So we will chose a primary and secondary weapon and decide upon combat skills and magic spells - choices which will determine what kind of higher quality gear will be open to us - as well as specialize into non-combat tradeskills. After the demo (assuming you got past its shortcomings and general lack of polish and originality), what are your plans regarding your progression and playstyle?

Mine are as follows...

• Primary Weapons: Longswords/Great Swords
• Secondary Weapon: Bow & Arrows
• Finesse Skills
• Finesse Armor
• Might Shield
• Crafting Skills Focus - Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Sagecrafting (didn't get to craft anything in demo, but it seemed deep and rewarding from what is hinted at)

I'll first specc into Finesse, so I'll be able to wear the sweet +critical armor. Looking forward to combine the critical prowess of Finesse with the raw power of Might weapons. Should be a fun build. Of course, if there are respeccs, I'll try out everything during my time with the game, which can be 100s of hours apparently.

I'm extremely tempted to go pure mage with some skills in lock picking and Hidden doors.

@Mordukai said:

I'm extremely tempted to go pure mage with some skills in lock picking and Hidden doors.

The shotgun (staff) and pistol (scepter) combo is extremely powerful and them chakrams do look sexy in the all them promotional videos. And the whole '+mana reg' gear allows much more frequent use of special abilities and magic. I did seem to set enemies on fire with proper blocking with a talisman too. It's very tempting indeed. Due to being overpowered out of the wazoo.

Wearing sandals is kind of a deal breaker for me though, assuming that's what magic-only users keep wearing throughout.

Pure Rogue: Cloak & daggers and all that good stuff.

I accidentally stole from the chest in the blacksmith shop and killed everyone in the town with sword & Staff.

I was also using the Scorpion "get over here" ability which had me like...Yeah I am def playing this.

Its tough to say how I will end up playing but I love the idea of a heavy might guy supported by magic.

A big fucking dude with a big fucking war hammer. It's clobbering time. Probably will do some blacksmithing to make even bigger war hammers. My demo ended right when I attacked some big ogre for a quest. It was almost as if they planned it but my time just ran out at the perfect time.

@FritzDude said:

Pure Rogue: Cloak & daggers and all that good stuff.

This ^

I'm totally not sure what to go with, started with sword and staff (loved using that combo), switched to daggers and staff (loved using that too and sacked the first town I came too!), found the hammer and bloody love using that too. Not even tried the Scepter yet!! Damn you Kingdoms of Amalur for having such accessible combat options!

And this is only the demo, god know what I will do when the game comes out.

I was thinking a thief-mage. Faeblades and chakrams.

Not sure, but probably a mixed combo.

I usually go for the pure Warrior my first play through, but I may change it up and go for a Battlemage type build. Odds are ill end up using Greatswords with secondary Bow, but who knows.

My current playstyle plan does not include this game, but if it were I would probably go daggers/stealth. Because that's always the first kind of character I make in these kinds of games.

Thief-mage. I usually go for pure warrior. Skyrim I was a warrior-mage, so I'll switch it up a bit here. Loved the demo!

So far going hybrid seems like you will be castrating yourself at lower levels.
Skills help each other out much more within their own trees.
Maybe at higher levels when you have skill points coming out of your ass this will change.
Gear likewise seems to better support plain classes, not hybrids.
 
I recommend everyone gets Detect Hidden to at least level 2 to see all the hidden stashes. These things are everywhere.
Blacksmithing pretty much seems to allow you to always have better wepons/armor for your level, outside of the purple loot. (so far)
Speech is a must if you want to talk your way out of situations or get extra rewards. But out of several quests in the demo speech failure was nothing a fight couldn't solve.
 
Maxing mages lighning bolt, makes you one shot any standard enemy at early levels. Even in the second main area. It is also a 35% chance AoE stun...
Ignoring attack interrupts from dammage looks like one of the most important skills for a 2h warror, as you will want to dish out those super dammaging charge up attacks.
Will try rogues tomorrow.
 
@Seppli said:

Wearing sandals is kind of a deal breaker for me though, assuming that's what magic-only users keep wearing throughout.

All magic all the time.

Hmmm... 
 
Seriously thinking Might/Sorcery with a bigass hammer and as many fireballs as I can muster. The other one was Finesse/Sorcery, because the stealth system is pretty fun and the magic was devastating as shit even at level 3 of shock bolt or whatever it was called. 

I was very tempted to go Might/Sorcery but didn't like the compromise I had to do since for the fates you have to go 50/50 and I was thinking more of a 70/30 but that just leaves you in a bad place and not really using either fate to its' full potential, so I think I'll go with pure Might.

@Seppli said:

• Crafting Skills Focus - Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Sagecrafting (didn't get to craft anything in demo, but it seemed deep and rewarding from what is hinted at)

Had a chance of trying it out in the demo and was able to give myself a pretty powerful longsword, with several effects and buffs which was really rewarding, I'm definitely sticking to it in the full game.

Weapons I'm pretty sure I'll go with Longswords or Greatswords for primary, sadly I didn't see any Greatsword in the demo so it depends on its speed, still haven't decided on the secondary but I messed around a bit with a Longsword/Hammer combo and it worked great, and for enemies that were far away I used the ability that worked like Scorpion's Spear.

@poisonmonkey said:

. Not even tried the Scepter yet!!

Scepters are pretty much peashooters and you can have a charge shot that fires shots in several directions, it seems like a good opener.

@poisonmonkey said:

. Not even tried the Scepter yet!!

Scepters are pretty much peashooters and you can have a charge shot that fires shots in several directions, it seems like a good opener.

Got my first Faeblades on my 3rd stint with the demo. It's the type of swords WoW's Ilidan wields. Two curved sword blades with the hilt being in the middle. Dualwielding Faeblades at that.

Revised plans. Going all-in Finesse with Faeblades and Bow. Traps and Poisons and all the other Finesse skills are neat to dick with NPCs. And isn't life all about being a dick to others? Indeed it is.

So far - finesse/sorcery with daggers and staff.  Magic seems really cool in this game.

I played mostly Rogue style with Daggers in the demo and I loved it. That charge up move where you can dash attack up to 4 or 5 times is just sick. I just feel so in charge when I'm in combat, it's like a slightly shallower version of Batman:AA/AC meets Darksiders (which in itself is just God of War-lite). Definitely want to play it again as something else though and see how it goes. I got all caught up reading all the Destiny cards and they all sound pretty sick at high levels.

Finished a playthrough as rogue today.
Having played as all 3 base classes now, comments on rogues:
 

• fuck daggers, they output piddly dammage compared to anything a warrior or mage does
• as per above due to low dmg output of daggers, dagger skill comboes are likewise underwhelming, you take seconds charging up for a 5 man dash and at the end no one is dead, in the same amount of time a war or mage would have decimated the enemy
• another problem with daggers is lack of simple aoe, which in group situations (almost all encounters in the game) makes kills take longer and you more vulnurable to counter attacks from non primary targets
• fayblades seem to be the only way to go, they are like daggers with an inbuilt AoE component and better combos
• as excpected too many enemies are in groups, frequently with no way to flank, making backstabs: time consuming, frequently non viable, and even when they are viable, you will still only take down part of an enemy force
• bows at low levels can go bugger themselves, limited ammo, and low dammage output, compared to the devastation a mage can lay down with a wand (maybe high level bow skills will reverse the situation later on in the game)

• save up your fade trance (or whatever) for bosses and the like, makes fights trivial AND gives an important xp boost
• game has elemental enemies in the first areas already, so having more then 1 method of killing is nice, since weakness/vulnerability to elemental damamge, makes a HUGE difference in how fast shit dies
• all classes and setups are viable and will do just fine, it's just a matter of some seeming to work better overall
  

• blacksmithing/sagecrafting is the way to go for having better gear all the time
• detect hidden is great for extra loot/money, but irrelevant for traps as you can just dodge out of harms way (so you could invest just far enough to see hidden goodies and forget about it, to get max benefit)
  
• lockpicking seems a waste, i could pick hard locks with 0 lockpicking skill with very little effort
  
• alchemy will depend a lot if there are actually any OP recepies later on in the game, at the start it's too much effort for small gain
• magic lockpicking seems a waste but more for the reson of magick locks being rare, and you can just eat the dammage anyway
• persuation so far is just a few more trinkets now and again
• stealth is an obvious must if you want to do backstabs (duh) but considering how situational and time consuming that shit is ...
• haven't tested effects of merchantile skill fully

@Tennmuerti:

I had a tutorial pop-up about how skills (supposedly trade skills) can be increased at skill trainers against gold and not necessarily requiring a lvl-up. As it is a Skyrim-like open world game (a fact which can be easily overlooked when playing the limited area and time demo given the game's environmental structure), I'm quite certain that becoming a 'Master of All' within one playthrough will be a possiblitly.

Likely linked to the completion of faction quest lines. Like completing the warrior guild stuff for a Blacksmith trainer and so forth.

@Tennmuerti:

I had a tutorial pop-up about how skills (supposedly trade skills) can be increased at skill trainers against gold and not necessarily requiring a lvl-up. As it is a Skyrim-like open world game (a fact which can be easily overlooked when playing the limited area and time demo given the game's environmental structure), I'm quite certain that becoming a 'Master of All' within one playthrough will be a possiblitly.

Likely linked to the completion of faction quest lines. Like completing the warrior guild stuff for a Blacksmith trainer and so forth.

Dark Knightish for me. Mostly might with some spells.

Two handed heavy armor wrecking shit up.

@Tennmuerti:

Gave the Greatsword a go and personally I found it to be a little too in the middle for me, I'd go with a longsword/hammer combo for speed and max damage depending on the situation.@Tennmuerti said:

Finished a playthrough as rogue today.

Combining this and my earlier posts.
I will either go with 2h warrior or rogue with fayblades.
Mages are powerfull but dmg scaling is a worry, and dagger/bow is inferior to fayblade for rogue.

As far as skills go:

• blacksmithing/sagecrafting is the way to go for having better gear all the time
• detect hidden is great for extra loot/money, but irrelevant for traps as you can just dodge out of harms way (so you could invest just far enough to see hidden goodies and forget about it, to get max benefit)
• lockpicking seems a waste, i could pick hard locks with 0 lockpicking skill with very little effort
• alchemy will depend a lot if there are actually any OP recepies later on in the game, at the start it's too much effort for small gain
• magic lockpicking seems a waste but more for the reson of magick locks being rare, and you can just eat the dammage anyway
• persuation so far is just a few more trinkets now and again
• stealth is an obvious must if you want to do backstabs (duh) but considering how situational and time consuming that shit is ...
• haven't tested effects of merchantile skill fully

From the above, I will likely go blacksmithing/sagecrafting, with a dash of detect hidden, other skill to consider could be merchant.

Personally I found rogues to be a little underwhelming, as you mentioned, the damage it does when compared to mage or warrior is not enough and stealth kills are very situational and I just don't have the patience to do it, though I did find the status effects and abilities are quite nice, I liked the one that gives you a chance to poison, that combined with poison daggers and it stacks up pretty well.

You worry about damage scaling but the other classes, which as far as I can see have a similar amount of abilities, don't have scaling abilities either and since you still would get new equipment the damage you can do evens out, staves are pretty powerful and its' combos are easy to handle and get a few enemies in them, and the scepters give you a good weapon for when you're a bit overwhelmed and want to keep your distance, haven't tried shakrams but they look like a good weapon for crowd management. With this I think I have to make clear my playstyle which is to use abilities not so much as damage dealers but to keep the enemies staggered so I can continue a combo.

As far as skills go I agree with you completely, being able to craft weapons quite more powerful than whatever you get in the demo and the possibility to get some of the items you used back to make an even better weapon makes it pretty easy to always have something very powerful for your level, that and you can still make better armor and such makes it a must have for me as far as skills go, persuasion I hope makes itself more useful later in the game so that you could get things other than money.

Personally, I find that the classes I enjoyed the most are Mage and Warrior, I was surprised by the fact that Mage armor is not as weak as in other games making it a little less vulnerable than what I was expecting.

Pure mage. I really enjoyed the staff. Had an Avatar: The Last Airbender feeling to it.

I thought the hammer was alittle to slow to use all the time but it was fun. last time I played demo used scepter and shakrams and seemed like a great combo. As for the skill trees it doesn't seem like there a ton of options unless they keep going up. I thought the scorpion like harpoon was great, and the quake looked cool. I'm not sure how many time you can level all of those up each.

@BoFooQ said:

I thought the hammer was alittle to slow to use all the time but it was fun. last time I played demo used scepter and shakrams and seemed like a great combo. As for the skill trees it doesn't seem like there a ton of options unless they keep going up. I thought the scorpion like harpoon was great, and the quake looked cool. I'm not sure how many time you can level all of those up each.

It lists a number of how many points you put into the skill out of how many are possible total for that skill in the description.

I think the harpoon is like 4 and quake 6, or thereverse. But quake for example has further upgrades and modifiers that get added to it if you go further up the tree.

Mage. Always mage in any game. Always evil in any game too if possible ^^

Some sort of Rogue/Mage Hybrid.

Main Weapon: Greatsword

Secondary: Hammer.

I like to hit hard. Fuck range and speed.

Just read on IGN's extended 'Review in Progress' for KoA:R, that Fateweavers will do full respeccs for a fee. So we can all do as much playstyle experimenting as we want.

btw. the article is quite good and clears up some confusion caused by the demo. It is in fact an open world game with lots of exploration in it for example, a fact which I feel is lost on most playing the demo it seems, who bring up criticism I'd only levy against a strictly linear experience.

I'm gonna go finesse/sorcery. I was underwhelmed with the bow and very impressed with sceptres, so that'll be my close/ranged combo.

The animation on the sceptre attack is pretty weak, though.

Edit: changed my mind on sceptres. Gonna be either daggers or faeblades (leaning daggers) combined with chakrams.

I went through the demo again today and tried the race that has 1 point on find hidden and I'm definitely using it in the full game, with 2 points you get to see TONS of treasures hidden in the world, that and blacksmithing should keep me pretty well equipped at least in the first couple of hours of the game.

I kinda wanna do a warrior mage type thing using the Chakram things, that weapon is so cool.

I will probably go with some sort of Battlemage since a pure stealth class isn't that great, also I never liked the part were Roguish-Stealthy classes ends up facing of against these giant monsters, that is not what an assassin is trained at - not in any form of direct combat, a Rogue would only be able to defeat such a monsters through cunningly poisoning the monsters food or sneaking in for a quick and fatal stab - otherwise he should get squashed.

But alas, they don't make games that support those ideals, mostly because that would be too hard to balance compared to Warriors or Mages since it would either be overpowered or underpowered.

@Village_Guy said:

I will probably go with some sort of Battlemage since a pure stealth class isn't that great, also I never liked the part were Roguish-Stealthy classes ends up facing of against these giant monsters, that is not what an assassin is trained at - not in any form of direct combat, a Rogue would only be able to defeat such a monsters through cunningly poisoning the monsters food or sneaking in for a quick and fatal stab - otherwise he should get squashed.

But alas, they don't make games that support those ideals, mostly because that would be too hard to balance compared to Warriors or Mages since it would either be overpowered or underpowered.

Drizzt Do'urden would like to have a word with you. He doesn't like when other universe's archetypes are applied across other properties.

Rogue doesn't always mean assassin. "Finesse" certainly doesn't, duelists and archers fall into that category.

Never play mage but Chakrams baby. Finesse/sorcery.

Pure Finesse, with Daggers & Bow. Maybe put a bit into Magic so I can get the Poison teleport, but I really really liked the Bow & sneak kills in the demo.

As an aside, to the people who were underwhelmed by the rogue: I managed to get the timer bug and spent 12+ hours grinding one up. Towards the end it became apparent that it's a proc-based class. Poison, bleed & the one that does upfront damage; that's in addition to the insane amount of +critical DMG gear combined with fast attack speed daggers (the faeblades seemed to trade in some speed for more consistent DMG/some AoE). Seemed like the tree was very well designed, like the abilities that attack multiple targets (more proc chances). I'm not sure how well the rogue stuff would work as a hybrid, but if you go "all in" it seemed just as great as the mage/warrior/hybrids, just...different.

I could be wrong (I honestly didn't play much as a mage/warrior), but it seemed like those classes were more of a "what you see is what you get". As example, scepters seemed so much better than a bow, but after investing heavily in the Finesse tree bows give you those poison/bleed/upfront DMG/one-hit-kill crit chances...I didn't notice anything like that in the Magic tree. And you can pretty much always open up a fight with an easy sneak kill by using a prism shard (I think that's the name); later on you can turn invisible. Even if it's not the most efficient thing in the world, it just plain looks cool ^_^

Anyway, my .02 is that rogues range the scale between insanely awesome and flat out mediocre...depending on the roll of the dice. I personally love "dice roll" classes like that. The times when you get a string of crits & procs is a hell of a lot of fun and makes you feel like a god. Then the times when nothing seems to crit/proc, you have to dig in deep with potions & abilities...provides variety.

Still not sure if I'm going to get the game, but Reckoning's combat system made me think about making a magic/rogue mix. The stock mage - a wizard going whiz, bang, boom with his magical powers - never made sense to me. Mages are usually characterized as being weak and vulnerable to direct attack, so why be obnoxiously loud and gain the attention of the enemy when fighting? I think a true magic user would be sly with their powers, and use them in a way where no one expects that he is the cause for any mischief.