RoA: Blade of Destiny HD - For the Gods DLC

Steam announces that new DLC is now available for RoA: Blade of Destiny HD.

Delve deeper into the mystical lore of the Northland with 3 new heroic questlines in “For the Gods” the first DLC for Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny.

First, you’ve been entrusted by a nobleman from Clanegh with the difficult task of transforming the paramour of a Thorwalian leader’s daughter into a worthy suitor. But father and daughter do not always see eye-to-eye. May Rahja, the Goddess of Love, be with you, because this quest is not going to be a cakewalk.

Next, when a villager goes missing, those that remain speak of strange phenomena haunting their fields and scaring their animals. These unnerved villagers look to you for help and point towards Orkhun, the ancestral dwelling of the Baerhag Clan which had been left to decay centuries ago. Perhaps there is more to these mysterious happenings than a run of the mill ghost story?

Then you will journey to the godforsaken hicksville of neighboring Rukian. First and foremost, the Rukian population lives to serve their passing travelers. But a dark spector of death hovers over this remote hamlet. Even though the Goddess of Hospitality’s name is on every Rukian’s lips, have the residents of this gloomy crossroads taken their credo a step too far?

Discover new towns, dungeons, and quests, encounter the Gods of Love, Death, and Hospitality and venture further into Northland legends of this epic RPG saga.

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More information.

Erm... I did buy the game when it got out, still waiting for the gold release to play it... but DLC?
I'm not buying, sorry.

The DLC is free if you've bought the (physical) Collectors Edition. A gesture of good will if you like. Not to happy about this, personally, since buyers of the digital edition have waited for a functioning game just as well.

I'm confused; is the game currently worth playing? I.e, did they patch it to the point it is 'fun' ?

Yeah, from what I've heard the game is still pretty rough around the edges but they've spent their time on DLC instead of focusing on the core game?

Weird...

Zerotown said:

if you've bought the (physical)

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I'm avoiding physical releases for ages now, in fact I'm rebuying games in digital form when possible and throwing old CDs to trashcan. Not only my room got cleaner but also I don't see CRC errors because of scratched medium.
Sometimes however this is not possible, like in the case of Phil. Secret addon, I could never buy it anywhere in any form because of whatever DTP ideas and complicating things till the complete edition got released.
Thank god for GOG, thank god for Greenlight.

In any case, I'm not buying RoA in physical form just to get some DLC. In fact, I'm not buying anything just to get DLC later. They can sell DLC to their mother. This includes NWN/NWN2 (which were complete on sale on GOG so in the end I bought it but so far couldn't be arsed to replay).

Dr. A said:

Yeah, from what I've heard the game is still pretty rough around the edges but they've spent their time on DLC instead of focusing on the core game?

Weird…

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That's not entirely fair. They've released patches frequently, so I doubt they were focusing in the DLC instead of the core game. I started playing the game a week ago and so far find it very playable, haven't seen any bug so far. In fact if you read the first patches texts it was all about fixing bugs, but the latest patches text is more about balancing (which is a never-ending thing really)

wolfing said:

That's not entirely fair. They've released patches frequently, so I doubt they were focusing in the DLC instead of the core game. I started playing the game a week ago and so far find it very playable, haven't seen any bug so far. In fact if you read the first patches texts it was all about fixing bugs, but the latest patches text is more about balancing (which is a never-ending thing really)

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That's good to know! I've been wanting to give it a go but held back when I saw the trickle of patches being released. I though I would wait for an "uberpatch"

But if the game is that playable for you wolfing, maybe I should give it a whirl anyway

That trickle has seemed more like a steady stream to me. I realize the releaee was garbage, and I haven't even played the game for real yet. All the same, I threw $4 at them for this DLC. Figured they could probably use the cash, and I appreciate their dedicated efforts to try to make things right.

I bought the game yesterday without DLC (don't really care about that). But the experience has not been good. The game crashed when I started it - unless I start in compatibility mode.

Then I took the default party, had a quick look at the town square, and then 'slept' in the town streets (I thought that was a bug at first, being able to do that)….and I was attacked by 4 rouges. Well, I have never experienced such a one sided unsatisfying battle. A party of 6 - with spell casters - against 4 rouges. 95% of our attacks failed to hit or were parried, 9/10 spells fizzled or had most of their damage absorbed by armour. Of course, they hit more frequently. My fighters were simply unable to hit - why? I looked at the die rolls - a lot of high rolls!

I did not play the original, but thought this might be fun. It's not. That simple fight took forever, and in the end we were all killed. Almost everyone's weapon broke (!!! you have to be joking…in 1 fight?) By 4 city thieves. I wanted my wizard to eventually attack with a melee weapon - I was only offered spells as an attack? So, what went wrong - why was this such an abortion? Are these super high level rouges? Was I incredibly unlucky? I chose the 'default' (hard?) setting - maybe I need the other one? I don't think it was my tactics in the combat, but having weapons break ion your first fight is unreasonable and I'd love a way to turn that off. If I bother going back to this.

booboo said:

I did not play the original, but thought this might be fun. It's not.

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I'd definitely suggest playing the original trilogy. They're classic epic RPG's, and the trilogy only got better as it went on. The new game is a miserable shadow of the original games.

booboo said:

I bought the game yesterday without DLC (don't really care about that). But the experience has not been good. The game crashed when I started it - unless I start in compatibility mode.

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Strange, never crashed on me (I was wondering what the 'compatibility mode' was for, guess now I know)

Then I took the default party, had a quick look at the town square, and then 'slept' in the town streets (I thought that was a bug at first, being able to do that)….and I was attacked by 4 rouges. Well, I have never experienced such a one sided unsatisfying battle. A party of 6 - with spell casters - against 4 rouges. 95% of our attacks failed to hit or were parried, 9/10 spells fizzled or had most of their damage absorbed by armour. Of course, they hit more frequently. My fighters were simply unable to hit - why? I looked at the die rolls - a lot of high rolls!

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That's TDE for you (at least the version in which the game is based). When in a town, you should sleep in an inn so you don't get attacked, and then recover depending on what room you buy. Also, in TDE high rolls are usually bad. In summary you want the roll to be lower than the 'difficulty', which is sort of like going lower than your score (so if your sword is 10 you want to roll less than 10) and then the defender also rolls and if his score is lower than his parry value, attack is parried. That's why low level fights last longer, you only hit like half the time, and then those hits are parried half the time. I think you can only parry once per round so you want to gang on the opponents instead of going 1 vs. 1.

I did not play the original, but thought this might be fun. It's not. That simple fight took forever, and in the end we were all killed. Almost everyone's weapon broke (!!! you have to be joking…in 1 fight?) By 4 city thieves. I wanted my wizard to eventually attack with a melee weapon - I was only offered spells as an attack? So, what went wrong - why was this such an abortion? Are these super high level rouges? Was I incredibly unlucky? I chose the 'default' (hard?) setting - maybe I need the other one? I don't think it was my tactics in the combat, but having weapons break ion your first fight is unreasonable and I'd love a way to turn that off. If I bother going back to this.

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In TDE, level 1 anythings are just slightly above you deciding to grab a sword and go outside. I'm not sure what level were those city thieves as I've only fought in the dungeon and outside. I think weapon breaks on a roll of 20? not sure, so your high rolls would explain that
What I do in all RPGs is play a bit with the default characters to learn the ropes, then I create my own party with what I learned and play 'for real'.