I know, I know, everyone's busy in Interstellar Shonk Simulator, but for those of us with a less sci-fi bent in our RPGs…
I'm really not very far in, but despite spending the best part of three hours last night getting my ass sequentially kicked by a giant spider, a hag, and two different groups of goblins, I'm enjoying myself!
The main issue at the moment, I think, is my party makeup - I suddenly realised that I don't have a tank, just a lot of fairly squishy DPS (ranger, warlock, wizard) and a healer (who has Healing Word prepared, but not Cure Wounds). So I guess I'll have to drag Lae'zel back out with me (ugh…) until I hopefully find someone I can tolerate.
Last night, I decided to abandon the goblins to their own devices (after subtly killing one of their leaders and stuffing the corpse in my backpack to avoid discovery) and wandered into an owlbear cave instead. Dumped the goblin corpse there - nobody will suspect a thing!
After a while, I found some gnolls and killed them, then accidentally burned my whole party to death while trying to pick a lock in a flaming building because I mistakenly thought it paused time during dice rolls. 🙃
On the plus side, I've recruited a flaming huge - she's literally on fire - tiefling barbarian lady to my party, so I no longer have to put up with Lae'zel for tanking duties. Result!
Lae’zel is very annoying, yes. She’s in my party at the moment, because she demanded it when I saved her, and it seemed relevant for the story, so I dismissed one of the others. Realistically though, I think I actually just managed to somehow miss where you pick her up for a surprisingly long while, and I can’t imagine her inclusion would’ve made a great deal of difference thus far, so I might evict her for a bit soon.
I’m still very much feeling my way with this, but I’m starting to get (some of) it, I think. Finally found the options to rest, having been confused at first as to why I couldn’t do certain actions/spells anymore. Also managed to do a very professional assault on a goblin cave, after splitting my party up to sneak in separately (even after one of my party was engaged in combat), which felt revelatory after some of my earlier fumbling.
Of course, on the other hand, I do keep sending new party members to some “camp” that I’m not actually familiar with, which seems quite odd. Why are all these people perfectly happy to be sent to what seems at present to be a purely hypothetical camp? Or why is it that they know where my camp is but I don’t?
Noobish tomfoolery notwithstanding, I really, really like this. Hopefully I’ll manage to put some real time into it soon. And work out what the hell I'm doing, of course.
I like that you can camp basically anywhere that's not a combat encounter. I replaced Lae'zel with Spoiler - click to showKarlach and am much happier for it. I'm also testing out Wyll in place of Gale, but I suspect I'll switch back when I get bored of Eldritch Blast.
Wyll: Spoiler - click to showI convinced him to accept Karlach, and his patron turned up, hurled him through the Hells, and now he's also a tiefling. So that's fun! No downsides as yet; his patron seemed to care remarkably little about him not killing Karlach. I do have to go rescue Wyll's dad shortly, though, so it might affect the reunion slightly…
Goblins: Spoiler - click to showI freed the goblin captive (Skazz? Something like that) from the druid grove, and snuck her out the back way. She led me to the camp and vouched for me, so I was able to basically wander about the place freely. I managed to kill two of the Goblins' three leaders without raising the alarm, then pretended I'm going to help the third (the drow lady) wipe out the grove, but I've gone ahead and warned them, so next thing is to help try and repel the attack.
I've hit level 4 now, so once I'm past my current predicament, I might go back better-prepared and see if I can put an end to the hag that did me in before…
If, for example, I wanted to create a bard and play it for the lols, would I be able to progress through the game? Or would I get stuck on combat encounters?
You might struggle in places, depending on the difficulty you pick, but you have a whole party of characters, so I imagine you'd not be fully stuck unless you also specced everyone into lol-inflected builds.
Out of combat, bard would be a good call - you can't move for Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidation dialogue options in this thing.
This evening's progress: Spoiler - click to showPut off defending the druid grove in favour of going back and wiping out as many goblins as I could, on the off-chance it'll improve my odds in that fight. Then got distracted killing a hag and a whole lot of gnolls. Giant spider boss is next, then I'll defend the grove, honest.
I've also been very forwardly propositioned by two party members - neither of which was the romance option I'm going for, who remains stubbornly un-wooed.
Out of combat, bard would be a good call - you can't move for Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidation dialogue options in this thing.
I play almost everything as either a tanky or rogueish character, and second playthrough of this is very likely to be the latter, so that I have more dialogue choices. I have been quite lucky with my rolls on dialogue-related stuff anyway so far though.
I’m finding the potential outcome variance within this somewhat surprising at the moment - two characters I expected to be allies (if not actual party members) I ended up fighting and killing purely due to a dialogue choice, another potential party member I left to rot for role-playing reasons. Then I finally went to my mystery camp only for one of my party members to try and make a snack out of me, so now I’m curious as to that all plays out if you actually play as them…
I can’t wait to finish work and get back to this. Really, really enjoying myself.
I don't currently have a rogue in the party, which I think I'm suffering for; I think after I hit 5 with my ranger (and unlock extra attack), I might dip into Rogue for a few levels. Sneak attack is great, but expertise on a couple of skills would be very helpful.
Given the option of two routes to the next… zone?, I opted for Spoiler - click to showthe Underdark, in large part because I'd found references to some Selûne/Shar stuff down there, and Shadowheart is bae, so that was kind of a no-brainer.Spoiler - click to showIt's huge! I've dealt with a group of duergar on behalf of a village of myconids, fought a bulette, and stumbled into a run that's full of laser turrets?? I've sailed across the underground lake view, and have just found the Adamantine Forge (and beat the boss on attempt #3), so now Shadowheart is wearing some shiny new mithral scale mail.
I've settled into a standard group, I think - my Ranger (soon to multiclass into Rogue), Karlach as tank, Gale for magic pew pew, and Shadowheart as healer (because Christ knows she can't hit anything for shit…).
Stupid question, but this is out on PS5 right now, right? My son wants it for Christmas, but absolutely nowhere appears to have it in stock… unless it's digital only? That seems a bit mad for a game like that. Any ideas?
God this is good, isn't it? It's one of those games that's going to make other games feel silly. So much freedom. Such great acting. The combat is slightly less chaotic than Divinity 2; the lack of elemental stuff takes away a little of the fun but makes everything so much more readable. On balance it's a good trade-off.
It's one of those rare games that I switch subtitles off, and don't quickly read the dialogue, skipping through line by line. The VO is just so enjoyable. Evenings can melt away just chatting to people about dark wizards and horny ogres.
