Drakensang: The Dark Eye

Some folks say that combat is all around too easy, but that fight was a doozie. Took me about three or four tries, after I had reloaded a couple of times after complete failure, to take them down.

Some general hints/help: Your attribute buffs are random... make sure you're getting +3 after a cast and not +1 to whichever attribute you want to buff. Also, don't be terribly afraid to run away after you take one down... they don't heal their wounds and their health regenerates slower than your party's will if you cast some heals, so you'll have an advantage going after them. Make sure you combat tactics are up to date as well... though you won't be able to train from the zealots you might be able to return to Ferdok... shield use 2 and master parry are huge for big rumbling fights like this. Fifteen attacks where your tanks can't be hit is pretty great... considering that ol'beardless got wafflestomped the first couple of times I tried this fight as well.

Lightning Find Thee and Plumbumbarum also work really well in this fight, but can be a bit of a pain to micromanage due to the sort durations. Since I don't know your character class or party make-up, it's a little difficult to recommend specific things, but the human fire spell also works great here. If you can cycle the two debuffs with Ignaxtius... or whatever the hell it's called... between two casters they drop fast and hit like wee girls.

If none of that helps... you can two shot the conquistadors dudes with the two arrow ability and summoned pig combo (Gwendala), then run away till they catch the end of their tether and reset, minus one dude. It's cheap, but it works.

One last thing... you can't parry attacks from behind you. Now, there's no way in hell you're going to get the enemies to round up the way you want them, but it's something to be aware of when fighting.

It is also possible to talk yourself out of that fight.

It is also possible to talk yourself out of that fight.

Fer serious!?! What's the skill requirement? I'm playing as a charlatan and I kind of feel like I've failed my archetype now, since I just went in there and knocked heads. Guess it's an auto-pass or auto-failure on the skill check, since I never got the option to talk my way out... or the cauldron fight either.

Oh... it's also worthwhile to visit Knowall before that quest, he has one of his own that gives a nice ring.

Well, when I walked up to them, ... hmm... I should spoiler this.

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]
When I walked up to them, they were surrounding the frog. One 'priest' type and 4 or so brawn types. They were not hostile. I talked to the 'priest' guy and convinced him that the head inquisitor wants to talk to him back at the camp. It took some finagling but he eventually saw it my way and skedaddled on his way talking his armoured posse with him. I did kill the 4 guys in the middle of the lakes killing frogs though. And for that I got chastised by the witches at the end of the whole ordeal.
[/color]

MoonDragon wrote:

Well, when I walked up to them, ... hmm... I should spoiler this.

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]
When I walked up to them, they were surrounding the frog. One 'priest' type and 4 or so brawn types. They were not hostile. I talked to the 'priest' guy and convinced him that the head inquisitor wants to talk to him back at the camp. It took some finagling but he eventually saw it my way and skedaddled on his way talking his armoured posse with him. I did kill the 4 guys in the middle of the lakes killing frogs though. And for that I got chastised by the witches at the end of the whole ordeal.
[/color]

spoiler wrote:

[color=white] Yeah, to be able to do this you need to find the Praiot camp just south of the brigand camps that's being attacked by forest spirits. You can only do this if you haven't already pissed off the Praiots as i don't think you get to talk to him after that. Later on, when you meet the guy at the Toad's stump he recognises you and you can talk your way out of it as he doesn't trust the Head Inquisitor..... though if you didn't rescue him at the camp then he won't be there to recognise you.

As for the actual way i convinced him to leave the toad alone, it was different for me than for moondragon. I convinced him that the witches weren't bad and he agreed that he didn't know why the Praiots were wasting their time here. (I had already killed everyone in the camp and i don't remember the option to tell him that someone wanted to talk to him but it may have been there)

I was okay on all the fights except the last one in the area and the one encounter in the little village/estate thingy after turning the guy into a toad.... they locked the gates and i really struggled to get through that one even though there were more guys to fight when protecting the trees for some reason that was easier.[/color]

Duoae wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:

Well, when I walked up to them, ... hmm... I should spoiler this.

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]
When I walked up to them, they were surrounding the frog. One 'priest' type and 4 or so brawn types. They were not hostile. I talked to the 'priest' guy and convinced him that the head inquisitor wants to talk to him back at the camp. It took some finagling but he eventually saw it my way and skedaddled on his way talking his armoured posse with him. I did kill the 4 guys in the middle of the lakes killing frogs though. And for that I got chastised by the witches at the end of the whole ordeal.
[/color]

spoiler wrote:

[color=white] Yeah, to be able to do this you need to find the Praiot camp just south of the brigand camps that's being attacked by forest spirits. You can only do this if you haven't already pissed off the Praiots as i don't think you get to talk to him after that. Later on, when you meet the guy at the Toad's stump he recognises you and you can talk your way out of it as he doesn't trust the Head Inquisitor..... though if you didn't rescue him at the camp then he won't be there to recognise you.

As for the actual way i convinced him to leave the toad alone, it was different for me than for moondragon. I convinced him that the witches weren't bad and he agreed that he didn't know why the Praiots were wasting their time here. (I had already killed everyone in the camp and i don't remember the option to tell him that someone wanted to talk to him but it may have been there)

I was okay on all the fights except the last one in the area and the one encounter in the little village/estate thingy after turning the guy into a toad.... they locked the gates and i really struggled to get through that one even though there were more guys to fight when protecting the trees for some reason that was easier.[/color]

See I didn't get either of those...

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]...probably because I helped the nature spirits slaughter everyone in that camp.[/color]

Interesting how there are consequences to your actions. And the coolest part is that, if I hadn't posted here, I would never have known that there were consequences, unlike The Witcher, which kind of rubs your nose in it a little. This game didn't seem all that deep, but I guess i should re-appraise my opinion.

I currently have my character (a Warrior), the Amazon, Gladys, and the Elven spell-caster/archer. I should probably have brought Forgrimm along, maybe I'll high-tail it back to Ferdock and better prepare for the end of this section...

Nightmare wrote:

I currently have my character (a Warrior), the Amazon, Gladys, and the Elven spell-caster/archer. I should probably have brought Forgrimm along, maybe I'll high-tail it back to Ferdock and better prepare for the end of this section...

Is there a way to "quick-swap" your party? I failed the stealthy witch quest part because some of my characters aren't very good at sneaking but i read somewhere else (another forum while doing a google search) that he switched down to 2 characters for that part. I know you can talk to someone and ask them to go back to the house whenever you want but can you bring someone to you when you're elsewhere? That'd be really handy.

That's funny Duoae...

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]...'cause I just killed that whole Praiot camp in the beginning of my time in the area. I went in and talked to them. I already had a quest to steal their wine. Found a lady that wanted me to kill the witch. Took her quest. Then tried getting the item I was supposed to get from the dead witch by talking to the witch, but wouldn't let me ask her for it. Then the Praiot lady showed up and accused me of god knows what. Killed her and her lackeys. But at this point the whole Praiot camp went red to me. So I lured them out one at the time and put the smackdown on them. This was before I did anything else in the area. So my camp was cleared already and I was aligned with the witches.

Yet the guy still talked to me and I could convince him to go back to Praiot camp and leave the toad alone.[/color]

I made the mistake of rolling an Amazon character, and then finding the first NPC to join my group was... another amazon. Bah. Gonna restart but damn if I can choose between Battlemage (I read they can learn healing spells, plus can do ok in melee with an axe), a Healer (I read you can essentially make them into tank-mages with the right talent points), a Charlatan (be a jack of all trades), or a Fighter, plus I like Dwarves, so... Not a good situation for an alt-o-phile like myself.

MoonDragon wrote:

That's funny Duoae...

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]...'cause I just killed that whole Praiot camp in the beginning of my time in the area. I went in and talked to them. I already had a quest to steal their wine. Found a lady that wanted me to kill the witch. Took her quest. Then tried getting the item I was supposed to get from the dead witch by talking to the witch, but wouldn't let me ask her for it. Then the Praiot lady showed up and accused me of god knows what. Killed her and her lackeys. But at this point the whole Praiot camp went red to me. So I lured them out one at the time and put the smackdown on them. This was before I did anything else in the area. So my camp was cleared already and I was aligned with the witches.

Yet the guy still talked to me and I could convince him to go back to Praiot camp and leave the toad alone.[/color]

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]I don't think the guy is in the main camp by the road, I think there's another camp to the north but still on the south side of the river (not the one you run across when trying to get the witch's pot back). The main camp has the High Inquisitor in it and a bunch of dudes, this one just had one priest guy and two or three low level goons in it. I *THINK* those were separate camps, although when I helped the nature spirits kill everyone, I was coming from the north. I'd have to look at my map to be certain...[/color]

MoonDragon wrote:

That's funny Duoae...

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]...'cause I just killed that whole Praiot camp in the beginning of my time in the area. I went in and talked to them. I already had a quest to steal their wine. Found a lady that wanted me to kill the witch. Took her quest. Then tried getting the item I was supposed to get from the dead witch by talking to the witch, but wouldn't let me ask her for it. Then the Praiot lady showed up and accused me of god knows what. Killed her and her lackeys. But at this point the whole Praiot camp went red to me. So I lured them out one at the time and put the smackdown on them. This was before I did anything else in the area. So my camp was cleared already and I was aligned with the witches.

Yet the guy still talked to me and I could convince him to go back to Praiot camp and leave the toad alone.[/color]

Yeah, i used the same tactic on the main camp and in fact went through the whole same process as you but i didn't like it. So i started again:

spoiler wrote:

[color=white] I found it weird that you couldn't get the owl skull from her by talking to her but since later on it became apparent why you couldn't just give it away to the praiots i felt like there could have been some explanation or perhaps another quest further down the road or something to get it back.
Eventually i did a google search to see if anyone had been able to get the skull for the praiot lady and that's when i discovered that you could take the quest to kill the witch but not act on it. Taking the quest, for some reason, allows you to enter the camp.... which is a bit thin.[/color]

Yes, that's exactly what I did.

MoonDragon wrote:

Yes, that's exactly what I did.

Inconceivable...

You know, I was absolutely fine with Drakensang being an on the rails, most generic of generic rpg adventures... but hearing about all this, even if I did take the 'smashy smashy' option is really cool to hear. For the twenty bucks or whatever I paid on steam, this has been a neat little gem. Unpolished and rough for sure, but it's surprised me in quality, which is really rare for video games these days.

Gah! I think i've borked my team.

I just got to where you first encounter all the orcs and they're owning me! I just can't deal out enough damage to take down the big squads of over 4 (when there's like 3 or 4 archers and 3-4 melee). My character is a Charlatan and in my team i have the amazon, the charlatan and the thief because i liked having the melee to fall back on when running low on magic.... however, i don't cast the healing spells fast enough and the amount of oneberries it takes to make enough potions to keep me going from one fight to the next is insurmountable.

I tried going in with a spellcaster instead of the second charlatan as i know spells can do a lot of damage but the enemy AI runs to engage every party member - it's impossible to stop them from attacking and killing my stupidly weak spellcaster within a few hits (and of course he/she has to stand still to cast a spell but willl still get hit whilst running away)...

Does anyone have any tips for dealing with the orcs?

[edit] I should point out that i'm using rings, amulets for dex, agility and constitution bonuses, spells for increasing strength and the fastness of body before battle. I haven't found another shield spell as yet but if there's one i've missed i could really do with knowing where it is....

Seems you have a lot of 'weak' characters in your group. The types that are supposed to do a lot of dodging and parrying. Make sure their dexterity is maxed out. Make sure they all have a shield to protect against archers and an extra parry. Alternatively get yourself a proper tank. Classes that have pets are very helpful too as the pet will keep at least one of the baddies occupied for a while. Always concentrate your fight on a single enemy at the time. When the fight starts, shoot off all your ranged specials on one character. If you take him down before you even engage melee, you have one less guy to worry about. I always front load my damage. Blow all my specials and such as soon as I can, concentrated on as few targets as possible.

Okay, now you guys are starting to make me no longer interested in trying out this game with all this talk about the ability to choose the "wrong" skills and not realizing it until hours later. Maybe I'll wait for a few well-written FAQs to appear before tackling it.

There is no wrong skills. It's a party based game. If you pick 4 'thieves' for your party instead of a well balanced group, it'll be a bit more difficult in parts. Doesn't mean you picked wrong. Besides, you can always go back to your house and pick a different team.

The problem i'm having Moondragon is that when i bring in another character - say the elf healer/pet woman she dies because there's no way to draw fire away from her and it takes too long for her to cast a spell. The amazon is pretty much a tank the way i've got her set up and Dranor is my traps guy (who i need for this mission) and i like having two healers in the squad... both my character and the charlatan woman (forgot her name as well) have healing, sleep, petrification etc. as well as the buffs which rounds out the squad quite nicely... the only problem i ever have is when there are groups of 6+ enemies when i can't take enough of them down before the weak characters who get their spells blocked and such by being attacked become useless.

So, instead of having 2 healers/buffers, have 1 healer/buffer and one smackdown tank. The tank can take a beating and take down an enemy or two while getting healed by a healer.

Just a suggestion though.

MoonDragon wrote:

So, instead of having 2 healers/buffers, have 1 healer/buffer and one smackdown tank. The tank can take a beating and take down an enemy or two while getting healed by a healer.

Just a suggestion though.

I don't think you're understanding me. I've used alternate groupings from the people i've set up:

My amazon takes and deals as much damage as the dwarf - both are only good for fighting during a fight (though amazon is good with harvesting and healing with bandages etc).
My character is a decent healer/spellcaster and fighter.
Other charlatan is a decent healer/fighter.
Male Thief is a decent fighter and trapper
Elf woman is a good healer/mage but sucks with hitpoints and defence.
Jost mage guy is again pretty crap with HP and def.

I think that's everyone i've got thus far.
My only choice is to have two tanks and suffer the consequences of having one healer - which is bad because the healers are usually the first to die in a battle (why there are no resurrection spells i don't know). But the mages are useless because they only get to fire off one or two spells before they start getting interrupted.

The two tanks can't be healed by the healer because the healer is dead... especially when they're getting knocked down all the time and thus the enemies switch to the support characters even more then.

Like i said... i think i've borked my people with how i've spent their experience points. I just wish the game had given me an indication sooner... i mean i've gotten through 95% of the fights thus far without much incident but these orcs are just caning me. The sleep and petrification spells just aren't very reliable and often don't work and the healing spells don't heal enough or seem to reduce in casting time with levelling.
I don't want to give up on the game but it's getting frustrating when i had no idea how to know how to spend the points.

For an example i'm level 9 across the board - how many hitpoints should i be dealing? How many vitality points and mana should i have? You say maxed out dex? Do you mean you got them to 19? I just haven't had that much exp to get the dodge/shield skills etc and get them to level 19 while also levelling the weapons/magic and skill stats.

The thing i dislike most about the game (apart from the stupid lengths of time for things like picking locks and harvesting etc) is that i've been guessing as to what i should be leveling and by how much throughout the whole game. I levelled up my speech stats thinking that they would be very useful but i've no idea whether the level 15 (or whatever it is) that i'm at has been any more useful than leaving the skill at level 12 because there's little feedback from the game.

[edit] I managed to get through the bit i was stuck on - more through luck than anything else i think (my petrification spell worked a treat on one of the enemies for a good 60 seconds and i managed to get 2 sets of lightning and fire spells off before my support characters bit the bullet).

[edit2] It also turns out that i could have snuck around them on a secret path through the mountain rock - i just didn't see it. Bah!

kuddles wrote:

Okay, now you guys are starting to make me no longer interested in trying out this game with all this talk about the ability to choose the "wrong" skills and not realizing it until hours later. Maybe I'll wait for a few well-written FAQs to appear before tackling it.

At the risk of double posting myself: Pay no attention to my rantings. It was the first time i got to a ridiculously (for my characters) hard part of the game. Beating that (and apparently there was a way to avoid the encounter altogether) and moving forward i've had no more problems. It just seems that there was a huge difficulty spike because i wasn't used to fighting against a large group of enemies and i had to learn how to increase my odds of winning. Overall, the game is very well structured and paced and while i don't feel confident in where i'm putting my skill/exp points all the time, my choices haven't really impacted me as yet.

Fine, you jerks. I've been hankering for an Infinity Engine type of game for a while, and this looks like the closest thing since games like The Broken Hourglass still don't seem any closer to release, plus it's got some nice production values to boot.

kuddles wrote:

Fine, you jerks. I've been hankering for an Infinity Engine type of game for a while, and this looks like the closest thing since games like The Broken Hourglass still don't seem any closer to release, plus it's got some nice production values to boot.

It's a good game. There's a lot going on under the hood to think about so expect a learning curve while you figure out the system. In particular read spell descriptions carefully. For example some spells are limited by level so it's best not to dump too many talent points into them up front.

Also the opening area is not an indicator of the game's overall quality but does get you used to most of the mechanics, so be thorough.

I'm not sure if I ranted about it before, but the only truly annoying thing about this game, for me, were buffs. Their duration, their randomness, their casting length. Why on earth do I have to recast my buffs every 5 minutes? What possible game/fun benefit is there to having my buffs expire every 5 minutes? How is it enhancing gameplay? And even then, when they expire and I recast them, why on earth do I have to keep recasting them until I get a dice roll that is more in line with the amount of skill points I put into the buff skill? I spent 15 points on the stupid skill. Why is it casting a spell at level 3? Just so I can stand there and keep recasting it until I roll 11+? *sigh*

MoonDragon wrote:

I'm not sure if I ranted about it before, but the only truly annoying thing about this game, for me, were buffs. Their duration, their randomness, their casting length. Why on earth do I have to recast my buffs every 5 minutes? What possible game/fun benefit is there to having my buffs expire every 5 minutes? How is it enhancing gameplay? And even then, when they expire and I recast them, why on earth do I have to keep recasting them until I get a dice roll that is more in line with the amount of skill points I put into the buff skill? I spent 15 points on the stupid skill. Why is it casting a spell at level 3? Just so I can stand there and keep recasting it until I roll 11+? *sigh*

This won't fix the random roll but you can set the buff duration this way (like the run speed fix it takes a bit of work):

1. Download this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqli...
2. Run the SQL browser and open your static.db4 file in drakensang/export/db (in whatever folder your DA game is in - you may want to make a copy)
3. Click the browse Data Tab and in the Table field next to the hourglass find _Template_Zauber.
If you look at the leftmost column all the "Attributio" spells are buffs. There are more, too but I don't have the time now to go through every single one.
4. Scroll to the right and find the "ZaDuration" column. Double click the cell for the rows you want to change and enter your time in seconds. Click Apply for each one you do.
5. Click the Save icon at the top when you're done.

Here you can also muck about with the spell ranges and some other things. It's a bit tricky because some of the spell effects and modifiers are behind the scenes.
If you really want to experiment you can match up the spell descriptions with the German names by opening up locale.db4 and using Browse Data. The spell descriptions are all in rows 13375 - 13500 or so. You can match up the spell descriptions with the names that way and mess around with range, cost and duration... but be careful... the values that are affected by modifiers are a bit aren't as straightforward as the "Attributio" durations.

Thanks, Big. I'll look into it if I ever decide to do another playthrough.

MoonDragon wrote:

Thanks, Big. I'll look into it if I ever decide to do another playthrough.

Unfortunately for you I only figured this out today :p

I think I'm going to start over after reading some more information about how the system actually works. I'm not a min/max sort of player, but I have made some not-so-great decisions in how my party is put together. I'll save my current game and if I find re-play to be too much of a chore, I'll revert back and try to make it through. I probably should have started over after playing a bit: I usually do this for most other RPGs, I guess I got lulled into a false sense of security by the relative ease of the early combat.

I think if anyone is going to play this game, you may want to check out this FAQ as it explains in some detail how the game system works and has some advice on weapons and skills.

So I started over, was having an easier time through the Dark Forest tutorial area when the game crashed on me. I'm taking a break on it for a bit...