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

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:03 pm

Thanks TiLT. After reading your previous posts my intuition came up with something pretty close to that, but your explanation was clear and concise. Part of my thinking it was only 1 weapon type was due to only having a few components (and only 3 component slots when blacksmithing) so I didn't have much choice in what to put where, giving me the illusion that there was no choice involved and only 1 weapon craftable.

I'll keep salvaging (I have been already) and pushing blacksmithing and pay more attention when crafting things.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:03 pm

I respeced this afternoon, and made a choice I should have done a long time ago: I specced completely away from alchemy. This keeps me from feeling the compulsive need to collect reagents every 5 steps, and I feel like the game is progressing much smoother as a result. Besides, outside of healing potions and one armor potion (to offset a curse effect), I have yet to use a single other potion in my 16 hours of play. Don't think I'm going to miss much by not focusing there.

Decided to go mainly Blacksmith/Sagecraft. Thought that would be a good combination, but it suffers from a couple problems. One: I can't craft any armor with sockets, which kind of defeats the purpose of also being able to create powerful gems. Two: I am able to Sagecraft "utility" gems which I can use during armor/weapon crafting, but it seems like the majority of these only have mana-increasing or mana-regen effects, which are pretty much useless to me as a non-magic user. Might need to rethink that combination. Is Persuasion worth dumping points into? The cheaper bribes don't matter to me (I don't break the law much), and I don't see enough dialog options to make it worth it. Might be better off with dispelling (which I have a hard time with, even on the easy ones) or lockpicking (same thing).

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:18 pm

Skinypupy wrote:Decided to go mainly Blacksmith/Sagecraft. Thought that would be a good combination, but it suffers from a couple problems. One: I can't craft any armor with sockets, which kind of defeats the purpose of also being able to create powerful gems. Two: I am able to Sagecraft "utility" gems which I can use during armor/weapon crafting, but it seems like the majority of these only have mana-increasing or mana-regen effects, which are pretty much useless to me as a non-magic user. Might need to rethink that combination.

No you do not! That combination is awesome, and you're paying it a huge disservice!

At higher levels of blacksmithing you can add a gem to the item you're crafting. What kind of gem this is depends on the item. You use Armor gems for armor, Weapon gems for weapons (duh!), and once you can craft them, Epic gems for chest armor. The latter is insanely good and definitely worth the effort. I'm currently using a crafted chestpiece which gives over 300 armor plus a bunch of other effects. The gem I added to that armor (which is permanently attached through the blacksmithing process, unlike items you find or buy) has a 60% chance of stunning any enemy that attacks me. That's right, 60% stun chance! I think it even works before the attack lands, as I often see creatures like trolls charging at me then suddenly becoming stunned before their attack animation has even started. My longsword's gem singlehandedly increased the weapon's attack power from around 95 to more than 130. Other gems I use give nifty effects like Elemental Resistance +11% and stuff like that, real lifesavers.

So no, the combination of Blacksmithing and Sagecrafting isn't bad. In fact, it's probably the most overpowering combination in the game. I noticed a dramatic increase in power once I was able to infuse gems in my crafted items.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:25 pm

Thanks for the intel Tilt! I mistakenly thought Utility Gems were the only things that could be added during the crafting process. The ability to add Weapon, Armor, and Epic gems will make a huge difference, I'm sure. I'm still a couple slots away from being able to do so (both on blacksmith and sagecraft0, but will keep on this path for now.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:52 pm

Looks like I have a few points to put into sagecraft now.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 6:09 pm

Skinypupy wrote:Two: I am able to Sagecraft "utility" gems which I can use during armor/weapon crafting, but it seems like the majority of these only have mana-increasing or mana-regen effects, which are pretty much useless to me as a non-magic user.

My favorite utility gem is health regen. Lightning + physical is the best combo if I recall. (I may not) With pristine I get 2hp regen. I need to check all the epic gem combos while I am at it.

Also the weapon gem I use in smithing adds 50 (fire) damage to my greatsword.... 50! Fire! At level 20 I have smithing maxed and sagecraft 2 pts from max. I need more shards! Sagecraft to a pure might user is awesome.

SlapBone · Post by **SlapBone** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 12:01 am

So did Salvatore write the story or the combat engine? I totally feel like making a white-haired dark-elf dual-wielding rogue-mage. I'll call him Drizst D'Orden.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:59 am

I’m about 22 hours into the game now and I’m much more impressed with some of the later locations than the ones you start in. I’m currently hanging out in a massive human city and the quests and related storylines seem like a step up from the ones you encounter in the smaller villages earlier in the game. The persuasion skill seems to come up a lot more now as well and is making the dialogue options more interesting.

I also liked right before I got to this location there was a smaller village that obsessed with religion and completely xenophobic. The options there let you help the racists or completely screw them over and was a nice change of pace from the earlier side missions. Makes me wonder if they had intended to have deeper quests in general but ran out of time to flesh them out.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:23 am

Bought it from Amazon, but if a download gets interrupted it restarts. It'll take at least 4-5 full 24 hour days to download this thing, maybe more. So I had to find a torrent. I look forward to playing a purchased, yet cracked game in about a week. :p

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:14 am

coopasonic wrote:My favorite utility gem is health regen. Lightning + physical is the best combo if I recall. (I may not) With pristine I get 2hp regen. I need to check all the epic gem combos while I am at it.

My mage just recently got 2 (or was it 3?) pieces of the frostweave set, which gives +2 hp regen. It's HUGE. As long as I don't die in a fight, I'm at full health for the next one. For a guy that is somewhat frugal with his potions, this makes the game a lot more "fun", in that I don't have to decide whether I can get away with 50% health or not for the next fight.

The shrine bonus of +0.5 regen is a big deal. +2.0 regen permanently is massive, at least for me.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 1:49 pm

I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't start using fast travel until I reach level 5 with my 3rd character. That's a LOT of running back and forth. Now that I'm using fast travel, it feels like cheating.

I was finally able to get past the 2 Ettin Shaman that ambushed my Hammer-dude. I decided that I'd drink all the potions I needed to and really concentrate on the combat. I was able to dodge the lightning far more often (about 95% of the time) and managed to split the 2, leaving me with 2 one on one battles rather than 1 two on one battles. After about 10 full combos, I noticed that its health bar hadn't moved yet. Nor was I building any fate. And when I was, it was only about +2 fate.

If you recall, I said I had crafted my hammer but that it was boring, but with a high total damage (compared to anything else I had seen at that point). Well, it was 100% physical damage. I went online to see if Ettin Shamans were immune to physical damage or what. I came across a video of a guy who looked far better equipped than I was, plowing through the same encounter. The thing I noticed is that his two handed sword was on fire, and his arrows were on fire as well. I put 2 and 2 together and broke out a staff I had kept for no good reason. Honestly, I have no idea why I was carrying that staff around. In any case, switching from my hammer (which had tons of skill points supporting it) to a staff with less top damage and only 1 skill point (giving the hold button aoe special attack) resulted in a complete slaughter of the ettins in a very short time. I also used the shield bash (timing the block just right) to great effect, since it was just about the only thing that would knock back the Ettins, giving me time to get in a full combo attack. Honestly, when I'm in sync with the game, that shield bash is awesome. When I'm out of sync though, ugh. I've blocked/bashed 3 attackers (not Ettins) at the same time, and that felt damn satisfying.

So I guess Ettin Shamans have significant resistance to physical, but are still vulnerable to magic. Regular Ettin brutes didn't seem to give my physical hammer any problems. After the crafting discussion here and the Ettin problems, I immediately crafted a hammer with a fire component (and higher damage overall) and have had little issue with Ettins since.

I had put my hammer guy on hiatus due to frustration and stalling with the Ettin encounter, but he's now back on the play list.

My rogue/mage and my fighter are both playing on normal difficulty. My mage is playing on hard difficulty, and is have a FAR easier time than my fighter, and a slightly easier time than rogue/mage. I don't know if it's a better understanding of the game and fight mechanics or if it's simply the build differences, but the mage is rocking along, often taking no damage in fights that would cause issues for my hammer-dude.

My mage has turned his storm bolt into something to fear, and has finally gotten some chaining happening along with the stun. He very recently got himself the skeletal companion, and despite it doing almost nothing in combat (only 1 pt in the skill) the companion looks cool as HELL! Very neat little guy. I used to make it a point to have a non-combat pet out almost all the time in WoW, and I plan on doing the same with this skeleton. I do plan on putting more points into him and I do hope (expect) he becomes useful in the future, but even if he doesn't, I like having him around. Keeps my mage from getting lonely.

I also noticed that the 3rd attack from the default 3 hit combo of the staff knocks back the big guys, whereas the 3rd attack from my hammer does not. Not sure why that is. I'll have to test a bit more to see if I'm missing something.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:20 pm

Have you ever repaired your hammer? At zero durability it does 1 point of damage.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:26 pm

coopasonic wrote:Have you ever repaired your hammer? At zero durability it does 1 point of damage.

Yes, it's repaired. It work(ed)s fine on other targets. Good point though. I don't always keep a close eye on the durability of my equipment.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:06 pm

I found the Skeleton pet pretty much worthless until I was able to get the health leech ability. Now every time Mister Skelington punches someone I heal about ¼ of my total health. This have become increasingly important because I’ve found that most enemies make short work of me if they actually get to melee, especially the demon creatures. I’m starting to regret not putting any skill points into force fields.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 4:45 pm

Lordnine wrote:I found the Skeleton pet pretty much worthless until I was able to get the health leech ability. Now every time Mister Skelington punches someone I heal about ¼ of my total health. This have become increasingly important because I’ve found that most enemies make short work of me if they actually get to melee, especially the demon creatures. I’m starting to regret not putting any skill points into force fields.

I've got the force field on my mage and my rogue/mage. My plan, such as it is, is to max out the forcefield tree (I wanna see what those missiles and such are like), the lightning tree, the arcane weapons tree (because meleeing with a staff is too much fun) and....something else I can't recall. Maybe that's it. 3 trees maybe. Fingers crossed I don't run across any lightning immune baddies.

There is definitely a big difference between my fighter wearing heavy armour and my mage wearing cloth, in terms of how much damage they take from physical hits. As you would expect of course. It was strange though, when my fighter switched to staff, he looked just like my mage except in full armour. It was unusual and gave a weird vibe, as the animation is clearly a casting animation. I mean for the circular aoe attack where you levitate with the staff hovering in front of you.

As I said, I'll put points in the pet just to see what happens. I'll still summon him anyway just because he looks cool.

Reemul · Post by **Reemul** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 4:45 am

I have 48 points in finesse but am Getting the urge to try a Mage. The only problem is no gear except the full house of ballads set. Is there an easy way to get a decent staff etc quickly or am I hoping for a lucky drop.

I have purple daggers, fae blades and swords but nothing for staffs or chakrams.

I am level 16 and still in dalentarth.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:54 am

Reemul wrote:I have 48 points in finesse but am Getting the urge to try a Mage. The only problem is no gear except the full house of ballads set. Is there an easy way to get a decent staff etc quickly or am I hoping for a lucky drop.

Purchase one or create one with Blacksmithing.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:08 pm

Finally started doing a little reading on the game and the general opinion is that the game is too easy, and that a pure fighter with a great sword or hammer, sagecrafting and blacksmithing, and relentless assault is an "I win" button.

So it seems like I'm taking just about the easiest route to finishing the game, even though I headed down this path randomly. I turned up the difficulty to hard in anticipation of things getting easier as my character develops, but he still dies at times.

Not too excited about drifting through the later parts of the game, but I like my character and find combat interesting so I'll keep going. On the plus side I've avoided relentless assault so far (because I was interested in other things) and I think I may just skip it entirely. Being interruptible should keep things interesting, as that is the main source of my difficulty right now.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:36 pm

My character is all might (well 6 points in finesse that I never use), and I even think I have relentless assault, but I've never used it. I may need to try it out. I don't ever die anyway.

Well except the first time I ran into a Niskaru(?) Tyrant. That's when I learned to use reckoning for bosses.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 3:06 pm

coopasonic wrote:My character is all might (well 6 points in finesse that I never use), and I even think I have relentless assault, but I've never used it. I may need to try it out. I don't ever die anyway. Well except the first time I ran into a Niskaru(?) Tyrant. That's when I learned to use reckoning for bosses.

I guess relentless assault alone is quite good, but if you climb the tree it gets nutty. Like holding your shield in front of you and everything dies when it attacks you. I've seen a screen shot of a single arrow being reflected and doing over 5,000 damage to the attacker Although the talk is that people had stopped upgrading their shield because they never use it and forgot about it. For me, I love the shield parry animation and mechanic, and try to squeeze at least one in per fight.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:09 pm

Woohoo! I finally found out how to get backpacks. I thought they were special items but as it turns out you can find them in several shop-keeps around the world. Now I feel foolish for not picking them up sooner.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:55 pm

Lordnine wrote:Woohoo! I finally found out how to get backpacks. I thought they were special items but as it turns out you can find them in several shop-keeps around the world. Now I feel foolish for not picking them up sooner.

I've been looking for a backpack the last 16 hours, and have yet to see one. Any hints as to which vendors have them?

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:57 pm

Skinypupy wrote:
Lordnine wrote:Woohoo! I finally found out how to get backpacks. I thought they were special items but as it turns out you can find them in several shop-keeps around the world. Now I feel foolish for not picking them up sooner.
I've been looking for a backpack the last 16 hours, and have yet to see one. Any hints as to which vendors have them?

There's one in the Corner Shop in the first town

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 11:22 pm

The three I’ve found are from Gohart, Ysa and Rathir. The backpacks are simply part of the normal inventory so just scroll down past the armor when you visit a vendor.

Having the extra space has improved my enjoyment of the loot system quite a lot. Since each type of potion takes up one slow and I have about 20 types of potions I was always forced to leave look in dungeons. No longer!

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 2:45 am

IceBear wrote:
Skinypupy wrote:
Lordnine wrote:Woohoo! I finally found out how to get backpacks. I thought they were special items but as it turns out you can find them in several shop-keeps around the world. Now I feel foolish for not picking them up sooner.
I've been looking for a backpack the last 16 hours, and have yet to see one. Any hints as to which vendors have them?
There's one in the Corner Shop in the first town

Thanks.

Just finished the House of Ballads quest line...thought it was interesting and well written. Last fight was a bugger, glad I saved a fateshift for it. I need to get better about using that ability (the extra XP is great), but I'm always afraid that if I do, there will be a big nasty right around the corner that I should have saved it for. End up typically only using it on bosses.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 3:21 am

Thanks for the tips about the backpacks. I've been meaning to look into it but hadn't yet. Time to fast travel back to gorhart.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:41 pm

My rogue/sorceror is on hiatus. I haven't touched her since last week. My fighter is level 16 now though, so he's progressing along. My sorceror is level 12, so he's moving forward too.

What I'm finding interesting, is that through somewhat organic role playing, my sorceror and fighter have taken almost completely different paths through the game. Sure they both follow the same core storyline, but the side quests that each have taken and completed have been significantly different. Different enough to have the game world feel different. My fighter never followed up on the webwood plotline and thus never entered the abandoned castle, whereas my sorceror has just recently taken on the widow in her lair (so that's two "dungeons" that my sorceror has been in that my fighter hasn't).

That has continued in various other areas. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that my 2 parallel playthroughs aren't parallel at all.

SlapBone · Post by **SlapBone** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 5:25 pm

Skinypupy wrote: Just finished the House of Ballads quest line...thought it was interesting and well written.

Same here. This game is steadily drawing me further in.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 8:45 pm

Just finished the Thieves guild quest line. I was happy to see that it required actual stealth to complete in a couple places. Not a lot mind you but most games make you complete thieves’ guild quest lines solely by stealing from corpses. It was also a nice change of pace that in the end of the quest you get to choose whom to frame and are rewarded based on your choice.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 12:07 pm

Struggling to get into Windemere.

Using lots of consumables including poison resist but with two of those things launching the slow tracking missiles (x3) all of which interrupt me, I'm struggling to do enough damage to survive. Even with the resist, they do enough physical and poison that blocking everything still kills me, and dodging just means the missiles keep tracking.

A little frustrating. This is the second time I've had to quit and take a breather after failing multiple times.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:58 am

Got through finally. What it did do is make me notice how little effect adrenaline rush was having. I'd noticed that it sucked much earlier. Many levels ago. And as written in the description, is kind of meh for the points needed. The problem is that it doesn't even work at that meh level.

I did a little research and it turns out it's bugged. Apparently there are issues with the proc rate that has to do with what equipment you're wearing. I didn't look at it too closely as this wasn't the interesting part to me, although for the record the proc rate goes down if you're wearing +% health items (and perhaps others, I didn't look too closely). The interesting part is that when it procs it removes 20% of your health, instead of restoring it. Which explains why so many times I see it proc, I'm actually dead.

So unless there has been a patch that I haven't seen, adrenaline rush from the might tree is bugged to damage you by 20% of your health, when it procs when your health drops below 25%. So. Yeah.

Off to the Fateweaver.

Grrr.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 12:41 pm

I kinda just hit a brick wall with this one and decided to sell it (360). While it was fun, the constant side-questing got a bit overwhelming and I felt like I wasn't making much actual progress. Suppose I could have just ignored all the side quests, but it would have driven the completionist in me nuts.

With ME3 coming out this week, I knew there was no way I was going to actually get through Amalur. Might be one I come back to later though.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 1:02 pm

The designers have acknowledged a couple times that they really didn’t expect or intend for people to complete every quest or even the majority of them. The game is balanced around completing the odd side quest as you work towards finishing the main quests only. If you complete all the quests in an area you actually break the game by leveling too fast and acquiring too much loot.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 2:02 pm

Lordnine wrote:The designers have acknowledged a couple times that they really didn’t expect or intend for people to complete every quest or even the majority of them. The game is balanced around completing the odd side quest as you work towards finishing the main quests only. If you complete all the quests in an area you actually break the game by leveling too fast and acquiring too much loot.

They obviously don't know PC RPG'ers very well then.

Qantaga · Post by **Qantaga** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 2:36 pm

Skinypupy wrote:
Lordnine wrote:The designers have acknowledged a couple times that they really didn’t expect or intend for people to complete every quest or even the majority of them. The game is balanced around completing the odd side quest as you work towards finishing the main quests only. If you complete all the quests in an area you actually break the game by leveling too fast and acquiring too much loot.
They obviously don't know PC RPG'ers very well then.

Which is really baffling. You would think if anyone knew the completionist tendencies of PC gamers, it would be Ken Rolston (lead designer of Morrowind and Oblivion).

Buatha · Post by **Buatha** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:23 pm

Wow, I guess someone will need to write a guide on which quests to take or not to take to keep the game scaled properly. Sheesh.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:36 pm

Buatha wrote:Wow, I guess someone will need to write a guide on which quests to take or not to take to keep the game scaled properly. Sheesh.

That's just it. You have a lot of choice. There aren't necessarily quests that should or should not be done. In my two on going playthroughs, outside of the house of Ballads and the main quest line, they have felt quite a bit different. What quests I've taken for each character has been a factor of how I envision the character (I almost never actually base decisions on role playing, I'm a min/maxer at heart, but in this game I've played a bit different) and what I decided to do first. i.e. what order I did things in, which led to different side quest priorities.

Sure, a guide could be written, easily. It's just that the game has enough things going on around the main storyline that you can take slightly different paths and still get to the end.

I've run up against being overleveled for some areas with one of my characters, and being about right with the other.

Reemul · Post by **Reemul** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 8:03 am

I stopped playing last week as I felt overwhelmed with quests etc especially as I was moving between a few new areas.

Anyways this weekend I decided to continue and focus on the main quests with the odd side quest along with the way and it has picked up quite nicely again.

The only downside is I another enjoying my sorcerer much anymore at level 20 so may go for might as that's the only one I haven't really tried.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 9:54 am

Reemul wrote:I stopped playing last week as I felt overwhelmed with quests etc especially as I was moving between a few new areas.

I'm experiencing the same thing, but am consciously trying to prioritize my quests and am having some success. Part of the problem with doing everything is how slow my progress has been. Everything lately has been grey except for maybe the quest specific dungeons which seem to scale to yellow, and bosses which seem to scale to orange. I'm definitely traveling through areas that are too low for me and I'm not getting enough experience. I'm just shy of 18 and it takes hours of play just to creep along, level-wise.

Looking at the world map, I'm slightly dismayed by how much of it is still left to be discovered and quests to be done in those areas. If the map represents an even distribution of game content, I'm not even halfway through it yet.

Reemul · Post by **Reemul** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:29 am

My plan is the faction quests and main line then anything that takes my fancy as I go along. At level 20 I am starting to move over to the east and south so progressing the main quest does quickly start to open up the map.

Also I am doing more fast travel to avoid getting too involved in the older areas.