Yeah, the practitioner really hits their stride once you unlock the first tier of advanced skills, and rogues just stay amazing at cutting things to bits. I think it’s been a few hours of play since the last time my fighter attacked, but she remains useful for repositioning, defense, and bonus opportunity.
One thing about the opportunity system is that marginal damage contributions are mostly irrelevant. In a traditional “everybody gets one action” system, a fighter can mostly focus on defense while still chipping in 10 damage per turn, but here, the rogue just rattles off four attacks for 20+ each, and uses up all the opportunity. My original created character was a 2H sword fighter, but she got benched because the damage output per opportunity point just fell way behind the rogue – as far as I can see, there’s no way to spec another class to keep up with rogues for physical attacking, which in practice means that everybody sticks to their specialty. I might have preferred a hybrid system, where everybody gets one opportunity per turn, and then you have a floating pool that can be used on any character.
Check for little buttons popping up near the skill button. I had trouble with that too, because I thought I could click on the space I wanted to summon it in and nothing happened. But then I noticed that I had to first pick between an immediate summon with 2 magic points, or channeling for 1 or 2 rounds to get one that starts with more MP.
You did not get lucky, if you are referring to a certain person’s Puzzle Wand. It’s always there for the taking, and yes Rend is the single greatest ability you can get on an item (there’s another Puzzle Weapon that gets it, and upgrades all the way to, uh, Caustic I think. Which is 2x rend and then some extra damage because 'Merica or something).
Of course Rend isn’t nearly as amazing on a weapon that’s only doing single target stuff. Rend on the wand is double-plus amazing because of all the AOE you can drop. Before a patch - I am not sure which one - Conjurer’s Mark explosions dropped rend on everyone they touched and said wand was even more absurdly busted. But now it only does rend against other people with marks IIRC (so if you shoot row lightning thingy and mark two people in a line, you get 2x rend on each and then when someone triggers a mark they’ll both get rended again but nobody else will; although you realize all of this of course).
Hard stops mattering once you’ve got a full set of Opportunity points (and you can potentially h it 6 before story advancement dolls out the last point). Party composition matters, to a point. But this is an area where the game is a bit odd. As you note you basically have 1-3 characters use up all the opportunity and they poop out damage. It’s still useful to have a shield-using fighter (critical blocking becomes amazing), and a few other types for specific purposes (I like a second caster for an occasional meditate usage/passive SP generation/Sorcerer SP gen passive and then I can occasionally pop off an opportunity free WAST or something even more devastating).
The combat is unusual, and suffers from sort of forcing you to be optimal only to discover that optimality is total and complete mastery and thanks for playing. Like, you could skip that wand if you wanted. But then you’re screwed when dealing with the heavily armored foes that start showing up and unable to efficiently spend all your opportunity (basically using movement/that one rending ability to hack down a single foe before moving on to the next, tediously). And suffers a bit from lack of variety. I quite like the game, but it is quirky. Fortunately they do a good job of having plenty of puzzles (with a number of dungeons having more puzzles than combat, by far).
I’m not sure how far I am. 60% into the game, perhaps. I wouldn’t say I am never taxed and there have been a few interesting fights (like me finishing with only a couple of people alive), but generally I can steamroll. I also took the party stealth buff which helps a lot (you can optionally spend a turn setting up for your opening, although I often don’t bother).
The latest patch just added, or is adding, +20% enemy stats to hard difficulty so there’s an effort to spice things up. But it will only go so far. The system is kind of quirky - a super boss with 6 OP isn’t necessarily terrifying (although it can be situationally, but the need to build up MP can limit what a boss can do initially).
There are a lot of secrets in the game, and the devs apparently like to stick Elven weapons in them. Some of them do only get 1 or 2 puzzles. And then there’s matching them with the appropriate shrine (which allegedly isn’t always desirable). You’ll see plenty more.
And you’ll get that wand. It’s impossible to miss (it’s from a fight literally blocking story progression). I think the real problem is that armor as is probably swings from too frustrating to too trivial depending on removing multiple ways of removing Rend and AoE rend. And maybe that suggests the mechanic needs tweaking. At this point in the game if I told you there would be fights with multiple enemies with 30+ armor (or 4+ enemies with 20+) you’d be like “wut” but it’s trivial to deal with thanks to Rend, Conjurer’s Mark, and the fact that you can favor specific characters by loading up on spending Opportunity through them.
Yup, that’s the one I was thinking of. I figured the wand itself would always be there, but wasn’t sure if it might randomize with a different gem/special ability. Just got the third-tier upgrade on it so it starts stacking extra damage vulnerability on anything that isn’t armored. And gave my mage a puzzle dagger in her other hand that gives a guaranteed crit after another crit. So pretty much every fight goes similarly, repositioning the bad guys into a cone with feather and taunt, fire breath to pile up damage/rend/caustic/conjurer’s mark, then alternating a flurry of attacks from the rogue and a few magic missiles, and loads of cascading bonus damage. If anything survives the opening round, the rogue makes very short work of it with a round of attacks boosted by caustic and razor strop.
I started a new playthrough because I got tagged by a nasty gamebreaking bug on the, uh, “Isles” (Stennet? I can’t recall), and every Puzzle weapon turned out as I remembered it. Most notably that one. The first sword you get you know where is burning, the axe with SP damage, etc.
I have mixed feelings about those item abilities being so overridingly dominant. Like right now I have no reason to give my melee thief anything but a sword that adds an attack to Storm of Blades, because 3 hits from that when buffed by Razor Strop is amazing. Eventually I’ll find the right puzzle weapon (with more rend + maybe caustic, or a crit one) and I’ll probably wind up switching to that (especially since crits reset the Storm of Blades cooldown).
It does kinda put a damper on all the different types of characters. I run 6 (Dwarf Fighter specializing in shields, Bard, 2x rogue - melee and ranged - and just went back to 2x mage) but only 3 characters regularly do anything (and again mage #2 occasionally chips in with a WAST that doesn’t cost opportunity. Bard can shield buff for just SP and no OP).
I do like the game, but yeah it’s an unusual combat system. And since enemy variety is apparently a problem through end game (in that there isn’t a lot of it), combat getting repetitive is unsurprising.
Played a little more last night. Figured out my first code wheel shrine (using the very nice HTML version someone created here) and was rewarded with 300 gold, which literally doubled my fortune to that point. I used part of the windfall to purchase a nicer arming sword and a shield for my character (fighter).
I also backtracked through Skara Brae Below and picked up all the trow troves I could find. Mostly just grappling hooks and ingredients from those. I swung by the Guild and exchanged the dwarf fighter character for a mercenary bard, the fighter just didn’t seem useful enough (given that my character’s skill set was already better) and the bard has nice buffs and sword attacks. I used a grappling hook in a hidden spot to rappel down to a chest, and found a nice helmet inside that I stuck on my mercenary bard. Then I finished the quest to reclaim the merchant’s magic store since I was passing by it.
I ended the night by entering the mage’s tower (picking up his familiar as a 4th party member). Solved a puzzle and fought some goblins in the first couple of rooms, then saved for the night.
I took @krayzkrok’s advice from above and turned off the motion blur. It does seem to smooth out the framerate, and I like being able to see clearly when I spin around. Still very much enjoying the game, even if the combat is a little hard to get used to.
I’ve got this installed and ready to launch, but I’ve been holding off until I wrap up either Pathfinder Kingmaaker or AC:Odyssey. Well, Pathfinder is a wrap (more on that coming in the official thread) so I might start up Bard’s Tale IV.
Question - what kind of shape is this in? With RDR2 dropping in just over a week, and Odyssey yet to play, I’m not hurting for games. Would it be wiser to let this “cook” a bit longer and wait, or is it cool to go ahead and dive in tonight?
They’ve had at least two huge patches since release that seem to have cleaned up the majority of the launch issues including adding a much-needed FOV slider, improving optimization by A LOT, improving load times, and fixing a bunch of gameplay bugs and issues. Granted, I am not very far into the game (a few hours), but I’ve noticed significant improvement from launch, and I have yet to encounter anything I’d consider a bug or glitch while playing since Big Patch #2.
I would love if they would take a crack at streamlining the inventory system to be more 2018 and less 2008, but that’s a minor personal annoyance at best. If you’re ready to play this right now, I would say from my experience that it’s ready for you to play right now. I’m enjoying it.
Didn’t have a lot of time to play last night, but I used what time I did have to complete both sides of the first level of Kylearan’s Tower. That was very cool! I fought the few critters in residence first, so I could tackle the puzzles unmolested. They weren’t super difficult, but they weren’t ridiculously simple either, and there were plenty of little extra secrets and goodies stashed around so that full exploration was well rewarded. Hopefully most dungeon levels in BT4 keep up this theme, as I enjoyed the mix of combat, puzzles and rewards.
Thanks for the updates and opinions, it sounds like I’d be totally fine to dive in now, so I may do just that after work. I’ve been looking forward to it for some time, so I had Pathfinder and Odyssey to tide me over until it was in better shape. Not that Pathfinder was itself in excellent condition. :)
That’s my experience as well. My GPU is a 1050Ti 4GB, but my CPU is an ancient Athlon II X4 3.0Ghz. Since the vast majority of games are GPU dependent I’m usually fine, but BT4 at launch was noticeably choppy for me. It’s smoothed out a great deal since then with the optimization patches, but there are still times when it hesitates for a second…nothing that interrupts gameplay or causes me to die in combat or anything, just a barely perceptible hiccup every so often when moving from one area to another or encountering large groups of NPCs for the first time.
Played some again last night in Kylearan’s Tower, this time on level 2. More combat and more puzzles, so more fun. I love that when Markus, my bard, chugs his pre-fight drink he yells “Slainte!” (Gaelic for “Cheers” and/or “Good Health”), which is also, of course, what I named my character. So now I imagine we get into a fight, Markus chugs his trow squeezings, hurls the empty bottle angrily at the monsters and calls out “Slainte!” while strumming his lute, casting a powerful buff on Slainte who is at that moment charging into the middle of the fray, sword cutting a path through the hapless enemies. Good times…
EDIT : Also, I found my first Eleven weapon. It’s uh…I’m not sure what it is exactly. It looks like an axe, but doesn’t really say in the description. Are Elven Weapons classified that way, or can you use them no matter what skill set you’ve specced out? I thought about giving it to my Fighter main character, but he already has a nice sword that adds an attack to Storm of Blades…so I don’t want to give up damage. I’m not really sure what to do with it for now…
The interaction between skills and weapon types is kind of confusing. You can use any skill regardless of what weapon you have equipped. But non-elven weapons give a bonus to one associated skill.
I’'m suffering crashes with the latest build. Discouraging when that happens and you’ve just completed a fight, and haven’t made it to one of the save points yet.
I played for about 90 minutes last night and had no crashes. Do you guys play in a window view or in full screen mode? I’ve seen other games have CTD issues when played in a window due to graphics driver. Just thinking out loud…
Used my 90 minutes last night to take care of some character and inventory maintenance. I’d just finished Kylearan’s tower the session before, so I had a ton of new stuff to look over and decide what to do with, and a couple of characters to skill up. I then went topside in Skara Brae to sell some stuff and check the vendors for boots (only my main character was wearing them) and equipment upgrades. While doing that I discovered previously closed off parts of town that I could now access…so I did that, collecting more stuff and getting into some now green to me fights along the way. I think I have most of the town explored now.
Went back to SB Below and headed out in the one direction I hadn’t yet been, on the path to find the next main quest NPC. Lots of large group yellow to me fights in this area, including a couple that will resolve open side quests. I quit before taking any of them on though, as it was late and a fight that big could take me 20 minutes to work through. I’m eager to see how my Elven weapon works though.
I started on Thursday and have 8 or something hours in, maybe closer to 10. No crashes, and I’m overall really enjoying it! The combat is cool, but I am certain I’m missing cool combos and great ways to play combat out. I’m sort of doing what works, mostly summoning a wraith to do most of the heavy lifting. :)
My only real complaint isn’t even the inventory (though that is a bit annoying), but rather holy shit so many puzzles! I’m not one that overly enjoys puzzles, I think of them as obstacles I need to overcome to get the fun stuff (combat, in this case), but I don’t mind them now and then. But I swear there are more puzzles than combat in this game. Most puzzles are fine, fairly straightforward and some have been cool and creative. Some have been so frustrating I had to look them up to solve them, and with this many puzzles that’s bound to happen more often than other games. I know BT is kind of known for puzzles, so I press on, but I still wanted to bitch about it. :)
I just unlocked my 5th character slot this morning, and ran back to Skara Brae and bought some new equipment with the money I’d been saving, so I feel like I’m in a good place atm.
One more slight annoyance, is there anyway to never have to hear the song the guild leader is singing in the guild, same song the lady sings outside the guild now as well, so I can’t ever escape it? I just… don’t know if I can hear that one more time.
