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[Eppy Thatcher]

I like the vagueness. I appreciate when there's an intricate system at work that can't easily be discerned and distilled to a few simple number graphs (like for example Diablo 3). A bit of mystery is good for a game like Dragon's Dogma. It's part of what drives the community – I remember the mystery behind what made this extremely elusive low-level rare spawn in EverQuest appear (Pyzjin). People had theories and ideas for literally years before a new dev team spilled the beans on that legend.

This feeling really comes through when you stray from your normal friends list/favorite pawns and hire some one out of the ordinary because they look cool or have the tier 3 skills and you wanna see em go to work and all that... and then they load into your world and seriously BLOW your mind...

I hired a new mage pawn off of a search last week and she was constantly keeping me and my group Grand Ano'ed and - i shit you not - was perfect with her enchanting.

Fire dragon? Whole group gets iced out.
Ice dragon? Fire all around.

Anything else? Electric. Along with that insane new bolide spell... she just rocked. It was amazing seeing how well battle tested this mage was. New bff.

edit:

Pawns know to run away from it and you can too. You don't have to hit him out of it (can just wait for it to be over, it does have a range), and I think you can actually climb him while he's doing it without getting sucked in.

if you are a strider/ranger/assassin or a warrior with a good pommel bash on you and you train your eye to see when he is getting ready to go into that vortex spell you can climb him and get a TON of free damage off before the stagger sets in. And then stagger is charging form. And then go to town on his prone ass.
Kill both forms in under 5 minutes if you can get to the stagger fast enough,

 

[Xilium]

Won't they do that with medicant? Though I guess following them around WOULD help, and I guess if following a scather they're more likely to get directly involved in a fight.

Medicant is pretty worthless on anyone other than a mage or sorc. It specifically deals with healing and support spells (Though I suppose it could work if you load up a pawn with party heal items as medicants do use items more often).

I'm using nexus as a secondary so he only helps other pawns when they need it. Scather is his primary so he's always in the middle of the fight regardless but he does a pretty good job keeping the other pawns safe when they draw enemy attention (I can usually take care of myself).

Anyway, I'm not saying it's an amazing inclination and it's probably useless on anything other than a tank/fighter but I've found that nexus and utilitarian are pretty good secondaries for a tank/fighter pawn because if they have two attack inclinations (scather/challenger/mitigator), they tend to primarily use their sword skills instead of their shield skills.

 

[GorillaJu]

^ sounds like that Mage was a utilitarian with a lot of enemy knowledge, and maybe Wyrmking's ring to get lots of spells off.

 

[Alucrid]

^ sounds like that Mage was a utilitarian with a lot of enemy knowledge, and maybe Wyrmking's ring to get lots of spells off.

I should run through the story again to get this. Does it stack with the skill that increases spell incantation?

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

^ sounds like that Mage was a utilitarian with a lot of enemy knowledge, and maybe Wyrmking's ring to get lots of spells off.

Since Wyrmking Ring isn't equipment it shouldn't be in a hired pawn's inventory.

 

[dubq]

x

 

[phierce]

I should run through the story again to get this. Does it stack with the skill that increases spell incantation?

The ring stacks with Articulacy, yes, but as stated above, it doesn't help when your pawn is hired...only when you use them.

 

[mace999]

Wow hit a brickwall on Blackwater Island, the wheel with the eye in the middle, can't even take a slither of health of him, guess I'm too underpowered .... I'm level 50 .... Is that too underpowered or am I doing it wrong !?!

So guess I have to go back to level up in the main story, where is the best place to get exp quick !?!
Thanks in advance

 

[DC1]

Wow hit a brickwall on Blackwater Island, the wheel with the eye in the middle, can't even take a slither of health of him, guess I'm too underpowered .... I'm level 50 .... Is that too underpowered or am I doing it wrong !?!

So guess I have to go back to level up in the main story, where is the best place to get exp quick !?!
Thanks in advance

Attack the

Spoiler

eye ball

.

If you're where I thank you are.
Gear and lvling up will help as well.

 

[Onion_Relish]

So im I play through 2 basically I should speed run it to get the completion trophy right? I feel no particular compulsion to do all the side board quests especially when I have the hero trophy. In vanilla dd is there something that pops up that I should be aware of gear wise? My guess is that everfall or bbi gear is better than any quest shit.

 

[dubq]

Wow hit a brickwall on Blackwater Island, the wheel with the eye in the middle, can't even take a slither of health of him, guess I'm too underpowered .... I'm level 50 .... Is that too underpowered or am I doing it wrong !?!

So guess I have to go back to level up in the main story, where is the best place to get exp quick !?!
Thanks in advance

Literally take a flying leap onto the eyeball and latch on and just hack away. If he throws you off, run back up the spiral stairs but wait until he does his spell before trying again. You'll know he's doing the spell if the eye floats away and it's eyelids starts moving like a pair of lips.

 

[Sera O]

Medicant is pretty worthless on anyone other than a mage or sorc. It specifically deals with healing and support spells (Though I suppose it could work if you load up a pawn with party heal items as medicants do use items more often).

Interesting thing about the medicant inclination - I think that it has to do with surviving as well as healing. The reason I say this is because I couldn't figure out why my warrior pawn kept drifting to medicant while I was (also as warrior) leveling the vocation in post-dragon. This was a situation where I wasn't using any commands.

Pawns do to some extent learn from you and mimic your behaviour. So I think that the fact he was turning into medicant was due to the fact that I was running around so I could cluster enemies and take them out with hammer swings. Not because of any actual healing behaviour - I was just avoiding getting swarmed.

The effect was really pronounced here because I was leveling that vocation to 9 from nothing.

If the AI does tend to mimic then this obviously is a strange way of doing things, as it assumes you want everyone in your party regardless of class/role to be doing the same sorts of things. There seems to be factors under the water-line of primary and secondary; I'd guess even the 4 top inclinations are influential from what I've observed - and I often don't pay that much attention to what pawns are doing unless they are always on my ass/dying all the time.

I like how the way the AI works is sort of obscure, but I definitely do not want me and my main pawn acting the same way in battles. I'm trying to set up a complementary thing there and it doesn't work out that way without micromanaging every few inn visits with elixir use.

 

[StunandStab]

My fighter pawn is getting pretty beast. I let her have all the nice gear and her defense stats are now way higher than mine.

926 defense and 750 something magic defense. I rarely see her die.


She could use better weapons, though, but a sturdy pawn is better than a dead pawn.

I found a neat trick in a room with 4-5 living armors... you can lure them up to the ledge and they will fall off back into the arena as soon as they climb on the ledge, they'll take so much fall damage they'll die from two falls.

Unfortunately with BBI I've had to cheese a lot of encounters because it's just too ridiculous sometimes.

 

[phierce]

So im I play through 2 basically I should speed run it to get the completion trophy right? I feel no particular compulsion to do all the side board quests especially when I have the hero trophy. In vanilla dd is there something that pops up that I should be aware of gear wise? My guess is that everfall or bbi gear is better than any quest shit.

All the gear you'll want for BBI will come from The Dragon, UR Dragon or The Everfall really. Some merchants have some nice unique items toward the end of the game, but as long as you bought those on the first playthrough, you're good.

I just did a speed run last night. It can be done really quickly if you have a few port crystals in the right spots and if you do a few things the "quick" ways (

Spoiler

having a forged wyrmking's ring will save you a trip, killing the griffon before he flies off will save a lot of time, choosing only cypher and shadow fort for the wyrm hunter's quests are the quickest, etc.

).

I'm actually running through once more just to DF a few more things.

Also, I might recommend doing Fournival's quests (only two short ones and it yields a

Spoiler

golden idol

).

I'm one trophy short of the platinum...some how I still need 100 f'n armor/weapon pieces.

 

[Eppy Thatcher]

All the gear you'll want for BBI will come from The Dragon, UR Dragon or The Everfall really. Some merchants have some nice unique items toward the end of the game, but as long as you bought those on the first playthrough, you're good.

I just did a speed run last night. It can be done really quickly if you have a few port crystals in the right spots and if you do a few things the "quick" ways (

Spoiler

having a forged wyrmking's ring will save you a trip, killing the griffon before he flies off will save a lot of time, choosing only cypher and shadow fort for the wyrm hunter's quests are the quickest, etc.

).

I'm actually running through once more just to DF a few more things.

Also, I might recommend doing Fournival's quests (only two short ones and it yields a

Spoiler

golden idol

).

I'm one trophy short of the platinum...some how I still need 100 f'n armor/weapon pieces.

Easier than it sounds once you spend a little time in the Everfall. Wakestones = cash money millionaire status.

 

[phierce]

Easier than it sounds once you spend a little time in the Everfall. Wakestones = cash money millionaire status.

Yeah, I spent lots of time in Everfall. Got every piece of gear I wanted for my pawn and myself. I have 100s of wakestones saved and millions of gold. I know I can just save then vendor a bunch of shit and reload, but was just shocked I still needed 100 items after almost 100 hours of play lol.

 

[Eppy Thatcher]

Yeah, I spent lots of time in Everfall. Got every piece of gear I wanted for my pawn and me. I have 100s of wakestones saved and millions. I know I can just save then vendor a bunch of shit and reload, but was just shocked I still needed 100 items after almost 100 hours of play lol.

LoL i will say that i was watching that trophy with a bit of the ol stinkeye for many many hours ... and then honestly kind of forgot about it until I was making some of my final Ur-Dragon kill runs and it popped when i decided on a lark to go through and kill grigori as a mystik knight and got the scaled shield... pop .. trophy sings.

"OOoooohh yah! that's right! ... well... good! "

 

[maomaoIYP]

Cumbersome to set up, can't move from the place you casted the cannon...does it pass through foes and hit multiple weak points at once? I don't know, actually. I'll take my focused bolt.

It doesn't pass through anything. Nothing is better than holy focused bolt.

 

[RyanardoDaVinci]

I just have to say how stupid it is that the "Expediting Papers" are absolutely worthless. When I first saw "Decreases the time for forging items at The Black Cat." I was fucking stoked that I wouldn't have to run back-and-forth anymore and could forge instantly.

NOPE.

All it does is cut it down to a half-day -- which is fucking pointless because it takes the same amount of time to select "Sleep til morning" and "Sleep til nightfall." It serves no fucking purpose! Not one single person selects an item to forge and then says, "I'm gonna go run around and do fuckall-who-knows-what for the next hour until this item is ready."

God forbid that someone who has played for over 500hrs could get a little break form the tedium of: sleep; run to Black Cat; scroll for 5 minutes to find the item; forge ONE AT A TIME; run back to the inn; sleep; run all the fuck way back.

Spoilers for vanilla!

Spoiler

Why did the duke choke his wife anyhow, because the dragon was back and he had to sacrifice his beloved last time and didn't want to do it again so he figured he's just 'put her down' or something?

I always took it that

Spoiler

the Elysion (evil wizard dude) had the Duke under a spell; the lightning flashes when he enters, and again when he snaps out of it. The Elysion may have found out that the Duke didn't really slay the wyrm and was messing with him or whatever.

You can fight him again. Take a left after you enter the 2nd shortcut direct to his chamber.
If I'm not wrong chests and enemies in BBI respawn after a certain time has passed in real time and cannot be affected by sleeping at the bench.

You can pass the time by sleeping at Gran Soren or Cassardis.

I think the benches at Bitterblack only pass the time 6hrs for every rest; though, I haven't tested that yet.

 

[Muchi Muchi Pink]

Finished the dragon last night and entered everfall. Now it got really strange somehow. So different from the rest of the game.

 

[Deified Data]

I never had the drake in Devilfire Grove fly off like a cowardly griffin in vanilla DD, but it seems to happen all the time in DA. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just imagining it?

 

[phierce]

I never had the drake in Devilfire Grove fly off like a cowardly griffin in vanilla DD, but it seems to happen all the time in DA. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just imagining it?

I've never had him fly off and vanish, but he does fly off back to his spawn point all the time.

 

[maomaoIYP]

Just went into NG+, and there was no option to switch to hard? What gives?

 

[Deified Data]

I've never had him fly off and vanish, but he does fly off back to his spawn point all the time.

Yeah, that used to happen all the time in vanilla, but for me he's just flying extremely high up in the sky and flying south towards Bloodwater Beach. I followed him long enough to determine that he leaves the bounds of the grove. Weird.

Just went into NG+, and there was no option to switch to hard? What gives?

Really annoying aspect of DA. You have to select hard mode from the start menu, which will restart your current save. You'll still be in NG+ but it's annoying having to cycle through all the starting cinematics all over again.

 

[GorillaJu]

Since Wyrmking Ring isn't equipment it shouldn't be in a hired pawn's inventory.

Oh, you're right. Completely forgot you can't equip it.

Just went into NG+, and there was no option to switch to hard? What gives?

Have to do it from the main menu.

 

[maomaoIYP]

Really annoying aspect of DA. You have to select hard mode from the start menu, which will restart your current save. You'll still be in NG+ but it's annoying having to cycle through all the starting cinematics all over again.

Have to do it from the main menu.

Oh I fucked up. Fuck. Kept reading things that said "gotta load the file instead of selecting hard or you'll lose your save". It'll only take me about 2hrs to reach NG+ again, but still annoying as fuck.

 

[GorillaJu]

Oh I fucked up. Fuck. Kept reading things that said "gotta load the file instead of selecting hard or you'll lose your save". It'll only take me about 2hrs to reach NG+ again, but still annoying as fuck.

You can pick it at any time.

 

[Naeblish]

Finished the dragon last night and entered everfall. Now it got really strange somehow. So different from the rest of the game.

I played a few hours of Everfall yesterday for the first time, and it's way to hard. I had trouble with the

Spoiler

dark chimera

before the dragon, now i face 2 of them and a

Spoiler

dark sorcerer

. It doesn't help that i just got the sigil and great cannon skills which are awesome, but bring my fps down to about 10. Not enjoying it at all.
I'm lvl 44 currently, should i just go to BBI, farm some equipment there?

 

[maomaoIYP]

You can pick it at any time.

Are you serious? I tried that once for a save that hadn't hit NG+ yet and it wiped my old save.

edit: Oh hey you're right! Thanks man, saved me two hours. I guess it only works for saves that have already cleared it once.

 

[phierce]

I played a few hours of Everfall yesterday for the first time, and it's way to hard. I had trouble with the

Spoiler

dark chimera

before the dragon, now i face 2 of them and a

Spoiler

dark sorcerer

. It doesn't help that i just got the sigil and great cannon skills which are awesome, but bring my fps down to about 10. Not enjoying it at all.
I'm lvl 44 currently, should i just go to BBI, farm some equipment there?

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing if you can't currently handle The Everfall, you're probably not going to make it too far in BBI.

Try some of the other chambers in Everfall. You should level up fairly quickly. Farm some cash and buy better gear if you can't get it to drop. Maybe toy around with other vocations (if you haven't before). Try using different pawns.

 

[Fistwell]

Question: Is the framerate improved on PS3 compared to vanilla?

 

[Naeblish]

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing if you can't currently handle The Everfall, you're probably not going to make it too far in BBI.

Try some of the other chambers in Everfall. You should level up fairly quickly. Farm some cash and buy better gear if you can't get it to drop. Maybe toy around with other vocations (if you haven't before). Try using different pawns.

From what i read, the first levels of BBI aren't that hard. And i find it a waste of time to farm equipment in Everfall for hours, only to get much better gear in the beginning of BBI. Or isn't that the case?

 

[phierce]

From what i read, the first levels of BBI aren't that hard. And i find it a waste of time to farm equipment in Everfall for hours, only to get much better gear in the beginning of BBI. Or isn't that the case?

I'm not sure how the first few levels of BBI would be at level 44 compared to Everfall at level 44. Maybe someone with more BBI experience can chime in? I know a few here have gone to BBI at fairly early levels.

 

[StunandStab]

I started BBI at around 52. I had to avoid a lot of the strong enemies at first (seriously, don't try to fight the corpse-eating monsters, the chained up gorecyclopes, or the eliminators), but 44 shouldn't be too bad; however, I did leave BBI after the first boss and farmed Everfall until I was level 70 ish and then went back to BBI for the second boss. Difficulty ramps up in BBI quite a bit after each boss.

I'm currently level 133 working on my second run through BBI.

 

[Dresden]

Focused Bolt + Holy Affinity is so good it's almost unfair. It's like sniper homing missiles that go through walls.

Current skill setup:

High Comestion
High Miasma (also have Toxicity, seems to melt random mobs well)
High Voidspell

Holy Affinity
High Gicel
High Maelstrom

Anyone tried out Seism? Seemed lackluster.

---

Augments:

Sinew
Perpetuation
Acuity
Attunement
Articulacy
Toxicity

 

[Eppy Thatcher]

anyone elseblown away by da and its treatment of the cat?

first...they tickle my balls with this fuckin letter that serves no purpose....they still leave out any kind of multiple item dupes....they give it no fuckin presence on bbi so its an even bigger pain to use...not to mention that it shows your entire fuckin storage now instead of what you have on you. fuckin ridiculous to go through hundreds of items. like....what in the flying hell were they thinking

godamn his cornerd market..

 

[Eusis]

anyone elseblown away by da and its treatment of the cat?

first...they tickle my balls with this fuckin letter that serves no purpose....they still leave out any kind of multiple item dupes....they give it no fuckin presence on bbi so its an even bigger pain to use...not to mention that it shows your entire fuckin storage now instead of what you have on you. fuckin ridiculous to go through hundreds of items. like....what in the flying hell were they thinking

godamn his cornerd market..

It's half the improvement they needed, the other half was making it function more like item storage at a minimum where every type of item was separated and categorized properly.

Finally got through and beat it, though I probably should've taken an image of my MC and Pawn given I'm planning to swap their appearances. Does NG+ immediately prompt you with the option to design your character, or should I got into Character Edit first?

 

[Eppy Thatcher]

It's half the improvement they needed, the other half was making it function more like item storage at a minimum where every type of item was separated and categorized properly.

Finally got through and beat it, though I probably should've taken an image of my MC and Pawn given I'm planning to swap their appearances. Does NG+ immediately prompt you with the option to design your character, or should I got into Character Edit first?

do you know how many materials i have? that list alone is exhaustive. i need a search function or a favorites marker.

 

[maomaoIYP]

Focused Bolt + Holy Affinity is so good it's almost unfair. It's like sniper homing missiles that go through walls.

Current skill setup:

High Comestion
High Miasma (also have Toxicity, seems to melt random mobs well)
High Voidspell

Holy Affinity
High Gicel
High Maelstrom

Anyone tried out Seism? Seemed lackluster.

---

Augments:

Sinew
Perpetuation
Acuity
Attunement
Articulacy
Toxicity

Holy focused bolt is the best attack in the entire game of any vocation imo.
I've only found seism required for a single enemy in the entire game, otherwise bolide was better in every situation.

 

[dragonelite]

What is the right level to start bitterblack isle as a (sorcerer lvl45 became boring) so i changed vocation to magic archer so far i have standard gear and just started Evervall?

 

[Eusis]

do you know how many materials i have? that list alone is exhaustive. i need a search function or a favorites marker.

Given the situation I was at by the end? Yeah, I understand it I think, especially with all the BBI drops at the bottom. Especially with BBI items being the most problematic to get more of.

JUST going through the materials would've been a mild pain, but that's just insane. Though I imagine doing it similar to Monster Hunter would've been good too, just giant pages of tiny icons you can flip through easily.

 

[aravuus]

Did finishing some or all of the wyrm hunt quests make some side quests impossible to finish, or is it just my memory playing tricks again? Just started the first of those quests.

Hired a strider and a mage yesterday, perfect inclinations and skill sets, but they both look like little girls.. I'm amused and appalled at the same time, and they are so good I really don't want to rent someone else lol

 

[itschris]

Decked out pawns are usually something you wanna avoid. Equipment have a hidden level requirement and if you equip something that's too high, I believe stamina will drain extremely fast.

Ah, good to know. I was wondering if there was any reason not to use the high-level equipment odd_morsel gave me. I didn't notice before, but now that I knew to look, my pawn was definitely running out of stamina a lot. So she's now equipped with level appropriate stuff if anyone wants to use her:

PSN ID: chris12221
Pawn: Brienne (31 Fighter - Scather/Utilitarian)

 

[Audioboxer]

A griffin outside Gran Soren keeps teasing me! Lands for battle then flies off again during it haha.


Finished two Wyrm quests, on my way to the 3rd now.

 

[Eppy Thatcher]

A griffin outside Gran Soren keeps teasing me! Lands for battle then flies off again during it haha.


Finished two Wyrm quests, on my way to the 3rd now.

Eventually you do enough damage to kill these cowards on one landing pass.....


And it is glorious.

 

[Muchi Muchi Pink]

So am I able to leave everfall at any point? Seems like I can just fall deeper. Killed the

Spoiler

EvilsEye and that Wryght

. Lvl 46 Assassin. So far no real problems though.

Also some augments just work at nighttime, right? Do Dungeons count as nighttime?

 

[I'm an expert]

Lol at a pit with two cyclops and a turret on top of a hill. First time I feel the game gave me a break.

 

[aravuus]

Lol at a pit with two cyclops and a turret on top of a hill. First time I feel the game gave me a break.

Shooting them both dead with the explosive bolts was goddamn awesome

 

[I'm an expert]

Youre damn right I did. Actually when we found it my fackin scather ranger jumped on the turret and started shootin lol.

 

[Audioboxer]

Lol at a pit with two cyclops and a turret on top of a hill. First time I feel the game gave me a break.

I done that at night, except I struggled through killing them both myself, only to find out after where the damn fire bolts were coming from.