Veterans and newcomers alike -- wacha think??

Ugh! So annoying.

Thanks for the assist!

I really like it too. If you notice the flame in the center is actually the Wyrm symbol you see all through the game too. Pretty neat touch. And yeah, its a fun cover when so many game covers these days are just dudes with guns posing on the cover.

@gunstarred:

it's in response to the vocal minority complaining about the game being too easy, despite the fact these same people were using uber gear, a full party of pawns and most likely a host of added bonus's to their strength/magic. Hopefully this will discourage such statements for a while. They've already nerfed autonomy from 70% down to 20% as well as bloodlust from 70% down to 20%. I'm guessing the next nerf is going to stop us from stacking various bonuses from 4 at a time down to just 1. Really sadden that they nerfed the ranger bow that gives 5x xp points down to just 2x as it helped cut the grind down once you're past lvl 150.

Forgeries do not function as their original if the in-game description is to be believed. Not for gear atleast.
Just found the port 2nd crystal in the game inside the small prison complex in the shadow fort. Don't believe the quest forces you to go in there specifically so could be easily missed. Also the stone you can find in the middle of the Gran Soren port circle also works on a respawn timer. This should help out people in their 20's when money is still hard to come by.

@humanity: i'd recommend dragon age origins as it is a pretty amazing game. the combat isn't action-y but its very strategic and satisfying. it works especially on PC because you have the option to pull back the camera and pause so it becomes a lot like a real time strategy game. i also think the interaction with npcs/dialogue options are the best bioware has ever done.

10 bucks is steal for that game.

Just ordered Dark Arisen from my retailer yesterday night. It's currently out-of-stock everywhere, so it seems to sell better than anyone expected - so that's great news for fans I guess. More feedback forthcoming, as soon as it shows up in the mail.

I was really craving a new open world game to play so bought this yesterday. I'm about 11 hours in and I have to say I'm really impressed. It feels like a combination of Monster Hunter and Dark Souls without the massive difficulty. I'm playing a ranger right now at level 27 I think. The game has a really nice atmosphere at night and when exploring dark caves with nothing but your lantern lighting the way. I'm in love right now.

Honestly, as I started over from scratch when I began my journey through Dark Arisen there were two things I noticed. 1: The first 15 minutes of normal mode are hard as balls if you try to kill the random bandits. As long as you skip them, get to the convoy quest and start doing the Gran Soren quest lines though, the game is real easy. I finished it pretty quick as I had already played vanilla. I finished around level 42 leveling primarily as an Assassin.

I made an alt character for some hard mode testing, its not really that bad if you know when you need to upgrade weapons and which quests to do. It kills the ability to run around and do what you want though, but its not really bad at all assuming you can assess your characters damage output.

Uhm, I also saw a lot of people mention needing to level up as different vocations for augments. Discipline points are a % of the exp earned, based off of the flat amount gained. The % is great for the less base experience gained and caps out at 1000 Discipline gained per kill. So since most bosses post-game give tons of experience, most of it is being put to waste when talking about leveling vocations because its capped at 1000 discipline per kill.

And the exp tables for leveling up a character and vocation are different. So its possible to kill things while being, say for example, a Warrior. And gain 99% exp towards gaining a level. Then switching to a vocation whose stats you want and leveling up as them. This does not change either vocations % toward their next level, its all calculated differently.

The best spot for this is right after you've killed the Grigori dragon and get thrown out of the Gran Soren Castle by the Duke, just stand on a ledge near the infinitely re-spawning guards and let your pawns kill the guards and just have them farm them for exp and discipline points. Before you gain a level, switch to the vocation whose stats you want and then switch back to keep farming. The guards don't attack pawns for some reason, you can afk while doing this if you want, and even if you don't care about not getting levels; it is an easy way to minimize the amount of levels gained in unfavorable classes. Since the lower the base experience gained, the higher % of that value is translated into discipline points.

I've also noticed a bunch of people compare this game to Dark Souls. DS is currently my favorite game and although I really like Dragon's Dogma, the impact skill has on the game is too different for me to even class it in the same field as DS. In DD stats and weapons play too much of a role in simply getting through the game and finding upgrade materials is too easy to make that aspect of the game seem like a necessary game mechanic to augment the experience. Which is odd because Monster Hunter does that so god damn well, and It just isn't as rewarding for the work put in comparatively.

There is a lot less emphasis on making traversing the world a significant point of the game, which is also odd because you have to run around A LOT. Running around throughout the day feels like a dull chore, the common enemies are generally so ridiculously weak that it feels like, unless you get surprised sniped by a Strider/Ranger bandit, they don't matter in the slightest! Which I would get, if the world wasn't painted as such a hardy place where only the strong are allowed to thrive. It feels like the game is basically saying "Hey, I guess everyone is just weak and conceited" Which could be a really cool story point to reflect on, if the true ending didn't come after post game everfall farming.

For how powerful and majestic characters in the world are supposed to be, its as if your character is somehow a god Amongst sheep. For comparative levels, a truly strong person able to fight a dragon is probably around level 25 ( with Savan from the tutorial stage being 20 ). Most people probably hit level 20 before finishing all of the wyrm hunt quests/random exploring as you get used to the game. Your character ramps up in power so much, that the only way to make the DLC content hard was to add a % chance to randomly fill the room you are in with a startling amount of boss monsters. And give all of the new ones different ways to have you fly through the air/super armor.

Not that I mean to complain too much, the music is refreshing and the art went in a really cool direction. I love the loading screen a little more then anyone should love a still image they see hundreds of times in a gaming session. Honestly its a cool piece of art. The pawn system gives me little internet-girl giggles when I make something silly or see the cool or terrible things people have created. The vocations pretty accurately differentiate common play styles so its fun to compare strategies with friends because most Vocations and people do it differently.( but oh god why do warriors always get the short end of the stick. CAPCOM WHY! IM GLAD I DONT LIKE WARRIORS, WARRIORS ARE SO BAD OMG ) The combat is fun and flighty, but it doesn't feel serious at all.

The boss fights are cool, but there is so much hand holding in terms of getting through the game and not enough actually describing how things work mechanically. The story is fantastic though, and I really like the direction they took DD. But compared to Dark souls? I've never beaten a game more then 15 times ( < Not exaggerating ) just so I could try out working my way through with different strategies from scratch. I've never spent so much time theory crafting and testing damage limits because it genuinely interested me nor have I gotten to NG++++++++ on the same file in basically any game before just to see if I could. DS has a hold of me that is strangely tight, and as much as I am having fun with DD; the inconsistencies it has make it really hard for me to even want that to happen. From beating the game at soul level 1, using only starting equipment and many of the other silly challenges I've done, DD has nothing that would remotely make me want to do that. Nor do it as many times as I have.

The only thing DD has is in terms of making me want to start over is a vague stat system that made me reroll my first character after beating the seneshcal the first time because my stats were so god awful that I was embarrassed that I considered myself a min/maxing gamer for a split second. And with an emphasis on builds being STR or MAG focused, creating an alt to properly utilize the magic classes.

But with that said, I am having a blast with the update. I did not mean to get so caught up with DS it's just that someone brought it up earlier and I could not control myself. Forgive me! DD:DA has been a lot of fun, with BBI being a really fun expansion to the world, albeit a little easy once you've acquired either unlimited conquerors periapts or the right level 3 cursed weapon. Why they gave those weapons so much damage is beyond me. I also laughed super hard when they introduced stamina penalties, but didn't change the level or weapon from Salde from the tutorial. Dude runs out of stamina super fast in my game haha.

Sorry for ranting. :C

Also, as I've seen some people saying stuff like "The game isn't too easy if you stop using OP augments and playing solo, I'm glad autonomy and blood lust got nerfed"

Even without those augments, the game still isn't hard ;_; don't be fooled by the "swishing" animations capcom uses to make things look fast. The pace actually isn't anything to really worry about it, just stop spamming attack buttons and casting spells too close to enemies and the difficulty drops significantly I've realized. Everything you need to suceed is handed to you in town, just slow down enough to stock up on lantern fuel and the like. All da moves are telegraphed super well, the relative level of enemies in an area helps you deduce the power level of the boss monsters you fight ( Oh god this place is already so hard, why is the BOSS just as hard/harder then getting here? ) Why do people even say that? lol, is that not to be expected?.

But honestly, that is one of the strengths of the game, simply pay attention to the cue's and combat almost becomes like a fast paced zelda system, with each fight being a race to discover the solution to a puzzle! The timer is your life bar and the tools you have to work with are your skills and gears! The obstacles are health bars and claws and teeth! And sometimes fire.

The experience is honestly really cool and very fun, and I apologize for talking it down so much in my last post when talking about DS. /end rant

I just finished my first playthrough and thought it was really amazing. I'm gonna start my second playthrough soon and then near the end of that I'll probably head to BBI.

I finally started farming Daimon, both his forms drop in less then 10 seconds each when you have over 4,000 attack and use Periapts. The new weapons are waaaaay too strong for farming him. Just hit level 146 after my last kill.

I just started playing this and I have no clue what to do! Having fun so far as a strider or ranger I believe and I just escorted the Hydra's head to Gran Soren. Bit overwhelmed but still it's a fun game.

You know I finally decided to switch over to a Fighter so I could Dragonforge all of my pawn's gear and...man its crazy how much harder BBI becomes without a ranged weapon. So many battles are WAY easier with either a ranged weapon or magic. Usually I'm an assassin so I can just shoot stuff. I don't like not being able to shoot stuff. Luckily that last battle with the cursed dragon forged the majority of my gear.

@demoskinos: No doubt. I did the same thing and when I first encounter a Wight I just thought the game was horribly unbalanced for non-ranged characters. Then I kept playing and discovered that Fighter + 2 Sorc + Mage with the player as the Fighter using Shield Drum and Perfect Defense makes most fights other than the Wights pretty trivial. And also Diamon second form because no magic is capable of being cast against that guy. He just interrupts way too much. Other than that magic stays the best option imo until you get some upgraded lvl 3 cursed weapons, then melee becomes less deficient when compared to magic in BBI.

@superwristbands: Hmm. Interesting. Although I'm not sure I want to fiddle with magic classes just yet. Although I am over 100 so the stat gains are dwindling down anyways so then again I might. Who knows! I have not gotten any lvl. 3 BBI weapons yet although i did get a set of lvl 2 daggers that are pretty snazzy.

@demoskinos: I didn't play as a Magic class much myself either. I tried it a but but I didn't find it as fun and fighter pawns do a horrible job keeping agro. Only time I was happy about being a Sorcerer was fighting... wraiths I think they were called (the floating red balls of souls) because I had control of when to attack which made killing them much faster. I would just run past those enemies as a melee class.

I'm getting back into the original game after putting it down months ago. So, I have a few newbish questions for you veterans:

-How often do you switch out pawns?

-How do you get a pawn to always use health items you give them? Sometimes they'll use the items, sometimes they won't, and I'd like to know why.

Any tips on playing as a mage/sorcerer would also be appreciated. What are your go-to spells? I'm going with a glass cannon approach FYI.

- I usually switch out after I'm 10 or so levels higher. I usually pick pawns that are a couple of levels higher than me (if I'm level 20, I'll pick pawns that are level 22) so I don't have to worry about for a while.

-You have to change their inclination. That's really the only way. I think the inclination is medicant that makes them heal themselves but I'm not sure. You can always check the wiki to be sure

-No idea on mage/sorcerer. There are a bunch of really good augs I've noticed ( my main pawn is a mage) that you should probably get. One I think boosts you mag atk power which was pretty noticeable on my pawn.

This game is a ton of fun, wish I had played it earlier. I am getting bored of my sorcerer though, I'm almost level 90 and really wanting to go melee, tried both magick archer and mystic knight and wasn't really digging their abilities (unless they get amazing after rank 6, which is about what I got them too). Is it worth switching from a magic class to a strength class so late in the game? I know the game gives you a certain amount of each stat on each level up, so I'm wondering if I would be better off starting over or something, since I've been sorcerer the entire time basically. Has anyone done something like this? Just getting kinda bored of dealing with some of the enemies like the giant eyeball in BBI when my spells don't really do much to it, and the pawns refuse to jump on it and melee it in the eye. I basically had to jump on it myself and hit it in the eye with my staff for like 20 minutes straight. Dragons are fun to fight though, one high maelstrom basically annihilates them.

@kerse: Depends, if you aren't super picky about your stat build you could sort of catch up and use some top top level gear to sort of mend the gaps you'll still be lacking potential in melee and STR but you'll most likely do just fine overall. If you're level 90 and want to melee and want the most potential out of the stats go with Assassin. After lvl 100 the stat gains drop off drastically but Assassin is the only class that still gets 3 STR stat gains per level after the 100lvl drop off (normally they get +6 STR every level)

Also if you're on PSN I could potentially throw you some daggers or something that I'm not using anymore as I've got pretty much top BBI gear on my Assassin ATM.

@demoskinos: I'm on xbox unfortunately. So its not that big of a deal then? I think I'll give assassin a shot then, I'm not too worried about having the maximum possible stats, I just don't want to end up gimped. But if its like 3-6 per level for specific stats, I suppose that won't make a huge difference, considering the weapons I have now have like 1000 of each stat.

@kerse: Nah, you should be okay. Assassin has augments that drastically bump your STR and Stamina at night time too. And if you want to get real crazy you could stack those augments with the Autonomy augment (which gives all your stats a bump if you're solo) and you'll have crazy STR thats not even including multiplying all of that by using 4x Conquerors Preiapts ....

So yeah, you'll be fine.

So I stuck to sorcerer and I'm glad I did, after upgrading all my pawns and my armor and weapons in BBI, now if I run into something thats resistant against magic, like daimon, I just spam lassitude over and over and eventually all of them stacked on top of each other freezes the enemy in place permanently, well for as long as I keep up the lassitudes. As soon as Daimon got stunned in his second form, I spammed lassitude while my pawns went to town, and he never got back up, went from 90% full health to nothing lol. It also gives me plenty of time to cast really lengthy stuff like maelstrom.

So I've been playing this game a fair bit. I'm near the end of the main story and I've gotten my feet wet in BBI ( I went through BBI until I encountered a cockatrice which debuffed me with a "hey you gonna die" debuff. At which point I ferried the fuck outta there and rested, as I had no curative items for that status. )

I'll keep this really brief, I love the game but some quests are a bit annoying. The escort duty quest actually made me not play for 2 days. ( I was procrastinating. On a video game. That's bad. ) But I finally got over it and I'm excited to continue playing now. I'll prolly finish off the main story before returning to BBI.

I find the game a tad too easy though. My storage is filled to the brim with restorative items, combat is mostly unchallenging even though I've been playing like a reckless fool ( I killed a chimera at level 10 and I've even killed the drake a couple of times ). I should add that I havn't been min-maxing and I havn't been using any OP pawns.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing more and I'm excited for the challenge that BBI will hopefully bring to the table.

Got ambushed by the night. I was on a quest to find the witch in the woods. I was already on my last leg. Then the flippin' night broke. Pack after pack of wolves came at me. And then ghosts!

Man, outstanding atmosphere! The night is flippin' real. If I cut it with a knife, it bleeds. Dragon's Dogma is legit!

Around lvl 50 now. Went from Fighter to Warrior to Strider to Ranger heading towards Assassin. First game in a long long while that made play all through the night. It's both unbelievably awesome, as it's incredibly flawed. Love the character customization and class systems. Love the combat. Nothing quite like taking down a Golem one magic disc at the time. The feel of movement is incredible. Really nailed jumping and climbing. Love the day/night cycle. The atmosphere achieved by its true to god darkness is pure gold. The pawn system, whilst initially rather arcane, is also flippin' awesome. The pawns are useful and absolutely key to success. Love browsing the Rift for sexy and capable gals.

That said, every so often the pawns just fail to do what I need them to do - especially when I need a magic boon to fight ghosts and the likes, and the pawns often do anything but. Wish I had more specific commands at my disposal, and more ways to customize behaviour - at the very least of my personal pawn. Quicktravel options are okay, with unlimited Ferrystones and 10 Portcrystals (only got 2 thus far) - though a mount would do wonders for getting places fast and past lowly mobs. The UI is one of the most clunky and unwieldy things ever (and god how do I hate the hassle to reignite the lantern). Haven't progressed yet into act II (I suppose talking to the King triggers something akin to such a thing), but as far as I know, mob spawns don't change throughout, which is disappointing. It should have new spawn patterns for every act. There's loads of quests, but most of them are unremarkable, and lots of them are rather bothersome - but in the end it's all about getting out there and conquering the world.

The game is not very forthcoming with explanations for all of its depth. Pawns, crafting, quests, combat, vocations and so forth. It makes for a tough start. With a little will to suffer - through the process of discovery - I've found one of the most addictive, most satisfying, and in many respects *best* open world RPG to date. It's amazing how captivating it manages to be despite itself. It's the rare case where the bullshit is almost too much, but it just doesn't matter, because what it does right is right as rain.

Why is it so expensive to change classes? My Pawn has enough, but I certainly don't. Am I doing something wrong?

Someone please help me!!! I'm playing the game and I'm stuck. I'm doing the worm hunt missions and I've completed them but when I went to talk to see Maximilian I accidentally hit him and I went to prison and when I got out he was gone and now i don't know how to get him back to complete the missions!!!! Someone please help!!!!