Capcom Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[yellowcake]

Guys can someone explain to me how save game works in this cause I think I lost a day's worth of gaming this moment and I'm pissed. I've been playing for a few days now. I made a mistake right after seeing auto save being made. Reloaded last checkpoint and it threw me fuck i don't know when where I was next to a rift stone. Accidentally clicked on it and it made another save on entering the rift. Now I'm back to sometime yesterday and whole few hours clearing the witchwood gone. Any tips before I ragequit this shit (otherwise liking it very much).

Edit:

I understand there are manual saves and checkpoints. The latter seem to be rather sparsely occurring or tied to main quest or whatever. I presume if you chose to "continue" upon the startup the game loads the one that is last in term of timestamp. So if one wants to reload to manually saved point one should "quit without saving" and then restart game and continue. If one loads a checkpoint and somehow triggers autosave right after he is fucked. I am getting this right? I can't believe this shit.

 

[Zombra]

Any tips?

Live with your mistakes. Best advice I can give for a game with rolling autosave.

 

[kintake]

If you're on pc and want to keep a specific checkpoint, just make a copy of the save file. Steam version is located in steam/userdata/xxxxx/367500/remote/ddda.sav

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Guys can someone explain to me how save game works in this cause I think I lost a day's worth of gaming this moment and I'm pissed. I've been playing for a few days now. I made a mistake right after seeing auto save being made. Reloaded last checkpoint and it threw me fuck i don't know when where I was next to a rift stone. Accidentally clicked on it and it made another save on entering the rift. Now I'm back to sometime yesterday and whole few hours clearing the witchwood gone. Any tips before I ragequit this shit (otherwise liking it very much).

Edit:

I understand there are manual saves and checkpoints. The latter seem to be rather sparsely occurring or tied to main quest or whatever. I presume if you chose to "continue" upon the startup the game loads the one that is last in term of timestamp. So if one wants to reload to manually saved point one should "quit without saving" and then restart game and continue. If one loads a checkpoint and somehow triggers autosave right after he is fucked. I am getting this right? I can't believe this shit.

First, as noted above by kintake, you can easily create copies of your save-games if you're playing on PC --- and even if you're playing on PS3, you can still copy saves from the PS3 to a USB drive and then store them on your computer.

Second, Dragon's Dogma keeps two saves for your character, which are part of the same file. One is the 'normal' save which is frequently updated by the game, although you can also choose to save manually via the menu at any time outside of combat or cutscenes. The other is the 'checkpoint' save, which is updated when you rest or when you enter a riftstone (there might also be a few points in the main quest at which the checkpoint save is updated).

From the menu within the game (i.e. not the title screen), you can load either your last 'normal' save or your last 'checkpoint' save. If you select the latter, then any progress you had made since your last checkpoint save is lost [edit: as soon as it saves again].

 

[Damned Registrations]

Not quite, if you accidentally load your checkpoint save by mistake, you can immediately turn the game off without saving and reload again at your normal save, I think. You can also abuse the system to savescum things.

 

[yellowcake]

So it seems about right. I went to the rift to check out how does this pawn stuff work then spent next two in - game days and nights wandering in the witchwood. Returned to the willage and spent about two RL hours managing inventory and crafting. Got this catch the thief quest, couldn't find the bastard then reloaded checkpoint. Got me back to the rift and from level 15 to 11. Ah well.

BTW is the crafting worth a hassle in this game? The interface is not helpful in this task.

 

[Zombra]

BTW is the crafting worth a hassle in this game? The interface is not helpful in this task.

I never found it worthwhile. Upgrading equipment on the other hand is very important.

 

[Hirato]

crafting is useful, I mostly used it to combine horspud juice with other things to simultaneously make more effective healing items and lighten my inventory...

 

[Damned Registrations]

Crafting is an alternative to simply spending more money (or cheesing the healing springs) and hauling around extra weight. You can create a lot of potent items via crafting, it's just not really any more effective than multiple weaker item spam.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Beat Grigori again last night, I had forgotten how shit the fight is, especially since I hadn't specced into any easy way to hit the heart.

Anyway, made it past and had forgotten how much better the post-game is. Last time I finished this game was on the PS3 ages ago. Looking forward to BBI.

edit: I'd only played the vanilla version on the PS3 - so this is my first time in BBI. Cleared the first trash pack, then got 1 hit KOd by:

This is awesome. My gear is shit as I have no patience to grind Everfall, is BBI doable on regular Dragonforged gear?

 

[kintake]

is BBI doable on regular Dragonforged gear?

Most definitely, I'd say it's a much better experience if you're not overgeared for it.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

Armor is mostly for fashion anyway imo. and you'll find better weapons there soon enough, which are more important since some enemies on BBI have pretty high resistances and HP. Enjoy BBI, it's a really cool place, despite all the recycling.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's a shame there wasn't more of BBI, considering it probably took less development hours than a single one of the dungeons in the main game, they could have made it 3 or 4 times as large, and non-linear to boot, by axing something like the gorge or undead crypt or lizardman nest. Environment variety is overrated, give me a massive dungeon crawl with decent loot any day.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

Yeah, if I had to choose, I'd choose massive and a bit more labyrinthine with some recycling over variety any day. Even better though if there'd be some more variety on top of a couple more levels. I mean, some more individual rooms/places comparable to Duskmoon Tower or Fortress of Remembrance would've been nice. Sad thing about the low budget.

Still, great game.

 

[Delterius]

I wish they'd take the lessons from BBI and make Dragon's Dogma 2. And so do you.

keyword: would. As in, they won't because Capcom.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

I really wouldn't want to miss the open world part of the main game though, it's a nice contrast to BBI. It would probably blow the budget, but a somewhat more fleshed out open world, that doesn't become that irrelevant that soon, and every dungeon as intense as and double the size of BBI, each with individual theme and enemies.

Yeah, not gonna happen. :/

 

[Delterius]

Imagine: a Dragon's Dogma version of the new Zelda and cry bitter tears of despair for what shall never be.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

This is awesome. My gear is shit as I have no patience to grind Everfall, is BBI doable on regular Dragonforged gear?

You'll find better gear as you proceed further into BBI, in particular cursed items that require purification from Olra (using Rift Crystals). You shouldn't need to worry about Dragonforging weapons/armor (and Rarefying them after that) until you're well into the second of BBI's three main sections. When you do reach that point, there's a relatively quick method of Dragonforging:

Spoiler

in the Duskmoon Tower zone where you first encounter Barroch, dropping a Rancid Bait Meat (purchasable from Barroch) summons a Cursed Dragon, which has a 40%-75% of Dragonforging each piece of weapon/armor/clothing you have equipped when it is defeated, depending on how enhanced they are. After killing the Cursed Dragon, leaving the zone and re-entering will summon another one if you were fast enough in defeating the first one.

It's a shame there wasn't more of BBI, considering it probably took less development hours than a single one of the dungeons in the main game, they could have made it 3 or 4 times as large, and non-linear to boot, by axing something like the gorge or undead crypt or lizardman nest. Environment variety is overrated, give me a massive dungeon crawl with decent loot any day.

BBI was created after the base game and does contain a number of new environments and enemies (though zones are re-used).

 

[Haplo]

Grigori weapons tend to be better then Tier 1 BBI weapons. It will take you a while to reach Tier 2 and especially 3 weapons.

 

[Great Deceiver]

It's taking me a long time to kill the BBI variations of Ogre and Cyclops. Makes me think I'm doing something wrong... I have dragonfire weapons upgraded, playing a Mystic Knight, but simply not doing any damage and fights take forever. Bullet spongy shit is boring.

 

[Delterius]

It's taking me a long time to kill the BBI variations of Ogre and Cyclops. Makes me think I'm doing something wrong... I have dragonfire weapons upgraded, playing a Mystic Knight, but simply not doing any damage and fights take forever. Bullet spongy shit is boring.

You won't deal much if any damage if you can't best the enemy defenses. So you might just be underlevelled and underequipped, still.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm probably very underlevelled at lvl 46 or so, but it's not that the fights are difficult - just take forever. Should I just grind Everfall for some items/xp?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

It's taking me a long time to kill the BBI variations of Ogre and Cyclops. Makes me think I'm doing something wrong... I have dragonfire weapons upgraded, playing a Mystic Knight, but simply not doing any damage and fights take forever. Bullet spongy shit is boring.

I'm probably very underlevelled at lvl 46 or so, but it's not that the fights are difficult - just take forever. Should I just grind Everfall for some items/xp?

Which weapons are you and your pawns using? At level 46, you're probably best off running away from Elder Ogres, although you should be able to kill the Gorecyclops without too much difficulty (unless you're referring to the Giant Condemned Gorecyclops, in which case you shouldn't even be trying yet).

If you need better weapons,

Spoiler

there are two merchants in the Everfall that between them supply good weapons for every vocation, though the cost is exhorbitant.

For leveling, you can try the arena-like side-area accessible

Spoiler

from Duskmoon Tower in BBI (there's another arena in the second of BBI's three main sections) or you can resort to the Everfall.

 

[Damned Registrations]

lvl 46 is very underlevelled, but if it's xp you want, high level targets are best. Buy a ton of throwable explosives (either type is fine) and kill some big baddies in BBI. Sadly, the phys/magic hybrids kind of suffer in BBI due to the way damage is calculated, neither aspect is enough to overwhelm the defenses. Other options are using stat buffs/debuffs (buffs are very effective, never tried defense down items, forget if they even exist) or diving past enemies to loot chests with better gear. Actually, there is a room just before the first mandatory boss with a ton of throwblasts iirc.

Also be mindful in general in BBI that the enemies have much stronger resistances/weaknesses. You might not notice if a vanilla cyclops is weak to phys or magic or lightning vs fire or whatever, but banshees are quite easily frozen and basically immune to other elements, goblin mages are basically magic immune, garms and dark ogres are highly phys resistant, etc. Don't expect to faceroll through everything with a single type of attack.

 

[Grimlorn]

lvl 46 is a bit low. I think I was about 70 when I first entered and I had trouble. I was using split damage daggers though for awhile. I had a lot of trouble killing those garm mobs (the hounds). Even though they were supposedly vuln to lightning, my daggers barely damaged them. That's because my daggers which were about half physical and half lightning damage. I switched to a pure physical damage sword and saw their hp drop much faster when attacking. I'm not familiar with Mystic Knights but you want to either go pure magic or pure physical damage when using attacks to overcome mobs defense.

The game is more equipment heavy. I hadn't even beat Grigori so my weapons weren't the strongest. Equipment matters much more since your stat growth is so slow. You'll level fast in BBI so I wouldn't worry about going to Everfall. Everfall is a waste of time except for the special dragon in it.

A lot of mobs are vulnerable to lightning damage in BBI so having casters with lightning spells helps.