GM lets you create your own adventures. Basically a digital version where you’re the dungeonmaster and your friends the heroes in the story. Just like old school pen and paper dungeons and dragons…cept digital.
Interesting. Thanks
Ceno said… “Think Flesner is tough. Wait till you meet the Witch”. So I met her and bashed her face with a mace.
In all seriousness though. She can indeed be quite challenging if your RNG-unlucky. When doing my singleplayer profile it took me a handfull of attempts to get her to run when Rupture Tendon+Chicken was on her. Meaning she runs around like a chicken while taking DoT that nearly kills her. So had to restart to get that cheese just right.
In co-op we nailed it on the first try. at 4 hours and 15 minutes into the stream we entered her cave for the fight.
Trick to her depends on party composition. Either you’re strong in replenishing your Physical armor or Magical armor. Depending on that you prioritise who too kill first. We had the mage freeze/cc the zombies while the others went after the Witch first. Then gradually took out the flying bugs. Also noticed that the zombies have cursed blood when you hit them. It hurts anyone nearby, including their friends. So that makes killing them, when grouped up, a lot faster. Just make sure you can keep yourself alive.
==voidwoken===
3 hours 7minutes in
I found the battle against the VoidWoken a lot more fun and interesting. Also has to do with the arena with different elevation and such. We did well there too once I figured out a good strategy. Scoundrel and another physical damage dealer on the pallisades nearby. Take out their archer when it appears and move up to the spellcaster nearby. Lohse as sumoner triggered the found so she could go up that ramp immediately afterwards and take on the Cryomancer there. The polymorphed flying enchanter of ours stood first few rounds in the back replenishing shields and lowering magical armor on the melee guys trying to keep them CC’d. Oh at the start I also placed the oil barrel at the entrance of the arena more the middle. So when the voidwoken would teleport there on its own, or by one of us, he’d explode and take DoTs.
===Aleksander===
This fight I’ve only done singleplayer. Co-op attempt will be upcoming saturday. Man it took me 7-8 tries to find a strategy that got me through. Feel like when I did it was more luck then actually succeeding in a convincing manner. Even though I messed up many turns with some characters. First few attempts I had trouble with the magisters killing the worm to fast, before I could even attack them.
Last attempt I just… Started with all chars at the stairs, frontal entrance. All seekers had departed and I asked for no help from them. Enchanter started fight with Aleksander. Lohse teleported the Gheist to the entrance up the stairs. My 2h melee and Sebille the rogue started killing the gheist. Worm appeared. All magisters hit the worm. My guys were near top of the stairs killing the Gheist and lowering armor on all magisters and taking out their melee guys. After the worm dissapeared I could CC Aleksander with ground slams, cripples and do nice damage with chicken/rupture tendon combo. Had to revive 2 of my chars during the fight. Then finished up the archer/polymorph mage.
for 6 rounds I didn’t use my 2h melee guy. He had the braccus rex set and to get a second Dome of Protection going I used the purge skill from the set. Which, i didn’t know at first, broke the helmet of the set and called forth a demon. Which also attacked aleksander and some of us for massive damage. After we killed the demon Braccus set was incomplete and its curse kept my Melee guy crippled and on fire inside the Dome of Protection. was wondering why he was like that since he wasn’t being attacked. then switched out into previous gear mid battle so he could help again lol.
The Polymorph mage fucking teleported my enchanter and summoner from time to time to the far end of the docks. But they both have significant range so wasn’t that much of an issue. Which explains why I took the fight up the stairs. The Archer and Mage can’t reach you there so its easier to focus on the melee guys then and just replenish Physical armor with occasional HP Heals to stay in the fight in a more controllable way.
==Lonewolf===
Going to start a 3rd playthrough alongside the singleplayer/co-op. Going for a lonewolf as well, but no idea which classes to get that I haven’t played yet. One of them is going to be Ifan as ranged I bet. So now what is my own char going to be. A wizard? Or full on high crit/damage rogue?
In all seriousness though. She can indeed be quite challenging if your RNG-unlucky. When doing my singleplayer profile it took me a handfull of attempts to get her to run when Rupture Tendon+Chicken was on her. Meaning she runs around like a chicken while taking DoT that nearly kills her. So had to restart to get that cheese just right.
Try her on HC legend =)
Well, on HC the only way to fight is to abuse sumons and invisibility. Whait with everyone, then mass-sumon and blink. Let the spiders do they job=)
I’ll just stick with Tactician. Challenging enough 
Id rather play on exploaration without safe-load abuse for challenge :roll:
yeah because everyone knows the fight/game mechanics right away… :rolleyes:
safe-load isn’t abuse…its learning how stuff works and getting better.
by simply dying and having to reply everything doesn’t teach you anything other then wasting time.:rolleyes:
So can one of you peeps give me a rough idea about number of hours needed with 100% exploration?
70-80 hours according to howlongtobeat.
The witch as a group we fought in her face. took her down asap. then went after the bugs while you CC’d the zombies.
In Lonewolf I had to fight backwards. My assasin focussed on the beetles furthest away from the group near the entrance. He had some teleport abilities such as Cloack and Daggers and Backlash to help with movement. Chameleon/Play Dead to avoid attacks. Occasionally battle stomping to throw opponents with no physical armor on their backs.
Beast, my wizard dwarf, flew around from ledge to ledge drawing the pack apart in position while AoE the zombie’s down at the bottom middle of the map. His slow, burn and magic helped well. Radeka was last to get our full attention so she died quick. Only had to stay out of her reach when my magic armor got low to avoid her Charm Grenade
Overall Lonewolf is awesome. Two very strong characters with more attacks per round. Usually tactics so far are to just run in and kill. Assassin takes opponents down fast with All In and Sawtooth Knife. Wizard uses Geomancer with Pyro. Impalement followed by Searing Daggers is really nice opener, especially if you can get multiple targets close enough.
100+ if you play on tactian; less if you play explorer…
How does part 2 stack up to the first game? I really want to play it I am doubting a bit.
It is definately worth it.
It has improved in many ways. IT also tried some “fixes” that I am a bit on the fence about.
=======Build options====
This game has A LOT of build options once you get the hang of it. It is quite simple to understand really with basic math. You know that the characters will most likely be around lvl20 when completing the game. Giving you 40ish attribute points. As usual that means 16-18 in constitution for health, 14 in memory and as spellcaster boost it further with mnemotic talent. Rest is divided over your main attribute and Wits. So you max your main stat to 30 and boost it beyond with gear. And rest dump in wits which could get to 25+ as well. You get high initiative, criticals and can find hidden loot with every char in this game.
In regards to the classes…there aren’t really any and is very free form as to what you want. Most skill trees provide the majority of their skills with only 2 points invested. Meaning you can dip into several of them and mix-match lots of skills. usually I end up with 5-6 points actually in a class and boost it to 10 through gear. Don’t really see the point to overcap. Plus each “class” also provides passive bonus stats that apply to everything unless stated otherwise. So you get your weapon type to 5+ and your 1-2 main classes. Then put 1-2 points in a few others to grab their skills.
Seeing how skills say they scale of strength by default doesn’t mean you can’t grab them as a finesse/intelligence user. That stat will change and depending on your weapon so will the damage type of the scale. But most skills scale of points put in the Class Mastery instead of needing actually the attribute.
Like I said. Awesome freedom in making builds in this regard. Shame I’m not a fan of the itemization. The items are good…getting them in the end is the problem. You can’t really farm anything since nothing re-spawns other then the stores. And that is just tedious to do with finite resources.
If you messed up your stat/skill distributions don’t worry. On your ship, the lady Vengeance, you can respec for free as often as you want. Fine tuning your character and/or outright fixing it. Unfortunately you can also use it to exploit something, which I prevent myself not to abuse. Instead of specialziing in bartering or thieving you can just respec in what you need for the specific situation. In short you can go full sneak/thievery and steal everything. Then respec into bartering/persuasion and talk your way out of things for example.
===quest/dialogue====
This game adds quite a lot of variety/options to how you deal with combat. It never really gets stale or samey.
This game adds more variety in how you interact/solve stuff. Even the simplest conversations had the obvious two solutions. Then on other playthroughs noticed specific dialogue options like Jester/Barbarian/Origin character gave another conclusion. Then I did some in a different order and that resulted in a different conclusion. Granted they all got bottlenecked towards the same binary mechanical solutions for progression and dialogue/quest design sake. But the fact you could have such profound impact on the details truly gives that sense of roleplay/character development and involvement.
Overall its very well voice acted. Writing is decent and not really cringeworthy anywhere so far. Which is good. Then again I don’t really play for story/dialogue and more for exploration, build diversity and the tactical combat.
AI of opponents is quite…different as well. Apparently opponents also have access to Loremaster with a weight range 2-5 with bosses having higher. And they actually attack the one who has the least resistance to their attacks. You can check their inventory through the trade screen in some cases, when you’re in dialogue before the fight. And when you see them use Charm grenade that you saw… wow. And they dont use it the first opportunity they get. So its always a surprise, but you are expecting it though. time to get the appropriate armor up to mitigate it.
People say character levels are very important. And to a degree this is true. A fight is noticeable more difficult if youre N-1. However with tactics it is still possible to deal with it. If youre +1 then the fight has become fairly easy in comparison of course. The game does a good job to “rail road” you in this regard. It is also predictable what level you are and opponents are build towards it. They do not scale and are handcrafted for the encounter. And you can tell since its not generic with dumb AI.
Some people say you need cheese to beat encounters on tactician for example. And this might be true the first time you play and don’t have a good enough grasp of mechanics and how the fight goes. Once you do the cheese will become a lot less. I’ve done a lot of encounters in different ways with each playthrough so far. Tactics needed will vary per group setup and there are many ways to deal with adversaries.
Instead of player level…what does matter…is gear and class level. You need of course enough points in your main “Class” and weapon type. That way you actually use your main stuff well. Especially early on in the game you don’t want to be too spread thing and be more specialized. Of course with some mild spreading support from other stuff. Also important is to of course is to grab 2 cc abilities, a move ability, an ability that can restore an armor type since that is more effective then actual healing, and get the most powerfully damaging abilitities.
What matters more, especially for melee, is gear level. You can get by with quest rewards/chests and such to about lvl5. After that you need to regularly start buying new weapons every 2 or so levels to keep your damage output up. And some major armor pieces to keep your physical/magical armor rating up to deal with incoming blows. If you don’t do this, no matter how good your strategy… You WILL lose. SImply because opponents can kill you in just a few hits then.
==crafting===
this aspect is more clear and concise. You find recipe books everywhere as well ass posters in kitchens. There are some secret recipes for secret armor/weapons which is nice. Some things aren’t mentioned anywhere but are helpfull to know. You can put an oil or poison or water etc barrel as ingredient. place your weapon in the next slot and it’ll receive the according damage type bonus/effect. Nails + boots give you protecting against falling on ice surfaces etc.
There are runes now. 3 of the same type create a larger version upto tier 3 if I recall correctly. You can put them in and take them out of items freely. So once you use a rune you can re-use it if you want.
You can craft spell scrolls of course. Now you can turn those scrolls into actual skillbooks to save you money from stores. You can use spellbooks you find and combine them to get other spellbooks etc. Really nice.
You can’t really improve quality of items and then sell them for profit though. So you use crafting less to make money as you would in DoS:EE in that regard.
=======minor QoL issues====
I haven’t encountered any noticeable annoying bugs yet. There are some QoL things that start to bug me.
Inventory management. I would’ve liked to be able to select multiple items and just transport them to another character at once in bulk. Instead of having to drag/go through menu one item at a time.
stuff being automatically placed on your skillbar like arrowheads, when i don’t use bows, is annoying.
Animations are often slow and after a while really start to grind my gear as massive time wasters. But that is part of playing an RPG I guess.
You could already do this in DOS1.
DOS2 is better than DOS1 but they are some things I like less:
- you can no longer increase AP with stats and action cost no longer decrease with stat, the worst is for sneaking that is no longer useful in combat (never take guerilla as talent)
- metamorphosis is a way too powerfull jake-of-all-trades tree
just quick question: do you think this game will get the GOTY award? 
true you could do it in DoS as well. however in that game the crafting system was not really … properly implemented. it was so convoluted I didn’t bother using it besides just doing stuff and make money.
Goty winner… For me it is a strong contender. Then again XCom WoTC was awesome as well. And we still got a few interesting games coming this year.
The way DoS2 uses the AP system took some getting used too. At first it felt confining. You only have 6-8 AP bulbs available. So you can’t save up a lot. In DoS:EE you had quite a larger bar with AP that if you saved it up for a round or 3 you could do tons of stuff. However it does get you to actually spend those points in some way and at most only save up 1 or 2. The way combat works in general you always want to do sometihng otherwise it feels like a turn wasted. It all fits well into that respect. Boosting/buffing yourself to get more AP’s for a turn is limited and not really present. There is adrenaline, flesh sacrifice, haste and that is about it I think. Giving it a more deliberate, tactical, decision when to boost yourself in order to burst down something.
Not being able to sneak in combat is something I can live with. Never was interesting to begin with. And lets be honest. Scoundrel in DoS:EE was just useless, annoying and pathetic. It needed a complete overhaul and it did. A lot of “sneak” is added into some of the skills you use in order to get actual proper backstab positioning. Or with “Cloak and Daggers” you get a mobile/transportation sneak skill. Chameleon from Polymorph lets you go invisible doing the sneak thing. But I only use that at the end of a turn to go invisible and no one will attack me…just like Play Dead
Couldn’t find any info?
Is that an acronym for War of The Casuals?
Forgive the blasphemy and ignorance on my part then
I had almost forgotten an expac was even launched (kinda, sorta slipped my mind)
I finished a couple of days ago - my play through was on tactian which was a bit difficult at the start (fort joy) and painful in the last battle but fairly easy most of the middle. I kind of prefer dos:1 plentiful ap points - i understand what they did here in an attempt to ‘balance’ things but I think they went too far.
The ai definitly cheats which is annoying and it has quite a few technical bugs. Also the last two islands (nameless and arx) are not nearly as good as the first two - i’m sure we will see some more patches.
Ok with the negative out of the way the game is much better than D:OS (esp in the story department) and I strongly recommend you play one of the premade characters (not so much their class but rather for their origin story).
I’ll definitly play a second time to pick up the two characters I did not use the first time - but I think i’ll wait 6 or 8 or 14 or whatever months for some solid patching.
Warning if you play on tactian mode you can’t reduce the difficulty - i tough’ed it out in fort joy and surrounding but had at least one fight where I really wanted to restart or reduce the diffculty. I think it took me 3+ hours to figure out a way out of that jam (to make matters worse no save near the encounter and I didn’t wnat to back up to the previous save). Shields help a lot so I recommend you use them on everyone but the archer (who will consequently die a lot without a shield ).
You can respect after fort joy but i never bothered. Can’t say how long it took me because I left the game running a few times accidently - but I think it was around 150 hours.