2861

Leveling up in this game is slowwwwwww.

Also the game really likes to make you grind through tons and tons of mobs, if I get too much attention, my main tactic right now is run away, lol.

I just made it to Delphi and chatted with the Oracle. Story overall isn’t that great yet… :(

2862

I don’t think the story’s ever much of a presence in the game nor is it particularly interesting (though at least it has some mythological roots so if that’s your bag that might add some spice). It certainly doesn’t have the magic that were Diablo II’s act cutscenes. But having forgettable stories is alas something of a hallmark of this particular subgenre.

2863

I wasn’t a fan either when it came out. Even though I am a big Diablo fan.

2864

Your memory of D2 is betraying you. Every skill was most certainly not useful at every level. A level 1 ice bolt stopped being relevant by the time you were in your teens, and most certainly wasn’t relevant in Act 5 normal or any time there after. And the point absolutely felt wasted. 1.10 introduced synergies which were supposed to fix the problem of having to put skills points in skills you weren’t using. I don’t think it was a particulary good fix but the situation improved (and anywya it was clear the basic structure of D2 trees wasn’t going to change, so it was better than othing). Many high-end skills in D2 superceded low end skills as well. It depended on the build, but most fancy sorceress builds only started at level 18 at the earliest. Some paladins and barbs didn’t mature until late. That’s pretty normal.

TQ’s mechanic of having to put points into the mastery (or whatever) to get stats and open up skills is not something I care for. Outside of this, it’s skill tree design is superior to D2. Like D2, if you’re going to use something you’ve ultimately got to keep putting points in it. Unlike d2 frequently an active skill had a variety of related utility skills, and the only hard relationships in the design were of actives to their utilities (as opposed to all the arbitrary connections D2 trees had). Or a utility might be a passive that affected all skills of a type (all ice damage skills or something). It’s true that some higher level skills were more spectacular than the lower level skills, but that’s to be expected. And many lower level skills remained staples throughout the game.

2865

Don’t worry about the story, it is largely forgettable. The game is pretty slow at the start. Character run speed is slow and you just don’t have the capacity for dealing with large mobs of monsters early on. That should change by the time you reach Act 2 though. Greece, normal difficulty is pretty terrible, but the game does improve thankfully. Plus Act II, III and V are so much nicer.

Quoted for truth. I’d take the TQ skill system over Diablo’s any day. There were some useless skills in TQ of course, the briar ward in the hunting mastery being one. As it turned out, the skills just didn’t scale appropriately in some instances. Luckily respeccing was easy enough. The other thing is that even with the expansion, a few bugs were still present in the skill system, as per the Grim Dawn forums for instance, apparently poison damage wasn’t being calculated properly which had an effect on the rogue tree (may have been fixed by the fan patch, but not sure).

Diablo’s skill trees in contrast had a few winning builds, and to get through to the higher difficulties meant going for one of the cookie cutter styled classes (eg: frozen orb sorc, multi-shot zon vs strafe zon). It was fine to experiment on normal mode for a character and try out other skills, but without the respec option (think it was brought in a later patch after 1.10) but to progress a character further, it came down to making the best use of the skill points available. And there were far too many skills that were essentially useless (eg: barbarian’s leap, the javelin tree on the amazon).

2866

As I recall Titan Quest didn’t have respeccing to begin with either. I think it was an expansion addition, along with the cross-character stash.

2867

I’m almost positive character respec was there from the start.

2868

Yea I kinda remember that you could respec when u got to a certain point in the game.

2869

Looks like you’re right. I might have been thinking of the enchanter.

2870

I know this forum hosts many fans of Titan Quests bright and colorful artwork. And many of us were disappointed with the grimdark look of Grim Dawn. I just wanted to share these great Divinity: Original Sin screenshots from a recent RPG article. D:OS is turn based, not an ARPG. But I think many Titan Quest fans will appreciate the sunny beauty these screenshots.

Tony



2871

I like.

Speaking of Titan Quest, Titan Quest Gold is $5 on Steam this week if anyone who doesn’t already own it gives a damn.

2872

Those screenshots look amazing. I loved Divine Divinity. That last shot reminds me a bit of Icewind Dale - that’s how I would imagine it or Baldur’s Gate III would look.

2873

Man, it looks like that AND it’s turn-based? I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

As for Titan Quest, it’s the game that refuses to die. It’s due for a reinstall and replay by me sometime soon. :D

2874

Combat is turn-based. General running around happens in real time, so the Titan Quest vibe is strong. I also love the last screenshot, the way the landscape falls away into the distance is very much like Titan Quest. I’m looking forward to Grim Dawn a lot, but I agree that it just doesn’t have as much character as the game that inspired it.

2875

Yes, TQ had this and, IIRC, the ‘Lilith’ total conversion expanded on it even more. In Lilith, I distinctly remember battling across a big plateau until we reached a sharp cliff. Far, far below we could see a beach and a town beyond that we’d be visiting some 30-45 minutes later (after we’d detoured through a crazy three dimensional maze/dungeon so would descend down through the mountain). My girlfriend and I just played through Torchlight 2 earlier this year, and it was good fun, but (modded) TQ is still my favorite co-op aRPG experience.

@lordkosc: If you’re still playing (doubtful), you’d find that some of the mods I linked upthread increase the monster count, forcing you to run away (we call it ‘kiting’ so it sounds like we’re in control :P ) even more. On the plus side, more kills means faster levelling and you’ll quickly unlock some area of effect skills that give you the satisfaction of decimating big hordes of beastly evildoers.

2876

As I mentioned in the bargains thread, I’ve been playing this for the first time since 2 weeks ago. I was asking if I should get the DLC (Immortal Throne?), and it seems that all these mods require it, so that’s my answer.

I’m near the end of Act II. How much longer until I get to the end…is that Act 3 or 4? I’m bored…but I don’t want to mod it to be too hard…I’m a pansy!!!

If I play single player only, how do I save item sets from one character to another?

2877

\

Your character stash has a tab shared across all characters.

2878

If you’re bored I would quit. Actually, I did! I never got to the expansion because I couldn’t take it any more.

2879

If you’re totally bored, there’s probably no hope for it. However, I thought one of the bigger mistakes on TQ was that the harder difficulty levels need to be unlocked by completing the easier levels. I don’t know if that ever got patched or if there’s a hack around it, but the game is far more interesting at the higher levels, since the enemies start using their own powers against you instead of just hacking away at you. I remember the first time I was playing on Epic and run into a Centaur who blew his horn and I ended up stuck like a fly on flypaper. Ouch.

I think the difficulty in Act III (China) is much harder than the previous areas though even on Standard, so that might give you somewhat of a challenge. I always found the Tiger heroes to be just vicious.

2880

Hey,

I just got Titan Quest Gold. I had some questions.

Are these recommended mods full conversions? I’ve never played so I should probably play the main game. For the steam version, are there recommended patches or mods to get that make the “vanilla” campaign more fun? I like difficult games. Would these mods work over the internet if my bro downloaded them too?

Thanks guys :)