I agree, the melee is terrific because I feel like how I fight completely changes the outcome of the battle. If I block well then I can escape virtually unscathed whereas if I’m lazy the same baddie can just obliterate me. It keeps me on my toes and makes for a very fun experience.
I haven’t tried archery or magic yet but I will say that I’ve been playing a bit of Gothic 4 and the archery in that game is a great deal of fun. It’s a pity we can’t mesh all these RPGs together for one fun combat package.
I think TW2’s Archery is cool… If it were viable I try an Archer/Assassin type, but it seems like Archery is the gimpest of your choices. Plus the Magic system is a ton of fun.
I figure I’ll respec into a Ranger-type once I’m one-shotting the game with Magic, which is apparently inevitable if you have half a brain to make spells and put points in Willpower.
I’m just glad they’ve invested some money into voice acting, so we don’t have to listen to some bored frat boy badly mangling faux-Chaucerian prose for dialogue like in the first one.
Though that did have its horrible kind of charm, in retrospect…
Archery had a few problems for me. (To be fair they fixed the fact sniper mode didn’t respect mouse inversion.)
First, the arbitrary restriction of certain shot types to sniper mode, just to use the same controls as melee & magic.
Second, the fact special attacks have cooldowns, but they don’t autoaim like the default attack does, so autoaim randomly comes and goes depending on where you are in the cooldown period. It’s much less controllable than any other archery system I can think of.
And arrows still have the tendency to be autoaimed at the centre of the hitbox I think, rather than the centre of the model, so they register hits over the heads of sitting enemies for example :)
And playing last night, aiming while zoomed in was also kind of sluggish.
And the super giant cross-sight…
I tried to start out as an archer, but it just seemed clunky to me.
Edit: Actually I just tried this again, and had a fair amount of fun with a bow. so maybe I just didn’t grok it all first time around.
I have discovered a lock picking spell. It opens level 1 locks. How do I boost it so that it can open more powerful locks?
I just got the ability to summon pets. They are level 4. What can I do to boost their level? I noticed I can’t add more cards to it.
What do the elemental damage on weapons like staffs mean? Is that some bonus damage it does when I whack something with my staff? It doesn’t seem to add to my spell damage. Having a staff which has 24 to fire then going to 84 fire doesn’t affect my firebolt spell at all.
I picked up a skill book on crafting weapons which I think lets me create a weapon. How do I use this skill?
Reading a book unlocks a skill so you can put points in it. Your crafting book is maybe metallurgy or the wooden equivalent used for bows, unless it’s one of the ones for fixing magical crystals to weapons… These skills then affect how far you can upgrade any weapon you have. I think each point in, say, metallurgy allows another level of upgrading for a sword. You get the material for the upgrade by dismantling other equipment.
I think the staff damage refers to its default attack. Not sure :)
Can’t really remember bu it should be sort of clear from the gui - mousing over the cards should give you some info. I think it’s probably more cards of type X, where the number of cards you can use depends how many points you’ve put in that school of magic. Different card combinations affect type, number and level of the summoned beastie. There were two types of these I really liked, and they came with me all game :)
I never saw a pick lock spell. Did you notice you can break locks? Unsheathe your weapon when you approach the lock and you’ll get a probability of breaking the lock, and the probability of breaking the weapon. Don’t know if that works for staffs though :) Boosting your spell will work the same way as your summoning.
Ice + enchant = open level 1 lock.
You can’t add any more cards to this.
As for summoning, I have level 2 fire magic and level ice / water magic. Putting a fire card in gives me a level 4 summon, and putting an ice card gives me a level 4 summon so the skill of the magic type itself doesn’t help with the level of the critter and I doubt of the lock.
I found this out:
For summons: Adding extra base cards increases the % damage bonus the cards get. Adding more summon carriers increases the level by 4 each.
Lock picking: Extra ice does nothing, extra enchant carriers does nothing.
I’m having an issue with locks as well. I’m level 12 and can’t get past simple locks even with a few ranks in lockpicking (just not quick enough). I hate leaving locked chests behind!
Don’t know about doors but with chests you’ll see a(stat/weapon dependent) % chance of breaking the lock (and the weapon). You can keep trying til it works.
I haven’t been able to bash them open with a mage staff. I did figure out the lock picking spell. Multiple cards are needed to boost the lock level. something like 7 ice x 5 enchant = level 7 locks.
Oh, I found out that the difficulty of the lock has little, if nothing to do with what you find inside. So if you think your are missing all the phat lewts from the advanced locks you do not open, don’t worry, its just random stuff, sometimes good, sometimes crap. Well its all crap, just crap that you sell or disassemble to get gems.
BTW does anyone know how you combine gems? I upped my gem skill so I could slot a level 4 gem, but it says I can now combine gems to some other level. How do you pick two gems and combine them?
