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Dragon's Dogma : Dark Arisen.


wholehole
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Sorry for the no reply, it's been a long time since I've played this.... Off my head, stay away from Bitter black Isle until easily level 60/70 you'll get raped...

 

Think it's Pawns with the Mage vocation and medicate that heals pretty well. Explore and find healing springs, fill up empty flasks with that and you can heal the entire party when you use it. 

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Another session of getting fucked every which way but Wednesday. I don't get the combat at all in this game. Why are humans so bloody strong, I can kill the big monsters by perseverance but the humans, especially ones with the shields are OP as fuck. When they're numerous you are basically shagged since your pawns all run about like idiots while you try your best to pick out the ones that can kill. Or rather that should be the ones that can kill at range, since it's those that seem to cause the biggest problems. I'm not entirely sure to be honest.  I might drop it down to easy because parts of it are utterly devoid of fun.

 

Also some horrible UI design. When you die it asks you if you want to use a resurrection stone of which you have to select "No" instead of pressing A or B or something to skip it. You can accidentally use what I assume is quite a precious resource by accident, which is stupid.

 

Also while I've my complaining hat on, why are the quests "Go here on the map and you might find what you're looking for"? I spend ages fighting scores of bandits to go kill dire wolves and then when I get there the marker is on a castle full of NPC's. What? That shit's even vaguer than how Morrowind did it.

 

Fighting those big lads though, that's super fun. It's like Shadow of the Colossus, but the controls work. More of that, less of the fighting bandits or other scuzzy mobs, particularly in the dark. Even with the lamp your vision is on par with Helen Keller.

 

I don't feel like I'm making any progress, but aside from those issues of mountain face difficulty spikes I can still see the roughed up gem under it all.

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I try to sleep if only to keep the pawns topped off. Usually I go and do the thing I set out to do and if night happens, it happens. I don't find it any harder aside from not being able to see archers off in the distance. I do get flash from having so many lighting effects going off, it's like being flashbanged when a lot is going off.

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Well I went on tonight and played for a few hours. I didn't have too much issues with human like mobs, but I am going down by the witches hut where typically I tend to have issues.

 

I am starting to be able to one shot trash mobs though, and I swapped out a pawn that had become under levelled and replaced her with a fighter which is helping more than the ranger was. I think I still might swap trades though, both me and my pawn are nearly at full wax seals, unless it prestige's or whatever I think it might be a case of swapping and levelling up. I'm looking at the numbers and the fighter and the mage are gaining points in different areas and I don't know if it makes sense to try and level them out somewhat.

 

Fighting the big lads is still a dream. I think games like this and The Witcher III must be studied by Bethesda for the next Elder Scrolls because the combat actually feels more epic the more dangerous the foe. It feels much more hands on and not as detached as TES. I'm sure they could work something out that makes you feel like you're actually a part of the fighting rather than what it is currently. You have this, WIII and even games like the Souls series that have combat that feels like there's contact. The hits feel like there's weight and resistance when you're driving the sword into the back of a Cyclops or whatever feels like it should feel.

 

I'm all up on it. I'll probably be down on it tomorrow if those human mobs ride me into misery next session.

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Keep in mind that perks you've unlocked can be mixed and matched no matter which vocation you decide to settle on... I was usually a Strider or Ranger but would have stints as a Warrior, Fighter and Mage to unlock certain things.

 

Unless your planning to main straight up magic weapons or become a Mystic Knight or Magic Archer (or Sourcerer and Mage obviously) I wouldn't worry too much about your magic stats.

 

Another thing to think about, the level of your pawns can effect how much XP you earn.

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Is there a way to differentiate between side quests and mainline? I've got something like 20 odd quests in my book and they all look the same sort of busywork.

 

I made it through the bit I usually have trouble with, I did nearly die once but I think that was an off stroke, I had zero luck finding the direwolves I was searching for, it says they're in a castle but when you actually read the thing the words don't correlate with the pointer. When you mouse over the map it tells you the districts where you need to do stuff and the district the pointer snaps to isn't named the one that's on the job docket. There are no wolves, just a castle full of friendly bandits, there are wolves that knock about at night, but none of the dire ones. I have no idea where this district is, I guess I'll uncover it at some point.

 

I've noticed this a few times actually. In the same castle there's some guy that task you with going out the west side of the castle and killing some women bandits. Except they're not in the west, on the map they're circled north of the camp and west of Gran Soren. It feels like they botched the quest cards or something, the UI could have done with a serious rethink because at times it can be neither use nor ornament. The map should let you zoom right out because a lot of the times you ask it where you should be going and it just shows you a blank part of the map that's yet to be uncovered and it's hard to tell where it is without scrolling about and finding a part that is uncovered.

 

I discovered a little camp on my journey where I left my game that acts as an outpost that's nice. I hope there's more of these dotted around because having to take a trek back to the nearest bed is a pain in the arse. I do have the unlimited hearthstone thing that takes me back to the city, but I don't know if it brings me back or whether I need to hike back to where I need to be after sleeping my team back to full health. I do have another gem but reading off the thing you can only fast travel to it if you put it in a ring or something? I don't want to put it down in case I can't pick it back up. I guess you get more of them somewhere down the line, because otherwise the game is going to be hell if you can't fast travel at all.

 

One thing that is getting on my nerves is how talkative one of my pawns is. She never ever shuts up. I don't even think I can sit her in the chair to get her to cool it a little.She's pretty integral to my squad at present, but I'll be swapping her for someone that doesn't spend the whole journey asking if we're there yet and other inane lines.

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If you're talking about a Port Crystal you can place it down and pick it back up all you like... Place them wherever you like (doesn't have to be in any ring)

 

You'll bump into Dire Wolves eventually, I wouldn't stress about finding them.

 

You'll get main questlines from the Duke and folk in and around the castle mainly... Those from notice boards are all some kind of busywork.

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Combat is making a lot more sense now. I tried the tanking way of doing it but I found the best way is to be super aggressive, use the dash to open the fight and then either kick them up in the air or dash to another threat that poses a greater danger. If a fight goes on for a long time you have to manage your stamina, but for the most if you get in and get the job done quick you should be OK.

 

Found a big fuck off castle that I can't enter so I'm guessing that's story related since it looks like it's gating me off from the next area.

 

Because I couldn't get in I made my way back because I was enjoying fighting the goblins on the way up there. The fight got snowballed into a dragon encounter. I managed to break the chest off and start stabbing it n the heart, but it killed my party so quickly and I soon followed. Gave it a wide berth on the way back. I'm not strong enough to kill it before it wrecks my party. I'll be back for it though. Gonna turn it into a handbag when I'm strong enough.

 

 

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I cleared the battlements off but it downed both my mages. One was on the deck and I had to drop down to get her. The other was just inside the doorway. If I had made a beeline back to the fight I could have saved her. I wish that when they were downed it showed where about they were so you don't have to rely on the minimap screwing you over. Just one of the many faults the game has.

 

I'm properly into this now. I've gone from "I don't want to fight that so I'll avoid it" to "Oh shit, I have no choice because I got ambushed" to "I'm dropping everything and fighting the biggest fucker I can see". The combat is such a weird mishmash of everything. I'm getting bits of DmC, Monster Hunter, Viewtuful Joe, Dynasty Warriors, Shadow of the Colossus, there's bits of Warframe's stances in there with Shadow of Mordor sprinkled over it. While none of those are particularly new it creates this weird mongrel beast that's not quite perfect, but feels amazing to play when everything is working towards its strengths.

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You're never safe playing this game. Just stood there letting my pawns collect loot and then a fucking Gryphon lands on me out of nowhere, roughs me up for about a minute and then fucks off just as quickly as it came in. Wild.

 

Just came to the realisation that the pawns are learning too. Dace, who has been in my party for a while now said something along the lines of "Oh there's a chest around here" and then did a whole hotter colder thing as I got closer to it. It floored me a bit, it was like when I was playing Borderlands with Jay and he knew where all the shit was, except this was a AI that had learned through playing with people, I guess.

 

The more I play the more I think that this shouldn't just be a cult hit, it should be a full blown one.

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Yeah, they'll learn the best attacks for things too... get a mage pawn who's fought that Drake you encountered a few times and if he has ice magic he won't fuck about using other stuff, that'll expose the heart and its happy days.

 

Not sure what class you're rolling but I really think having access to a bow really allows you to roll with any kind of threat. 

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Using the Fighter class.Tempted to rotate around though to see what the rest is like. I did have a gander at the vocations and it looks like you have classes between classes. The issue is I'm using my pawn to heal the party right now. I'm using a pawn that has been brought in from a friends game that's high level but it's doing work and generally taking a load off so I'm reluctant to see it go for something else.

 

If I did switch and held onto the high level Mage I'd have to go to either Strider or Mage. This means that the open slot I have would have to be a fighter for aggro control. If I did go Mage I'd have to make sure the party was healed up all the time and I don't know how hard that is. Alternatively I make my own pawn a Fighter and have to scour the pawn club for a healer each time I level up.

 

I don't know, it feels a bit of a quandary because the 4 man party system is mean to be one of each and then whatever the player fancies being themselves. I'm pinned in by the high level full out offensive Mage and my own support Mage that the last two spots feel like they have to be Fighters to make up for the squishiness.

 

I feel like almost all the pawns you see are either Mages or Fighters. I have tried Striders but they tend to be really shit. They spend more time on the deck than they do dealing damage.

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There's 9 vocations for the player and 6 for pawns, you'll never have clean sweep and to be honest you'll never really need to.

 

You'd be surprised what you can get away with on this, I ran with a Mage and Sourcerer for half a game at one point... Yeah, they were glass cannons but some of the fights were spectacular. The Assassin let's you wield a sword and bow, it also has perks which makes it a viable tactic to go it alone.

 

I loved the freedom to chop and change at will, it was a breath of fresh air at the time 

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