1701

Right now I’m on act 3 in normal and act 1 on legendary, so depending on what you guys want to do I can play either. I can probably host around 9:30 est.

1702

Doesn’t matter to me. Got a 33rd lvl Dreamkiller and a 53rd level Conqueror.

1703

Hehe your not making my choice any easier. Is your conqueror the character we finshed legendary with several months ago?

1704

Yep. Taking him through the new areas on easy, just to learn the lay of the land and the new quests.

1705

One nice thing about the engine is that if you go back with a really high level character to normal first area, you can pretty much send any guy flying. I knocked a satyr at least 40 feet into the river with my assassin.

1706

Yeah, I get this all the time with my Dreamkiller when I use the multi-target attack, whatever its name. Sometimes they fly off the screen. :)

1707

Yeah, that Dream right-click attack had guys flying in the air on normal difficulty in Act 1, something I’d only seen last summer with my Conqueror after he’d hit high 30s and with normal enemies.

1708

Hmm, my Templar (level 33) is now just beyond Medea in the new expansion areas and I have to say that I think the difficulty got ramped up a bit. Is it just because the areas are new so I have to take it a little slower or is drinking down potions like mad even with the little guys usual? I made it to this point without a death in this game, yet, but I’ve noticed I’ve come awfully close and that’s not even against boss creatures. I’m kinda dreading what’s coming if it’s this tough throughout.

Typhon was a grind, as usual. Wish they’d bring back the ability to destroy the statues. At least that made it interesting.

1709

There’s a definite hump in the difficulty at the early parts of Hades, but it planes off after a while. I hemorrhaged potions up until I started fighting the undead, who seem a bit easier than the frogs and crabs.

1710

Ah, good to know. I was thinking I’d be in grind mode all the way from Typhon to the conclusion!

Those artifact recipes are resulting in a big hoard of relics and charms. I’m beginning to wish for a “relic & charm” bag or something, even with the new caravan storage.

1711

would u mind posting your conqueror build?

1712

Ok around 9:30 I’ll post here about the game, I think I’ll go thru with my templar on normal, as I need to get another character to epic so I can start farming relics and charms for the scrolls I’ve found. One thing I noticed on the new content in epic at least was a rise in the number of good drops. I think I found at least 3 purples going thru and several green items that give a skill.

When an item grants a skill that’s not in your mastery trees, do you still get that skill? My assassin found an item that grants armor handling which is defense but he’s of course warfare and rogue.

1713

Not sure how it works with passives, but with active skills absolutely. You can put them on your hotkey bar and everything.

1714

Ok starting it up now
game name qt3
pass qt3

it’s going to be on normal.

1715

I’ve been playing using a Harbinger (Dreamer/Warrior). Good lord, Dreamer is overpowered, as everyone has said. The combo of the AOE nuke and the warp/swing in Dream wipes out anything, and at level 22 I’ve just started pumping the passive defensive skills. I can only imagine what this beast will fight like at higher levels.

1716

I’ve been going the other way with it in a dreamer/nature build, going for summoning and back up. I have to admit though looking at teh dreamer for comboing into a melee build or even a straight up caster build is frightening, thinking about storm/dream for a trial run once normal is finished with the current dreamer combo.

1717

Just got back from the emergency room with my 3.5yo daughter so no gaming for me tonight. Sorry.

1718

I can see why ILE has such a hard time balancing this game. On one hand there are folks like me saying that boss encounters are way too hard, and that the expansion really ramped up the difficulty, but then there are others saying how the Dream mastery is overpowered and needs to be cut back a bit (and I’m playing a Templar [Dream/Defense]). It’s almost as if this game needs some sort of separate difficulty slider apart from the normal to allow the game to be tweaked for each individual taste.

Personally, I find hacking enemies to pieces with ease to be quite fun. Wish I had more of that.

1719

My warfare/defense Conqueror Maximus is nearing 46 around act II, Epic. I have to say once you find a good epic or set piece weapon or two, in my case it was, here’s a pic:

Once you find that sort of thing, then going to the store just becomes a depressing exercise. :D

I was hoping Epic would be more of a challenge, and while I do take some damage and have the occasional challenging moment, it’s mostly just “lather, rinse, repeat” unless you choose to use lousy weapons as a way to make the game tougher. Once in a blue moon the game spawns something about 8-9 levels above me and thats maybe the rare moment I sweat. I’m hoping by later acts it’ll get tougher again.

And the game could definitely use more bosses as large and entertaining as the Artificial Construct boss. He isn’t even a quest boss or anything special, but he’s so much more fun to watch than most. :)

Here’s a video. I don’t think we can “embed” videos here so it’s a link to my photobucket space:

Hope using images is OK, I won’t go crazy with them. :)

My take is there are so many masteries, and combinations, and unless they can implement the long suggested “difficulty slider” in some way, there’s just no way for the game to adjust the difficulty to every single combination of masteries and every single distribution of points to said masteries. That’s way some sorta slider (even if just for single player) would be good, because what’s boring to me may be a “just right” difficulty for someone else; and what’s a “refreshing challenge” to me might really annoy somebody. :)

1720

Oh if you’re into “click till your wrist breaks” Hack’n’slashers, there’s of course Silverfall coming out shortly, but perhaps more promising (and a lot more grisly and violent, if that’s your thing) is another French-made one, Loki. They released a trailer the other day (tentatively due in April some time here):
http://www.loki-game.com/en/loki.php

At another board I said I’d laugh out loud the first time I see a prevew referring to Loki as a “Titan Quest” clone. :-) It seems promising enough and promises lots of massive bosses, though we’ll have to wait and see if a demo comes out.