Amalur: Destiny and Fate(Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning now

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:27 pm

I'm not sure if I'd say that it's cliché as much as it seems like it's fully entrenched in the framework of High Fantasy (tm). The story hook seems to be the element of fate and how it can be manipulated by the main character, but I say that as someone with ~2 hours of play time.

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:41 pm

Yeah, being a reanimated corpse with no memory has never been done in RPGs.

Fuckin' really? C'mon.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:48 pm

I have to go with Cliché being used in innovative ways. Despite some dull side quests, which I admit the game has, I find the lore and story pretty compelling. When I was playing last night I made it to what I’ll call chapter 2 in the storyline and I actually got a bit of a Planescape Torment feel to storyline. Nowhere near that in-depth but as you run across people who knew you when you were alive and getting hints about who you are shows promise of the same mystery.

I become completely puzzled when people say the Elderscrolls have a better story. I finished Skyrim a couple weeks ago and I have to think hard to remember what happened in the story! Dragons show up. Dragons bad. You only person who can kill dragons! Go kill dragons! For me the Elderscrolls games have among the most boring settings and lore of any of the RPGs I’ve played, or at least finished. The only reason I play them is that the Assassins Guild & Thieves quest are usually pretty good; aside from that they are completely forgettable to me.

For me Amalur feels more alive largely because of how the story and characters are presented. The lore stones spread through the world that play voiced audio as you explore. NPCs that join you and speak to you as you complete quests. I’ll freely admit it’s no Dragon Age but I can only assume that the people who dislike the story are going out of their way to avoid it.

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:03 pm

No, it really is just dull as shit. Skyrim may be vanilla, but at least it manages vanilla.

Amalur is a bunch of awful "fantasy name generator" crap that sounds like it came out of a 9th grade D&D campaign, told un-artfully, in ways that are uninteresting.

That said, the mechanics of the game are quite fun and very much enjoyable...but this feels like an opportunity missed.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:45 pm

silverjon wrote:As I see it, TiLT mixing up cliche and trope. A trope is a story building block, and whether or not it is expressed as a cliche is dependent on how the block is used. It's effectively not possible to tell a story without incorporating tropes. You'd have no setting, no characters, and no plot.

GreenGoo's description sounds like some of the elements are being used in innovative ways, even if the quests lack depth.

This isn't a specific defense of the game, since I haven't gotten quite curious enough to try it in the face of all these books I gotta read.

Thanks silverjon. Trope is an excellent way to put it. I almost wrote the "all stories have already been told" quote. TiLT is being too generic in his description of the game, and by doing so it is very easy to say the game has elves just like all other games.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:48 pm

Lordnine wrote:I have to go with Cliché being used in innovative ways. Despite some dull side quests, which I admit the game has, I find the lore and story pretty compelling. When I was playing last night I made it to what I’ll call chapter 2 in the storyline and I actually got a bit of a Planescape Torment feel to storyline. Nowhere near that in-depth but as you run across people who knew you when you were alive and getting hints about who you are shows promise of the same mystery.

Of course not (as in depth). The game is not completely original and the very MMO feel and design decisions prevent it from being in the same league as Planescape. That being said, it's simply not a cliched story, not so far anyway. It could easily get so later, but it doesn't start that way. I look forward to the story developing, and hope it is more Planescape than D&D.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:52 pm

triggercut wrote:Yeah, being a reanimated corpse with no memory has never been done in RPGs.

Fuckin' really? C'mon.

Are we talking Planescape or something else? No one said it was completely original, and in fact I said it wasn't right from the start. Also I said that this is no longer my genre, so I have missed a pile of rpgs. Which is not to say that I haven't played any.

The weird thing about Reckoning is that I forgot that I was supposed to have no memory. I felt more like a Mary Shelley Frankenstein than an amnesiac. While waking up with no memory IS cliched, I don't feel that applies to this game, but again, that could change later as I play farther into the storyline.

And the gnomes are clearly doing research into magic. There is no technology or science involved, unless you consider research to be science. Actually you could make that argument but then science in the context of most rpg's gets thrown out and we're back to the scientific method as a research tool.

I actually don't give a crap about the gnomes, but since we are arguing cliches, I feel compelled to correct the misconception that the gnomes are tech gnomes. At least not for the opening segment of the game. Perhaps we revisit them later and they are tinkering away at flying machines or something.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:06 pm

GreenGoo wrote:I look forward to the story developing, and hope it is more Planescape than D&D.

I know what you mean (regarding the story being more like the one from the Planescape CRPG than the typical D&D CRPG) , but technically Planescape is D&D

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:08 pm

I found a poster posting this:

And the ending is... Well, it's bad. I'm not gonna bother putting up spoiler boxes to explain everything I didn't like, but I'm gonna list a few non-spoilery bullet points:

It performs the cardinal sin of amnesia plots by giving the main character a big, complicated, nonsensical backstory in a gigantic exposition dump at the very end of the story. I'm not gonna say what it is, but I can promise you that no matter what ideas you form in your head about them, you will be immensely disappointed with the cliched, plot-hole-riddled crap that the truth turns out to be.
The script very hastily attempts to establish a mutual love interest between the player character and Alyn Shir in the last ten minutes of the game, with literally zero prior development of said "romance arc." And then they have the gall to attempt to make said romance have a bittersweet ending! If you're anything like me you'll already hate her for having a vapid, shallow personality and wearing three band-aids into combat. Frankly I was insulted when the game expected me to be sad about never seeing her again! I suspect this was an attempt to rip off Morrigan's ending from Dragon Age, except that you know, had proper pacing.

And I can understand how a crappy ending can ruin even a good game, let alone one that is average. So yeah, now I've got that to look forward to, which sucks. In the meantime I'll try not to let it bother me while I play the rest of the game.

As for the guilds, that was my fault not recognizing them. When you encounter the warsworn there is a definite "faction" feel to it, and my impression was that they were going to be just one of many factions in the game. I didn't realize at the time that they were the "fighting organization" with the wanderers (or whatever they're called) being the "sneaking/stealing organization". Again, these felt more like factions (such as rep grinding factions in WoW) when I first encountered them and expected to come across others. So I concede that game mechanics that mimic guilds are part of the game. Shrug. I wasn't planning on joining any of them, since they sounded like they required a commitment from me to do certain things, and I didn't want to be tied down.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:42 pm

Just finished the House of Ballads and I’m curious about alternate endings.

Spoiler:

Reemul · Post by **Reemul** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 3:03 am

triggercut wrote:Yeah, being a reanimated corpse with no memory has never been done in RPGs.

Fuckin' really? C'mon.

Well Planescape springs to mind in an RPG sense, nothing else does for me so if you haven't played a shit load of games where this happens your outlook will be different to other peoples.

Personally people read too much in to this shit, I am really enjoying this game regardless of how similar or not it is to other games.

I mean I have been an avid reader since I was a child and at one stage owned and had read over 10,000 books and how many of them were similar, the same, overlapped, ripped off of other books I hate to imagine however didn't mean many of them were not a great read.

Personally Green Goo's write up and points mirror my enjoyment of the game.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 9:02 am

IceBear wrote:
GreenGoo wrote:I look forward to the story developing, and hope it is more Planescape than D&D.
I know what you mean (regarding the story being more like the one from the Planescape CRPG than the typical D&D CRPG) , but technically Planescape is D&D

Yeah, I re-read that and thought about throwing in a "generic D&D" but was too lazy to change it.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 11:28 am

GreenGoo wrote:
IceBear wrote:
GreenGoo wrote:I look forward to the story developing, and hope it is more Planescape than D&D.
I know what you mean (regarding the story being more like the one from the Planescape CRPG than the typical D&D CRPG) , but technically Planescape is D&D
Yeah, I re-read that and thought about throwing in a "generic D&D" but was too lazy to change it.

The irony in that is that Planescape is the most "generic" D&D you can get since it exists in all the published settings.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:36 pm

TiLT wrote:The irony in that is that Planescape is the most "generic" D&D you can get since it exists in all the published settings.

You're arguing that Planescape is a generic D&D world, is that it?

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:49 pm

Started a new character, which is never a good sign, since I tend to have alt issues and never get anywhere because I'm playing too many alts. In this case though, I let my 4 year old daughter design the appearance, blond haired blue eyed bombshell she wanted to name barbie. I hate the look but my daughter likes it because it's a lot like her, and we compromised on the name, taking something else less...commercial.

She's mostly a rogue with a smattering of mage. I will be mixing the skill points in a 2:1 ratio between rogue:mage and see where that takes me.

I got a pair of faeblades early, but I think I prefer the daggers. I also got a chakram super early (like level 3. My fighter didn't see them until level 7 or so). With the daggers and chakram, I can see how people would find the game easy. I'm breezing through mobs just by wailing on the attack button, only changing it up when I get bored. This is nothing like my hammer dude, who is constantly on the defensive and relies heavily on his special moves to get in a counter attack.

Low level stealth seems fairly useless. Too easy to get spotted from far away. I'm still putting points into it to see how it fares later. Also, I don't see any way to increase the speed of my stealth movement, which is going to royally suck over time. WoW's stealth movement starts excruciatingly slow, but with talent points you could get up to a respectable speed. To make it tolerable I'd need more speed in stealth. Combined with how far away the mobs can spot you, means you have to enter stealth from miles away and travel close at the slow speed. Painful and boring. I might look for a mod that knocks it up a notch without being crazy fast.

Moat_Man · Post by **Moat_Man** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 2:55 pm

GreenGoo wrote: I let my 4 year old daughter design the appearance, blond haired blue eyed bombshell she wanted to name barbie. I hate the look but my daughter likes it because it's a lot like her, and we compromised on the name, taking something else less...commercial.

Are you auditioning for an episode of Toddlers & Tridents?

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 2:56 pm

GreenGoo wrote: Low level stealth seems fairly useless. Too easy to get spotted from far away. I'm still putting points into it to see how it fares later. Also, I don't see any way to increase the speed of my stealth movement, which is going to royally suck over time.

Use your somersault ability or if you become a Seer your teleport ability to quickly get behind enemies.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 4:52 pm

Lordnine wrote:
GreenGoo wrote: Low level stealth seems fairly useless. Too easy to get spotted from far away. I'm still putting points into it to see how it fares later. Also, I don't see any way to increase the speed of my stealth movement, which is going to royally suck over time.
Use your somersault ability or if you become a Seer your teleport ability to quickly get behind enemies.

The backstab ability has to come out of stealth to work, doesn't it?

I dodge all over the place but I should have blink in a level or two.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 6:54 pm

As long as you start out in stealth you should remain in stealth after using one of the doge abilities.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 8:58 pm

Lordnine wrote:As long as you start out in stealth you should remain in stealth after using one of the doge abilities.

I see. But the skill is against "creatures that are unaware of you" and I still get seen from miles away.

I'll practice.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 9:10 pm

You just need to make sure their back is to you. I only have two points in stealth and I am able to blink up to most enemies without problem. It just becomes harder if there are lots in a group.

The disparity in the quality of quests is really starting to get to me. About 1 in 5 quests are really excellent but those other 4 should have been cut entirely… Still enjoying the game a lot but I hope the developer learns to scale back the amount of content and instead focus on making the good content better for their next game.

Buatha · Post by **Buatha** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 10:00 pm

I pre-ordered the PC version from Amazon to get come cool weapons. Well, it seems that the codes don't transfer with your cloud saves, so I can't play the game on my downstairs computer since "This save file requires downloadable content that is not currently available."

How can you offer cloud saves, yet not transfer the DLC? WTF?!

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 2:57 am

In case anyone is interested I found the answer to my previous question. Most of the major quest lines in the game (Main Plot, Factions, World Events) DO have variable twist of fate cards you will earn based on your actions or dialogue throughout the quest.

For those that don’t know, Twist of Fate cards give you permanent bonuses to your stats and/or skills.

Buatha · Post by **Buatha** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 3:25 am

Buatha wrote:I pre-ordered the PC version from Amazon to get come cool weapons. Well, it seems that the codes don't transfer with your cloud saves, so I can't play the game on my downstairs computer since "This save file requires downloadable content that is not currently available."

How can you offer cloud saves, yet not transfer the DLC? WTF?!

Apparently, the way I installed the game with the files from Amazon caused the issue. I uninstalled the game and did a full install from Origin that cleared up the save game issue.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 1:18 pm

sigh...i wish there was a way to change the difficulty setting without restarting the game entirely. I'm about 15 hours in and it's been really too easy so far. I've only died a couple of times and that was in a boss battle early on. Now I can take down bosses without breaking a sweat on normal.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 1:20 pm

hepcat wrote:sigh...i wish there was a way to change the difficulty setting without restarting the game entirely. I'm about 15 hours in and it's been really too easy so far. I've only died a couple of times and that was in a boss battle early on. Now I can take down bosses without breaking a sweat on normal.

You can change it at any time from the options screen. In fact, there's a tooltip mentioning this. The only downside is that it warns you that you may not be able to get certain achievements when doing this. I assume it's talking about the "win the game on Hard difficulty" achievement.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 1:26 pm

TiLT wrote:
hepcat wrote:sigh...i wish there was a way to change the difficulty setting without restarting the game entirely. I'm about 15 hours in and it's been really too easy so far. I've only died a couple of times and that was in a boss battle early on. Now I can take down bosses without breaking a sweat on normal.
You can change it at any time from the options screen. In fact, there's a tooltip mentioning this. The only downside is that it warns you that you may not be able to get certain achievements when doing this. I assume it's talking about the "win the game on Hard difficulty" achievement.

I was looking for that in the options off the main menu and in the game and didn't see it.

edit: d'oh! it's only available in game, so I must not have looked terribly hard. just switched it to hard. i don't really care about achievements, I just wanna have fun. Thanks!

naednek · Post by **naednek** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 2:18 pm

How do I increase my stats in might/finese/sorcery? Is it by fate cards? I have the dlc, but I can't use them because my might is too weak. I switched from rogue to brawler, but it doesn't give me enough after that.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 2:46 pm

When you level up you get three points to spend on skills in the Might, Magic and Finesse trees. The games uses the total amount of points that you've spent in those three areas as a guide to the type of fate cards you can unlock as you level up. So if you really specialize early on, you can start unlocking class-specific bonuses or have yourself spread out over a range of skills and get different benefits that way as well (though not nearly as fast).

That's my impression, anyway.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Feb 19, 2012 7:38 pm

Ettins + Hammer dude = pain.

Without knock back, I'm all out of tricks. Looks like I'll be chipping away at them for awhile, hoping I can avoid the lightning instead of riding it.

SlapBone · Post by **SlapBone** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 12:25 am

GreenGoo wrote:
triggercut wrote:Yeah, being a reanimated corpse with no memory has never been done in RPGs.

Fuckin' really? C'mon.
Are we talking Planescape or something else?

Revenant

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 1:29 am

GreenGoo wrote:Ettins + Hammer dude = pain.

Without knock back, I'm all out of tricks. Looks like I'll be chipping away at them for awhile, hoping I can avoid the lightning instead of riding it.

I discovered that many attacks you cant back away from you can avoid by phase shifting through the person doing the attack.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:22 am

I've put in about 14 hours over the last couple days, and am thoroughly enjoying it. Amalur doesn't redefine the genre in any way, but has a solid combat system, plenty of things to do, good enemy variety, solid writing (for the most part), plenty of stats and loot to fiddle with, a cool crafting system, and it looks good (something other that brown & grey is nice). I much prefer Amalur to Skyrim, which bored me to tears after the first 10'ish hours. Seems to be very long as well...I'm 14 hours in and haven't even finished the first of what looks like 5 main areas.

I've got a couple minor quibbles: wish you could drop quests, as the completionist in me hates seeing those thief guild quests up there, even though I know I'll never finish them. Also wish you could see what components you'll be getting before choosing to salvage an item. Other than that, I'm liking Amalur far more than I expected to.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:24 am

Skinypupy wrote:Also wish you could see what components you'll be getting before choosing to salvage an item.

It's supposed to be very random when salvaging. You can salvage a really powerful weapon and get nothing in return, or salvage a non-magical weapon and get an awesome crafting component. There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to Blacksmithing, in my experience:

- Salvaging an item will only produce parts that can be used to build that item in the first place. In other words, you won't get a bowstring from a sword.
- If you receive a core component, its quality will be directly based on the salvaged item. For example, if you salvage a Sylvanite chestpiece, any core component you get is going to be what you need to create another Sylvanite chestpiece. That particular armor won't produce Azurite parts.
- Both core components and supporting components can be bought in certain stores. I'm not sure if the quality is based on the location or your level, but I've seen some pretty good quality stuff show up for cheap prices so far. Even Greater supporting components are beginning to be available for purchase, which is nice.
- All items share supporting components with other items. You can see an overview of this from the crafting screen, but the UI is sorely lacking in detail. What I did was to go through every bit of equipment I'd ever need to craft and write down what components it used. That made it much easier for me to determine if a component was worth buying, for example.
- I'd recommend that you either focus on Mercantile or Blacksmithing. Not both. They seem to be designed as two separate ways of approaching equipment in this game. The thing is, if you're a blacksmith you really should salvage everything that is possible for you to salvage, and only sell the stuff that you can't do that with. You'll still be swimming in money as long as you actually use your Blacksmithing skill and don't try purchasing stuff all the time.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:21 am

Lordnine wrote:
GreenGoo wrote:Ettins + Hammer dude = pain.

Without knock back, I'm all out of tricks. Looks like I'll be chipping away at them for awhile, hoping I can avoid the lightning instead of riding it.
I discovered that many attacks you cant back away from you can avoid by phase shifting through the person doing the attack.

This guy is never going to be able to blink (I assume that's what you mean) unfortunately.

I've got 3 characters on the go, just to get a feel for different character designs and play. I'm toying with the idea of deleting them all and deciding on 1 character to play all the way through without interuption.

I've got a pure fighter, a pure mage and a rogue/mage combo. The rogue/mage is by far the more interesting one to play, just from a stealth/stealing/pickpocketing stand point. Also I'm playing it less rigidly than the fighter, who is a goodie two shoes.

I can say that how you approach conversation trees does in fact change how the game plays out, even if it's just in small ways. For instance (minor spoiler):

Spoiler:

Playing 3 characters through the starting area up to about level 8 (for all 3. Fighter is level 10, my highest) I see these small differences often enough. And of course differences in persuasion skill have an impact as well.

Also with my rogue, I stumbled across 2 jotun sitting on their asses some distance apart. I was able to back stab one, quietly enough apparently, and not alert the other. I got 2 backstab kills back to back and that was HUGELY satisfying. Not the least of which is because the backstab animation on larger humanoids is to scale their back, plunge 1 dagger into their clavical, plunge the second dagger into the other clavical, then drag the blades across its throat in a gush of blood and then leap off as the target reaches for his throat which is fountaining blood and then collapsing to the ground. Not exactly as silent looking as backstabbing a normal sized humanoid, with the hand over mouth, multiple rib stabs and then laying the body quietly on the ground, but extremely satisfying nonetheless.

Multiple tougher targets are still difficult as a rogue, but I'm starting to develop some DoT's so I'm able to nick and cut them and let my poisons and fires doing some of th work for me. My hammer dude comes very close to 1 kill per hammer combo. Smaller, weaker targets can fall before the entire combo is finished. larger ones take more. BIG ones involve some dodging.

Mage I don't have as much experience. It's almost always chakram x4, storm bolt thingie, staff staff staff and then storm bolt again if needed. I like the melee ability of the mage's with a staff, but find the aoe difficult to pull off while getting wailed on. The attack from blocking is ok, but seems very weak, damage-wise. I'm struggling to figure out how I'm going to be a caster mage. Switching spells is a chore, and cooldowns mean I can't just spam a spell (which is good). Once my storm bolt is maxed, it'll do more aoe damage and some stun, so vortexing from block to bring the mobs together then stormbolting the grouped bad guys might be viable and fun.

I wish you could switch your abilities to mouse scroll, rather than weapon switch. I'm not sure why they let you map a weapon swap key and then lock the mouse scroll to weapon swap as well. Annoying. I assume taht will be fixed in a mod or patch. Being left handed it is less intuitive for me to leave the keypad and reach over to the top number row to switch abilities, especially if I'm trying for some fast, cool combos.

Each area has it's own little sub plot, such as the fae assaulted in gorwhatever, the spider invasion from the webwoods and the ettin activity. It may not be literature, but it's enough to keep me paying attention to the goals of any single area, as well as trying to keep track of the overall plotline as well.

Having you get your own house is a nice touch, although certainly not a new innovation. I wish they'd let me decide what crafting station to put in the house. It would make more sense for my fighter to have a forge in the house rather than an alchemist table. Oh well.

Skill (detect hidden and such) points are extremely rare, meaning you have decide if you want to be an master in something or a jack of all trades. It's ok, but part of me wishes I had just slightly more points to spend. Not double, but maybe 3 every 2 levels or something.

I don't find the crafting system very compelling, but I haven't spent a huge amount of time on it. It seems to work fine, but it doesn't capture my interest much.

The game is perhaps not as deep as an old school rpg, and not as fast and furious as a pure action rpg. Depending on what you're looking for, that's a good or bad thing. They at least gave you the ability to skip through any dialogue, which is a godsend if you play through the game more than once. Unskippable dialogue would have me pulling my hair out very early.

For those of you who have finished, what level was your character at the end?

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:54 am

GreenGoo wrote:Skill (detect hidden and such) points are extremely rare, meaning you have decide if you want to be an master in something or a jack of all trades. It's ok, but part of me wishes I had just slightly more points to spend. Not double, but maybe 3 every 2 levels or something.

There's more than enough skill points to go around. You'd need 90 points to max out every skill. You get 4 points for free with your race choice. You get 40 points from leveling. If you get the highest-tier jack-of-all-trades destiny you get +3 to all skills, worth 27 skill points in total. Each skill also has a selection of trainers spread across the world who will increase a particular skill by +1 if it is within a certain range at the time of training. Even if you miss this window of opportunity you can use a Fateweaver to reset your skill choices so that you once more qualify for the trainer. You can also find a bunch of randomized skill tomes as loot. All in all, you'll find that you have no lack of skill points in the end. At level 25 I've maxed out two of my skills as well as brought two others halfway up and have a bunch of points spread across the rest.

I don't find the crafting system very compelling, but I haven't spent a huge amount of time on it. It seems to work fine, but it doesn't capture my interest much.

I find the crafting more interesting than in most other games, at least the blacksmithing. You don't work with the traditional recipes from other games, but instead have a "frame" that you build the item around using components, including optional components in the form of gems. The crafting system gives you plenty of opportunities to create truly unique items perfectly suited to your playstyle.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 11:06 am

TiLT wrote:
GreenGoo wrote:Skill (detect hidden and such) points are extremely rare, meaning you have decide if you want to be an master in something or a jack of all trades. It's ok, but part of me wishes I had just slightly more points to spend. Not double, but maybe 3 every 2 levels or something.
There's more than enough skill points to go around. You'd need 90 points to max out every skill. You get 4 points for free with your race choice. You get 40 points from leveling. If you get the highest-tier jack-of-all-trades destiny you get +3 to all skills, worth 27 skill points in total. Each skill also has a selection of trainers spread across the world who will increase a particular skill by +1 if it is within a certain range at the time of training. Even if you miss this window of opportunity you can use a Fateweaver to reset your skill choices so that you once more qualify for the trainer. You can also find a bunch of randomized skill tomes as loot. All in all, you'll find that you have no lack of skill points in the end. At level 25 I've maxed out two of my skills as well as brought two others halfway up and have a bunch of points spread across the rest.

I don't find the crafting system very compelling, but I haven't spent a huge amount of time on it. It seems to work fine, but it doesn't capture my interest much.
I find the crafting more interesting than in most other games, at least the blacksmithing. You don't work with the traditional recipes from other games, but instead have a "frame" that you build the item around using components, including optional components in the form of gems. The crafting system gives you plenty of opportunities to create truly unique items perfectly suited to your playstyle.

That's good to know. Part of the perceived issue is that I'm so low level, and I see advantage in lots of the skills, so right now I have to pick and choose somewhat carefully and it almost always involves leaving something I would like, behind.

I've started pushing blacksmithing on my fighter but I really haven't paid it any attention. I like the experimentation for the potions, as well as getting potion recipes for rewards or loot. That is intuitive and something I'm used to. Blacksmithing seems a little different. Every time I go to craft something, there is usually an icon for each kind of weapon, with an X or a green thingy showing whether I can craft it or not. So it *looks* like I can only craft 1 weapon of each type. Similarly for each armour type. I am clearly missing something but have not spent any time figuring out what that something is, yet.

I will say the last 2 hammers (including my current one) I have crafted myself. They are kind of boring but have a higher top damage than anything I've found so far.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 12:39 pm

TiLT wrote:
Skinypupy wrote:Also wish you could see what components you'll be getting before choosing to salvage an item.
It's supposed to be very random when salvaging. You can salvage a really powerful weapon and get nothing in return, or salvage a non-magical weapon and get an awesome crafting component. There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to Blacksmithing, in my experience:

- Salvaging an item will only produce parts that can be used to build that item in the first place. In other words, you won't get a bowstring from a sword.
- If you receive a core component, its quality will be directly based on the salvaged item. For example, if you salvage a Sylvanite chestpiece, any core component you get is going to be what you need to create another Sylvanite chestpiece. That particular armor won't produce Azurite parts.
- Both core components and supporting components can be bought in certain stores. I'm not sure if the quality is based on the location or your level, but I've seen some pretty good quality stuff show up for cheap prices so far. Even Greater supporting components are beginning to be available for purchase, which is nice.
- All items share supporting components with other items. You can see an overview of this from the crafting screen, but the UI is sorely lacking in detail. What I did was to go through every bit of equipment I'd ever need to craft and write down what components it used. That made it much easier for me to determine if a component was worth buying, for example.
- I'd recommend that you either focus on Mercantile or Blacksmithing. Not both. They seem to be designed as two separate ways of approaching equipment in this game. The thing is, if you're a blacksmith you really should salvage everything that is possible for you to salvage, and only sell the stuff that you can't do that with. You'll still be swimming in money as long as you actually use your Blacksmithing skill and don't try purchasing stuff all the time.

That's helpful, thanks Tilt. I've been focusing solely on Blacksmithing, but have steered away from salvaging because of the unpredictable nature of what you get. I've been selling most of my stuff simply because I haven't been able to craft anything (Blacksmithing level 8) that's even close to what I can buy in stores at this point. Will probably start salvaging a bit more and see if I have any success with it.

ChuckB · Post by **ChuckB** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 1:05 pm

Buatha wrote:
ChuckB wrote:...I'm playing this on the PS3 and the game is clearly optimized for gamepads...
The graphics are very good on the PS3, fantastic in parts...
So, you're not seeing any blockiness with the Anti-Aliasing? I went with the PC version + gamepad route since the PS3 version (my usual choice for single-player games) almost looked like AA was turned off. Of course, I had to base this off the demo, but I wanted to pre-order the game for some of the weapons/goodies.

Well, I don't expect much of AA in my PS3 games and strangely, it doesn't bother me. I'll definitely not play a PC game without AA (although I play at 1920x1200) but for some reason, it doesn't bother me with PS3 games. Reckoning looks good and something about the visual style makes the lack of AA less of a problem. It also doesn't rely on little details and it's generally fast moving and colorful, so I'm fine. I tried Skyrim on my PS3 and couldn't stand it ...

I decided against the PC version because I don't think that there will be a lot of modding going on for Reckoning (something that makes games like Oblivion and Skyrim so much better over time) and because I got the feeling from the demo that this would be a good console game.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 1:22 pm

GreenGoo wrote:I've started pushing blacksmithing on my fighter but I really haven't paid it any attention. I like the experimentation for the potions, as well as getting potion recipes for rewards or loot. That is intuitive and something I'm used to. Blacksmithing seems a little different. Every time I go to craft something, there is usually an icon for each kind of weapon, with an X or a green thingy showing whether I can craft it or not. So it *looks* like I can only craft 1 weapon of each type. Similarly for each armour type. I am clearly missing something but have not spent any time figuring out what that something is, yet.

There aren't multiple types of each weapon. When on the crafting screen, you first decide what kind of weapon or armor you wish to make. Let's say you wish to make a longsword. You pick the Longsword option. This presents you with a new screen, the first one which asks you to select the type of blade. This is the longsword's core component. At the beginning of the game you're unlikely to see more than one option here as this is pretty much the "level" of the weapon. More powerful core components leads to greater base damage for weapons, and greater base armor for weapons. That's all there is to this part.

The next three steps (less if you haven't built your Blacksmithing skill far enough) deal with the various supporting components. This is where the true customizing appears. For a longsword, your first choice is what hilt to use. These you mostly get from salvaging other items, though you can get some really powerful support components from quests. Unlike the core component, support components are shared between item types. The hilt you choose can do anything from increasing the item's physical damage to giving a bonus to health and/or mana, or increasing gold drops. To get the most out of this system you MUST salvage items as often as you can, or you'll be stuck with a limited selection of crappy components.

The final step, which is only available to an advanced blacksmith, lets you add a gem to the item. This gem can never be removed, but it can really improve any item. This is where synergy between Blacksmithing and Sagecrafting really pays off.

Once the item is finished you have the option of naming it.

My character, at level 25, has a longsword that deals more than 130 damage per attack and has some seriously nice effects associated with it. I have never found a longsword so far that deals more than about 90 points of damage, and those have less nifty effects as well. Blacksmithing can be truly powerful if you invest in it.