Capcom Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[Blaine]

You don't have to search for jack shit. Everything from secret informants to hidden entrances to ancient artifact pieces is circled in red for you.

 

[Reinhardt]

I'm talking about sidequests.

 

[Blaine]

Sidequests also have red circles for quest objectives. If there are exceptions, they must be very few and far between.

Well, so far I've had two griffins flee from me. It's very annoying. I endeavored to keep the second one weighed down and on fire, but when I tried to cling to its head to bash its face in I lost thousands of stamina within two or three seconds (first the stamina I'd had, and then the stamina I got from a round restoratives), after which the big fag immediately flew away since it was into its last health bar. Next time will be different.

I completed the quest to escort Reynard to Greatwall Encampment since I didn't have that on my map yet. Sometimes I prefer "cheating" with a Portcrystal, but fuck it. I knew it was going to be a slog and also really chancy keeping that stupid fuck alive, and boy, was it a slog. Dozens of regular bandits, dozens of Tumblr bandits, dozens of dire wolves, dozens of snow harpies, two cyclops, and a chimera. While fighting large monsters, escorted NPCs assist you by milling about directly in front of the monster's face or beneath its weapon. Man, that's helpful. It took at least an hour to finally get there, but no one died, so that was all right.

 

[Damned Registrations]

While fighting large monsters, escorted NPCs assist you by milling about directly in front of the monster's face or beneath its weapon.

Depends greatly on who you're escorting. The soldier type NPCs will actually fight alongside you, and are pretty tough. The merchants and other weaklings OTOH... I've had them drop dead from stray arrows or harpy attacks. Very annoying.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, Ser Berne was my first escortee. Gotta get dat Gryphic Victory.

I believe Fighter and Warrior were the main classes I used in my playthrough years back, and I'm using them again. I'm re-realizing my intertwined annoyances with each of them. Warrior can only set three active skills and is fairly simple and straightforward to play, and furthermore it features relatively low-effort tanking of mobs of enemies. The upside is that it's fun to LARP Conan and master your positioning and timing (on which Warrior heavily relies due to its slow and deliberate moves), and it's very effective. The problem is it gets a bit boring because it's simple and straightforward. If you want an enemy aggro attraction skill, you actually only get to set two attack skills.

Fighter is probably my favorite overall class because it has more options, swift attacks and high-mobility special moves, and is more effective at dealing damage while clinging to large monsters (Warrior can only pommel bash, and is better off doing 'tard rage ground pounds for megadamage). You've got more customization, more tactical options, and more dynamicity with the Fighter. However, it relies on its shield for tanking; I have no issue with timing perfect blocks most of the time even without its augment, but the thing is, tanking one enemy at a time while nine Strider bandits circle around to homosex you from behind is gay. That's not a problem with Warrior, since once the knife homos start their stabbing, the greatsword is already sweeping around behind to smash the teeth out of their faces.

Well, it is what it is. I've begun to try out Mystic Knight, but a few things annoy me about it, not least of which is that it has pretty overt equipment clipping issues, and the tower shield stays on its back at all times even during combat, until the very moment the block button is pressed. It just instantly transitions from back to hand and back again. Capcom could at least have added a special effect where the shield "warps" or "teleports" from one position to the other. I can't LARP a knight properly this way, bros. Also, its skills use either physical power, magical power, or a combination of physical and magical power (not too surprisingly), but the hybrid skills tend to use about 2/3 magical power and 1/3 physical, and many of the more effective skills are entirely magical. I'm not sure I'm up for the metagaming necessary to get a nice balance for maximum versatility.

Still, it seems to have some nice crowd control skills, so I'll at least level it up a bit.

 

[Mystary!]

Allowing warriors to slot 6 damage spells might be overkill but at the very least there should be a secondary bar just for "utility" skills like Warcry and Pommel Bash, similar to the Fighter shield skills.
Something as simple as giving them access to double jump would be a huge QoL improvment. Unlike everyone else they have no ranged option so they desperately need that extra reach. And it's annoying having to switch class whenever I feel like exploring a bit...

 

[Mozg]

The full moon slash/dragon's maw (something like those names) skills for fighters have a lot of invincibility frames. The wiki says broad slash doesn't give real invincibility but it's fast and evasive enough to feel like it does. Warrior exodus slash is also invincible. You can pretty much chain normals, see something is gonna hit ya -> invincible move.

If you want versatility assassin gets to wear sword/board, dagger/board, sword/shortbow, and dagger/shortbow. Assassins and mystic knights both get broad slash and full moon, although not dragon's maw, but with a bunch of other shit. Fighters end up feeling real basic in comparison. Mystic knight maces are also just like straight up 20% stronger than an equivalent tier sword.

There is a strider skill that gives you a strength bonus on jumping attacks that's really useful for a warrior.

 

[Zombra]

Bah, Warriors can't jump, they're big heavy damage tanks. You want jumping melee, be an Assassin.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Someone created a mod that sets the inclinations for the offline randomly-generated pawns: http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma/mods/122/?

 

[Blaine]

If you want versatility assassin gets to wear sword/board, dagger/board, sword/shortbow, and dagger/shortbow. Assassins and mystic knights both get broad slash and full moon, although not dragon's maw, but with a bunch of other shit. Fighters end up feeling real basic in comparison. Mystic knight maces are also just like straight up 20% stronger than an equivalent tier sword.

There is a strider skill that gives you a strength bonus on jumping attacks that's really useful for a warrior.

Yeah, I'm gonna spend some time on Assassin for sure, might even be my main choice later on. Almost all of its augments are marginal, nerfed into being marginal (multiplayer balancing, fantastic!), or even bugged, but when you add good augments from other vocations, it's a contender.

I sort of wish I'd gone Sorcerer w/Fighter pawn though, since I've never done a Gandalf playthrough, and I may swap files to try it.

 

[Blaine]

Gold Idol obtained in one try.

I was worried about the hide-and-seek portion, but found her immediately. I almost lost my composure looking for a water refilling jug at the water carrying portion, but then remembered that I can just buy flasks of water from the shop.

 

[Mozg]

I can't really get into sorcerer, if I try to fight stuff that I can't just numerically RPG stat skullfuck with a spell like fulmination I end up with this incredibly annoying playstyle based around kiting with holy focused bolts or the fastest charging spells (basic fireball/ingle and miasma). Magic archers are just a much more fun way to do magic damage (faster charges and everything targets better), plus they get daggers (and roll/double jump) and immolation so they can do melee and climbing stuff fairly well too. They even get a group magic damage booster, which lets you do damage booster stuff without the shame of instant inventory cheesing. I feel like aside from warrior the hybrid classes are pretty much straightforwardly more fun versions of base classes.

More false mod hopes, but it would be cool if in addition to giving warriors six skill slots, someone figured out a way to give warriors magic bow as secondary.

 

[Mystary!]

Contender? Assassin is basically easy mode, jack of all trades - master of everything.

 

[Blaine]

Contender? Assassin is basically easy mode, jack of all trades - master of everything.

I meant a contender in the sense that it might be what I want to play moving forward, as opposed to say Mystic Knight, or Ranger, whose role Assassin cannot fill since shortbows get garbage-tier damage unless you're close enough to jerk off whatever you're shooting at.

It's a bit daft that Assassin is allowed to use Shield Drum. That borrows a little too much from the pure physical class' roles, and doesn't make a lick of sense in terms of the class concept, either. Assassin's missing the massive defense and stability of heavy armor and Fighter or Warrior, but it has other tricks, so can fulfill the role of a tank adequately.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Isn't the point of shield drum to combo it with the counter moves? Makes sense to me.

 

[Blaine]

Well, so far I've had two griffins flee from me. ... Next time will be different.

Yeah, you see who else is there, right? That's Quina. Every time I need to escort an NPC anywhere, the game vomits a Monster's Manual worth of huge enemies every five yards along the road. Those tiny-penised Jap devils can't foil me, though.

Isn't the point of shield drum to combo it with the counter moves? Makes sense to me.

The main thing is to attract enemies so that fifteen dudes don't all pile on your Sorcerer while she's casting some big nasty shit.

 

[Reinhardt]

My Quina actually died in her escort mission. First failed quest for me. Two of my pawns jumped to their death from the cliff but i was already so close to final destination and decided to continue. I was wrong.

 

[Invictus]

I can't really get into sorcerer, if I try to fight stuff that I can't just numerically RPG stat skullfuck with a spell like fulmination I end up with this incredibly annoying playstyle based around kiting with holy focused bolts or the fastest charging spells (basic fireball/ingle and miasma). Magic archers are just a much more fun way to do magic damage (faster charges and everything targets better), plus they get daggers (and roll/double jump) and immolation so they can do melee and climbing stuff fairly well too. They even get a group magic damage booster, which lets you do damage booster stuff without the shame of instant inventory cheesing. I feel like aside from warrior the hybrid classes are pretty much straightforwardly more fun versions of base classes.

More false mod hopes, but it would be cool if in addition to giving warriors six skill slots, someone figured out a way to give warriors magic bow as secondary.

Sorcerer is awesome and maybe s little OP if you learn to play it right, if you want to be the hero in the middle of enemies taking down shots left and right you are playing it wrong
After you get the cool AoR spells you can either play crowd control or take the offensive, but still you need to rely on having competent pawns who can engage in melee so you have time to cast the big spells
Once you get the meteorites, earthquakes and lighting storms the class becomes super fun
Yesh you cab still use the homing holy attacks for crowd control and especially for undead attacks and flying foes but nothing is as satisfying as killing dragons with your spells while everybody just gives you time to cast or enter an ambush and kill a chimera in one blow of your meteroite shower
I also played a melee based assassin my first time and while it is very cool to do the climbing and beign at the front I have very mich enjoyed beign a magic user
This is the best magic user system I have played for an action RPG hands down and makes the magic in Dark Souls like parlor tricks, maybe the second best would be the Kingdoms of Amalur but still that game had no chance against the big AoE spells from Dragons Dogma
I am planning on doing a sorcerer wizard or spellsword combo with my pawn for the next run, all decked up with japanimation cute girls in skimpy clothing

 

[Damned Registrations]

The holy bolts can fire through walls too btw. Also, Exequy is hugely underrated.

 

[DDZ]

http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdog...nsdogma/ajax/modimages/?user=0&id=39&gid=1249

Oh yes, this exists.

Thank god.

 

[Blaine]

The cool thing about using bows in the PC version is that I can reach up and grab the mouse (while holding left bumper) in a split-second, and use it to aim and activate two skills, or all three, if I assign the keyboard control for the third skill to one of the ancillary mouse buttons.

The uncool thing is that the special effects for weapon elemental enchantments, the lingering healing visual of High Anodyne, and the "glare sprite" of the lantern all make it impossible to see and aim at anything unless it's high noon on a cloudless day, and sometimes not even then. The glare from Fire Boon/Affinity is especially bad. Fortunately this is only an issue for mobs of smaller enemies; boss enemies are never a problem to aim at since they're large and their weak points tend to be higher off the ground.

Edit: Wow, DDZ posted while I was typing this post. Fuckin' coincidences, eh?

 

[DDZ]

Haha ye, eerie.

But yeah, the glare is terrible. When I was fighting mobs like wolves or goblins at night they would completely vanish.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Contender? Assassin is basically easy mode, jack of all trades - master of everything.

Yeah, I had no previous knowledge of the classes and went for Strider-Assassin because it sounded cool and now I can't enjoy the game with other classes. Feels bad man.

 

[Blaine]

Eh, surely you could get some mileage out of Mystic Knight, Magick Archer, or Sorcerer if you wanted. They all can do things Assassin can't.

Still, Assassin is very effective and certainly the most versatile. It basically allows you to enjoy most of the aspects of the warrior and archer classes in a nice mishmash, with some extras thrown in.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Eh, surely you could get some mileage out of Mystic Knight, Magick Archer, or Sorcerer if you wanted. They all can do things Assassin can't.

Still, Assassin is very effective and certainly the most versatile.

I went for Mystic Knight but problem is, the only content I have yet to explore is BBI and after my first run into Elder Ogre and 20 wasted wakestones I am just too burnt out to try it further.