You don't fight your own party in single player mode.So what do I start playing after finishing Divinity: Original Sin 2 with Terrik, Dei, and Snuffles?
Divinity: Original Sin 2 again, of course.
Because I always overindulge in whatever I'm doing at the moment until I'm sick of it and can't ever look at it again, apparently.
Anyway, this time I'm doing a tactician mode playthrough, and so far @Dei's gripes ring pretty true. The opponents are not particularly smarter, it's just that they seem to have more grenades and more often a fight will have a "gimmick" like having a fire immunity aura or something, when fire is CLEARLY supposed to be their weakness in vanilla mode.
Also, now that I am not rushed, I'm noticing bugs much more acutely. I swear to god my number of memory slots sometimes changes at random, and furthermore crafting recipes that I know I've learned (specifically, combining potions to make better potions) occasionally disappear from my list. Also, I've noticed things like quest updates may stop showing up for a couple minutes then suddenly they'll all spam the screen at once.
All that aside, I'm doing a lone wolf dual-wield warfare necro with a touch of polymorph, based on what I learned on my previous playthrough. Since Necromancy does physical damage, it benefits from the Warfare "5% damage boost to all physical damage" schtick (as do the polymorph attacks, naturally). I have to split my stat points between STR and INT, but the lone wolf bonus makes that less of an issue.
For my one NPC companion (Lone wolf only lets you have 1 other person in the group, instead of a full group of 4), I spoke to all 5 of the possible candidates in Fort Joy, and even did the first couple steps of some of their quests before dismissing them, and ended up going with Lohse (because of reasons you will never fucking guess that might rhyme with Dead Bear), but the further I get the more I start to kind of wish I'd gone with Sebille because her quest arc - and her personality - seem a lot more interesting. But, what's done is done, I made my choice.
I let Lohse stay with her initial default "Enchantress" build (Hydromancy/Aerothurgy), with Lone Wolf thrown in for the bonus (because might as well), but as the game progressed I found myself having her put almost everything into hydromancy and intelligence... and now she's a fucking scary cannon. On my first playthrough with the others, I was warfare/necro/hydromancy but mostly for the heals... the damage was an afterthought and it kinda showed because of my split build without being a lone wolf. With Lohse putting almost all her points into Hydro and Int, a single medium-radius AE spell is usually enough to completely strip the magic armor off of anyone it hits, which means the followup usually freezes two to three enemies solid. Also, something I didn't realize... points in hydromancy boosts ALL water damage, not just for spells. Gave Lohse a couple water wands to dual wield and she can easily pump out jawdropping damage with those alone. I'm kinda worried about what's gonna happen when I have to face her in the arena, TBH.
Anyway, in the meantime, I'm finding and completing a LOT more quests than we did as a group, and leveling up a LOT earlier, and because there's only 2 people in my party to buy equipment and spells for, I'm rolling in dough. Kind of trivializes a lot of the encounters, TBH. I mean, yeah, the first few battles in the game were really hairy, but by the time I hit level 4 it started to even out... and by the time I was 6 shit was effortless. The big battle against the Chapter 1 boss, Bishop Alexander, was hilariously cake. Now I'm 11 and in chapter 2 and nothing (within level appropriate range, of course) has really stood a chance against me.
It's slightly irritating how often I have to go back to the ship to re-spec out of persuasion into thievery and back, because so much relies on picking locks in this game... but so much ALSO relies on persuasion checks.
You don't fight your own party in single player mode.
GasBandit
Staff member
Also: everybody should put 1 point into aerothurgy just to get teleport. Because it is the most hilarious form of crowd control in the game. Nothing beats teleporting an angry bear to the top of a ladder that it doesn't know how to climb down to get to you.[DOUBLEPOST=1508787223,1508787165][/DOUBLEPOST]
Not even at the very end?
I'm pretty sure that everyone just lets you make the decisions.
GasBandit
Staff member
I think that's because of how we were playing it. It seems to be less important in main quests but there have been several other encounters where I have used strength-based persuasion to scare enemies into shutting up, sitting down, or running away.
Also I got caught with a stolen item once and managed to talk my way out of it.[DOUBLEPOST=1508787383,1508787318][/DOUBLEPOST]
I hope so. I guess I'll find out.
Well.
I've died more times hitting lvl20 as Brick in this game than as all my other three playthroughs combined. He sucks SO BAD when engaging at any sort of distance. When he closes and hits his skill, though, he's amazing. He can out-melee every other enemy, even a Badass Berserker is no problem. I'm sure he would make a halfway decent tank...IF there was anyone else to take advantage of it, that is.
--Patrick
I took Brick to 20 (well, ok, he's 18 currently) and didn't have any problems at all. I've put all my points into the left punchy tree and been using shotguns and combat rifles, hitting berserk when my shield breaks and my health starts to drop (or a badass needs to be punched to death)
I had significantly less trouble with the other three for some reason. My loadout has been Sniper/Launcher, SMG/Rifle, and Shotgun/Blaster Repeater, and I also took three levels in the punchy tree, though I admit I probably haven't been berserking as much as you seem to be.
Things improved in other areas once I figured out how to enable VSync, though.
--Patrick
If you ain't berserking, you ain't Bricking properly
(Unless you're max level and doing master blaster brick)
This has stopped me dead in the original Divinity OS. The UI is so clunky.
I usually run with Soldier/Commando, so for the Halforums game I went with Brick, and my BL2 game, I started as Krieg.
Gods, Krieg is so much fun! SALT THE WOUND! RIP THE FLESH!
Gods, Krieg is so much fun! SALT THE WOUND! RIP THE FLESH!
...only now?
fade
Staff member
South Park: The Stick of Truth
Thanks for the game, Frank. I enjoyed it at the beginning, and the overwhelming number of references to the show are something else. That being said, it gets kind of boring fast. In its favor, combat is surprisingly challenging for a turn-based RPG. Otherwise, it's a lot of walking around solving rather obvious puzzles or just re-treading the same ground.
Thanks for the game, Frank. I enjoyed it at the beginning, and the overwhelming number of references to the show are something else. That being said, it gets kind of boring fast. In its favor, combat is surprisingly challenging for a turn-based RPG. Otherwise, it's a lot of walking around solving rather obvious puzzles or just re-treading the same ground.
GasBandit
Staff member
Divinity: Original Sin 2 -
I'm starting to think my strategy is flawed. Lohse continues to do more and more magic damage - outpacing my physical damage by a lot - but it is entirely situational. Started messing with stormwing voidwoken last night, which have 80% immunity to water and air, and she became the world's heaviest dead weight. Basically she had to just buff me and let tons of AP go to waste until I managed to whittle down someone's physical armor and then set decaying status on them, allowing her to use her heals offensively.
Furthermore, I went this way thinking "ok, I can handle the people with low physical armor, and she can handle the people with low magic armor" but I've found in at least half the fights I'm in, most of the enemies fall into the same armor archetype, leaving a lot of wasted effort when one person or the other doesn't have an ideal target.
So, the upshot is I'm thinking of respeccing Lohse into necromancy - because, while the damage is about half what Hydromancy is putting out, nobody's "resistant" to physical damage, and I think it would help mow down people faster if we're not splitting our damage between magic armor and physical armor. We can double team everybody, which is important when you've only got 2 people in the party instead of 4. And because necromancy makes you heal yourself when you do damage, nobody will need heals. Really, my character has barely ever needed heals at all - just if he's incapacitated for more than one round, which doesn't happen often.
You know, this is a really good RPG. It's got a lore-rich immersive world, it's got good characters and designs and stories and fancy spells and an interesting dynamic... but I can't help thinking that the whole physical/magic armor dichotomy is an irritating step in the wrong direction. To say nothing of the whole source point dynamic. And there's no excuse for spirit vision not being a toggle instead of a 10-round buff. And why does Bless cost a source point when Curse doesn't?
Upshot seems to be, it's a good game, but I still think I liked the first one better. The only real improvement in this one is 4 player co-op instead of 2 player. And I'm pretty sure there's a mod that lets you go 4-player in D:OS1 now.
I'll tell you one thing I don't miss about D:OS1 though - multiplayer conversations that fuck up your build by making you vengeful/forgiving whatever because your answer didn't suit your personality or something.
I'm starting to think my strategy is flawed. Lohse continues to do more and more magic damage - outpacing my physical damage by a lot - but it is entirely situational. Started messing with stormwing voidwoken last night, which have 80% immunity to water and air, and she became the world's heaviest dead weight. Basically she had to just buff me and let tons of AP go to waste until I managed to whittle down someone's physical armor and then set decaying status on them, allowing her to use her heals offensively.
Furthermore, I went this way thinking "ok, I can handle the people with low physical armor, and she can handle the people with low magic armor" but I've found in at least half the fights I'm in, most of the enemies fall into the same armor archetype, leaving a lot of wasted effort when one person or the other doesn't have an ideal target.
So, the upshot is I'm thinking of respeccing Lohse into necromancy - because, while the damage is about half what Hydromancy is putting out, nobody's "resistant" to physical damage, and I think it would help mow down people faster if we're not splitting our damage between magic armor and physical armor. We can double team everybody, which is important when you've only got 2 people in the party instead of 4. And because necromancy makes you heal yourself when you do damage, nobody will need heals. Really, my character has barely ever needed heals at all - just if he's incapacitated for more than one round, which doesn't happen often.
You know, this is a really good RPG. It's got a lore-rich immersive world, it's got good characters and designs and stories and fancy spells and an interesting dynamic... but I can't help thinking that the whole physical/magic armor dichotomy is an irritating step in the wrong direction. To say nothing of the whole source point dynamic. And there's no excuse for spirit vision not being a toggle instead of a 10-round buff. And why does Bless cost a source point when Curse doesn't?
Upshot seems to be, it's a good game, but I still think I liked the first one better. The only real improvement in this one is 4 player co-op instead of 2 player. And I'm pretty sure there's a mod that lets you go 4-player in D:OS1 now.
I'll tell you one thing I don't miss about D:OS1 though - multiplayer conversations that fuck up your build by making you vengeful/forgiving whatever because your answer didn't suit your personality or something.
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I was significantly handicapped while I was lvl14 and going through Sledge's safehouse and had to get past a lvl15 badass raider with a shock shotgun who followed me back to the save point. It was just Berserk and whittle away 20-25% of his HP/die/New-U/die/New-U/die/New-U/die/Berserk finally recharged RRAAARGH another 20% or so HP/die/repeat until said raider was finally dead. More than half of the total deaths on my Brick playthrough happened right there, in that specific encounter. It was very frustrating. But I'm lvl22 now with 500+ HP and 500+ shield and I just punched Skagzilla to death, so things are definitely getting better.
--Patrick
*cough*summoning*cough*
GasBandit
Staff member
That reminds me... the Bone widow is SO BAD now
Seriously. Lohse does 300-350 damage for 2 ap with hydromancer. (At level 11)
I do 150-200 damage for 2 ap with necromancer or warfare.
Bone widow? 90-something. And it only gets 4 ap a round and no magic armor. AND IT TAKES 3 AP TO SUMMON THE SHIT. All it's good for is distracting people to maybe do damage to something that is going to disappear in 3 rounds anyway
All the talk about Civilization made me fire up Civ 5 for the first time in over a year. This time, using the "Winter is Coming" full conversion Game of Thrones mod. I chose to play as Robb Stark. My immediate nieghbors were the Dothraki under Khal Drogo and the Targaryens under Daenerys. Those two have been at war three times so far.
Also, just to make sure you know because I didn't at first, you can score criticals with melee by targeting the head. It's also more dps to constantly do jabs instead of winding up for uppercuts. The only time uppercuts are better are if you are winding up while covering distance
I've already finished that Brick playthrough. I focused on the Tank skills (middle tree) - and there's a skill that boosts your second wind health, so my strategy for dealing with turrets was "run up to them and let them drop me, so I can blast it with my shotgun and pop right back up ready to fight everyone else."
Oh, I noticed. I found that the uppercuts seem to do better against armored opponents (mainly skags) as well. So either they get in under the armor somehow OR else it's purely subjective and I was just noticing the numbers more during the uppercuts.
<searches>
Seems like it was probably subjective. Uppercuts basically do the same DPS as jabs, i.e., 1 uppercut might equal 3 jabs, but then it would also take 3 times as long to throw one. That makes winding the uppercuts during a dash seem like the best strategy, and "jab the head" for everything else.
Also, I think the voice actor must've had a grand time recording the "I am Berserking now" soundtrack. It's so insane.
--Patrick
I have been playing Oxygen Not Included because I need to have my Halloween costume done by Friday so of course I bought another game. I suck at this game, and I've been trying to avoid guides to figure it out myself. It's a good time sink/diversion, which is the exact opposite of what I should be doing.
One thing that worked out tremendously to my advantage in this GoT playthrough is that my first settler was in a space next to three "Salt" resources, a "Marble" resource, sheep, cows, and (once I unlocked the tech) horses. Salt is a very potent resource, adding food, production, gold, and being in high demand as a luxury by other civs.
GasBandit
Staff member
Divinity: Original Sin 2 -
Turns out I didn't need to divert many of Lohse's points to necromancy. Just moving 6 points to Necromancy (leaving TWENTY ONE still in Hydro), she can now learn and cast all the necromancer spells in addition to her previous repertoire - and since necromancy gets a boost from INT, they do as much damage as my own, maybe even a smidge more. All that on top of still doing redonkulous water damage and big heals.
As for myself, I slept with a lizard prostitute.
Turns out I didn't need to divert many of Lohse's points to necromancy. Just moving 6 points to Necromancy (leaving TWENTY ONE still in Hydro), she can now learn and cast all the necromancer spells in addition to her previous repertoire - and since necromancy gets a boost from INT, they do as much damage as my own, maybe even a smidge more. All that on top of still doing redonkulous water damage and big heals.
As for myself, I slept with a lizard prostitute.
Turns out it was a shakedown... I woke up naked with five dwarven thugs wanting to rob me of all my possessions - which were all bundled into a pack just out of my reach, of course.
Well, I told those runts to go fuck themselves. Lucky I got to go first in the initiative order, so I Phoenix-dived for my pack and scrambled to put as much of my armor as I could and still have 1 AP left to cast a protective dome. On my second turn (as I tried with limited success to block bladestrikes with non-pink-and-squishy parts of my appendages), I realized that even though the door to the room was shut and locked with Lohse on the other side of it, we both had teleporter pyramids... so I had her use hers, and she popped into the room and helped cover me (figuratively) while I got dressed and armed.
Once I was, oh man, we mowed those pecks down like grass.
I confronted the prostitute, who then tried to sweet-talk her way out of any consequences. I could tell she wasn't sorry.
So I hacked her in half and ATE HER SOUL. Literally. That's a thing I can do. Her last word before every vestige of her being ceased to exist in all realities was "Gods-dammit!"
Then I took everything of value in the room, exploded all the corpses, set everything on fire, and left.
Well, I told those runts to go fuck themselves. Lucky I got to go first in the initiative order, so I Phoenix-dived for my pack and scrambled to put as much of my armor as I could and still have 1 AP left to cast a protective dome. On my second turn (as I tried with limited success to block bladestrikes with non-pink-and-squishy parts of my appendages), I realized that even though the door to the room was shut and locked with Lohse on the other side of it, we both had teleporter pyramids... so I had her use hers, and she popped into the room and helped cover me (figuratively) while I got dressed and armed.
Once I was, oh man, we mowed those pecks down like grass.
I confronted the prostitute, who then tried to sweet-talk her way out of any consequences. I could tell she wasn't sorry.
So I hacked her in half and ATE HER SOUL. Literally. That's a thing I can do. Her last word before every vestige of her being ceased to exist in all realities was "Gods-dammit!"
Then I took everything of value in the room, exploded all the corpses, set everything on fire, and left.
...soo, more or less your usual Friday evening?
Insert Nick's Prom Night joke here.
So, I uh, procured, WWE 2K18 because I haven't played a WWE game since the PS2.
By the end of the beginning of the first match of the career mode I was yelling at the game for how frustrating, ploddy and terrible it was to play. This is maybe the worst fucking game I've played in years. This shit is unacceptable. I know now to NEVER play these games.
I hate this game. It's the God. Damned. Worst.
By the end of the beginning of the first match of the career mode I was yelling at the game for how frustrating, ploddy and terrible it was to play. This is maybe the worst fucking game I've played in years. This shit is unacceptable. I know now to NEVER play these games.
I hate this game. It's the God. Damned. Worst.
Check out Fire Pro Wrestling World. It looks jank, but it has all of the tools and customization you could want
Yeah, I already have it. It's great, but I was looking for more of the surrounding stuff like you'd expect from a full fledged wrestling game.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK WWE 2k18 though, that shit I think has increased my chances of cancer 11 fold.
Just fuck 2K in general and you'll live a happier life
GasBandit
Staff member
I learned that lesson back in.... I wanna say 2000ish? There was some WWE console game that was absolute shit that turned me off to all those games forever after. Might have been Royal Rumble for the dreamcast, or maybe a PS2 game (I don't remember if I had a PS2 at that point, I didn't get one until you could get them for practically nothing off ebay).