I'm ready for Destiny Knight

[VoidEngineer]

I've got my party all geared up, leveled, and ready to go. Bring on Lagoth and all his little girlfriends! What I am really looking forward to is Thief of Fate, though.

My current loadout is going to be this:

2 x warrior (death daggers)
1 x bard (spectre snare)
1 x rogue (death dagger)
3 x wizard

All of these guys have the lowest attainable AC in the game. Most are around around L45 with the wizards around 75 and the warriors around 30. The warriors are so low because I wound up replacing my two original hunters with two monks and then two paladins and finally the warriors because they are the obviously superior choice of all the tank classes.

Is there going to be a beta I can participate in?

[Lord Marcus]

I too am waiting with anticipation on BT2 I have 2 archmages, 2 (Level 50) monks, Bard and 2 Paladins waiting to kick butt.

[Keefe the Thief]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but if they follow Destiny Knight faithfully, there are not death daggers. ;) On the other hand, Paladins can use Stoneblades in DK if I remember correctly.

[Keefe the Thief]

And I'm pretty sure Destiny Knight will take them much more time than Tales of the Unknown. Thoses snares have be so hard to code right. Realtime puzzles in a Bard's Tale game!

[SpectralShade]

I'd say you are a bit overleveled for BT2 and it might put you at a disadvantage in BT3, depending on how they implement the increased stat attribute cap from there.

[VoidEngineer]

Originally posted by SpectralShade:

I'd say you are a bit overleveled for BT2 and it might put you at a disadvantage in BT3, depending on how they implement the increased stat attribute cap from there.

Nah. Even if the cap bumps up, it'll be the same XP per level from 13-14 as it is from 75-76. It's not going to be any faster to level up if I come in lower. It will actually be slower since my damage and resistance rolls will be weaker which makes combat harder. As i recall, the starter dungeon in BT3 puts all of your characters at level 30 when you complete it anyway.

As far as the death daggers, I feel confident that the itemization is going to be consistent across all three game insomuch as they won't make items vanish as the series progresses except perhaps in legacy mode. I think the original games had a bug preventing death daggers from dropping that has now been fixed. If I am wrong, I'll swap over to stoneblades.

[astrosha]

Originally posted by SpectralShade:

I'd say you are a bit overleveled for BT2 and it might put you at a disadvantage in BT3, depending on how they implement the increased stat attribute cap from there.

The old games, C64 version at least, stat caps were 18 in BT1, 19 in BT2, 30 in BT3. I think. At least, I don't remember BT2's caps being too different from BT1's.

My party has reached the mid 30's just by playing the game. I did some grinding in the Catacombs before moving on, but I still entered Mangar's more than ten levels ago. Got those levels just coming out and going back in each time I ran out of room or SP.

The issue won't be the stat caps, however - it will be the exp requirements. Are they going to maintain the same 100k exp per level (after level 13) in BT2 and BT3? If so, there's no reason not to grind away now to level 100 or so. If they are not, and exp requirements will go up, that's a reason to NOT grind past enough to beat Mangar here : you'll want to grind in the sequels in order to reach the stat caps (and their effects on HP/MP) easier.

[Keefe the Thief]

I definitely remember that an overleveled party was nearly useless when coming from BT 1 to 3. I used an editor to push everything to the max and got my ass handed to me in the first dimension i travelled to with my chronomancer.

And I hope they remove death daggers in BTII - they make itemization for warrior-types a non-issue. Why have weapon damage at all when pretty much everybody can instacrit? YMMV of course.

[flux_c]

Yeah, I'm wondering how they're going to handle transferring characters. It seems that a lot of people are overleveling their characters, and equipping them with the best items. However, I can't help but be reminded of the Twilight Zone episode A Nice Place to Visit.

[VoidEngineer]

Originally posted by Keefe the Thief:

I definitely remember that an overleveled party was nearly useless when coming from BT 1 to 3. I used an editor to push everything to the max and got my ass handed to me in the first dimension i travelled to with my chronomancer.

And I hope they remove death daggers in BTII - they make itemization for warrior-types a non-issue. Why have weapon damage at all when pretty much everybody can instacrit? YMMV of course.

I remember getting the crap kicked out of me in Arboria as well after bringing in characters from BT1 to BT3. We relied heavily on dragonwands and then just started getting annihilated after those ran out. I used to think it was because I was a kid and didn't know what the hell I was even doing, but now that I hear you talk about it, I wonder. In any case, every fight is going to have a zillion foes in it at a variety of ranges, so being able to automatically kill 2 or 3 per round from melee is not going to be a serious factor in combat. Spells will continue to do most of the damage with front line guys continuing their role as meat shields. The existence of death dagger/stone blades isn't going to affect this at all.

[SertanDoom]

Characters I transfer over are probably going to be the back line ones that will be training the new frontline team. An overleveled spellcaster (or two) should still be helpful getting the new teamgoing no matter what happens.