cronicler

Then again, sometimes you get a lock that is too hard (like the chests in oil barrel shop and the recruits home in redcliffe) you go away, level up your skill and come back only to find a dagger or a single mushroom in the chest. I wish the chests had "somethings" in them. Just 3 or 4 pieces of general low cost junk would be better than another dagger. Seriously.

I would suggest Assasin/Duelist (Or vice versa) for a pure meele build. The 3rd Assasin talent provides a hug passive bonus to your attacks (Cun-10). When you mix that with paralyse runes, stuns and 4th duelist ability; it brcomes a meat grinder.

I have to agree, the lack of transparency in game mechanics isa real pain. Personally Dps wise high str is better than high cun. They both give you same bonus damage however 1hands use %100 of the bonus while daggers use %85 (%42.5 if you use the dex fix). High str gives you the ability to use main hand weapons which have higher dps then the daggers. On the other hand high cunning gives you a lot more penetration, making more from your lesser base dagger damage. 30+ base penetration is enough to negate nearly all armor your attacks have to encounter, except in some rare cases like massively armored bosses. Also I have to note that I have no idea if tha dagger attack rate is higher than 1hands or not. However for a rogue (and persuasive main character, if you like that route) cunning also gives you the other underhanded options: combat stealth vs bosses, lockpicking and trap disarming, a couple of dialogue options here and there, *If you are an assasin, then you get bonus damage from your bonus cunning on crits. Edit: On a DW warrior there is no dispute, you need very high str (2per lvl) and high dex (1per lvl). the bonus stats you gain from fade and a few other places are more than enough to get your stats to the needed numbers to unlock the talents. Still at the end of the day, It boils down to preference instead of solid facts I guess

A correction; in the fade you can find 4 st, 4 dex, 4 will, 2 mg, 5 cun, & 2 con Except for finding an odd pice here and there there arent really many good light armor in the game. (For example I liked the dalish leather set but it gave exra armor for full set . I wish it had -Fatigue as set bonus.) Most of the game my rogue was either wearing a rough leather set for maximum "-stamina" effect. Later I swapped the pieces with "+dodge" gear (and trinkets) and used a robe (witch robe or chasinid robe had the best bonuses for my rogue that I could find I think) to keep the stamina penalty down. at dwarf city, elven camp and after the landsmeet you can find some decent leather (chest) armor. For Leilana (or your own archer builds) be on the lookout for the +critical, +ranged critical, +dex, +critical damage gear (in that order of importance). You can buy 2 or 3 pieces from the dwarves at the camp (belt, bracers) dalish and dwarfs also have some more of those gear. Your archer will have to rely on her stratospheric dex to dodge (You did get her dex to the 40+ range "at least" I hope?)

Dex hotfix (actually) lowers your dagger dps (as your bonus damage shifts from %85 of cunning bonus to %42.5 cunning bonus and %42.5 dex bonus) increases bow and crossbow dps. this actually makes the enemy archers (and leilena and the elves at the end game) even more deadly. On 2H warriors; I know it is actually counter intuitive but for 2H (and DW warriors) you actually need to use light armor to avoid stamina penalties and have the 3rd talent (the one that lowers aggro) on autocast as your real defence is being unnoticed. Heavy or Massive armor + two handed weapons is just a death sentence. Archer Warriors; this is actually a very weird class. you just go 2dex 1 other stat each level, use dex enhancing items and let loose with scattershot - arrow of slaying. It does really high dps but you wear leather and just put him/her in a corner doing dps without any need for micro. Very boring.

Btw, in the beginning the best mage gear is actually the 10 str rough (?) leather set. it gives you -%3.6 or so stamina rating. Compared to other claptrap you get at the beginning, it is definately superior. untill you get some real gear or your spellpower gets high enough you are better off with using those.

Heya all. (Using dex fix) I think I can answer some of your questions. Str: Increases damage. 1 point per each point of str over 10 ( .425 for daggers, .5 for bows, 0 for crossbows) Allows equipping heavier armor. Some tooltips say it also affects hit chance but Im not sure about that. Dex: Increases damage ( .425 per point over 10 for daggers, .5 per point over 10 for bows, 1 per point over 10 for crossbows.) Increases hit rating and dodge (defence) rating Cun: Increases armor penetration (.5 AP per point over 10). With talents, it replaces the str score for basic damage and adds extra damage There are 3 different defence types in DAO: Dodge chance (Def. Rating), Damage Reduction (Armor) and Resistances. Your attack rating vs enemy's defense rating (and shield rating if you are using bows from front) determines your chance to hit (and except the main "ratings" the numbers in tooltips are outdated or wrong most of the time). However when you are "flanking" your target, your chance to hit increases. Rogue talent increases the flanking zone while the shield talent decreases the flanking zone. Not sure if the bonus is static or cunning based but it felt a lot on my experiments using rogue so I would hazard a guess supporting a base bonus+cunning (or dex?) modifier. Your Armor Penetration vs enemy's Armor determines how much damage you do with a regular hit. Normally flanking has no effect on this but if you are using a rogue with lethality, every flanking attack is x2 damage. On top of that, the "whole" damage gets treated with 1 dr check so your 5 damage normal attack (20 damage attack vs 15 dr) becomes a 25 damage attack (40 damage vs 15 dr). Magical/Elemental damage completely ignores the above 2 formulas. For every magical attacks you have 4 checks. -First you check the spell resistance score. First Spell res. check determines if you resist the attack completely. the second one determines how much damage is left. Eg: Alistar has 82 spell resistance (Knight Commander, Elven Gloves, Shield, Rune, Spellward Amulet). He is hit by a 100 point magical attack. the game first checks if he resists the attack. If he doesn't he gets an 18 point damage that goes to.... -Then you have specific resistances. Mental and elemental resistances work the same way as basic SR. Eg: Lets say the 100 damage was fire based. Allistar has 60 FR so he checks for resist again. If he fails his check the damage gets adjusted again and he gets 11 fire damage. Meele abilities and some spells, check Physical Resistance. Except for a few bugged ones (overwhelm for example) a score of 70 is enough to resist every spell/ability in the game (80 in nightmare I think). However your own min/max spellcasters can go above this so friendly fire is still possible (Earthquke etc). Depending on the ability magic score or cunning vs PR determines how long you get debuffed (for petrify or stuns) or how much penalty you get (below the belt etc) Lastly some thoughts on Rogue builds and DW warriors: DW Rogues and DW warriors may seem alike but actually they are complketely different beasts. With rogue builds, you want your guy/gal as a flanker, using talents like combat mobility, lethality coupled with rapid hitting, stunning and sustained skills. 20ish str 40ish Dex and maxed Cun gets you an incredible dps output. Use backstab/critical damage increase gear. Screw other runes, use paralyse runes. DW warriors on the other hand are in your face guys. they don't have the rogue talents but their starting talent makes up for it alone. -%10 stamina coupled with leather armor gives you an incredible stamina pool. Go for Str and Dex primarily, Will and Con secondarily. (1Str, 1Dex and alternating between will and con each level untill you hit 20 will and 20 con) Late game, use dodge gear and 2 main hand swords. With your high dex and dodge gear it is nearly impossible to hit you. Archer rogues are actually among the biggest DPSers in the game. Sure they suck untill lvl 10-12 but after that they go berserk. Go for dex. Maximise her dex. Use crit and crit rate gear. Spam AoS and Scattershot. Abuse rapid aim + aim cheese. Configure her orders so she attacks your tank's target and you can basically forget her while she does her thing. (For Imoen, get her str to 20 for armors. then just go 2dex 1 cun each lvl. Her cunning needs to be high if you want to use her bard talents properly as her her bonuses increase with cun and her ofansive talents are based on cun vs enemy resistance checks)

I just wish there was a possibility of having some of the designers (and their conscripted friends) just recording their lines on crappy pc mics and using those for a full blown Radio quest(s). Its like having a network of amateur radio station(s) that chatter away in the night as an escape from the crumbling dreams of reality. Tieing some quests to that like a chance remark about a lost caravan in XY map grid or a radio station (in a settlement near your location) saying goodbye to others as they are attacked by raiders and they don't have a hope (cue the wandering firemagnet/idiot hero). It could be nice....

I'm sure you are aware that being able to recall such an ancient title, you declare yourself as a gamer-fossil. (And yes I remember her too :lol: )

Gaah! No not the incubation! I don't want to face 25HP (and fully regenerating next turn from 1 hp) things again. Focus fire on the bastard one turn, get flanked next and get a flood of crappy low hp bugs the other turn. It was sadisticly hard. And I finished it with full squad / no losses. (Well except for choosing to go after 2 stranded grunts and leaving the other mission where another grunt was defending defending an ammo dump. Wish I could have saved all three but alas I had to make a choice.

The gambling skill was and is quite useless. You can use it on a TT game to (quickly) simulate the process (when the dm or the players have no idea how to play the said game or dont have time to play ) but on a C-game, automating it just makes it boring. That said, there have been more than a few nice examples of thase games. Poker, Carps, "Dice" Poker, Blackjack, Roulette games are not that hard to insert in a game. Used right they can be a real hard, long and enjoyable "Quest" on their own right to become the best tragic player, to complete a full tragic desk, to win a tournament. Hell if the quest designers are creative they can even insert one of these games as alternate paths to some quests: -Target: Infiltrate the Gambini family's compoıund to steal their wi-fi access codes (that they use to speak with their manufacturing center located at "abandoned military outpost 42"). Location: The Gambini compound is a series of pre and post war buildings located in a star formation. The whole compound is walled in with 3 tiered defence: A hard wall, a heavy patrolled palisade and a cleared and mined ground that has a fence except south. The south "wall" consists of a massive pre war building that houses Gambioni mercenary recruitment hall, Long haul merchant organisation offices and "Wild Swan" Casino. Solutions: You can go tech and tap into their connection from an external location by hand You can go ninja and sneak into their compound the hard way You can buy some gangs to do a ride-by which screens your entrance You can enter via the front door, play some games at the casino and have yourself taken in as they get suspicious of your constant good fortune. While they leave you to alone a bit, you go ninja

Psst Alanschu: Just load your Mercs with the good stuff. Then on the Strategic Map / Sector Inventory Screen you can ALT-Click the unwanted equipment to sell them (for a % loss due to logistics) without any waiting!

A little bit more info about the Unseen. I really wonder if we will ever see a good MW Game with a good branching campaign; supply and logistic rules; MechBay, MechLab and MechBazaar options; nice gameplay... Then again I like to dream now and then.

Trine, Shadowgrounds, SGS, Portal, TF2, World of Goo, Gish, M&B, Spidersoft games (if you are into nerdy rpgs that is).... 20$ Market is like the normal market. there are 40 crap titles for each good one. (And yes I might have made some mistakes on initial prices. After the "Sale"s and other stuff in Digital Sites, I got these titles for less than 20 each)

I am not kidding you. The first edition of MW was penned by Macross geeks so most of the Mechs in Macross were created in the MW system. The main problem is not the mechs themselves or using them in stories but the little fact that in the US those "design styles" are under another IP. So they have to either change the model completely or keep them without "official" designs. FASA choose to keep the mechs in the game (legal to play that is) but didn't want to rape their lore so they didn't change their looks. If I am not mistaken, this issue cropped up after MW2 was released or so. (And MS destroying FASA) That's why there is such a weird issue about these mechs. Ps: The pictures of these designs are horrible in FASA books. To get a good look at them try the Macross snips on Youtube Quad Mech designs are sub-optimal because you loose about 12 or 16 critical slots (depending or arms configuration) when you switch to 4 legs in the legal construction rules. (Hand and lower arm actuator + 8 free slots in an arm VS hip, knee and feet actuators + 2 free slots. you can remove hand and lower arm and put fixed gun in arm but not in leg) This cramps your ability to install stuff in your Mech by a large margin.

What? You mean you drag a peon (Peon: very lov level mercs that cost no money or up to 150 a day that you use as mules for your logistic train, random militia trainers, territary repairers and such) just to leave him/her at the edge of the map with the sole purpose of "save, shoot, reload if miss, make the peon spend some ap to change the randomised outcome and shoot again"??? You cheater! EDIT: Before 1.13, enemies used to work like I described before. With 1.13 the enemies do use (and are affected) by the stuff in their inventory like NVGs, Sun glasses, Armor, camo kits and so on. Also with 1.13 nearly half of the regulars and most of the elites spawn with realistic gear (Armor, decent mix of weapons per 20man unit including mgs and support weapons). In 1.13, every enemy has a small chance for each item he carries to drop if you don't check the "drop all" which results in 5 or 6 drops per 20 enemies. I don't like this much becouse I am generally very unlucky and get secondary (armor, nvg etc) or territary (F/A kits, random loot stuff) drops most of the time. Then again if you check the "drop all" and manage a good and agressive play for the first few days, you get countered with Elite mercs equipped with better weapons (than your stage of the game.) this can lead onto some really good gear and easy battles. However, as you progress, you will notice that holding onto your acquisations will become much much harder than acquiring them. Defence battles suck, especially when your assault team is away attacking another city.

Bah! I really hate all this idiotic stuff about the Unseen. Now they will have to go back and rip those off the game and after 2 hours people will put them back into the game using a pack. All these stuff for 20 Medicore mechs out of 300+ in the game.... (Without counting the variants)

I think there is a 1/36 or 1/48 chance (don't ask where the chances are from. I seem to remember a thread on Bear's pit but couldn't find it) for an enemy to drop his weapon. The rest of the stuff (medkits, ammo, armor) are actually in the enemy's inventory and he doesn't use them at all (Sort of like a walking, gun toting chest). I know drop all does make the game easier, but I hated the normal, non-scavenging mode more.

Volourn, I am a guy who does follow the RPG gaming scene on and off and I do check the outlets now and then again. I didn't even hear about most of the "not hyped" stuff like detailed combat order system at all. I checked the main site and All I saw was red on white and death and glory and all the usual stuff on your average book/game cover. If People can't learn that this game does really offer some of the things it is "promised" to offer, You can't really blame them to distrust what is "Promoted". I have been stung a lot of time by empty promotions to trust them on face value.

Boo: You might want to allow "enemies drop all their stuff" option in the preferances (or the ini editor). Without it only the stuff in "enemy inventory" can drop and they don't carry anything usable. With drop all enabled, you would have gotten a few rifles, an AR or two even before the counter attack. After the attack, your sector inventory coul hit 1000+ items. (Thou this does give you a good advantage till 1/2 of the game To defend against the attack without the only exploit (the AI still can't destroy wallls to gain entry to buildings and they can't blindfire into the buildings through walls to force you out) left in the game, you need to hire some heavy duty mercs for 1 day at the beginning and use them, ira and your IMP to defeat the attack using pre planned positions, traps and crossfires. After the attack you will have to release them as your finances wont be able to keep them on the field more than a day or three (and you can't blitz like the vanilla and capture everycity other than Meduna before first week ends.)

Don't get your hopes up Will. Relic has a nasty tendercy to push unfinished (or unpolished or unbalanced) products and then leaving them alone for the last few years. I dont give it more than a 40% chance of decent game. And I do hope they will stop abusing Karen this time

Saber and Lightning, Dual Hand Lightning, Grip and Lightning. Also Lightning. Bad jokes aside, -The story goes bonkers at the end. Not to mention it is quite a strech at times. -Your support crew...? -Luke Skywalker the force prodigy was able to pull his saber after busting some arteraries and grumbling as if he is in WC. -Just how many rogue force users are left in the galaxy ffs? everytime we turn around we bumpo into one. The game as a game was not so bad and quite enjoyable at times but people are fed up with ripping SW lore a new one again "for the last time honest!"

There doesn't seem to be much in the UC 1.13 department. Shame to see it stuck on the old inferior code but a lot of manhours were spent on the old closed file system. The conversion is still alive but slow going I guess.

In no particular order: Massive lan parties (ala 30+ people): Battlefield 1942 Battlefield Vietnam Quake 3 (and its spinoffs) and UT Somethings Small Lan Parties (3,4 chaps): Worms (2, Armageddon) Street Fighter 2 and other old fighting games (Love the mode where the winner gets to kick a shot of tequila then faces a new challanger :D) Trine hotseat Any passable FPS on harder than hardest difficulty, hotseat Home alone on the net: LFD Diablo 2 WoW (Haven't personally played SWG or EvE so cant say much. WaR was not up to it) CoD WaR Wolfenstein TF2 (From the old days) Tribes Fallout Tactics Probably missed a lot of fun generators but this is it for now

Need good weapons, a good logistics for your assault team (repairers, militia trainers, after the battle loot gatherers) and a decent assault team to be successful in JA2 1.13. Besides, playing as Afgan hipshhoters will result in a lot of spent ammo and a lot of dead Mercs. You have to go spec ops on them BTW, did you get the HAM's new release? they finally managed to implement a real supression system in the game! You can now use your (previously useless) LMGs and HMGs to fire at groups of enemies and force them to drop to ground (resulting in Ap loss and slowdowns) while your marksman chew them up.