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  • Serpent in the Staglands – Endgame

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Having now finished the game I’m left somewhat conflicted.

    Ultimately it feels incomplete, with the final parts of the main quest seeming forced and unnaturally sparse. The Wandering Lady shrine is so expansive, while Lev is a burned husk where you can’t even deliver the spices you got in with (the entire interaction with Mya in fact feels like a placeholder), the logging yard is just an empty expanse filled with enemies, and Ista Cale is populated by no-name dock workers. It’s also annoying you can’t seem to do anything with Corem’s Shipping Guild or the Rheamus Farm area.

    At the end I was level 13 (having just leveled-up following the final battle) after clearing what I believe are all the possible areas to clear. Arcane Attack ended up being a fantastic spell for physical attackers, much better than focusing on Strength and particularly amusing when combined with Strafe, while Searing Light was the only direct damage spell worth actually putting points in. I also had over 10k money because there’s little worth buying beyond the custom armor; the equipment variety is sorely lacking.

    Unfortunately I got the bad ending, since warning the “natives” to not trust the Consil apparently means nothing and getting the Lele to leave peacefully somehow makes you responsible for massacring an entire village. This ending seems to be bugged, as during the final battle I couldn’t actually control the PC during it besides casting spells on myself and had to rely on the auto-attack AI to eventually kill everyone (caster MC). Not sure if I want to replay it to get the good ending (there’s a lot of empty space to traverse) or just shrug and go with this one for the upcoming expansion.

    Some other things to take note of:
    – Avoid using any sort of multi-attack ability around neutrals.
    – Most NPC pickpocket inventories appear to be completely randomized.
    – Don’t leave the Logging Camp until you have the Manor Key.
    – Orf’s Bridge Consil contains the best dodge-focused armor.
    – Rumin Consil contains the otherwise best armor.
    – You can copy/paste text in the Incantation Book.
    – Attack Speed 0 makes you unstoppable.
    – Wolf Morph, Wolf Claws 8+ & Amplify 8+ with a Hunter Whip works well.

    Continue reading → Post ID 2449

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  • Serpent in the Staglands – Initial Impressions

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    At this point, being at level 4 after having cleared the first set of areas, this game reminds me most of the first Baldur’s Gate. You start with basically nothing, most things can easily kill you, and the mechanics can be opaque. Visually speaking it looks pretty good (which is amazing considering that the native resolution is 320×240) while the gameplay is a more mixed experience.

    Early on at least, magic is not a viable damage dealer. So encounters come down to either baiting/kiting enemies away from their friends to beat them down 5-on-1, or making use of spells like Fearful Light and Festering Ooze to disable parts of otherwise unavoidable group attacks. You never, ever want to get into a ‘fair’ fight… because you will lose. Offsetting the deadly encounters is the ability to fully heal your party essentially at will outside of combat; there’s no limit to how much magic you can use, so just spam-cast the basic healing spell.

    Character progression is both simple and complicated. On level-up characters get 2 Attribute Points (used to raise attributes) and 2 Skill Points (used to raise skills, spells, and aptitudes). The attributes are relatively straight-forward (though Dexterity not affecting dodge is bizarre), the skills/spells/aptitudes however are far trickier. Many spells do not improve much at all at higher levels, you can only have 3 skills active at a time, and some aptitudes can become incredibly powerful indirectly (if you have the right tools). So it’s quite difficult to choose what to advance in and extremely easy to end up wasting points.

    Then you have weird ‘ease-of-use’ contrasts like being able to create infinite ranged ammo with a Linguistic Incantation, but the ammo has to be dropped on the ground first. Or new incantations being automatically written down as your Linguistics skill increases, but not having anything automatically marked on your world map or journal.

    Some starting things:
    – Create two additional Avatars at the start.
    – One of them should be a Drow Frost Jackal for the item.
    – Avoid fighting more than one enemy at a time.
    – While the game is paused, healing items cannot be used in battle.
    – If you use Woodwise on yourself, you can detect traps.
    – Parasitic Orb is required to unlock Fairy Rings.
    – Read everything, nothing is written down for you.
    – Don’t sell keys, drop them on the ground instead.
    – Merchant inventories are limited and extra items disappear.
    – Set traps will disappear if you save/reload.
    – If you only kill part of an enemy group, saving/reloading will respawn them.
    – Wands are very good, and anyone who can cast spells should have one.
    – Whether it’s day or night affects which encounters you’ll find.
    – Day/night can be changed at will with Linguistics 4.
    – GOG Galaxy installs the patch wrong, you have to move the contents of the 32/64 folder into the main directory.

    ‘Secret’ Linguistic Incantations:
    – “Davi Bone(s)” to turn a bone or bones into healing items.
    – “Shoar [Gem] Chip” to turn gem chips into whole gems.
    – “Grafitus [Ammo]” to refill any stack of ammo to 100.
    – The items above have to be dropped on the ground.
    – “Nufri [Ruin Name]” to reveal some kind of secret.
    – These are provided in the out-of-game Erlein’s Handbook.

    Spells to consider raising:
    – Blood Cocoon (works faster)
    – Festering Ooze (increased radius/duration)
    – Heat Metal (so it does damage)
    – Feverish Haze (works faster)
    – Cat Poly (up to 3dx dodge chance)
    – Wolf Poly (up to 5d6 physical hit chance)
    – Nauseate (works faster)
    – Strangling Vines (up to 5d6 dodge penalty)
    – Shimmering Scales (up to 3d17 AC and spell resistance)
    – Ethereal Weapon (up to 6d8 damage and 3dx hit chance)
    – Siphon Poison (works faster)
    – Searing Light (up to 5d7+15 damage and 12 radius)
    – Zana Morph (increased duration and up to 5d6 magic hit chance)

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  • Rebel Galaxy

    Posted on by Offkorn 1 Comment

    Calling Rebel Galaxy an RPG is stretching things a bit. There aren’t any skills to progress in, and dialog choices amount to some minor plotline options (whether you want to side with the militia or pirates, whether you want to help someone or just blow them up) and the ability to threaten or capitulate to pirates instead of fighting them.

    Let’s get the bad out of the way first:

    • All the systems are identical, with the only differences being what level of equipment you can purchase and which aliens may show up.
    • Progression is hilariously broken. Level 5/6 equipment (6 is max) and the best ships are available essentially as soon as you leave the first system.
    • All enemies fight pretty much the same way.
    • Mission-specific enemies often just pop into existence out of nowhere.
    • There’s not much in the way of ship customization; weapon, armor, and engine options are all pretty limited and there’s no cosmetic customization at all.
    • Faction differences are minor bordering on non-existent.
    • Mining is a complete waste of time (would be better if what the pulse detects could be customized).

    That’s a lot of bad, so what’s good about it? Um… well… it’s kind of fun to just unload rapid fire cannon blasts into the sides of dreadnaughts and watch them explode. And there’s something viscerally satisfying about running blockades and buying low/selling high to make a few million credits with basically no effort (buying salt for 2k-8k and selling it one system over for 30-40k is surprising entertaining).

    Some things to know if you plan to play this:

    • Upgrade your shields before anything else.
    • The Cargo Scanner module that marks which ships are carrying something will save you a ton of time hunting for alien weaponry.
    • The ‘system average’ column on the trading screen is the average price across all systems.
    • The Merchant Guild is the easiest way by far to make money and sells the best cargo modules.
    • The Mercenary Guild missions can send you against any other faction (you never know which until you get to the location).
    • Becoming neutral with the Red Devils gives you access to Aegis Shields, Smuggler’s Holds, and a couple ships including the Mercenary Guild’s Minotaur.

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  • Agarest War Zero

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    While originally I had no intention of ever playing this game, when I went to try out the PC version of Agarest 2 I found that you could import a Zero save to get some free items.

    Since the GOG version of the game does not appear to have access to any of the DLC (and I obviously can’t import a PS3 save file) getting a Zero clear save appeared to be the only way to cut down on the early grinding. Which gave me an excuse to stop ignoring it.

    Honestly I wish I kept ignoring it.

    While it does show you exactly what the characters in Agarest 2 were talking about during the artifact and Chaos/Summerill conversations (and you get to see an early version of Eva) it turns out that nothing of note was omitted from those conversations. When you combine that with the large amount of required grinding and ‘unwinnable’ battles that you’re supposed to lose… well, there really ends up being no reason whatsoever to play it.

    I’ll just leave these here though in case anybody else wants to see for themselves:

    Cheat Engine Table (GOG Version)
    True End Post-Game Save (GOG Version)

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  • Tyranny – Conclusion

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Played through it three more times; once siding with the Disfavored, once siding with the Rebels, and once Independent (betraying the Disfavored at the start of Act 2).

    Your choices matter to an extent, but that extent is largely what areas/sidequests you gain access to and how many enemies you have to kill. Maps and main quests generally stay the same regardless of what path you take, with mainly just what opponents you may face changing or whether there’s a possibility of a peaceful solution. Sometimes you get to see a particular quest from different angles though, with the Act 1 assault on the Citadel and the Act 2 Brotherhood assault on Lethian’s Crossing having the most variety.

    Out of the four the Disfavored path seems the most natural. The Chorus side has a lot of railroading, and both the Rebel and Independent options have a lot of contrivance (with the Rebels having their fair share of railroading as well). That said, the Rebels have the most fleshed-out third Act and the Independents are the only ones that get to visit all four of the main areas. So, ultimately, I end up having to endorse betraying the Disfavored/Chorus alliance the first chance you get in Act 2. Why Act 2? So you can grab the quests and items from their base locations which would otherwise be inaccessible.

    For difficulty I would suggest playing on Normal. Story mode is so easy it makes leveling and finding loot practically worthless, and Hard just makes the enemy do annoying things like deliberately break engagement to chase after your ranged attackers.

    As far as bugs go I didn’t run into anything particularly game-breaking, the biggest one being that the court summons you get about halfway through Act 2 to update Tunon on your progress regarding the Chorus/Disfavored paths does not trigger on the Rebel/Independent paths (when you show up in Act 3 he gains Wrath and berates you for not showing up to the summons that never triggered). More minor ones would be Spire Library/Forge progress not progressing until you’ve visited Lethian’s Crossing, and abilities getting stuck in the ‘on’ position if an enemy dies at the wrong time (this only rarely happened when Story difficulty and Fast Mode were activated at the same time; switching to a weapon set that wouldn’t work with the ability fixed it).

    Combat-wise Lore is the name of the game. Magic is so good here that I ended up having flashbacks to Dragon Age: Origins. So you’ll want to build the Infirmary as soon as possible to get access to the master Lore trainer and pick up the Selfless Magic Sigil. You’ll then likely want both Lantry and Eb, with their Lore-teaching skills learned, in your party at all times. At that point just fill up your slots with disabling spells and cast them as much as possible to watch the experience counter surge (I made it halfway to level 22 on the Independent run).

    As far as equipment goes there’s not really any reason whatsoever to wear heavy armor in your non-chest slots. The armor boost from those slots is so small that it’s easily outweighed by the accuracy/precision/deflection/recovery boost light armor gives. Concerning weapons, either 2-handed or unarmed is the way to go for melee thanks to the Material Force class of spells. The higher your base damage the more bonus damage they’ll give you, and with 2-handers you may eventually find yourself doing 300-400 damage on a critical hit and one-shotting Disfavored guards.

    Lastly, I’ll close this with some area accessibility and spell information. Note that I only started recording Sigil locations on the last playthrough, so you may find some in easier to reach places depending on your alliance situation.

    ——————————————————————
    Area Accessibility
    ——————————————————————

    Chorus
    – Lethian’s Crossing or Burning Library
    – Library/Crossing or Blade Grave
    – Stone Sea

    Disfavored
    – Blade Grave
    – Crossing or Library
    – Stone Sea

    Rebel
    – Crossing
    – Blade Grave or Stone Sea
    – Blade Grave or Stone Sea/Library

    Independent (Betray Disfavored)
    – Blade Grave
    – Burning Library
    – Crossing or Stone Sea
    – Stone Sea or Crossing

    Independent (Betray Chorus)
    – Same as above?

    ——————————————————————
    Notable Sigils
    ——————————————————————

    ——————————————–
    Expressions
    ——————————————–

    Guarded Form (Disfavored Camp, Merchant Sterling Hagnon)
    The Illusion and Force versions are powerful support spells.

    Chaotic Decent (Twin Rivers Oldwalls Depths, Lantry Lore Spot)
    When combined with Focused Rain you get a brutal multi-hit spell.

    Material Force (Mountain Spire, Merchant Revos)
    Great for 2-handers or, with the Lightning version, characters with high critical hit rates.

    Influential Domain (Burning Library Lower Ruins, 65 Lore Spot)
    The Fire and Frost versions cause some pretty great debuffs, and the Life version is a solid support spell.

    Proximate Action (Edgering Ruins, 39 Subterfuge Locked Chest)
    Has a couple niche uses.

    ——————————————–
    Basic Accents
    ——————————————–

    Bounding Bolts II (Howling Rock, Upper-Right Hidden Cache)
    Strength IV (Twin Rivers Oldwalls Brotherhood Camp, Lantry Lore Spot)
    Timeless Form III (West Blade Grave Oldwalls, Lantry Lore Spot)
    Cyclical Energies III (Twin Rivers Oldwalls Depths, Lantry Lore Spot)
    Precise Action IV (Spire Library, Merchant)
    Limitless Boundaries III (Spire Library, Merchant)

    ——————————————–
    Special Accents
    ——————————————–

    Selfless Magic (Spire Infirmary, Loot)
    Drastically increases the power and duration of a spell in exchange for not being able to cast it on yourself.

    Pride Magic (Gulfglow Runic Hall, Hidden Cache)
    Drastically increases the power and duration of a spell in exchange for only being able to cast it on yourself.

    Focused Rain (Spire Library, Merchant)
    Massively increases the power of Chaotic Decent spells.

    Stunning (Central Blade Grave Oldwalls, Lantry Lore Spot Beyond Lethian’s Crossing Torchlock)
    Adds the Stun affliction to Lightning spells.

    Volcanic Weapon (Lethian’s Crossing, Merchant Biotus)
    Causes Material Force enhanced attacks to launch huge lines of flame every hit.

    Killing Blows (Spire Library Research Scroll, Twin Rivers Oldwalls Depths)
    Modifies Lightning and Terratus spells to do large amounts of damage to near-death enemies.

    Frostfire (Tripnettle Wilderness, Center Hidden Cache)
    Can be attached to a Fire or Frost spell to combine their damage types and afflictions.

    Volleys (Sentinel Stand Hall of Regents, Hidden Cache)
    Two Distant Impact castings for the price of slightly more than one.

    Spell Surge (East Blade Grave Oldwalls, Lantry Lore Spot)
    Reduces Recovery time. Best used on a Focused Intent spell combined with Strength IV.

    ——————————————–
    Notable Spells
    ——————————————–

    ___________
    Lightning
    – Character Creation; Edgering Ruins (Merchant)

    Distant Impact: Inflicts Stun.
    Channeled Strength: Increases Shock damage by a base of 50%. With Strength IV it’s 85%.
    Material Force: Deals additional damage on a critical hit.

    ___________
    Frost
    – Character Creation; Disfavored Camp (Camp Merchant)

    Distant Impact: Does a ton of base damage (21-32).
    Channeled Strength: Has armor-piercing and multiple projectiles.
    Influential Domain: Penalizes recovery rate and inflicts Prone.

    ___________
    Vigor
    – Character Creation; Scarlet Chorus Camp (Camp Merchant)

    Channeled Strength: Base +30% damage. Strength IV bumps it up to a 51% increase.
    Proximate Action: Adds Hit and Graze Precision.

    ___________
    Atrophy
    – Character Creation; Echocall Crossing (Lower-Left Hidden Cache)

    Chaotic Decent: Inflicts Poison.
    Directed Force: Inflicts Weaken and Silence.

    ___________
    Fire
    – Conquest Choice; Lethian’s Crossing (Merchants Harchiand Bronze & Biotus)

    Chaotic Decent: Deals fire or crush damage.
    Influential Domain: Inflicts Fatigue.

    ___________
    Illusion
    – Scarlet Chorus Camp (32 Lore Spot)

    Channeled Strength: Base +30% Graze/Hit Deflection. Strength IV bumps it up to a 51% increase.
    Distant Impact: Inflicts Prone.
    Channeled Strength: Inflicts Stun.
    Guarded Form: A base of +100 Dodge/Parry for 45 seconds. With Strength IV, Duration III, and Pride/Selfless it comes to +255 for nearly 2 minutes for the cost of 180 Lore.
    Directed Force: Inflicts Blind and Confusion.

    ___________
    Force
    – Vendrien’s Well Citadel Interior (30 Lore Spot)

    Guarded Form: A base 25% reduction to Recovery Speed for 45 seconds. With Duration III and Pride/Selfless it ends up a 63% reduction for nearly 2 minutes for the cost of 130 Lore.
    Proximate Action: Immunity to Prone.

    ___________
    Stone
    – Iron Hearth (Merchant)
    – Stone Sea Halfgate Settler’s House (Dialog Reward)
    – Stone Sea Jagged Maw Shrine

    Focused Intent: Inflicts Petrify.
    Distant Impact: Interrupts.
    Directed Force: Inflicts Prone.
    Chaotic Decent: Does pierce damage and inflicts Bleeding.
    Material Force: Inflicts Prone on a critical hit.

    ___________
    Emotions
    – Cacophony (Merchant)
    – Central Blade Grave Oldwalls (Loot Spot, Need Lethian’s Crossing Torchkeys)

    Distant Impact: Taunts.
    Channeled Strength: Inflicts Fatigue.
    Influential Domain: Inflicts Sleep.

    ___________
    Life
    – Lantry Dialog

    Guarded Form: Regeneration.
    Proximate Action: AOE regeneration.
    Influential Domain: Removes hostile effects.

    ___________
    Terratus
    – Eb Dialog

    Focused Intent: Inflicts Paralyze.
    Proximate Action: Useful against Bane.

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  • Tyranny – Endgame

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Having just now finished my first playthrough of the game, I’m left conflicted. While the last Act is incredibly abrupt I get the distinct feeling I’ve missed a large chunk of content, which is supported by some comments I’ve seen elsewhere regarding getting artifact-hunting quests from the Assassin archon (which I couldn’t get because he refused to support me). I definitely missed some stuff in the second Act, as I was never able to do the Lethian’s Crossing quests.

    After siding with the Chorus in the first Act, the Voices mentioned there being problems at the Crossing and the Library. But you’re only allowed to accept one location; either go to the Crossing or go to the Library. I chose the latter and then after returning was given another choice, this time the Crossing or the Blade Grave. This is the point I may have messed up, as after choosing the Blade Grave there was never an option to handle the Crossing situation (permanently locking the Oldwalls area there, meaning I was also prevented from fully exploring the Blade Grave Oldwalls since those have areas that require torchkeys presumably found in the Crossing). I hope it’s not the case that you’re actively prevented from going to all 3 locations in one playthrough, as that would would be a pretty dick move.

    Speaking of, I plan to play this at least once more, siding with the Disfavored in Act 1 this time, to see just how much the choices you’re given actually do matter. The results of this playthrough seemed pretty haphazard and chaotic despite consistently siding with one side and even winning Tunon over. I’ll probably put the difficulty on ‘Story’ though, as when playing through on ‘Hard’ the battles weren’t so much hard as just tedious. At least until I hit 13th/14th level and everything just melted; Lantry casting lightning spells and enchanting weapons to launch huge pillars of flame, Sirin doing constant arcane damage and causing fear with her songs, Shadows ripping things up with a greataxe, and then my PC casting disabling Illusion spells and multi-striking with dual-wielded artifacts.

    Some things to take note of for the early game:

    • Avoid picking any starting magic skill, as the Core Sigils they grant are all found early (Atrophy is just to the left of the entrance of Echocall Crossing, in a hidden cache).
    • Choose either Parry or Dodge to focus on, as there are Talents available that let you use one skill (Parry for the Agility tree and Dodge for the Ranged tree) to defend against all attack types.
    • The maximum value you can raise an attribute to at level-up is 19.
    • Expect to hit at least 13th level.
    • The Forge and Library are the two most important upgrades, Forge trumping Library, with the Training Ground coming in third since it produces Hides for the Forge. The Infirmary just lets you make consumables.
    • Different trainers can train you to different ranks, the Training Grounds ones being the best at training everything (up to 150) except magic skills. The Infirmary has the best Lore trainer.
    • Due to the above, if you want the highest possible Lore rating the Infirmary ends up being the most important Spire upgrade.
    • For the best returns, wait to train a skill until just after it’s leveled up (training resets its experience progression).
    • You won’t be able to re-visit the Act 1 areas after the Edict is resolved, so make sure to have thoroughly explored them before attacking Ascension Hall.
    • The Lethian’s Crossing and Blade Grave Oldwall areas contain some of the most powerful spell accent Sigils.
    • You can only betray your chosen alliance at certain key points at the start of quest branches, if you don’t at that time you’re locked into supporting it fully until the end of the branch.
    • On the Chorus side for instance, if you don’t attack Jagged Remedy the moment you first meet him you apparently won’t be able to do anything with Ashe’s daughter except kill her or give her to the Voices.
    • Extra weapon sets are incredibly useful, as you can use the abilities of any artifacts placed in them without having to actually wield them (and those artifacts also gain renown).
    • As long as the character has a valid weapon set in their secondary slots, using a skill that doesn’t match their active set will automatically equip the valid weapons and then switch back to your default set immediately after.

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  • Tyranny – First Impressions

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Tyranny is quite a bit like Pillars of Eternity, but also significantly different in some key ways. The similarities so far (just cleared the first main quest, annulling the timed Edict) are the combat system, visuals, and acquisition of a Stronghold. The differences are the leveling/class system, magic system, reputation system, and general feel of events.

    The leveling/class system is the most striking change. For one thing there are no longer any classes, as instead the game goes the Elder Scrolls route. Your skills increase as you use them, those increases then progress you toward leveling up, and leveling up gives you both a Talent and an Attribute point to spend. You can select any sort of combination of Talents you want from up to 6 different trees (Leadership, Defense, Power, Agility, Ranged, Magic), with the more powerful Talents requiring a greater investment in a particular tree.

    The magic system is completely independent of the leveling system, being a tiny bit similar to how Oblivion handles it. You can learn various types of Sigils (base spell type), Forms (target type), and Accents (sundry parameter modifications) by finding/buying them, then using your spell menu you can arrange those components into all sorts of different spells and assign them to any characters who have a high enough Lore skill (more complex/powerful spells require higher Lore values). Once assigned they can be used just as often as any other basic ability.

    The reputation system is similar to Mass Effect 2‘s, unlocking new abilities/bonuses for the protagonist as your actions raise Loyalty/Fear with your companions and Favor/Wrath with various factions.

    The feel of the game is relatively unique however. Rather than being a random nobody who suddenly becomes great, you’re an already important/influential official who suddenly becomes even more powerful. This has the odd effect of making you not feel very powerful at all… instead everyone else seems strangely weak. You have all these characters who are supposed to be incredible fonts of magical energy walking around and they’re squabbling like children, unable to capture a simple bridge. It’s an interesting choice to make what would be impressive mid-bosses in another game come across like easily dismissable minor bureaucrats.

    I’m also a bit turned off by the narrative so far, as the climax of this first scenario came across as exceptionally forced and frankly I don’t much like either side. The Disfavored are your standard rigid knightly group and the Scarlet Chorus are New Vegas‘ Legion. The former seems more or less okay aside from their obsession with purebred lineage and their leader behaving like a child, while the latter is something of a mess whose members constantly want you to fight their battles for them. Neither side gives a particularly good reason to support it (nor for that matter do the rebels).

    Well, we’ll see how things develop now that there’s no longer a countdown toward the player’s impending doom. Speaking of, don’t worry about that 8-day countdown. Unless you do something ridiculous like rest after every encounter you’ll only need 2-3 days to clear all the side areas before taking the Spire.

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  • Titan Quest AE: Post-Normal

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    With Tyranny just around the corner, and most of the characters I made in Titan Quest having completed Normal difficulty, it seems it’s time for a progress update. I’ll list the characters in the order I beat Hades with them (with one exception).

    The Oracle ended up preforming much as expected. Most enemies ended up quickly cut down by a flood of Ternion blasts before they could do anything. It’s a bit of a glass cannon though and doesn’t do too well against close-quarter AOE attacks (I died a bunch against Cerberus due to non-existent poison resistance). Lightning Bolt is also a really good skill and I think I may try to max it as a back-up attack.

    The Templar actually ended up being the weakest character for much of the game. It wasn’t until Act IV that the combination of high defenses and high enemy damage resulted in opponents killing themselves in droves, before that point it was a real slog. I wouldn’t suggest trying this sort of build unless you’re prepared for a tedious and somewhat frustrating early game.

    Next is a character made mainly based on wanting to use the Spell Breaker skill, although having someone who could use +Cold equipment was another consideration. Enter the Sage. Spell Breaker is curious. Most skills in this game either start good and stay good, start off good and become lackluster, or are just plain lackluster for a particular build. This one however, initially unimpressive, ends up fantastic when maxed out in Acts III & IV. Tiger Elites? Dragonmen hordes? Demon elites? All instantly either wrecked or rendered effectively harmless. The only real weakness here is a lack of crowd control; Scatter Shot just doesn’t cut it in a non-Bleed build. I may have to try out Freezing Blast or Squall.

    Here is a good time to point out that TitanCalc, the site I’ve been linking to for character builds, uses outdated skill descriptions; quite a number have been buffed/nerfed/changed since that was last updated. Scatter Shot for example no longer does a ton of piercing damage, it does a little piercing with a bunch of Bleeding. Some other notables included Earth’s Volatility increasing physical and burning damage in addition to fire, Dream’s Premonition being a flat increase instead a percentile, Rogue’s Lucky Hit having a 44% change to trigger, Warfare’s Onslaught granting ~half the damage bonus, and Spirit’s Circle of Power now increases Bleed/Vitality/Leech damage and casting speed while decreasing energy cost and recharge rate.

    Getting back to the characters we come to the Harbinger, which is practically the best of all worlds. Tons of speed (Weapon Training, Ardor, Temporal Flux), tons of physical damage (Dual Wielding, Onslaught, Battle Standard), and tons of elemental damage (Temporal Rift). Give it two ‘of Reckless Power’ axes/maces enhanced with some +speed Anubis’ Wrath glyphs and watch it decimate everything in its path. The only notable weakness is a lack of Stun resistance, so make sure to keep an eye out for gear that enhances that.

    Less impressive is the Warlock. Constructs and spectral Undead are the Warlock’s bane, and there are quite a number of the latter in the game. Disarm Traps more or less solves the Construct issue with its hefty damage bonus, but even with Spirit Ward/Bane Undead are still a problem (Deathchill, sensibly enough, turns out to be almost completely ineffective in this area). Lethal Strike certainly destroys them, but that’s only single target. It’s a conundrum. Maybe the elemental damage from maxing out the Lich’s Arcane Blast would be effective?

    After the previous character I really needed to play one that didn’t have an issue with Undead. Enter the Summoner. With summon-enhancing +Elemental gear the Wolves and Nymph (set to ‘aggressive’), along with support from Volcanic Orb and Eruption, just ripped through them. Ripped through most things actually. The Core Dweller was less impressive, and spent most of the game set to ‘normal’ acting as something of a bodyguard to waylay any creatures that bypassed the Wolves. The character basically plays like a siege engine; you stand back and launch Orbs/Eruptions at enemies while your army of summons engage them. The main weakness of the build would have to be enemies that use un-dodgeable AOE attacks; those tend to wreck the Wolves… who obviously won’t physically move out of the way.

    I made the Dreamkiller specifically to have a character that could benefit from Poison-focused gear. Sadly, it doesn’t really play differently enough from the earlier characters (e.g. Warlock, Templar) to grab my attention. So far I’ve left it sitting at the start of Act II Normal since it’s a real pain to kill spectral Undead (immune as they are to poison and the character build not yet having access to Temporal Rift)… which is mostly my fault for trying to max out early skills before unlocking the full Mastery trees. I may respec it a bit and transfer the points from Phantom Strike into advancing toward Rift.

    Lastly we have the previously mentioned Diviner, who I’ve heavily re-specced to focus on Vitality damage. I decide to play through Epic with this character first after all and they ripped things up surprisingly well in Act I. Temporal Rift is insanely powerful and, combined with Trance of Wrath, easily handles the Undead/Constructs that are otherwise immune to Deathchill and the damage type I decided to focus on. The only thing I’ll say about Epic at this point is that it’s a lot like Normal, the main exceptions being: Enemies take longer to die, your base resistances take a huge hit, there’s a new class of equipment, summoned creatures become quite tough, and there are some new boss monsters scattered about.

    I guess I’ll close this with some notes about Normal difficulty:

    • Don’t worry about dying. The XP penalty is small and easily recovered.
    • The difficulty spikes at points. Most notably: The Athens’ Catacombs boss, the start of Act III, the Act III boss, and the Demon archers in Act IV.
    • Note that the area where you fight the Act III boss includes one of each Shrine variety.
    • Life/Energy Leech isn’t very good, since the creature has to stay alive for you to actually leech anything.
    • All Undead and Constructs are completely immune to Life Leech, Bleed/Vitality Damage, and Convert Damage to Health effects. Constructs and spectral Undead are also immune to Poison damage.
    • Expected levels at the end of each Act, assuming no farming/grinding, are: 18-19, 27, 32-33, & 39-40.
    • Don’t try to complete equipment sets with a single character. After going through the game with all the above characters, I’ve only managed to complete three of them (Templar, Fragile/Frail, and Obsidian).
    • While at first blue gear will seem the best, keep a lookout for green gear. Since it can be enhanced with creature parts or glyphs it often ends up far better for specific builds.
    • Summoned creatures aren’t updated in real-time, you have to re-summon them if you want them to use abilities gained from skills you just unlocked.

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  • Heretic Kingdoms, Nox, & Titan Quest

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    So, taking a break from Titan Quest, I decided to give the first Heretic Kingdoms game another shot. Loading up my save from just after leaving the opening temple area, I immediately entered Dreamform and explored the new map… finding nothing but ~4 Hex marks (which grant attribute points) and a ghost that gave a quest. This seemed a bit strange, so I left Dreamform and found myself being attacked by a lizardman in short order. The starting wand did 1 damage a hit to it, and it had ~25 life, while each of its hits took off about 15% of my health bar.

    I only just barely defeated it. Then three more showed up and promptly killed me as I was trying to see if attacking with a halberd would be more effective (it didn’t seem like it). Deciding there that the game is quite clearly much more like the first Baldur’s Gate than Diablo, requiring some serious effort to understand its mechanics (What attributes should be raised? What early-game tactics are effective? Etc.), I decided to go try a different game for the time being.

    Enter Nox, which I grabbed some time ago during some sale or other. This game is far easier to grasp and pretty forgiving of wandering into areas unprepared, at least as the class I started out trying (Conjurer). It’s somewhere in-between an RPG and an action RPG, with a somewhat odd control scheme. In most games like this left-click is move/interact, moving you to whatever you may be trying to interact with if you aren’t already near it. Here it’s just interact. You have to right click to move in the direction of your cursor, as though the mouse were simulating WASD (which are used as spell hotkeys), and can only interact with stuff you’re next to. It feels off. The humor too feels off, and the combination made me put it down after getting killed by some bandits I honestly shouldn’t have been engaging.

    So back to Titan Quest it was. In addition to my first character, who’s at the very start of Epic (in Sparta at the moment), I made a few more characters:

    A lightning-spam Oracle (Spirit/Storm) who’s now in Thebes, a soon-to-be Harbinger (Warfare/Dream) who’s just reached Athens, a soon-to-be pierce/bleed Warlock (Rogue/Spirit) who’s at Delphi, and have plans to start a reflection-death Templar (Dream/Defense) and some sort of class focused on summons (Nature/Earth? Nature/Spirit? Unsure). All three of the existing characters are doing much better than my first, partly thanks to a tighter focus and partly a result of the much larger equipment pool (I have yet to really find any gear tailored to a Diviner), and each play rather differently. So having to repeatedly clear the same areas doesn’t end up as boring as I thought it would be; it certainly helps that there’s such a wide variety of equipment drops (though I seem to be getting an inordinate amount of INT-focused gear).

    The Oracle is vaporizing enemies with Ternion, the proto-Harbinger is mincing them with Battle Standard, and the proto-Warlock is doing hit & runs and/or insta-gibbing with Lethal Strike. The first two will only get more powerful in the near future, but I’m a little worried about the Warlock. Automatons and Undead are both resistant/immune to pierce/bleed, so I see some tough going ahead unless I try to rush Deathchill/Necrosis… which will likely cause some severe Energy-related problems.

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  • Titan Quest Anniversary Edition

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Have you ever played Diablo II? Titan Quest Anniversary Edition is basically that with a more varied skill system, a few quality of life improvements (base health/mana regen, infinite portals, keep equipment on death, no item durability, easy respec), and no random maps.

    The maps are quite linear, the sidequests amount to killing/finding things, and the dialog and storyline are both very simple. If you don’t enjoy wandering around viciously murdering hordes of enemies while constantly picking up shiny new equipment there won’t really be any reason to play this game. On the plus side you pretty much never have to backtrack through a previously cleared location (there are 2-3 exceptions in Act IV, added by the Immortal Throne expansion).

    My first playthrough was with a Diviner (Mind/Spirit) who focused mainly on ranged attacks, Psionic Immolation (which killed nearly every non-boss in one hit once maxed out), and the Lich summon. At the end of Normal they were at level 40 and ready to start maxing out Lich and Temporal Rift (which turns out is even nastier than PI) in Epic.

    Despite not being optimized in the slightest and not doing any real grinding, for the most part I didn’t have any trouble getting through to the end. Hades’ third form did kill me something like 6 times though because Immolation kept missing his floating body and his life drain wave did tons of damage. However, before going into Epic with this character I think I’m going to run through Normal/Epic with a lightning-spam Oracle (Spirit/Storm, which apparently isn’t very gear dependent) so that I can find better Diviner-focused equipment, as I suspect it won’t do too well in Epic just using whatever.

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