Nicely, though, the tactical control is what Neverwinter Nights 2 ought to be but still isn’t by the last expansion. I’m not ready to compare it to Baldur’s Gate, which was often fascinating in the kinds of subtle variations on strategy you can use without micromanaging too heavily.
I haven’t tried much with archery, but clearly that’s because I’ve forgotten an important lesson Baldur’s Gate taught me – don’t close into melee, stand your ground and let the other bastards eat missile attacks until they can close into melee.
Not sure if that works now, because most encounters would have their own archers, and there are usually 3 to 4 of them (I come across a 3 archers demonspawn, 2 melee ones in a random encounter, and the ground was littered. with. traps. Ouch). Whatever tricks we learned in BG2 the developers have used against us…
Well, the archery trick I learned precisely because the game used it against me in the first place. Those Black Talon archers used to tear my party to shreds before we could get close enough to poke them with our swords.
Having everybody jump on the same target still seems to thin them out pretty quickly, and I pray NPCs never figure out this trick.
I’m LOVING this game. I don’t know if I’ve been playing the wrong games or what, but I haven’t seen a game where the fights are just so damn fun.
Right now I’m getting my ass kicked by the ogre at the top of the Tower of Ishal, and I don’t even care that I die over and over and over because he kills me with such coolness. This last time he threw a boulder at my mage and killed her in one shot, then killed the two henchmen, until the only person left standing is Alistair. “OK,” I think, “it’s a long shot, but the ogre is down to 25% health… let’s see what I can do.”
Ogre stomps over, picks up Alistair, and proceeds to punch him in the face until he’s dead. I couldn’t do a damn thing - heck, even if I could, I was laughing so hard at the whole thing that I couldn’t even see the keyboard. The vision of Alistair in this ogres left hand while he pummels him mercilessly with his right is the reason I play games.
Yeah, that was an issue for me as well. I never even think about them in most game except during boss battles. My tank swigs(and how do you swig a poultice anyway) then swings, then swigs then swings and so on hehe.
I am having less issue now. I think my problem was the way the game starts off. With random and temporary team mates I couldn’t get into a flow, and started making my character a jack-off-all-trades but useless-for-anything to fill in deficits. Now That I have a real fellowship nutured things are better.
I actually like archer, and my main toon is an archer.
You can shoot people out of the middle of the pack and only one or two of them come rushing at you, without triggering the rest. You have to hold back the rest of the team from rushing in and triggering them all. That was the cheesy trick that got me through the early game.
They do know it. For some strange reason they are programmed to gang bang the highest armoured character.
Because of this the game got much easier once I found Sten, he is pretty tough, and doesn’t fall as easy as Alistair.
Damn it. I swear it’s like these bastards at Bioware have spent the last decade replaying Baldur’s Gate, like the rest of us.
Still, I actually find it’s often more useful to take down minions to reduce the rate of damage I’m sustaining before turning on the tanks. There’d be no point in the computer trying this, because I’d simply reload if anybody in my party went down.
You can try to use shield pummel, dirty fighting or dread howl to stun the ogre when he’s doing that. And there’s fire at the left hand corner of the room, if you can somehow lure the ogre there he be burn. I never did it that way; I cleared the boss through luck and numerous re-tries.
Are they? I’ve pulled mobs off the heavily-armored folk with my mage. I assumed that they had some sort of aggro calc that eventually headed them towards the highest dps char.
I also successfully taunted mobs off using one of the henchmen who had a taunt ability.
Thanks for the clue. I eventually kicked his ass, not sure how, but I got through it.
This game is the best RPG I’ve played in a very, very long time. Playing it so far has felt like every great part of Baldur’s Gate, or the assassin’s guild quests in Oblivion.
Anyone else playing on hard difficulty? Any tips to share if you are?
Man it’s brutal, every single encounter I beat feels like a true accomplishment. I giggle uncontrollably as I position my characters just right and use their abilities at the right time, and curse out loud when I know I’ve made a fatal error.
A right skill at the right time makes hell of difference. Using Fireburst/Cone of Cold correctly can mean the difference between wipe or live.
I spent 2 hours trying to get past the Attack on Redcliffe. Got Morrigan to learn Fireburst (or the fire cone spell). It makes the fight beatable. Not easy, just winnable. And oh yeah, I used up all my healing
As for playing on harder? Are you nuts? Saluations to you then. I am just about to surrender and crawl back to easy. I guess if you want to play hard, be a trap-maker. Steal. Make acid vials, firebombs and etc. Specialized.
Well I wasn’t completely sold on this game as an all time great before. Just kind of a wierd feeling where in other games I started playing, and just couldn’t stop until way past when I had to stop.
DA for some reason didn’t grab at first, bit of a thing where I could play for an hour or so, then walk away, surprisingly(I am recovering from Wisdom tooth, so I wanted something I could sink my teeth into for hours and hours at a time).
But I just did the Dalish Elf treaty branch, my first main branch. Wow, that was cool. A great engrossing dungeon crawl, with big fights, and some puzzles. Then at the end a big cut scene movie, movie segment that lasted 20-30 minutes, with some big hard decisions. No spoilers here(except It’s hard to hear Tuvok’s voice and not think of Tuvok, which made it a bit… Odd ;)) But that was sweet. I am officially hooked. It does live up and even exceed to the hype, something no game in years has done for me years.
So I’ve got the dog now, and I loooove having a doggy in my party. But I’m wondering if he’s going to be a good long-term party member. If I’m going to have to give him up eventually, I’m thinking of doing it sooner rather than later (yes, I’m stupidly sentimentally attached to a video game dog. Let’s not speak of this anymore.)
Doesn’t seem like he can use healing poultices, for example. That could be bad in a difficult fight.
So for those of you who have better memories of previous related titles (Baldur’s Gate, etc), what’s your gut feel? Is my doggy a liability or a reasonable party member?
You can buy or make (with the herbalism skill) Treats for him to eat which restore both his health and his stamina (That’s a good boy!). And I know what you mean. I love the little guy and I felt terrible leaving him for another party member, but the banter, oh my god the banter between the NPC’s is hilarious!
If you do keep him, don’t forget to have him look for stuff every time you enter a new area. Sometimes he comes back with interesting/useful stuff.
I’m trying to find a happy middle between disabling NPC AI and not having them spam abilities.
With the default tactics on I get butchered on hard difficulty because they keep spamming their abilities and scattering about the battle field. Every time an opportunity presents itself, I find that the character has already used a key ability. They also don’t last as the AI keeps spamming stuff so that mid-battle I’m out of stamina and mana. Right now I’m doing better disabling AI so that I can time combos well and I can choose when and where to use each ability. The problem with this is that they turn completely dumb. They just stand there so I have to baby sit them constantly.
I guess I have to play with the tactics screen a little more. I want them to stay close and use regular attacks against nearby foes if I haven’t told them to do something else.
I haven’t had problems with early battles that other people are experiencing. I’m playing on Normal with a Human Noble. What are the backgrounds that are having these brutal early battles?
The Tower of Ishal was murder for me, until I learn to use the mage’s AOE spells effectively. I have to re-do one room over 4 times (the one with the double doors). I should have gotten traps training.
Anyone has a route for the 4 locations? I think it’s a bad mistake to go to Redcliffe first.
