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Pierzak posted:Is there a "what should I know before playing D&D" post, specifically for Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale 2? I can see that the rules have changed quite a bit (new D&D edition?) and have no idea how to create a party - I mean, the standard "2 face-punchers, 2 casters, healer, rogue" should work, but I'm afraid of loving up and learning that I made a very suboptimal character 10 levels later I haven't played IwD2 yet, but the rules are a fair bit different from all the previous infinity engine games. Regarding BG2, the kits are pretty powerful with the exception of several kits that require a fair bit of in-depth knowledge to play well. Kensai, stalker and swashbuckler can be good but require powergaming. Shapeshifter is kinda useless unless you get a mod to fix it, in which case it becomes overpowered. The mage specializations give extra spell slots but can be a trap for new players if they are locked out of crucial spell schools like abjuration or divination. Wild mage is hands down the most powerful class in the game, but it will also kill the party many times over. All the other kits range from average to awesome. Multi-class builds are awesome but you have to choose multiclass at the start and they are locked out from using kits. I wouldn't recommend dual classing for a first playthrough. Only the starting class can be a kit. The character loses all benefits of the first class until the second class reaches the same level. It can be really good if you know what you are doing though. You might want to avoid rolling a rogue for plot reasons. Casters become really, really powerful. Late game, 3 casters is easily viable. Apart from the kits, BG2 works basically just like BG1/IWD1. Dispelling mage protections will play a much larger role though. I recommend taking a look through this link if you need help with spellcasters or getting the most out of your spells: https://sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/SpellsReference/Main.htm Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Dec 4, 2019 |
# ? Dec 4, 2019 01:30 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 13:18 |
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Pierzak posted:Old version or Enhanced? I know that EE updated the ruleset of BG1 to the later version.
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# ? Dec 4, 2019 01:49 |
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anilEhilated posted:Anything for Total War: Warhammer 2? I've played the first one, so I'm mostly interested in changes and tips for the new races. You can now aim Wind-type spells directionally by holding left-click. Instead of having certain parts of the map locked to certain factions, there's now a system where some land is easy to live on, some is mediocre, and some sucks, varying according to faction. You can still settle on the bad land, but those towns get big debuffs. Regional capitals now have eight building slots (from six), and famous cities get ten. The Vortex campaign requires you to gather a special resource (which you mostly receive passively for holding certain special provinces) and performing rituals (which spawn deathstacks all over your land). You can go wide, but there's a lot of benefit to having a medium-sized empire, so that you can defend it a little more easily. Build walls everywhere, of course. If one of the AIs beats you to the end, you have a chance to beat them in the final battle. If you do this-- and it's quite easy-- they become permanently unable to win. In other words, it's hard to truly lose the Vortex race, but the AI getting there first is kind of a moral defeat. Anyway, the vortex campaign isn't awful, but it's repetitive, and there's a reason why the DLC factions-- the Tomb Kings, Vampire Coast, and Nakai and Wulfric-- can play on the Vortex map without engaging with the vortex mechanics. Mortal Empires has extremely long turn times, even on a high-end PC. Putting the game on an SSD will make a big difference to battle load times (an essential one IMO), but not to turn times. Also, the changes to how habitability works makes the dwarves even more of a terror, and makes playing as the Wood Elves kind of bad. For the new factions: Skaven have trash infantry backed up by some of the best artillery in the game, plus some decent monsters and skirmishers. They also have a restrictive food mechanic and a tricky system of under-cities that lets them make mini-settlements under towns belonging to others. Also, some of their best units are behind DLC. For this reason, I'd recommend against playing as them first. High Elves are the official straightforward noob faction, with easy income, solid melee units, and tons of ranged and monsters. If you play as Tyrion, understand that you've got about 20 turns until the whole island turns into a giant civil war, and that about half your battles across the whole campaign will be against other Helves. Dark Elves have lots of flimsy, high damage infantry, backed up by maybe the best basic ranged units in the game. Decent selection of monsters and cav. On the campaign map, they get a lot easier if you jump headfirst into the slave economy. Specialise all your dudes to increase the number of slaves captured, and try to concentrate them all into one or two mega-provinces with maxed-out bonuses to slave income. The Lizardmen have tough, brave, high-damage infantry that can dumpster what most other factions field. They also have heaps of monsters, way more varieties than you even need. Rather weak in the ranged department. Uncomplicated on the campaign map. Regarding DLC: owning Ham 1 unlocks the big combined Mortal Empires map. All DLC from the first game carries over to the second, although it can be a bit fiddly to unlock it. Several factions have gotten free reworks: -Dwarves can now craft special items. Also, that Slayer lord got a new start position. -The Empire now has a loyalty mechanic where it actually works like a disjointed, decentralised country (instead of a bunch of culturally-similar states). You win over the loyalty of the other Elector Counts. They also redid the tech tree. Finally, Gelt got a new start position. -The Brets had their vow system reworked into something more interesting. I haven't actually played them yet. -The Vampire Counts got this system where they can revive ancient renowned lords. Also, Kemmler got a new startpos. Greenskins and WElves are probably getting reworks next year.
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# ? Dec 4, 2019 01:58 |
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Commander Keene posted:Enhanced Edition just updates the game to play the same as BG2, afaik; the original didn't have class kits or the Sorcerer and Barbarian classes. Also both games get hi-res patches and a couple new party members. Also the most important 2nd to 3rd Edition changes really are that all stats in 3rd Edition theoretically go up forever and all scale in a much saner way than 2nd Edition (no more having a 6 in a stat being functionally the same as having a 13), armor class is, as mentioned, going up to be better instead of down (like everything else you track numerically), you can take a level in whatever you want in 3rd Edition when you gain enough experience, like one level in every class if for some reason that sounded fun, but as a result it is much easier to do something dumb thinking it sounds good on paper than when you only have a choice of a few pre-designated multi-classes like in 2nd Edition. Also Icewind Dale II will probably never have an Enhanced Edition to contemplate playing as the source code is lost, but since there is no character importing anyway and it is the most recent of the games that is not so bad. Pierzak posted:Specific questions for IWD2 now: * I think this is covered, I think you get an experience penalty after taking more than two classes, unless the second one is a "favored class" for your character's race. * Slowing down spell access in 3rd Edition by taking a non-magic class is anecdotally even more detrimental than the same thing in 2nd Edition, though you can still make interesting multiclass combos. But one level of a fighting class will mostly just give you better proficiencies with certain weapons rather than make a huge difference in survivability. * I do think there are first-level-only feats, but I also think they are clearly labelled if they made it to the game? * Any class that has the relevant skill in-class can be a Rogue substitute; Rogue skill point totals are huge though, and I feel like only they get Disable Device in-class? * Indeed it is not * You can only have a kit with your first class if you dual class, so that is the primary limitation.
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# ? Dec 4, 2019 06:15 |
Krazyface posted:tons of helpful advice
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# ? Dec 4, 2019 13:09 |
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Dr. Quarex posted:* I think this is covered, I think you get an experience penalty after taking more than two classes, unless the second one is a "favored class" for your character's race. For posterity: all the classes must be within 1 level of each other or you suffer significant XP penalties. However, the racially-favored class is ignored for the purpose of calculating this restriction, so if you wanna take Fighter 3/ Wizard 10 like in IWD1, better have a race that has Fighter or Wizard as favored class. Also a question for the older games (too?): If a character gets their portrait removed from the party roster in combat, it's the "super-dead, do not resurrect, give me the character sheet" status you get from disintegration and such? Pierzak fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Dec 4, 2019 |
# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:07 |
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Pierzak posted:For posterity: all the classes must be within 1 level of each other or you suffer significant XP penalties. However, the racially-favored class is ignored for the purpose of calculating this restriction, so if you wanna take Fighter 3/ Wizard 10 like in IWD1, better have a race that has Fighter or Wizard as favored class.
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# ? Dec 4, 2019 18:22 |
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Pierzak posted:Yeah that tripped me up, I thought they were just fluffy indicators, took the wrong halfling class and I could really use the Rogue favored. I think I'll restart, I'm still at the prologue anyway. Yep! Exception being petrification, they can be cured. They have to rejoin the party via dialogue though, and "leaving" the party temporarily can cause some bugs if they were involved in a quest at the time.
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# ? Dec 4, 2019 18:35 |
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I seem to have bought Sea of Thieves, and I require both tips and tricks.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 02:53 |
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Lizard Wizard posted:I seem to have bought Sea of Thieves, and I require both tips and tricks. The only tip you need.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 05:05 |
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I started up The Surge for some reason. I checked the wiki of course, just wondering if anyone has anything to add.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 06:29 |
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BrightWing posted:I started up The Surge for some reason. I checked the wiki of course, just wondering if anyone has anything to add. One armed mounted weapons are the best in the game, including the actual best weapon in the game.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 06:33 |
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Personally I found I did better with staves against human/drone enemies and single-rigged (that what you meant with mounted?) against robots. But to each their own.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 06:39 |
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Zanzibar Ham posted:Personally I found I did better with staves against human/drone enemies and single-rigged (that what you meant with mounted?) against robots. But to each their own. Yeah, single rigged, been a minute and forgot the exact term. I found that single rigged had the most useful weapons and move sets, and the black spike thing from the end game was fuckin dummy strong.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 07:03 |
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Those four-legged jumping combat robots you start running into partway through the first area don't just seem like they have an instant kill attack - they pretty much actually do. Their jump attack does a flat amount of damage based on the distance of their leap and no amount of armor can save you if you're too far away from them when they use it. Dodge to the side the moment they start winding up for it, there isn't really anything else you can do.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 07:26 |
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Also, in my experience, extreme aggression will serve you better than caution. Attack relentlessly, don't hesitate. Ducking and hopping are very hard to use, best to ignore them altogether and just dodge away and counter attack hard
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 07:30 |
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Generally once I got over my instinctual caution/need to keep my distance I found that it's very easy to bait robots into doing specific moves that can leave them wide open. Humans too, though usually I find it less necessary with them as they don't usually have those super dangerous moves like that aforementioned death leap.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 07:38 |
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Yeah, contrary to what might be your first instinct, you actually want to stay as close to them as possible at all times. At melee range the leap does pretty much no damage at all, so the safest way to handle them is to to get right in their faces and stay there.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 07:50 |
I wouldn't stress over the "best" weapons too much; the game can be completed using all manners of weaponry. I had a lot of fun beating the game with claws, seen speedruns that use the basic "sword", etc; very few weapons are actually bad.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 11:30 |
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Omi no Kami posted:Anything for The Longest Dark? I've bounced off it a few times, but I wanna give it another shot since I keep hearing great things. Assuming you're talking about The Long Dark, if you want it to be super immersive play in a cold room with a space heater and only turn the space heater on when you have a fire going and turn it off when the fire goes out.
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# ? Dec 8, 2019 18:56 |
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Anything for Crossroads Inn?
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 08:32 |
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juliuspringle posted:Assuming you're talking about The Long Dark, if you want it to be super immersive play in a cold room with a space heater and only turn the space heater on when you have a fire going and turn it off when the fire goes out. I straight-up know someone who turned off the heat and played Duskers in the basement so it'd be cold and echo-y just like a deep space freighter.
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 14:54 |
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Omi no Kami posted:I straight-up know someone who turned off the heat and played Duskers in the basement so it'd be cold and echo-y just like a deep space freighter.
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 15:01 |
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:That's how I play most of my games, but not by choice Just call it "enforced method gaming" and start a new hipster trend, then rent your basement out as an artisanal gaming cafe and rake in the big bucks.
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 16:09 |
Back when my friends and I played Artemis every month or so, we always made whoever was playing as Engineering set up in the basement and communicate via walkie talkie, it was surprisingly fun
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 17:09 |
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Omi no Kami posted:Just call it "enforced method gaming" and start a new hipster trend, then rent your basement out as an artisanal gaming cafe and rake in the big bucks. MockingQuantum posted:Back when my friends and I played Artemis every month or so, we always made whoever was playing as Engineering set up in the basement and communicate via walkie talkie, it was surprisingly fun
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 17:17 |
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I'm just into the double digits of hours playing Far Cry: New Dawn and figured I'd throw out some tips in case anyone else picked it up in its current sale climate.
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 17:37 |
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MockingQuantum posted:Back when my friends and I played Artemis every month or so, we always made whoever was playing as Engineering set up in the basement and communicate via walkie talkie, it was surprisingly fun We usually played Artemis when the group happened to be gathered at someone's house for an unrelated social event, so the realest part of the entire game was "Let's spend 30 minutes troubleshooting what's wrong with the gosh-darn wifi." quote:Captain, we're in trouble! I can't fit under the desk to reset the router any longer! Unrelated, but Shenmue I/II (PC remaster): I know it's possible to run out of time without solving the murder, and I've heard that some of the events/progression cues are infuriatingly hard to figure out and trigger. Are there any game-threatening gotchas to be aware of, or can I gleefully bumble and screw up my way through the game safe in the knowledge that unless I'm actively trying to sabotage myself I'll inevitably muddle through?
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 18:37 |
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Omi no Kami posted:We usually played Artemis when the group happened to be gathered at someone's house for an unrelated social event, so the realest part of the entire game was "Let's spend 30 minutes troubleshooting what's wrong with the gosh-darn wifi." I don’t know about part 1, but for 2 you really had to fail a certain button prompt over and over again* to run out the clock. *A guy tells you to not move and then the game tells you to mash a button, so you fail by actually pressing something. That ends the current day. Repeat about 100 times. Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Dec 9, 2019 |
# ? Dec 9, 2019 19:04 |
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 19:59 |
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Mierenneuker posted:I don’t know about part 1, but for 2 you really had to fail a certain button prompt over and over again* to run out the clock. In Shenmue 1 you can fail a QTE when you're trying to sneak into a baddie hut (I believe the cutscene involves you catching a flashlight before it falls and alerts the guards), and you just try again the next day. Same story though, you'd have to fail an inordinate amount of times for it to affect you.
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 21:49 |
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Yeah, it's possible to run out of time in Shenmue in the same way you can theoretically hit the 13 year limit in Fallout 2. You really need to make an effort for it.
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# ? Dec 9, 2019 21:50 |
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Cardiovorax posted:Yeah, it's possible to run out of time in Shenmue in the same way you can theoretically hit the 13 year limit in Fallout 2. You really need to make an effort for it. That's what I was hoping- I figured it was something like this, but given that it came out in 1999 I figured there was always the off chance it was, like, "It takes 90 actions to finish the game and you get 95 actions, GL."
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# ? Dec 10, 2019 03:37 |
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Omi no Kami posted:That's what I was hoping- I figured it was something like this, but given that it came out in 1999 I figured there was always the off chance it was, like, "It takes 90 actions to finish the game and you get 95 actions, GL."
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# ? Dec 10, 2019 03:45 |
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The Shenmue games don't even tell you about the time limit because they know you'll never hit it without actively trying. Its more of an easter egg, now that I think about it.
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# ? Dec 10, 2019 04:06 |
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Cardiovorax posted:The Persona series of games might not be your thing, then, if you've ever considered playing them. When 3 to 5 tell you that you have a year to solve the plot, they mean it. To be fair though on those, it's not a time limit for the whole game, they give you discrete little time windows to do each chapter and if you miss the deadline they always do something like send you back a week to try again.
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# ? Dec 10, 2019 04:16 |
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Glagha posted:To be fair though on those, it's not a time limit for the whole game, they give you discrete little time windows to do each chapter and if you miss the deadline they always do something like send you back a week to try again. It's still plenty generous and you can finish all of the games with months and months of empty time left, but if it bothers the guy, then it bothers the guy.
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# ? Dec 10, 2019 04:25 |
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Cardiovorax posted:Yeah, it's possible to run out of time in Shenmue in the same way you can theoretically hit the 13 year limit in Fallout 2. You really need to make an effort for it. In one of the old Might & Magic RPGs (not Heroes of M&M) you could "take an odd job" for a week in a city, a week would go by in the in-game calendar and you'd get paid some money for the work. I didn't realize the impact of the time passage thing and clicked that option over and over and over, my characters ended up being super rich but all 90 years old, with heavily reduced Strength, Dexerity, and Constitution stats to match, so they were crippled and terrible in combat. An interesting commentary on wage work and what it does to us, but I do think it's funny that my PCs basically just quit RPGing and got regular jobs for the whole game.
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# ? Dec 10, 2019 04:35 |
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Cardiovorax posted:Yeah, but it's still a hard limit. You only get to do so many things in that time, because you only have X actions per day one way or the other. It's apples and oranges; He's referring more to 90's adventure games, where Sierra Entertainment specialized in unforgiving puzzles and cheap deaths. Or just plain being able to put your playthrough in a soft fail stste without knowing for HOURS.
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# ? Dec 10, 2019 04:37 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 13:18 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:It's apples and oranges; He's referring more to 90's adventure games, where Sierra Entertainment specialized in unforgiving puzzles and cheap deaths. Or just plain being able to put your playthrough in a soft fail stste without knowing for HOURS.
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# ? Dec 10, 2019 04:41 |