They become obsolete compared to crafted equipment very quickly, as well as later yellow/purple gear, so they're worth it only if you're a completionist or if you want to support 38 Studios, imho.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning |OT| An Enemy-Pounding Funfest
- Thread starter ReaperXL7
- Start date
Barack Lesnar
Banned
Cross Slash (Dagger Dodge Special) lifts on the second hit so you can do that. You're able to go from that right into a combo with either weapon to juggle them. Lunge should work for the Staff delayed hit if you can catch them in mid-air with it too.
The Health bit is debatable as it's well into the 600-ish range that it's modifying for a Might build so it comes down to how much Mana is valued. My Might/Finesse build doesn't plan to need a lot of Mana yet so I'd rather take the raw HP, though it's debatable if I'd want to "waste" a slot for it at all in crafting.
And Mastercrafted is a good point I forgot about :|
Edit: I'll craft one when I get off work but I distinctly recall falling short, ever so slightly, in the end. In the event I just screwed up somewhere, at least the Unique gave it a good run and damn them for wasted HP itemization.
I'm being a mage, and doing it wrong? 
I just started playing and I'm level 6 now.
I love my staff and chakrams because the attacks just look so awesome, and I keep forgetting to use my spells! I'll probably pick up the healing ability for convenience, but beyond that I'm not sure if going pure mage is the best thing for my play-style since I keep going in up and close.
Yet I can't work out what else to put points in, since both other specs seem to want me to use their weapon types.
Has anyone made a successful battlemage type person that mainly uses staff and chakrams? What armor should I wear, and what else should I stick points in? Any ideas?
I just started playing and I'm level 6 now.
I love my staff and chakrams because the attacks just look so awesome, and I keep forgetting to use my spells! I'll probably pick up the healing ability for convenience, but beyond that I'm not sure if going pure mage is the best thing for my play-style since I keep going in up and close.
Yet I can't work out what else to put points in, since both other specs seem to want me to use their weapon types.
Has anyone made a successful battlemage type person that mainly uses staff and chakrams? What armor should I wear, and what else should I stick points in? Any ideas?
NoirVisage
Banned
Hear, hear, I brought it up before, Its one of my favorite quest as well, well done arena story with fairly fleshed out characters.. but one full "faction" being locked out didn't sit well with me either, i am hoping they expand on it in DLC, i KNOW the other gladiators are not gonna let the Crows get away with being champs for too long, plus i need an excuse to mix it up with my favorite Drunken sorceress!
Honestly, did anyone not choose the Drunken Sorceress? :x
The_Darkest_Red
Member
I chose the rogue for every fight because he seemed like the underdog of the bunch.
You should try playing as a battlemage (points in might and sorcery). You still get lots of spells and you can still use staves and chakrams but you also get to add longswords, greatswords, and hammers to your arsenal. You also get to choose between sorcery and might gear. It's a very flexible path.I'm being a mage, and doing it wrong?
I just started playing and I'm level 6 now.
I love my staff and chakrams because the attacks just look so awesome, and I keep forgetting to use my spells! I'll probably pick up the healing ability for convenience, but beyond that I'm not sure if going pure mage is the best thing for my play-style since I keep going in up and close.
Yet I can't work out what else to put points in, since both other specs seem to want me to use their weapon types.
Has anyone made a successful battlemage type person that mainly uses staff and chakrams? What armor should I wear, and what else should I stick points in? Any ideas?
razgriz417
Member
So I've been putting points into stealth, detect hidden and sagecrafting and just maxed that last one out only to realize that epic gems require a specific slot on armour to fit into. Either I find one of these magical pieces of equipment or max out blacksmithing which I have no points in at all.
I think epics usually go into chest pieces. You can make a bunch of epics then respec and put points into blacksmithing
The voice over work was surprisingly extensive, although they really could have done well by hiring more voice actors for variety.
NoirVisage
Banned
Glad you stuck with it! I did that after waning interest through the first 10 hours of sacred 2, 100+ up and down hours on Skyrim, yet i'm still enjoying this game consistently, the combat really helps, 67 hours in i discovered i REALLY like great swords, feels like a whole other game with my high crit/bleed powerhouse i named "Gatsu"!
Calm down folks, I said the game was great.
I played it like an action / loot game, which is what it is at its core. Do people play Diablo for the story?
What I meant was that there were so many side quests that just involved killing certain enemies, clearing certain small dungeons that I had to skip them to even come close to finishing. The faction quests were good though.
Anyways different strokes for different folks. It's great that there is a large amount of lore in the game for people who enjoy that. There is also a huge amount of action and loot for those like myself that just enjoy that, that's why this game rocked.
I had to start ignoring all the "!" after a about 5 hrs to even finish. The only quests I did were factions and any quest that was initiated by the NPC, and the main of course.
I played it like an action / loot game, which is what it is at its core. Do people play Diablo for the story?
What I meant was that there were so many side quests that just involved killing certain enemies, clearing certain small dungeons that I had to skip them to even come close to finishing. The faction quests were good though.
Anyways different strokes for different folks. It's great that there is a large amount of lore in the game for people who enjoy that. There is also a huge amount of action and loot for those like myself that just enjoy that, that's why this game rocked.
I had to start ignoring all the "!" after a about 5 hrs to even finish. The only quests I did were factions and any quest that was initiated by the NPC, and the main of course.
It's a common complaint but ... what exactly would be expected from quests otherwise? I mean, at their core we're really going to just be looking at fetching things, killing dudes, or clearing areas of dudes. Maybe I'm narrow minded or uncreative but ... not sure what else is there for quests if we're stripping off the lore of them.
Not anything against you in particular, just curious on this subject.
The_Darkest_Red
Member
I've wondered about this as well. If you remove the story and fluff around a quest in a video game it can almost always be described as a "fetch quest." The entirety of Ocarina of Time was just a series of fetch quests, for example. The key is what's surrounding and supporting that goal or series of goals.
In the case of Amalur I think the side-quests are generally very well done. There is a good deal of lore and background for almost all of the ones that I've found and the objectives always seem to have a properly supported purpose. Obviously each one of these can't be as fully fleshed out as a main line quest due to their quantity and the fact that most of them are fairly short but I don't see why that should make them instantly worthless or something.
I actually agree with this point. While I certainly don't listen to every spoken line of dialogue, I do read/skim them majority of the text; and, on the whole, the dialogue has been rather fitting, and is often relevant to the area/town/environment you're currently in. For instance, I really enjoyed the dialogue and quests in Webwood b/c it all related to the down-trodden life of being silk farmers in a very dangerous area.
I'm not sure what else people are looking for in this style of game, and I don't understand the complaints, especially when compared to other games in the genre that just come across as silly (Sacred series, Titan Quest, Diablo series, etc.). I know this makes me sound like a GAF'er, but all I can say is to critics is this: you're doing it wrong.
Reviewers and min-maxers need to realize that if they're just powering through the game, then they can't expect to take much away from the story and the lore; but don't blame it on the game itself.
sloppyjoe_gamer
Gold Member
Having such a blast with this game.....all ive been doing lately is sidequests, and i havent gone back to the main story in a while!!!
I think I'm the shining example of min/maxing (I love figuring out game mechanics to figure out best approaches of things; take a look at anything Disgaea or Etrian Odyssey related :|) but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm skipping through the story and lore. Over on the actual Reckoning forums it seems to be a general assumption that getting through the game already == never reading anything story related at all. :|
But yeah, it's down to the lore of it all and this applies to basically every game. Without that then all you're left with is the very core of it all which is something very broad in scope. Everything is basically a fetch quest or dude killing at the end of the day without the lore and rationale behind it and enjoying the lore is definitely a case-by-case basis. Just curious if there's something about the core structure of the quests that can be different to make things more exciting for those who find them all samey or if it's just a case of wanting more out of the story for the quests.
I chose the rogue for every fight because he seemed like the underdog of the bunch.
You should try playing as a battlemage (points in might and sorcery). You still get lots of spells and you can still use staves and chakrams but you also get to add longswords, greatswords, and hammers to your arsenal. You also get to choose between sorcery and might gear. It's a very flexible path.
Yes, I think I'll try that. Add some points to the warrior path support skills and wear heavy armor, that should make quite a survivable build.
I'm pretty sure I'll be looking at around 100hours (-+10hours) after finishing the game. For 35, that's a steal.
Then if the DLC really adds another ~10hours per, I'll be a happy camper.
You know, I really am extremely positively surprised by what 38Studios and Big Huge Games have released here.
I mean, sure there are problems, you can talk about "WoW clone", "genericness" and "easy mode" all day and it's absolutely fine not to like the game, but if you look at it objectively, it's a huge game with tons of detail in the world, crazy amounts of text which is all voice acted (and not the same stuff over and over either!), a fun combat system and (often overlooked by almost anyone who plays this) the game is basically bug free. No memory leak, no crazy crashes, no horrendous framerate, no driver problems, nada. The game has been running for 40 hours without any tiny technical error. Hell, I didn't even have the friggin AI bug out on me and that's a given in almost any big RPG/open world game.
Seriously if this is the kind of game 38/BigHuge release as their FIRST combined project, then I am really looking forward to their next title.
Then if the DLC really adds another ~10hours per, I'll be a happy camper.
You know, I really am extremely positively surprised by what 38Studios and Big Huge Games have released here.
I mean, sure there are problems, you can talk about "WoW clone", "genericness" and "easy mode" all day and it's absolutely fine not to like the game, but if you look at it objectively, it's a huge game with tons of detail in the world, crazy amounts of text which is all voice acted (and not the same stuff over and over either!), a fun combat system and (often overlooked by almost anyone who plays this) the game is basically bug free. No memory leak, no crazy crashes, no horrendous framerate, no driver problems, nada. The game has been running for 40 hours without any tiny technical error. Hell, I didn't even have the friggin AI bug out on me and that's a given in almost any big RPG/open world game.
Seriously if this is the kind of game 38/BigHuge release as their FIRST combined project, then I am really looking forward to their next title.
Arcane Hayter
Member
Anybody having an issue with the dialogue matching the mouth movements? Its out of sync for me (installed Xbox360). It's weird because it was flawless on my demo...
Dialogue is generally fine, but the spoken lines from those Stones never match up for me.
I agree with you on the stability of the game. I mean when I first played Skyrim the game crashed to desktop after 20 minutes and it happened a lot after that. For a game o this scope the guys at 38 and BHG really did an excellent job. The game is really fun to!
Their lead designer responded to me about the loot scaling:
I'll keep an eye out, but it sounds like it shouldn't be too shitty overall, provided the non-DLC level ranges on scaling aren't very large. What's annoying though is that if that is the case, then there's really not much reason to have the scaling at all. Maybe we can convince them to drop it entirely for future DLC because truthfully it does more harm than good for the player.
Ian Frazier said:
I'll keep an eye out, but it sounds like it shouldn't be too shitty overall, provided the non-DLC level ranges on scaling aren't very large. What's annoying though is that if that is the case, then there's really not much reason to have the scaling at all. Maybe we can convince them to drop it entirely for future DLC because truthfully it does more harm than good for the player.
Flachmatuch
Member
I am enjoying the game a lot, but why do Western fantasy games always have loads and loads of really, really bad poetry? Some (most? probably all) of that stuff is just...ugh. I have to turn down the volume, it is just way to embarrassing. Finished the House of Ballads at least, but the lorestones are still there to annoy me :-D I think the writing in this game is the Western equivalent to SO4, but of course there's no "acting" to go with it so it's not nearly as bad - on the other hand, there seems to be more of it and more evenly distributed. I knew what I was getting into when I bought the game though, I'm not complaining
Anyway, some great stuff in there. Just noticed that when I salvage mastercrafted stuff, I have a chance of getting the gem bonuses back in the form of high level components, for example a single +2 health regen gem just salvaged into 2 +2 health regen flawless components. And of course abusing save/reload to create +10 health regen gloves is exactly the thing I like about RPGs. Great stuff.
Anyway, some great stuff in there. Just noticed that when I salvage mastercrafted stuff, I have a chance of getting the gem bonuses back in the form of high level components, for example a single +2 health regen gem just salvaged into 2 +2 health regen flawless components. And of course abusing save/reload to create +10 health regen gloves is exactly the thing I like about RPGs. Great stuff.
Baconsammy
Banned
Saw Curt on Fallon last night. Good job, Curt. Fallon's a great venue to get the word out to people who play video games.
It basically sounds like it scales the same way loot drops scale in the first place so it's honestly not that big of a deal. Just maxing out what they can give you would at least make quest rewards enticing if you're below the max level of the region, though...
I think the writing in this game is the Western equivalent to SO4, but of course there's no "acting" to go with it so it's not nearly as bad - on the other hand, there seems to be more of it and more evenly distributed. I knew what I was getting into when I bought the game though, I'm not complaining
I don't know, man. From what I've seen it just feels like bog-standard, generic,
'kay
Flachmatuch
Member
I think the writing is in fact about the same level, what's thankfully missing is the atrocious voice work and the "acting", it's the whole package that makes SO4 perfect :-D (Although I also played the PS3 version and in Japanese because I thought it might be better than the English stuff, but actually it sounded worse. I don't speak Japanese and so it's usually less offensive to me but this game was an exception, which is an achievement itself.) But the poems, wow. Again, not complaining, I knew what I'd get, I'm just not used to this kind of stuff any more :-D This is a nice game, and my "complaints" about it being generic and badly written may be a bit pointless - it has to be somewhat generic so that enough people like it and games just can't take too much (definitely not enough) risks nowadays, they cost too much to fail. But the "quality" of fantasy writing, especially the fake poetry, still amazes me. It's not the game's fault though but the genre's.
It is odd that the mouth shapes seem relatively accurate, but the actual lip sync is consistently behind the dialogue. If they just would have had the mouth shapes happen a touch sooner it would have made a big difference.
madmaxx350
Member
So goood. I'm at 25 hours played and have only done 4 of the main story quest and the one to get into the
I'm now trying to explore the entire map, so much to do in this game
gardens of Ysa
madmaxx350
Member
I did Dalentarth -> Plains, Haven't even been to Detyre
The choice is yours; Detyre seems to have lower level caps and is just overall shorter so it should fit the level curve better. I did Plains first and saw grey cons everywhere in Detyre barring the MQ and Faction Quest dungeons, I believe. The faction quests suggest Plains then Detyre, as does the Lorestone list, though so that's something to keep in mind too.
It's optional, you can choose to tackle either one. Basically you go Thousand Needles or Mulgore.
Baconsammy
Banned
The main quest pushes you to the Plains before Deltyre. Warsworn does too.
madmaxx350
Member
QUestion: I was doing the
quest from the Warsworn faction and it seems a bug keeps me from completing the quest, after defeating all the mages nothing happens , and the bad thing is I saved after doing that, is there a fix? Is this problem known?
lock and key
Did you talk to the Quest NPC? I don't remember any issue with the quest when I did it.
Did the girl with you leave after that? You just go back to the HQ.
Or the second part, where
the locksmith comes out of his secret room?
I thought the voice acting was really patchy. There'd be times where the accent was genuine (or seemed genuine at least) and other times where it was all over the place. American voice actors have trouble trying to imitate Irish and Scottish accents, and its common in a lot of games not just Reckoning.
It's probably not noticable if you yourself is American, but as a Brit I can usually tell and when they get it wrong it really sticks out. The female Dwarf in the first village, in the alchemy shop, as an example.
The_Darkest_Red
Member
Really? The main quest seemed to branch once I finished the stuff in Dalentarth.
madmaxx350
Member
No she's right there saying "go, go"
Baconsammy
Banned
Yeah, now that I think about it
Agarth led you to Detyre and Aiyn to the Plains
sloppyjoe_gamer
Gold Member
Not really noticing that, but i do see that sometimes the voice gets way ahead of the subtitles on the screen (PS3 version)
The_Darkest_Red
Member
So have you finished the game yet, Baconsammy? If so did you ever get around to posting some final impressions or anything? I'm really curious to hear whether or not the story holds up from some people who actually find it interesting like myself.
Ivory Samoan
Gold Member
I'm in the same boat - tried un-installing, emptied cache, moved save files to cloud and deleted rest... didn't make a difference either : I have noticed however that the further into the game I've gone, the better the lip syncing has gotten.
One odd thing, Alyn Shir's syncing is always perfect.. weird.
I'm thinking it will fix itself at this rate, hopefully . . . ;P
Flachmatuch
Member
Does anyone know if there's a way to increase the probability of salvaging good components from stuff? Have to reload too often now (yeah I know it's "cheating", but this is how I like to play these games, so whatever). Have maxed out blacksmithing of course. I think it's probably completely random, independent of any skill or whatever. But if there was even some temporary boost, it would be nice.
Blacksmithing, detect secrets are maxed, sagecraft is at epic gem level, alchemy is somewhere in the midrange, I'm at level 24 and with +3 to Sorcery abilities (mastercrafted robe and 2 rings) I have almost every sorcery ability maxed (don't know how it happened, I only put 1 point into the last fire spell and 1 point into the ice one and the ice one is at level 4 as it should be, while the meteor one is maxed...no idea how, I only have 2 points above 70); I'm not even close to halfway through the game, so the level cap at 40 just seems a little bit too low :-/ And apart from crafting better gear, I don't have much to look forward to in terms of levelling up and new abilities it seems...although of course cheap respeccing means I can put points into other trees now and worry about the max level sorcerer destiny later.
Blacksmithing, detect secrets are maxed, sagecraft is at epic gem level, alchemy is somewhere in the midrange, I'm at level 24 and with +3 to Sorcery abilities (mastercrafted robe and 2 rings) I have almost every sorcery ability maxed (don't know how it happened, I only put 1 point into the last fire spell and 1 point into the ice one and the ice one is at level 4 as it should be, while the meteor one is maxed...no idea how, I only have 2 points above 70); I'm not even close to halfway through the game, so the level cap at 40 just seems a little bit too low :-/ And apart from crafting better gear, I don't have much to look forward to in terms of levelling up and new abilities it seems...although of course cheap respeccing means I can put points into other trees now and worry about the max level sorcerer destiny later.
mysocksarepink
Banned
god, the audio bug was so annoying.. updated my realtek audio drivers and smooth sailin now
Does "Stash" (in the description of what locales are available in a town) mean that there is a purchasable house there?
If so, can anyone give me a hint
If so, can anyone give me a hint
how I can get the house/stash in Rathir? I have done several quests there, but so far have seen no overarching quest series like in the webwood town. Or is the house a result of a story quest?