Agreed. Entering Act 2 there very much felt like "open, but realistically you just have to find the narrow path of quests you can actually accomplish"
Maybe thatj's ust me being bad though :P
While you can go east, north, or west out of Driftwood you're only likely to survive going west or a tiny distance to the east because you don't really fight much in the graveyard. Admittedly the bridge to go directly north is broken but the road you came into the city from will lead north and since that's the area you came from, it's easy to think you should return to it and keep going.
I'm playing on classic and I feel like I'm missing something. My folks are level 12 and I just fought a lich that was level 13, where he processed to throw acid on guys and kill them asap. I'm not sure if it's my team? or if it's my equipment? Or if I'm missing something around battle pre-setup.
For equipment, feels like I constantly have a hodge podge of stuff, some things are close to my level but other things are maybe level 7 gear still.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
You definitely need on level gear, it makes a huge difference.
Is it worth giving up +1 to stuff just to get on level gear? That's been my concern, I have a level 7 boots with initiative or something, but the only thing in the shops are the plain level 12 version.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
You need the armor more than most any skill boosts. The only exception I would say are staff/wands which can just be stat sticks if you are always casting rather than attacking.
Edit: Also, this is just my opinion but look into shields, they've got huge armor values, just enormous.
Yeah my 2 mages are tankier than my Ranger and Duelist due to shields even though they have crappier armor. I'll start keeping a look out. Hard to give up some sweet bonuses though.
on Reaper's Coast, which was such a bogus fight I needed a break for a couple months after the first attempts. Eventually with a variety of cheese and re-attempts I made it through that. Completed most of the rest of the quests there, and moved on to the Nameless Isle.
The island was great! I was having fun, fights were challenging but beatable, the story was cool and going at a nice, fast pace.
Which is when I made a grievous mistake: I continued on with the story before completing a large amount of "optional" side quests.
Now I've made it to the Arx, but about a level below where I should be. Which means every fight is now a grueling ordeal of slowly burning through my resources and losing anyways multiple times until (usually) I cheese it and get lucky. There is only one (poorly-supplied) shop that I can reach, and I've already bought/stolen everything from it. I am probably on the last one of these before entering the city proper (the Voidwoken fight at the entrance), which will be nice, but it's the hardest one so far...
I'm still on the island as I'm fearful of that. Plus I don't mind the puzzle stuff, I was just getting tired of combat. I agree that the story is moving forward faster, which is really nice compared to Act 2.
Given that I'm 171 hours in, I enabled the max 8 AP points so Fane can basically murder everything since he's glass cannon and the combo of Polymorph, Necro, and summoner is pretty powerful. It's making battles move faster thank god.
I'm still on the island as I'm fearful of that. Plus I don't mind the puzzle stuff, I was just getting tired of combat. I agree that the story is moving forward faster, which is really nice compared to Act 2.
Given that I'm 171 hours in, I enabled the max 8 AP points so Fane can basically murder everything since he's glass cannon and the combo of Polymorph, Necro, and summoner is pretty powerful. It's making battles move faster thank god.
Is max 8 AP a mod...?
But yeah I think I skipped most of the combat on the Isle and solved the puzzles and dialogue checks mostly haha. Still got xp for that of course, but you don't get xp for the quests you don't do....
I'm still on the island as I'm fearful of that. Plus I don't mind the puzzle stuff, I was just getting tired of combat. I agree that the story is moving forward faster, which is really nice compared to Act 2.
Given that I'm 171 hours in, I enabled the max 8 AP points so Fane can basically murder everything since he's glass cannon and the combo of Polymorph, Necro, and summoner is pretty powerful. It's making battles move faster thank god.
Is max 8 AP a mod...?
But yeah I think I skipped most of the combat on the Isle and solved the puzzles and dialogue checks mostly haha. Still got xp for that of course, but you don't get xp for the quests you don't do....
It's a gift bag option. It just allows for 2 more AP slots, so it's not massively game breaking outside of Glass Cannon. I also enabled the Source on rest as well since it just saves me having to setup use the pyramids to do the same thing. I think I have almost all the gift bag stuff on at this point.
haha I'm not in any race with anyone for Achievements, so I'd rather use the in game mods rather than dealing with external ones.
Also, power Runes suck. Seriously my + to crit chance rune is Intelligence? Magic armor is strength? Did the developers not want folks to use these? They should have added stats to the frames themselves, so you can choose what you want with what Rune stat.
I'm getting pretty close to just stopping and reading the rest of the story/ending. I'm at 188 hours and just got to Arx. While wandering around looking for the schoolhouse to finish a level 18 quest, I get jumped by 4 level 20 demons that promptly destroy my level 18 party... I guess I'll poke around for other quests I might be able to do at 18 but quite a few are listed at 19 and 20. I've done every quest in the game so far, and I'm half way through 18.
I'm getting pretty close to just stopping and reading the rest of the story/ending. I'm at 188 hours and just got to Arx. While wandering around looking for the schoolhouse to finish a level 18 quest, I get jumped by 4 level 20 demons that promptly destroy my level 18 party... I guess I'll poke around for other quests I might be able to do at 18 but quite a few are listed at 19 and 20. I've done every quest in the game so far, and I'm half way through 18.
Yeah the balance is honestly consistently the roughest part of this game. Quests aren't really optional, and there's often a very railroaded track you have to stay on unless you are seeking an exceptional challenge
I'm debating either kicking the difficulty down, using the cheat commander mod to just jump to 20, or just take a break. Ideally a break would help, I like the game but man am I tired of it at this point. And having to do another 20+ hours of quests so I can finish the game sounds, not fun. But a break could easily lead to never jumping back in haha.
The other thing I've been noticing is initiative really sucks. Every single party member has gear with +wits and +initiative on it. Some characters are above 40 and yet I'm constantly getting out sped when battle starts. I don't know if they coded the enemy to go first in many cases or what the deal is.
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
I'm debating either kicking the difficulty down, using the cheat commander mod to just jump to 20, or just take a break. Ideally a break would help, I like the game but man am I tired of it at this point. And having to do another 20+ hours of quests so I can finish the game sounds, not fun. But a break could easily lead to never jumping back in haha.
The other thing I've been noticing is initiative really sucks. Every single party member has gear with +wits and +initiative on it. Some characters are above 40 and yet I'm constantly getting out sped when battle starts. I don't know if they coded the enemy to go first in many cases or what the deal is.
a LOT of encounters start with you being ambushed, which I believe mucks up the initiative system
but you're so close!
once you're in arx city proper, it's a little easier to supply yourself with items and cash via rampant theft
and that makes it so much easier to keep all of your gear at the right level
should all else fail, and you find yourself in an unwinnable fight, track down the
scroll of Pyroclastic Eruption
Available starting from level 16
Gareth at Lady Vengeance (Reaper's Coast, Nameless Isle), Hall of Echoes (Arx)
Trader Ovis at Driftwood (Reaper's Coast)
Hannag at Cloisterwood (Reaper's Coast)
Almira at Paradise Downs (Reaper's Coast), Lady Vengeance (Reaper's Coast, Nameless Isle), Hall of Echoes (Arx)
Tovah at Reaper's Coast elf camp
Priestess of Duna at Temple of Tir-Cendelius (Nameless Isle)
Black Ring Alchemist at Wordless' Black Ring camp (Nameless Isle)
Trader Friel at Arx
haha yeah I'm so used to scrolls and potions being pretty useless in these types of games, I only really came around in Act 3, where I realized how OP they were. Sebille has the double effectiveness trait which is crazy since she can 100% dodge from one potion and 100% elemental resists from another potion. Also it took till now to realize the equipment and potions that say "immunity to" still work for glass cannon, which is a life saver for Fane on his GC Undeath Incarnate build.
So this fight is fun. The enemy turns my whole party into cows with a single action, where it automatically skips my turn while I sit there and slowly die while they turn me into cows over and over again.
I assume eventually the RNG will let me move, but this "lol funny ability" thing became obnoxious fast. Did they not test this?
So this fight is fun. The enemy turns my whole party into cows with a single action, where it automatically skips my turn while I sit there and slowly die while they turn me into cows over and over again.
I assume eventually the RNG will let me move, but this "lol funny ability" thing became obnoxious fast. Did they not test this?
Which enemy is this? I know there's a potion that turns you into a cow, but I'm not sure which opponent can do it. Is it a mandatory fight?
So this fight is fun. The enemy turns my whole party into cows with a single action, where it automatically skips my turn while I sit there and slowly die while they turn me into cows over and over again.
I assume eventually the RNG will let me move, but this "lol funny ability" thing became obnoxious fast. Did they not test this?
Which enemy is this? I know there's a potion that turns you into a cow, but I'm not sure which opponent can do it. Is it a mandatory fight?
It is a mandatory fight, very close to the end of the game.
In one of the very last rooms of the game, you have to pull the correct levers. If you pull the incorrect levers, Bad Stuff happens (standard trap stuff, deathfog, teleporting you around the room.... and turning your whole party into cows).
There are also a large group of (infinitely respawning?) enemies who mostly ignore you, and use their large movement speed to go and pull all the wrong levers. That means they turn you into a cow frequently and almost constantly. Eventually one of my characters somehow got far enough from the enemies that was out of combat, and I ran to the last remaining correct lever ASAP to end the fight
So this fight is fun. The enemy turns my whole party into cows with a single action, where it automatically skips my turn while I sit there and slowly die while they turn me into cows over and over again.
I assume eventually the RNG will let me move, but this "lol funny ability" thing became obnoxious fast. Did they not test this?
Which enemy is this? I know there's a potion that turns you into a cow, but I'm not sure which opponent can do it. Is it a mandatory fight?
It is a mandatory fight, very close to the end of the game.
In one of the very last rooms of the game, you have to pull the correct levers. If you pull the incorrect levers, Bad Stuff happens (standard trap stuff, deathfog, teleporting you around the room.... and turning your whole party into cows).
There are also a large group of (infinitely respawning?) enemies who mostly ignore you, and use their large movement speed to go and pull all the wrong levers. That means they turn you into a cow frequently and almost constantly. Eventually one of my characters somehow got far enough from the enemies that was out of combat, and I ran to the last remaining correct lever ASAP to end the fight
ohhhhhhh yes
I don't think that fight is winnable in the traditional sense, but yeah the game doesn't really let you know that.
If I remember correctly
The intended way of doing that is to hit all the levers without starting the fight at all? I vaguely remember there being a hint for what order you need to do them in, but I remember being able to bypass it altogether with some teleportation stone shenanigans)
So this fight is fun. The enemy turns my whole party into cows with a single action, where it automatically skips my turn while I sit there and slowly die while they turn me into cows over and over again.
I assume eventually the RNG will let me move, but this "lol funny ability" thing became obnoxious fast. Did they not test this?
Which enemy is this? I know there's a potion that turns you into a cow, but I'm not sure which opponent can do it. Is it a mandatory fight?
It is a mandatory fight, very close to the end of the game.
In one of the very last rooms of the game, you have to pull the correct levers. If you pull the incorrect levers, Bad Stuff happens (standard trap stuff, deathfog, teleporting you around the room.... and turning your whole party into cows).
There are also a large group of (infinitely respawning?) enemies who mostly ignore you, and use their large movement speed to go and pull all the wrong levers. That means they turn you into a cow frequently and almost constantly. Eventually one of my characters somehow got far enough from the enemies that was out of combat, and I ran to the last remaining correct lever ASAP to end the fight
ohhhhhhh yes
I don't think that fight is winnable in the traditional sense, but yeah the game doesn't really let you know that.
If I remember correctly
The intended way of doing that is to hit all the levers without starting the fight at all? I vaguely remember there being a hint for what order you need to do them in, but I remember being able to bypass it altogether with some teleportation stone shenanigans)
You can't normally not start the fight. You can always go invisible as soon as you enter the room, or teleport and maybe miss the trigger? But you'd have to know there was a dumb fight, just walking into the room normally without doing anything else triggers the fight. You know what to do if you talked to Arhu earlier, it's just the act of actually doing it.
Overall it's a good game. I think it's really close to being great, but it's not quiet there. Damage was a little bursty and so too easy to die really fast. Combine that with formations always being a bit janky, so half the time you start the fight in a big bundle, and then you lose like, all your armor and some health before 3/4 of your party can move.
Then, of course, most quests were only optional in the strictest definition, in that you could skip them to continue the story but then you'd be under-leveled and in a really rough spot.
But it was fun. A decent variety of builds, lots of content, nice story.
Overall it's a good game. I think it's really close to being great, but it's not quiet there. Damage was a little bursty and so too easy to die really fast. Combine that with formations always being a bit janky, so half the time you start the fight in a big bundle, and then you lose like, all your armor and some health before 3/4 of your party can move.
Then, of course, most quests were only optional in the strictest definition, in that you could skip them to continue the story but then you'd be under-leveled and in a really rough spot.
But it was fun. A decent variety of builds, lots of content, nice story.
Overall it's a good game. I think it's really close to being great, but it's not quiet there. Damage was a little bursty and so too easy to die really fast. Combine that with formations always being a bit janky, so half the time you start the fight in a big bundle, and then you lose like, all your armor and some health before 3/4 of your party can move.
Then, of course, most quests were only optional in the strictest definition, in that you could skip them to continue the story but then you'd be under-leveled and in a really rough spot.
But it was fun. A decent variety of builds, lots of content, nice story.
Hooray!
How did you handle the last fight?
Desperately
I agreed to sacrifice myself, so thankfully had Lucian & co on my side. I ended up using my entire team to stall with all our might against the adds from the Kraken, while Lucian and one unnamed peon went to take down Braccus Rex.
It was a losing battle, and I was losing people quickly. Lucian was about to clinch the win.... and then missed the All In. Ahhhhh! Lucian died on Braccus' counterattack, and he was so low. My party was on the other side of the map, and also about to die (two already dead, both survivors at no armor and very low hp). And on fire.
But I got lucky . Braccus was also on fire, and he burned to death before my group did . I'll take it!
That was on my first try. I probably could have done things better, but didn't end up needing it.
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
ah that sounds like a good, dramatic fight!
i felt like I had no chance in that fight (phase 2 kicked my ass), but then accidentally found myself trying a strat that turned out something like this:
Finally beat the game. Holy hell was that something lol. I don't think I've ever had such a love/hate relationship with a game. So many amazing things; it's the first game to really match BG2's style but in full 3D. The environments were incredibly detailed. The story and characters were pretty good and the soundtrack is amazing. I loved that all the animals had lines and some were fun to talk with. There where some really fun quests and tricks for bypassing things or resolving quests in different ways.
Combat had it's ups and downs. While I really enjoy this style of combat, there were a bit too many AoE super spells that turned the entire battlefield into a nightmare. I had the same issue Kime ran into as well where formations were buggy and units would huddle together to get blasted right out of the gate. Which lead me to having to break everyone out and position them individually. Also Initiative was handled kind of terribly and was buggy/broken in a lot of cases. By the end of of the game each of my units have over 70 initiative, but combat would start with 1 of my units then enemy, then my unit, then enemy, etc. There's no way multiple encounters have units with similar initiative such that they perfectly mixed in with my units.
I really hope Larian learned from this game for BG3. They are so close to something really great. They just need to learn how to be more respectful of the players time. 214 hours to complete a game is something I don't think I'll be doing again and I'm for sure not pre-ordering BG3 unless I hear you can complete it in a reasonable amount of time. This game had so many time wasting parts to it. These would be my lessons learned for streamlining:
1) I should be able to beat the game by just doing the main story line, associated side quests, and maybe companion quests. This is for Normal difficulty and should be challenging. If someone wants 'Story' because the battles are hard still, that's what it's there for. If someone wants to make sure they have to do every side quest or a greater challenge, go with Hard.
2) Crafting needs a complete overhaul or removal from the game. I know it's kind of a mainstay of RPG's but if it doesn't add anything, toss it out. There were no weapons or armor secret recipes I found that would allow me to make anything useful. Crafting really came down to a handful of potions and scrolls along with arrows and junk to sell. If they don't get rid of it, the entire UX needs an overall as it was rather cumbersome to use. Also I'd suggest adding the ability to craft "level" your gear. If you find something level 14 and it has the sub stats you want, allow us to craft it up to 15 or whatever level we are now. Though at least with DOS2, I'd probably have just cut crafting, so it would help with "clutter".
3) Speaking of, since the game required pretty much every side quest, it also lead to a ton of "I need to explore every one of these books, vase, box, etc". I was so tired by the middle of the game having to go to over a dozen bookshelves to only find 2 paper or something. Only to have 1 of them have something good, just to feed the addiction and have me do it all over again in the next room. Just cut down on stuff. Make boxes, vases, bookshelves, etc all empty. If there is a nice scroll or something, lay it on a desk or chest. There were some rooms that if you pressed ALT, the room just exploded in text due to all the interactive objects. If the game was only act 1 and 2, I could see the fun in finding random stuff and then Larian designing hidden uses for them as easter eggs or something. But given how much is already in the game, they couldn't do that, so 99% of the stuff laying around was just to be sold, which by the middle of the game didn't get you much money anyways.
4) Continue to work on combat. DOS2 was a lot more fun than DOS1 combat wise, but as mentioned, the battlefield could get overly complex due to all the interactions. I can't remember a battle in the later stages of the game where there wasn't necrofire.
Those are the ones off the top of my head. I didn't mention bugs, which of course I hope they improve on lowering, but I think streamlining the game itself can help in that regard so you don't have as many interacting systems.
EDIT: Also props to the Cheat Commander mod! Pretty much kept me in the game. I was able to plow through the main quests and side quests while ignoring ones I didn't feel like doing as I could use it to level my characters and equip them with level appropriate gear.
Initiative is weird. If I remember correctly, the way it works is it determines who goes first, and after that there's some other stat (or random?) to determine the rest of the order. So.... only one character's initiative matters, really.
I'll double what you said, Trajan, that there was very clearly multiple ways to complete most quests, and I really really enjoyed that. A lot of the time I felt obligated to do all of them anyways because of the XP, but it was cool to have multiple legitimate paths that you had to actually discover. And sometimes, of course, choosing one would invalidate the other (kill/save <x> person).
But otherwise, I agree wholeheartedly with your lessons. NECROFIRE EVERYWHERE :P
That's a lot of time to beat the game. I also played it over the holidays (on Classic) and finished at 124hrs (and I played the first act twice since I hated my original party/build). I can see a Tactician run taking a bunch more time. I did play the second run with a wiki open because I could not be bothered to figure out the fiddly answers to the more annoying quests (including the goddamn endgame puppet fight referenced above). Overall, I think the game overstayed it's welcome by an Act and could have benefitted from dropping the Nameless Isle or Arx.
I agree on the combat - it's good and so close to amazing but it always seemed to come down to having enough armor to survive the enemy's alpha strikes and then cc'ing them as much as possible. Charm and knockdown arrows/grenades are just incredible and there's almost no reason to use other arrows (other than maybe electrical / ice ones to complete a stun/frozen).
I was OK with crafting, but I was a heavy user of scrolls/arrows/grenades which is where it shines. I agree the UI could have used some work but overall it didn't bug me too much.
One of my biggest complaints after finishing was some story elements near the end:
- Malady getting used as a Deus Ex Machina wayyyy too much. It would have felt much better if there had been a quest to earn access to the Adrahmalihk's domain rather than her just popping up at her front door. It would have felt better if there was a way to earn a way to preserve your soul if you banish source rather than "welp, Malady fixed it".
- There should have been more choice in the endings. If I want to banish source why can't I kill Lucian as well? Why can't we work with Fane to find a way to bring back the Eternals without enslaving the world? For the amount of choice there was throughout the rest of the game, the endings felt very railroady.
- The fact that Braccus Rex of all people was the endgame fight was just dumb. Not Lucian or Dallis (which would have made sense). Not the God-King (which would have made sense). Braccus Rex again.
Despite the complaints, I still think it's an incredible game and worthy of the praise it's got.
That would make sense. By the end of the game I had cheated my way to max Wits for all so they could just go first and allow me to finish the story. But it didn't seem to work that way lol.
The importance of armor means that not using a shield felt like suicide. My one character who dual-wielded died first every fight.
re: the final boss
I actually kinda like it being Braccus Rex. He didn't really live up to the hype in D:OS 1, so it was cool to see him at "full power" so to speak. And it's not like we hadn't been getting hints of Braccus Rex being a part of the story since Fort Joy.
Yep, both mages used shields the entire game. Ifan stayed a ranger and usually was able to get out of the way early enough, but Sebille definitely died a lot. I threw the auto-res on her which helped a ton.
I had two characters (one magic, one physical) with shields. Shields are good. Shields Up is an amazing ability late game.
I had one character who was a staff-wielding air battlemage. She shrugged off magic attacks and could generally stay alive against physical with her very high initiative, good dodge (Leadership is good!), good mobility (nether swap is great, plus poly's wings), and some defensive spells like chameleon cloak and the 90% dodge air spell.
Then I had Ifan as my ranger/summoner who ate 75% of the alpha strikes and, because he was using finesse armor, didn't have enough to weather a focused attack of physical or magic. While his init was high it was lower than my battlemage and Ifan was thus usually almost dead before he acted, if not entirely dead. I had the auto-res and comeback kid on him and he had solid mobility options, but even so I usually had to pop an invis potion for bigger fights or he was dead before his second turn. It got incredibly frustrating and I came close to re-spec'ing him several times.
At one point I thought about a full shields party haha.
I had Fane set as Necro/Summon with as high an INIT as I could get and glass cannon. He'd usually start, Apotheosis, Extra Turn, Blood Rain. Then on turn 2, hit with Grasp and then summon and buff with cursed blood and the 2 other standard buffs. The hardest battles were the ones where the enemy went first either via Init or game design, since he'd almost immediately get crowd controlled.
It wasn't till Arx that I discovered Stoneskin and Strong Will potions, whoops.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Did something new happen with this game? Ten of my steam friends are playing it simultaneously.
I snagged this game on PSN sale about 2 weeks ago and installed it.
I immediately got overwhelmed by character creation. There doesn't seem to be any sort of in-game description for the differences (and nuances) between classes. There are like 4 different magic classes and the game did not really give me any indication as to what the difference is. What's the difference between a wizard, a witch, an enchanter, and a battlemage?
I can make educated guesses as a lifetime RPG player, but everybody's definitions are different. If I was to guess, I'd say the battlemage would be a hybrid class that's a mix of melee and magic, sorta like what a Red Mage is in Final Fantasy (or what is sometimes called a Spellblade). But that's only a guess, and the game didn't really give me enough information to know that with any certainty.
Likewise, the game gave me no indication of what the difference is between an Inquisitor or a Cleric. Or a Rogue and a Shadowblade.
I think I went with a Red Prince Knight as my character, just because the character model looked cool. But that decision was really aesthetic only and is likely not what I would have chosen if they had given me better in-game documentation.
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Maybe thatj's ust me being bad though :P
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While you can go east, north, or west out of Driftwood you're only likely to survive going west or a tiny distance to the east because you don't really fight much in the graveyard. Admittedly the bridge to go directly north is broken but the road you came into the city from will lead north and since that's the area you came from, it's easy to think you should return to it and keep going.
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I'm playing on classic and I feel like I'm missing something. My folks are level 12 and I just fought a lich that was level 13, where he processed to throw acid on guys and kill them asap. I'm not sure if it's my team? or if it's my equipment? Or if I'm missing something around battle pre-setup.
For equipment, feels like I constantly have a hodge podge of stuff, some things are close to my level but other things are maybe level 7 gear still.
Edit: Also, this is just my opinion but look into shields, they've got huge armor values, just enormous.
So I finally beat up
The island was great! I was having fun, fights were challenging but beatable, the story was cool and going at a nice, fast pace.
Which is when I made a grievous mistake: I continued on with the story before completing a large amount of "optional" side quests.
Now I've made it to the Arx, but about a level below where I should be. Which means every fight is now a grueling ordeal of slowly burning through my resources and losing anyways multiple times until (usually) I cheese it and get lucky. There is only one (poorly-supplied) shop that I can reach, and I've already bought/stolen everything from it. I am probably on the last one of these before entering the city proper (the Voidwoken fight at the entrance), which will be nice, but it's the hardest one so far...
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Given that I'm 171 hours in, I enabled the max 8 AP points so Fane can basically murder everything since he's glass cannon and the combo of Polymorph, Necro, and summoner is pretty powerful. It's making battles move faster thank god.
Is max 8 AP a mod...?
But yeah I think I skipped most of the combat on the Isle and solved the puzzles and dialogue checks mostly haha. Still got xp for that of course, but you don't get xp for the quests you don't do....
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It's a gift bag option. It just allows for 2 more AP slots, so it's not massively game breaking outside of Glass Cannon. I also enabled the Source on rest as well since it just saves me having to setup use the pyramids to do the same thing. I think I have almost all the gift bag stuff on at this point.
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Also, power Runes suck. Seriously my + to crit chance rune is Intelligence? Magic armor is strength? Did the developers not want folks to use these? They should have added stats to the frames themselves, so you can choose what you want with what Rune stat.
Yeah the balance is honestly consistently the roughest part of this game. Quests aren't really optional, and there's often a very railroaded track you have to stay on unless you are seeking an exceptional challenge
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The other thing I've been noticing is initiative really sucks. Every single party member has gear with +wits and +initiative on it. Some characters are above 40 and yet I'm constantly getting out sped when battle starts. I don't know if they coded the enemy to go first in many cases or what the deal is.
a LOT of encounters start with you being ambushed, which I believe mucks up the initiative system
but you're so close!
once you're in arx city proper, it's a little easier to supply yourself with items and cash via rampant theft
and that makes it so much easier to keep all of your gear at the right level
should all else fail, and you find yourself in an unwinnable fight, track down the
I assume eventually the RNG will let me move, but this "lol funny ability" thing became obnoxious fast. Did they not test this?
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Which enemy is this? I know there's a potion that turns you into a cow, but I'm not sure which opponent can do it. Is it a mandatory fight?
It is a mandatory fight, very close to the end of the game.
There are also a large group of (infinitely respawning?) enemies who mostly ignore you, and use their large movement speed to go and pull all the wrong levers. That means they turn you into a cow frequently and almost constantly. Eventually one of my characters somehow got far enough from the enemies that was out of combat, and I ran to the last remaining correct lever ASAP to end the fight
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ohhhhhhh yes
I don't think that fight is winnable in the traditional sense, but yeah the game doesn't really let you know that.
If I remember correctly
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Overall it's a good game. I think it's really close to being great, but it's not quiet there. Damage was a little bursty and so too easy to die really fast. Combine that with formations always being a bit janky, so half the time you start the fight in a big bundle, and then you lose like, all your armor and some health before 3/4 of your party can move.
Then, of course, most quests were only optional in the strictest definition, in that you could skip them to continue the story but then you'd be under-leveled and in a really rough spot.
But it was fun. A decent variety of builds, lots of content, nice story.
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Hooray!
How did you handle the last fight?
Desperately
It was a losing battle, and I was losing people quickly. Lucian was about to clinch the win.... and then missed the All In. Ahhhhh! Lucian died on Braccus' counterattack, and he was so low. My party was on the other side of the map, and also about to die (two already dead, both survivors at no armor and very low hp). And on fire.
But I got lucky
That was on my first try. I probably could have done things better, but didn't end up needing it.
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i felt like I had no chance in that fight (phase 2 kicked my ass), but then accidentally found myself trying a strat that turned out something like this:
and... well I wasn't quite prepared for that, but accepted it because by the 150+ hour mark i kinda wanted to get past the finish line
Finally beat the game. Holy hell was that something lol. I don't think I've ever had such a love/hate relationship with a game. So many amazing things; it's the first game to really match BG2's style but in full 3D. The environments were incredibly detailed. The story and characters were pretty good and the soundtrack is amazing. I loved that all the animals had lines and some were fun to talk with. There where some really fun quests and tricks for bypassing things or resolving quests in different ways.
Combat had it's ups and downs. While I really enjoy this style of combat, there were a bit too many AoE super spells that turned the entire battlefield into a nightmare. I had the same issue Kime ran into as well where formations were buggy and units would huddle together to get blasted right out of the gate. Which lead me to having to break everyone out and position them individually. Also Initiative was handled kind of terribly and was buggy/broken in a lot of cases. By the end of of the game each of my units have over 70 initiative, but combat would start with 1 of my units then enemy, then my unit, then enemy, etc. There's no way multiple encounters have units with similar initiative such that they perfectly mixed in with my units.
I really hope Larian learned from this game for BG3. They are so close to something really great. They just need to learn how to be more respectful of the players time. 214 hours to complete a game is something I don't think I'll be doing again and I'm for sure not pre-ordering BG3 unless I hear you can complete it in a reasonable amount of time. This game had so many time wasting parts to it. These would be my lessons learned for streamlining:
1) I should be able to beat the game by just doing the main story line, associated side quests, and maybe companion quests. This is for Normal difficulty and should be challenging. If someone wants 'Story' because the battles are hard still, that's what it's there for. If someone wants to make sure they have to do every side quest or a greater challenge, go with Hard.
2) Crafting needs a complete overhaul or removal from the game. I know it's kind of a mainstay of RPG's but if it doesn't add anything, toss it out. There were no weapons or armor secret recipes I found that would allow me to make anything useful. Crafting really came down to a handful of potions and scrolls along with arrows and junk to sell. If they don't get rid of it, the entire UX needs an overall as it was rather cumbersome to use. Also I'd suggest adding the ability to craft "level" your gear. If you find something level 14 and it has the sub stats you want, allow us to craft it up to 15 or whatever level we are now. Though at least with DOS2, I'd probably have just cut crafting, so it would help with "clutter".
3) Speaking of, since the game required pretty much every side quest, it also lead to a ton of "I need to explore every one of these books, vase, box, etc". I was so tired by the middle of the game having to go to over a dozen bookshelves to only find 2 paper or something. Only to have 1 of them have something good, just to feed the addiction and have me do it all over again in the next room. Just cut down on stuff. Make boxes, vases, bookshelves, etc all empty. If there is a nice scroll or something, lay it on a desk or chest. There were some rooms that if you pressed ALT, the room just exploded in text due to all the interactive objects. If the game was only act 1 and 2, I could see the fun in finding random stuff and then Larian designing hidden uses for them as easter eggs or something. But given how much is already in the game, they couldn't do that, so 99% of the stuff laying around was just to be sold, which by the middle of the game didn't get you much money anyways.
4) Continue to work on combat. DOS2 was a lot more fun than DOS1 combat wise, but as mentioned, the battlefield could get overly complex due to all the interactions. I can't remember a battle in the later stages of the game where there wasn't necrofire.
Those are the ones off the top of my head. I didn't mention bugs, which of course I hope they improve on lowering, but I think streamlining the game itself can help in that regard so you don't have as many interacting systems.
EDIT: Also props to the Cheat Commander mod! Pretty much kept me in the game. I was able to plow through the main quests and side quests while ignoring ones I didn't feel like doing as I could use it to level my characters and equip them with level appropriate gear.
I'll double what you said, Trajan, that there was very clearly multiple ways to complete most quests, and I really really enjoyed that. A lot of the time I felt obligated to do all of them anyways because of the XP, but it was cool to have multiple legitimate paths that you had to actually discover. And sometimes, of course, choosing one would invalidate the other (kill/save <x> person).
But otherwise, I agree wholeheartedly with your lessons. NECROFIRE EVERYWHERE :P
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I agree on the combat - it's good and so close to amazing but it always seemed to come down to having enough armor to survive the enemy's alpha strikes and then cc'ing them as much as possible. Charm and knockdown arrows/grenades are just incredible and there's almost no reason to use other arrows (other than maybe electrical / ice ones to complete a stun/frozen).
I was OK with crafting, but I was a heavy user of scrolls/arrows/grenades which is where it shines. I agree the UI could have used some work but overall it didn't bug me too much.
One of my biggest complaints after finishing was some story elements near the end:
- There should have been more choice in the endings. If I want to banish source why can't I kill Lucian as well? Why can't we work with Fane to find a way to bring back the Eternals without enslaving the world? For the amount of choice there was throughout the rest of the game, the endings felt very railroady.
- The fact that Braccus Rex of all people was the endgame fight was just dumb. Not Lucian or Dallis (which would have made sense). Not the God-King (which would have made sense). Braccus Rex again.
Despite the complaints, I still think it's an incredible game and worthy of the praise it's got.
re: the final boss
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Oh also I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to beat the game without stealing. Hard to tell if that's me being bad or bad balance :P
At least until near the very end,
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I had one character who was a staff-wielding air battlemage. She shrugged off magic attacks and could generally stay alive against physical with her very high initiative, good dodge (Leadership is good!), good mobility (nether swap is great, plus poly's wings), and some defensive spells like chameleon cloak and the 90% dodge air spell.
Then I had Ifan as my ranger/summoner who ate 75% of the alpha strikes and, because he was using finesse armor, didn't have enough to weather a focused attack of physical or magic. While his init was high it was lower than my battlemage and Ifan was thus usually almost dead before he acted, if not entirely dead. I had the auto-res and comeback kid on him and he had solid mobility options, but even so I usually had to pop an invis potion for bigger fights or he was dead before his second turn. It got incredibly frustrating and I came close to re-spec'ing him several times.
I had Fane set as Necro/Summon with as high an INIT as I could get and glass cannon. He'd usually start, Apotheosis, Extra Turn, Blood Rain. Then on turn 2, hit with Grasp and then summon and buff with cursed blood and the 2 other standard buffs. The hardest battles were the ones where the enemy went first either via Init or game design, since he'd almost immediately get crowd controlled.
It wasn't till Arx that I discovered Stoneskin and Strong Will potions, whoops.
Maybe someone new got it and they're cooping?
I immediately got overwhelmed by character creation. There doesn't seem to be any sort of in-game description for the differences (and nuances) between classes. There are like 4 different magic classes and the game did not really give me any indication as to what the difference is. What's the difference between a wizard, a witch, an enchanter, and a battlemage?
I can make educated guesses as a lifetime RPG player, but everybody's definitions are different. If I was to guess, I'd say the battlemage would be a hybrid class that's a mix of melee and magic, sorta like what a Red Mage is in Final Fantasy (or what is sometimes called a Spellblade). But that's only a guess, and the game didn't really give me enough information to know that with any certainty.
Likewise, the game gave me no indication of what the difference is between an Inquisitor or a Cleric. Or a Rogue and a Shadowblade.
I think I went with a Red Prince Knight as my character, just because the character model looked cool. But that decision was really aesthetic only and is likely not what I would have chosen if they had given me better in-game documentation.