Thanks for the details/reminder, I don't remember D2EG received such enthusiastic comments, or perhaps it's all the bad words about bugs and bad ending that let me an overall tedious impression.

I can't stop gaming, it's now more than 6 month that I haven't pick a big game that grab me up to the end or close. I play more light games and their gameplay fun is great. But big games brings a part of dream and even if it's mostly illusion of dream when a little bit survive the real play of the game then it's just unmatched by any great pure gameplay fun. That parts is missing me now. :) I'm installing the patch and will see with the original game, I need play it further than the first village.

I second the advice to play D2 with the patches before you buy DKS. And to stop gaming for a while.

Stop gaming? That makes no sense. :)

So I played D2 with the patches and I just forgot I was supposed to test it to buy or not DSK. The first village looks good but isn't very fun despite few good secrets. The patch fix almost all ugly bugs and the game seems even more smooth. The area after the introduction are is just great.

It reminds me totally Gothic 2 + NOTR, the area design and use and implementation of obstacles and heights is as smart and accurate than in G2+NOTR. I even quote that like in G2+NOTR some plants picking surprise you because you find some only the second time you pass through an area or only by putting a lot of care to look into the corners.

It hasn't the same great sword fighting system but instead I switch for now to a mix of bow/summon and magic that probably works better than a similar choice in G2+NOTR. Also the living scenery isn't as good than in G2 but not that bad, and it has perhaps not the same average quality of quest but not that far in quality.

And it has some other qualities better than in G2+NOTR like, quite good secrets and as good management of mid hidden stuff, even better exploration, much better fantasy mood (don't like much the realistic approach of Gothic series but even when it targets fantasy the true fantasy mood isn't here) and I totally agree that the place visual design is quite at the top.

Very impressive, great game. I just regret I didn't emerged sooner from the very long session so I could play instead D2 through DSK.

I am playing this Now Dhruin (just the expansion as i finished ED already) and WOW!! what a great job by Larian, This game has alot of personality and i love the quests. Many are fedex but are written in such a way and handled by colorful characters so well that they are fun and not tedious like i found in Arcania. I'm about 15 hrs in and know i am approaching the end which is the worst part about this expansion because i don't want it to end. Great stuff!!!

I Want more.

Rats! Foiled again! I suspect some medling kids are involved…

I was poking through some walk-through guides to see if I could find all the parts of the Archmage armor. According to them, they are all located in Stone's flying fortress. Not! The fortress description is all wrong. I cleared the whole thing and found only one piece of the ten piece set, and it wasn't where they said it was. Plus I found a few pieces outside in normal adventuring. Looks like the remastered Ego Draconis randomized the locations of those things.

Unfortunately, I think the chances of me finding all ten parts via random number generator are pretty slim.

If i recall, each flying fortress had a complete set of the boss named armor set and yes all items were in set locations unaffected by the random items generator. If they are not anymore than i would think it is a bug in the new release. The item flags were removed in the update and someone forgot to replace them. Interested to hear what Larian says about this.

Ther is some new guides to armor sets on the Larian forums. Sems they moved some of the armor sets around in DKS.

Then skip directly to the add-on in DKS. All skills are opened during char gen. Then they're closed again and you have to level up in the normal way. IMHO FoV is even better than D2:ED, although it'S much more compact.

Sure anyway from few reading it seems Larian want make evolute D2:ED to KSD, so it's pointless keep for future replay a separate version not maintained. Also each time I could reuse a character through an addon or followup I end using a new character for the change or to try one of the new features.

Also the problem or reusing the character is often it starts too strong and create a new one reset the balance.

I went ahead and purchased DKS even though I own D2. I figure I'll just start over since I have that disease anyway and it's been several months since I played with that character. I really disliked the dragon parts of the original game. Has this been tweaked in any way? I'm not a good twitch player at all. Is there a god mode for playing through the dragon parts? I know I suck and don't really need to be reminded :D

"Also the problem or reusing the character is often it starts too strong and create a new one reset the balance. "

And thus the horrible plague of amnesia that strikes down roughly a third of all returning RPG characters. Most of the rest fall prey to the couch potatoe syndrom. ;)

Crpgnut - I haven't played the original so I can't say for sure, but I found the dragon parts to be mighty easy. Get yourself far away from the attackers and simply weave back and forth, tossing out a fireball whenever it recharges. There are a few towers that shoot guided fireballs at you or instant-hit lightning bolts so try to target those first. If you get hurt much, simply fly out of range and cast your heal spell.

I'm in the final hall of Stone's flying fortress and getting clobbered badly. I think I'll have to respec entirely. I sort of have a character who knows a lot of skills but is a master at none of them.

Is that possible? Or are you talking about starting over?

It's possible in the last half of the game. You have to cough up 5000 for it, though.

Mad - yeah, you definitely need to respec. This is the kind of game where it's best to be master of a few skills. I did magic missiles, magic blast, charm, and lockpick. I think destruction got a point and fireball got a couple of points. Also, did you get your skills up past 10 by paying your skill trainer?

I just uploaded a quick video of some high level fighting - though the dang autosave kicked in at a weird time.

Say… this on sale anywhere currently? I knew I should have looked into this title when I saw the Steam sale :(

Just wanted to jump in and remark on that that Stone is - once again - a forum member's name. ;)

Larian has a long-standing tradition of including forummember names. ;)

And there are several of them, some kind of disguised (one as a password). ;)

I'd say that I have reach the second part and well now I regret not have used DKS to play, if in DKS the difficulty rising isn't as mad. :-/

I was level 13 at end of first part, had made almost everything, but also haven't optimized my character and had about 20k unused that I could use a the "wish hole" to get better equipment. But well the voice sort of guide me to monsters 22/23, oops ok let say it was a warning and not a guiding, but then I get series of tedious fights with monsters 5/7 level higher, in area not allowing much maneuvering.

Well with pain I'm now level 17 and cleaned a bit the shores but I get tired, and wonder why this brutal increase of difficulty. I should try spend my 20k for better stuff at the wish stuff, but I'm not sure. It's a huge disappointment the first part was so great, too bad.

The problem from first part to second part isn't the difficulty but the sudden increase of difficulty, they get drunk when they end do such thing!

Ooops in fact I was searching the temple at a totally wrong place. When I finally realized my error my character was invincible for those area so I took back an old save before I started explore too soon the wrong place.

The price of having freedom, sometimes it makes you do stuff you aren't supposed to do and end with a too strong character at least for some time.

Well, at least the temple is quite fun this sweeten a little all the wrong errand. :)

Yes at this point I have to agree with you.

Until the final area of Stone's Flying Fortress, the game was challenging, but I could eventually fight my way through the hordes by luring a few out, killing them, healing up and rinse/repeat. But in the final area of Stone's flying fortress I'm literally getting killed in 2 to 3 hits… a sudden and massive increase in damage.

If you wouldn't mind, could you tell me how many points you put into the skills you mentioned? Just to get an idea of how invested you were with your core skills? Thanks.

I was aware that you CAN do this but I haven't done it yet… as the need to do so only presented itself now with my butt being handed to me in 1/10th of a second in the final area of Stone's Flying Fortress.