First Impressions

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Ooh! Really? Since I keep starting over, I've probably never been above 3rd level. I haven't ever left the keep. I'm not even sure I've found the right cave that turns out to be the exit. Maybe….I've found one with fire bugs that looks pretty big but no idea.

That's just one of 4 (yes, four!) different ways to enter the fort.
And from fort there are 3 possible exits which will finish the main story part (sewer hole to swamp, lower the bridge or through harbor).

Firebugs are totally crazy, let Ifan talk to them.
Even if you plan to wipe them out, first befriend the queen, you just need to read her letter.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
BTW, I lost the fight in the arena, even on explorer. I only had 3 guys vs their 4 or 5 dudes and no healer. It was me (Fane), Prince, and Beast. Definitely need to take Lohse for some heals. I kept both Prince and Beast as warriors. Fane is an archer with Earth. Lohse will need to be a cleric and I'll probably swap Beast out for Mohammed or whatever the Middle-Eastern sounding dude's name is….

Okay, Fane won the battle, but Beast and Prince bought the farm and I'm too cheap to actually USE a resurrection spell till I have thousands of gold shinies.

You need a party of 4 for arena. Any 4, just make them 4, not 3. It's superhard as you cannot prepare the area setup.
Don't resurrect anyone, just win and postbattle they'll all be automatically resurrected. Starting point should be you moving everyone on the platform nearby - at least dog won't be able to climb.

A big help is if you manage to get gloves of teleportation from crocs prior to this fight. Wait for their knight to come close then toss him away on an oil barrel. By the time he gets back to you, you'll already wipe the rest of them.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
@joxer Do combats get longer as you play further? Right now I'm facing parties smaller or of similar size as my party. What killed DOS1 for me, was battles with 10 or 15 monsters on the enemy team. I got to watch 20 minutes of the other guy playing the game while I watched….uninstall.

Question 2: When do I get my mask back? Before Chapter 1 ends? You might put that answer in spoilers….

Some fights are long (bosses). Others aren't.
The mask you'll get back, yes you will - you'll stumble upon the witch who stole it.

Once I fought alligators that were hitting me with AoE magic attacks, I think I'm done with this one. It seems like every battle is pure madness. AoE's flying, every enemy has multiple magic/ranged attacks and it just feels like too much to me. And the starting areas have too many people to talk to and it's not very interesting to do so.

Ah well. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for this kind of game right now.

Originally Posted by joxer
What most quests? Only two are problematic. What lizard? You can keep all companions whatever you do. Sure you don't get every journal entry but that's normal as you skipped something, it doesn't break anything.

Break the rule!
It's so fun it's worth it.

While I'd love if they fixed those two quests that don't close properly in the journal (you still receive the reward!), I refuse to wait for whatever EE.

The following five quests broke for me in chapter 1:

Originally Posted by crpgnut
@joxer Do combats get longer as you play further? Right now I'm facing parties smaller or of similar size as my party. What killed DOS1 for me, was battles with 10 or 15 monsters on the enemy team. I got to watch 20 minutes of the other guy playing the game while I watched….uninstall.

Yeah, the fights really do drag on later in the game. Has started to annoy me a bit now, though not as much as Torment: ToN did.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Question 2: When do I get my mask back? Before Chapter 1 ends? You might put that answer in spoilers….

Originally Posted by Maylander
The following five quests broke for me in chapter 1:

Spoiler

Call to Arms: Never completed, until the chapter completed, and then it claimed I left without the help of the seekers. The previous entry, however, confirms that I had the help of the seekers (which I did).
The Imprisoned Elf: Never completed, until the chapter completed, and then it claimed I abandoned Amyro to his fate. I did not. I rescued him, as the previous entry confirms.
The Purged Dragon: Same deal as above. Current entry claims I didn't save him. Previous entry confirms that I did, in fact, save him.
The Arena of Fort Joy: Same deal. Last entry claims I left without exploring. Second last entry confirms that I'm the champion.
The Burning Pigs: Same deal yet again. Claims I left without helping the pigs, but also confirms that I helped the pigs and even talked my way out of a fight with Scapor.

Getting fixed in a patch later this week (not the one today which was for direct connect, some crashes and fixing the always wet issue).

Also:

@azarhal Thanks for the update. With what you and Maylander posted I'm pretty tempted to table this game for a couple months or till the EE. It's still fun, but broken. I know very few people will blame Larian, but with 40 employees and a team of contractors too, you'd think that QA should have been a big part of the Early Access process. When chapter 1 quests are still broken, you just wonder how many are broken later on; all of them?

Originally Posted by Maylander
…Never completed, until the chapter completed…

5?! Dunno how's that possible.

I thought that text line "without Seekers" is not a bug - I did the harbor without any kind of their help then just told them the coast is clear.

Mild spoilers (hints really) for the two I completed and you didn't:
- Muppets' Pigs in space, after helping cursed ones, you need to find the last one between abandoned camp and dragon beach, talk to it, send to SyFy show Sanctuary, then meet it in the sanctuary and suggest it to wash.
- Regarding certain blue chained questgiver, you're supposed to give the wand to him:


Amyro and Arena are bugged for everyone. Win arena, pick the prize, go lollygagging, switch partymembers with new ones, return to arena, talk to the questgiver there and you'll get the reward again (items, not XP). Same goes for silly Amyro quest, it doesn't complete but you get the reward twice by shuffling the party.

@crpgnut The quests aren't broken as in you can't finish them (minus Arena), you actually get final quest rewards if you finished them as they are supposed to be finished (even Arena actually), it's the journal update after finishing act 1 that isn't correct.

Originally Posted by wolfing
Ok I just had to restart the game on classic difficulty. Tactician is way too hard or I'm just too stupid, fighting some level 3 dudes at level 3 and they kicked my arse easier than most other games' "boss fights"…

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For what it's worth, I also restarted on Classic difficulty. The method by which they increased difficulty in this sequel seems to revolve around stat bloat and having you pump initiative so you can repeat the same crowd control attacks every single fight (and hoping they land through the bloated stats). There's a lot of complaints over on the official forums as well.

Originally Posted by Drithius
For what it's worth, I also restarted on Classic difficulty. The method by which they increased difficulty in this sequel seems to revolve around stat bloat and having you pump initiative so you can repeat the same crowd control attacks every single fight (and hoping they land through the bloated stats). There's a lot of complaints over on the official forums as well.

Tacticians in DOS1 increased stats of enemies too. Also, you can't CC anything in DOS2 until you break physical/magical armor (depending on CC), unlike DOS1. Either you are reading something wrong or the person complaining in that threads has a serious cases of L2P for DOS2.

Oh and pumping initiative on more then one character is actually pointless in DOS2 .

I really get the feeling that many people complaining DOS2 is hard have cases of L2P and people almost made fun of me because I wanted a proper manual and was restarting the boat over and over again to try stuff.

I haven';t restarted but I still have 2 more things to do in act 1. One should be easy but that fight with alex can be hard. I did have a heck of a time getting past the void ambush. I had no save near it and it was a royal pain on tactian mode (also I think he is overkill and should be toned down because he can disable or kill just about any character any single turn - at least on tactian mode when you are level 6). Not going to tell you how i got past him but it took a while to figure something out.

Remind me who's Alex. I can't remember a bugger named like that giving me a hard time.

You mean Alexandar? The fight that's supposed to be the final one on the island? And you engaged him while level 6? My condolences.
I wouldn't dare that even on my normal playthrough, man!
I had no hard time on level 8, entered just to study the terrain then loaded and did it in just one attempt.

Dunno if that would work on harder difficulty where AI is supposed to be even smarter. Works on normal.

Oh, and don't forget to deal with their other bowman that escaped. Recheck the Abandoned Camp to see on the minimap where he is. Beware of traps. Buy or steal his book during the chatty - he won't drop it if dead!
This game is all about details.

Dang, why are the animal stuff so sad in this game. The bear cub, Buddy and now the chickens. *sniff* I suspect the frog isn't going to be better off now.

Also, I just had a creepy encounter that reminded me of The Secret World (probably not intentional though).

edit: lol at the cows. I keep seeing people on reddit saying that the animals have the best voice over. I can see why.

Ok, replayed the Arena fight at level 2 with just Fane and won. How? Well, first Fane is an archer and I'm playing on explorer. 2nd this battle has an enemy that can't reach you if you climb. 3rd, there is only one tank. 4th, the mages are leery of climbing up into bow range. So, tank, healer, mage, and anti-climber in that order. I almost died three times in the battle and the treasure was nearly worthless even for a level 2 dude.

Still, I felt good taking out 4 level 4 dudes with my one level 2 dude!

I think I will finally work through and finish Divine Divinity or continue playing Vaporum. I'm just not feeling this game. Maybe I'm getting old but the game is just too much and I'm not really having fun playing it. It feels soulless or something, overly complex and the camera, controls and linear exploration in a starting zone that I don't find interesting all ruins what could be a good game. Maybe someone will do an amazing mod campaign in the engine. I hope so.

Originally Posted by azarhal
Tacticians in DOS1 increased stats of enemies too. Also, you can't CC anything in DOS2 until you break physical/magical armor (depending on CC), unlike DOS1. Either you are reading something wrong or the person complaining in that threads has a serious cases of L2P.

I honestly don't think so, a lot of complaints are from players who've spent alot of time with the game. And a 50% increase is alot more than the 20% in DOS : EE Tactician. In my personal case however you're probably right, I need to L2P. But I wouldn't wrote the complaints off as irrelevant, since there's alot of people who manages Tactician mode just fine. But is it more FUN?

L2P?

pibbur who is C

Originally Posted by azarhal
Getting fixed in a patch later this week (not the one today which was for direct connect, some crashes and fixing the always wet issue).

Also:

Spoiler

The Arena of Fort Joy: apparently the second step require co-op to resolve.
The Burning Pigs: Did you return Feder to human form? Only possible if you got the statue in the seeker camp to bless the water.

I blessed the water, but I never got any indication that I had to do help anyone named Feder. The log simply states I saved the pigs, huzzah, followed by having left them.

Originally Posted by joxer
5?! Dunno how's that possible.

I thought that text line "without Seekers" is not a bug - I did the harbor without any kind of their help then just told them the coast is clear.

Mild spoilers (hints really) for the two I completed and you didn't:
- Muppets' Pigs in space, after helping cursed ones, you need to find the last one between abandoned camp and dragon beach, talk to it, send to SyFy show Sanctuary, then meet it in the sanctuary and suggest it to wash.
- Regarding certain blue chained questgiver, you're supposed to give the wand to him:

Spoiler

https://s26.postimg.org/sbxyaacuh/pic.jpg

Amyro and Arena are bugged for everyone. Win arena, pick the prize, go lollygagging, switch partymembers with new ones, return to arena, talk to the questgiver there and you'll get the reward again (items, not XP). Same goes for silly Amyro quest, it doesn't complete but you get the reward twice by shuffling the party.

I did indeed give him the wand. My log says exactly the same as yours in that regard, but he never appeared and my log states I left him (instead of the appearing thing that yours does). Also, unlike you I actually had the help of the seekers against Alexander: Two of them, in fact, yet my log remains the same as yours.

Originally Posted by pibbur who
L2P?

pibbur who is C

Learn to play.

Tomas who hopes Pibbur is no longer confused.

Naw I'll be 8. I know i can kill him. I'm just saying he is pretty hard on tactian mode which you are not playing. Really you should play tactian mode if you are going to give advice on how to do fights because there is a big difference. I think the void critter is hte hardest fight in act 1. Was very lucky to get past him given the ambush I walked into and that he can one-shot each party member each round.

Originally Posted by joxer
Remind me who's Alex. I can't remember a bugger named like that giving me a hard time.

You mean Alexandar? The fight that's supposed to be the final one on the island? And you engaged him while level 6? My condolences.
I wouldn't dare that even on my normal playthrough, man!
I had no hard time on level 8, entered just to study the terrain then loaded and did it in just one attempt.

Spoiler

Dissipate your party on the right side and enter with just one party member through the right passage, not main doors, break the oil barrel there (slow) and pull back. xbow their xbowman who'll teleport on that oil, the knight will arrive fast, teleport is your friend so kick the knight on the plateau more right where he can't come near at all. Their sidemage will get stuck and will never come, all you now need to kill Alexandar, the pet and an assassin but voidworm will appear so just stop whatever you're doing and run up the mountain - shoot them and not the worm from the top of the mountain with wand/xbow.
Later just kill the teleported knight, then sidemage one by one.

Dunno if that would work on harder difficulty where AI is supposed to be even smarter. Works on normal.

Oh, and don't forget to deal with their other bowman that escaped. Recheck the Abandoned Camp to see on the minimap where he is. Beware of traps. Buy or steal his book during the chatty - he won't drop it if dead!
This game is all about details.

You have to meet the pig later and talk to him; then he will have a method to return to human form. I met him way later after removing the fire - actually he ended up near the dragon in this play.
-
The dragon quest hasn't closed for me either but he did return to human form.

Originally Posted by Maylander
I blessed the water, but I never got any indication that I had to do help anyone named Feder. The log simply states I saved the pigs, huzzah, followed by having left them.
--




I did indeed give him the wand. My log says exactly the same as yours in that regard, but he never appeared and my log states I left him (instead of the appearing thing that yours does). Also, unlike you I actually had the help of the seekers against Alexander: Two of them, in fact, yet my log remains the same as yours.