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Omi no Kami posted:Okay, stupid question since I'm trying to remain spoiler-free. I know that I'm not supposed to do Following The Thread until I have Lambert's gwent card, since that moves him, but I don't have Old Pals and I'm fairly sure I can't get it until I play Zoltan. Is the correct way to proceed forward without autofailing a quest to a) progress the Novigrad main quest until I get Zoltan's gwent quest, b) do that quest immediately, then play him, c) start Gwent: Old Pals from beating him, d) go beat Lambert & Vernon, e) only then start Following The Thread? Jerusalem posted:I believe that you get another chance to play him after doing the Ugly Baby quest? You'll know that one when you see it, it kicks off a long series of cut-scenes and then drops you in an entirely new location. Just to confirm what I said above, this definitely works. I just today did Following the Thread, then Ugly Baby, then The Final Trial and after that I was able to continue Old Pals and play him for his Gwent card. RatHat posted:I disagree, a well timed weather card can be gamewinning(also the Frost+Dragon card combo). Which you run depends on the deck though. Like Monsters should never run Frost and Northern Realms should never run the Siege one. Yeah, playing a Biting Frost card on a packed row of 10+ close combat cards to knock them down to 10+ 1-strength cards and then using Villentretenmerth is almost too cruel. Almost.
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Jun 27, 2016 11:48
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Hmm, wasn't really trying to be hostile, they just don't seem to be enjoying themselves. I could've definitely used friendlier wording, though. Apologies, everyone, and carry on!
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Jun 27, 2016 11:58
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Xander77 posted:Just learned that seashells can be dismantled and pearls extracted. Amazing. Speaking of junk: looking ahead I know my enhanced beast oil needs a bear pelt. Are any other junk items worth dismantling/keeping? Same question for weapons really, relics seem like big sellers but not sure if they should be broken down for parts instead.
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Jun 27, 2016 12:29
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10 Beers posted:Hmm, wasn't really trying to be hostile, they just don't seem to be enjoying themselves. I could've definitely used friendlier wording, though. Apologies, everyone, and carry on! ... In other news, holy poo poo is Gourmand amazing. Should have picked it at level 2, would have saved me so much hassle.
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Jun 27, 2016 12:41
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Xander77 posted:Just for you - I really liked the ending to the Botchling quest and the whole thing with Letho. I'm glad, it's an incredible game. If you're still looking for builds, I'm doing an alchemy run this time, and it's ridiculous. I can have 3 decoctions going at once and they last for about an hour and a half, I have 9 of every bomb and they all split into 6 bombs when they explode, my blade oil never wears off and I have the possibility to poison enemies with whatever oil is on the blade, and I have 25% protection against enemies that match the oil I have on my blades. Looking forward to Grandmaster Wolf armor so I can have 3 oils on each sword forever.
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Jun 27, 2016 13:10
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Jerusalem posted:Just to confirm what I said above, this definitely works. I just today did Following the Thread, then Ugly Baby, then The Final Trial and after that I was able to continue Old Pals and play him for his Gwent card. Regarding Following the Thread, it fails when you start Ugly Baby (at least it did for me), because it moves Lambert out of Novigrad. I played him for his card as he was walking away after finishing Following the Thread, but I assume he's still playable where he shows up later.
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Jun 27, 2016 16:05
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Yeah, the biggest problem with Nilfgaard Nobleman though is that you only have one spy at that point and one decoy. It's very hard to beat his complete Nilfgaard deck, even if you get lucky and get a medic and decoy and the spy. Then again, I've never played as anyone but NR except in that Skellige only tournament. Arcsquad12 posted:All you guys playing gwent and conceding in the first round, hah. Play all your spies first round, and then bury him preferably with one hero card to beat his advantage. If you get lucky, you'll force him to expend too many cards in round one allowing you to time a good scorch or three-jackdaws card on him. Then spend round 2 mopping up and using your commander ability. Doing the round 1 spystorm with Nilfgaard and then using the Emhyr "draw from the enemy pile" ability lets you gently caress poo poo up. I played an enemy Nilfgaard player and there were so many spies and decoys and medics played in the first and second rounds I actually ran out of cards to draw from my deck and discard pile. I've never understood the number of people saying lose the first round on purpose. In my experience, you can generally draw out a bunch of cards in the first round and still win. I generally throw down all spies, decoy any spies on me. If I have none, I use hero cards as a means of drawing the CPU into playing their best cards right away in the first round. I almost always win first round, and then it's just mop up duty second round for the win. Sometimes I'll throw the second round knowing I have card advantage and will just win third easy. The other advantage of playing lots of hero cards is eventually you can draw out the scorch the CPU invariably gives itself and it'll burn your like 5 strength guy and not hte legion of heros laughing at it.
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Jun 27, 2016 16:36
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Did CDP nerf the northern deck between now and sometime before the release of heart of stone? I remember having 3 catapults and an army of blue stripes by the time I was half-way done with novigrad. I found one catapult in the passiflora, and googling tells me I should have picked up another way back in White Orchard. I only have two though now, and what seems to be 4 poor loving infantry, two of which won't stack. I have feeling I've been hit by a bug of some sort if they haven't patched out a few cards.
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Jun 27, 2016 17:58
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JetsGuy posted:Yeah, the biggest problem with Nilfgaard Nobleman though is that you only have one spy at that point and one decoy. It's very hard to beat his complete Nilfgaard deck, even if you get lucky and get a medic and decoy and the spy. ... Is there a specific significance to Geralt saying “winds howling” or “storm brewing” or whatever? Does the weather influence anything? Though – I and Letho have just dealt with Louis. As we were leaving him, he started cursing us, and Geralt is like “yeah, wind”. Seriously, I miss the fairly simple sword comparisons from Witcher 2 so much. Not only was that game exceptionally good about correlating price with utility, but there were only a few parameters to compare by, the rest being modifiers you could apply on your own. It’s nice that there’s a way to stumble into a quest without starting it properly (the Royal Wyvern cave) elsewhere. On the other hand, the refugees have nothing to say to you if you come in from the wrong entrance, without starting the quest. Also, why don’t I have a Royal Wyvern bestiary entry from the one I killed at White Orchard?
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Jun 27, 2016 18:26
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Do the previous games give some reason for geralt to be into yennifer? The whole game she doesn't seem that great and possibly just wants geralt as a henchman but they also make it seem like she might of been cooler in the past. Triss seems so much more compatibe than yen, it's almost like the writers are trying to push the player towards her. Of course, I don't know the over arching plot between games.
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Jun 27, 2016 18:30
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I think its kinda silly that at the end of Blood and Wine you can alert Damien of the plot to kill the Duchess, he says he'll keep an extra eye out and whatever but the Duchess can still die at that point
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Jun 27, 2016 18:30
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Marzzle posted:Do the previous games give some reason for geralt to be into yennifer? The whole game she doesn't seem that great and possibly just wants geralt as a henchman but they also make it seem like she might of been cooler in the past. Triss seems so much more compatibe than yen, it's almost like the writers are trying to push the player towards her. Of course, I don't know the over arching plot between games. Yen owns though.
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Jun 27, 2016 18:37
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Marzzle posted:Do the previous games give some reason for geralt to be into yennifer? The whole game she doesn't seem that great and possibly just wants geralt as a henchman but they also make it seem like she might of been cooler in the past. Triss seems so much more compatibe than yen, it's almost like the writers are trying to push the player towards her. Of course, I don't know the over arching plot between games. If you do the Yen stuff first, you will probably have the opposite feeling. The Yen plotline is far more developed.
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Jun 27, 2016 18:39
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:I think its kinda silly that at the end of Blood and Wine you can alert Damien of the plot to kill the Duchess, he says he'll keep an extra eye out and whatever but the Duchess can still die at that point How? I got them to hug and make up, but I guess I'm good at getting the good ending
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Jun 27, 2016 18:39
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Iron Crowned posted:How? I got them to hug and make up, but I guess I'm good at getting the good ending This happens regardless of whether or not you investigate the fifth victim and warn the guard captain and Anna about it ahead of time.
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Jun 27, 2016 18:41
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Iron Crowned posted:How? I got them to hug and make up, but I guess I'm good at getting the good ending If you are harsh towards Syanna in the trial, they still hug but Syanna pulls a knife and stabs the duchess to death.
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Jun 27, 2016 18:41
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Iron Crowned posted:How? I got them to hug and make up, but I guess I'm good at getting the good ending If you do the stuff for the Good Ending it all works out, but if you do all the bad ending stuff, you can still investigate the bootblack and learn that Syanna wants to kill the duchess. You can then tell Damien and the Duchess "Hey watch out, she wants you dead" but it doesn't do anything, Duchess still ends up dead as heck
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Jun 27, 2016 18:42
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Marzzle posted:Do the previous games give some reason for geralt to be into yennifer? People's opinion about the romance pretty much seems down to whether you read the books or not. In the books Yen is Geralt's cannon love interest, due to a (this actually does come up in the game) wish Geralt made of a djinn, they are literally soul mates magicked into loving each other or something, there's a quest in Witcher 3 later that lets you undo this. Also in the books Triss is apparently a backstabbing coward and creepy date rapist, this never comes up in the games though, she has pretty much the opposite personality in them. Avalerion fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jun 27, 2016 |
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Jun 27, 2016 19:29
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Avalerion posted:People's opinion about the romance pretty much seems down to whether you read the books or not. The Triss thing is a little backwards actually, the creepy date rapist thing comes from Game Geralt, who has amnesia, being all "I remember being in love with a sorceress" and Triss is basically "OH YEAH YEP THAT'S TOTALLY ME WHO THAT IS, DEFINITELY NOT SOME DARK HAIRED WOMAN, TOTALLY ME FOR SURE". I don't even think it was intentional to make her creepy or anything, they just wanted to give you an excuse to bang some redheads, but when you know the canon of the series, it definitely makes her actions pretty drat suspect.
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Jun 27, 2016 19:47
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Avalerion posted:In the books Yen is Geralt's cannon love interest, due to a (this actually does come up in the game) wish Geralt made of a djinn, they are literally soul mates magicked into loving each other or something, there's a quest in Witcher 3 later that lets you undo this.
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Jun 27, 2016 19:49
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Crappy Jack posted:The Triss thing is a little backwards actually, the creepy date rapist thing comes from Game Geralt, who has amnesia, being all "I remember being in love with a sorceress" and Triss is basically "OH YEAH YEP THAT'S TOTALLY ME WHO THAT IS, DEFINITELY NOT SOME DARK HAIRED WOMAN, TOTALLY ME FOR SURE". I don't even think it was intentional to make her creepy or anything, they just wanted to give you an excuse to bang some redheads, but when you know the canon of the series, it definitely makes her actions pretty drat suspect. No she literally drugs Geralt to have sex with him in one of the books.
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Jun 27, 2016 19:50
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I think it's all because they didn't or couldn't want to use yen and ciri in the witcher 1 and had to spin a tale out of secondary characters (or new ones in Alvin) that still followed that plot line with the elder blood and everything else. To their credit instead of just trying to carpet over the plot they did a great job folding it into the two following games, even if a lot of it is indirectly.
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Jun 27, 2016 19:50
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One of my favorite quotes from was from later in the game where one of the sorceresses says "You know, except for me & Ciri, Geralt has banged every woman on this boat." Somewhat related: Does taking the Triss romance route expand her role any? I went with Yenn and she was all over the plot in the end, whereas Triss just kinda stood around.
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Jun 27, 2016 19:59
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Hobo Clown posted:Somewhat related: Does taking the Triss romance route expand her role any? I went with Yenn and she was all over the plot in the end, whereas Triss just kinda stood around. No, her involvement is identical regardless. The only real additional content for either are the sex scenes and the scene wherein you talk to them about the future.
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Jun 27, 2016 20:01
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Gwentchat: is there a way to tell which deck your opponent is playing before the game starts, or should I just never bother running non-clear weather cards because it is impossible to tell whether they will be relatively useful against any given opponent?
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Jun 27, 2016 20:06
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Welp, after 203 hours I think I'm done with the game, one of the best games I've ever played.
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Jun 27, 2016 20:10
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What is it about buffed Igni that makes it so powerful? The armor debuff, the burning damage over time, or just the pure numbers from alt casting? I only have one rank each in melt armor/alt fire so far. Still doing most of my damage with poisoned fast attacks from the alchemy tree, haven't put anything into the combat tree. Want to do a signs build my first playthrough, then alchemy/combat with NG+.
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Jun 27, 2016 20:22
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poor life choice posted:What is it about buffed Igni that makes it so powerful? The armor debuff, the burning damage over time, or just the pure numbers from alt casting? I only have one rank each in melt armor/alt fire so far. Still doing most of my damage with poisoned fast attacks from the alchemy tree, haven't put anything into the combat tree. The base values for Signs don't scale as far as I know, the main benefit from most signs are the secondary effects especially at higher levels. The strongest aspect of Igni is the burn DoT, since it does % HP damage and also CCs enemies by making them freak out due to being on fire. As far as I know it's mostly humans that visibly have armor who actually have an armor value to melt, it's not a great talent since most monsters don't have any armor just large HP pools.
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Jun 27, 2016 20:42
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Does the first game hold up at all? I've never played through it all. I have tried in the past, but I kept getting bored at the barghest bit.
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Jun 27, 2016 20:45
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Xander77 posted:Wait, are we talking about a specific Nobleman I missed, or the monosyllabic fucker in the castle when you first meet Emyr? He was easy. Now the Baron - that was an arse and a half. That's the fucker. On the other hand, I've never had a problem with the Baron. 
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Jun 27, 2016 20:46
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Gunder posted:Does the first game hold up at all? I've never played through it all. I have tried in the past, but I kept getting bored at the barghest bit. There are folks who will disagree with me, but I think the first game is not terribly good. The combat is bad and the writing/acting is very stilted. Witcher 2 is still real solid and 3 is exceptional, but I always advise people to skip 1.
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Jun 27, 2016 20:55
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Pellisworth posted:The base values for Signs don't scale as far as I know, the main benefit from most signs are the secondary effects especially at higher levels. Oh, huh. I thought I'd seen lots of posts (maybe elsewhere) about signs builds being broken, but maybe they're just talking about how alt Quen is so powerful.
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Jun 27, 2016 21:03
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Xander77 posted:
Certain potions have bonus effects depending on time of day or weather. Off the top of my head superior thunderbolt gives automatic critical hits during storms and superior tawny owl is infinite during nighttime and won't drain between 8pm and 6am
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Jun 27, 2016 21:05
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Gunder posted:Does the first game hold up at all? I've never played through it all. I have tried in the past, but I kept getting bored at the barghest bit. It's not particularly good, the first area is dull and the city bits are one massive slog.
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Jun 27, 2016 21:08
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Gunder posted:Does the first game hold up at all? I've never played through it all. I have tried in the past, but I kept getting bored at the barghest bit. It's badly dated, big budget RPG quality has improved a lot over the last 10 years. There's some if the quest writing that stands out in the latter games but it can be quite a slog to get to it.
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Jun 27, 2016 21:17
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poor life choice posted:Oh, huh. I thought I'd seen lots of posts (maybe elsewhere) about signs builds being broken, but maybe they're just talking about how alt Quen is so powerful. The only thing that was ever super strong or broken about Signs builds was alt-Igni, but that got nerfed. Alt-Quen is only okay, if you think about it all it's really doing is giving you an in-combat healing option. That's very nice early in the game, but you'll eventually get access to a bunch of other healing options and it's better to not get hit in the first place. IMO the standout ability in the Signs tree is alt-Yrden because it's extremely versatile and good in most all fights. I would say a heavy Signs build is the weakest option, the first two tiers with alt-signs are very good but the higher tiers have a low return on investment, you're investing 5 points to add +25% Sign Intensity to only one sign and that's terrible. Alchemy or a hybrid build is probably the strongest, but is a mid/late game thing since you need a lot of ability points and alchemy recipes unlocked to make it effective. Really though you don't need to worry much about powergaming and min/maxing your spec. Stick with whatever is fun and engaging for you, using the appropriate Witcher tools and staying mobile in combat are far more important than gear or spec.
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Jun 27, 2016 21:41
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Pellisworth posted:The only thing that was ever super strong or broken about Signs builds was alt-Igni, but that got nerfed. Alt-Quen is only okay, if you think about it all it's really doing is giving you an in-combat healing option. That's very nice early in the game, but you'll eventually get access to a bunch of other healing options and it's better to not get hit in the first place. IMO the standout ability in the Signs tree is alt-Yrden because it's extremely versatile and good in most all fights. Thanks for the feedback. I think I'm going to stick with it so far, and then maybe do a combat/alchemy hybrid for NG+ once I'm drowning in build points and have all that from the beginning of the game. Through careful hoarding of broken rakes and bear asses I'm sitting on a cool 5k so I can afford respec potions. 
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Jun 27, 2016 22:02
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Pellisworth posted:The only thing that was ever super strong or broken about Signs builds was alt-Igni, but that got nerfed. Alt-Quen is only okay, if you think about it all it's really doing is giving you an in-combat healing option. That's very nice early in the game, but you'll eventually get access to a bunch of other healing options and it's better to not get hit in the first place. IMO the standout ability in the Signs tree is alt-Yrden because it's extremely versatile and good in most all fights. Firestream got nerfed too much imo though. I remember when the nerf happened, it went from overpowered to useless. Also, yeah, one of the best parts of the game is that you don't have to be a min/max sperg about builds. Frankly, I love the build I did, and even as I go through the trees there's very few things I'd even care to add. With the four extra slots w/ mutuations, I'm just kinda meh about the skills I'm adding at this point. I would probably invest a little into alchemy to get even more potion tolerance if anything else. Gotta complete dat tree though to unlock all four first...
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Jun 27, 2016 22:07
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Yeah it's a good thing you don't need to min/max much, partly because the ability spec and level progression are imo the weakest parts of the game 
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Jun 27, 2016 22:12
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Pellisworth posted:Yeah it's a good thing you don't need to min/max much, partly because the ability spec and level progression are imo the weakest parts of the game I think that's a good thing, personally. Levels matter, but not to a level that it would turn off people that aren't hardcore RPGers. You can certain min/max if you want, but it's not required to have fun and you don't get punished too much if you make a mistake. EDIT: One of my biggest quips about many other RPGs is you usually *have* to min/max or you get screwed in some way. Hybrid builds are rare and challenging, and if you're in an MMO good luck getting parties with a hybrid. I like being able to do more than *one* thing, so W3 was great fun for me because while I was largely a swords build, I invested a little in signs, wore griffon, put sign intensity glyphs on, and was able to support my swords use with an acceptable amount of sign strength. JetsGuy fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jun 27, 2016 |
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Jun 27, 2016 22:20
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