Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Catch-All

Yeah, co-op seems like it would be a good fit with this game. Especially since parties are capped at 4 so you could have 2 players plus their main pawns.

Gimpy_Butzke wrote:

I have my online activity set to friends only so whoever uses my pawn has to be on my friends list.

Right now I think only two people have been using my pawn. I'm pretty sure the only person in this forum to use my pawn is ccesarano.

Also, I wonder how long capcom will keep co-op out of the series if they continue forward.

I think your pawn is level eleventy-billion or something right, on PSN? He intimidates me a bit at the moment, but I'll give him a run when I'm high enough level to work up the nerve to talk to him.

Co-op would be nice but Capcom isn't the sort of company that messes with what works. How long has everyone wanted online in all the Monster Hunter games? No weird DLC in their fighters? Mega Man games?

It's a possibility, but I wouldn't put money on it myself.

Redwing wrote:

I think your pawn is level eleventy-billion or something right, on PSN? He intimidates me a bit at the moment, but I'll give him a run when I'm high enough level to work up the nerve to talk to him. :)

Yeah, my pawn is in the mid to high 80s I think. Although it shouldn't cost you any Rift Crystals to use my pawn. My pawn is a Sorcerer right now and she has some crazy magic that she can use.

My PSN is the same as my forum name.

Let's play "What do you want in the next version?". Here's my list:

A less ambiguous system for tweaking the pawn AI.
Reworked UI. Because... goddamn.
Co-Op would be spectacular. Instead of just pawns, it'd be great to be able to invite in another player and his pawn into your game.

Other than that... I'd be thrilled if it was pretty much the same but in another part of the world. That'd be stellar.

Haven't played much lately because Endless Space took over my game time for now, but I will definitely finish this one.

Fredrik_S wrote:

A less ambiguous system for tweaking the pawn AI.
Reworked UI. Because... goddamn.

I know this might sound odd but I kind of liked the system to change your pawn (in theory anyway). I liked sitting and talking to them to get them to act differently rather then just going into a menu to do it. I think it helped add a bit of a personal feel to your pawn. But I do hope also that the UI is reworked for it though.

And yes. Co-op (and just 2 player Co-op, more than that would just clutter things up I think) would be fantastic. because honestly, climbing on a cyclops and stabbing him in the back of the head while dodging its hand is one thing. but doing that same thing while your friend shoots him in the face? priceless.

I like the knowledge chair, I just wish the things your pawn said weren't so ambiguous.

Is there more than one dragon in this game?

Spoiler:

Because I got jumped by one while I was fighting some goblins out in the woods, and he looked a lot like the one from the beginning of the game. He talked to me, and had the same glowy heart thing. The thing is, I'm nowhere close to the end of the game (level 28, haven't even met the duke yet) and I was still kicking this dragon's butt. He did finally kill me, but I burned through three of his health bars first and if I'd been a bit more careful I probably could have finished him off. Are there random dragons that just happen to look and sound like the main one?

Also, highlight of the fight was watching him try to take off, only to get hit in the face with a meteor and immediately fall back to earth.

muttonchop wrote:

I like the knowledge chair, I just wish the things your pawn said weren't so ambiguous.

Is there more than one dragon in this game?

Spoiler:

Because I got jumped by one while I was fighting some goblins out in the woods, and he looked a lot like the one from the beginning of the game. He talked to me, and had the same glowy heart thing. The thing is, I'm nowhere close to the end of the game (level 28, haven't even met the duke yet) and I was still kicking this dragon's butt. He did finally kill me, but I burned through three of his health bars first and if I'd been a bit more careful I probably could have finished him off. Are there random dragons that just happen to look and sound like the main one?

Also, highlight of the fight was watching him try to take off, only to get hit in the face with a meteor and immediately fall back to earth.

Simple answer, but I'm putting it in a spoiler just in case.

Spoiler:

Yes there are more dragons than just the one from the opening of the game.

muttonchop wrote:

Is there more than one dragon in this game?

Yes. Or, sort of.

Spoiler:

There is a wyvern, drake, wyrm, THE dragon, and the Ur-dragon (from the trailer). I believe that was a drake you fought.

Ok, good to know.

Spoiler:

I re-watched the trailer and it definitely wasn't the dragon from the beginning of the game, this one didn't have big horns. The heart and the talking just threw me off. Fun fight though, next time I run into that guy his scaly ass is mine.

muttonchop wrote:

Ok, good to know.

Spoiler:

I re-watched the trailer and it definitely wasn't the dragon from the beginning of the game, this one didn't have big horns. The heart and the talking just threw me off. Fun fight though, next time I run into that guy his scaly ass is mine.

You might want to wait a while. I and another poster in this thread (cannot recall who) fought him at level 40-something and still had a rough time of it.

Granted I was also trying magic archer at the time. I've seen reverted back to Strider because, honestly, I like the abilities better.

Killed my first dragon-lite at level 38. I killed a drake out in the wild by the Shadow Fort after a long... long fight. Seeing as how 2 of us were spellcasters and the drake liked to silence us it took even longer. I think I died 3 times before finally beating him because he could one-shot me with a physical attack though I could stand directly in his fiery breath with my health barely ticking down. Freaky.

I'm playing a ranger, which seems to be really good for fighting drakes. Any time he took off I'd just start pegging him in the heart with Tenfold Flurry, which would knock him back down pretty quick. Definitely a long fight though, it took an entire night (game time) to drop his first three health bars. I was hanging out in the same area so long that a pack of goblins respawned on top of me.

It also helped that I was in the forest so any time he breathed fire I could just hide behind a tree.

I just found a nice perch on a rock in the middle of the lake and kept spamming maelstrom to keep him grounded. Not flashy, but effective. I'd have to float down every now and then to revive one of my pawns but otherwise I was fine. I also popped a trinket right before taking his last sliver of life off to double the exp gained. Sadly I have no idea how much exp I got because so much stuff was flashing around on the screen though it did take me to level 39.

I think I've been conditioned by other games to find amazing loot on big baddies so I was slightly disappointed to not see some shiny new sword or staff among the dragon remains. I just had to remind myself that the dragon teeth, scales and bones I found may be used for some great upgrade later. Actually, that's one thing I need to look into. Has anyone played around with combining items?

I've played around with combining items, but so far it doesn't seem terribly useful outside of making consumables. There are a lot of weird loops, like you can combine an absorbent cloth with water to make a clean cloth, then combine the clean cloth with a rock to make it back into an absorbent cloth. There are also some really stupid items like the Avernal Mushroom which you can use to make poison, but every recipe to make an Avernal mushroom involves combining a mushroom with some sort of poisonous item so you could have just skipped the Avernal Mushroom and used the original poison instead.

I mostly combine items just to get healing potions. I go to the inn and just combine everything with everything until something pops out
IIRC Nuts and Harspud make for some good group-healing potions, and you can get better versions of Greenwarish by combining it with Pollen and then Cloudwine.
I also did bump into a couple of useful combos to make skeleton keys (shackles and a piece of ore I think) and some attack scroll (blank scroll + iron blade). The loops are indeed pretty stupid, but useful in the sense that you're not locked into bad combinations.

There are also a few rare equipment upgrade materials that can be made via combination. For example, firefly stones combine with various "shard" items (i.e., miasmite shard) to make the full item (i.e., miasmite).

Is anyone here called Cerious_-_ on PSN?

Gimpy_Butzke wrote:

Is anyone here called Cerious_-_ on PSN?

I've gotten so very many random XBL friend requests since playing DD, not sure why.

I've gotten a few random friend requests from people. one of witch I immediately removed because only a few seconds after I accepted, the guy said something like "hey I like your pawn. I see he has the dragons dogma sword. Can I have it?" I replied "um...no?" He then got strangely upset and said some things I'll not rewrite here.

So those assassin jerks who ambush you sometimes? 3 of them jumped me while I was escorting a quest NPC and one of them immediately made a beeline for the NPC and stabbed him to death. You asshole! I needed that guy!

muttonchop wrote:

So those assassin jerks who ambush you sometimes? 3 of them jumped me while I was escorting a quest NPC and one of them immediately made a beeline for the NPC and stabbed him to death. You asshole! I needed that guy!

I had a good laugh at that.

I hate escort missions because they always want to go where Chimeras and Cyclops are.

I learned humility last night in this game. For background, my guy's got maybe rank 5 in mage, maxed out sorc and maybe 3 or 4 in Mystic Knight that I'd recently swapped over to just to mix up the playstyle. So in reality, the bulk of my 40+ levels have been spent playing as a sorcerer.

I'd been considering trying out Arcane Archer as well and several builds I'd seen online kept recommending 2 or 3 assassin skills to really beef up the archer's damage. Since I already had an assassins mask in storage that I'd never used I decided to swap over and try out assassin. Now, instead of being smart about it and getting the profession level up a few notches by fighting trash mobs, I just kept on going on with the story and immediately headed out to my second visit to the Bluemoon tower.

Yeah, don't do that. I'm assuming the combination of my magic focused levelling, relatively low strength and lack of class skills made my poor little assassin less than deadly. The bow skills were literally taking off slivers of enemy health. Barely noticeable. The daggers actually did fairly well against melee enemies but as soon as I got around any archers my guy turned into a pin cushion and died almost instantly.

After an insanely difficult trudge through the canyons, and numerous deaths, I made it back to Bluemoon tower. I could barely make it past the entrance. After about a half dozen deaths I gave up, returned to town, swapped back over to sorcerer and returned to the tower. And as Kurt Russell once said, "and hell's comin' with me". A few maelstroms and meteor storms later I'd cleared the tower and regained my sense of supremacy.

So next time I decide to swap over to a non-magic primary class I'm going to have to spend some time getting the skills up and working out some different strategies. The approach I take to facing enemies as a sorcerer seems to have left me with no knowledge of how to approach fights as a melee character. The idea of the assassin still intrigues me, especially their skill that gives you a 70% bonus if you're adventuring alone. I'm just afraid my magic heavy build isn't going to translate well when I decide to make the jump.

I seem to be having problems with the quest to collect 66 skulls. By the time I got the quest, I already had 88 skulls stashed at the inn. If I put any number of skulls into my inventory the quest will say I have x/66 skull collected, but the quest still won't complete. My new plan is to carry around 65 skulls until I can loot one more, hopefully that will work.

You have to turn them in to the guy at the little bar/restaurant with the job board. The gathering quests don't finish automatically like the kill quests.

Hah, I feel dumb now for not trying to turn in the quest.

Those quests also don't count what's in storage. It freaked me out after I stored some Seeker's Tokens and then saw a 0/10 or whatnot in the quests, but as soon as I pulled 66 skulls out of my storage I was able to hand it in and complete that quest.

Weird, truth told.

ccesarano wrote:

Those quests also don't count what's in storage. It freaked me out after I stored some Seeker's Tokens and then saw a 0/10 or whatnot in the quests, but as soon as I pulled 66 skulls out of my storage I was able to hand it in and complete that quest.

Weird, truth told.

But not stupid, because you didn't put The Misfits on while you did it.

Or...

Blind_Evil wrote:

Co-op would be nice but Capcom isn't the sort of company that messes with what works. How long has everyone wanted online in all the Monster Hunter games? No weird DLC in their fighters? Mega Man games?

It's a possibility, but I wouldn't put money on it myself.

But ironic that they added co-op to Resident Evil, the only game that didn't need it.

IUMogg wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

Co-op would be nice but Capcom isn't the sort of company that messes with what works. How long has everyone wanted online in all the Monster Hunter games? No weird DLC in their fighters? Mega Man games?

It's a possibility, but I wouldn't put money on it myself.

But ironic that they added co-op to Resident Evil, the only game that didn't need it.

Two issues there:

1. Capcom only ever does what makes business sense, like most game companies. Resident Evil is arguably their most popular franchise outside of Japan, and co-op became a huge thing after Gears of War and other games, so of course they're going to try to get on that train.

2. While it might not have needed it, I still had a lot of fun with RE5. My roommate played it through like three times in the first two weeks it was out.