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

This isn't a movie, and no, I dont hate widescreen movies. It's just tough to play a game with widescreen bars when not a single game I've ever played has the bars.

Anyway, this is old news for everyone else in the thread so I won't drag it on, it's just shockingly disappointing.



I never asked for it, but thanks for your input.

I mean really, what did you expect? Obviously everyone posting regularly in this thread has played the game for more than 20 minutes and was able to get over the fact that there is a black bar on the top and bottom of the screen. Did you think we were all going to go "Holy crap! You're right! Well, gotta stop playing now even though the actual game is fun. Thanks for pointing that out, Sir Mossybloke!"
 

Eusis

Member
Do you also hate 2:35:1 films? I don't even notice the bars anymore. They really should have given us the option to scale the image. OPTIONS, devs, let us decide whether we want a sharp nonscaled image or a blurry scaled one.
Yeah, I never notice them now unless I go out of my way, and I'd rather have the sharper image, kinda stuck out in Dark Souls and I've been noticing it more and more lately. Probably doesn't help a lot of games have shit performance now.
 

Hambone

Member
Picked up Dark Arisen, and imported my save successfully.

My character is level 49. Spent my levels 1-40 maxing out Fighter, than Warrior, and now two bubbles away from maxing out Assassin. Once Assassin is maxed out I'll switch over to Strider.

I'm just finishing up sidequests before I start the final battle, then on to NG+ and Bitterblack Isle.

Added my level 49 Sorc pawn to the spreadsheet. Most of those levels were as a Strider, but he is very close to maxing Sorc out.
 

phierce

Member
Bigger TV solves the issue for me...

Anyway, question for you BBI vets...how far in are the upgrades for abilities/spells?
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
Question about BBI - you can use the teleportation stones to go back to the surface, but is there a fast way to go back down?
 
Just picked up the game and loaded my save data. It said Game Cleared and started me at beginning with no equipment. I have my level but no items that I worked so hard for. WTF???
 
I really love this game. Going to start hard mode tomorrow and ng+.

Im starting to get those RCs from you, burgerdog. Youve probably netted me over 1.5 million in the last 6 days! Youve been leveling up like crazy, lol. My pawn is almost top 100 for the month, ahhhh yeah.
 
Bigger TV solves the issue for me...

Anyway, question for you BBI vets...how far in are the upgrades for abilities/spells?

They are Rings that you wear, which are found in chests or dropped by monters as Cursed Gear lvl1, 2, 3; you have to purify them first in order to use them.
 
Woah ..i've just reached a place and a gang of sorcerers decided to summon giant dogs , there was 2 big dude chainned that wanted part of teh action too ..And just went i managed to survive a little death came to say "hello".
The piece before this had annoying sage saurian + that big annoying dude with the mace and a super cyclops..

I know i wanted a challenge but this is a little too much. I usually plan for encounters by having some curatives but hell Waoh the game kinda wanted me dead.

Those dogs sure hit quite hard !
 

Eppy Thatcher

God's had his chance.
Stopped and went through my 20+ rings last night and realized I had 5 of the new skills already. The enhanced stinger is pretty intense. I really want to get that enhanced assassin explosive trap. If it's suitably huge/damaging now I might actually use that skill for the first time in 550+ hours :lol
 

Sera O

Banned

klee123

Member
Woah ..i've just reached a place and a gang of sorcerers decided to summon giant dogs , there was 2 big dude chainned that wanted part of teh action too ..And just went i managed to survive a little death came to say "hello".
The piece before this had annoying sage saurian + that big annoying dude with the mace and a super cyclops..

I know i wanted a challenge but this is a little too much. I usually plan for encounters by having some curatives but hell Waoh the game kinda wanted me dead.

Those dogs sure hit quite hard !

It's even worse when those sorcerers let out a few maelstroms.... Happened to me once and it wiped out my entire party. It didn't help when the giant dogs got summoned as soon as when I entered the room.
 

xCobalt

Member
For those who have cleared BBI, what kind of ranger rings have you found? The only band I found improved Deathly Arrow and Spiral Arrow.
 
The wiki site for this game says that a Portcrystal can be found in the Witchwood, near a gravestone. I searched for the gravestone for an hour yesterday and didn't find it. Does anyone know where in the Witchwood it is?

Yeah, as Sera says there is a section of the Witchwood behind Selene's hut that only becomes accessible after completing the quest "Witch Hunt". The area is blocked off by (Witch Hunt spoilers)
a hibernating Golem that comes to life in that quest, revealing a tunnel that leads to the new section.
 

Skirn

Member
Have you done the Selene quest involving going to the Witchwood because she is in trouble? The tree her house is on has a door that opens at that point I think so you may just not have access yet. I don't remember seeing it before that quest.

No, the only Witchwood quest that I've done is the one involving Quina, the girl from the main character's home town. And I think I know which door you're talking about, and yes, I have no access to it since there's a boulder blocking the path. I should probably just advance the main quest so that new quests will open.

Edit: Thanks, endlessflood.
 

burgerdog

Member
I really love this game. Going to start hard mode tomorrow and ng+.

Im starting to get those RCs from you, burgerdog. Youve probably netted me over 1.5 million in the last 6 days! Youve been leveling up like crazy, lol. My pawn is almost top 100 for the month, ahhhh yeah.

Damn, Casca's been busy! In other news, I've been through BBI twice from top to bottom and Death is not showing up. It has less than a health bar so it knows the end is coming. I think one more day in BBI is all I need to finish up in there. I have all but 1 piece of the 13 fabled items, all weapons, 4/4 Oblivion, 3/4 Hellfire, and 0/0 Carrion(don't really want it, but I expect to get some pieces anyway when Lv4 items show up that I already have.)
 
Damn, Casca's been busy! In other news, I've been through BBI twice from top to bottom and Death is not showing up. It has less than a health bar so it knows the end is coming. I think one more day in BBI is all I need to finish up in there. I have all but 1 piece of the 13 fabled items, all weapons, 4/4 Oblivion, 3/4 Hellfire, and 0/0 Carrion(don't really want it, but I expect to get some pieces anyway when Lv4 items show up that I already have.)

I've just reached the bloodless stockade (I think I'm near the end) and he appears every time I drop through the tunnel into the sewers. I only have him down to about half health so maybe that changes once he is closer to death.
 

Laughing Banana

Weeping Pickle
...say, they don't do anything to correct the stupid romance system, do they? Well, except for the Assalam bit. Arisen's Bond still useless....?
 

moniker

Member
This isn't a movie, and no, I dont hate widescreen movies. It's just tough to play a game with widescreen bars when not a single game I've ever played has the bars.

Anyway, this is old news for everyone else in the thread so I won't drag it on, it's just shockingly disappointing.



I never asked for it, but thanks for your input.

You can use the zoom function of your TV (at the expense of IQ and FOV).
 

GorillaJu

Member
I'm starting to believe that Fighter pawns are the best. They're the only pawns that I've seen which are truly aggressive and don't miss their abilities all the time.

You need to leave the secondary skill set completely empty, and just put Burst Strike, Full moon Slash and one other on the primary skill set. He'll be a hyper aggro monster. Strider/Ranger pawns spend too much time walking around doing nothing even if they're scather/challenger.

Also has anyone actually got the lowered armor effect from Sapfire daggers to stick? I never see it show up on any enemies I'm attacking – tested in both BBI and the over world.

Sapfire daggers with Morbidity (increases dmg on mobs youve debilitated) would be insane, that'd be +70% or so damage on every enemy you hit. But I never see the debilitation icon show up, ever. I wonder if its just not visible even if its taken effect?
 
Looks like jumping down the shortcut in the Bloodless Stockade is a sure way to make Death appear. No idea if it still works if you've already beat BBI but I just took down all his health by using the shortcut, fighting him until he leaves and then exiting the area. Go back, jump down the hole and he appears again.
 

Ill Saint

Member
Spent the best part of the day farming Daimon 2 and reloading Death to try and get a level 3 weapon for my Assassin and Warrior pawn with no success. You win Dragon's Dogma.
 
I think I've made a huge mistake. It's my own fault for not looking into the game more, but I had no idea about these black bars. They completely ruin the experience for me :(. Played for 20 minutes and had to turn it off.

They are there to keep the image quality intact, the alternative is scaling a sub HD resolution like many other games do which causes pixel crawling, artifacts and blur out the ass...

You're playing on a console you should know by now that the hardware is pathetic.
 

Pyrrhus

Member
Thanks for the new gear for my pawn, Eusis.

So at this point I did the
Everfall
bit where everyone hauled ass out of the dungeon and have begun doing some quests in Gran Soren. I grabbed a crystal down in that previously mentioned area, but people are saying there are four or five of them. Should this one be my first or have I missed one or more?

And do I need to do anything to make it possible to return to Gran Soren? I have a ferry stone. I guess I should probably always carry at least two? I'm just thinking about this because I've got a quest to return to Selene all the way back in the Witch's wood and that's a bit of a walk. I don't want to have to walk back too.
 
Thanks for the new gear for my pawn, Eusis.

So at this point I did the
Everfall
bit where everyone hauled ass out of the dungeon and have begun doing some quests in Gran Soren. I grabbed a crystal down in that previously mentioned area, but people are saying there are four or five of them. Should this one be my first or have I missed one or more?

And do I need to do anything to make it possible to return to Gran Soren? I have a ferry stone. I guess I should probably always carry at least two? I'm just thinking about this because I've got a quest to return to Selene all the way back in the Witch's wood and that's a bit of a walk. I don't want to have to walk back too.

Ferry stones cost 1000-2000g depending on what vendor you buy them from (black cat or fournier , both are in grand soren) , just use it and it lets you teleport to grand soren or cassardis (the starter town) because there are already fixed teleport crystals there.

Any port crystals you find (like the one in everfall, which is indeed the first one you find) you can place anywhere on the world map (not in dungeons or any instanced area) will make a new teleport point.
So when you use a ferry stone you can choose from a list of points, both grand soren and cassardis and any spot where you put a port crystal.

I'd suggest putting one at the female bandit camp (you'll know when you get there) and one at the entrance to witchwood.

I personally put my other ones at the grassy knoll hill and at the rest camp near the great wall.

edit: actually let me list the stuff I wish I knew when I started playing:

Bookmark these they'll answer a lot of questions, no spoilers:
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Pawn_Inclination (to understand how to get your pawn to behave the way you want to)
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Gold_Idol (you don't want to miss this)
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Shopping (just as a reference)
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Come_to_Court the game will warn you when some quests will expire if you accept this, use this as reference at that point, read it all at that point it shows some missable quests at that point as well!

General advice:
-Level yourself and your main pawn as rank 5 fighter ASAP to get the SINEW augment, this will allow you to carry 20 kg more weight and will help a LOT with stamina and movement speed and inventory managment throughout the game.

-give your pawns a pickaxe, mining nodes are easy to miss and they'll often mine for you when you didn't notice them nearby
It also saves you from moving heavy ores to your pawns to carry

-DO NOT LET ESCORT QUEST NPCS DIE! You can lose stores, quest chains etc if they die.

-check the bounty boards across the map every now and then, when the main story progresses you often get new board quests, which give you a nice chunk of gold for completing (you'll complete almost all of them by just playing the game normally, most are killquests)

-take a good hard look at what each ability does, experiment and try them all, try different vocations too (especially your main pawn's one so you know what skills to give to him), there are a lot of interesting and fun abilities in the game

-in the pawn rift when you search for pawns, you can select 5 pawns to summon, there is an option in that window to change the search settings, what this does is allow you to apply filters and search for one vocation only, a certain spell they must have etc, it really makes finding a pawn to hire much easier

-don't give hired pawns gear (unless you don't mind losing it or want to give something to the owner of the pawn), if you equip them with stuff you won't get it back, you can have them hold anything you want and get it back but if you equip them with anything it transfers the item to the player who owns the pawn.
 

Sanctuary

Member
It's even worse when those sorcerers let out a few maelstroms.... Happened to me once and it wiped out my entire party. It didn't help when the giant dogs got summoned as soon as when I entered the room.

Sometimes the "balance" of BBI is just completely off. Mostly because it seems like all but your Fighter pawn (if you use one) gets demolished in a few seconds and you spend about half of the battle either duoing, soloing, or running around in between dogs/casters reviving them. In a way, pawns feel rather useless here since it almost requires them to guzzle consumables just to stay alive against anything that matters. Hell, my hired Mage pawn kept getting one-shot again and again to just the Persecutor enemies (the guys that look like Minotaurs, but I'm not sure if they actually are since that's a helm).

I'm starting to believe that Fighter pawns are the best. They're the only pawns that I've seen which are truly aggressive and don't miss their abilities all the time.

You need to leave the secondary skill set completely empty, and just put Burst Strike, Full moon Slash and one other on the primary skill set. He'll be a hyper aggro monster. Strider/Ranger pawns spend too much time walking around doing nothing even if they're scather/challenger.

I think Fighters are about the best too, although Mages are a close second for usefulness (gotta get those enchants, even if they are too stupid to do it without your input). I'm not sure why you would go without Cymbal attack though. I leave the other two slots blank for my Fighter as well, but having that ability does help quite a bit with the Fighter drawing enemies to him, even if sometimes you have to wonder if it even works. Maybe if for some reason you wanted two melee pawns, then I could see using a fighter without the taunt. At least I could see doing that over using a Warrior pawn; which I still can't find any justification for existing at all. They are easily the worst class in the game. Even if you believe that they are "fun", they are still the least useful out of them all, even without using a single charge ability. You can stagger-lock many of the minibosses in the game with them, but much later on the Fighter can too.
 

Pyrrhus

Member
How do I effectively command pawns? I know it's mapped to the digital pad, but all I seem to be able to do is Go, Come, and Help Me commands. How do I command my mage to use Fire Boon or use magic on an enemy, for instance?
 

Kyoufu

Member
How do I effectively command pawns? I know it's mapped to the digital pad, but all I seem to be able to do is Go, Come, and Help Me commands. How do I command my mage to use Fire Boon or use magic on an enemy, for instance?

That depends on their Foe Knowledge. Once they gain knowledge of enemy weakness they'll use Boon spells accordingly.
 

Pyrrhus

Member
That depends on their Foe Knowledge. Once they gain knowledge of enemy weakness they'll use Boon spells accordingly.

So you're telling me these badly dressed guys who are shouting "Wolves hate fire, Master!" repeatedly have no idea what the hell they're saying? The life a Pawn is rough.
 

GorillaJu

Member
Sometimes the "balance" of BBI is just completely off. Mostly because it seems like all but your Fighter pawn (if you use one) gets demolished in a few seconds and you spend about half of the battle either duoing, soloing, or running around in between dogs/casters reviving them. In a way, pawns feel rather useless here since it almost requires them to guzzle consumables just to stay alive against anything that matters. Hell, my hired Mage pawn kept getting one-shot again and again to just the Enforcer enemies (the guys that look like Minotaurs, but I'm not sure if they actually are since that's a helm).



I think Fighters are about the best too, although Mages are a close second for usefulness (gotta get those enchants, even if they are too stupid to do it without your input). I'm not sure why you would go without Cymbal attack though. I leave the other two slots blank for my Fighter as well, but having that ability does help quite a bit with the Fighter drawing enemies to him, even if sometimes you have to wonder if it even works. Maybe if for some reason you wanted two melee pawns, then I could see using a fighter without the taunt. At least I could see doing that over using a Warrior pawn; which I still can't find any justification for existing at all. They are easily the worst class in the game. Even if you believe that they are "fun", they are still the least useful out of them all, even without using a single charge ability. You can stagger-lock many of the minibosses in the game with them, but much later on the Fighter can too.

The thing is that taunt isn't really an issue for me. I just want my pawns to go in ham, the sooner they do damage the better. Like I think Prophet said here, BBI is all about dmg output.
 

Sanctuary

Member
That depends on their Foe Knowledge. Once they gain knowledge of enemy weakness they'll use Boon spells accordingly.

Kind of. If they actually cast it before your party starts taking damage, or else they will spend more time healing and they might actually get around to buffing your whole group before they start dropping (BBI).

In vanilla they do a slightly better job because the damage output of most enemies is lower, and often on the big enemies the Mage/Sorc sees them far enough away before you engage to start casting. That being said, I personally always force the Mage to prebuff due to the shoddy mid-fight AI. I think that's one area where the Mystic Knight beats out the other casters: convenience. It also means your entire group will be buffed for the same duration.

That being said, I don't like having more than a single boon type on a pawn. Some people have better luck with it than others.

The thing is that taunt isn't really an issue for me. I just want my pawns to go in ham, the sooner they do damage the better. Like I think Prophet said here, BBI is all about dmg output.

I may try it out sometime, just because it does feel like it's all about damage output (along with debilitation resists, or a surplus of panacea), but my Fighter doesn't actually just stand there clapping his shield. He'll do it at the start, then usually only one or two more times over the up to two or three minute fights. The last time I fought the Holy Lich thing and the three giant wolves appeared, he grabbed them at the start, then kept running back and forth Burst Striking in between Dragon's Maws. My Fighter already seems to be doing the majority of the group damage that's not from me, and he's also the only reason my other pawns last more than a few seconds. With them being corpses, there's no damage output on the fights that feel like they are just there to be zergged. I can't honestly imagine removing the taunt just so he uses his other abilities 2-3 more times total is going to make up for the other two hirlings being dead. The largest improvement I've seen for a Fighter's output is to leave the last two shield slots blank. Otherwise he does just run around clapping and using abilities in a really nonsensical way. If you're going to go without Cymbal, you may as well just make sure the Fighter is a Mitigator instead of Scather. The other issue (at least for me) is that as a ranged type, I need a distraction. If there's no ledge for me to abuse, spending time running around because the enemy suddenly decided I was a higher priority is much less damage overall.

How do I effectively command pawns? I know it's mapped to the digital pad, but all I seem to be able to do is Go, Come, and Help Me commands. How do I command my mage to use Fire Boon or use magic on an enemy, for instance?

The help command will force your Mage to cast a boon if you do it before a fight starts. Although the AI seems kind of stupid with that too. Sometimes it will cast it on you first, then the second pawn and third, then itself. Other times it will cast it on you, itself and then stop. It will also sometimes cast it on you, then begin casting it on another pawn and stop. It will do that until you force it to start again via help. Some people claim that using the D-pad will change your main pawns inclination's, but I have not seen that happen yet in DA in over 50 hours after forcing my pawn to be what I wanted via potions. And I use "go", "come" and "help" pretty consistently. It may have been changed with the expansion.

The "go" and "come" commands specifically work wonders against Gorecyclops. Otherwise, when you let them do their own thing they are pretty much dead most of the fight due to running happily into it's berserking swings.
 

Skilletor

Member
Apparently I missed the Maedeiline (sp?) quest. Annnd the Fournival guy is no longer around.

Did I screw myself out of leet gear?
 

Sanctuary

Member
I think it'd be awesome, really really awesome, if DD2 had a Gambits system.

Yeah. More AI tailoring (that works) would be pretty awesome. I think FFXII had the best AI outside of this game, but that was after the options unlocked. I wouldn't want it for the player character though.

Bioware tried to update the Gambit system in Dragon Age, but the Tactics system was a complete mess, where practically the only thing that reliably functioned was them using potions or a force-field at specific times. You had to rely more on pause and play than realtime.

Apparently I missed the Maedeiline (sp?) quest. Annnd the Fournival guy is no longer around.

Did I screw myself out of leet gear?

No. The good gear before post-game comes from Caxton. Unless you are a female or have a female (caster) main pawn, you didn't really miss out from Madeleine either. Fournival sells a neat cloak that shares the health that the wearer gained, but I'm not sure how many people actually use it outside of a Magick Archer that uses Grand Scension.
 
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