Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Meh at least for the original it only took like 30mins to farm whatever you wanted just using godsbane in front of the right chest and doing that for the multiple chests.

Anyway just picked this up on the PSN, god does it take forever to install games on this shit, but now at least I have faster loadings and less clipping so that's cool. Started exploring, really love the place, so many hidden platforms and shit, rewards exploring a lot. Found a bunch of shit too, including a dagger that's better than Heaven's Key(it is fire, has a -mdef proc and does as much damage as 3star than Heaven's Key dragon forged, but too lazy to get it dragon forged). So far difficulty seems alright for me, I seem to have found a decent point. I'm lvl 200 but I only have 1 main pawn(which also does like no dmg, mage and she spends most of her time casting heals or looting stuff), didn't take bloodlust or obviously autonomy(even with the nerfs it'd be a big boost), I made my char as an hybrid so I have equal str/magic instead of min max values, I'm not using super powerful armor and instead using stuff I like and it's on hard mode, so overall it's fairly balanced, I killed some shit quickly but some others take quite a while and need to play it smart.

I just wish the map was linked together so I could check stuff out. Also found very interesting the room near the start with all the locked doors, have to come back and check the various rooms once you get keys, I guess some of the cool gear is from these chests.

Sean_sl said:

I got like 3 different bows that I have absolutely no use for out of them and some garbage shit. Also, unlike the rest of the expansion area, they do not seem to ever reset.

Click to expand...

Could be they don't reset yeah don't know, only opened 2 so far, forgot what I got first and second I got lvl 2 armor thingie so nothing really good. Noticed you can basically get all the everfall loot in random shit wooden chests everywhere, pretty funny.

Mostly the interesting thing for loot are the cursed shit, lots of new stuff there. I do get shitty low level gear too but got a lot of pretty high end armor and what not, too bad I don't really care about armor. I also got a bunch of new augments, really worthless stuff but nice they added some stuff. I got like longer lantern, faster reload on ballistas(wtf), can't get shaken off mobs and faster mining/harvesting. I also found an elite lantern(bigger light radius, longer duration) and a light pickaxe(it's like 0.09weight or some shit which is awesome).

Other than that found interesting that while they reuse the places over and over, it still doesn't feel repetitive because of the different perspective(come from a different point) and different light/objects in the rooms. I wish the Everfall had been like that, it was really a terrible place to farm with the small rooms and having to run back out and drop into another level and shit instead of just being able to run around. I hope for Dragon's Dogma 2, they use the Bitterblack setup for their endgame area.

No idea about DLC, it should be in the bank usually, maybe only once you reach gran soren don't know never bought anything.

Bandit groups often have higher level bandits mixed in as a "boss" type mob, they hit a lot harder and have more armor and health. There's many different types of bandits and they don't all have the same power level.

As for pawns you don't need pawns higher level than you, you get RC from quests and from people renting your main pawn and also from drops sometimes(or often in bitterblack isle). If you friend people you can rent their pawns for free regardless of the level difference but you're going to trivialize the early content which isn't necessarily a great idea.

X X E X X_sl said:

Magic Archer looks like what i want to roll as, but the interwebs say i need to max mage/sorce first. Any thoughts?

Click to expand...

Yes and no. Technically the stat growth for sorc is a lot better. Don't do mage at all other than unlocking augments(but you shouldn't level when doing that). However the stats growth has fairly little impact eventually so it's not really a big deal. Once you get to the end of the main game, you can farm the Ur Dragon offline, killing it as a sorcerer is actually the easiest and fastest way, so it's very easy to grind a bunch of levels at that point to get some good stats then go back to MA if you plan on doing bitterblack isle. You get like 2-3levels a kill for the Ur Dragon and you can kill it and reset in about 5mins. Goes even faster if you equip a ranger pawn with a Bezel Crown(used to give 5x xp but if you have Dark Arisen it only gives 2x since it was nerfed however since autonomy and bloodlust were both nerfed too, you definitely want to use pawns for it with Dark Arisen installed). So you can grind until you get bored of it and even out your stats decently.

The staff stuff sucks for MA, if you want to do caster stuff you need to play Sorc or Mage, MA and MK are terrible staff users. I had one in my inventory for bitterblack isle though because you can use the glide jump from the staff to reach certain places you can't otherwise.

For armor I used random crap until I got to endgame, didn't really bother upgrading anything or finding high lvl armor early since it doesn't really matter. Once you get to endgame you just farm whatever you want to equip and it's fine. I personally used bikini armor so I didn't care too much about the stats, helm was Dragonband or something and before that Laurel Circlet, Nebula Cape(good stats), Iron Chestplate(low lvl chest clothing that's basically metal bikini top), no chest armor, Silk Lingerie, Dark High-Knee Boots. The total stats of this set are fairly terrible but it really doesn't fucking matter much, you either have super high def with heavy plate shit as a MK/Fighter/Warrior, or you're squishy regardless of what you wear. Only thing that can kinda matter is resistance but if you're a MA that's also completely worthless as you can use Greater Warding Arrow which cures everything and gives you immunity to everything for like 2mins too.

The vendors in Gran Soren upgrade their inventory as you progress the main story though. Also at some point they will have quests for Idols, and if you have the golden idol(which if you haven't read a walkthrough is very unlikely) you can access basically everything they sell about half way through the game. The 2main vendors are the blacksmith guy obviously and Madeleine who's in some shop in the crappy part of the town but only if you've done a quest, otherwise she's in the inn. There's a few other vendors in the game but none of them really sell anything worthwhile in terms of equipement, besides maybe the Greatwall vendor but meh.

Hmm "under shadowforge", you mean shadowfort? And under you mean south? Cause under shadowfort is a cyclops, and an hydra during post game, and not sure where you mean otherwise. There is a drake just south of the entrance though so probably what you mean, it kinda depends on your team and shit, but generally it's a really tough fight until lategame. If you can grab them from under and position correctly however they can't knock you away and you can spam hundred kisses on the heart, generally dies in seconds if you do that, just have some mushrooms to keep your stamina going. With a sword you'll have to wait until you get Gouge, you might have it already.

X X E X X_sl said:

Yeah sorry for the bad description. I meant south, and I guess I will try fucking with him a bit if I can keep pawns from being merc'd.

Click to expand...

Every drake, dragon, wyvern and such have a roar attack that instantly kills all pawns, that's part of the mechanics. They also almost all have a mechanic to take control of your pawns(like they grab them then do some incantation shit in latin and if you don't stagger them before they're done your pawn is converted as an enemy). That drakes isn't necessarily meant to be fought early on, however you can definitely kill it at like lvl 20 or so if you're loaded on consumables. Do note there's a camp like east of the shadowfort entrance(keep following the wall then it goes south a bit and you'll reach it) where you can sleep to heal up to full in preparation, also has a vendor with not much but eh. Otherwise just skip it, you'll fight a ton of dragons eventually anyway, as the name of the game implies ^^.