Overminty posted:

Yes eventually when you unlock enough rooms at the end of time. Caveat is that you will forget all the spells and skills you've learned so make sure to buy/make any spells you want to have again afterwards.

Morpheus posted:

Should I hold off on learning spells/skills until then? Or is gaining spell and skill books not that much of a problem?

For monetary reference we've made our way most of the way through the first town and I've got >5000 gp.

Gerblyn posted:

I'm playing Alpha Protocol for the first time, and the wiki page is a huge wall of text full of inconsistencies:

http://www.beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Alpha_Protocol

Could someone who's played it maybe filter out the bits of it which are important?

Mierenneuker posted:

Neddy Seagoon has Egypt confused with Rome

Morpheus posted:

I mean that's not terrible, as they aren't melee based, but it's good to know. Also what's the deal with respec-ing and any skill books I've read?

Eldred posted:

Unless Enhanced Edition significantly changed the balance, you'll eventually have more money than you can possibly spend if you keep stealing everything that isn't nailed down. Skills are a much less meaningful expense than buying rare equipment.

Gerblyn posted:

I'm playing Alpha Protocol for the first time, and the wiki page is a huge wall of text full of contradictions:

http://www.beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Alpha_Protocol

Gerblyn posted:

I'm playing Alpha Protocol for the first time, and the wiki page is a huge wall of text full of contradictions:

http://www.beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Alpha_Protocol

Could someone who's played it maybe filter out the bits of it which are important?

Jegan posted:

Honestly, they're probably necessary if you want to use SMGs or Shotguns as your primary weapon.

Gerblyn posted:

It's the advice for how to build your character which is confusing, like one line says to ignore all weapon skills, another says to max out a weapon skill and another says to just get pistols and forget about everything else. In the end though, the article just has too much stuff on it, making it hard to see what's important and what's just a tip that makes your life easier or helps maximize your play through.

Gerblyn posted:

I'm playing Alpha Protocol for the first time, and the wiki page is a huge wall of text full of contradictions:

http://www.beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Alpha_Protocol

Could someone who's played it maybe filter out the bits of it which are important?

quote:

- If possible, it's generally not adviced to play the official HD remaster version of HoMM III due to it lacking all expansion content. The original HoMM III Complete can be brought up to modern resolutions with a free HD patch (https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/) which also adds a bunch of very useful quality of life improvements such as the ability to purchase all creatures in a town at once, the option to re-attempt fights, and more.

- The order the official campaigns are meant to be played goes Restoration of Erathia -> Armageddon's Blade -> Shadow of Death. The campaign menu lists these in the opposite order, leading to a lot of players inadvertendly starting from the hardest campaign.

- Save often and in multiple slots, do not rely on the game's autosave function very much as it autosaves at the end of each turn rather than the beginning. This is incredibly important in campaigns where you often have an essential hero that is not allowed to lose or even flee from combat without failing the entire scenario, as it's very possible to get stuck with an autosave where that hero has used up all their movement and thus has no way to avoid an enemy army they can't win against.

- In campaigns where your hero carries over from one scenario to the next, it's worth getting as many permanent attribute boosts and spells as possible before finishing the current scenario as they will carry over as well. Artifacts will not carry over, some plot-specific ones notwithstanding.

- Upgrading your Village/Town/City Hall into a Capital in your starting town should usually be your first priority due to the income boost it provides. There are a handful of exceptions however, for example Tower will want to upgrade Gremlins into Master Gremlins and Conflux will want to upgrade Pixies to Sprites on the first day as they're far stronger than their unupgraded counterparts and make early fights far easier.

- It's often a good idea to hire a second hero from your town's Tavern on the first day. Not only can you add their starting troops to yours, but you can use them to pick up resources, transport troops, grab weekly creatures and resources and so forth while your main hero focuses on exploring and fighting enemies.

- A handful of heroes start with a powerful high-level spell at level 1, such as Tower's Solmyr (Chain Lightning), Dungeon's Jeddite (Resurrection) and Necropolis' Aislinn (Meteor Shower). These can be very advantageous all throughout the game. Some heroes also produce free gold or resources, making them useful secondary heroes even if they never fight a single battle.

- A town with a Mage Guild will fully replenish the Spell Points of any hero who ends their turn there at the beginning of their next turn.

- Having Expert skill in a magic school often greatly amplifies the power of spells belonging to that school, most notably causing most status effects to apply to entire armies rather than individual units.

- Morale and Luck can't go over +3 or below -3, any further increase or reduction past those points has no effect.

- Ranged units only deal half damage in melee unless they have "No melee penalty" listed in their abilities, so getting your melee units next to enemy ranged units and keeping your enemy from doing the same is very important. Most ranged units also deal reduced damage from long range and when attacking from the outside of city walls, represented by your targeting cursor turning into a broken arrow as opposed to a whole one which represents full damage.

- AI heroes will always try to run away if they're losing a fight, often with an annoying "parting gift" in the form of a Lightning Bolt to your weakest stack. When your enemy is starting to be low on troops in a fight, do your best to wipe them out in a single assault before they manage to get a turn which would allow them to flee.

- The 4th level spell Armageddon can be combined with fire-immune creatures such as Black Dragons or Fire Elementals to deal devastating damage to enemy armies while leaving your side unharmed. A high-level Anti-Magic spell can also make individual stacks immune to Armageddon.

- Controlling your own and your enemy's Speed is one of the key components for winning fights with minimum casualties. This makes Slow arguably the most universally useful spell in the game despite it being 1st level, as a hero with Expert Earth Magic can cripple entire armies with a single cast of Slow.

- In addition to its role in combat, the creature with the lowest Speed stat in an army also determines how many movement points that army has available on the adventure map. For that reason it's not recommended to bring very slow creatures such as Walking Dead or Dwarves along when going for longer journeys as they will slow your hero down significantly.

- Certain terrains increase the amount of movement points required to traverse them on the adventure map, in effect slowing down your heroes. These terrains are Rough (+25%), Sand (+50%), Snow (+50%) and Swamp (+75%), making swampland the hardest terrain to travel in the game. The Pathfinding skill reduces or eliminates these penalties. Roads have the opposite effect, allowing an army to travel further than normal.

- Each creature also has "native" terrain on which they suffer no movement penalties, and they even gain bonuses in battles taking place on that terrain. For example, an army consisting only of creatures from the swamp-dwelling Fortress town can move on Swamp terrain without suffering the normal +75% penalty to movement point costs.

- Some secondary skills are more useful than others. The following is a rough order of usefulness, but it's by no means absolute as opinions vary and for example Archery is less useful if your army has weak or no ranged units and Leadership is more useful if you have creatures from many different towns as it offsets the morale penalty from having a mixed army.

GREAT - Air Magic, Earth Magic, Logistics, Offense, Wisdom, Necromancy (only for Necropolis)

GOOD - Archery, Armorer, Diplomacy, Intelligence, Tactics, Water Magic

USEFUL - Fire Magic, Leadership, Luck

SITUATIONAL - Navigation (Great on water-heavy maps, useless otherwise), Pathfinding (Great when facing lots of harsh terrain, useless otherwise)

BAD - Artillery, Ballistics, Mysticism, Resistance, Scholar, Scouting, Sorcery, Estates (good on secondary heroes)

TERRIBLE - Eagle Eye, First Aid, Learning

- Once you have good handle on the game and want to experience something new, the fan-made and free expansion Horn of the Abyss adds a new town, campaigns and many good balance/QoL improvements. In the Wake of Gods is another option for advanced players, adding huge amounts of customizable options that can alter practically all aspects of the game, often to imbalanced but entertaining results.

Ainsley McTree posted:

Ainsley McTree posted:

Knight-enchanter is a good idea yeah. Once you unlock the spec, you pretty much only use those Abilities from then on, right? And there's what, 4? Should be p easy. And in the run-up to it, low-level Mage is pretty straightforward as I recall.

Kanfy posted:

This all reminds me that the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 page is kind of a mess also with a lot of advice that's either inaccurate, completely subjective or just weirdly written. With no disrespect to anyone who has contributed, as someone who has put a whole ot of time into that game over the years I'd go as far as to replace the whole thing with the following (which incorporates a bunch of the more useful advice there):


Suggestions are obviously welcome. It's pretty long, but there's a lot of different aspects to the game.

Zaphod42 posted:

Can you link me the free HD resolution mod? I've been playing at old-school resolution since the HD remaster does indeed suck.

Kanfy posted:

The new features are under "Documentation", HD+ is worth enabling just for the ability to re-do battles. It means you can always keep Quick Combat on if you want, and only manually fight the battles that you need to fight.

Zaphod42 posted:

Oh wow. Yeah that's going to be a huge quality of life improvement. Kinda cheating but who cares?

Ahhh and they added simultaneous turns to multi. That's a game changer.

Kanfy posted:

This all reminds me that the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 page is kind of a mess also with a lot of advice that's either inaccurate, completely subjective or just weirdly written. With no disrespect to anyone who has contributed, as someone who has put a whole ot of time into that game over the years I'd go as far as to replace the whole thing with the following (which incorporates a bunch of the more useful advice there):


Suggestions are obviously welcome. It's pretty long, but there's a lot of different aspects to the game.

anilEhilated posted:

I'm not sold on the campaign play order - Shadow of Death is your standard fare difficulty curve thingy but Armageddon's Blade's campaigns vary between trivial and completely batshit insane (why hello there Dragon Slayer and a first mission you can't win if the random spell generator doesn't give you the right stuff), I'd suggest saving that one for last.

Kanfy posted:

This all reminds me that the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 page is kind of a mess also with a lot of advice that's either inaccurate, completely subjective or just weirdly written. With no disrespect to anyone who has contributed, as someone who has put a whole ot of time into that game over the years I'd go as far as to replace the whole thing with the following (which incorporates a bunch of the more useful advice there):


Suggestions are obviously welcome. It's pretty long, but there's a lot of different aspects to the game.

Dr Snofeld posted:

Watching the Diablo 2 run from SGDQ has got me nostalgic for it but it's been years since I played it.

Centipeed posted:

I don't need much convincing.

I replaced the existing page with your tips.

Zaodai posted:

This would vary based on which version you're playing. LoD? Newest patch? A mod? Base 1.09 patch?

Dr Snofeld posted:

I suppose Lord of Destruction with the newest patch.

Kanfy posted:

HOMM3

Gynovore posted:

Skills for everyone: Logistics, Armorer, Archery, maybe Pathfinder
Skill for Might heroes: Offense, Tactics, Leadership (not if Necro)
Skills for Magic heroes: Wisdom, Intelligence, Sorcery, Air Magic, Earth Magic, maybe Mysticism

Castle: Good for might heroes. Get archangels ASAP.
Rampart: Decent for might heroes.
Tower: Hands down the best choice for magic heroes. Guzzles resources.
Dungeon: Good for both might and magic. Needs a lot of gold. Dragons are awesome.
Inferno: Not great.
Stronghold: Good for might heroes, utterly useless for magic.
Necropolis: Pretty good, especially for might, but it requires a playstyle all it's own. Not for beginners.
Fortress: Horrible, never play this.
Conflux (requires expansion): very good for magic heroes.

Ainsley McTree posted:

My girlfriend is nearing the end of dragon age 2, so now it's time to ask: what's a good class to play in Dragon age Inquisition for someone who's not very good at video games?

Dog Fat Man Chaser posted:

Mine own question: Is there anything a total newcomer should know about Fire Emblem Fates that isn't already on the site? I played one of the GBA ones for a few levels back when it was new but I barely remember it, so basically all I have to go on is "is strategy RPG" and "has permadeath". Any advice or heads up about hidden stuff (that isn't easily discovered on my own) or mechanics the game doesn't cover would be appreciated. I'm starting with Birthright and if I like that I'll get Conquest, the 3DS thread steered me that way.