Drakensang Random mid-game questions

As always, I'm a slow player. I'm up to early Tallon - about level 10, I think. I have some questions about character development and equipment for those further ahead of me.

My team is doing OK - Rhulana, Gladys, Gwendala and myself (Dwarven Prospector - sounded different), although I don't think it's been as easy as some say.

1. Should I have better weapons by now? Rhulana is using a sabre (1D+6, I think). In the last boss fight, she could barely cause any damage. I'm worried she is heading down the wrong side of the power curve.

2. She still has her first armour (albeit with a nice shield and other bits and pieces). I see her as a sort of D&D barbarian, using dodge more than heavy armour. Is that the best setup for her? She takes too much damage and she also isn't dishing it out that hard. It doesn't feel quite right.

3. The spells are pretty dull so far. Tallon had some new stuff (about time) but the best stuff (fireball and others) were reserved for human mages. Are there good elven spells as well, or is Gwendala stuck summoning badgers and other mundane stuff?

4. Buff spells. All I've really seen are "raise attribute" spells and you can only have one running. Is there a D&D style Bless or Aid coming? Is Strength the best attribute to raise? With the rather complex AT formula, raising one attribute by one point doesn't seem very powerful.

Basically, we've been toodling along but I'm starting to worry the party will run out of steam if I'm not careful.

4. Yes, I think so. Ask at the tent before the temple at the entrance of Ferdok.

1. & 2. Rhulana is an Amazon, a female warrior dedicated to the goddess of Rondra, goddess of war, thunder and honesty.

Which is why Amazons heavily despise poison and crossbows. Normal bows are tolerated by them. Plus, they will never ever attack the back of an enemy, because that would violate her conduct of honesty - even against villians.

Personally, I saw her as kind of a "tank", together with Forgrimm, but she is ... well, different because of what I wrote above. Amazons are very good warriors, but dwarves aren't hindered by rules of honesty, for example.

So, I always put the dexterity value relatively high for Rhulana. Since she has not so strong armor than Forgrimm has, she must be a bit more agile, I think.

Later in the game there is the possibility to get much better armor for her, but I think she'll do very good in her special armor.

What would be important, imho is a special "talent" which enables the characters to become accustomed to armor. It is taught I think I Ferdok, too.
Unfortunately I don't know how it is translated in the English-language game.
Forgrimm and Rhulana should get it, and everyone wearing heavy armor, too.

3. Well, I always saw Gwendala rather as a person with bow expertise, so I trained her in that way. Elves with bows are generally very good. I don't remember any offensive spells for her ... Although a few weakening spells ...

1. You will get the chance to craft a nice sabre after finishing Tallon (with high Blacksmithing skill), however you must choose between this sabre and a spear.

2. You should have already found a better armour for Rhulana, which you get by doing the quest with her regarding the black amazons. (A fellow amazon of hers should show up in your residence after the 2nd dragon quest.)

3. Spells are indeed rather limited for elves, they are more hybrid characters. Badgers? Do you mean wolf rats? Have you increased the modifier of the summoning spell in your quickslot bar (below the icon)? By now you should be able to summon boars, if not already bears.

4. All spells that are available in the game are available in Tallon, there will come nothing new. Besides those buff spells increase the attribute by SP*/3 + 1, which could easilybe 6 or 7 points for a caster trained in that spell. I have the creeping suspicion that you until now somehow missed the fact that you can raise your spells just like talents...

Praios is the God for honesty, Rondra is honour.

Dhruin said:

As always, I'm a slow player. I'm up to early Tallon - about level 10, I think. I have some questions about character development and equipment for those further ahead of me.

My team is doing OK - Rhulana, Gladys, Gwendala and myself (Dwarven Prospector - sounded different), although I don't think it's been as easy as some say.

1. Should I have better weapons by now? Rhulana is using a sabre (1D+6, I think). In the last boss fight, she could barely cause any damage. I'm worried she is heading down the wrong side of the power curve.
2. She still has her first armour (albeit with a nice shield and other bits and pieces). I see her as a sort of D&D barbarian, using dodge more than heavy armour. Is that the best setup for her? She takes too much damage and she also isn't dishing it out that hard. It doesn't feel quite right.

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I don't remember at that point exactly, but in general, up to the last part of the game, my characters were fine with armor and weapons they got as drops or quest rewards. Nothing too fancy like you said. I found in this game it's more about the character and not about the items (as it should be). Make everybody learn defensive style, and your meleers offensive style plus some special moves. Keep it always active (offensive for meleers, defensive for casters). Special attacks that do wounds are the best. Keep everybody's main weapon skill maxed. In the case of Rhulana, I used her as archer/mini-tank so I kept her sabre and bow skills maxed.

3. The spells are pretty dull so far. Tallon had some new stuff (about time) but the best stuff (fireball and others) were reserved for human mages. Are there good elven spells as well, or is Gwendala stuck summoning badgers and other mundane stuff?

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Well since you don't use a full mage in your party, I'm afraid the 'non-dull' spells are off-limits. There must be a trade-off for being a weakling You can always switch characters whenever you want, they get all the skill points you get even if not in your party so you can experiment and see.

4. Buff spells. All I've really seen are "raise attribute" spells and you can only have one running. Is there a D&D style Bless or Aid coming? Is Strength the best attribute to raise? With the rather complex AT formula, raising one attribute by one point doesn't seem very powerful.

Basically, we've been toodling along but I'm starting to worry the party will run out of steam if I'm not careful.

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I used strength for the big fights, otherwise I didn't bother. Obviously the armor spell is the best for those who can cast. Another buff spell I remember using in some occasions was the resist magic bubble for fights against lots of casters. Debuff spells are important too. I used the cold spell a lot on bosses. I also used the 'stone' spell for crowd control. Sleep I found mostly useless.

Is Tallon truly mid-game? if it so, then I'm pretty happy with the length of the game. I'm there now and I had the impression that I was fairly late in the game.

I have pretty much the same group as the OP with Gwendala as my main spellcaster and I agree, her spells are somewhat lackluster. I love that shield spell, healing and summoning a bear. Casting a lightning bolt can be useful too from time to time but it's not generally as deadly or useful as her bow with these multi-arrow/marksman skills. But she doesnt seem to have any real combat spells except for fighting animals.

My main character uses swords. I kinda hesitate at the moment between a bastard sword and dart(?), that magical short sword that has a 25% chance of causing wounds. I generally use this one because I end up killing enemies with high HP more frequently with wounds than with loss of HP. Like these three ogres near Tallon.

But generally, I feel there is a lack of variety in term of weapons and armors. Especially when you compare with a game like Baldur's Gate.

Tallon is not truly mid-game. At least, the rest of the game doesn't feel like that much anymore, because it's lacking variety.

As others said, Rhulana shoud have her best armor by now. You should also invest in hiring Nasreddin as soon as you can, even if you just strip him of his armor . Training all party members in defensive maneuvers is a must. Even Jost is a decent melee fighter this way.

In principle, the most useful spells are the summons and the debuffs. "Lightning find you" on bosses helps a whole lot (keep it maxed). That detox spell comes in handy in this game. Gwendala will have a spirit bear as summon at some point, which can deal lots of damage. Although I prefer first the fire elemental (sets groups of weak enemies on fire) and later the djinn, who is a full party member (powerful melee attack and spell) in his own right.

Tallon is the beginning of the last third, I would say.

Tallon is where I kinda ran out of steam with Drakensang. I might actually go into town but I'm getting the "been there-done that" feeling with all the quests at this point. I'm not sure what the point is anymore. I solved Arlo's murder, which was my motive for becoming involved. I normally get bored with linear games at some point.

Tallon is actually a great area with very nice quests. Same with the next city you enter. It is after that where the game gets a little stale for me. But fortunately you are almost through by the time.

Well, obviously you have been chosen for a divine quest, so that is supposed to be the motivation later. There is more to it, but Drakensang reveals that at a very late point.

crpgnut said:

Tallon is where I kinda ran out of steam with Drakensang. I might actually go into town but I'm getting the "been there-done that" feeling with all the quests at this point. I'm not sure what the point is anymore. I solved Arlo's murder, which was my motive for becoming involved. I normally get bored with linear games at some point.

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My grandma used to say 'If a dragon asks you to do something, you better do it!'

Thanks for all the replies. I have no idea if Tallon is mid-game -- I just guessed.

No, I didn't forget to put points in spells - but I did forget to include that in the math. So, 10 points in Strength does have some effect - thanks. The "badger" bit wasn't meant to be literal; she actually summons a boar at the moment but it doesn't last long. This is why spell documentation would be good - I can't tell what spending more points actually gets me some of the time.

So that's it for spells? That's disappointing. I didn't realise Gwendala was considered a "weak" mage; elves are usually good at magic and being an elven Spellweaver, I figured she was a decent elven mage. I might have to think about re-jigging the team.

I forgot all about Rhulana's special quest - it popped up when I returned home to purely swap team members (I was trying Jost but didn't like him) and wanted to get back to the main quest I was on.

Cheers!

Dhruin said:

elves are usually good at magic

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That would depend on the definition of "good" . In TDE elves are more of a hybrid class. They are excellent at everything that goes in the ranger/hunter/scout direction and they have some rudimentary magic skills to go along with it. An elf is usually never as good as a pure caster though.
I think that with the six character party of the Realms of Arkania games it made a lot of sense to put at least one elf in there as primarily a ranged fighter and secondarily a support or backup caster in case some of your other casters ran out of AP (mana).
In Drakensang, however, it might make more sense to (mostly) play with non-hybrids since you only got four slots but then again experimenting with all the different characters is half the fun of the game so... just do what you think works best and is the most fun .

Gladys is a reasonable caster with some good, if not great offensive spells. I use Gwendala as an archer/healer who might cast a thunderbolt or debuff in the first round.

Yeah, but I know you - you're playing a mage, right? That means you've got two. I'm playing a fruity all-round dwarven prospector, so maybe my only mage needs more grunt.

The main thing I wasn't sure about - there isn't a huge amount of depth in the spells and fancy equipment. That's not really a complaint - I just thought I might be missing something.

Yep, I'm a caster, but I only use a very small number of spells.

With regards to equipment, I was kinda dissapointed that there were no better non-magical arrows you could craft other than War Arrows (DP +1). I *did* find a single 20-quiver lot of armor piercing arrows (DP +2) as an enemy drop, but I never found a recipe available to craft more of them.

Moriendor said:

That would depend on the definition of "good" . In TDE elves are more of a hybrid class. They are excellent at everything that goes in the ranger/hunter/scout direction and they have some rudimentary magic skills to go along with it. An elf is usually never as good as a pure caster though.

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That's true, but in Drakensang the difference is not that grating. Elven full mages still get one relatively good summon that is still helpful in the endgame, and thunderbolt is not that bad as attack spell, either. At least it's fast . As Corwin already said, the game doesn't have that many useful spells, and they are often nearly interchangeable.

They miss out on any area-of-effect spells, right? That would be nice. A fireball to soften up a large group would really help.

A fireball should become available in or after Tallon. I don't know if elves can use it though.