The "What should I know before I play this game for the first time?" Q&A!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The "What should I know before I play this game for the first time?" Q&A!

«‹›896 »

Gynovore: Jun 17, 2009; Forget your RoboCoX or your StickyCoX or your EvilCoX, MY CoX has Blinking Bewbs!

WHY IS THIS GAME DEAD?!

Cervixalot posted:

Picked up Fallout New Vegas and i've never played any of the Fallout games before. I checked the Wiki for tips on builds and weapons, but as far as general gameplay goes, any tips? Should i do the quests in each town I encounter, or will I unlock more stuff by heading straight to New Vegas then exploring at will?

New Vegas has almost no missables in the classic sense. Toward the end, going too far with a particular faction will piss off the others, so you can't do every single quest in one playthrough. Don't worry, it has loads of replay value.

General build tips: Strength, Intelligence and Endurance should be fairly high, Charisma low. If you're not sure what to tag, go with Guns, Repair and Speech. Survival skill is useless. Perks that deal with radiation, experience, healing, or that only give you dialog options suck, while Educated is a must-have. Other than that, just about any build will work.

When you leave Goodsprings, go south. If you venture too far from the road early on, you will be facefucked by monsters you have no chance of beating.

EDIT: also, not everyone will agree with me here, but I don't recommend the Trigger Discipline perk. The reduced fire rate hurts in the late game.

Gynovore fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Aug 23, 2011

# ? Aug 23, 2011 20:42

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 10, 2024 23:15

scamtank: Feb 24, 2011; my desire to just be a FUCKING IDIOT all day long is rapidly overtaking my ability to FUNCTION

i suspect that means i'm MENTALLY ILL

Gynovore posted:

Survival skill is useless.

I'll fight you on this. A high Survival gives you immensely healthy food recipes and increases the stat effects you get from food and booze at skill levels 50 and 100. Chow down a bighorner steak, a brahmin t-bone and wash it down with a beer and you can increase your strength from 4 to 10 instantly.

Having Survival replaces stimpacks on hardcore. I'd say Medicine, but you can't make Hydra until level 75 and (in my experience) cave fungus is a bitch to find.

# ? Aug 23, 2011 21:37

thebardyspoon: Jun 30, 2005

scamtank posted:

I'll fight you on this. A high Survival gives you immensely healthy food recipes and increases the stat effects you get from food and booze at skill levels 50 and 100. Chow down a bighorner steak, a brahmin t-bone and wash it down with a beer and you can increase your strength from 4 to 10 instantly.

Having Survival replaces stimpacks on hardcore. I'd say Medicine, but you can't make Hydra until level 75 and (in my experience) cave fungus is a bitch to find.

Yeah I agree with this guy, survival lets you make stuff that heals better than stimpacks, doubles or triples the stat boosts most items give you and with one of the DLCs also lets you craft healing poultices that fix broken limbs (and you can just pay a doctor to heal those or use a doctors bag until then). It's way better than medicine which affects like 4 items and gives access to a couple perks.

# ? Aug 23, 2011 21:43

Gynovore: Jun 17, 2009; Forget your RoboCoX or your StickyCoX or your EvilCoX, MY CoX has Blinking Bewbs!

WHY IS THIS GAME DEAD?!

scamtank posted:

I'll fight you on this. A high Survival gives you immensely healthy food recipes and increases the stat effects you get from food and booze at skill levels 50 and 100. Chow down a bighorner steak, a brahmin t-bone and wash it down with a beer and you can increase your strength from 4 to 10 instantly.

Having Survival replaces stimpacks on hardcore. I'd say Medicine, but you can't make Hydra until level 75 and (in my experience) cave fungus is a bitch to find.

YMMV, but I never felt a need to turn Bloatfly Meat into sliders. You will run across mountains of food during normal play, so healing yourself outside combat is a non-issue. As far as healing yourself in combat on Hardcore, I preferred to crank up Medicine to boost Stimpak usage, and use a Med-X or Slasher before a hard fight.

Even after a zillion playthoughs, the only items I ever crafted were Weapon Repair Kits, Stimpaks and Super Stimpaks, Slasher, and Turbo, none of which require Survival. (although I haven't hit the DLC yet). Bleak Venom looks rather nasty, but I was never a big fan of melee weapons.

Boosting Strength from 4 to 10 is sweet, but I couldn't imagine playing with only 4 Strength. One would have penalties with many guns, and not be able to carry much.

# ? Aug 23, 2011 23:42

Goofballs: Jun 2, 2011

The only reason I ever increased survival to 50 is its necessary for a quest in a tiny town area that I suspect most people miss their first time through the game and the quest wasn't even that interesting. I guess it came in handy in the Dead Money DLC but it wasn't exactly crucial.

Guns Stealth and Repair were all very useful. Science lets you skip a lot of bullshit through conversation as does speech so those are also very handy.

For the base game you can do totally fine with just guns. In the third dlc if you don't go prepared you might need some energy weapon skills. And in Dead Money I found using a powerfist very helpful for conserving ammo.

When you have your core skills down it can be useful to increase melee or unarmed just to have a fallback. But you don't have to.

On the otherhand survival could be great for immersion. On my first playthrough on hardcore an amazing moment was running down to this river because I was parched and just gulping in water. Possibly cooking your own food wherever you go lends something to the game.

quote:

So I've just started playing Vampire: Bloodlines, and I just installed the latest unofficial patch. It comes in two flavors, though, Basic (mostly bugfixes and restoring patched-out content, as I understand it), and Plus (rebalancing, a bunch of new stuff.)

I'm normally kind of a purist with regard to patches, but in this case I'm okay with installing the Plus patch if it makes the experience legitimately better. Does it? Or should I stick with the Basic version?

The base game is just fine. I remember on the penny arcade forums some people got seriously angry about a fan patch that adds content. They were of the opinion that weird vampire obsessed nerds should keep their weird vampire fantasies out of the vampire fantasy game. You might have a patch that adds in content that was removed because it caused poo poo to crash and with an upcoming release they just had to remove it. That patch was discussed in the steam thread but it would be a bitch to find. I hate to suggest going into it but you might want to check the vtm:b thread and ask which is the optimal patch.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 02:26

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

Goofballs posted:

I remember on the penny arcade forums some people got seriously angry about a fan patch that adds content. They were of the opinion that weird vampire obsessed nerds should keep their weird vampire fantasies out of the vampire fantasy game. You might have a patch that adds in content that was removed because it caused poo poo to crash and with an upcoming release they just had to remove it. That patch was discussed in the steam thread but it would be a bitch to find. I hate to suggest going into it but you might want to check the vtm:b thread and ask which is the optimal patch.

There was a whole big patch war a while back, and though the Wesp patch won (given that the guy who asked the question wasn't even aware any other patches existed), there was a huge spergy "the Wesp patch moved an NPC three inches to the right - a completely unncessary change" list floating around. I've done my second playthrough with the + patch and didn't see anything particularly weird or out of place.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 04:13

FelixMeOneMoreTime: May 11, 2010

Cervixalot posted:

Picked up Fallout New Vegas and i've never played any of the Fallout games before. I checked the Wiki for tips on builds and weapons, but as far as general gameplay goes, any tips? Should i do the quests in each town I encounter, or will I unlock more stuff by heading straight to New Vegas then exploring at will?

Are there any particular perks for having good faction with certain towns/cities that I can screw up?

I'm going to be controversial here and say that if you want to skip the moderately tedious second and third towns, do head north. I normally do that and head towards Vegas straight away on Primm Pass, keeping high up on the left most rockery to avoid the ridiculously high level monsters. If you manage to make it to the end of Primm Pass and carry on heading towards factories, you'll be around reasonably low level human and robot enemies so you won't get shafted straight away. Most importantly, you'll be right next to an NCR camp which provides a few sidequests and a way to get into Vegas for free if you use the NCR airport monorail in NCR uniform. It's better not to piss the NCR off in the early game, and don't piss the casinos off unless it's the solution to their own sidequests.

If you do want to randomly kill/do quests where you have to kill NCR or Legion, try and do as much as possible before visiting Lucky 38 casino in Vegas for the first time. After the first visit, an NCR/Legion NPC will give you a pardon for all your previous offences against the respective faction. You can probably court both Legion and NCR for a while after this, only doing quests where you're not killing rival factions after the pardon. When you reach a point where you've decided who to side with (you can side with others but you can also do NCR/Legion sidequests until the very last few decisions pretty much), then just go crazy and kill opposing factions freely.

If you do want to follow the suggested route (which I find to be boring but that's my opinion), you can get two overpowered companions early on. Repair the robot in Primm post office, and do the sniper's sidequest in Novac. You will then be able to kill pretty much anything around your level or slightly above with no real effort.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 07:38

Lets Fuck Bro: Apr 14, 2009

Speaking of New Vegas, what mods are recommended? I played it once before at release and didn't get too far, I'm planning on playing it again beefed up with some mods. There has to be some sort of recommended modpack by now.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 07:54

Mordaedil: Oct 25, 2007; Oh wow, cool. Good job.
So?; Grimey Drawer

scamtank posted:

I'll fight you on this. A high Survival gives you immensely healthy food recipes and increases the stat effects you get from food and booze at skill levels 50 and 100. Chow down a bighorner steak, a brahmin t-bone and wash it down with a beer and you can increase your strength from 4 to 10 instantly.

Having Survival replaces stimpacks on hardcore. I'd say Medicine, but you can't make Hydra until level 75 and (in my experience) cave fungus is a bitch to find.

While I agree that Survival is a pretty drat good skill that rewards itself, it doesn't lend itself fairly to players jumping in for the first time and to avoid crying over frustration, they should probably stay away from putting too much into survival until they get more comfortable with the game and know what it does and what they need it for.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 08:17

jhmaz: Oct 28, 2007

Just got a bunch of RPGs, anyone have any tips for Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, or Blue Dragon? Thanks in advance!

# ? Aug 24, 2011 12:06

GOTTA STAY FAI: Mar 24, 2005; ~no glitter in the gutter~
~no twilight galaxy~; College Slice

jhmaz posted:

Blue Dragon

I don't recall there being any missables, and the game isn't very difficult. Go into it expecting a light-hearted game that follows standard JRPG convention to the letter and you won't have any trouble. It's a fun (and quite lovely!) game put together by an all-star team of developers and artists. Enjoy!

edit:

Final Fantasy XII

Don't just slap the strongest weapons you have on your characters--experiment with all the weapon types. Some weapon types have (sometimes unexpected) benefits that others do not. That said, get the Brawler license and equip the item that raises bare-handed damage, then try out fighting unarmed by unequipping both hands (leaving a shield on negates the Brawler license's effect). It's worth doing just to see Balthier kick a T-Rex in the face.
Learn to use and love your gambits.
The Oil status effect works on more enemies than you think--set up a gambit that has your team cast Fire-based magic on enemies that are Oil-ed and try Oiling some punks. There is a handbomb and some oiling handbomb ammo you can acquire in the bazaar by selling fire crystals, bomb ashes, and books of orgain that is just perfect for this purpose.
Slow works on quite a few bosses/espers/marks. Casting it is immensely helpful in some upper-tier elite mark battles.
Did you know that the bestiary doesn't just have info about enemies that you've beaten? Clues to bazaar combinations can be found there, as well as lots of game lore!
If an enemy has Shell, Protect, Faith, Bravery, etc. status buffs on, cast Dispel. Set up some gambits for it, even.
Grinding for LP isn't terribly important once you get the licenses in the top half of the board. Don't worry about getting everybody all the weapon licenses right at the start--by the late mid-game, you'll have LP coming out of your ears. Buy the ones you need and leave the rest for later.
Casting spells requires a short charge time, but item use is nearly immediate. Stock up on curative items and set up status ailment remedy gambits that use them rather than wasting time and MP on Esuna.
In Wraithwall's tomb, you'll come across two enemies (one optional) that you will feel a pressing need to defeat quickly--turn up the combat speed for these fights. They won't advance any faster, but you'll be able to hit them more frequently.
Sometimes, you'll come across a merchant in a really odd place. These aberrant entrepreneurs are almost guaranteed to sell something you can't find anywhere else. For instance, there's a bekamy merchant in the Necrohol of Nabudis that sells a nifty spell if you can manage to find him.
A gambit for Charge if character MP is below ten percent works well. Syphon also works well to get MP back, and only costs two MP to cast. You can buy the spell from a merchant on a leisure craft.
Don't hoard those teleport stones--use them if you need to. Relatively early in the game, you'll be able to buy them regularly from a vendor (or two).
Did you know that you can use items/cast spells on reserve party members? This is helpful if you're getting your butt kicked and have put the KO'ed people in reserve. You don't need to drag their corpse out to bring them back!
Yes, that is John DiMaggio you're hearing (he's the voice of Gilgamesh, who you should steal from at every opportunity in order to get a unique set of armor)! Don't think you've seen the last of him when you finally take him down... you'll see him again if you decide to complete the fishing side-quest Also, the battle music for that portion is unique (and loving great).
Speaking of voice actors, John Lee (who you might remember as the voice of Trevor Goodchild in the Aeon Flux TV series) plays the role of Doctor Cid.
In the early stages of the game, The Feywood is a great place to go if you want to be slaughtered mercilessly. Seriously, stay the gently caress out of there.
Check your gambits and equipment regularly. You don't want to be walking around wearing inferior armor because you didn't notice that you got a rare drop while grinding ten levels ago.
This is contrary to popular opinion, but don't fret about the Zodiac Spear. Enjoy the game and don't be afraid to open chests for fear that you might not get it. It's not that great, anyway.
When buying equipment, only two stats are shown at a time. Yes, that new set of armor might raise defense by ten points, but what you can't see is that it might lower some other stat. If you're low on cash, you can always save, buy the armor, check its stats in your Equip menu, and if you aren't happy, just re-load.
The Pharos at Ridorana is a gigantic pain in the rear end. Don't start that section unless you have time to complete it (probably a few hours if you don't use a strategy guide) because the sparse save points are in lovely locations when you manage to find them. At one point, you'll have to temporarily "give up" an ability (attacking, casting spells, using items, or your minimap, if I recall correctly). Choose the Altar of Knowledge (giving up the minimap). You can still use your regular map by pressing Select.
Larsa literally cannot run out of potions, and uses them often. This is really, really helpful. Consider keeping him around for a while to help out with grinding and sidequests.
Make sure you have a ranged attacker in your party. Guns, crossbows, bows, and handbombs can all hit flying enemies with ease. The technick Telekinesis allows any given weapon to be able to damage flying enemies, but you don't get it for quite a while. Guns, however, are available from the start!
Don't pull your hair out in Giruvegan. There are maps online that explain it pretty well. Oh, and be ready for lots and lots of cheap-shot status ailments (Disease is a favorite of some of the jerks down there). Save often.
Sometimes, Montblanc is the petitioner, kupo.

GOTTA STAY FAI fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Aug 24, 2011

# ? Aug 24, 2011 13:29

ahobday: Apr 19, 2007

jhmaz posted:

Just got a bunch of RPGs, anyone have any tips for Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, or Blue Dragon? Thanks in advance!

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Tales_of_Vesperia

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Lost_Odyssey

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Star_Ocean:_The_Last_Hope

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Blue_Dragon

# ? Aug 24, 2011 13:55

SiKboy: Oct 28, 2007; Oh no!😱

FelixMeOneMoreTime posted:

I'm going to be controversial here and say that if you want to skip the moderately tedious second and third towns, do head north. I normally do that and head towards Vegas straight away on Primm Pass, keeping high up on the left most rockery to avoid the ridiculously high level monsters. If you manage to make it to the end of Primm Pass and carry on heading towards factories, you'll be around reasonably low level human and robot enemies so you won't get shafted straight away. Most importantly, you'll be right next to an NCR camp which provides a few sidequests and a way to get into Vegas for free if you use the NCR airport monorail in NCR uniform. It's better not to piss the NCR off in the early game, and don't piss the casinos off unless it's the solution to their own sidequests.

You CAN try to run north, but the first time someone plays the game you are seriously suggesting they should ignore the suggested route, skipping a full third of the towns in the game, (including the introductions of the major factions) and spend a frustrating half hour trying to stay out of reach of monsters that can 3-shot a level 20 character while simultainiously skirting invisible walls halfway up most of the cliffs?

Heading north is fine for a speed-run or to do something different on a second or third playthrough, but for a first time player you are skipping a large amount of level-appropriate content, missing a large number of interactions with NPCs, and cutting a large amount of time out of the games length.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 16:53

Jokymi: Jan 31, 2003; Sweet Sassy Molassy

Lets gently caress Bro posted:

Speaking of New Vegas, what mods are recommended? I played it once before at release and didn't get too far, I'm planning on playing it again beefed up with some mods. There has to be some sort of recommended modpack by now.

Check the mod thread. The OP is updated regularly and has a great list of high quality mods.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3376713

# ? Aug 24, 2011 17:00

YYZ: Apr 26, 2011

I'm playing through Dragon Age: Origins at the moment. I've finished the Redcliffe, Mage Tower and Orzammar quest-lines. Is there a point of no return coming up where I'll be unable to finish up all the side-quests I have?

# ? Aug 24, 2011 18:03

a crisp refreshing Moxie: May 2, 2007

GeneralFai posted:

Final Fantasy XII

Larsa literally cannot run out of potions, and uses them often. This is really, really helpful. Consider keeping him around for a while to help out with grinding and sidequests.

Didn't they fix this in the IZJV, or am I mistaking it for some other change to Guest NPCs?

VV Good point. :v:

a crisp refreshing Moxie fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Aug 24, 2011

# ? Aug 24, 2011 18:29

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

fount of knowledge posted:

Didn't they fix this in the IZJV, or am I mistaking it for some other change to Guest NPCs?

Since IZJV was only released in Japan, I suspect most people in this thread won't be playing it.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 18:31

bbcisdabomb: Jan 15, 2008; SHEESH

Centipeed posted:

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Tales_of_Vesperia

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Lost_Odyssey

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Star_Ocean:_The_Last_Hope

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Blue_Dragon

You should just make a new thread. Put the wiki in the OP surrounded by sirens.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 18:45

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Any mods I should use for Deus Ex 1? I had started it a while ago, stopped playing for a while and now when I try to play it, I am lost about where I need to go, so I think I am just going to start over.

blackguy32 fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Aug 24, 2011

# ? Aug 24, 2011 19:24

Lets Fuck Bro: Apr 14, 2009

blackguy32 posted:

Any mods I should use for Dues Ex 1? I had started it a while ago, stopped playing for a while and now when I try to play it, I am lost about where I need to go, so I think I am just going to start over.

Yeah, you want New Vision, High Def Texture Project, the updated Deus Ex launcher and drivers which I believe are included in New Vision, and Biomod.

NV and HDTP are graphical improvement mods. Read the instructions carefully when installing NV and HDTP as they *will* require some specific ini editing. The launcher and drivers allow you to play the game in directx10 at a modern resolution so they are highly recommended. Biomod is a gameplay patch and makes the game a bit less clunky. Post here if you're having trouble getting things to work, as it can be a little tricky and the DX1 main thread inexplicably appears to be closed for some reason.

Essentially, you should have a HDTP and NVTextures folder in your main \DeusEx folder, a few replaced files in the DeusEx\System folder, and an edited deusex.ini in your C:\Users\[Name]\Documents\DeusEx\System folder. The edited lines should be under the [Core.System] heading and once everything is installed should look something like this:

Paths=..\System\*.u
Paths=..\Maps\*.dx
Paths=..\NVTextures\*.utx
Paths=..\HDTP\System\*.u
Paths=..\HDTP\Textures\*.utx
Paths=..\Textures\*.utx
Paths=..\Sounds\*.uax
Paths=..\Music\*.umx

Lets Fuck Bro fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Aug 24, 2011

# ? Aug 24, 2011 19:36

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

blackguy32 posted:

Any mods I should use for Dues Ex 1? I had started it a while ago, stopped playing for a while and now when I try to play it, I am lost about where I need to go, so I think I am just going to start over.

You should install Shifter, which doesn't cause any huge changes but has some improvements which, personally, I couldn't live without. Some would recommend Biomod for a first run, which is Shifter with an overhaul to the augmentation system and some changes to skills, but personally I'd say to leave that until your next playthough. There will be a next playthrough.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 19:36

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Dr Snofeld posted:

You should install Shifter, which doesn't cause any huge changes but has some improvements which, personally, I couldn't live without. Some would recommend Biomod for a first run, which is Shifter with an overhaul to the augmentation system and some changes to skills, but personally I'd say to leave that until your next playthough. There will be a next playthrough.

So shifter is fine for a first playthrough? I remember hearing that it would be better to play just vanilla without shifter the first time through, but if it adds some really nice stuff, then I would be stupid not to play with it on.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 19:46

Lets Fuck Bro: Apr 14, 2009

blackguy32 posted:

So shifter is fine for a first playthrough? I remember hearing that it would be better to play just vanilla without shifter the first time through, but if it adds some really nice stuff, then I would be stupid not to play with it on.

Well don't play vanilla. If anything use Shifter. I still would recommend Biomod because there's really nothing about Shifter that it doesn't improve on. It's just Shifter with a better augmentation system. The base augmentation system is a clunky piece of crap that requires you to reach your hand over to hit F8 F9 F10 F11 F12 all the time. Biomod makes the process mostly automatic and contextual. There are also some just horrible augs that are little more than a trap for the player (like filling all your torso slots with aqualung or some poo poo before you pick up regeneration later) and Biomod makes them competitive.

Lets Fuck Bro fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Aug 24, 2011

# ? Aug 24, 2011 19:49

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

^^ Seconding this. Unless you have a philosophical objection to using patches or mods at all, you should be using Biomod, not Shifter. Shifter is mostly just gameplay tweaks; it's Biomod that makes all of the aug/UI changes that are actually worthwhile.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 22:38

FelixMeOneMoreTime: May 11, 2010

SiKboy posted:

You CAN try to run north, but the first time someone plays the game you are seriously suggesting they should ignore the suggested route, skipping a full third of the towns in the game, (including the introductions of the major factions) and spend a frustrating half hour trying to stay out of reach of monsters that can 3-shot a level 20 character while simultainiously skirting invisible walls halfway up most of the cliffs?

Heading north is fine for a speed-run or to do something different on a second or third playthrough, but for a first time player you are skipping a large amount of level-appropriate content, missing a large number of interactions with NPCs, and cutting a large amount of time out of the games length.

I did this on my first playthrough, and preferred it to doing Primm-Novac-Nipton first which I did on subsequent playthroughs. I think the natural route, particularly from Nipton onwards, is really quite boring. Coming back and doing it at a higher level means you can breeze through those boring early parts to get the recruits/quests, so you can spend more time doing the fun quests which are more towards Vegas itself and the North of the map in general. The less time spent on the route between Nipton and Vegas the better in my opinion.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 22:50

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

ToxicFrog posted:

^^ Seconding this. Unless you have a philosophical objection to using patches or mods at all, you should be using Biomod, not Shifter. Shifter is mostly just gameplay tweaks; it's Biomod that makes all of the aug/UI changes that are actually worthwhile.

Will do. Gonna track it down now.

# ? Aug 24, 2011 23:04

Draile: May 6, 2004; forlorn llama

GeneralFai posted:

Final Fantasy XII

Did you know that you can use items/cast spells on reserve party members? This is helpful if you're getting your butt kicked and have put the KO'ed people in reserve. You don't need to drag their corpse out to bring them back!

This bit of advice in particular is worth pointing out again. If your characters die, put them in reserve and then use your active characters to heal them. This is ultra-important against the high level marks, where having only one or two active characters likely means that you will lose.

Also, if you're going to resurrect a dead character, equip your healer with the accessory that doubles item restorative power and use a phoenix down. This will revive the character with full hp, works instantly, is available very early in the game, and costs almost nothing.

# ? Aug 25, 2011 01:26

Hit or miss Clitoris: Apr 19, 2003; I HAVE BEEN A VERY NAUGHTY BOY

I lucked out and found Street Fighter 2010 and Mappy Land for the NES at a local thrift store, any advice on those two? I know they might be kind of old for the nature of this thread, but of the 5 in box games I found I haven't played these yet.
Also, anybody want to part with old Nintendo games, or know a thread in GoonMart I couldn't find? I looked through the last 6 or 7 pages but didn't see anything.

# ? Aug 25, 2011 05:00

Ulio: Feb 17, 2011

YYZ posted:

I'm playing through Dragon Age: Origins at the moment. I've finished the Redcliffe, Mage Tower and Orzammar quest-lines. Is there a point of no return coming up where I'll be unable to finish up all the side-quests I have?

You really should do the specific missions for the town when you're doing it's main quest. Like a lot of Orzammar's sidequest happen in the Deep Roads, so does the main quest, do both of them at once. Same goes for every town/place except maybe Denarim because certain areas unlock after a certain quest is completed etc...It will be obvious when you come to the final part where you can't go back. But just try to do every sidequest along with the mainquest of the town together.

# ? Aug 25, 2011 05:02

YYZ: Apr 26, 2011

Ulio posted:

You really should do the specific missions for the town when you're doing it's main quest. Like a lot of Orzammar's sidequest happen in the Deep Roads, so does the main quest, do both of them at once. Same goes for every town/place except maybe Denarim because certain areas unlock after a certain quest is completed etc...It will be obvious when you come to the final part where you can't go back. But just try to do every sidequest along with the mainquest of the town together.

Thanks. I've done most of the sidequests, I've just skipped over the ones that have objectives all over the place (like the quest to deliver letters to people or to find x amount of crafting materials). I think they're mostly all from Denerim, so there isn't really one area I need to visit for all of them.

# ? Aug 25, 2011 15:01

Dr Snofeld: Apr 30, 2009

Fable 3? The wiki only tells you when the point of no return is. Also Tropico 3 if there's anything the wiki hasn't covered.

# ? Aug 25, 2011 20:48

csm141: Jul 19, 2010; i care, i'm listening, i can help you without giving any advice; Pillbug

Dr Snofeld posted:

Fable 3? The wiki only tells you when the point of no return is. Also Tropico 3 if there's anything the wiki hasn't covered.

The most important thing is to make sure that your transportation works. If builders can't get to sites, or teamsters to docks, your island will have major problems growing.

# ? Aug 25, 2011 21:08

Palleon: Aug 11, 2003; I've got a hot deal on a bridge to the Pegasus Galaxy!; Grimey Drawer

Dr Snofeld posted:

Fable 3? The wiki only tells you when the point of no return is. Also Tropico 3 if there's anything the wiki hasn't covered.

Fable 3 is trivially easy, you can't die, and there's really nothing misable that I was able to find. You do need absurd, and I mean absurd, amounts of money to get the "good" ending. To get that much money without being evil, you pretty much have to buy every house and business in the game, then walk away for 8-10 hours to let the rents accumulate.

# ? Aug 25, 2011 21:12

gohuskies: Oct 23, 2010; I spend a lot of time making posts to justify why I'm not a self centered shithead that just wants to act like COVID isn't a thing.

Dr Snofeld posted:

Also Tropico 3 if there's anything the wiki hasn't covered.

Exports are really the best, most consistent way to make money early on. If you get a mine or two up early you can get steady income to rely on for several decades. Just make sure that you use that money to invest in an industry that can stand on its own once the mine runs out - you don't want to be caught with your pants down when that eventually happens. Usually a mine is one of the first things I build if I can. Sure it pisses off the environmentalists but there usually aren't many of them and you can use the money to raise wages or improve other factors to make people happy. Make sure you don't build too dense to start - as your city expands you will need a lot more stuff and your downtown will get quite crowded.

# ? Aug 25, 2011 21:35

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Palleon posted:

Fable 3 is trivially easy, you can't die, and there's really nothing misable that I was able to find. You do need absurd, and I mean absurd, amounts of money to get the "good" ending. To get that much money without being evil, you pretty much have to buy every house and business in the game, then walk away for 8-10 hours to let the rents accumulate.

You do have to buy more or less every house and business, but you don't need to walk away, I've got the good ending twice and never had to do anything cheap.

All you have to do is be super diligent about buying property as quickly and early as you can (this does mean going into the sanctuary every 5 minutes to look for unowned property on the map, which isn't the most fun thing in the world, I'll admit) and jack up the rents/prices as high as they'll go. By the end of the game you'll have enough to invest in the treasury for the good ending, and as long as you don't do evil things throughout the game, the morality hit from high rents and prices won't make you evil. You just really have to make sure you start buying property ASAP and never stop.

Houses make the most money, but the downside is that you have to repair them periodically, which adds an extra level of tedium. I think in the end it's worth it though, profit-wise.

Some other tips:

-Whatever path you choose, invest in your magic levels and buy the lightning spell, it's the most useful one in the game in my opinion. In addition to doing decent damage, it also stuns enemies, which is invaluable to melee and ranged fighting. Combined with fire, high magic levels get pretty deadly.

-If you're going ranged, try not to use the manual aim thing that you do by holding down a trigger button. When you shoot enemies like this, the game LOVES to do that annoying slow motion camera zoom in on the enemy thing, which slows down the action and also makes it so that you can't see your character or the enemies that are attacking you. Fighting without the over the shoulder aim makes this less frequent.

Ainsley McTree fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Aug 26, 2011

# ? Aug 26, 2011 01:24

Lord Banana: Nov 23, 2006

Chief Savage Man posted:

The most important thing is to make sure that your transportation works. If builders can't get to sites, or teamsters to docks, your island will have major problems growing.

Is there any trick to this? I'm playing Tropico 4 which is pretty much just Tropico 3 so far, but in both games no matter how many garages and roads I built the builders would never seem to build some things. Pretty much if I put it on high priority they'll eventually build it, but once all high priority things are built they seem to ignore everything else.

# ? Aug 26, 2011 08:15

Gerblyn: Apr 4, 2007; "TO BATTLE!"; Fun Shoe

Lord Banana posted:

Is there any trick to this? I'm playing Tropico 4 which is pretty much just Tropico 3 so far, but in both games no matter how many garages and roads I built the builders would never seem to build some things. Pretty much if I put it on high priority they'll eventually build it, but once all high priority things are built they seem to ignore everything else.

Builders are irritating as hell. A couple of things that help are:

- Constructing a second builder's building, so you have more of them available
- Setting the wages of the builders to be slightly higher than all the other low paying jobs
- Using your dictator to encourage builders to they work faster

If all else fails, you can start examining individual builders to see what they're doing with all their time. They might be spending all their time getting food, sleeping, praying and seeing the doctor that they don't have time to work, meaning the layout of your town isn't very good.

# ? Aug 26, 2011 09:04

gohuskies: Oct 23, 2010; I spend a lot of time making posts to justify why I'm not a self centered shithead that just wants to act like COVID isn't a thing.

Gerblyn posted:

Builders are irritating as hell. A couple of things that help are:

- Constructing a second builder's building, so you have more of them available
- Setting the wages of the builders to be slightly higher than all the other low paying jobs
- Using your dictator to encourage builders to they work faster

If all else fails, you can start examining individual builders to see what they're doing with all their time. They might be spending all their time getting food, sleeping, praying and seeing the doctor that they don't have time to work, meaning the layout of your town isn't very good.

These are all things I do. It's actually really worth looking into how they spend their off-work time. You'll think "why do these guys spend like 0 time on the job?" and then realize they have no marketplace near their home so they have to go all the way over to the farm to get a meal and it takes a lot of extra time. Or whatever it is they are doing.

# ? Aug 27, 2011 00:17

ClearAirTurbulence: Apr 20, 2010; The earth has music for those who listen.

In Fallout: NV, when you head south out of Goodsprings towards Primm, follow the mountains on your right and you will see a location mark up in the mountains appear on your compass about 2/3 of the way there. Follow a path up into the foothills to get there, and you will find a trailer with a useful skillbook and some fairly common junk like scrap metal, conductors, and scrap electronics. Loot every single thing out of the trailer, making sure you don't miss anything. When you get to Primm, you will now have everything you need to repair ED-E in the Mojave Express building without any skill checks.

Re: mods, I have had bad experiences with mods breaking the game or adding stupid stuff that makes me groan. I only use two, Nevada Skies and More Lights. Nevada Skies makes the skies prettier, adds some weather options, and can make the nights much darker, which I like. More Lights activates a lot of the streetlights in the game so you can find your way around in the near total darkness a lot better. If you are annoyed by how light the nights are, you could try those, but don't get the URLWIFIED version of Nevada Skies, the options it adds are useless and it seriously breaks the graphics in wooded areas. Base Nevada Skies does add a couple of lame perks that are nearly useless even if you enable the weather features they pertain to, but you don't have to (and shouldn't) take them.

For your first playthrough, I recommend against using any walkthroughs or guides except maybe to help at the very beginning. You will miss tons of stuff and fail a lot of quests, but it will still probably be your favorite playthrough because of your mistakes. I started referring to walkthroughs on subsequent plays and the sheer amount of stuff available to do and get can be overwhelming, and I'm not sure if I would have stuck with it if I had realized how much I was missing the first time. The game has HUGE replay value - I've beaten it 4 ways and have multiple characters who could finish the game that I'm holding back so I can do more stuff before ending it - and I'm the type of person who rarely finishes large RPGs.

# ? Aug 27, 2011 12:21

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 10, 2024 23:15

Shardok: Jan 12, 2009

Might & Magic VII

Get a Druid. Yes, Druids suck, but you will thank me when you notice that only Druids can learn GrandMaster Alchemy and therefore are the only ones who can make you a supply of instant +50 stat potions. This is also true in the other MM6-8 games, but not for Druids, for whoever is appropriate for them, but I can't remember the respective classes. I think Necromancer for MM8.

No idea on 6, it's a small wonder that 7 and 8 run on my computer at all, not gonna even bother trying to get 6 to run.

# ? Aug 27, 2011 13:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The "What should I know before I play this game for the first time?" Q&A!

«‹›896 »