Capcom Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[Delterius]

By the way, once shit starts to become kinda easy, which will happen sooner or later, consider playing with your main pawn only (or even solo).

It's easy now minus the drake but I prefer having the pawns around and extra damage. To my understanding xp isn't split at all and I stopped giving pawns gear because they can't use it anyway. They're good for holding heavy items so that I don't constantly have to go back to a town. Doing things this was, I've heavily cut down on inventory management and switch pawns as I level.

one easy way to make pawns useful is to find the one thing they do well and limit their repertoire

like

a ranger pawn with just the 12 arrow shot skill so they spawn it

or a strider pawn with just dagger skills, so they are that much more likely to climb and distract things

 

[sullynathan]

one easy way to make pawns useful is to find the one thing they do well and limit their repertoire

like

a ranger pawn with just the 12 arrow shot skill so they spawn it

or a strider pawn with just dagger skills, so they are that much more likely to climb and distract things

So pretty much choose one spell/ skill for my main pawn that I like.

Doesn't sound very feasible for picking other pawns

 

[Damned Registrations]

You don't have to go that route (though you will find other people's pawns set up that way) it's just a way to control them better. Oh, and you can give them orders to some extent. I forget the controls for it, but there's a command that will make them heal you, and another that will make them buff you. Very helpful.

If you give them a full loadout of skills, if they know the weakness of an enemy they'll exploit it. The problem is, most pawns don't know jack shit, especially your own, so they use dumb shit instead. But a well trained pawn with a good toolkit is very effective.

 

[sullynathan]

You don't have to go that route (though you will find other people's pawns set up that way) it's just a way to control them better.

I'm playing this completely offline. The pawns are still dumb, one fell off a cliff and needed help so I jumped off the cliff and died losing a good amount of progress.

Anyway, I found the fort of women. When I made it to the top, their leader immediately attacked me so I massacred all of them. The guy at the great wall encampment didn't allow me to withdraw items so I couldn't check if I had anything to fool them like my pawn recommended.

I eventually made it to the Catacombs, another good dungeon that lead me directly back to Gran Soren. The game might lack easy fast travel, but there are shortcuts here and there. I went to the DLC shop because I have 350k gold and all the DLC items are worse than what I currently have, so I have money to do whatever with.

The shitty Jasper quest doesn't spawn Jasper in until you wait outside Gran Soren for like 5 minutes. This is really annoying in general because both monsters and npcs will spawn right in your face when you don't expect it. The faggot even asked for 30k gold to help him.

With this done, the rest of the dozen quests I have are go here and kill x enemy for money and xp which I don't need nor will I trek to those places and beat on trash mobs since I'm level 33. I'm just gonna move on with the main quest of everfall.

 

[Wunderbar]

The pawns are still dumb, one fell off a cliff and needed help so I jumped off the cliff and died

:D

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

XP isn't split, but you do get additional xp for each pawn slot you don't fill [https://dragonsdogma.fandom.com/wiki/Experience_Points#Increasing.2FDecreasing_Experience_Gain].
You also might want to level Fighter and Strider for the Sinew and Leg-Strength augments to help with encumberance.

For pawn behaviour, it's worth checking Pawn Inclination.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The pawns are still dumb, one fell off a cliff and needed help so I jumped off the cliff and died

:D

If your slave jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The pawns are still dumb, one fell off a cliff and needed help so I jumped off the cliff and died

:D

If your slave jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?

If he didn't he'd be forever known as the guy who let his slaves escape because he was too scared to jump.

 

[Damned Registrations]

To be honest I threw mine off cliffs myself fairly often. The best part is if they live and say "Tis a troubling foe."

 

[sullynathan]

Sinew and Leg-Strength augments

Already ahead of you. I started the game as fighter and got close to max vocation rank. Already got these

 

[sullynathan]

Quest design and the open world isn't very good in this game just due to how they don't even interact with each other.

Remember how I said I went to the water gods alter and cleared it minus one locked room? Said Locked rooms key was inside a cyclops that I previously beat only this time it spawned with the key only because of the quest.

I returned to maul's bandits and he gives me two quests and i can only do one: slay the female bandits in the north or confront a deserter. The thing is, I already slayed the female bandits and their leader but maul doesn't recognize it at all.

It would've been much better if the game was more open and had extra dialogues/rewards for doing things ahead of time instead of locking them and spawning them per quest basis. Iirc risen did this much better.

On the topic of random scenes. I've advanced enough that the griffon appeared as I was leaving gran soren and interrupted some soldiers defending their carriage from goblins. Why doesn't this happen more?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah, the devs definitely didn't plan for you to explore that far out without just taking the quests. It's very arbitrary, since there are plenty of sidequests that aren't available right away. I'd love a mod that unlocks that progression actually. I think that was probably the original intent but they ran out of time to implement extra interactions like that. I wish they'd never bothered with those stupid noticeboard quests and dumped that time into the open world and sidequests instead.

The griffon isn't random, sadly. Well, there's a chance it'll show up randomly from now on, but that first time you see it is it's intro basically. Though you can kill it there with certain builds and bypass the quest to go slay it.

 

[sullynathan]

Defeated the drake. Fought the Griffin until it fled to a far tower. I thought my comrades would lead me there as they led me to the first encounter, but they just walk to Gran Soren and teleport away.

At this point the game has truly stretched its enemy variety thin. The golems I saw in the woods are here in the pass to the tower, and they have the exact same movesets as cyclops except they're made out of rock and they only get harmed in the specific gems around their body. I'm really not liking this specific design of a monster taking most of the damage on very small gems on the body while the rest of the body receives only 10% or 0% damage.

It works in Shadow of the Colossus because the Colossi there are much much larger than the monsters here. Here, you get stupid things like trying to hit a drake's chest that is practically on the ground meaning most of my dagger hits fail to hit the actual gem on and instead just register as a chest hit. Even worse is the golem who has a gem on the palm of his hand and can't be harmed anywhere else on his body, so you have to try to hit that ridiculously small target with a sword or dagger while it's flailing all around. Mounting the monster doesn't even make it easier. How disappointing to cast a meteor and multiple crash down on your opponent just to do zero damage because it hit its back and not it's palm or knee gem?

I wish it had a far better UI. Please give me a list of everything I've crafted so I don't have to sift through my materials/tools to find specific items to then combine with others for crafting. Give me a trash can to put everything I don't want.

 

[mogwaimon]

Yeah, the devs definitely didn't plan for you to explore that far out without just taking the quests. It's very arbitrary, since there are plenty of sidequests that aren't available right away. I'd love a mod that unlocks that progression actually. I think that was probably the original intent but they ran out of time to implement extra interactions like that. I wish they'd never bothered with those stupid noticeboard quests and dumped that time into the open world and sidequests instead.

The griffon isn't random, sadly. Well, there's a chance it'll show up randomly from now on, but that first time you see it is it's intro basically. Though you can kill it there with certain builds and bypass the quest to go slay it.

To be fair, a good portion of the notice board quests were DLC, the ones in the pawn's guild basement in particular. And yea, the enemy variety is fairly low, it gets a bit better in post-game and BBI, but a lot of the enemies you will see are ultimately reskins or variants. Keep in mind that this was a new franchise for Capcom, they never quite expected the success that it had and the PC port came like 5 years after it originally released back on the 360/PS3. Despite the technical limitations and the 'first game in franchise' feel, it's still an awesome game. I just hope that DD2 proves to be like, a Mega Man 1 > Mega Man 2 leap and not something like... Dead Rising 1 > Dead Rising 2. Not that DR2 was bad, but it was slight decline compared to DR1.

Sully, don't worry about the golems. You thankfully don't encounter them too often outside of a few specific quests, I usually try to prioritize the hidden gems when the golem falls over for precisely the reason you listed. There are golem variants later on that have the gems off of their body, you'll see.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Again, you've kind doomed yourself to rehashing stuff by exploring everything before doing any main quest stuff. You're going to be fighting stuff you've already seen for a while aside from the occasional new monster here and there, at least until you get to BBI, which has a bunch of new shit.

IIRC you can actually kill the golems without getting all their gems, I think you can overkill some medallions or they take extra damage in rage mode or something? I forget. They are a total PITA though, the worst is when the last gem is on it's foot, make sure to get that one early when it's frozen. Well, the actual worst is being a sorceror and just literally not being able to hurt them with your skills. Well, instant death works though, which can be hilarious.

Also, don't be afraid to just leave a monster behind. Fuckers are everywhere, no need to try genocide the countryside. Fight stuff you find fun to murder.

 

[sullynathan]

IIRC you can actually kill the golems without getting all their gems, I think you can overkill some medallions or they take extra damage in rage mode or something? I forget. They are a total PITA though, the worst is when the last gem is on it's foot, make sure to get that one early when it's frozen. Well, the actual worst is being a sorceror and just literally not being able to hurt them with your skills. Well, instant death works though, which can be hilarious.

The fucker fell into a wall and got stuck inside the terrain. I couldn't hit him and had to wait for him to get back up.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Well, the actual worst is being a sorceror and just literally not being able to hurt them with your skills.

Go full muscle wizard and cast Fist.

 

[sullynathan]

when you max out a vocation, is that the time to switch? how do I get more points for the switch?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

is that the time to switch?

If you don't wanna switch, don't.

how do I get more points for the switch?

Same way everything is achieved in this game. Krump more gits.

 

[sullynathan]

what is the crime system like? I got taken to jail for going into the treasury, but I couldn't fight back or anything? In there I could bribe the fat ass guard for 5K gold, but I already have 900K gold. Can I even kill people like the king?

is that the time to switch?

If you don't wanna switch, don't.

how do I get more points for the switch?

Same way everything is achieved in this game. Krump more gits.

then i'll probably switch back to fighter for a bit to max it then use sorceror for op spells. with that, does it mean I can mix match augmentations all across?

 

[sullynathan]

Lmao ballsack. I killed him in two hits, what a great boss

 

[Damned Registrations]

To be specific, vocation points don't scale up much with the strength of enemies. Killing 10 goblins will give you more than a cyclops. There's a point later on that makes it easy to farm points if you want, it'll be extremely obvious. Early on the best spot is probably the catacombs. Lots of mooks easy to splat.

what is the crime system like?

It's hilarious. I dunno if you've noticed yet, but if you draw weapons in front of a peasant they'll drop some shit for you and run away. You can also craft lockpicks to escape the dungeon iirc. I think there's a kid that calls the guard on you way more quickly than normal people as well.

 

[sullynathan]

To be specific, vocation points don't scale up much with the strength of enemies. Killing 10 goblins will give you more than a cyclops. There's a point later on that makes it easy to farm points if you want, it'll be extremely obvious. Early on the best spot is probably the catacombs. Lots of mooks easy to splat.

Really early on I had no clue what the points meant because the game doesn't explain but it became apparent as it went up new moves became available. I've now maxed out assassin and fighter and I'm playing sorcerer at level 44.

It's rather different. You have to press r1 + x square, triangle or circle and keep on holding r1 to target a specific person or group and then let go for the spell to work. Too bad there was no tutorial but it's rather easy and quite shitty that the pawns don't attack more often because it's quite powerful.

I'm pretty much working up to get bolide & fulmination since those kill the shit out of monsters when I picked pawns using them.

My pawn now is a max mage but I don't want to switch and lose the healing spells. Full sorcerer party.

It's hilarious. I dunno if you've noticed yet, but if you draw weapons in front of a peasant they'll drop some shit for you and run away. You can also craft lockpicks to escape the dungeon iirc. I think there's a kid that calls the guard on you way more quickly than normal people as well.

I got taken to jail for dumb shit. I stood in front of the guard in the castle at night and the screen turned black and I'm in prison. I was only there to do a quest for an important person.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I stood in front of the guard in the castle at night

Man that place is off limits at night.

 

[Damned Registrations]

To be specific, vocation points don't scale up much with the strength of enemies. Killing 10 goblins will give you more than a cyclops. There's a point later on that makes it easy to farm points if you want, it'll be extremely obvious. Early on the best spot is probably the catacombs. Lots of mooks easy to splat.

Really early on I had no clue what the points meant because the game doesn't explain but it became apparent as it went up new moves became available. I've now maxed out assassin and fighter and I'm playing sorcerer at level 44.

It's rather different. You have to press r1 + x square, triangle or circle and keep on holding r1 to target a specific person or group and then let go for the spell to work. Too bad there was no tutorial but it's rather easy and quite shitty that the pawns don't attack more often because it's quite powerful.

I'm pretty much working up to get bolide & fulmination since those kill the shit out of monsters when I picked pawns using them.

My pawn now is a max mage but I don't want to switch and lose the healing spells. Full sorcerer party.

It's hilarious. I dunno if you've noticed yet, but if you draw weapons in front of a peasant they'll drop some shit for you and run away. You can also craft lockpicks to escape the dungeon iirc. I think there's a kid that calls the guard on you way more quickly than normal people as well.

I got taken to jail for dumb shit. I stood in front of the guard in the castle at night and the screen turned black and I'm in prison. I was only there to do a quest for an important person.

The sorceror gets a LOT of nice shit. The defense buff is great, as is the status clearing one. The higher level version of the instant death spell is actually very good for wiping out little annoying shits or cheesing dumb shit like golems and Maelstrom is basically broken. The only ones that kinda suck are petrification (it only works properly on a few guys) and poison (it's ok for cyclops since it hits their eye easily, but those guys are chumps anyways.) Oh, and I think some of their passives are still bugged and do nothing or work in reverse or some shit. Like the higher defense while casting one maybe?