I ordered store pickup online and got my confirmation e-mail that both TQ and the XP are ready for me.
Jab
1562
So far dream mastery is pretty awesome. Lvl 7 and I’m already able to survive pretty well. The pet is helping out alot. Graphically the game looks abit sharper now with the expansion. What does triple buffering do?
edit: I should be back on around 10:00 pm est.
Umm, you didn’t put any points in. I’m aiming for something like this at 30. Full melee templar, heavy on the offense. Then when it gets hard, you start to put points into defense.
Gendal
1564
The Templar is an awesome build, at least up to lvl 50 and into the expansion’s epic difficulty. Legendary might switch everything around again, but it’s been a cakewalk up to this point. I am, at best, a lazy player. I like to wade in and kill everything with out nary a care and this build lets you do that for the most part. My previous two characters where a dual wielder and a druid, both of which had a hard time in epic staying alive. The templar is so easy to keep alive I am using that +50% xp for -50% health and -18hp/s talisman just because I can. I don’t even take it off for the bosses unless it’s one that has killed me before, which really is just that @#$@ ice meteor guy in act III. Nope, don’t like to dodge either, and you generally don’t with this build.
My build is below, but it’s probably not very optimal. I can’t really test it out till I make to Legendary, then I can see what does and does not work. Templar Build
Lvl 19 now, and heavily into Dream as a melee build. I’ve been playing with Phantom Strike / Dreamstealer and it’s a lot of fun seeing enemies asplode away from you in a giant crit. I now have that as RMB, and Distort Reality as a nuke. The eye thing gets a nuke at lvl 5 too.
Why take both phantom strike and shield charge? Seems to me that phantom strike is better. Also, why no points in rally? Rally itself sucks, but the two addon skills are pretty sweet.
Gendal
1567
Phantom Strike is better, and it’s what you want first. But shield batter and charge are great additions to your toolkit, especially when you factor in recharge times. Phantom Strike will also cause you to only hit one mob because as soon as you hit it you go invisible. This causes the mobs to instantly start returning home, dispersing the nice tight pattern you set up. It can still work well, you just have to make sure you don’t end up traveling even a foot when it fires. It’s also slow, where as charge sends you at 3x the speed to your target. I really use both all the time.
Batter is awesome too, especially when you add in some more items that improve your slow debuff. It’s loads of fun to be in the middle of a massive army of mobs all slowed to a snails pace. Inbetween Strike, Batter, and Charge you generally can hit most of them, then finish them off before their first blow even gets halfway through the arc.
As far as Rally, it’s something I am eyeing. I didn’t like the recharge time on it, and for now, it’s just not necessary. It would be fun to try Rally + ToE for some crazy high damage reflection. I don’t even use Quick Recovery except for shits and grins.
Ahhh crap, I suck at the internet apparently. I pasted the wrong URL (titlebar instead of the one below in the form field).
Also, is there some magic way to get rid of the video refresh ripple? I tried all combinations of resolution, vertical sync, triple buffering both in TQ options and in the new Vista Nvidia drivers and nothing seems to help. It just irritates my eyes… I’ve got a fairly decent system, 3GB RAM, X2 4400+, 7900GTO 512MB…
Triple buffering uses more RAM to render future frames ahead of time to smooth out frame-rate. This is only really helpful if you have vertical sync turned on.
Jab
1570
vertical sync fixed mine, but I do see slight lines in the background.
I decided to finsh up the new stuff with my assasin. I think I just beat the first boss, I did find some arcane scrolls both ranked divine artifact level. Both give a pretty powerful skill, but I doubt I’ll be able to build either of them anytime soon.
Dang I loved this game. I’ve gotta pick me up the expansion now.
Anyone know what element the Psionic attacks in Dream Mastery are? I see some can proc an “Electric Burn,” but I don’t think it’s worth going Storm/Dream for the Wisp if it’s only going to up the Proc damage.
Warfare/Dream looks pretty good. Stock up on the Passives in Warfare and the melee-to-AoE burst in Dream? That could melt face.
Gendal
1572
Electric Burn is different than lightening for the purpose of bonuses, but the same when calculating resists. Supposedly there are items that give +Electric Burn, cause +Lightening won’t do jack.
Really loving the expansion pack. They implemented the filtered item pickup click I was begging for early in this thread, which is a godsend for me. TQ’s version of the Diablo Cow level isn’t near as funny, but the item drops are much cooler. Santa Claus, Sherlock Holmes, a Cowboy(girl), and a Pirate are just the item sets I have discovered, wonder how many more there are?
Kunikos
1573
Right off the bat, off a random elite I got a blue rarity shield:
Once I can pick my second mastery I’ll go Templar, I think.
I’ve had about three blue and one green shields drop while in Greece - nice, as I’m a shield user, but a bit more variety would be welcome! I’ve had a couple of really nice blue spears and a good blue bow too. Off they go to the transfer tab of the caravan…
I love the caravan. It’s a great incentive to create and experiment with different characters, as you know the cool drop that your current toon can’t use won’t go to waste. Also good for sharing runestone/tablet parts.
With the Defence Mastery, i built mine with Adrenaline maxed and lots of points in Rally. Basically as soon as Adrenaline “procs” (is that the right word?) i fire off Rally, and heal all my damage.
But coming from my Hunter, Defence seems pretty hard because there is no easy, or synergistic, skill paths obvious to me to deal damage. Armor Handling though is one of the best skills in the game, imo. For just a few points you can greatly reduce Str requirements. My Hunter really, really has a hard time finding any armor to wear. She’s stuck because all Armor is either Int or Str based, but her main attacks are Agil. So she’s wearing some generic Mage wrap that only provides about 40 armor, because she doesn’t have enough Str or Intel for anything else.
Well, Defence does have several 6% chance to be used skills that could very well stack on top of each other once you get points in them all…
My copy of the expansion finally arrived, and customs even forgot to charge me VAT! Great little enhancements all over the place, like “loot lock” and the shaded experience bar. And I’ve already found a new monster, a “Monstrous Boar” that looks suspiciously like NWN2’s dire boar. I’ve started a new character with Dream Mastery, not sure what to minor in… maybe Defence?
One complaint: The installation of the expansion pack sucks. First, you have to restart Windows when the installer is done – why? Then, you can’t skip the intro movies – even though they’re the same ones from the original game. Next, once you’ve finished watching the movies, the game wants to patch the original TQ – and for that purpose immediately exits the game! Why exactly couldn’t that have been done by the main installer? On the next restart, I noticed that the expansion hadn’t brought over my various settings from the original game, including the screen resolution – which of course… you guessed it… required another restart!
Now that I’m finally allowed to actually play the game, I try the new hotkey for button switching and… nothing happens. Checking the hotkey list, I see that both the hotkey for “Select 1st Pet” (F2) and “Swap Quickbars” (B or Z, the documentation can’t make up its mind here) are simply missing. At first I thought changing hotkeys didn’t work either, until I discovered the nearly invisible outline that you have to click on.
Great expansion, but please fire the guys who wrote the installer…
What does the installer inject into the system? MSXML, InstallShield, SecuROM?
I think it’s one of the variety that installs DirectX for you no matter what and assumes you have to reboot because of it.
Jab
1579
I agree about the installation, I forgot how bad the game looks going from 800x600 to 1280 x 1024. Does anyone know what the option unlock content is? If anyone wants to I’ll be on later going thru the epic version of the new stuff ( My assassin isn’t finshed legendary yet). The artwork looks alot neater the further you go in. So far the bosses and hero versions are alot tougher but the option to recover some of your lost exp is great.
nKoan
1580
I bought my expansion pack at Best Buy and it had a card inside with a code for a set of armor. You use that “Unlock Content” option, input the card number and some gear appears at your feet. I assume there are numerous codes available, or will become available.
