Blackguards

Yeah, adding points will improve the success chance.

If you just want to check it out without committing to any changes, you can add some points to the spell (the success chance on the tooltip will change), but you can then navigate away from the spells tab… just make sure to select the ‘do not save changes’ option.

Here’s a mild spoiler for everybody thinking about starting the end run in chapter 5. It’s the workaround for what is either a bug or less likely a case of crappy balancing.

Make sure you can do the following before the showdown …

[spoiler]
-> Kill 5 easy enemies in 1 round with 3 people.

Liberating Blow or an area spell dealing 10+ HP damage.

The situation is [medium spoiler

In a certain level close to the end you have to kill a boss to end the fight. If that’s buggy a group of 5 easy critters will respawn until you kill them all within one round. This isn’t particularly hard, but of course your party has to be able to actually hit 5 enemies.[/spoiler]

It was explained:
“You spend AP to level up a spell, making its casting less probable to fail and unlocking 4 casting levels; […]”

The upcoming patch seems to be a major one, so I’ll hold off on my restart myself. I want games like these to succeed though. We need more turnbased strategy games. Its a good time to be gamer!

ETA for the patch is March 4th.

Playing the demo…
It doesn’t seem like a character with the Treat Wounds skill can treat another character with bandages outside of combat. That seems poor since a character can treat themselves with bandages outside of combat.

Edit: I guess this is what people are complaining about back on page 2.

Wrong thread (again, arg)

GOG.com is currently selling Blackguards Special Edition for 50% off, or $22.49 U.S. as part of GOG.com’s Battle of the Games special.

This offer only lasts for another 12.5 hours, so don’t wait too long.

Thanks for the heads up. After trying the demo I think I’ll wait until this is a $10 game.

Blackguards is on sale for $13 for 12 more hours at Humble Bundle

Did you grab it? I quite enjoyed it until the Divinity: Original Sins release took over my attention. Having some clue about how to build a character seems crucial to having fun with BGs; I took a look at a couple of guides before starting for the second time and it made a huge difference.

I decided to hold off. I asked myself whether I would play it before the winter sale and decided I wouldn’t need to. I liked the demo for the most part, but it seems like people thought the quality dropped after the initial period. I’ll get it eventually, but it wasn’t a game I decided I had to play right now.

I didn’t notice a quality drop. Some parts were too linear, but that’s it. I have to admit I was in the mood for a tight game like Blackguards though, when I battled through the chapters as they came out in Early Access.
Holding out is probably a good idea. The game will see a hefty discount during the winter sale to prepare for the sequel early next year.

I liked chapter 4 and 5, apparently there’s multiple endings or at least some way to make
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Aurelia side with the party.

Can’t wait for Blackguards 2, I’m tempted to play the old Realms of Arkania games or to give the Drakensang series a try to get my Dark Eye fix now.

I liked the Drakensang series a bunch, or maybe I just played The River of Time.

I think I’m toward the end of chapter 3. Are chapters 4 & 5 more of the same or do they introduce something interesting to make continuing worth while? It’s a good game, but there are so many battles that they do start to get a bit old.

I think I just hit the straw that thinks its an enema and is trying to crawl up my ass. I’m tired of the gimmicks of the battles. The particular spot I’m at now changed the rules of being able to rest as you progress to each node on the local map to forcing you to fight battle after battle. Now that I know this I can try to plan for it, but I don’t really feel like replaying those battles again. I was hoping I could just plow through and finish, so I’ve been skipping many of the side quests for the last chunk of the game.

I think as a whole the battles have been pretty fun but rely too much on the gimmicks and changing up the rules. I can see how people would like that, and if the game was shorter I could probably enjoy it a bit more too, but there are just soooo many battles and they are really the only draw of the game.

Thanks for the heads-up on this!

I just started seriously playing Blackguards this week, and am now up to chapter 2. It sounds like a good strategy for the “no-rest” issue you described is to stock up on mana and health potions every chance you can before leaving “safe” areas. True? Any other tips you’d care to relate?

I hadn’t really had trouble with supplies up until that point, but its good to keep some healing and mana potions equipped in your belt. I really didn’t start using other types of potions much (like poison) until recently. I tend to hoard things until I really need them. The problem with the area I mention is that it is battle after battle without break, so if you use up your potions in the first battle, you can’t equip more from your inventory before the next battle (unless I’m missing something). After the first try you go in knowing this and can maybe plan for it.

So far on normal difficulty there have only been a couple or so that I had to reply to win, so it hadn’t been too bad. I think at this point I’m just tired of it so when I have to fight more than once it seems like a drag.

Thanks for the comments!

Over X-mas vacation, I played almost nothing but Blackguards, and am now at the final battle (Urias), and am about to give up, or at least put it aside for a later day when I have more patience (translation: never). I’ve tried it 8 times, and now am firmly convinced it is a matter of pure luck (teleportation locations near characters are absolutely required). I hate BOSS battles that require luck!

Up until now, I loved Blackguards. I get that BOSS battles should be tough, but I think they should be dependent on skill, not luck.

robc04: Not sure if you gave up, but I found (after reverting to previous saves) that having two characters with healing spells, and most (if not all) characters with competency in using bandages, the “consecutive battles” issue is not as horrible (although still irritating).