The Dark Eye Help with Drakensang: The River of Time

[IncendiaryDevice]

You're right, I have Fatness of body! That's a good point, I'll have to give that one another try, I haven't used that since it's first try at level 1 when it did bugger all. But now I'm leveled it could do something! That could be the one I need to finish the end boss for sure, so thanks for that.

Fireball looks shit, that cast time... if it also does friendly fire... and uses up 40% of AE. Could have it's moments though for sure.

At level 12 my guy actually has pretty good armour, better than what you show, it just didn't arrive until I was near the end of the game. I saw that -4 shirt and thought it looked extremely cool, costs a lot though, about 300 Ducets...

I have the Fire Elemental Summons which I haven't used for about 6 levels, it uses up too much AE for what it's worth. Had I known the Djinn would be better from the start... but wow, 30 AE, that's quite chunk, that'd better be worth it! Maybe I should have done more save-scumming earlier on to test it out.

 

[Turjan]

Can someone post a good build I can use? I want to play the game but my first attempt at rolling a mage was abruptly ended 7 hours in as I could not beat an encounter that I can't remember now. I tried everything I could think of that did not involve cheating and nothing helped.

There are some encounters that cannot really be beat if you are not of high enough level, like the one against the troll near Nadoret. My build up there is actually a stock battlemage, so there's nothing wrong with that. Of course, you can cheese the system by doing a custom build, playing around with advantages and disadvantages.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

i see dr manhattan is getting into the spirit of movember

I see a troll thinks he's spotted fresh meat...

 

[Turjan]

Fireball is only for initiating trash mob fights when not detected. Thunderbolt is a better attack spell. Although the debuffs generally take the cake, like Lightning find you.

I have the Fire Elemental Summons which I haven't used for about 6 levels, it uses up too much AE for what it's worth. Had I known the Djinn would be better from the start... but wow, 30 AE, that's quite chunk, that'd better be worth it! Maybe I should have done more save-scumming earlier on to test it out.

The summoning spells go through stages. The summon depends on the points invested. With a duration of 20 minutes, you can summon the djinn long before the fight. That specific spell won't help you in the final fight though.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

That specific spell won't help you in the final fight though.

At last, someone remembered the reason for the thread!

Does the Knight Armour cover the whole body's inventory slots? Or does it just cover the Body/legs inventory slot? It looked awesome, but if it fully fills all slots then all my characters already have better armour with assortments, I forgot to save scum a check but it has been nagging on me.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Can someone post a good build I can use? I want to play the game but my first attempt at rolling a mage was abruptly ended 7 hours in as I could not beat an encounter that I can't remember now. I tried everything I could think of that did not involve cheating and nothing helped.

There are some encounters that cannot really be beat if you are not of high enough level, like the one against the troll near Nadoret. My build up there is actually a stock battlemage, so there's nothing wrong with that. Of course, you can cheese the system by doing a custom build, playing around with advantages and disadvantages.

I suspect it was the Junk Golem, I had to cheese the crap out of that encounter with kiting to the max.

 

[Raghar]

I'll take the opportunity to ask: What about The Dark Eye Drakensang? It's good? I have the chance to play it, cheap and secondhand.

You'd get all classes sooner or later. Companions in second game are more focused and versatile. Of course there is that part with frogs.

BTW only scum is paying for used games, these with spines are pirating them.

Can someone post a good build I can use? I want to play the game but my first attempt at rolling a mage was abruptly ended 7 hours in as I could not beat an encounter that I can't remember now. I tried everything I could think of that did not involve cheating and nothing helped.

Are you crazy? Build? In this game you don't plan exact build for 20 levels before playing. If you need something, you often have enough points to learn it badly.

 

[Turjan]

Does the Knight Armour cover the whole body's inventory slots? Or does it just cover the Body/legs inventory slot? It looked awesome, but if it fully fills all slots then all my characters already have better armour with assortments, I forgot to save scum a check but it has been nagging on me.

Aren't we talking about mages here?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the Knight Armor covered everything, and I don't think I bought it, either. Or I might have for Ardo. I would have to look.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Yeah, not for me but for one of the other guys, they're all way over 8 all-round so if it just gives 8 all round it's total shit, especially for 600+ Ducets (A real newb trap), unless it can be enhanced/modified of course...

 

[abnaxus]

That -4 shirt is waste of ducats.

Duplicatus spell can give you the same or even better effect.

 

[Turjan]

Regarding AE, I already showed the staff with that big bonus. Furthermore, there's this:

I think there's two of those. Then we have this:

And that one is not bad, either:

 

[Turjan]

That -4 shirt is waste of ducats.

Duplicatus spell can give you the same or even better effect.

Meh. The base armor is good enough for what you can get for a mage. It doesn't use 4 actions to cast and no AE. Also, I wasn't short on cash.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Yes, I have all those and yes, they're all kinda end-game items that you won't have for most of the game. Most direct damage spells use up huge amounts of Astral Energy. Boosting base stats does very little to your total and bumping up AE directly only bumps it up by one at a time.

Me, as a non-specialist mage spent most of the game between 30-40 Astral Energy, that's two and a half Thunderbolts, or 30-40 damage to one target and if you fire off a thunderbolt and the target dies a nano-second before you fire it then you lose the Astral Points to nothing.

Adding a ring gives you another 10, and since then I've rarely run out of Astral Energy because now the other more useful spells like sleep and Plumbarmy heavy arm are actually worth using and provide a better value for money. Just standing around occasionally firing these off means the natural regeneration is the main bulk of my Astral Energy intake.

When I said I'd prefer it if I had more mana I was talking about the 75% of the game, not the ending so much, but even at the ending when facing two 500hp'ers and one of them wont even be affected by Plumbarm and neither is effected by sleep... then it's more irritating, this is the stage of the game where I really do wish for the right to be a bit more spammy with Thunderbolt... maybe just to the same extent Cano is permitted to spam his damage talent.

 

[Abu Antar]

Well, I got past the encounter I was stuck on. I looked at my last time I played the game and it was two years ago. I was stuck at the toll gate. This time I went with Cano and did it the stealthy way. (Still killed that mf'er in the sewers. Pushed the archers down and convinced the rest to desert. Only had one dude outside the tower to worry about. Going to sneak my way into the tower, too. Problem is that sneaking is killing me. The s...l...o...w animations. It takes forever to get somewhere. It's good to finally have a tank in the party, even if it seems my two mages can handle themselves well enough in combat thanks to FoB.

 

[Turjan]

Adding a ring gives you another 10, and since then I've rarely run out of Astral Energy because now the other more useful spells like sleep and Plumbarmy heavy arm are actually worth using and provide a better value for money.

That's TDE for you. Damage spells are not the way to go.

A game-specific problem is the lack of collision during fights, which makes tactics like protecting your mages by proper positioning difficult. A real mage can do much more with his bigger AE pool, but he's so squishy.

Here's putting everything into AE btw:

 

[abnaxus]

It's certainly more fun to play a mage in Drakensang than in Blackguards.

I'm glad they kept some of the quirky spells in the game, like Tlaluc's pestilential breath and Aerofugo vacuum.

 

[SarcasticUndertones]

Is this vulnerable to min/maxing as others?

I was part way through before my last system crash and have yet to re-start it. I'm curious if there are obviously OP builds.

 

[Turjan]

Is this vulnerable to min/maxing as others?

Sure. River of time (without add-in) brings you only to level 12, which means that the upper limits you set during character creation are important. If you use "Expert Mode" you can buy quite a few points through disadvantages. Of course, already knowing the game helps with deciding what you can get away with.

The cheese is quite limited though. There's no totally overpowered char in this game.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I'm not so sure, earlier in the thread people were admitting that archers can produce some pretty OP attacks and pretty much the only dangerous human opposition you find in the game is archer-based. So a fighter/archer maybe tops the bill for most trouble-free gaming, in this particular game?

That's TDE for you. Damage spells are not the way to go.

A game-specific problem is the lack of collision during fights, which makes tactics like protecting your mages by proper positioning difficult. A real mage can do much more with his bigger AE pool, but he's so squishy.

Well... the bag-guy mages seem to have a never-ending pool of the stuff... oh, that ol' bad-guys don't use the same rules you do problem.

And yes, you can't make choke-points in this game. When I found that out for the first time I was absolutely livid with rage. It's just another one of those things you have to get used to. There's a reason games like these get the "quirky" tag.

 

[Turjan]

The effectiveness of archers in this game is very situational. The danger from enemy archers stems from their position at hard to reach places. On the side of the PC's, this allows for cheese tactics. If you manage to let loose a barrage of arrows and a fireball before combat has been initiated, you do lots of damage during your "surprise round". But, often enough, it's hard to stay out of melee. That's also one of the reasons why I thought the -4 shirt was a good investment.

 

[V_K]

This game is a blobber at heart, yeah.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Yes, I have all those and yes, they're all kinda end-game items that you won't have for most of the game. Most direct damage spells use up huge amounts of Astral Energy. Boosting base stats does very little to your total and bumping up AE directly only bumps it up by one at a time.

Me, as a non-specialist mage spent most of the game between 30-40 Astral Energy, that's two and a half Thunderbolts, or 30-40 damage to one target and if you fire off a thunderbolt and the target dies a nano-second before you fire it then you lose the Astral Points to nothing.

Adding a ring gives you another 10, and since then I've rarely run out of Astral Energy because now the other more useful spells like sleep and Plumbarmy heavy arm are actually worth using and provide a better value for money. Just standing around occasionally firing these off means the natural regeneration is the main bulk of my Astral Energy intake.

When I said I'd prefer it if I had more mana I was talking about the 75% of the game, not the ending so much, but even at the ending when facing two 500hp'ers and one of them wont even be affected by Plumbarm and neither is effected by sleep... then it's more irritating, this is the stage of the game where I really do wish for the right to be a bit more spammy with Thunderbolt... maybe just to the same extent Cano is permitted to spam his damage talent.

You don't have a giant mana pool in Drakensang, that's the way it is. Putting too many points into AE is gimping your character, considering only the first few points are cheap and then it gets really expensive. As a mage, it's best to have 1) fast AE regeneration, which requires either picking Spellweaver or Healing Mage, or you need to use expert mode on char creation and pick the fast AE regen perk and 2) equipment which further increases your AE regeneration. Lots of AE regen is better than +10 AE. Then you also need to be adept at at least one weapon, because you will attack with a weapon often.

Last time I played this game I made a spellweaver. The reasons are 1) fast AE regen and 2) you're an elf, so you can get the best bow in the game (sidequest in the elf area, this bow kicks major ass). Additionally you'll start with helpful paw, which is a good summon until you get the djinni, which is better. You have to use the + to increase the modifier though to get the stronker summons, duh. At char creation I picked an additional flaw (something like -3 to all knowledge skills) - that gave me enough points to pick another advantage: +4 on all ranged attacks. Can you say ARCHER?
You kill stuff by using your archer special attacks to cause wounds, you can still heal, buff, summon or thunderbolt if required.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Yeah, I have the bow schematics, just no archers or elves. That quest was quite funny, a promise of awesome weaponry, to then be given schematics for a bow a dagger and some other odd weapon. That's a nice min/max run down you've put together there, certainly worth listening to for future reference. I can't even remember what my character was titled, I think he was a meridevanian (whatever that word was) charisma based mage/rogue. Oh yes, found it on google, he was a "Charlatan"... his training ground was, surprisingly, in the rogue training area, where he failed at a lot of tasks.

 

[SarcasticUndertones]

Is this vulnerable to min/maxing as others?

Sure. River of time (without add-in) brings you only to level 12, which means that the upper limits you set during character creation are important. If you use "Expert Mode" you can buy quite a few points through disadvantages. Of course, already knowing the game helps with deciding what you can get away with.

The cheese is quite limited though. There's no totally overpowered char in this game.

Thanks that's what I was looking for, something not so abusable.

 

[Raghar]

Is this vulnerable to min/maxing as others?

Sure. River of time (without add-in) brings you only to level 12, which means that the upper limits you set during character creation are important.

What upper limits?
You either pay AP or not, and level only limits max bonus from skill.