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New Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Media

DaBuddaDa

Member
Being DX9 doesn't necessarily mean it's visually going to be the same game as the console versions.

It just means your guaranteed to not see some things such as tesselation.

Feel free to prove me wrong, it'd be great if there were more enhancements than the obvious.
 

Data West

coaches in the WNBA
Also, to people saying this won't get EA advertising. It's feature pretty heavily at my local Gamestop, and the ME3 thing will help it out a lot, esp if the ME 3 demo mentions it. Clearly EA thinks more of this than SOTD
 

Lain

Member
You know, it feels pretty good to see this thread grow up so much in these past few days.
Just another day for the demo release, right? I can't wait.
 

Hannar

Member
Once you complete the dungeon, you've got a 45 minute timer on where you can explore the areas around the dungeon. So you'll at least get a little of that.
 

ReaperXL7

Member
Level system for zones sounds pretty good. As long as it isn't hardcore scaling bullshit. Hopefully there are plenty of cool unique items to find and the loot doesn't scale too much either (one of the few things I hate in Skyrim).

Holy crap, I go to work and the thread blows up....lol. Glad to see everyone getting pretty pumped for the game. I think it's going to be pretty awesome.

Fjordson, To answer your fears about unique loot these are a few of the answers the devs have given about the question. Hopefully these will quell your fears in that reguard.

Here is how the "random" loot works out. this is stuff like Flaming Sword of the wombat, Fine long sword, stuff like that.

Quotes from the dev team on Loot stuff:


BHG_Miller(systems designers)

Reckoning features extremely robust affix and loot table systems, which can randomly generate thousands of item and equipment variations. In keeping with the emphasis on hand-crafted content in Reckoning, we have also created hundreds of unique armor pieces, weapons, and items that you can discover!

perezidente

Our basic armor loot pool consists of six tiers of Warrior themed armor which are built of metal materials, and five tiers each of Rogue and Mage sets which are more in the line of leather armor and cloth clothing, respectively. Our weapon classes all have five tiers as well, which vary by weapon type. Swords use five different metals, staves use wood, etc. Additional to that, within each material tier there are three levels of quality that an item can come in. Your baseline item will have no modifying word tacked on ("Iron Gauntlets"), but you'll also see loot with modifiers, "Crude Iron Gauntlets" or "Fine Iron Gauntlets," that include slight stat decreases and increases respectively from the baseline version. And there are versions of each armor type that have sockets in them for use in the Sagecraft system. I've listed below all the tiers of armor so you can see it's a mix of real world materials like iron and cotton, and some Amalur-specific fictional materials.

These material tiers are the base of our loot system, but something like, "Iron Gauntlets" is the absolute simplest piece of loot you can find. Those material tiers also go through our affix system for an even further level of variety, which Will Miller described in more detail in a previous Q&A.

And on top of all of that, there are hundreds of unique weapons and armor that are outside of the basic materiel tier hierarchy. Short summary: It's a lot of stuff.

Warrior:
1. Iron
2. Chainmail
3. Steel
4. Azurite
5. Sylvanite
6. Prismere

Rogue:
1. Leather
2. Boiled Leather
3. Studded Leather
4. Trollhide
5. Dreadscale

Mage:
1. Cotton
2. Linen
3. Silk
4. Hexweave
5. Spiritweave

these two are more inline with unique types of gear.

xael:
There is a great breadth of unique items that you can find throughout Amalur, many of which were "lored" by Internationally Celebrated Game Designer and visionary Ken Rolston, himself! Some of them, like the Warsworn Commander Ballegar’s claymore, named "Fortune" are famed for bringing riches to the wielder (one of the buffs increases the amount of gold you find). Others, such as the Faeblades, are manifestations of magic.

Much like the Fae themselves, each unique pair of Faeblades embodies an aspect of nature; more specifically, they represent the natural categories of animal. As a sneak peak of these weapons, here are the Fae proverbs associated with a few pairs:

"Treachery is a poison."

"The greatest danger is barely seen."

"Fire separates, and renews."

You'll have to explore the world of Amalur to discover the rest of the Faeblade proverbs yourself.

Tiberius(Ian Fraizer)

That's correct. In loot-centric hack and slash RPGs, "unique" items usually means "really rare and special...but it might still drop 5 more times," but Reckoning does not work that way. In Reckoning, infrequent and rare items may drop repeatedly, but uniques really are UNIQUE. i.e. if you've already picked up Excalibur, you're never going to find another copy of it elsewhere.

Also, to clarify: there are two types of unique items: purples and golds. Purple items are standalone unique items, and golds are part of a set. Pound for pound, a purple is generally better than a gold, but if you manage to acquire some or all of a set, the gold will start to vault over an equivalent level purple due to the set bonuses.

As for legendary items: we don't have a separate color classification for "legendary items," but the higher leveled uniques are indeed "legendary." We're talking Erathi-forged weapons, or the armor worn by Prince Eagonn (son of the king who founded the Warsworn), and so forth. These items are--fictionally, visually, and statistically--legendary.




These are a few, there was another I was looking for aswell but cant seem to find. It was about an Armor set that they created in the game. The way it went was that BHG has a regular D&D group. Ian Fraizer the lead designer is their DM, and they ended up creating a unique set of armor, where each piece of the set is named after each staff members character in their D&D game. They are supposed to be pretty well hidden though, highly special gear.

Also keep in mind that there are some weapons that you can only get by crafting, and having mastered blacksmithing.

So lots, and lots of loot.
 

Hannar

Member
Loving what you are doing here, Reaper. I'll track that one down for you.

Here you go:

10-19-2011 10:43 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/...eam-10-19-11&highlight=Answers+Reckoning+Team
Meridian said:
Goatrek said:
Meaty content and special "epic" events, found in hidden spaces and far corners of the world is very rewarding and exciting for most RPG-players but one could think that spending a lot of resources on this kind of hidden-away content would be very unrewarding for the developers. A lot of people might not even find this content because they are not interested in exploring. Is this something that you think about? Do you have to find a good balance when it comes to how much resources you put into something that to some will be awesome, whilst others might not find this content at all.
Actually, creating special areas for hidden content was one of my favorite things to do when creating the world. When we're handed new exploration reward items that we need to find homes for, it's like a field day for the world design crew. Crafting secret areas and visual stories relevant to that item really give us a chance to come up with ideas that no one has thought of yet and lets us give context to the world in our own way.

True, it's a fairly involved process to come up with some of this stuff. Often the idea starts in design, gets passed to concept, then to character or environment art, maybe even animation and then to us (world designers) to integrate into the world. For art, it's a chance for them to flex their muscles and come up with their own ideas that aren't dependent on quests. On our end, it means sculpting out passages in mountains, setting up particular encounters and traps, locking the treasure away behind hidden doors and using a whole slew of other devious toys at our disposal to make you really work to find the content.

When I found out that our Lead Designer, Ian Frazier, was designing a set of unique armor to be hidden throughout the world, I was super excited to start working on their hidden locations – because, with Ian being our D&D group's DM, each of the five armor pieces of the set were named after our characters. We had free creative reign for these one-off moments and somehow they all turned into the area where they either died or were laid to rest with varying degrees of brutality and serenity (it's surprisingly fun to kill your beloved D&D character – don't tell the DM!). I was even able to work with one of the narrative designers so that when you wear my character's helm, you’ll find that some NPCs have commentary for it. At that point, when you're having so much fun with the project, it's all about the time you want to put into it to make it really special.

We know that there is the possibility that some folks will never find the things we've hidden away, but when people do, it's extremely exciting and gratifying. One of my favorite moments was hearing that one of the Narrative Designers stopped play-testing quests when he discovered a piece of the unique set we had hidden away, and spent hours searching the rest of the world to obtain the rest of the armor set.
 

Dead

well not really...yet
Its like everything I read about this game further checks off a box on my list of everything I would ever want in an RPG.

If it does, it would be the 2nd time in a year after Xenoblade
 
One of things I love about this game is that you can compare loot without going into the inventory screen. I can't begin to say how frustrating it was to pick up items in the Dragon Age games.

Every game where loot is important should have this ability from now on.
 

ShdwDrake

Banned
Ehhh, not a fan of the combat camera zooming so far out at times, but maybe that was just due to the player's lack of camera management. Other than that it looks really fun.

What's the word on using a 360 controller with the PC version? Adapts well, I hope.

You can switch between controller and KB/M on the fly.
 

jogarrr

Member
Preordered this game about a month ago, picking up the PS3 version. It's definitely my most anticipated game in the early part of this year. I'm skipping over FFXIII-2, SSX, and Twisted Metal for this. Can't wait, looking forward to trying the demo this week.

Now to decide what type of character I want to play as..
 

Hannar

Member
Ehhh, not a fan of the combat camera zooming so far out at times, but maybe that was just due to the player's lack of camera management. Other than that it looks really fun.

What's the word on using a 360 controller with the PC version? Adapts well, I hope.



Curt has posted dozens of times (literally) that this will be a game he plays on the PC with an XBox controller. The UI will detect what control method you are using, and instantly transition over to fit. So I think there are a lot of folks out there who will be using a gamepad.
 
You can switch between controller and KB/M on the fly.

Curt has posted dozens of times (literally) that this will be a game he plays on the PC with an XBox controller. The UI will detect what control method you are using, and instantly transition over to fit. So I think there are a lot of folks out there who will be using a gamepad.

Good stuff. This certainly came out of nowhere. Swore that Twisted Metal, SSX, Max Payne 3, and Mass Effect 3 would be my only "day 1's" in the first few months this year, but looks like that's changing.
 

Hannar

Member
Anything said about how many difficulty levels or a new game+ being in it?

Standard Easy/Normal/Hard at the very least. Once the main story is completed, the player will still be able to play through other quests that have not been finished, and will have access to some content that only occurs once the main quest is finalized.
 

Xevren

Member
Standard Easy/Normal/Hard at the very least. Once the main story is completed, the player will still be able to play through other quests that have not been finished, and will have access to some content that only occurs once the main quest is finalized.

Cool, thanks!
 

ReaperXL7

Member
Anything said about how many difficulty levels or a new game+ being in it?

I know there are 3 difficult settings, Easy, Normal, and Hard. I don't think they have gone into more detail then that though on that specific aspect.

New Game+ however is a no go, only because the game does not technically "end". Once you complete the main quest you will get some credits/ending, then you'll just drop right back into the game to continue exploring. There will also be quests that you can only do once the main quest has been completed.
 

Wallach

Member
Really looking forward to the demo. Hopefully the PC version is up to snuff. Would appreciate some UI scaling options or something, because the console UI seems enormous and I hardly want to imagine what that is going to look like on a monitor.
 
Has there been any info on the save system? Is it checkpoint-based or can you save anywhere?

Seems to be both. In the OXM first 30 minutes preview, they can make a bunch of save files (which save very quickly) and there's clearly a checkpoint system in place because after certain critical events there's a spinning blue circle in the bottom right.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Seems to be both. In the OXM first 30 minutes preview, they can make a bunch of save files (which save very quickly) and there's clearly a checkpoint system in place because after certain critical events there's a spinning blue circle in the bottom right.

I dunno how you'd possibly play an open world RPG without being able to hard save. That would be awful.
 

Fjordson

Member
Holy crap, I go to work and the thread blows up....lol. Glad to see everyone getting pretty pumped for the game. I think it's going to be pretty awesome.

Fjordson, To answer your fears about unique loot these are a few of the answers the devs have given about the question. Hopefully these will quell your fears in that reguard.

Here is how the "random" loot works out. this is stuff like Flaming Sword of the wombat, Fine long sword, stuff like that.
Thanks for the meaty response man. Sounds like they're handling that really well.
 

ReaperXL7

Member
So how is everyone going to play the game? Im going to be focusing on sorcery and finesse, but it will probably be a 70-30 sorcery-finesse ratio.

I know i'll probably go the Battlemage route for my first playthrough, but alot of the finesse skills look awesome too. I'll probably save those for my second playthrough.

This is my build plan so far(could change somewhat during play though):

Light Elf/Male/God of War

Might:
Brutal Weaponry 1-3
Brutal Weaponry 2-3
Brutal Weaponry 3-3
Brutal Weaponry 4-3
Greatsword Mastery-6
Bulwark-4
Battle Frenzy-5
Stone Skin- 5
Celerity- 3
Quake- 5
Aftershock- 4
Hardy Consitution- 6
Adrenaline Surge-5
Power Strike-5
60

Sorcery:
Arcane Weaponry 1-3
Arcane Weaponry 2- 3
Arcane Weaponry 3-3
Arcane Weaponry 4-3
Chakram Mastery - 6
Sphere of Protection- 6
Sphere of Reprisal - 5
Sphere of Retribution- 5
Storm Bolt - 6
Chain lightning - 5
Tempest - 5
Conservative Casting - 5
Healing Surge - 4
Mark of Flame 4
63

Skills I have not entirely chosen a path yet, but I know i'll Master Blacksmithing, and Sage Craft.
 

H3xum

Member
I know i'll probably go the Battlemage route for my first playthrough, but alot of the finesse skills look awesome too. I'll probably save those for my second playthrough.

This is my build plan so far(could change somewhat during play though):

Light Elf/Male/God of War

Might:
Brutal Weaponry 1-3
Brutal Weaponry 2-3
Brutal Weaponry 3-3
Brutal Weaponry 4-3
Greatsword Mastery-6
Bulwark-4
Battle Frenzy-5
Stone Skin- 5
Celerity- 3
Quake- 5
Aftershock- 4
Hardy Consitution- 6
Adrenaline Surge-5
Power Strike-5
60

Sorcery:
Arcane Weaponry 1-3
Arcane Weaponry 2- 3
Arcane Weaponry 3-3
Arcane Weaponry 4-3
Chakram Mastery - 6
Sphere of Protection- 6
Sphere of Reprisal - 5
Sphere of Retribution- 5
Storm Bolt - 6
Chain lightning - 5
Tempest - 5
Conservative Casting - 5
Healing Surge - 4
Mark of Flame 4
63

Skills I have not entirely chosen a path yet, but I know i'll Master Blacksmithing, and Sage Craft.

Where can one find the skill trees?
 

ReaperXL7

Member
http://wiki.38watch.com/index.php?title=Kingdoms_of_Amalur:_Reckoning#Abilities

You can find the skill trees here, just click might/sorcery,finesse and it will take you to pages describing the trees,their ablities, and how many points can be allocated in each.

You can also get visual ideas of abilities here.
Abilities

Also for reference the level cap is 40, and by 40 you'll have 123 points spent in your abilities.

If im not mistaken you can always respec right choosing the no destiny card or something.
 

ReaperXL7

Member
If im not mistaken you can always respec right choosing the no destiny card or something.

In order to respec you have to visit whats called a Fateweaver, pay them some gold, and they will wipe your destiny clean. Everytime you do it, it will cost more money to do.
Destinies themselves can be changed on the fly though. However you have to have a set number of points in skill trees in order to unlock each destiny tier.
So for instance In the Battle Mage tree you would need 6 points in might, and 6 points in sorcery to unlock the guardian destiny in that line, then 14 in each for the Battlemage destiny, etc.

As you do that though you'll also unlock destinies for the pure Scorcery, and Might destinies, for you to choose from, add some points into Finesse and you'll start unlocking Jack of all Trades destinies.
There are pros and cons for all your choices though. Jack of All trades for instance typically won't be able to use the top abilities in each tree. Each highest tier destiny though also has a special ability that unlocks when you equip it. The highest Tier Jack of All Trades Destiny for example automatically unlocks all of the weapon mastery abilities for each weapon type. Bascially a Weapon Master type of skill.
 

H3xum

Member
So, question about Destinies.

I'm looking at them here

Do they unlock as you progress through levels, 1 by 1? Or is it a matter of picking whichever one opens up or opening up particular ones based off of your game play?

This game is really selling itself hard, I'm glad I wondered into this thread
 

abundant

Member
So, question about Destinies.

I'm looking at them here

Do they unlock as you progress through levels, 1 by 1? Or is it a matter of picking whichever one opens up or opening up particular ones based off of your game play?

This game is really selling itself hard, I'm glad I wondered into this thread

They open up when you have enough skill points in Might, Finesse, or Sorcery. For instance, if you have 49 skill points in Sorcery, you unlock the Sage Destiny card. You can change Destinies whenever you like.
 
New video : killing guards, citizens, ect...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxKEwgCR1CY

It seems the loadings will be tedious after sometime... (Witcher 1)

Yeah the load time looks to be quite long especially when compared to a Bethesda RPG.

The camera self adjustment will get annoying and the HUD is too cluttered for my tastes. Hopefully there'll be some customization options with regards to those 2 minor things. The combat looks to be the best part(aside from not knowing anything about the story/lore)

Can't wait to play the demo tomorrow! =D
 

shaowebb

Member
For awhile now Western RPG's have bored me in different ways. Either the combat would be dull, or the level system would restrict me too hard in how I want to build my character, or they'd quite frankly just end up throwing a poorly made story/world at me and I would just pray to skip all the dialogue surrounding it.

This game has combos...like real combos with some tricky stuff to them you can add and sweet juggles, the destiny system allows me to build up ANY skillsets together I want and be rewarded by it instead of making me a tard at many trades who is good at none, the alchemy system appeals so hard to me as a Atelier fan, the weapon forge feels like Lost Odyssey gem socketing gold to me, the story is Salvatore, McFarlane is involved, top notch music, and ...and I am so gushing right now.

Its like FINALLY there is a Western RPG that feels like it caters to everything. You can even go in fast on looting/comparing equipment/equipping loot without ever having to enter your inventory. The constant inventory in/out always broke the flow for me in these games but here you can sort, dump, and equip comparatively as you loot the corpse without huge menus blocking the screen changing the atmosphere. I'm a stealthy guy who loves backstabs, looting, and traps, but at the same time I am a combo fanatic with a love of tight melee. This game lets me actually be a thief that can fight. FINALLY...salvation is at hand.

Day one if I can pool together my cash. I may just sell some stuff to own this.
 
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