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I never realized how OP stealth skills are in HZD. And because of the high difficulty all enemies are very paranoid and detect me from away, at least enough to get them to come investigate; which is when I shove my spear into them. :D
Stealth kills and jumping up and down to get the slow-time to trigger so that I can actually aim. Those are my two main skills.
 
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Playing Zoria: age of shattering. Initially I was not that enthusiastic, but once i got over some initial things it started to be fun. It's definitely an indie game, so no fancy high end gfx. It's a bit of a weird hybrid : TB rather than RtwP (in fact, you can't pause...) with a almost useless formation/facing aspect (facing seems kinda random mostly) and line of sight for attacks. The Line of sight mechanism is a hindrance in combat - it just doesn't make sense given that you can't control where your character starts in combat (often they keep on moving and are then sucked into initiative and 'frozen'...often in a position with bad LoS :(). There is some feedback in attacks interface to help to figure out if you haveline of sight, but I often forget that thinking I have it when I don't. Also, you have 2 AP typically - moving *any* distance uses one. In many case, I start moving, think I have LoS (visually, or because I'm standing next to a table....) Stop. Realise I don't have LoS and then have to waste my other AP moving aagain to where I can actually do something. They should have implemented it so that you can move up to max with 1 AP, and if you move again imemditaley that same AP is still used (up to max distance). That would solve many, many problems. Initially (early levels) I found the game a bit tough, but it has huge amount of gear that massively boots your stats, so now it is too easy (switched to hard, but haven' tried 'unfair' yet). I also didn't realise that you can drink unlimited potions (at no AP cost!) in combat. WHAAAAAT!? You can guzzle buffs, health etc etc - so if you have enough, and enemies can't one shot you - you basically can't die. Hm. There is too much loot and too many plants/mineral resources - they respawn too quickly. I am walking around with 65K gold which I don't really need to spend etc. You also have shrines ( like Dibalo etc) taht gives boosts -a nd you can stack these too... I AM A GOD!!!! BWHAHAHA!!! etc etc So, I think they need a major rebalance patch that (1) limits potion use per round (2) massively reduces density of plants/minnerals/food (and their value), (3) allows one shrine bonus to be active only and (4) tries to improve LoS to better place enemies w.r.t. you when (random) placement starts and allows no LoS when you are fighting giant creatuires (like a giant/dragon). Anyway, despite my criticism, it is still quite fun and the story is OK (a hodgepodge of other common fansty stories - incl. some very similar bits to pillars of eternity....)
 
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danutz_plusplus said:
I never realized how OP stealth skills are in HZD. And because of the high difficulty all enemies are very paranoid and detect me from away, at least enough to get them to come investigate; which is when I shove my spear into them. :D
Stealth kills and jumping up and down to get the slow-time to trigger so that I can actually aim. Those are my two main skills.
Click to expand...
On the other hand, when the silent attack isn't enough to kill one, I'm like 'uh-oh. RUN!'. :D
 
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Redglyph said:
On the other hand, when the silent attack isn't enough to kill one, I'm like 'uh-oh. RUN!'. :D
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think I did read in some skill description that for bigger foes it won't kill them, but still do more damage than a regular attack.
I'll be curious how I fare with that. I did notice that I was able to stealth kill one enemy, its companion noticed me and started attacking.
But I managed to regain stealth by running to the closes tall-grass patch and crouching. And the proceeded to stealth kill the second one.

This will definitely not work in boss fights. Those are the ones I expect to be tearing my hair out, on this difficulty.
The scrappers in particular have a way of one-hit killing me regularly if I don't dodge fast enough out of their melee attacks. And those laser balls they fire are also brutal.
Heck I've even had watchers one-hit kill me.
 
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danutz_plusplus said:
Yeah, I think I did read in some skill description that for bigger foes it won't kill them, but still do more damage than a regular attack.
I'll be curious how I fare with that. I did notice that I was able to stealth kill one enemy, its companion noticed me and started attacking.
But I managed to regain stealth by running to the closes tall-grass patch and crouching. And the proceeded to stealth kill the second one.

This will definitely not work in boss fights. Those are the ones I expect to be tearing my hair out, on this difficulty.
The scrappers in particular have a way of one-hit killing me regularly if I don't dodge fast enough out of their melee attacks. And those laser balls they fire are also brutal.
Heck I've even had watchers one-hit kill me.
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Scrappers were the first enemies I met that had a difficulty spike, along with the Sawtooth. Nasty piece of work, that.

Some skills allow you to kill more enemies from stealth, like bandit leaders, but I wonder if we're able to upgrade the spear at some point. It's the only weapon I've never seen in any merchant's stock so far.
 
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IIrc you can upgrade the spear much later on (during the add-on?). By that time I was that so used to the bow that I hardly ever used the spear. A good tactic for me was tying the machines down using the ropecaster (I think that was its name). Once tied down even the most dangerous ones can be disabled or at least stripped off their most dangerous weapons pretty easily.

Enjoy :)
 
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Lakorus said:
A good tactic for me was tying the machines down using the ropecaster (I think that was its name). Once tied down even the most dangerous ones can be disabled or at least stripped off their most dangerous weapons pretty easily.
Click to expand...

I still have to try that. :) I'm barely using the tripcaster as it is, sticking too often to bow and spear.

Now I'm playing with the shadow sling a little, for which I had to hunt and kill a huge beast (a thunderjaw). That took a while; maybe I was a little under-leveled.
 
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I had a tough battle recently in Wildsilver, it featured a named creature with three additional troops. Usually what I'll do in a situation like this is pick off the adds then focus on the head honcho, yet that didn't work here as the lead guy kept an array of buffs/debuffs and poisons going constantly. I finally beat him down yet it took more resources than I thought it might, and has me wondering if maybe I've missed some treasure along the way or possibly another party member. Anyways, back to the scrum!
 
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I managed to kill the Sawtooth that's part of the main quest all using stealth jabs. It was really exploitable.
All I did was run between two patches of tall-grass, and kept regaining stealth after a successful stealth hit.
They made the sawtooth lose aggro really fast, so it was a piece of cake. But it did take around 5-6 stealth hits.
The real test will be in scenarios where I don't have enough tall-grass.
 
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Playing Serpent in the Staglands.

It is one of the worst cRPG's I have played. It's much worse than Lionheart - at least that had good writing. The only reason I bought it (and Mechjammer) is because I heard it is like Darklands. It is nothing like Darklands. The combat is worse. The writing is worse. The character system/rules are way less interesting. I don't think there is anything redemable about this game. I have only not finished a handful of cRPG's in my life and I think this is going to be one of them. If I spend another 10 hours on it I really don't think it is going to get any better.

If anyone says it is anything like Darklands I actually doubt whether they have actually played Darklands.
 
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Ehh, I enjoyed Serpent in the Staglands when I played it, though I'd agree it's not anything like Darklands. I have Mechjammer as well, I've just not gotten around to playing it as of yet.
 
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I'm finally in the open world in HZD; defeated the Corruptor and was surprised how easy it was, even on the highest difficulty.
Though I did abuse the hell out of jumping in order to trigger the free slow-time. They really did not balance that at all.
And looking at the skill tree, I finally have a direction I want to go, compared to my first attempt at playing the game.
I'm gonna go for the skill that allows sprinting while being silent. That along with the stealth kills should be fun.
 
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I've decided to keep playing Dragons Dogma 2 over Rise of the Ronin after spending about 5 hours with each. They are both fun with Ronin having better combat than DD2, but DD2 having better just about everything else.

DD2's setting, exploration and certain amount of charm (that I feel but don't really know how to quantify) gave DD2 the edge. I will be playing Ronin immediately after finishing DD2 though.
 
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I'm now determined to find every Seeker Token in Dragon's Dogma. Got 51, still a ways to go, but hey, if you're having fun, you're having fun.

Also got 5.5k Rift Crystals and nothing to do with them. I saw some pointless cosmetic glasses that give no stats and can barely be seen, selling for 9,999, maybe made for players like me in mind, so I'll aim to grab them too . :cool:
 
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Playing the last Forza Motorsport, pretty entertaining especially at higher difficulties, im enjoying this much more than Horizon series. And it looks just amazing during rain or thunderstorms, or on those circuits with forests like Spa or the one from Japan with Mount Fuji in the background.
 
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Carnifex said:
Ehh, I enjoyed Serpent in the Staglands when I played it, though I'd agree it's not anything like Darklands. I have Mechjammer as well, I've just not gotten around to playing it as of yet.
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I put another 5 hours in and it is getting better thankfully. But the start is goddamn awful. The inventory system is pretty woeful as well. A sheet of paper seems to take the same space as a stack of 10 healing potions. The problem is made worse by the very limited storage space available. Having 20 sheets of paper rolled up should use a single item slot - it really needs a scroll case or similar - as well as a regents bag to store mushrooms etc.
 
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