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Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen |OT| deep down darkness

Eusis

Member
By the way it looks like I was full after all, so I cleaned up my friends list some. Some hadn't been on forever, or had really low trophy collections implying they weren't playing much (something they're undeniably useful for admittedly... and also why complaining about standard progress ones is somewhat shortsighted.) Still not many slots though.

And man, this makes me wish I could either forcibly replace everyone's copy of Dragon's Dogma with Dark Arisen and make the original DD offline only, or (better yet honestly) that consoles could have Steam-esque patching to get around the issues of not having pawns being fully compatible between the two. Actually I guess the PS3 COULD support that kind of patching, but the 360 drags it down, and at any rate the PS3's so slow at things I can't see people really wanting it there either. Though with Steam-esque patching we'd probably have also gotten to buy this as DLC too.
 
Seems like more people are playing Dark Arisen now, I just got 130k riftstones from my pawn and upgraded enemy knowledge. Didn't get much of anything the first couple of days
 

burgerdog

Member
I cannot clear the room with 3 sorcerers and 2 gore cyclopses. The scorcs one-shot me with the whirlwind spell and I can't do anything about it. There are three of them and one of them always gets it off even if I manage to kill the other two. Not only do I die, but I have to sit and wait while the spell duration goes.

Switch to a ranged vocation and snipe them from the top floor.
 
I don't see this brought up often, or ever... but maybe I'm just blind. Why is the AI in this game so bad? There are certain things in which the AI is great... like i just fought a gryphon and my pawns were constantly trying to attack and the gryphon fought in a reasonable manner and it was a lot of fun.


But the problems pop up when it's versus a lot of AI. I had a fight earlier where it was my team of 4 vs about 6 or 7 AI guys. An AI archer shot at me 3 times and then put down his bow and just paced back and forth. My own pawn would run up, swing at one guy, and then walk around for 15 seconds before attacking again. I have two sorcerers, one was buffing us - which is ok... the other ran around the entire fight never casting a spell. There were also melee fighters on their side that would take 3 swings and then just stand there.

Also as a ranger there have been plenty of times that I have hit someone with an arrow and they don't even react. They just stand there so I can hit them a few more times until they die.



I really love this game. It's a ton of fun, its gorgeous, the pawn system is neat, the world is great. But man... when you really start watching the individual behavior of each AI player on your side and the enemies... it's pretty bad.
 
All this talk of BBI being scaled to whatever level you are has me worried.

I do not hate scaling as much as I should but I do if an area is littered with 5-6 enemies who can one-two hit you to dead.

It is not like I need to worry the first few dozens of hours. I am still Level 8 :lol
 
I don't see this brought up often, or ever... but maybe I'm just blind. Why is the AI in this game so bad? There are certain things in which the AI is great... like i just fought a gryphon and my pawns were constantly trying to attack and the gryphon fought in a reasonable manner and it was a lot of fun.

But the problems pop up when it's versus a lot of AI. I had a fight earlier where it was my team of 4 vs about 6 or 7 AI guys. An AI archer shot at me 3 times and then put down his bow and just paced back and forth. My own pawn would run up, swing at one guy, and then walk around for 15 seconds before attacking again. I have two sorcerers, one was buffing us - which is ok... the other ran around the entire fight never casting a spell. There were also melee fighters on their side that would take 3 swings and then just stand there.

Also as a ranger there have been plenty of times that I have hit someone with an arrow and they don't even react. They just stand there so I can hit them a few more times until they die.

I really love this game. It's a ton of fun, its gorgeous, the pawn system is neat, the world is great. But man... when you really start watching the individual behavior of each AI player on your side and the enemies... it's pretty bad.

The AI is really, really strange. Sometimes your pawns will do great things on their own and almost seem to be in sync with you, but other times they freak out and rush in when it's not safe, or get really close to cast spells instead of creating some space and using melee/mid range pawns as a buffer, or not use range weapons even when the Arisen is clearly keeping his/her distance, or run ALONGSIDE you on narrow ledges while telling you how dangerous and narrow the path is, etc. As for enemy AI, all the pack fights are wacky melees except for wolves who occasionally show some smarts when one person gets knocked down. The bigger enemy fights generally turn out better because they have a very specific set of rules and all of your Pawns can focus on one point, but even then things can go awry.

It's still really fun, and often funny in its randomness, but I'd love to see a sequel really polish the AI behavior on both sides so that each enemy and bandit/pawn vocation acts more strategically and more consistently, at least in their positioning during battles.
 

Sanctuary

Member
So what are the improvements to the UI that everyone seemed to be raving about? I don't really notice anything other than being able to see how much of an item a pawn has when you're trying to trade them the same item (I honestly don't even remember if that was in vanilla) as well as being able to see how much of an item you have total, whether it's banked or on your person while browsing the vendor window. If that's all that was done, I don't get why it's such a big deal, because it barely improved the inventory management at all.

Aside from that, I'm really loving the infinite ferrystone and added portcrystals. I got so goddamn sick of the backtracking over the same areas ad nauseam and hearing "GOBLINS ILL LIKE FIRE!" that I did simply duped ferrystones and portcrystals between my different accounts so that I could have more earlier
(this was before I knew you could buy many more post-game)
. Some people seriously thought that walking everywhere made for a better experience, but it doesn't. It makes it a slog. If the game was something like a TES game on the outside areas, then backtracking would be okay, but the way this game is setup with it's spawns--and relatively mundane terrain-- and the way the pawns have amnesia is even more immersion-breaking. Besides, if you have a Mage/Sorcerer in your party, you could just rationalize that they are teleporting you. Backtracking was bad enough on the first playthrough, but it made playing again a chore.

I don't see this brought up often, or ever... but maybe I'm just blind. Why is the AI in this game so bad? There are certain things in which the AI is great... like i just fought a gryphon and my pawns were constantly trying to attack and the gryphon fought in a reasonable manner and it was a lot of fun.


But the problems pop up when it's versus a lot of AI. I had a fight earlier where it was my team of 4 vs about 6 or 7 AI guys. An AI archer shot at me 3 times and then put down his bow and just paced back and forth. My own pawn would run up, swing at one guy, and then walk around for 15 seconds before attacking again. I have two sorcerers, one was buffing us - which is ok... the other ran around the entire fight never casting a spell. There were also melee fighters on their side that would take 3 swings and then just stand there.

Also as a ranger there have been plenty of times that I have hit someone with an arrow and they don't even react. They just stand there so I can hit them a few more times until they die.



I really love this game. It's a ton of fun, its gorgeous, the pawn system is neat, the world is great. But man... when you really start watching the individual behavior of each AI player on your side and the enemies... it's pretty bad.


I just noticed this recently as well (I'd seen it before, but I just noticed a really glaring example). I was running up some stairs to reach the top of an area where 5-6 humanoid enemies were. Two longsword (they call them longswords, but it was more like a two-handed sword) users kept running back and forth between my party. My group would run up the steps, then back down without attacking and would keep doing this until I killed the enemies on the stairs. Once up at the top, there was a bullshit Ranger that kept taking 80% of my health with a single volley over and over again. My pawns proceeded to run PAST the Ranger and jump off of a cliff, only to return to me from behind me after I finished the Ranger off solo. You're right, the pawn AI can be pretty bad, but overall it's relatively good, especially for having that many partners.
 

Kyoufu

Member
UI improvements:

Amount of item possessed on both player and storage shown.

Able to equip weapons and armour from storage rather than individually withdrawing first.
 

Sanctuary

Member
UI improvements:

Amount of item possessed on both player and storage shown.

Able to equip weapons and armour from storage rather than individually withdrawing first.

Ah, the ability to equip from inventory is a pretty big improvement. I forgot about having to remove gear first. The item count viewing isn't really gamechanging either way, although I'll take it.

Metal Golem sure is dumb when you have to rely on your pawn's bow...

One of those "How did an entire team of people think this shit is OK?" moments.

Are you an MA or Sorcerer? If you have 8 ranks in Sorcerer, they are not too bad to take down with High Exequy. I'd read the horror stories about metal golems as an MA without Sorcerer levels; so I'm glad I won't have to experience that.
 

Kiraly

Member
EAxrct8.jpg

qN8XERV.jpg


I saved these two pics from the OT a long ass time ago, would like to make her but has anyone got any idea of the sliders?

Never mind this shit, you won't see shit anyway in this low-res game lol.
 

I'm an expert

Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
This game sure does not fuck around. Escort quest in Gran Soren..yeah..no.. clearly not meant to be done now. Tome quest from Gran Soren..yeah.. take a trip back south to the waycastle..then even back further south that camp I avoided in the beginning by the witchwood. All of this shit for random beginner quests before I even hit the pawn guild..

I love this game.
 
Ah, the ability to equip from inventory is a pretty big improvement. I forgot about having to remove gear first. The item count viewing isn't really gamechanging either way, although I'll take it.



Are you an MA or Sorcerer? If you have 8 ranks in Sorcerer, they are not too bad to take down with High Exequy. I'd read the horror stories about metal golems as an MA without Sorcerer levels; so I'm glad I won't have to experience that.

I was ranking up Warrior at the time. I've read about people having trouble, too, but I find the fight is stupid easy even at night and the rock golem joining in on the fun. I just had no way of hitting the final power source because my Ranger pawn kept poking at the golem with daggers while complaining about how her attacks do nothing. It's just dumb.
 
The AI is really, really strange. Sometimes your pawns will do great things on their own and almost seem to be in sync with you, but other times they freak out and rush in when it's not safe, or get really close to cast spells instead of creating some space and using melee/mid range pawns as a buffer, or not use range weapons even when the Arisen is clearly keeping his/her distance, or run ALONGSIDE you on narrow ledges while telling you how dangerous and narrow the path is, etc. As for enemy AI, all the pack fights are wacky melees except for wolves who occasionally show some smarts when one person gets knocked down. The bigger enemy fights generally turn out better because they have a very specific set of rules and all of your Pawns can focus on one point, but even then things can go awry.

It's still really fun, and often funny in its randomness, but I'd love to see a sequel really polish the AI behavior on both sides so that each enemy and bandit/pawn vocation acts more strategically and more consistently, at least in their positioning during battles.

Tell your pawns to be carefull while exploring.
Teach your pawns to go all out when you are fighting.

After all that your pawn will never fail you.
 

I'm an expert

Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
Tell your pawns to be carefull while exploring.
Teach your pawns to go all out when you are fighting.

After all that your pawn will never fail you.

We're talking about your main pawn right? You can't influence/set your 2 hired pawns, can you?
 

eXistor

Member
Yeah my save is gone. Strange thing is that my save was still on the hard drive, the game just refuses to read it. What I did is move this save data to a USB drive and start the game again. The original DD save game was still there, so I just have to restart the Bitterblack Isle part, which I was only a few hours into. Hopefully this won't happen again.
 

ixix

Exists in a perpetual state of Quantum Crotch Uncertainty.
I was ranking up Warrior at the time. I've read about people having trouble, too, but I find the fight is stupid easy even at night and the rock golem joining in on the fun. I just had no way of hitting the final power source because my Ranger pawn kept poking at the golem with daggers while complaining about how her attacks do nothing. It's just dumb.

Bow-wielding pawns are, for whatever reason, simply incapable of targeting one of the metal golem's cores.

I had really hoped they would fix that for Dark Arisen. It makes killing metal golems effectively impossible for some vocations.
 
It's just a item to summon mini-bosses like the cursed-dragon, great for DFing items. In other news, I just found an elite lantern, "...casts light brighter and wider than a normal lantern..." and it also lasts longer.

Ooh, I need to find me one of those. The "Prolongation" augment that makes your lantern burn longer makes it infinite, pretty much. I used it for the entirety of my second run through the labyrinth and it never even dropped to half-full.

You can also get a Ring of Dessication, which makes you immune to getting drenched; super useful in the last leg of the labyrinth where there's ankle-deep water all over the place, your lantern will go out when it hits water but dries out immediately when you stand up.

I don't see this brought up often, or ever... but maybe I'm just blind. Why is the AI in this game so bad? There are certain things in which the AI is great... like i just fought a gryphon and my pawns were constantly trying to attack and the gryphon fought in a reasonable manner and it was a lot of fun.


But the problems pop up when it's versus a lot of AI. I had a fight earlier where it was my team of 4 vs about 6 or 7 AI guys. An AI archer shot at me 3 times and then put down his bow and just paced back and forth. My own pawn would run up, swing at one guy, and then walk around for 15 seconds before attacking again. I have two sorcerers, one was buffing us - which is ok... the other ran around the entire fight never casting a spell. There were also melee fighters on their side that would take 3 swings and then just stand there.

Also as a ranger there have been plenty of times that I have hit someone with an arrow and they don't even react. They just stand there so I can hit them a few more times until they die.



I really love this game. It's a ton of fun, its gorgeous, the pawn system is neat, the world is great. But man... when you really start watching the individual behavior of each AI player on your side and the enemies... it's pretty bad.

I think pawns are just really stupid when you first arrive at Bitterblack because they have no experience in dealing with the enemies; now that my pawn has 2 stars for all but Silver/Gold Knights and Strigoi, he fights much smarter and lasts much longer.
 

Gbraga

Member
EAxrct8.jpg

qN8XERV.jpg


I saved these two pics from the OT a long ass time ago, would like to make her but has anyone got any idea of the sliders?

Never mind this shit, you won't see shit anyway in this low-res game lol.

I have her settings at home, I'll PM you once I get there from work.

EDIT: Google never fails

Since some people asked earlier these are the settings for my main and pawn,

For detail sliders farthest left will be considered 1 in this guide:

KzZYg.jpg
cZiC9.jpg


Face:

Hairstyle 19, Color Red
Face Shape 37, Head Size 5(middle), Skin Color: Top Left
Eyes 10, Vertical 2, Spacing 2, Size 5, Eye Color Green
Brows 32, Vertical 3, Spacing 4, Brow Color Red
Nose 4, Vertical 2, Size 3
Mouth 31, Vertical 3
Ears 5, Vertical 4, Position 2

Body:

Stature Height 7, Weight 3, Skin Color: Top Left
Build Musculature 2, Bust Size 4
Torso 2
Arms 2
Legs 7
Stance Posture 3, Stance 3

t2PeX.jpg
p7PaR.jpg


Face:

Hairstyle 23, Color Black
Face Shape 10, Head Size 5(middle), Skin Color: Middle Column 6
Eyes 04, Vertical 2, Spacing 2, Size 4, Eye Color: Blue
Brows 19, Vertical 1, Spacing 2, Brow Color: Black
Nose 4, Vertical 2, Size 3
Mouth 28, Vertical 4
Ears 2, Vertical 3, Position 3

Body:

Stature Height 4, Weight 2, Skin Color: Middle Column 6
Build Musculature 2, Bust Size 4
Torso 7
Arms 9
Legs 7
Stance Posture 2, Stance 3

Makeup 2, Color: Black
 

iddqd

Member
Yeah.. I wish the game would give me the option of seeing if a quest is beyond my abilities.

Walking for 15 minutes, fighting boring wolves only to get into a zone with things
that I can not even do damage to is not fun but just lame.

Goblins and wolves spawning before my eyes is pretty shitty as well..

This game is not doing it for me.. it feels like someone spent the time on content but not on polish. There is nothing that makes me move forward story wise.
 

TentPole

Member
Yeah.. I wish the game would give me the option of seeing if a quest is beyond my abilities.

Walking for 15 minutes, fighting boring wolves only to get into a zone with things
that I can not even do damage
to is not fun but just lame.

That right there is a huge part of the games appeal.
 

I'm an expert

Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
Yeah.. I wish the game would give me the option of seeing if a quest is beyond my abilities.

Walking for 15 minutes, fighting boring wolves only to get into a zone with things
that I can not even do damage to is not fun but just lame.

Goblins and wolves spawning before my eyes is pretty shitty as well..

This game is not doing it for me.. it feels like someone spent the time on content but not on polish. There is nothing that makes me move forward story wise.

I dunno man.. I enjoy the game not color coding shit or making everything so obvious to me. Though I learned the hard way that escorting Reynard from Gran Soren was not for me yet. As for the wolves/goblins, don't the leaders of the pack call more? I find if I rush them down the numbers are drastically smaller than if I just kill the runts of the packs first. Either way, I like that the game feels like an open world game even though it's not structured as one.
 
Someone hired my pawn last night, so thank you. Not sure if it was GAF but I'm assuming so as she's not terribly unique, but she does look like my wife which is fun.

I will hire out some new GAF pawns later tonight.
 

ironcreed

Banned
I am starting to wonder about the claims of level scaling. As the main game did not have it, so I don't see why on earth they would do that here. I have also checked out some footage of players at higher levels than me getting through encounters much faster, using the same vocation. I am talking fights that lasted only a couple of minutes vs around the 40 minutes it takes me to whittle away all of the health bars.

So, while some enemies may be able to one shot you still, I am convinced that anything less than level 100 is going to make it very rough in terms of the damage you do to the stronger foes. Hell, it even says at the start of the new content that if it is too hard, then go level up and come back later. With that, I think I'll head back myself and get leveled up to around 100 before I go take on the last boss again just to see for myself. As it's ridiculous at level 73.
 

TentPole

Member
I am starting to wonder about the claims of level scaling. As the main game did not have it, so I don't see why on earth they would do that here. I have also checked out some footage of players at higher levels than me getting through encounters much faster, using the same vocation. I am talking fights that lasted only a couple of minutes vs around the 40 minutes it takes me to whittle away all of the health bars.

So, while some enemies may be able to one shot you still, I am convinced that anything less than level 100 is going to make it very rough in terms of the damage you do to the stronger foes. Hell, it even says at the start of the new content that if it is too hard, then go level up and come back later. With that, I think I'll head back myself and get leveled up to around 100 before I go take on the last boss again just to see for myself. As it's ridiculous at level 73.

That would still work as the theory is that it scales to when you first set foot on the isle and is locked in at that level. That being said I am still pretty sure that the theory is wrong and there is zero scaling just like in the main game.
 

ironcreed

Banned
That would still work as the theory is that it scales to when you first set foot on the isle and is locked in at that level. That being said I am still pretty sure that the theory is wrong and there is zero scaling just like in the main game.

I agree. Like I said, I have watched footage of higher level players of the same vocation waltzing through battles that take me forever. I think, like the main game, I'll come back later and feel the rewards of being stronger. They even tell you at the start to go level up if it gets too difficult.
 
That would still work as the theory is that it scales to when you first set foot on the isle and is locked in at that level. That being said I am still pretty sure that the theory is wrong and there is zero scaling just like in the main game.

Oh good lord, I hope that theory isn't quite the truth. I've started a fresh dude on Dark Arisen having never play Dragons Dogma before and I set foot on the island not really knowing it was the expansion content. I quickly left to return after I tackled the main story, and I very much hope it hasn't locked that content to the level 5 I believe I was at the time.
 

iddqd

Member
That right there is a huge part of the games appeal.

Yeah, I totally get why someone would like it.
I'm just bummed because that trial and error costs me so much of my playtime that is then spend walking back.
BUT I'm going to try using an FAQ for some guidance and that should help a lot.

I'll leave the unguided exploring to people with more time to play.
 

ironcreed

Banned
Oh good lord, I hope that theory isn't quite the truth. I've started a fresh dude on Dark Arisen having never play Dragons Dogma before and I set foot on the island not really knowing it was the expansion content. I quickly left to return after I tackled the main story, and I very much hope it hasn't locked that content to the level 5 I believe I was at the time.

I'm doubting it. As they said you should not even attempt it unless you are at least over level 50. But even that is way too low for many encounters based on my experience of starting at level 58.
 

iddqd

Member
I dunno man.. I enjoy the game not color coding shit or making everything so obvious to me. Though I learned the hard way that escorting Reynard from Gran Soren was not for me yet. As for the wolves/goblins, don't the leaders of the pack call more? I find if I rush them down the numbers are drastically smaller than if I just kill the runts of the packs first. Either way, I like that the game feels like an open world game even though it's not structured as one.

So that's what the howling does? I had no clue. Thanks!
 

robotnik

Member
I hadn't my save from vanilla DD on PS3, when I started DA. Currently ~15 hours in. Can I use my old DD save without rewriting current DA progress and get infinite ferrystone?
 

Wanchan

Member
I agree. Like I said, I have watched footage of higher level players of the same vocation waltzing through battles that take me forever. I think, like the main game, I'll come back later and feel the rewards of being stronger. They even tell you at the start to go level up if it gets too difficult.

I don't think there's any lvl scaling at all, or it's just to a point... I'm on the second run of BBI and i know i have way less trouble now at lvl 80 than i had at lvl 70 and it's only a 10 lvl difference.
 
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