Dragon's Dogma (Series)

[Moonface]

I didn't use the ring yet because I had no idea what it was really for and was waiting for the game to maybe give a hint of when the right time to use it was, but since it never does and I didn't know you could have relationships with characters I just kept hold of it. XD

I guess I got Valmiro because of his quest that involves giving him a lot of items and the game registers those as gifts. I think overall the beloved feature of this game is rather useless, because I never got the impression of developing an intimate bond with anyone except my personal pawn, and maybe Quina who takes care of you at the start of the game but I couldn't tell if I was related to her by blood with the way some of the dialogue is delivered so I just noped out of that. I really wouldn't have known it was a feature without Grigori taking them as a sacrificial choice though and if DD2 keeps that feature I hope it gets done better.

[Moonface]

So I started the Bitterblack Isle DLC yesterday, and what the fuck level are you meant to be for this shit?! My pawn and I are both Level 63 and since getting beyond the big eyeball tentacle boss, the damage output of my party has gone to nothing. I just had a Cursed Dragon drop in after grabbing a Void Key and attacks to the crystal in its chest are so weak that I spent over 20 minutes on it without even getting one bar of health down by 1/3. Add to that all the pawns want to act like toddlers in a toy store and run off doing whatever they want all the time. Oh, an imprisoned Gorecyclops with a shit ton of health that's chained to the wall that we're telling our master to leave alone? Fuck it let's wail on it anyway and see if our master can finish what they're doing and get out of the area before we piss off this thing enough to have it break free and start murdering everyone. LEAVE IT ALONE FOR THE LOVE OF GRIGORI!

Edit: Tried to change up the party by grabbing pawns that have strengths against the Cursed Dragon, but it did nothing. Stopped giving a shit and grabbed DL's pawn and another super strong pawn and it still made no difference really. I don't know what the DLC of this game expects but it's a miserable experience and I don't see what the appeal is of it. This DLC is like pulling teeth in the most dull and painful way possible.

[Mr EliteL]

Ah, yeah you may need to level yourself up to....80-100 before tackling BBL, and that's like early levels. If you're 63, just run if you come across a boss-like enemy like the Cursed Dragon and yeah, if your pawns are trying to attack that Condemened Cyclops, just spam the "Come" command at them so they're kept away from trying to anger it. I take it you're still Magick Archer which is good for BBL, but Assassin would be better for early explorers, as it has a "safe" skill that makes you invulnerable to a physical hit and counter to give you a fighting chance. So perhaps grind that vocation if you haven't to max level in the post-game overworld or the two early BBL areas (with Cyclops and Cockatrice), or the Everfall.

If you have fought an Evil Eye, the Gazer is basically the same, removing it's tentacles is even better for the fight as they're more dangerous and to make it vulnerable for a time, and as it goes down that's where the damage will start to happen for you. DL's Pawn should be able to destroy the Gazer then....if she casts the correct spells. Once you get past the Gazer, the areas beyond that before the next boss are quite fun to go through...oh er, kinda, watch out for the Eliminator and possible Elder Ogre spawn in the Fortress of Remembrance. Ha...ha...ha.... *thinks of the second version of BBL* Did you try the room, actually you might not know this about it yet, but where there's like a top floor looking down on an arena which you go down to that spawns a set of enemies, but they can if you exit then go back in, but if you defeat one set, none will appear for a while. The room is from top floor of Duskmoon Tower.

Yeah it might be better if you try and complete most of the Everfall before BBL, just don't complete Fathom Deep until you feel like moving on towards the very end (you can keep as many Wakestones as you want, just don't to talk to Quince when you have 20 in your on-hand inventory).

[Moonface]

I can't recall if I fought an Evil Eye, but the Gazer I dealt with by myself with just your pawn hired out. No idea what an Eliminator is, and haven't seen an Elder Ogre yet. The only other boss enemies I've seen are Death, the imprisoned Gorecyclops, and the stupid Cursed Dragon. The last one is when I dragged out DL's pawn but it didn't really change the tide of the fight very much.

Also you'd think spamming "Come" would work but they were entirely ignoring me even when I was needing actual help. They were just intent on pissing that cyclops off by channeling their "step on me mummy" energy.

[Mr EliteL]

You should fight an Evil Eye as an intro to the post-game Everfall, and I believe there's another in that overall place somewhere, so perhaps you haven't actually started that yet. If you recall escaping the Everfall earlier with the tentacles rising from the ground, although you don't get to fight one then, is from an Evil Eye. Ah, so there's plenty more for you to comes across yet then. Get on levelin', my boi.

Yeah, sometimes the command doesn't always attract them back to you. Perhaps you're still too close to it, they shouldn't bother it when higher up, although the ranged pawns may if again close enough. They can also accidentally fall back down (usually to their temporary down position because of the fall damage). If my guy's also attacking it, it may be because he's trying to get knowledge on it as I don't think he has any on the Condemned Gorecyclops at the moment, although having full knowledge won't prevent him either. May be an arduous task but if you're not being attacked by other enemies in the room, try grabbing the pawns, throw them away from the Gorecyclops then spam "Come" while moving away so they follow you. Ahh, not sure what else to suggest as that's what I'd do in that situation, but still better not to tackle that room yet, it should also be the end of that section of BBL with nothing beyond that particular room.

Oh, have you encountered the chest enemy, the first one spawns in a particular chest in the area before the Condemned Gorecyclops. If you haven't yet, I'd recommend having a Throwblast/powerful attack handy. On my PS4 game, I can't kill one myself yet even with DL's pawn.

[Moonface]

Yeah I haven't done anything in the Everfall; I immediately teleported out to go continue doing side quests and then decided to go to Bitterblack instead to get my shit shoved in.

Oh I've thrown your pawn many many times just because he has a tendency to always walk right in front of me and try to take chest contents. XD

As for the chest monsters, absolutely fuck those things! Every time I get caught by one the pawns take so long to do anything about it I almost die every time; and when I first tried fighting the Cursed Dragon I ran into a hallway for safety, saw a chest, opened it and died to it. It doesn't help that there seems to be no way to tell what chests are just death traps.

[Dragon Lord]

I can't recall if I fought an Evil Eye, but the Gazer I dealt with by myself with just your pawn hired out. No idea what an Eliminator is, and haven't seen an Elder Ogre yet. The only other boss enemies I've seen are Death, the imprisoned Gorecyclops, and the stupid Cursed Dragon. The last one is when I dragged out DL's pawn but it didn't really change the tide of the fight very much.

Yeah, my Pawn's behavior is probably so out of whack that she's not going to be doing what she's supposed to be doing. That's the bad thing with how they made the Pawn system work in DD. You can align them perfectly, but after a while of being rented and used, their alignment is going to start changing due to the influence of other players, so you have to continuously go back and fix it. Of course since I haven't played the game in a couple of years, she's way off the mark right now.

Hopefully in DD2 they fix that. It's so stupid that random players can rent your pawn and purposely screw up their behavior just to troll.

[Mr EliteL]

When a pawn opens a chest, you can run in and take the contents before they pick up what's in there, so you could always still let them open it if you're cautious the enemy will come out. Forgot to mention this, but only one will spawn in an area and also I noticed if there's a chest on a balcony type floor they won't be in those so those should be safe. However I could be wrong on that note, I haven't memorised every Maneater placings but that tended to be the case when I played. The exception is the first encounter in the area before Condemned Gorecyclops where it's on that wooden path. The one spawn every area (er most) changes after you defeat the main boss of BBL for the first time though, and when that happens the first two safe areas of the enemy become unsafe too.

Another thing is you can equip the Egression Augment Skill, but that's in the Fighter vocation that is unlocked.

[Moonface]

I can't recall if I fought an Evil Eye, but the Gazer I dealt with by myself with just your pawn hired out. No idea what an Eliminator is, and haven't seen an Elder Ogre yet. The only other boss enemies I've seen are Death, the imprisoned Gorecyclops, and the stupid Cursed Dragon. The last one is when I dragged out DL's pawn but it didn't really change the tide of the fight very much.

Yeah, my Pawn's behavior is probably so out of whack that she's not going to be doing what she's supposed to be doing. That's the bad thing with how they made the Pawn system work in DD. You can align them perfectly, but after a while of being rented and used, their alignment is going to start changing due to the influence of other players, so you have to continuously go back and fix it. Of course since I haven't played the game in a couple of years, she's way off the mark right now.

Hopefully in DD2 they fix that. It's so stupid that random players can rent your pawn and purposely screw up their behavior just to troll.

Oh, I didn't realise that pawn behaviour is influenced by any player. I thought it was just what you set at the start when making your pawn and then how good they are with those behaviours increases as they level up and learn things in the world. My pawn hasn't been rented too many times (like, maybe three times) so hopefully her behaviour hasn't been badly altered by other players yet.

[Moonface]

Dragon's Dogma II | First Trailer
The first trailer for Dragon's Dogma II has been shown during today's PlayStation Showcase:

[Mr EliteL]

I completely missed the Showcase, but man am I happy this was included in it. We got a glimpse into DD2, and well it's looking good so far. Definitely need to see more in hopes it does have multiple notable locations like cities and towns where we only got Cassardis, Gran Soren and....that small Encampment place which wasn't much. Plus other stuff too of course, but hey, they are going full fantasy here with different humanoid species. Also Grigori looks to be back again, I don't mind as the design is incredible and I dunno, would it feel weird if we didn't see that dragon? Hope it's still voiced by David Lodge, he really gave it the weight of a high and mighty being. Also proves the cycle continues or is happening elsewhere.

[Moonface]

Doesn't the ending of DD1 kinda indicate the cycle repeats itself, since I'm aware the Arisen you fight at the end after your first playthrough can be your previous character depending on what ending you got beforehand. Although that doesn't really explain how Grigori comes back to life since unless you take his offer you always have to kill him.

Apparently a lot of stuff in this trailer is content that was cut from DD1, but I've not remembered to look further into it to see what was cut from that game to see what has been brought into the sequel and what else has a chance of coming over too.

As I said in the Showcase thread though, definitely the biggest surprise for me in the whole show just because I really didn't think we'd see anything this year for DD2, let alone a trailer featuring gameplay footage.

I need to go back to DD1 at some point and finish my first playthrough. I stopped during that DLC island I forget the name of because I wanted to get through everything I could before triggering the ending since I know the game will go into NG immediately upon completing it.

[Dragon Lord]

Trailer was neat, but I'm still going to keep my hype in check for this game. I want to be super excited for the game, since the first game is one of my favorite games ever, but it's been a long time since the first game came out and there's a lot they can screw up with the second one that could completely ruin it. With the huge time gap between the games, I just don't want to set myself up for major disappointment in the case it does happen.

Also yes, there was a ton of cut content from the first game due to time restrictions. I believe the map was originally intended to be at least twice as big as it ended up being in Dragon's Dogma.

[Mr EliteL]

If you remember Barroch, he's an Arisen who never completed the task of getting his heart back and remained on Bitterblack Isle as he found it more interesting, him and Olra are never affected after our Grigori is defeated, unlike Edmun and the Dragonforged guy who do. So they're from another world(s) that are also cursed with the cycle. So DD2 is another area/world or the same but our cycle never broke.

I knew content was cut for the original too, I've got the design works book, can't remember if some of the new enemies could've been from there...*checks* well not in the trailer but there are unused monsters in there and other designs that could've worked as a different enemy. Stuff like giants (not Cyclops/Ogres), a daemon that looks more like a dragon, wingless/tiny winged dragons with long necks, witches, slime, orc, orc skeletons, massive monsters (one is controlled by another being hovering above it), behemoths. There's likely more too that may have been cut which wasn't featured in there.

[Moonface]

If you remember Barroch, he's an Arisen who never completed the task of getting his heart back and remained on Bitterblack Isle as he found it more interesting, him and Olra are never affected after our Grigori is defeated, unlike Edmun and the Dragonforged guy who do. So they're from another world(s) that are also cursed with the cycle. So DD2 is another area/world or the same but our cycle never broke.

I forgot there are characters who are Arisen but aren't affected by Grigori's defeat, likely because I didn't meet Barroch until after that point so I probably just didn't make the connection that he's an Arisen who isn't dead from Grigori's passing and instead took him to be another NPC. I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of multiple realities because I don't want to just have the core motivation of the player to just be chase after another Grigori. I love Grigori don't get me wrong but I don't just want to be seeing the same villain again or having the same outcomes occur from defeating him, so I'm curious to see what will be done differently regarding him in this game.


More enemy variety will definitely be nice to see. I found that after a while enemies started to get a bit repetitive in DD1.

I wonder if pawns are going to be entirely fresh or if we can bring anything over from DD1 at all, even if it's just the character and none of the stats/progress.