Capcom Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[Invictus]

Who knows? Maybe we'll eventually actually see a sequel to this where they'll iterate and refine it. (Or decide that stats really held the whole thing back and remove them all.)

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/drag...n-is-capcom-s-fastest-selling-pc-game/0162379

Great news, I sincerly hope they make proper sequels which take the big open world of the original and more deep multilevel dungeons of the dlc
This is maybe my favorite game of the last generation along with the Souls and Stalker series

 

[Blaine]

I can't play for a while because I have my laptop while house sitting for someone, but I was a ways into BBI by Thursday evening, and the shine is really starting to wear off for me. I think this happened when I played the PS3 version years ago, too.

I'm not sure what it is, exactly. I think it's a combination of things. For starters, there are hundreds and hundreds of items and consumables to pick up, with samey copy-paste icons (there must be thirty monster parts that use the "pile of bones" icon) that make visual identification for sorting and combining a pain; plus, 90% of them will never actually be used. For example, if you were to load up with three of every type of debilitation curative, you and your pawns would be staggering around with massive encumbrance, so realistically you have to combine or sell off the crap and just use cure-alls. On top of it all, you never really know which items you'll need to upgrade equipment, so grabbing everything in sight is strongly encouraged.

The weaknesses of pawn AI become super-apparent once you really get into BBI. I feel like I'm herding retards. For example, some mage will try to cast Anodyne, then hop away because an enemy is near (though not actually directly attacking the mage), then start casting High Anodyne again, then hop away again, et cetera. I have no idea where bow-wielding pawns are actually shooting, but they're not doing any real damage (including rented pawns with 2000+ attack) except to mooks. They just die constantly during boss fights. It's funny how bad pawns are at avoiding damage given the hopping mage thing I described earlier.

On the topic of gear, before you can upgrade past Dragonforged, you first have to get it Dragonforged. Guess I'm supposed to go farm Cursed Dragons, BBI Dragons (if those exist) and the Ur-Dragon, but what I actually want to do is continue exploring BBI, and it takes ages to kill a Cursed Dragon currently when it comes to feast on dead enemy corpses. I can handle the fight from what I've experienced of it so far (a good five minutes), but I don't fancy spending 45 minutes whittling off 8 health bears with shitty gear, and that's hammering away at its heart. Then there's the cursed gear you have to purify, which they're doling out so slowly I suppose it'll be 20 hours before I have an entire armor set put together.

I'm sure I'll figure it out when I get back, but I feel like it's a slog designed to waste my time, and I'm normally very tolerant of "time-wasting" shit in games like these. I've never particularly felt that Dark Souls or Monster Hunter were wasting my time, for example.

 

[Mozg]

The second criticial path boss in BBI has a cursed dragon involved that's much weaker than the "wandering" ones. That fight dragonforges at the rather high cursed dragon rate (I think 75% for three star enhanced stuff). You could also fuck around with the offline Ur-Dragon, it's decent fun a couple of times.

The basic BBI loop is "flee from the necrophage superbosses deeper into the dungeon, where you will eventually pick up gear improvements that will let you fuck up the bosses you used to have to escape from."

I agree with the pawn thing. Soloing with the 20% autonomy augment doesn't feel significantly weaker than running with 3 pawns and I don't have to worry about them getting possessed or dying to the dragon instant-pawn-kill ability. They were built for open world, not dungeons. I think fighter pawns are good self-sufficient distractions most of the time and rangers with great gamble will at least dump their stamina into doing a chunk of damage to a weak spot. Trying to get pawn sorcerers to kill wraiths for you is suffering.

 

[Invictus]

You can kill the drake in 10 minutes with a decent sorcerer with ice spells and since I hate that sucker I have dine it 3 or 4 times and gotten at least one of my items transformed. Having 3 star gear makes things much easier. To be honest I never felt the game to be grindy at all and having my fighter pawn sorcerer char combo means she gets to tank and distract enemies while I cast the big magics. The other pawns having a healer and an archer kind of rounds things up but I am still the main damage dealer
This mostly works fine but for the damned golems which take forever to kill but I happen to think the combat in BBI is the most fun since I rarely feel overpowered and really have to stay on my feet
Funny that I used to force nyself to play one game at a time to make sure I finished it but nowadays I play Darkest Dungeon on my laptop, Dragons Dogma on my gaming PC and to spice it up just restarted Mad Max and doing some Dead State
Hell as much as I love the setting for a reak grindy game Mad Max

 

[mediocrepoet]

Yeah, pawns can be pretty crappy sometimes. And yet if they're well built and have monster knowledge, sometimes things come together.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

On the topic of gear, before you can upgrade past Dragonforged, you first have to get it Dragonforged. Guess I'm supposed to go farm Cursed Dragons, BBI Dragons (if those exist) and the Ur-Dragon, but what I actually want to do is continue exploring BBI, and it takes ages to kill a Cursed Dragon currently when it comes to feast on dead enemy corpses. I can handle the fight from what I've experienced of it so far (a good five minutes), but I don't fancy spending 45 minutes whittling off 8 health bears with shitty gear, and that's hammering away at its heart. Then there's the cursed gear you have to purify, which they're doling out so slowly I suppose it'll be 20 hours before I have an entire armor set put together.

If you place a rancid bait meat in Duskmoon Tower (the second area of BBI, where you first meet Barroch) a Cursed Dragon spawns --- and a new one will spawn each time you re-enter the Tower until the bait meat disappears. Aside from randomly finding the occasional rancid bait meat, you can purchase them from Barroch after finishing the Eyes of the Deep quest, which completes when you pick up the Abyssal Eye that you find after killing the Gazer. This makes it simple to farm Cursed Dragons, the only question is how quickly you can kill them.

For myself, I recently killed three Cursed Dragons there in order to Dragonforge the equipment my Strider pawn was using (and a few extra items), which of course required changing my Arisen to a Strider so as to be able to equip those weapons and armor. By that point, my Mystic Knight Arisen was able to kill a Cursed Dragon fairly easily, and they were still doable as a Strider with some preparation in terms of consumables. You might be at a bad stretch of levels where you're still too underpowered to take down a Cursed Dragon easily, but in that case you can grind a bit in the Rotunda of Dread or the Black Abbey. A three-star enhanced item has an 18% of becoming dragonforged from a regular, weak drake/wyrm/wyvern, and in those two areas you can leave and re-enter to cause the enemies to change --- the Rotunda of Dread has two groups of enemies with one dragon and one group with two dragons --- so this might also take care of your dragonforging needs.

 

[DDZ]

Finished first bbi run, man, now it gets real hard!

 

[Perkel]

I have fucking OCD man problem with this game.
I collect every piece of gear for my fashion dogma playtrough.

Fuck i need to stop playing like that or i will never finish it.

 

[cw8]

I have fucking OCD man problem with this game.

My OCD's worse. I break every breakable barrel and vase with my Sorc..

Switched again to Mystic Knight and kinda discovered this by accident while farming the Drake in Devilfire Grove. Lay a Ruinous Sigil and put a Great Cannon in the middle. Mob moves into it = rapid fire machine gun balls. Used it on offline Ur Dragon with Holy enchantment on Great Cannon, it's hilarious.
EDIT: I just read the Wiki, it's a documented strategy. Never thought about using it before.

 

[DDZ]

I am playing as a MK right now, but so close to switching back to Magic Archer.

Drakes are constantly flying way.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I am playing as a MK right now, but so close to switching back to Magic Archer.

Drakes are constantly flying way.

Either switch to staff to cast something to knock them down or back up a bit, focus up and use magic cannon.

 

[Perkel]

I have fucking OCD man problem with this game.

My OCD's worse. I break every breakable barrel and vase with my Sorc..

Thankfully my pawns loot everything for me. My main pawn even sometimes cares more about loot than fight. Actually i like that. In case of smaller monster 1 pawn doing something else isn't a problem and in case of big fights, fights last long so pawn getting something up for few seconds isn't that much problem.

My main problem is that i started to play it like Dark Souls trying to collect every piece of gear sometimes in multiple coppies to field same looking band of one type pawns for lulz. Like 4 Striders or 4 warriors wearing full same looking knight looking set.

Now if pawns would say something like "which way to the gral !?" it would be amazing.

 

[deuxhero]

Is there any penalty to having your Pawns instakilled by the grim raper on Brokeback Island? I know you can rehire them if they die, but do you lose the items they were carrying or maybe something else? I assumed you had to run from grim every time he shows up but I've read that he can actually be killed but if I try to fight him my pawns are guaranteed to die cause they don't dodge shit.

The items they were carrying go to storage.

The penalties are
1: Pawn's owner gets 3 star rating, which is kind of annoying for them (but I've literally never based hires on rating) but not an issue for you
2: You have to pay to rehire (but I don't think I've ever hired a pawn above my level that wasn't free from friendlist stuff)
3: Pawn may be changed by the time you get back to a rift.

So no real penalty.

 

[Suicidal]

3: Pawn may be changed by the time you get back to a rift.

This is really annoying for me - I hire a pawn for a day then he dies, I want to hire him again but now he is 50 levels above me and costs 100k crystals. I'm still trying to maintain a team of the ugliest characters I can find and when one becomes unhirable for me it's a problem cause I don't have many to choose from.

 

[cw8]

I am playing as a MK right now, but so close to switching back to Magic Archer.

Drakes are constantly flying way.

Get Great Cannon and own everything. Get Ice weapon buffs on your MK for yourself. Cast it first, then cast the Great Cannon. Now all Great Cannon shots are ice. Should take Drakes down super quick. Put a Ruinous Sigil around it for the lolz.

 

[Stabwound]

Is there really no way to fast travel in this game? Running back and forth is brutally painful, especially when you suck at the game and run into dead ends.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Is there really no way to fast travel in this game? Running back and forth is brutally painful, especially when you suck at the game and run into dead ends.

Ferrystones let you travel anywhere you place a portcrystal at, along with the 3 major hubs of the game. Until the post-game you will only have 4 to set but that should be more than enough for the average person.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Is there really no way to fast travel in this game? Running back and forth is brutally painful, especially when you suck at the game and run into dead ends.

Ferrystones let you travel anywhere you place a portcrystal at, along with the 3 major hubs of the game. Until the post-game you will only have 4 to set but that should be more than enough for the average person.

This except you can actually get 5, iirc. You can only place a maximum of 10 though.

 

[polo]

So, started a new run with a figher/warrior solo char. Beaten the gazer at lvl 25. I have a lvl1 bbi weapon and it took me 3 tries. In one of the tries i discovered the asshole can hurt himself lol, he shoot a fireball while i was clinging to his eye, and he killed me, but he also dropped to the flor. I was like wtf? Then i realized what happened.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Is there really no way to fast travel in this game? Running back and forth is brutally painful, especially when you suck at the game and run into dead ends.

How far into the main quest are you? As soon as you reach Gran Soren, which happens quite early in the main quest, you gain the ability to use ferrystones to teleport to permanent teleportation sites at Gran Soren, Cassardis, and Bitterblack Isle (after having first reached it via boat). You can also acquire 5 portcrystals, which are portable teleportation sites, and collect even more portcrystals in NG+ up to a maximum of 10. The first portcrystal can be found

Spoiler

at the very bottom of the Everfall, where you're directed as soon as you enter Gran Soren. Just make sure to pick up the portcrystal before examining the platform.

 

[polo]

So, started a new run with a figher/warrior solo char. Beaten the gazer at lvl 25. I have a lvl1 bbi weapon and it took me 3 tries. In one of the tries i discovered the asshole can hurt himself lol, he shoot a fireball while i was clinging to his eye, and he killed me, but he also dropped to the flor. I was like wtf? Then i realized what happened.

ok so after that i went to main story because didn't want to overlevel much, and lol i was stupid. With the armor and weapons (weounded heart and hydra helm mainly), main story line is just stupidly easy. Nothing can kill me, some enemies do nearly 0 damage, i kill almost everything in 1/2 MAYBE 3 regular hits. Im just doing the main quest so i can do everfall before BBI.

 

[Mozg]

The guy that made Volgarr the Viking that is doing a DD solo run on Youtube did the cleverest thing I have seen in a video game lately. He's playing assassin, which has an ability called powder blast. When you trigger a powder blast, your guy makes a little pile of explosive powder on the ground, and then, until you trigger that skill a second time, he leaves a Looney Tunes style train of powder behind him as he walks. Activating the second time lights your powder train, which rapidly burns backwards until it reaches the original powder pile and explodes.

The super clever thing is that he would protect himself from BBI maneaters (which are basically Dark Souls mimics) by creating a powder charge in front of the chest and then leaving a very long powder train that eventually loops back around. He'd light the train, then quickly open the chest before the powder had time to burn back to the charge. If it had a maneater in it, the exploding charge would then knock him out of its mouth.

That is one single ability you could very well play through the entire game a couple of times without ever using.

 

[Haba]

Finally did everything I had to do in DDDA (namely killed Death, the fleeing pussy). 96 hours.

All in all, a really good game. Got a bit repetitive, but that could be forgiven with all the late game surprises it had in store. The magic combo of a full party, adventure outside as well as dungeon romping and solid combat system worked for me. Like I said earlier, it was kinda like the real "old school" rpgs where story was an excuse for doing rpgey stuff.

 

[Martius]

Too bad that some of these surprises are that available in post game. Few things like different drakes or hydra could be boss fights or just roaming monsters long before unlocked Everfall. Dark Arisen is bit better in that regard although it still save some things until killing Damion for first time. Hopefully if Capcom will produce sequel pacing would be better.

 

[Ebonsword]

I've started a second playthrough (going for Magic Archer this time, I think). So, now I have two pawns for rent (see sig).