Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Catch-All

With the exception of the Griffin, it sounds like you played the exact same areas I did yesterday, only in reverse. I fought that Chimera, but died the first time because of those Saurians (well, the guy I was escorting died first, then I stopped trying as hard). So second attempt I hung back, aggro'ed the Chimera with arrows, and then took out the Saurians separately.

My favorite so far: having my weapons imbued with ice and using the arrow volley to rain frozen death from above, doing a one-attack kill on sleeping Saurians. I killed roughly 8 that way, which made for an easy.... *counting fingers* ...3,280 experience.

I find it amazing that I accepted the quest to kill 42 rabbits, and now that I'm looking for them I can't find them anywhere. The first time I left the opening hamlet they were all over the place, usually in groups of three or four.

Witchwood is the best place to get rabbits.

So I did a bit of investigation of The Watergod's Altar today, hoping to discover a shortcut to Shadowfort (answer: no). It was a nice little adventure, got to kill a Cyclops, but I hit a sort of dead end. My guess is that there is a quest in that location, but there's a door that needs a round thing put into it (how Resident Evil) and the water level needs to be lowered to access a bunch of locations. So I just turned around and left.

It was awesome, though. Five-fold arrow aimed at the face of a cyclops is a recipe for "at least ONE of these will hit that f*cker's eye".

Yesterday, I did the actual quest at Shadow Fort. It felt very LOTRish - a small party trying to complete a quest by killing small things and avoiding the big things.

Spoiler:

Oh, they brought a cyclops!

Aristophan wrote:

Yesterday, I did the actual quest at Shadow Fort. It felt very LOTRish - a small party trying to complete a quest by killing small things and avoiding the big things.

Spoiler:

Oh, they brought a cyclops!

Just did this one myself. It was a nice series of events for sure. I needed the change of pace after wandering the land for so long.

So I

Spoiler:

Beat the Dragon

and wow I thought I was done. Turns out there's even more!

Man this game is great.

zero - I feel like I should finish Dark Souls or KoA: Reckoning before taking on another fantasy action-RPG. But I did play a little Dark Souls today, for that reason!

I know with the whole 38 Studios thing going down this might sound cold, but f*ck Amalur. This game is better*.

Y'know, I had to escort two people to that damn Shadow Fort, and when I finally decided to go back to the main quest (most of my current quests are either "Kill X Creatures" or escorts to areas I haven't been to yet) that was the one I ended up choosing. For a moment, I was all rage.

I find it interesting, however, that I once was so frightened of tackling things like Cyclops and Chimeras, but now I tackle them regularly.

Tackling two was a bit of a worried moment.

Also: best way to die: raining arrows down upon the battlefield when, suddenly, a ballista to the face knocks me from the fort roof and onto the ground, going from 900 health to 0.

That's a death worthy of the Wilhelm scream.

Aristophan, I gave your guy a ring that boosted some stats, and also left him with a pair of enhanced boots that boost everything but his Magic Defense. I didn't equip it to him, though, so I don't know if you got them or not.

Frederik_S, I equipped your guy with a shield.

Both of your characters have basically become permanent fixtures of my party.

Oh, I discovered something that no one warned about, and that is all your skills learned from one class don't roll over into the next. I was hoping to mix and match Assassin and Strider, but I couldn't take Downpour Volley and most of my abilities with me. So, yeah, screw that. Downpour Volley is probably one of my most constantly used attacks.

Might try out Ranger, but if that class can't use Ensnare then screw it.

*IMHO

ccesarano wrote:

So I did a bit of investigation of The Watergod's Altar today, hoping to discover a shortcut to Shadowfort (answer: no). It was a nice little adventure, got to kill a Cyclops, but I hit a sort of dead end. My guess is that there is a quest in that location, but there's a door that needs a round thing put into it (how Resident Evil) and the water level needs to be lowered to access a bunch of locations. So I just turned around and left.

That's the other presently-a-dead-end I was referring to earlier. Strange as that place was, I'm really fearing what might be on the other side of that door, and what hideous nastiness might be living where that water presently happens to be.

ccesarano wrote:

The Watergod's Altar

There are two quests associated with that location. I picked up that quest in Soren on the board in the main inn. Those two quests took me almost 4 hours to go through. That dungeon is huge! Also; there is no exit on the other side of it.

Yeah, same here. Aristophans and ccesarons pawns are the ones I roam around with a lot, occasionally pulling in a friends pawn helping him out.

Also.. I checked out the #1 ranked pawn in the world the other day and I got a chuckle when I saw that it was a little girl. Very creepy / awesome.

So I did a bit of investigation of The Watergod's Altar today, hoping to discover a shortcut to Shadowfort (answer: no).
Spoiler:

You may find aught of interest if you search the mountain side southwest of Gran Soren.

I'm mostly using Fredrick_s and ccesarano pawns as well - they're my tank and healer! I guess us PS3 folks are stickin' together.

When you look at the screen where you buy and equip new skills, you will sometimes see a vocation symbol on the details window, which means that skill is only for that vocation. I don't think any augments have limitations.

I just picked up necromancy which summons some purple skulls that swirl around my body, and when the enemy gets close they take off and lift them high into the air. And drop them. Goblins are terrified of me

ccesarano wrote:

I'm going to remember this dragon, and I'm going to come back at level 30 or 40 and give him another go and see if I can bust him up.

Level

Spoiler:

41 was enough for me, went through about 20 potent greenwarish.

Interesting equipment mechanic involved with the drakes, too.

Fredrik_S wrote:

There are two quests associated with that location. I picked up that quest in Soren on the board in the main inn. Those two quests took me almost 4 hours to go through. That dungeon is huge! Also; there is no exit on the other side of it.

The above may help illustrate what I was thinking about last night when I finally accepted that I just can't take out two ogres at the same time and went to bed. I'm really loving this game, and I know a lot of you do as well. This is a very specific type of game in my mind - what I wanted was a tough, frantic, PITA action-oriented dungeon crawler teeming with giant monsters and huge locations, and that's exactly what this game does. The more I can think about it, the more I can understand some of the critical write-ups lambasting this as not particularly engaging - yes, it's not an Elder Scrolls game, but then, I don't play Elder Scrolls games for the action, either. No, it doesn't try to draw on complex fabricated mythology like Kingdoms of Amalur, but then, the thing I disliked most about that game (other than the visuals) was that the quests felt generic in light of how much work went into setting up races, history, etc. There's a lot about this game that feels very old-school, just with some more contemporary action mechanics thrown in. Thankfully, those things are implemented quite well.

"Oh no, wandering monsters!" "Egads, I have to walk everywhere!" Hey, sometimes, that's exactly the sort of thing I feel compelled to put up with. I don't have to work hard to get to where I can kill some monsters, I'm going to run into them if I just stray off the road or travel at night. There are times where I like my dungeons sprawling, my daggers gleaming, and my monsters challenging. This game is like a sieve with a Monstrous Manual knockoff coming through it, and I think that's pretty swell.

I would prefer more paths to different locations, but at the same time, I went from being afraid of tackling a Chimera to tackling a Chimera and the Cyclops on the way to Shadow Fort because I can.

Frederik and Aristophan, that's actually awesome that you guys have been keeping up with my pawn. I don't know how the system works, but I've intentionally been messing with equipment and skills before resting at the inn just in case that is when it updates my pawn's data. That way I make sure you guys are frequently getting the most up-to-date information. Hell, this weekend alone I think I got him from level 20 to level 29, and that's been a pretty huge change so far.

Now then, monster strategies. Let us share some.

In particular, Cyclops. I know my pawns have shouted quite a bit about attacking his club-arm, and I've climbed up his back to around his arm pit, allowing me to slash at his arm while his hands grasp for me in futility. However, nothing seems to take his arm out of commition. As such, I only employ this strategy on armored cyclops, and only until they remove their helmet.

Otherwise, I use the five-fold arrow or what not and aim for his face. There's always a good chance one of them will hit his eye. This seems to deal more damage than any other attack of mine, though I frequently need to stop using five-fold and just peck at him with regular arrows until my stamina returns.

The downside is this seems to get him swinging more wildly, whereas hacking at his under-arm gets him distracted by the fact that I'm climbing on him. Aside from the troll in Everfall, I've yet to run into such a creature that will leap in the air just to crush me after landing on their back.

As for Chimera, using the five-fold arrow attack with explosive arrows equipped, plus a decent use of downpour volley, made short work of the goat head before I was even down the first health bar. Usually I hack at the snake first.

ccesarano wrote:

Otherwise, I use the five-fold arrow or what not and aim for his face. There's always a good chance one of them will hit his eye. This seems to deal more damage than any other attack of mine, though I frequently need to stop using five-fold and just peck at him with regular arrows until my stamina returns.

You're going to want to fine-tune those other strategies, then. This afternoon, I met a cyclops who's wearing a helm that protects his eye from arrows and other projectiles. The ladies on my side (I swear, now I know how Dolemite must've felt) helped take him out in due order, but it took forever. There was some chatter about doing something to the helm but I couldn't manage to remove it or break it.

The downside is this seems to get him swinging more wildly, whereas hacking at his under-arm gets him distracted by the fact that I'm climbing on him. Aside from the troll in Everfall, I've yet to run into such a creature that will leap in the air just to crush me after landing on their back.

IIRC, that's an ogre, not a troll. Elsewhere, I caught word of the Everfall ogre/troll/whatever being subject to a bug whereby he almost always falls off the ledge mid-battle. GWJ is the only place I've heard of someone going over the ledge with him, though, let alone surviving.

Which makes sense, we're just better people, here.

Also ogre: my favorite enemy animation in the game so far is when an ogre grabs one of your pawns and runs off with her. If you haven't seen it, it's as though he were a 13-year-old boy snagging the Victoria's Secret catalog and dashing to the toilet. Very distinctive, very funny, and yet knowingly unwholesome.

So, I beat the game. There is something I want to warn people about, but I can't do it without sort of spoiling the structure of the game a bit. That said, I'll be as vague as possible, but still only read on if you don't mind a little bit of spoiler about how the later stages of the game are structured.

Spoiler:

So, the spoiler I have to reveal is that there is a false ending, and then a substantial "post game" before you go for the real ending.

But without telling you that, I can't tell you that as you approach the REAL ending (and you WILL know when you are making the choice that will start the real ending sequence) be sure you've done everything you want to. Once you start the final sequence, you are done, no going back. You finish the game, it auto saves, you load (choose load, not new game -- I've read people who made that mistake and lost all their progress from the first run through the game), and you are in new game plus. So be sure you've finished any quests you care about, got any of the achievements that can only be done during the post game, and bought all the weapons you want to have available for new game plus before you start that final sequence.

So why is this game a 7 and Skyrim is perfect again? This game is amazing. The world building and systems could be terrible. We'll see. But the combat is fun, really fun. Feels very fluid. I'm more interested in the world right off. The world is pretty, the opening in unique and the dragon at the start is insanely more awe-inspiring than the dragon at the beginning of Skyrim. I promise I won't compare the two further. I've only played a few hours of Skyrim and love Bethesda games.

Just saying that right off the bat this game gets some things really right. The dragon was amazing and I'm in. This shot to the top of my list. I'll finish it, then Witcher 2 and then double back to Dark Souls.

DSGamer wrote:

So why is this game a 7 and Skyrim is perfect again?

I don't know. It's aught I can't quite put my finger on.

Spoiler:

Fire! Lend me your kiss!

I think the biggest complaint is no fast travel with the exception of the ferrystones back to the capital. But honestly, with combat this fun, it doesn't matter much. I mean, fighting goblins is different from fighting bandits is different from fighting a chimera is different from fighting a cyclops.

I didn't play Skyrim yet, but let's compare to Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3, where enemy A.I. was "Run at you in slow-motion movements, then whack at you endlessly. Repeat ad nauseum."

Even if I've done a path several times, it is fun to just tear through sh*t, especially at higher levels.

ianunderhill wrote:

You're going to want to fine-tune those other strategies, then. This afternoon, I met a cyclops who's wearing a helm that protects his eye from arrows and other projectiles. The ladies on my side (I swear, now I know how Dolemite must've felt) helped take him out in due order, but it took forever. There was some chatter about doing something to the helm but I couldn't manage to remove it or break it.

As I said, if he has the helm on then I climb up his back and hack at his [strike]squeezin'[/strike] swingin' arm. I noticed at some point during the fight he grabbed at his face and then pulled his own helmet off, which is when I hopped down and began my usual strategy of "f*ck that eye up".

IIRC, that's an ogre, not a troll. Elsewhere, I caught word of the Everfall ogre/troll/whatever being subject to a bug whereby he almost always falls off the ledge mid-battle. GWJ is the only place I've heard of someone going over the ledge with him, though, let alone surviving.

Which makes sense, we're just better people, here.

Also ogre: my favorite enemy animation in the game so far is when an ogre grabs one of your pawns and runs off with her. If you haven't seen it, it's as though he were a 13-year-old boy snagging the Victoria's Secret catalog and dashing to the toilet. Very distinctive, very funny, and yet knowingly unwholesome.

Again, each enemy has so many distinct things that they do, and one of the Pawns mentioned later that they go after females in particular (which is something I must keep in mind considering I'm playing a female character). It just feels like they wanted to make sure each creature has its own personality and style, and started to create so many custom attacks and behaviors. There's so much time and love spent on this game.

God I love it so.

LobsterMobster wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

So why is this game a 7 and Skyrim is perfect again?

I don't know. It's aught I can't quite put my finger on.

Spoiler:

Fire! Lend me your kiss!

They're masterworks all, you can't go wrong.

DSGamer wrote:

the dragon at the start is insanely more awe-inspiring than the dragon at the beginning of Skyrim.

FWIW, I feel the opposite way.

However, I would venture to say, too, that Dragon's Dogma is quite different from Skyrim, but just as awesome.

I really don't understand the Skyrim comparisons; DD feels more like Divinity 2 mashed up with a Monster Hunter game than an Elder Scrolls game.

Yeah, when one of my pawns told me that giants target women above all else I got a distinctly unwholesome feeling.

So I just started reading Escapist's review of Dragon's Dogma, yet another that is all "For everything it does right it does a bunch else wrong", when I came to a conclusion.

A reviewer cannot enjoy Dragon's Dogma because they have to play it on a deadline.

I thought of it when Greg Tito brought up that quests have no indication of just how difficult they are. They don't say something like "Level 15-18" or another hint as to how high in level you should be before taking it. Meanwhile, I've been praising my love that you can go to an area and get totally wiped out and think "Okay, I'll do that later". It sucked that I now have a forever-failed quest in my list of completions because my escort died on a road I simply wasn't strong enough for, but it is nice to have a world that actually feels dangerous again, as well as providing the sense of progress I got when I returned to Corneria at Level 25 in Final Fantasy and made short work of the imps there.

This is not a game to be played on a dead line. It is a game to sit down and just enjoy the experience of. To sit down not with the goal of reaching Level X and achieving this goal and that accomplishment because you want to get things done ASAP. It's about a game where you just lose yourself in the world, fight monsters, and look for reasons to explore and chop some creatures apart.

Which makes it a God awful game to play on a deadline.

I am curious how many quests there are in this game. I was out and about with Aristophans and ccesarons pawns and did a quest which led me into the some catacombs. At the end of it, both of them said "I have learned what to do on this quest" and I believe both of you guys are further along / have done more than me. I also read about Shadow Fort up there ^ and I have not seen that quest yet. Makes me happy that there are so many different stories that can be told by it.

I found a stellar pair of fire enchanted daggers last night which just tore through undead.

One great moment last night was when I was wandering through the forests at night and up ahead I see a giant outline of something monstrously big. All my pawns stopped dead in their tracks and a few of them basically said "wtf is that!?". We all waited until it had lumbered away so we could sneak around it undetected. It was an amazing feeling of being vulnerable and super squishy next to this behemoth of a monster.

Have to say that I am completely loving this game.

I just made it to the capital and I've got to admit, I couldn't leave soon enough. Cities bore me. Talking to NPCs bores me. That compulsion to check each and every last corner for goodies is boring. I want to go kill big monsters.

The city is actually a lot smaller than it seems to be. The slums are just a maze of buildings and people knocking on doors.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I just made it to the capital and I've got to admit, I couldn't leave soon enough.

Hah, I had a similar feeling. I wanted to get in, take care of my business, and then get out into the vast wilderness!

A bit of exploring will reveal the important parts of the city. I didn't bother doing so at first, and I took me until level 18 or so before I bought new equipment or upgraded equipment.

ccesarano wrote:

They're masterworks all, you can't go wrong.

Get out of my head!

Went outside Gran Soren the other day and a flying lion thingy (griffon, I guess?) was having his way with some goblins. I tried killing that bloody thing, but only once did I get it down on the ground. Tips and tricks? I've tried targeting the wings, but the bloody thing just refuses to go down.

Set the wings on fire, either via specialty arrows or fire enchants from your casters. Or a straight up fire spell, if you can hit with it.