D:OS II

[Tigranes]

Speaking of balance and nerfing, how do I do that final (multistage) boss fight? Seems rather hard, and I'm on explorer mode. Though I've seen that you have to be strategic somewhat, but still....

 

Once the big ugly thing shows its face, take out the mwahahaha dude and it's all over. In spoilery terms

 

 

Once Braccus Rex summons the Kraken thing, just kill Rex and it's all over. Don't worry trying to take on Kraken or its many summons etc.

 

[smjjames]

 

Speaking of balance and nerfing, how do I do that final (multistage) boss fight? Seems rather hard, and I'm on explorer mode. Though I've seen that you have to be strategic somewhat, but still....

 

Once the big ugly thing shows its face, take out the mwahahaha dude and it's all over. In spoilery terms

 

 

Once Braccus Rex summons the Kraken thing, just kill Rex and it's all over. Don't worry trying to take on Kraken or its many summons etc.

 

 

 

Yeah, I think maybe that was the mistake I made. Plus not setting up all of the source based abilities.

[smjjames]

Does using the Anathema sword with the overpower skill even work? Because I saw one suggestion to use that and it doesn't even work, does the sword even work in the first place?

 

dammit, theres also a bug where if you kill Braccus before stage two starts, it bugs out and combat cannot end, not even if I kill the other party members.

Edited October 8, 2017 by smjjames

[Zoraptor]

 

 

 

 

One strategy is to leave the area and just let the voidworm kill Alexandar and his group, then come back and finish off the voidworm (and whoever got left behind). And 'Alexandar' is how his name is intentionally spelled ingame.

 

 

 

On tactician at least the voidworm gets roflstomped by Alexandar's group, it just lasts long enough for you to at least have Alex in status lock via battle stomp/ charge/ chicken wotsit or chloroform if you've dropped his magic shields.

 

sic doesn't imply that it's necessarily spelt wrong, it just means it's been reproduced as written- unfortunately about 90% of people seem to think it's 'Alexander' no matter how it's spelt in game much as people talk about Mike 'Thornton' from Alpha Protocol despite it consistently being spelt without the 1st n in game.

 

[smjjames]

Is there a way to make the last boss fight easier? I'm struggling and I'm using explorer mode.

 

edit: wtf, Braccus teleported himself inside a wall....

Edited October 9, 2017 by smjjames

[Tigranes]

I mean, there's nothing really special that happens after it, you're not missing some brilliantly written finale to a tearjerker story. If you can't make it on explorer mode - and possibly your party's underpowered, it's hard to say - then it seems like you either cheat (if there are any), grind some levels/equipment, or walk away.

 

I probably had it a lot easier that the first stage of the battle bugged out, but I don't know how you'd purposefully reproduce that. In terms of the second phase of the fight, you can basically ignore everybody else and go for Brac, and surely you can get his armour down in the first turn, allowing you to keep him permanently CC'd?

Edited October 9, 2017 by Tigranes

[smjjames]

Seems easier if you pledge to surrender your source, since you're just fighting Braccus.

[Orogun01]

It has become very obvious that enemies seem to enjoy the benefit of both being well positioned and having great mobility, whilst you have to waste an entire turn just trying to reach them. I don't know why this is thought to be a good idea or what the Codex thinks strategy is, although i'm thinking that is min maxing to the extreme and using a lot of resources on an encounter. Which is fine and dandy except that its a regular enemy with very few rewards, the balance of the game is certainly off.

[Humanoid]

And the counter is that the player is effectively made to take single points in Warfare and Huntsman regardless of actual role, just so they can abuse the mobility options. This is made even more obvious because by and large, these utility spells do not meaningfully scale with actual skill level. This is often true of civil skills too, Telekinesis can lift infinite weight with a single point investment. Loremaster gives complete information on enemies with just one point.

 

(Incidentally, enemy units design abuses this because even generic level 1 mooks always come with a point in Loremaster, so for pretty much every single encounter in the game, they will automatically be able to exploit your weaknesses and avoid your resistances. There's a mod - No Psychic Enemies - that restricts Loremaster to enemies who would reasonably have it.)

 

This weird behaviour is incentivised by the weird design where learning new spells is tied to very low skill requirements, such that with a mere three points in a spell school you can learn pretty much everything. You'd think there'd be more benefit in specialisation, but often this is not the case. When the correct advice when trying to build an archer, for example, is to take three points in Huntsman and ten in Warfare, it's plainly obvious that there's a fundamental flaw in the way skill points work.

[Orogun01]

Difficulty is really all over the place. I tried the same fight in Explorer and then in Classical; in explorer it was done in two hits (literally) whilst in Classical it took over one turn. That is one hell of a scale difference. Is it too much to have a medium setting that isn't too condescending but won't put you through hell just to take down one enemy.

[Tigranes]

I mean, you can teleport your friends and enemies so far that sometimes the enemy's having tea on the other side of the beach because it can't figure out how to get back. Warfare gives you at least 3 mobility options, Aerotheurge gives you two, Huntsman gives you one (right?). If the enemies weren't positioned as well as they are now, it'd just be cold game. Meanwhile, it's pretty rare for enemies to teleport you, for example.

 

There certainly are a lot of mechanical issues, but I don't think putting enemies in dumber places is the solution.

[Humanoid]

It's fully reasonable to put enemies in intelligent places, particularly when they're expecting to ambush you. However it's still somewhat unfair because often the enemies won't actually spawn until you trigger the ambush so there's nothing you can reasonably do to counter them - other than cheesing it by pre-placing explosive barrels and such. Why not instead have the enemies stealthed but let you detect and counter-ambush them? In the grand scheme of things, it's just a minor annoyance to me on medium difficulty, but it does take away from immersion a bit.

 

Most of the time there's no problem initiating an encounter on your terms, and I do appreciate being able to initiate separately instead of the whole party being forced into combat simultaneously. It doesn't tend to resort to the tired trope where the bosses go invincible and force you to fight mooks, or where they unilaterally declare a fight over and just escape unchallenged (though I've heard of a couple edge cases where it happens). Nonetheless, there are a few annoying gaps though where scripting overrides your actions, such as the execution and the purging demonstration near the start of the game, where it would have been interesting to see alternative outcomes.

 

 

EDIT: Top of my wishlist for any further sequel is proper Z-axis handling so that you can do things like throw enemies off cliffs and climb on stacked crates to get over walls (Ultima 7, after all, is cited as a leading inspiration for the game).

Edited October 9, 2017 by Humanoid

[Nail]

Making a new run to hunt some achievements.

After last big patch there are still old bugs and glitches, some quests are idle in journal nevertheless they are done and I got the reward - weird.

I like the fact you can play from very good hero / total evil villain. A pity there is nothing like karma or something like that.

 

When you know what to expect from the game - it's pretty easy to plan your way through the content.

Gear (lootable / vendors) scales according to your level, so level is almost everything.

There are some drastic moments, when you get outrageous exp. amounts for easy exploration / quests without any fights vs. situations with very tough battles with low exp. income.

So if someone struggling - just leave tough fights and return when you'll be more experienced and with better gear.

 

Also it's funny to throw somebody with teleportation into lava, there is no save roll from teleportation (weird)...

Throwing barrels with deathfog into living enemies also fun

Edited October 9, 2017 by Nail

[smjjames]

Difficulty is really all over the place. I tried the same fight in Explorer and then in Classical; in explorer it was done in two hits (literally) whilst in Classical it took over one turn. That is one hell of a scale difference. Is it too much to have a medium setting that isn't too condescending but won't put you through hell just to take down one enemy.

 

Which boss fight are you talking about here?

 

Also, I'm thinking of trying an all (or mostly) summoner team, given how powerful those summons can be. Unless you can't really do it the way like it's done in PoE.

 

 

I mean, you can teleport your friends and enemies so far that sometimes the enemy's having tea on the other side of the beach because it can't figure out how to get back. Warfare gives you at least 3 mobility options, Aerotheurge gives you two, Huntsman gives you one (right?). If the enemies weren't positioned as well as they are now, it'd just be cold game. Meanwhile, it's pretty rare for enemies to teleport you, for example.

 

There certainly are a lot of mechanical issues, but I don't think putting enemies in dumber places is the solution.

 

Scoundrel also has two actually, one that works similar to battering ram I believe, and one that is like huntsman's tactical retreat. Summoning also has two, but one is too short for outside battle and one costs too much AP to be used in battle.

Edited October 9, 2017 by smjjames

[Orogun01]

 

Difficulty is really all over the place. I tried the same fight in Explorer and then in Classical; in explorer it was done in two hits (literally) whilst in Classical it took over one turn. That is one hell of a scale difference. Is it too much to have a medium setting that isn't too condescending but won't put you through hell just to take down one enemy.

 

Which boss fight are you talking about here?

 

Also, I'm thinking of trying an all (or mostly) summoner team, given how powerful those summons can be. Unless you can't really do it the way like it's done in PoE.

 

 

I mean, you can teleport your friends and enemies so far that sometimes the enemy's having tea on the other side of the beach because it can't figure out how to get back. Warfare gives you at least 3 mobility options, Aerotheurge gives you two, Huntsman gives you one (right?). If the enemies weren't positioned as well as they are now, it'd just be cold game. Meanwhile, it's pretty rare for enemies to teleport you, for example.

 

There certainly are a lot of mechanical issues, but I don't think putting enemies in dumber places is the solution.

 

Scoundrel also has two actually, one that works similar to battering ram I believe, and one that is like huntsman's tactical retreat. Summoning also has two, but one is too short for outside battle and one costs too much AP to be used in battle.

 

The old lady from the ship, you fight her on the island.

[Zoraptor]

Considering she sank a ship with a dozen (?) magisters on it she's ridiculously easy to kill, even on tactician. It might have taken me more than 1 round to kill her, but if it did she was stunlocked the whole time. Possibly the easiest fight in Fort Joy except for some of the generic voidwoken ones.

Edited October 10, 2017 by Zoraptor

[Tigranes]

It depends, I found her while I was underlevelled when I made an early escape from the Fort and she could toy with my party at will. The placement of encounters and their scaling itself is actually done very well, but the problem is how 1 level makes a massive difference in your/enemies' power level and that dictates everything else that follows.

[Zoraptor]

I generally agree, but in her case I found the fight with the nearby generic skeletons and several of the magister groups even excluding Alex to be quite a lot harder- which I suspect wasn't the intention, and doesn't make much sense in context given you'd seen her beat a dozen magisters on the ship.

 

Personally I think I'd have switched her encounter and Radeka the witch's one. The Radeka encounter was clearly meant to be done near the end, so they could accurately estimate what level you'd be at when doing it and make it a challenge, which I think you want for what was at least kind of the early antagonist of the game.

[Humanoid]

DHL continue to be an easy counterpoint to the stereotypical notion of German efficiency, but my CE box finally arrived today. Heard some horror stories about poor packaging, but I guess I'm fortunate in that because I bought some extra apparel as add-ons, they were packed in a larger box alongside the box containing the CE. As a result, though the outer box was banged up a fair bit, the merchandise is in pristine condition.

 

Gotta say it's the best Kickstarter CE I've seen thus far, and it's up there with the Witcher 3 CE as the most premium game package I own. The Fane statuette is very well constructed and is the kind of thing that retailers would sell for $100+ alone and the two hardcover books are lovely too with embossed covers, better than your typical D&D sourcebook or whatnot.

[Nail]

DHL continue to be an easy counterpoint to the stereotypical notion of German efficiency, but my CE box finally arrived today. Heard some horror stories about poor packaging, but I guess I'm fortunate in that because I bought some extra apparel as add-ons, they were packed in a larger box alongside the box containing the CE. As a result, though the outer box was banged up a fair bit, the merchandise is in pristine condition.

 

Gotta say it's the best Kickstarter CE I've seen thus far, and it's up there with the Witcher 3 CE as the most premium game package I own. The Fane statuette is very well constructed and is the kind of thing that retailers would sell for $100+ alone and the two hardcover books are lovely too with embossed covers, better than your typical D&D sourcebook or whatnot.

Can't wait to get Eothas statue

[Harry Easter]

Played through it. I thought that it would be my new favorite game and I was right. True, the third act was short, but the writing and story was still strong, so at least the third act didn't fall apart like in D:OS1. There are still some bugs tho' and I hope they can detect and fix them. Now I will rest, because those were 138 hours in one sitting on hard. I need a rest. And sleep :D.

 

My hopes for the future of the game:

- More quests in the third act, so it is at least as fleshed out as Fort Joy.

- They could rebalance the last fight a bit. On paper it is better than the one in D:OS1, but it is so hard, I feel itcan't be done alone and

the support NPC's do to good a job. Lucian and Dalis are just too powerful and I felt quite impotent at their side. But I played it on TACTITIAN, so maybe the balance better on CLASSIC.

 

Edited October 10, 2017 by Harry Easter

[Orogun01]

It depends, I found her while I was underlevelled when I made an early escape from the Fort and she could toy with my party at will. The placement of encounters and their scaling itself is actually done very well, but the problem is how 1 level makes a massive difference in your/enemies' power level and that dictates everything else that follows.

It does seem like you're right, but then again your earlier post makes me wonder about builds and the benefits of specialization over diversifying. It seems like the game favors diversity.

[Tigranes]

Eh. You basically pick a weapon type, then every level you pump Warfare (which gives better damage bonuses than actual weapon skills for some reason) and Strength or Finesse. If you're going magic, every level you pump Intelligence and your chosen magic skills. Everybody benefits from plopping one or two points into a couple of secondary skill trees, because that's all the investment you need to get 90% of the spells. That's about it. In a standard four-man party, it's hard to NOT end up taking almost every skill and damage type and magic school. 

 

I don't think this is a game where you can even have 'builds', in the sense that the choices are so obvious and a standard party will have 99% of the skills and abilities available to it. The only thing to do is really powergame to see what combination of framed runes and whatnot will give you the highest damage output, but really the mechanics are so basic there's no theorycrafting to be done. 

 

Having fooled around with a rogue, ranger, twohander and mage across two tactician files, seems like physical damage is king - far easier actually to disable enemies and achieve high battleground mobility, instead of fiddling around with contradicting elements. Also seems perfectly possible to run with a physical dude and magical dude, though that usually means each guy focuses on a different enemy.

[Humanoid]

Diversification relies on identifying which abilities scale with what attributes/skills and how. It's not always in an intuitive way. In a physical party you need to identify which spells can be useful with baseline intelligence, and vice versa. There are some traps like how summoning doesn't scale with anything but itself - a pure summoner can stack strength just as effectively as intelligence. Even summon spells that are not linked to the summoning skill use it for scaling: things like the Fire Slug and Bone Widow still require you to stack summoning to be effective, not Pyro/Necro as you might expect.

[Orogun01]

Seems like an interesting system, I 'm just concerned about hybrid classes since I'm trying to run a few of those.