Hawklord

It's happening! 

Had to go out so I missed the stream. Sort of glad to hear I didn't miss any DLC announcement

Is this a timed demo eg 2 hours from when you start download?

2 hours ago, Jamie John said:

Has anyone tried this? 'Upgrading' your Deck's display with a Decky Loader plugin called 'Vibrant Deck' to increase saturation, among other things.

Yep set to 150% for all games. Does make a good difference!

All Quiet on the Western Front 4.5/5

My only criticism is that it could have been longer. My grandad was in both wars, he got it semi easy in the 2nd one but I remember him telling me stories of WW1 that horrified me. It was only when I got older and after he'd died that I realised he hadn't made them up. Doesn't matter which side you were on, war never changes.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 3/5

I didn't not enjoy it, but it did drag. I'm not burnt out on superhero movies but the recent ones have really stagnated. Bloated but not unwatchable and they had to do "something" to honour Chad Boseman

This solved an argument between me and my missus on how to pronounce Blue Riband (I won 😛)

I got and still have a tie dye shirt that accompanied this ad campaign (send in x amount of lids + postage)

1 hour ago, SpagMasterSwift said:

Thanks for the heads up, tickets booked - now need to find somebody to go with...

Same lol. My missus said she'll go but I know she'll hate it

16 hours ago, MrHendo said:

Yeah the Fextralife guide is fairly basic. I use it for every play through to remind me of where to go in what order.

 

Also, @Hawklord, I upgraded the Reduvia to the same level as the poleblade and it just melts things! I still prefer the poleblade for general killing as it looks very cool, but I’ve got both on hand and will switch if the poleblade just isn’t cutting it.

 

I was struggling with a couple of bosses early on in Atlus and the Reduvia skill just destroyed them.

 

Still getting nowhere against the guardian outside death eater, and the dragon a little further south has a laughably small pebble of health disappear when I hit it, so back later on.

The death bird won’t be back, however.

 

Question about the dragon communion seal - how does the buff work?

I’m two handing the pole on the right hand, does that mean no buff unless I’m one handing it with the seal on the other hand?

I've found the Poleblade is good for mobs but you really need a lot of health or really good armour to tank the hits you inevitably get so I've been reverting more and more to the Reduvia.

From what I've read (and it depends where you read) the Dragon Seal passively buffs Bleed and makes it proc sooner. Also works better than the Frenzied Flame Seal for any Madness Incantations.

"the guardian outside death eater"...yeah he's tough. Do you have Black Flame? The stats for the Blood build work well with it and it can melt high HP enemies due to the 10% additional damage per second after it hits. A combination of that + Reduvia should take care of him as long as you don't get hit. That's what I used on the Twin Gargoyles and was one of the quickest boss fights I've done

There are two bands that I never thought I'd ever get to see live. At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta.

I managed to see ATDI twice (and ORL as Bosnian Rainbows) and now I'm going to see The Mars Volta in June!  

@MrHendo had enough Sombre stones to upgrade the Poleblade to +9 and I'm liking it. My stats aren't far off from the ones in the vid. I might go repsec to bring them a bit closer. I think I'll run with both weapons for the time being, possibly using the Reduvia to start the bleed from further back (range isn't that great but good for one shotting single enemies like Rot Dogs) then follow up with the Poleblade to finish them off. Apart from the Twinblade that was in the network test, I'd never used one since for one reason or another. As an example of how well it does, I'm following Millicent's quest so went to The Shaded Castle and destroyed the boss there, as well as anything that stood in my way. Fuck you Perfumers lol

Also found another area that I hadn't been to before

For you, I'd probably put some of your Dex into Arcane as the Arcane scaling works better on both weapons. Next stop is the Dragon Communion Seal as that passively buffs Bleed.

5 minutes ago, MrHendo said:

This is the build I’m using, but not taking the stats or add-ons as gospel, just a guide.

It shows off the poleblade quite well, though.

 

It’s more or less the same as Reduvia - spam L2 a lot, use R1 for weaker enemies.

Had a quick try out and obviously haven't upgraded it but it took x3 L2 to kill a basic soldier in Altus and about x8 for a Archer Knight. Reduvia one shots the soldiers and as bleed procs on the 3rd shot, it took x3 for the Archer. Had been saving my Sombre Stones for the Regalia of Eochaid but wasn't a fan of its moveset. think I'll give this a go for a while 

39 minutes ago, MrHendo said:

I’m at 30 dex and arcane with the poleblade and struggling a bit against the last few bits in Caelid, specifically the large stone bastard outside the death eater, the dragon further south and the death bird. All the main bits are done and I’ve moved forwards into Atlus, but want to get them finished.

 

I think the weapon is either 6 or 7 level so far.

Would you suggest stopping splitting the stats and going more into arcane than dex?

I'm leaning heavily into Reduvia's Skill, Reduvia's Blood Blade, which scales primarily with Arcane and actually does more damage than the blade itself. Arcane is at 30 (Dex is only 24) but coupled with the Silver Tear Mask and Marika's Scarseal boosts me to 41 Arc (these give +8 and +3 Arc).

Haven't really used the Poleblade in any of the runs so I'm not sure how well that causes bleed build up and I'm not actually "fighting" with the blade, just spamming the skill lol. Got a few things to clear up but I'll be heading into Altus soon so I'll pick up the Poleblade when I get there and give it a try, see how it compares damage wise.

You could burn a couple of Larval Tears to change things around. Need Sombre Stones for the upgrades (and I just maxed Reduvia out to +10 a few mins ago)

I've also ignored most of the dragons except Greyroll as I'm trying to get to 100% as quick as I can. Deathbirds can fuck off though, got no time for those lol.

Edit: Elenora went down in 6 "hits" of the Reduvia skill

On 17/02/2023 at 09:47, MrHendo said:

Are you gonna try the whole game with the Reduvia?

Haven't done any progression beyond Altus yet but

1 hour ago, memories said:

And...I'm out 

 

Even after pumping half a million runes into leveling up from 19 to 62 or so I'm still shit at this game.

 

Followed the Fextralife guide and tried out the storm front gate bit, after about 10 attempts with folk shooting me from the side and some new big bastard jumping down from above I just got on my horse and ran through. 

 

 

I always run through that part. Running away in this game is a viable strategy unlike the previous games  

1 hour ago, memories said:

Got a giant pot shaped guy out a hole and nothing much happened.

That's the start of an NPC quest. You'll meet up with him a few times over the course of the game and "help" him out.

1 hour ago, memories said:

Guide then said to go back south to the ravine in the lake, struggled to fight some skeletons but eventually beat them by...yip running away on my horse and using the magic at a distance, carried on up the ravine and got invaded and battered.

Skellys are fuckers as you have to kill them again before they come back to life otherwise they keep respawning and ganking you. I just run past them as they aren't worth the effort. Shortly after you get invaded, someone arrives to help you out. The weapon you get after the fight is what I'm using on my current playthrough and it's shredding everything. Need a specific set of stats but it's pretty powerful even where I've got to in the mid-game on this playthrough.

The whole starting area you are in is pretty much a tutorial for the rest of the game. It's around 100+ hours for a full playthrough. I could co-op to help you out if you want? I'm so sad that I've triple dipped so platform doesn't matter

1 hour ago, PikaStu said:

Does it tell you anywhere in the game how long your play time is?

If you manually go to load a save it should have it there (I think)

That's the first game in a long time time that I've had to switch off due to it giving me motion sickness!

On 09/02/2023 at 13:39, Hawklord said:

 

This stopped working for me in October but I was out of contract at the time. I've since had a new contract with 3 months free so I'll be interested to see if it still works (3 months is up next week)

 

When it did work I had to wait until a day or two before it expired to re-activate

Can confirm that the DISNEY3 code no longer works (for me at least) and has also been removed from the mega thread over at HotUKDeals.

Anyone got a replacement?  

1 hour ago, memories said:

Haha, no not yet but I'm sitting right back at the Church of Elleh grace point ready to pump a shit load into level upgrades next time I'm on.

If you're going to stick with Astrologer then Int and Mind are what you'll need to focus on for levelling (increases FP so you can cast spells more often & sorceries are more powerful). Memory stones can be found that will increase the number of spells/incantations that you can have equipped at any one time. You can find a really good staff early on, I'll spoil the location below in case you want to find it naturally.

Astrologers also start with a reasonable Dex stat so keep an eye out for Dex based weapons in case you need to get up & close with some enemies. Some have a good Ash of War that will also scale with your stats and note that most weapons will allow you to swap out the AoW for a different one. Don't neglect your weapon and Spirit Ash upgrades either.

The good thing is that you can unlock the re-spec fairly early on in the game (it may seem longer than early but trust me, it is early game ) so you aren't tied so much to any one build. The consumable for this is fairly scarce early on but you can farm more later

7 hours ago, memories said:

Just killed Mad Pumpkin Head, well more my ghost dogs killed him whilst I got the odd sword hit in when his back was turned.

Nice one 👏

3 hours ago, MrHendo said:

Are you gonna try the whole game with the Reduvia?

Not decided yet. I've only just reached Altus in this one but it's been great for everything so far (halfway through Ranni's quest as well). Hammers your stamina though as I'm only getting 3/4 hits with the skill and I'm still a bit of a glass cannon.

Also need to farm some stones to upgrade the RoE to see how it fairs against the stronger enemies going forward. Hopefully when I get the Lord of Blood's Exultation it should help with both with weapons

+1 for Fextralife. Probably my most visited bookmark

Currently on 5th playthrough and experimenting with an Dex/Arc build using the Reduvia that you get near the start of the game. At close/medium range, its weapon skill "Reduvia Blood Blade" is seriously overpowered! 

Also just picked up Regalia of Eochaid. Paired with the Winged Sword Insignia gives another OP skill

I get the 3 months for 15k from that link

22 minutes ago, Darwock said:

Regarding the Morne guy, yes I have been to that place and had that fight. Did not even register it was connected.

22 minutes ago, Darwock said:

 

I hope it’s not always like that, or…

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I’ve just killed Millicent too

 

Nah, that one doesn't affect her quest but her quest is also one of the easiest to mess up!

12 minutes ago, Darwock said:

Oh FFS, one of the things I wanted to do right this time around was when you first go to the hold, there’s this Rob Stark-lookin’ guy that tells you to find his servant/companion. When I played it first time, by just going through the game naturally he disappeared before I found her.

 

Thinking that was triggered by killing the wrong boss at the wrong time, I set about exploring the map as far as I possibly could without killing any bosses this time. I went as far north as Caria Manor, over to Sellia, down to Castle Morne - didn’t go into Stormveil at all (because I did that last time). Didn’t find her anywhere.

 

 

12 minutes ago, Darwock said:

Also, to piss me off even further -

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apparently when I decided to deliver Irina’s letter to her father at Castle Morne after going north a bit further, I broke the quest. I just fought my way up to see him and he’s not even there to receive it.