Hey GAF, I recently brought my PS3 to work (in order to tackle the backlog at lunchtimes) and borrowed Dark Arisen. I have a vanilla DD save which I haven't touched for about a year...
If possible, I'd like some advice in how to get back into this properly without feeling overwhelmed.
Muscle memory came back pretty quickly, and I'd forgotten how nice it feels just to run around and fight. I'll try to break down my niggles into simple question form:
1. Is there a lock-on? I forgot...
2. I main an Assassin, my primary pawn is a mage, and secondary is a warrior. Is this an okay setup?
3. The random beast encounters are cool as hell, but I spend 30mins whittling away at a Griffin only to have it fly away on its last HP bar. What am I doing wrong?
4. I'm not looking forward to returning to Gran Soren and seeing how much rotten crap I have in my item box... I remember hoarding a lot of items for crafting but not knowing when/how to use them. What sort of things should I aim to keep/look out for? Do you recommend a purge?
5. I took a look at my active mission list and almost fainted. I'm a sucker for side content and tend to get bogged down very easily. Again, should I purge and concentrate on the main quests? I remember feeling underleveled early on and don't want the bigger battles to feel like any more of a slog than they do now.
Any other advice is also welcome. Thanks in advance!
1. No
2. Personally, I hate Mage class. I'd say change your main pawn to Warrior or Sorcerer and get a Mage just for healing and buffing as a support. But to be honest, most party set ups work fine as long as you are the primary damage dealer.
3. Just too weak right now, I guess. Try shooting explosive arrows at its wings when it takes off or cling onto it.
4. I don't think stuff rots in the item box, but I am not 100% sure on that. Since storage is unlimited, keep everything since you might end up needing random things to upgrade your weapons and armour.
5. If you are going for the platinum, you have to do every side mission. Since you may be underleveled, I would take on the monster hunt ones. The ones that target specific big monsters in dungeons around the world. Those are challenging and require exploration which helps you level up as well.
Extra advice: Now that you have Dark Arisen with a vanilla save, you have a free Eternal Ferrystone that lets you fast travel around to different port crystals in the world. There's a few permanent ones like in Gran Soren and I think Cassardis, but you can find others around the world and put them down to fast travel between them.
Also: Wolves hunt in packs.