Okay. Got a party of six now.

I was exploring off the road and managed to not fully reveal said road. On my way back, I found I missed a certain healy type cast member. I do like how my off-road killing sprees clear the area out pretty much FOREVER...but I keep missing the bones being thrown to me by wandering around too much.

Gandalf's "Stay off the road!" message...eff him.

Let's just say my party is so much fun now. It feels familiar, but the classes are different enough to feel unconventional (I know, paradox). I have a date with the inhabitant of a certain cave.

I had to look up what "Cheevos" was... I feel ashamed.

Yeah, my party layout is not ideal at the moment.

I need to get my wizard some root or slow spells. By the time he casts an offensive spell, the enemies are already on me and my party takes all kinds of friendly fire.

I should check and see if my rogue and fighter can use bows or crossbows. I'm not sure how the weapon abilities/penalties work...or if they even exist. I have just been using the default weapons.

Loving the game so far. I made a human rogue.

I'm playing on Normal difficulty. I'm getting through okay so far, but man, after every fight not against spiders or wolves I have so many injuries.

Account of an early encounter:

I was exploring and found a cave. Sneak in, holy shit a bear. Nom nom dead. Huh. Tried several more times with the same result. I move on and find a guy saying a bear killed his friend up in a cave...for the love of god stay away from it or you'll meet the same end! Tell me about it, dude.

Now, I'm highly paranoid about exploring. It seems a few rooms into a dungeon there's a group of mobs that will just own me. So I wonder if I'm supposed to come back later or what? Once I beat that encounter, I'll round the corner and find a completely new enemy that I can't even dent. I hired a mercenary from a tavern and turned him into a shitty level 1 fighter. Definitely helps my squishy party of two...though he's pretty weak compared to my level 3 party.

Also, my rogue loses stealth once the other party members engage. Is this right? I swear one time I lured a mob just past a doorway and then had my rogue jump out and stab while still stealthed, but I haven't been able to recreate that scenario.

I can't wait to get home from work and tear into this!

Sounds like fun! Hopefully, I'll get some time this weekend to try it out.

Redmask wrote on Mar 24, 2015, 19:28:

Cutter wrote on Mar 24, 2015, 17:41:
Wtf? I bought the deluxe edition and I see now that it didn't include any forthcoming DLC. Fucking EA, man.

You purchased something without having any idea of what it was? I try not to defend EA as a matter of course but this seems like a bad idea.

Hahaha! Cutter got trolled by EA. No wonder he's always pissed off!

I'll just say that the Olsen sister is hot. The movie looks fun, pretty much the same spirit as the first one. Also got to see an extended trailer for the new Star Wars. Weird seeing Han Solo and Princess Leia on screen again...

My exploration didn't end up going that far. I was having fun with the debug camera taking pretty pictures. I go back to my cockpit, and I'm on fire at 75% hull. Ouch, didn't realize I was that close to a star.

The Auto repair thingies seem useful now, as heat damage starts breaking your subsystems now.

I just beat this game the other night. Was fun, but I'm a bit disappointed that it's essentially a continuation of DA2's DLC mission. After you beat the "big bad" you get a few moments of other characters wrapping up their arcs...until a weird "twist"...that makes absolutely no sense.

I'll be damned if I'm not driven to roll a new character and play again, though.

I took some time off as well. I'm more or less back now. I just set off on an exploration run since no one is around anymore.

And, yay..the Avengers 2 is done! Shawarma for everyone! What's this? No time off, go work on Warcraft? Dammit.

I loaded this game up. They added nothing new. Now, there are little platforms you can "dock" at. Um...no explanation how to request docking clearance (though I guess it's not necessary since it is literally a platform in space with nowhere to go).

The flight mechanics that CR talks so highly about are so ridiculously non-existent. When docking...your ship stops on a dime, no inertia. It feels more like frogger than a real space sim. You just slam your ship onto the platform, then it says "landing gear deployed" followed by "docking permission granted". Elite would have shot my ass off five times by then.

Nice to know there's tons of "underlying hooks" that the game will eventually use. Spectral Meat's right...they keep releasing the same tech demo over and over...with the $300 ship/carrot stick. Jesus, people.

And, yeah, either is good. I like to play Assassin's Creed type games with a gamepad. Third person fighting games (also Batman) 'feel' (to me) better that way. If it's first person, your gamepad can take a long walk off a short pier.

The Witcher is an interesting pickle... I love me some mouse look, and my favorite moments of the game are just walking around looking at stuff.

Krovven wrote on Mar 21, 2015, 16:43:

Vall Forran wrote on Mar 21, 2015, 14:48:
It actually never crossed my mind to try the Witcher with a controller... Maybe I would've died a lot less in combat.

You can't use a controller for The Witcher, but you can for The Witcher 2.

Sorry, I thought Witcher 2 would be implied.

DangerDog wrote on Mar 21, 2015, 15:04:

Doors are now opened automatically

Doesn't that sort of kill stealth gameplay?

I don't think so. The doors referred to are the "loading" zones that the cities had moving from the street to, say, inside a tavern. The stealth missions would have the entire level loaded to prevent that sort of pausing. At least one would hope...

It actually never crossed my mind to try the Witcher with a controller... Maybe I would've died a lot less in combat.

Yay! Can't wait to play it!

I'm free all day, if anyone wants to mess around and form a wing.

Sorry to be posting too much, but the Vulture is awesome. It's a Viper on CRACK. Same power issues though, so beware. I'm still trying to work out a scheme where I can kill warrant scan.

Edit:

And, from what I've found out... the new shield boosters are meant for trading ships that have lowered their main shield class for extra cargo space. They are different from shield cells...they add an extra percentage to your shield strength. Flat out. Nothing you need to mess with once it's installed.

I tried putting one on my Vulture, and the power requirement went so far above my class A power plant I laughed out loud. So...if you're in a fighter, you probably can't use them. A multi-role ship, however, probably can. It's nice if you buy a part that doesn't work, you can trade it back with no money loss.

This comment was edited on Mar 13, 2015, 03:06.

Took me two hours, but I finally found a place in empire space that sells the Vulture. Gliese 58. Woot.

Also, to confirm. Fuel is dirt cheap. My highest refuel cost? 348c. I also was feeding my guinea pigs and almost flew into a star. I took 1% hull damage on my 'conda. Repair cost? $1k. Yeah. This game just got real.

I don't think anyone's gonna be quite so shy anymore...

Edit:
Before 1.2, 1% hull damage on an Anaconda costed me about $100k. Hunting missions were stupid because the reward was $150k, but my ship damage would usually be more than that.

One thing that hasn't changed is the wear and tear damage. It's strange. You can only see it if you go to the repair screen in the station menu. Clicking "repair all" in the main menu doesn't address this. I'm not exactly sure what this does. I know if you fix it, it'll make your ship all shiny new with fresh paint. It's also prohibitively expensive...my wear and tear is slight, but already would cost $250k. I haven't seen an issue yet, but I have read that wear and tear can make your hull 30% less effective.

This comment was edited on Mar 13, 2015, 02:57.

SpectralMeat wrote on Mar 12, 2015, 14:43:

Vall Forran wrote on Mar 12, 2015, 14:25:
Crazy! They released a new patch that cut the prices of the Vulture (now $5m) and Fer de Lance (now $52m). They also increased the money earned from bounty hunting and selling exploration data.

Good news!
I somehow misunderstood your previous post about the fuel charges.
Anyways, I am reading this book right now and it seems most bounty hunters are flying the Lance or Viper.
According to the fictional World of the book that is

Is the book any good? I am reluctant to read fan fiction. Or developer fiction. The mass effect games were awesome, but the books were terrible.