[First playthrough] Should I use a guide?

[Dranolth]

I'm an "altoholic" when it comes to RPG games. I've recently picked up D:OS2 and I don't want that to happen.

I've played a little bit on my own, meaning no guides, and I'm doing "meh", not bad, not good.

What I wanted to know is if you'd recommend the use of guides (of any sort) during my first playthrough or if I should just go in blind and learn on my own.

The thing that I'm afraid the most of is that I don't know how punishing the game is going to be if I "screw up" my build, party composition, whatever.

Bottom line is, I don't want to get stuck at some point in the game because I chose the wrong skill/companion.

So, should I use a guide? And, if yes, could you point me to a good source for them?

Finally, I'm guessing going "Lone Wolf" is not the best idea the first time playing, but I'm terrible at macro-ing stuff. If anyone could provide a reliable Lone Wolf build that would work for a newbie, that'd be greatly appreciated, too.

[Mad Marduk]

Respeccing in the game is totally free. You can do it in Act 2 and with a gift bag option you can do it at basically the start of the game. The only caveat is that respeccing doesn't provide you with any skills for what you respecc in to.

[rasmasyean]

Act 1 is generally the toughest because you have few abilities and you can't respec. But if you're an Altaholic anyway, try Tactician Honour difficulty. This will force you to learn more about the game mechanics and try things out before you venture. And it's the most immersive way to play and can even give you a "rush" if you like that. This is the only chance you get to do this blind because otherwise it's much different when you know what's gonna happen and the suspense is no longer there of permadeath.

But in general, you can use Fextralife as a reference guide. Don't read the comments because posts include spoilers and cheese tactics which you might not want to know. I did this and occasionally looked up puzzle hints when I was stuck. It got me through Tactican Honour in pretty much my first run. Well, I died in the tutorial ship first but that's way in the beginning. Once you get past Act 1, it gets easier. And the game gives you a way to trivialize some of your fights via extra turns and stuff like that (legit story progressions, but can be considered "cheap"). I didn't use it because it seemed it was made to help those struggling (brutal game btw), but I didn't have the problem with the web site listing all the skills and descriptions, etc. I think that's the only "manual" I found, unless there's one that comes in retail box.

[Chaoslink]

I’d say no. However, should you struggle and wish for a little advice, I’m fully willing to offer any amount of help I can to try and get you ahead. Be it just offering my thoughts on whether an item is an upgrade or not over what you have to full on party wide suggestions to maximize the efficiency of your team or even full respec suggestions for a more powerful party. My default setting is just to help you make what you already have work. You just have to ask.

[gregfromthepeg]

What difficulty are you playing? For classic, I wouldn't worry too too much. Most any combo can work. For tactician, you may wsnt to read an intro guide. The first act is definitely tough since you can't respec.

I found the first time was more fun without a guide. I just consulted the odd guide when I got badly stuck or something.

I would say no to lone wolf for your first game. 4 player gives you a lot more options and is more powerful, especially later in the game.

[Pyromus]

If you want build advice, there are some good guides out there, and some not so good ones. If that's the kind of guide you need, SinTee on youtube (lost Sinner is their steam name I believe) has a LOT of good build guides for both a full 4 person party and for a solo lone wolf build.

As far as plot/story guides, it's up to you if you want spoilers.

If you just want to know when hard parts are coming up, skim the forums.

But it sounds like you just want to know if your team is good. For that, I'd suggest skimming the forums as well, and most of the stuff Chaoslink says is spot on advice.

And if you aren't sure what kind of build to make, I'm gonna go ahead and self plug my own guide, with my steam name on youtube, or at least the first video or two, as they sum up most of the elemental interactions pretty quickly and clearly.




But, as others have said, you can respec after the first island, usually level 8 or 9 if you clear most of the island out, and from there on, changing the entire team's build only "costs" the gold you need to buy their new skillbooks. And as an altoholic, keep in mind you will need at LEAST 2 playthroughs to get all the character quests done, so if you have another team build you're itching to try, there's good reason to hold off and do another run.

[rasmasyean]

Also, if you're bent on Altaholicing, heck, try to get lots of spells on your characters just to try them out. Then every Alt generation will converge you into something you like use for the whole game. The first part of the game doesn't really benefit from "scaling" much. That 5-10% or a bit more extra damage doesn't make jack all difference if you have an extra spell in your kit, particularly if it counters enemy resistance or CC's them.

My experience with a "fun build" can reveal something. I never even close to needed a Ressurection scroll and I'm in the beginning of Act 2 Tactician Honour. I split points in Str, Fin, Int, Con so I can wear any armor I find and swap them. Memory is like my highest attribute on average so I can arm more spells. I split Skill points to get "positioning skills" on each character. I kept +Skill items so I can mix and match spells.

In Act 2 if you want to you can repec to some sort of "Warfare / Int Pump" if you want, once you know what you want to do specifically. It might make a difference later when burst damage is significantly increase (e.g. +50%), but the way this game works, level 1 spells are good enough for the entire Act 1 pretty much if you use them in the right situation.

[Pyromus]

Originally posted by cool-dude:

...Most effective builds are full physical or full magic. Hybrid damage builds do not work very well in this game, due to how the armor system works. But if you go full magic, you need to spec into all 4 schools of magic( you don't need necro or poly) for a magical character to be viable. The reason you need to do this, is because there are enemies who are immune to certain magics, and immunity translates to healing them. so you need multiple magic schools to deal with these types. Physical damage characters don't really have this issue, except for the certain fight I mentioned above. For the most part, physical damage based characters only need to burn down an enemies physical armor to kill them...

This is the one thing in that post I would ignore. Full physical damage or full magic damage is not the most effective. Split damage is the best because of the way armor works in this game. If an enemy has low magic armor, hit it with magic, if it has low physical armor, smack, stab, or shoot it. You do not need the entire party attacking one unit at a time.

Full physical is SIMPLER to play and you can kind of shut off your brain with that party, but split is more efficient. Most enemies will have either super high physical, or super high magical, with really low on the opposite armor. Hit the low end and you'll be taking things down with ease. Only give yourself one option, and you're going to get hit a lot more, since you'll be cc'ing half the enemies a lot less.

That's not to say you can't do either, as they're all viable, but split is for sure stronger.

[rasmasyean]

Originally posted by Pyromus:

Originally posted by cool-dude:

...Most effective builds are full physical or full magic. Hybrid damage builds do not work very well in this game, due to how the armor system works. But if you go full magic, you need to spec into all 4 schools of magic( you don't need necro or poly) for a magical character to be viable. The reason you need to do this, is because there are enemies who are immune to certain magics, and immunity translates to healing them. so you need multiple magic schools to deal with these types. Physical damage characters don't really have this issue, except for the certain fight I mentioned above. For the most part, physical damage based characters only need to burn down an enemies physical armor to kill them...

This is the one thing in that post I would ignore. Full physical damage or full magic damage is not the most effective. Split damage is the best because of the way armor works in this game. If an enemy has low magic armor, hit it with magic, if it has low physical armor, smack, stab, or shoot it. You do not need the entire party attacking one unit at a time.

Full physical is SIMPLER to play and you can kind of shut off your brain with that party, but split is more efficient. Most enemies will have either super high physical, or super high magical, with really low on the opposite armor. Hit the low end and you'll be taking things down with ease. Only give yourself one option, and you're going to get hit a lot more, since you'll be cc'ing half the enemies a lot less.

That's not to say you can't do either, as they're all viable, but split is for sure stronger.

There are also bosses or other high damage dealers you want to take out of commission fast, lest they might one shot you. At least in the harder levels. They often have an armor skew in either direction. So unless you have another way to deal with that...

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by rasmasyean:

Originally posted by Pyromus:

This is the one thing in that post I would ignore. Full physical damage or full magic damage is not the most effective. Split damage is the best because of the way armor works in this game. If an enemy has low magic armor, hit it with magic, if it has low physical armor, smack, stab, or shoot it. You do not need the entire party attacking one unit at a time.

Full physical is SIMPLER to play and you can kind of shut off your brain with that party, but split is more efficient. Most enemies will have either super high physical, or super high magical, with really low on the opposite armor. Hit the low end and you'll be taking things down with ease. Only give yourself one option, and you're going to get hit a lot more, since you'll be cc'ing half the enemies a lot less.

That's not to say you can't do either, as they're all viable, but split is for sure stronger.

There are also bosses or other high damage dealers you want to take out of commission fast, lest they might one shot you. At least in the harder levels. They often have an armor skew in either direction. So unless you have another way to deal with that...

Most builds can find some way of outputting the other damage type. Archers can deal both simultaneously in amounts similar to other builds normal output. I can’t think of a single fight where I feel an all one type team would be preferable to a split. The big scary bosses also have plenty of adds that you’ll want to deal with as well and often times you’ll want mages to deal with those while physical deals with the boss. Magic is the superior AoE type while physical is the better single target type.

Balance is best.

[Valrynn the Dragoness]

There's no shame in googling how to do some of the quests because some of them have really weird solutions or are outright frustrating if you don't know how they work.

If there's one thing I would recommend using the wiki for it's for crafting recipes.

Crafting is pretty meh in this game and manually finding out the good recipe is way too much of a chore. Using the wiki to find out what ingredients are worth keeping and which ones you can sell will save you a lot of time.

[Pyromus]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by rasmasyean:

There are also bosses or other high damage dealers you want to take out of commission fast, lest they might one shot you. At least in the harder levels. They often have an armor skew in either direction. So unless you have another way to deal with that...

Most builds can find some way of outputting the other damage type. Archers can deal both simultaneously in amounts similar to other builds normal output. I can’t think of a single fight where I feel an all one type team would be preferable to a split. The big scary bosses also have plenty of adds that you’ll want to deal with as well and often times you’ll want mages to deal with those while physical deals with the boss. Magic is the superior AoE type while physical is the better single target type.

Balance is best.

Yeah, the only "big boss" in the game that is 100% solo is Slane, and he's not even that bad.

[Dranolth]

Alright. Thanks everyone.

For now, I'll avoid Lone Wolf and will try to strike some balance between magical and physical damage in my party.

I'm marking one of you at random so that this post doesn't get necroed. But everyone was really helpful.

[rasmasyean]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by rasmasyean:

There are also bosses or other high damage dealers you want to take out of commission fast, lest they might one shot you. At least in the harder levels. They often have an armor skew in either direction. So unless you have another way to deal with that...

Most builds can find some way of outputting the other damage type. Archers can deal both simultaneously in amounts similar to other builds normal output. I can’t think of a single fight where I feel an all one type team would be preferable to a split. The big scary bosses also have plenty of adds that you’ll want to deal with as well and often times you’ll want mages to deal with those while physical deals with the boss. Magic is the superior AoE type while physical is the better single target type.

Balance is best.

Summoner is also one. Your totems and default summon takes the element of the Surface it spawns from. You get spells later to change it as well as give it a select "powerful" spell of that element. You can also cross Magic trees to get a pet of different elements that have different features in addition to use found pets (which scale off Summoning level). It's real easy to use and the pets can serve as a remote Tank / meat shield as well to waste enemy cooldowns.