tree is very vital: “First Aid”. It immediately increases the effectiveness of Medkits by 25%. From there you have “Life Insurance”, lowering the cost of dying, “Vampire” earning you stamina from kills and “Spectre” reducing her threat. “Spectre” is best for those aiming for a backstab and “Vampire” goes a long way to just keep her stamina up using bladed weapons.

Now you get down to Tier 3. Here you will find “Lockpicking” and “Endurance”. Grab some levels of those and move on. Save “Deeper Pockets” until it is needed. There is no big rush to grab those extra slots. That will let you hit Tier 4. This is a quick tier with “Field Medic” being the only skill and it stacks with “First Aid”, boosting the recovery effectiveness of Medkits to a total of 75%.  That will let you crack into Tier 5. There you will find “Choice Cuts”, “Merchant” and “Combo”. “Choice Cuts” and “Combo” give an EXP boost for slicing off limbs and getting kills within 5 seconds of each other respectively. “Merchant” should be first priority as it cuts the cost of the items you are buying from merchants.

When you get to Tier 6 you will find “Rally”, “Custom Maintenance” and “Equal Chances”. Grab some “Rally” and “Custom Maintenance” as “Rally” ramps up your stamina regeneration when your health is below 50% and “Custom Maintenance” just makes it easier to hold onto your modified weapons. “Equal Chances” helps as it reduces the penalty for taking on higher level foes but it is hardly essential to have.

Finally you have “Surgeon General”. This gives a 75% boost to the effectiveness of Medkits and it stacks. This bring the total effectiveness of a Medkit to 150% with the other 2 Medkit skills. If that does not patch up the majorty of something's health you are using the wrong skills.