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Scalding Coffee posted:http://forums.stardock.com/313459 Tips. Big ships are the definition of Win-More. If you're not winning, they won't help you because by the time the ship is finished, it'll be two tech levels out of date. If you are winning, then you don't need it. Just go for a lot of small, cheap, fragile ships, up Logistics, and throw them at the enemy en masse. Think less "Star Destroyer", and more "swarm of hornets". The only exception is if you need something really big RIGHT NOW and have the money to buy the ship outright. Do note, hoever, that the Arcean's racial ability to always strike first will either be incredibly useful (if you're playing as them) or the bane of your existence (if you're fighting against them). Relatedly, invest in ships that buff other ships in the squad. These turn "swarms of hornets" into "swarms of even deadlier hornets". Same deal with military starbases. Make sure you can beat your own ships. There's an uncommon, but incredibly painful random event where a significant portion of your planets and ships are stolen either by pirates or rebels (depending on if you're good or evil) and if you don't have the technology and equipment to kill what were once your own ships easily, this can get very painful very quickly. If you make a treaty with someone, don't back out of it. No one will ever trust you again. Neutral is the best alignment, period. The benefits you get from it from Xeno Ethics are absolutely mind-blowing, and you don't risk pissing off half the galaxy like Good and Evil do. Feel free to use one of the others, if you want, but know that you're handicapping yourself. There are two "sustainable" methods of income. Taxes, and trade. The happier and higher you can keep your populations, the more the former pays off. The latter should always be exploited for all it's worth. Several people have already gone into specifics on it. The game loves to gently caress with random events. They're not actually random at all, they're picked by what will cause the most interesting game, in the "may you have an interesting life" sort of way. The AI has no idea how to gauge the worth of a good military. It's always a sheer numbers game. This means that they'll often put much more stock into a large army of lovely tissue-paper fighters than a half-dozen floating star-destroying kill machines. (Ironically, they're usually right.) The larger the galaxy, and the longer the game, the more useful Terror Stars are, if for nothing else than turning worthless solar systems into valuable, exploitable asteroid fields. The strongest "fair" AI difficulty is Intelligent/Tough. Higher than that, and the game just starts stacking increasingly unfair bonuses on them. The AI at full strength is really good at strategy, but really poo poo at tactics. EDIT: The boring-but-practical technologies are Logistics (more ships in a fleet), Miniaturization (fit more equipment/weapons on your ships), and Trade (afford better ships). The best racial bonus is Creativity. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Dec 16, 2011 |
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Dec 16, 2011 13:05
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SiKboy posted:What should I know about Skyrim? I liked Oblivion okay, but got fed up with the oblivion gates and stuff and the bizarre leveling, so never finished it. I've started Skyrim, made it through the introductory dungeon, got to the first town and taken a sidequest from the innkeeper to get some kind of golden thingy. So far I have to say its not really grabbing me. What do I need to know before playing the game? - Don't level Smithing and Enchanting, they make the game much too easy and you can create much better stuff than you could find in dungeons, so that removes some of the fun. - There are puzzles in the dungeons where you need to spin some pedestals with carvings of animals on them. The solution is ALWAYS nearby, either in the form of un-spinnable carvings with the same symbols, or a book or somesuch hinting at the correct sequence.
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Dec 16, 2011 13:39
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Foul Fowl posted:Anything for STALKER: Call of Pripyat, specifically any method to fix the awful view distance and grass fade in or do I need to use mods? In the Call of Pripyat thread there's a mod that will fix the FOV. Grass Fade in you're going to have to live with unless you install mods As for gameplay: Talk to the first stalkers you meet. They'll point you towards a safe location. Exploring too much at the beginning can lead you to some nasty surprises. Artifact hunting is incredibly profitable, but you will definitely want to grab an upgraded detector as soon as possible. One of the missions has you take out some stalkers for someone, you should be able to loot one off the bodies. You can only see artifacts with your detector out in this game. The first detector will point you in the general direction of an artifact but you've got to figure out where it is by yourself. A lot of artifacts move so good luck with this. You can order weapons and armour from Nimble. They're rather expensive but very, very powerful. They might make the game far too easy for you, though. As a general rule: Long range weapons for humans, shotguns for mutants. Mutants generally move around a lot, lot quicker than humans and most will be within close combat range to you. A shotgun will take them out very easily. There are some exceptions to this rule, but in general it's good advice. Don't pick any weapons that are more than 3 bars damaged unless you plan on using them yourself. They will repair for more than they will sell and you will lose money on the deal. Feel free to unload their ammo first, though. You can get stuff repaired cheaper by greasing the wheels a bit. Don't go overboard, though, or you'll find it impossible to do anything.
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Dec 16, 2011 14:16
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Well, didn't see anything on the wiki. So how about some beginner's tips for Icewind Dale? You want a balanced party in IWD, but remember that the more characters you take (and the more mullti-classed ones as well), the slower your party will level up. You definitely want a fighter, a thief and a cleric. Personally, I always bring a mage but some people prefer to go with a druid or bard. To me, 4 is an ideal number, (especially if one of them is multi-classed). Remember, this is an old school tactical RPG so don't rush around the map. Use your thief to hide and scout, and draw enemies to you. Use the long hallways to your advantage, and when you know you're heading for a fight have your casters take a moment to put some buffs on the party. Money should be spent outfitting your front-line fighters more than anything, and making sure your ranged guys have plenty of ammo. Casters should be learning area-of-effect and control spells like Sleep and Grease and Cloud Kill. Enemy mages can be easily disabled by dishing out constant damage to them. Something like the mage spell Melf's Acid Arrow or the druid spell Insect Swarm can prevent most enemy casters from getting any spells off. The game is one massive dungeon crawl, so don't expect much in terms of interactivity with the story. That being said, the developers gave the Dale region a pretty rich history that goes a long way toward explaining and contextualize the massive battles you keep finding yourself in. It's worth talking to anyone who isn't hostile as they'll probably have something interesting to tell you. The game is also EXTREMELY linear. You will literally not have a choice about the order in which you do dungeons, and you won't be able to further "explore" the map until you complete your current dungeon. Just roll with it. There also aren't many "choices" when it comes to how you resolve situations, but this kind of changes when you get to Lower Dorn's Deep. All of a sudden, you're presented with a bunch of options as to how to treat people or approach situations, so try not to rush through that part. It's one of the better parts of the game. There are a couple times when the game will make you backtrack through like 5 empty maps to get out of a dungeon (Dragon's Eye, I'm looking at you, but the Vale was also pretty bad). In those situations, you might want to turn the debug mode on in your ini file and use the Ctrl-J cheat to teleport. You can't teleport into the fog of war, so this isn't really a game-breaking cheat, just a fast way to traverse cleared areas.
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Dec 16, 2011 15:58
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Thanks for all the stuff on Skyrim, I'll spend most of the day tomorrow playing it. Cheers!
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Dec 16, 2011 17:54
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Colon V posted:Also, build ship defenses in square numbers. (1, 4, 9, etc.) Defenses are worth their square root against other types of weapons, and IIRC the game doesn't like to round in the player's favor. Usually, if you're going to add off-defenses, it's best to just have 1. The AI judges your military strength by the hp of ships. I heard peaceniks build one cargo(?) hull with lots of hp buffers, to hold off hostile intentions. Just don't let the AI see that ship.
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Dec 16, 2011 19:48
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In Might and Magic III(and Xeen as well) is there any way to detect traps, either environmental or those on treasure chests, without simply stumbling into them? Is there any way to disarm traps or avoid their damage without using the jump, levitate or etherealise spells? Edit: One other question. Should the last two character slots be saved for hirelings or is it better to use them for two more created characters? Jive One fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 16, 2011 |
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Dec 16, 2011 23:10
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Jive One posted:In Might and Magic III(and Xeen as well) is there any way to detect traps, either environmental or those on treasure chests, without simply stumbling into them? Is there any way to disarm traps or avoid their damage without using the jump, levitate or etherealise spells? If I recall correctly, at least as far as Xeen is concerned, I think there is a spell that tells you if something is trapped. One of the UI elements (like the gargoyle head) begins to animate.
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Dec 16, 2011 23:56
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Scalding Coffee posted:Do you really need to add protection for all three types?
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Dec 17, 2011 05:41
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I've finally gotten around to picking up my save of Persona 3, and i'm liking it a lot (I've played Persona 4) my question is: should i be referring to the internet for fusing/Elizabeth's requests? This is really bugging me, as I played through P4 using the web to guide a chunk of my fusions. I'd really prefer not to, but I'm afraid i'd just mess it up for myself that way. What have most people done for this aspect of P3? Is is more necessary than P4? Or will I be fine just fusing crap together? Because i really don't want to go back to past saves. I wanna play it straight.
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Dec 17, 2011 22:39
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LoveisOver posted:I've finally gotten around to picking up my save of Persona 3, and i'm liking it a lot (I've played Persona 4) my question is: should i be referring to the internet for fusing/Elizabeth's requests? This is really bugging me, as I played through P4 using the web to guide a chunk of my fusions. I'd really prefer not to, but I'm afraid i'd just mess it up for myself that way. What have most people done for this aspect of P3? Is is more necessary than P4? Or will I be fine just fusing crap together? Because i really don't want to go back to past saves. I wanna play it straight. With fusing, the easiest approach is to pick a few Personas that you want to keep, then fuse the rest into new guys. Next time you explore, you'll fill up the empty slots with fresh personas you can fuse again. You won't get all the personas this way, but you'll get more than enough to get through the game. Only thing to remember is that you may want to keep an eye out for persona's that give immunity to status effects, since you can't control your team mates (unless you're playing the PSP version) and they'll usually never cure you of them. It may even be worth your while to prioritize those kinds of attributes when fusing (especially Null-Charm). As for Elisabeth's requests, you can do them without a guide, but it would take huge amounts of experimenting and messing around to get some of the later ones. I'd personally say that if you were going to look stuff up for any part of the game, it would be that part. Gerblyn fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Dec 17, 2011 |
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Dec 17, 2011 22:56
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You can do fusing with an internet guide, but be warned that the fusion process is significantly more complicated and spergy than you may expect. Like, trying to minmax my fusions with a guide was probably the closest I have ever come to literally sperging out on a game. I recommend just fusing poo poo together and seeing what sticks. If you fuse a stinker and want your original persona back, you can buy them back from the velvet room for a nominal fee. The biggest things you need to worry about in that game are a) covering for elemental weaknesses and b) using buffs/debuffs effectively, you can do these just fine through normal play. One thing that is really useful for the "just do whatever" method of fusion is that when you're about to fuse a persona, if you don't like the skills its going to inherit, you can back out of the menu, select the persona to fuse again, and it may have inherited different skills. Doing this repeatedly is how I got the good skills to transfer to my new personas every time. If you have a large repository of personas with useful inherited skills saved in the velvet room this makes it much easier to build powerful endgame personas later on.
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Dec 17, 2011 23:17
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I found a hybrid approach worked best for me, where the majority of my fusions were "Let's see what happens when I mix you and you", but I would occasionally have a chart like this for triple fusions and the like. Plus as the above posted mentioned, there is always the persona database to buy back your old personas if you need them. The only time I really recommend sperging out is if you play through the game on hard mode, because gently caress that 4x database cost bullshit. Really I can't think of a reason you would ever have to go back to a previous save due to fusing the wrong persona at some point. a crisp refreshing Moxie fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Dec 18, 2011 |
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Dec 18, 2011 16:20
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Mayor McCheese posted:Any tips for Dead Island? I was unable to find a page up on the wiki for it. Play it with a friend or 2, makes the game much more fun. If you are on PC make sure you use the hack that lets you use the directional(analog) attack direction. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3436011 PC thread has a bunch of stuff for mods and all that. If you are playing with more than 1 other person I recommend getting Director's Cut (challenge/co-op mode)mod by t-nutz.
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Dec 18, 2011 16:29
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Any tips for Empire Earth? I don't play strategy games very often, so even with the difficulty set to Easy I'm fumbling a lot. I searched the thread with Google (correctly this time!) but I don't think there's been any tips given for it.
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Dec 18, 2011 19:13
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Any tips for Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction? I checked the wiki and all I could find was info on Ratchet 1 and 2.
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Dec 19, 2011 00:16
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Any tips for Age of Empires 3 with all the expansions? Also, my question about Spore is still open. Farecoal posted:Is Spore more fun now with all the patches and Galactic Adventures (also possibly some mods)?
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Dec 19, 2011 01:50
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Farecoal posted:Also, my question about Spore is still open. I think with Galactic Adventures, the game is reasonably fun, especially if you download some good adventures online. Each adventure is like a self contained MMO quest chain, and there are some surprisingly inventive ones, or you can make them yourself if that's your thing. The core game itself is fun but very shallow. It generally takes less than three hours to complete cell, creature, tribe and city phases, as each one has very little content. The space phase last pretty much indefinitely though, and it feels like a very very simplifed Darkstar One with planets offering you quests and the requirement to trade. The exploration is decent though, as you can go down to planet level and geomod it.
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Dec 19, 2011 13:07
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Well, didn't see anything on the wiki. So how about some beginner's tips for Icewind Dale The previous tip about a balanced party... No, IWD is about mages, mages, and more mages, if you want to have a hilariously easy time with the game. Have one pure fighter for tanking, three pure mages, one thief-mage and one cleric-mage. As for general gameplay, always stealth and scout before going into battle. There's a lot of traps in the dungeons and setting one off in the middle of the fight often means a total wipe. Target enemy mages first, dispel their defensive shields and nuke with 5x magic missle or something. With enough mages you can chain CC everything but bosses while nuking it. edit: Two nights ago I came home drunk and apparently bought Shogun 2 + all DLC. I'm getting my rear end kicked, both in military and economy. Any good tips? texting my ex fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Dec 19, 2011 |
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Dec 19, 2011 13:31
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Skilleddk posted:The previous tip about a balanced party... No, IWD is about mages, mages, and more mages, if you want to have a hilariously easy time with the game. Have one pure fighter for tanking, three pure mages, one thief-mage and one cleric-mage.
That should be enough to get you started. Enigma fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Dec 19, 2011 |
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Dec 19, 2011 15:54
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Jive One posted:In Might and Magic III(and Xeen as well) is there any way to detect traps, either environmental or those on treasure chests, without simply stumbling into them? Is there any way to disarm traps or avoid their damage without using the jump, levitate or etherealise spells? Are you sure you can even make them characters yourself? I thought the "reserved slots" were a fairly consistent trend throughout the games, but Might & Magic III is magically my least-recently played game in the series, so maybe it was an anomaly. Also, are you searching your treasure chests when you encounter them? Or am I now thinking of 1 & 2 instead of 3? In at least a fair number of games in the series, searching the chest is the only way to dig for/disarm traps.
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Dec 21, 2011 11:48
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So yesterday I was lucky enough to find Dungeons of Dredmor gifted to me yesterday, anything I should know about that? I think I'm gonna do a mage build for what it's worth.
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Dec 22, 2011 01:18
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I've heard things about Neverwinter Nights games. The second one is only $5 on Steam right now. I've been assured it's a good deal at that price, but I'm hesitant to get it because I've never played the first one. Will I miss much by skipping right to the second?
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Dec 22, 2011 02:48
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Monicro posted:So yesterday I was lucky enough to find Dungeons of Dredmor gifted to me yesterday, anything I should know about that? I think I'm gonna do a mage build for what it's worth. Well a lot of the fun in the game comes from experimenting with all the different builds you can do. You should try the different traits at least once each. Not sure if it's been rebalanced a lot since I played, but I found the mushroom farmer awesome, if a bit micro-management intensive. The Archaeologist used to really great once you get it high enough.
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Dec 22, 2011 02:52
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Argon_Sloth posted:I've heard things about Neverwinter Nights games. The second one is only $5 on Steam right now. I've been assured it's a good deal at that price, but I'm hesitant to get it because I've never played the first one. Nothing whatsoever. Indeed, you would miss little by skipping the NWN2 base campaign entirely and going right to it's unbelievably good expansion pack, Mask of The Betrayer. NWN2 is a solid B or B+, basic D&D orc-slaying and evil-conquering with some great parts and some sections that kind of drag on. It's long. MotB is an A, shorter and tighter and has an extremely rich and compelling story, though the epic level D&D combat it has gets a little imbalanced at times.
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Dec 22, 2011 04:48
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I'm finally getting around to Fallout: New Vegas with the release lull from now until the end of January. What is up with the combat? It seems a lot different than Fallout 3's. I was able to punch across the wasteland from the word Go, and now my punches suck rear end.
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Dec 22, 2011 05:04
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SpazmasterX posted:I'm finally getting around to Fallout: New Vegas with the release lull from now until the end of January. What is up with the combat? It seems a lot different than Fallout 3's. I was able to punch across the wasteland from the word Go, and now my punches suck rear end. Melee is ungodly powerful in NV. Once you get used to New Vegas it is really hard to go back to FO3 because combat is just so markedly improved in every possible area.
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Dec 22, 2011 05:18
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Captain Beans posted:Play it with a friend or 2, makes the game much more fun. If you are on PC make sure you use the hack that lets you use the directional(analog) attack direction. Sounds good, thanks for pointing this out!
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Dec 22, 2011 06:39
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Argon_Sloth posted:I've heard things about Neverwinter Nights games. The only thing I'd say you really need to know is that the first act is, by far, the worst. There's a lot of good stuff in the game, but you have to get through Act One first.
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Dec 22, 2011 06:51
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Monicro posted:So yesterday I was lucky enough to find Dungeons of Dredmor gifted to me yesterday, anything I should know about that? I think I'm gonna do a mage build for what it's worth. Promethean with the second skill, is a powerful start and takes care of pesky intruders while you recover. Alchemy works with every magical character through the power of booze. Archeology helps with trap removal. Burglary has some awesome skills and free exp/items. http://j-factor.com/dredmorpedia/ Scalding Coffee fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Dec 22, 2011 |
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Dec 22, 2011 08:03
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Bigass Moth posted:Once you get used to New Vegas it is really hard to go back to FO3 because combat is just so markedly improved in every possible area. This. I haven't tried it personally, but there's a mod called "Requiem for the Capital Wasteland" that lets you play FO3 from within NV. The other major point I need to make is that you should *always* play NV in hardcore mode. In FO3 and non-hardcore NV, you can pause combat anytime and use half a dozen stimpacks to heal yourself instantly, making combat pointless. Hardcore changes them to healing over time, making combat require some thought, and Medicine skill not useless.
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Dec 22, 2011 09:52
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Argon_Sloth posted:I've heard things about Neverwinter Nights games. The second one is only $5 on Steam right now. I've been assured it's a good deal at that price, but I'm hesitant to get it because I've never played the first one. A bit. Some people will tell you that the main plot for NWN1 stinks; IMHO, it's not bad, just a bit blah and predictable, and it takes too long to get going. The second is better, although the fort-building aspect, IMNSHO, adds nothing. From a gameplay aspect they are about the same, although the second gives you a bigger party and more toys to play with. Crafting, in particular, can break the game.
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Dec 22, 2011 09:59
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With Chrono Trigger anything I miss I can just grab the next time around in New Game+ right? I just knocked down the prison rock in the antiquity era then looked in the beastiary and saw what all the monsters had for stealing. NG+ is also infinitely repeatable I take it so I can see the endings and sidequests right?
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Dec 22, 2011 20:02
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thebardyspoon posted:With Chrono Trigger anything I miss I can just grab the next time around in New Game+ right? I just knocked down the prison rock in the antiquity era then looked in the beastiary and saw what all the monsters had for stealing. NG+ is also infinitely repeatable I take it so I can see the endings and sidequests right? Yes to both. You can also grab anything you didn't miss, so you can, for example, end up with Prism Helms and Prism Dresses for everyone after a few playthroughs. Some endings (like the developer room) are only really practical to get after doing NG+ more than once, due to the amount of early-game firepower required.
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Dec 22, 2011 20:45
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SpazmasterX posted:I'm finally getting around to Fallout: New Vegas with the release lull from now until the end of January. What is up with the combat? It seems a lot different than Fallout 3's. I was able to punch across the wasteland from the word Go, and now my punches suck rear end. If you're going unarmed you're still going to want a "weapon" even it it's just brass knuckles or something very basic. You'll also want high strength but that's pretty obvious. Punching felt very underwhelming to me until I picked up some knucks and once it gets going it's really fun.
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Dec 22, 2011 21:18
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Monicro posted:So yesterday I was lucky enough to find Dungeons of Dredmor gifted to me yesterday, anything I should know about that? I think I'm gonna do a mage build for what it's worth. There aren't nearly as many items you can eat/use accidentally to kill yourself like in most roguelikes; the Mud Wren is the only mushroom with a bad effect, any "Oil of something/Aqua Something/Solution of whatever" potion is actually acid; the Root of T'chaar will probably kill you if you eat it, but most items are purely benign. Taking Vampirism prevents you healing normally (food/regen over time) but you heal every time you kill something. If you make a mage, you want to take some of the "primary" spell trees and at least one of the "secondary" trees (either magic training, blood magic, or ley walker) which boost your casting abilities. Don't take none of those and don't take both Ley Walker and blood magic because it's massive overkill in terms of mana regen. Your ability to disarm traps is determined by your Trap Affinity stat (looks like an orange gear), and there's only a couple skill trees which boost it: Perception, Burglary, Tinkering, and (to a lesser extent) Archaeology and Blacksmithing. You probably want at least one of those because without any boosts to it any 1x1 corridor with a trap in it is unavoidable damage and later on traps do really horrible things like poo poo on your armor or attack you with magic bees or explode violently or something. If all else fails, put a lutefisk cube inside of itself.
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Dec 22, 2011 21:33
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Dayewalker posted:Any tips for Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction? I checked the wiki and all I could find was info on Ratchet 1 and 2. -When you kill big monsters you get "Leviathan Souls" which a certain NPC will offer to buy off you. But he'll be willing to pay more per soul later in the game so you should hold on to them for a bit. -You can turn off Sixaxis controls for everything except the Tornado gun in the options menu, do it immediately. -Plasma Beasts rock early game. -Near the end of the game you'll get an item that lets you see Gold Bolts and other collectables on the map, so keep that in mind if you care about 100%ing it
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Dec 22, 2011 21:38
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Dayewalker posted:Any tips for Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction? I checked the wiki and all I could find was info on Ratchet 1 and 2. And to add a few more: -The Groovitron is your best friend. -The Pyro Blaster is the strongest (not-RYNO) weapon you can use against bosses. -You'll probably want to do as many skill points as you can before starting Challenge Mode. Don't worry about anything else.
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Dec 22, 2011 22:29
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CaptainRat posted:If you're going unarmed you're still going to want a "weapon" even it it's just brass knuckles or something very basic. You'll also want high strength but that's pretty obvious. Punching felt very underwhelming to me until I picked up some knucks and once it gets going it's really fun. That's what I figured. I've also noticed that you're a bit more shoehorned into where you need to go at the start. I tried to head north from Goodsprings to check out the strip and was immediately assaulted by unholy insect swarms that were apparently immune to anything I could throw at them.
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Dec 23, 2011 01:30
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Thanks guys! That's exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for.
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Dec 23, 2011 01:33
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