The Secret World

You need to make sure all your skills are working together too. For example, I have passives that set the "Afflicted" state whenever I hit a target and actives that do additional damage when my target is Afflicted. Look at what states your actives and passives set and exploit and make sure they are reinforcing each other.

That's pretty much what I did. It's hard to tie everything together with just passives from AR and Blade though. Blade attacks for me now trigger a ton of effects, but AR not so much. I've heard there are passives in other trees that can help though, like triggering on Frenzy attacks, which both Blade and AR have a lot of. That's the next thing I'm going to look into.

You are limited to actives from two weapons (plus your one auxiliary slot) but can have any combination of passives. I have blade, assault rifle, fist weapon, elemental and hammer passives.

The big one is Bloodsport (which is a Fist Weapon passive) which causes every hit to set Afflicted. All my Blade actives exploit Afflicted. Plus, I have two more passives which do extra damage when I hit an Afflicted target (Salt in the Wound and Molecular Exploitation).

It gets painful when I hit an opponent immune to Afflicted though...

Here's how I look after finishing the main storyline.

tanstaafl wrote:

You are limited to actives from two weapons (plus your one auxiliary slot) but can have any combination of passives. I have blade, assault rifle, fist weapon, elemental and hammer passives.

The big one is Bloodsport (which is a Fist Weapon passive) which causes every hit to set Afflicted. All my Blade actives exploit Afflicted. Plus, I have two more passives which do extra damage when I hit an Afflicted target (Salt in the Wound and Molecular Exploitation).

It gets painful when I hit an opponent immune to Afflicted though...

Here's how I look after finishing the main storyline.

Quick question, is there any reason you haven't hit QL10 for any of your weapon skills?

You only need to reach skill 9 to equip ql10 weapons- and the bonus for that last skill level is basically incremental, whereas there is a noticeable stat boost for maxing out the talisman skills.

Plus the game uses your skill levels to determine the displayed difficulty of a mob/quest. Early own I was consistently getting owned by supposedly "easy" quests because my skills were much higher than my equipped weapons. Now I'm trying to keep them as high as they need to be but no higher.

ruhk wrote:

You only need to reach skill 9 to equip ql10 weapons- and the bonus for that last skill level is basically incremental, whereas there is a noticeable stat boost for maxing out the talisman skills.

Interesting. Completionist me is horrified, but logical me understands.

Redwing wrote:
ruhk wrote:

You only need to reach skill 9 to equip ql10 weapons- and the bonus for that last skill level is basically incremental, whereas there is a noticeable stat boost for maxing out the talisman skills.

Interesting. Completionist me is horrified, but logical me understands. :)

Weapon skill 10 let's you do additional fractional upgrades to ql10 weapons, so it's not USELESS per se, just not absolutely necessary unless you get into endgame dungeons or pvp. Base ql10 is more than adequate for solo pve.

Holy Phillips Lovecraft- "The Vanishing of Tyler Freeborn" dlc was amazing. It's almost a shame that it's a high-level mission chain, they should put it up front where the most people can see what the studio is capable of.

Doesn't that start in Blue Mountain?

Yeah, but it's aimed at higher levels. In the last several legs of it you start going up against ql10 enemies.

Cool, I didn't know about that site. Here's my character so far.

Love the name.

Shalalam Baskur!

Lots of new changes inbound for the cash shop.

Starting today, pet unlocks will be available account-wide in addition to per character, with plans to roll that out for clothing items also in the near future. Further down the line there will also be a new alternate currency for subscribers/lifers, and tons of new stuff to spend it on such as regional teleport items, dps-meter mannequins and mission cooldown-reducing consumables.

Combat pets or merely cosmetic pets?

Combat pets might be the last straw that gets me to subscribe. If they are in and viable, it will offset my awkwardness with the combat until I can get more accustomed to it.

I think I recall one of the preset deck characters the thaumaturge, having lightning turrets as a skill? Way too cool if true... Hopefully it won't take me forever and a day to get them.

Character bound items were the reason I never bought anything. That, and I believed they were overpriced even with my lifetime discount.

I got a cat as some sort of purchase award that gives me small combat buffs when deployed, so I'm guessing these pets will be similar. That isn't quite the same as pets that actually fight though.

Regarding combat in general, success in TSW seems to rely heavily on having complementary skills. So one attack will set a state on the critter (either directly or via a passive skill) and then other attacks and passives trigger on that state to provide additional effects. It also helped me when I learned that the higher tier skills in a tree aren't more powerful than the low tier skills, they're just more specialized. So it's absolutely normal to even be max level and using 1 or 2 point skills if they fit your build. It also seems like the skills from each weapon can be configured to produce this effect cascade, so don't stress too much that the build guides tend to choose skills from all over the place. That's an ultimate goal, not an intermediate one. The only tough thing is getting the skills from two different weapons to synergize without branching out a bit. For example, I use AR/Blade and am currently filling out the fist weapon tree so I can grab Bloodsport (which tanstaafl mentioned above). But once you're out of Kingsmouth the AP comes pretty fast. Filling out the entire lower tier of a weapon might take an hour or two of play in The Savage Coast.

fangblackbone wrote:

Combat pets or merely cosmetic pets?

Combat pets might be the last straw that gets me to subscribe. If they are in and viable, it will offset my awkwardness with the combat until I can get more accustomed to it.

I think I recall one of the preset deck characters the thaumaturge, having lightning turrets as a skill? Way too cool if true... Hopefully it won't take me forever and a day to get them.

No combat pets, yet. Some of the pets give passive buffs though.

As for turrets, they currently exist in the Elementalism, Shotgun and Pistol skill trees. The elemental and shotgun turrets are basically just high-damage, short lived (5-7 sec) aoe fields. The pistol "turret" is a drone that lasts longer and follows you around, but doesn't do very much damage/healing.

So...Talks been a bit dead on this game, but I was thinking of picking it up anyway, is the community still alive or whats going on with it?

I had stopped when GW2 came out, but picked it back up a week or two ago and have been playing nightly. It's a great game.

This does look like an interesting game. But I am still on the fence about the 40 dollar price tag. I am probably going to take a break from GW2 and pick this up.

inthebird wrote:

This does look like an interesting game. But I am still on the fence about the 40 dollar price tag. I am probably going to take a break from GW2 and pick this up.

$29.99 on Amazon to download. Every couple months it seems like they have a 50% sale where it's $15.

Last 12 months data on price tracking for TSW
Lots of dips in there. You can set up an alert through CamelCamelCamel as well so when it hits $19.99 or something it will let you know.

Last 5 Price Changes
Date Price
Feb 01, 2013 12:50 AM $29.99
Jan 31, 2013 03:27 AM $17.99
Jan 07, 2013 03:59 AM $29.99
Jan 06, 2013 02:14 AM $17.99
Jan 05, 2013 01:26 PM $29.99

I'm still playing now and then. My love for the setting and story is at war with my dislike of MMO structure. So I'll play until I get bored with the mechanics, take a break...

Ever since I put this down last year, I've been tempted--what seems weekly--to pick it back up. The story and puzzles had such a strong hold for me, but other circumstances or excuses keep holding me back. I really should start playing again if only in bit-sized sessions. It's not like this game asks alot of your time, beyond the puzzles, which are usually very rewarding.

I'll do that, then.

I've had no access to internet for 2 weeks, I plan on getting right back into Secret World at some stage tonight now that it's back up again.

Ha, well that answered that. Going to have to pick this up once it goes on sale. $30 is a bit steep for me at the moment.

Id love to play again I just got tired of doing all the non dungeon stuff by myself.

Finally got to put some time in again this weekend, didn't catch any goodjers around but still had fun. Illuminati tankish build just getting to hellraised instance as I type this.

Garin in game, I also hang in the chat; /chat join GWJ

Really thinking of buying it, sounds like fun, but Don't really have the $30 to spend right now. Hopefully goes on sale soon !

I am still way into the game. But I am more Solo than not and more casual than hard core.

That said, it is the best story telling and game system I have come across in an mmo