The Dark Eye Return to Realms of Arkania

[DaveO]

On the back of my weapons list was my "Skills to improve"

Physical control, Climb, Stealth, Swim, Self Control, Hide and Carouse got two marks to improve for the body skills.
Streetwise and Evaluate got two marks on my social skills
Orientation, Animal Lore, and survival got two marks on the nature skills
Tactics was my only two mark skill for lore
Danger sense and perception got two marks for the intuitive skills

 

[V_K]

IIRC, physical control is precisely the skill that is checked for avoiding traps (and danger sense for detecting them). The thing about BoD is that in all the exploration skillchecks, only the party leader skills are checked. So the usual advice is to have three characters you rotate for party leader - one with good dungeon crawling skills for dungeons, one with good wilderness skills for world map travel, and one with good social skills for cities (optional, but doesn't hurt).
The stats needed for spellcasting are listed in the manual. It's mostly just mental stats, but some do require DX, AG or ST as one of the checks.

Btw, I did some calculations out of curiosity and I was wrong - skill ranks do matter more for spell success than stats. Roughly, 1 additional skill rank increases your success chance by the same amount as 2 additional stat points.

 

[Desiderius]

I’d be surprised if the math weren’t a little more nonlinear than that - it’s a fascinating system - but I appreciate all the input and much of it fits with my intuition so far.

My question on spellcasting was whether there was an additional Arcane Lore and/or DEX check (likewise with Physical Control for melee) or whether it provides a bonus/malus. I think PC is checked for all toons since my Mag kept falling through pits alone in Ship of Dead.

The penalties on weapons look horrible but end up not being THAT big of a deal for a dedicated fighter. What ends up taking forever is the fact that mob Parry is unaffected by your stats and that any mob with armor will eat most of your damage that does get through on eg a regular Sword.

So you need another attacker to eat the Parry (or a spell to reduce it) and a way to deal significant damage. No poison for Warriors ends up being major drawback.

At low levels they play like a classic tank if you load them up with armor where they neither deal or receive much damage. Really beautiful development on multiple dimensions though as they gain STR.

Looks like Ice Elf is probably ideal poisoner with high Thrown skill (no Parry for ranged) and can buff own AT with spells. Need Throwing Stars or returning Dagger.

 

[Desiderius]

So was getting pretty disgusted by Witch combat performance and after level three level ups had some ideas for a restart and even rolled up some new toons. Did this several times with P:K.

Ended up sticking with my original. The way skill-ups fail more as they go up makes minmaxxing less of a thing and lets you catch up from bad decisions without restarts.

And yeah Battle Mag would be fun and more effective than Witch in combat, at least initially (Terror Broom is only 4 AP and maybe with poison broom...), but replacing the Witch with one would blow a hole in all the Social skills that Witch is bringing to the table.

With Shadows being all urban that’s not a chance I’m willing to take, so we’ll see how Witch pans out. Suspect the max Seduce female character may have some uses.

Just found Vala in hold of Death Ship I don’t remember from last playthrough so things are looking up.

 

[V_K]

To my knowledge, there are close to zero social checks in Shadows. At best, social skills affect how many topics you can ask an NPC about before being thrown out, but I never felt it was very relevant. Money-making skills are marginally more important since you can't gather herbs and have to buy them if needed. But that's about it.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Stealth is more important in Shadows than the social stuff (there is a major quest that has you trail a person from his house accross the city to another house that can be a huge pain in the ass unless you have some high stealth character(s), splitting the party to leave out all the non-stealth people is a must there), lock-picking is more important too (which is why having a rogue in your party is good thing). Great social skill to have is Haggling (done when shopping), which can get you plenty of money if done right.

Other social skills (Convert, Seduce, Lie, Human Nature, Evaluate) are never used in game (fairly shocking for an urban based adventure and there are plenty of missed opportunities, like when dealing with Tarik etc) . Steetwise can allegedly let you avoid some bad random encounters in town, but I am not sure at all if this is really the case, there is a special event near the town hall when a crowd tries to lynch a Holberk (IIRC) and you can try to divert the crowd by shouting that orks are attacking the walls, the other options are to charge into the crowd or leave. This would likely be a Streetwise check if there is one. Other than that I cant recall a single case where you can talk someone down as an alternative to fighting.

 

[Desiderius]

With the mechanic of skill/spell ups getting harder the higher they go the ability to advance additional times per level becomes somewhat less important on skills/spells that don’t start out way in the negative, especially buffs which don’t need to beat resists. Do higher values increase duration?

 

[Desiderius]

Ship of Death is nice melee tutorial since you get a lot of x on one or two mobs so get the play around with flanking and need to save arrows/bolts.

Really enjoying it - this is melee done right. Ten to twenty strategic rounds without needing bullet sponges. The importance of flanking and ganging up along with the AC/DR equivalent/trade-offs reminds me of contemporary game Helherron.

Too bad devs are scared of misses. No reason this system couldn’t be implemented today with a decent tutorial to keep the CRPG Addict types from embarrassing themselves.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Hmmm, now you got me worked up about continuing my playthrough with 6 mages

 

[Desiderius]

Just cast Magic Armor for a tank and go off. Wand combat isn’t the worst (better than Broom) since some spells use AG and ST so you really can’t afford to dump.

 

[Desiderius]

Other than Ship of Death and Temple of Nameless been leveling up via detective work and just hit lvl 4. Feeling like everyone is rounding into shape nicely, other than the Witch who now gets spell animations without the damage number that other casters get. Hard to tell if her spells are doing anything at all and of course in combat she's awful. So so far buffbot/mule/parry eater isn't the worst thing ever (Golden Shield is a nice one since she can't wear armor), but looking forward to Star Trail on Witch for sure. Really interesting tradeoff between higher skills failing more and more skill ups whether to go wide or deep. Magician will soon have more spells than he can conceivably cast, and that's not even counting his Demonology stuff.

 

[Desiderius]

So now have Grimring and everyone at lvl 5. Poison OP, Domination spells hardly ever work (no proof that Witch spells do anything at all although you do get animations for some of them there is no damage/effect bubble. Great Need has failed for all 30 or so casts so not even an animation there. Witch's Knot as Create Wall not completely useless, and I think Meekness did mez a Spider or two). In fact I'm at the point where I just turn on Computer Fight no Magic and slay. Magic still good for utility/adventuring/buffing/occasional nuke. Warrior ended up great once his STR (with Belt) reached a good level and his weapon skillz developed.

Game was better than I remembered (helps to just play detective instead of trying every random house), and I enjoyed it at the time since it has a Wiz 7 type feel, still not that great overall - a lot of unrealized potential.

Would like to see how much Star Trail capitalized on that if someone can explain how to import my group from Blade into Trail on GoG.

EDIT: got it imported and it nuked the portraits. Went to save and original Star Trail still has password protection in GoG version (Blade didn’t).

Looks like we’re playing the Remake.

Will probably try M&M III-V first then Pendragon.

 

[DaveO]

Definitely ask around the M&M thread if you're going to play the best part of the series(Xeen is of course the best one).

 

[Desiderius]

Definitely ask around the M&M thread if you're going to play the best part of the series(Xeen is of course the best one).

Halfway through III and just created a party for IX. III is great - reminds me of NES Zelda. Portraits/models in IX are criminally bad and it’s amazing that 3D games were still this clunky and barren ten yrs after Underworld but mechanics seem sound.

 

[Sotomonte]

...there is a major quest that has you trail a person from his house accross the city to another house that can be a huge pain in the ass unless you have some high stealth character(s), splitting the party to leave out all the non-stealth people is a must there...

Oh, I remember that mission... but I solved that quest by separating my elf from the rest of the group, transforming him into a dog and following the NPCs.

 

[Falksi]

Right, never played this series, need to give it a go over the Winter.

Where's best to start?

 

[Abu Antar]

Right, never played this series, need to give it a go over the Winter.

Where's best to start?

Just start with the first game. I played all three games this year.

 

[Atlet]

These games looks so beautiful. Considering playing them after watching some reviews.The hand painted art is drop dead gorgeous.

I just wanna know what is the main appeal of these classics: diabolic dungeons or tactical combat?

PS: I don't know anything about Dark Eye.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Of these two options it would be the combat, with quite a lot of spells and fairly deep ruleset, though some of the dungeons had fairly nice puzzles for their time. Story and some of the memorable characters were also a big advantage for the Shadows over Riva.

The setting is high fantasy based on German legends/folklore.

 

[moleman]

...
I just wanna know what is the main appeal of these classics: diabolic dungeons or tactical combat?
...

These games are the GOAT for me but combat is IMO not their strong point. It's comparable with Gold Box but inferior.

What sets these games apart is the high simulationist aspect.
Your characters can get a variety of diseases for example. Even a badly or not treated wound can cause fever and death.
Traveling without coat during rain? Not a good idea.
Traveling over a mountain range without rope? Not a good idea.
Some people hate this, I absolutely love it and no game since then could bring that back.

Oh, Startrail and Shadows over Riva have some fucking great dungeons.

 

[jaekl]

It's tough to find info that isn't vague on these games. I need one more map piece I think, but only 2 are available to get - the wandering merchant and the unicorn. The unicorn said he's gonna go get a map piece for me but that was in the spring. It's autumn now in the second year, I've wandered all over the map and walked back and forth around the lake for weeks and weeks. No merchant, no unicorn. Getting pretty pissed! I loved it a few days ago but now I'm filled with so much rage that there is steam bursting out of my ears!!

 

[jaekl]

If anyone in the future is scouring the internet like I was trying to get one last map piece - the unicorn functions on a hidden timer that uses real world time. So, you can wander around for months and months in game running down the time limit, but maybe that only takes a couple of hours in real time and the unicorn won't respect that. Sit your ass in a temple and leave the game on overnight, only a few days will pass in game, then the unicorn will spawn at the lake. Fuck unicorns, next unicorn I see in a video game is kill on sight!!

EDIT: also the date that the time runs out is "last week of peraine, year 17"

 

[Dorateen]

Fuck unicorns, next unicorn I see in a video game is kill on sight!!