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The Dark Eye Blackguards - turn-based tactical RPG set in The Dark Eye world

Io-Daedalic

Educated
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Nov 19, 2013
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34
Location
Hamburg, Germany
toro, the to-hit chances are calculated correctly in the game, but you have to keep in mind that what you see is only the chance of your character to succeed with is attack roll. If you succeed, the enemy still has the chance to parry or evade.
The calculation of the to-hit chance is explained in the in-game help, as well, look it up there, it's not simply a roll against his attack.
What is missing there, is the calculation of evasion or parry rolls, but I suspect that they follow a similar patter to the attack rolls, i.e. you don't simply roll against the attack, parry, or evade value, but rather a number that is modified according to the opponent's attack or parry values.

This is only my suspicion, but a) do we know that the attack role is calculated that way and b) would it explain why my chars largely stopped parrying against the buffed enemies from chapter 4+5.
The displayed THC includes parry/dodge of the opponent as the game does only one roll. The upcoming detailed combat log will help to explain this as you'll be able to see (your characters') dice rolls. I explained how to-hit works a few days ago on our official company board, so let me quote that to maybe clarify things:
In contrast to the TDE 4 ruleset, there is no dedicated parry or dodge roll. The attack of the attacker is weighted against the parry/dodge (whatever is available and has the highest value) of the defender. If they are the same, the chance to hit is 60%. For each increasing point of difference between the two values, the chance to hit will be modified by +5% or -5%, up to a value of 95% hit chance. Any hit using this one and only dice roll will be considered a "hit", any miss will be considered a successful "parry"/"dodge". A roll of 20 on the D20 is considered a "masterly parry"/"masterly dodge" by the defender. So there are essentially no "misses" due to not having separate rolls any more. Also note that there is no way to dodge after a failed parry.

This is also different with distance attacks, where there is a minimum chance of 10% to miss (19 or 20 on a D20). Rolling a 20 in distance combat will result in a true "miss", whereas rolling a 19 will result in a "masterly parry"/"masterly dodge" from the opponent. Distance attacks can only be parried if the defender has a shield equipped.

A character can parry only once per round, but dodge any number of times. However, for every attack beyond the first the dodge attempt is made at a commulative -2 penalty (0, -2, -4, etc.). A masterly parry does not prevent further parries, a masterly dodge does not result in a -2 penalty for subsequent dodge attempts.

update info...

I didn't see any mention of animation speed options. Will these be coming in 1.3?
I see the point that some fights with a lot of enemies are tedious. We talked about that, but it's a bigger thing to implement and we think the effort isn't quite justified with the number of fights where it would really speed up things being fairly low. We have to be a bit picky about the things we want implemented and it's just on the lower end of the priorities.
 

Whisper

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Feb 29, 2012
Messages
4,357
Dev posting? Wow.

Can you mention in character creation that pure offencive mage is not viable for Hard difficulty.


Great game, probably best in long time - only thing that i dont like is that you are limited in spells. Offencive just useless, some debuffs are just worse then other debuffs and move as lighting is must have.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
update info...

I didn't see any mention of animation speed options. Will these be coming in 1.3?
I see the point that some fights with a lot of enemies are tedious. We talked about that, but it's a bigger thing to implement and we think the effort isn't quite justified with the number of fights where it would really speed up things being fairly low. We have to be a bit picky about the things we want implemented and it's just on the lower end of the priorities.
I personnaly think it is a big issue : the UI is cumbersome in a few ways. One of them is animation speed, and it made me almost stop playing the game. It would vastly improve the game overall I think, and not only a few select fights. I think it is one of the bigest negatives underlined on gamekult review too, so I am not the only one to get irritated by this.
What about just having a button to skip all animations for the current turn?
My other issue with the UI is the character stats whenever I double click, which makes movement even more tedious as you have to click twice to move.
The battle that made me almost drop the game did not even feature a lot of enemies (only 6 lices, it was the second arena redux battle), but took an awful number of turns.
 
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Ebonsword

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2008
Messages
2,326
It seems like there's some significant changes to the game coming (sounds like a detailed combat log is one of them?).


Should I get the game now or wait a bit longer?
 

Loriac

Arcane
Joined
Jan 20, 2007
Messages
2,375
Hmm, interesting post from Io-Daedalic re: hit rolls. I find it difficult to accept that the mouse-over to-hit % includes dodge and parry, as the rate of hitting seems significantly lower than that would imply (perhaps this is purely observation bias however). The number of regular attacks that miss even 95% hit chance seem higher than 1 in 20 (and in fact, I will look out now for 'normal' parries or dodges on these odds, as they should in theory be impossible as you only fail on a 20 which is automatically a masterly parry or dodge).

This also means that feint is much less useful than if it applied a penalty to the opposing parry or dodge value (perhaps it does?).

Based on the new explanation, the calculus on AV, PV and dodge changes once again in my opinion: your best best is to get dodge as high as possible, and completely ignore PV - even to the extent of favoring weapons with higher PV penalties provided their AV penalties are more modest.

I have to add, I'm disappointed in this implementation if it is a 100% accurate picture of how it works. Considering that the original design was to not even show the dice rolls, the 'simplification' to a single die roll appears to be laziness in coding than anything else. Additionally, it hurts dodge and general defensive builds a lot, which further explains why full-retard AV builds seem to work better than more balanced options.
 

ricolikesrice

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
1,231
Finished the game. on Hard. Did change to "Easy" one time, in flashback fighting 5 lice.

Impressions: starting as mage-archer for main character was a bad advice from one of the posters here. Best idea for main character would be 2-handed weapons user with access to some spells: healing balm (90%+ at lvl 2), move as light (80%+ at lvl 3) and probably +atk/+dodge buff at lvl 4.

Good spells: paralise (lvl 1), berserk (aoe, lvl 4), wraith of elements (lvl 2), remove poison (lvl 3), lighting finds you (4 lvl).

with decent stats and +5 atk for whole party and lighting finds you debuff, you will hit around 80-90% on Hard with deathblow/hammerstrike. that's the goal.

All other spells: ranged buff, remove enchantments, wall of force etc - are optional, not really needed.

agree with the spell choice but you forgot aching limbs which is also a great debuff. unless i m mixing things up it costs 5 asp less than lightning find you at lvl 4 and by reducing strenght/agility it also has a big effect on enemies dodge/parry/attack values - and makes them a little easier to wound/knochdown via hammerblow.
combined with lightning find you debuff and steadfast buff 95% hammerblows on most enemies are easy to get.
personally i mostly used achim limbs as group debuff and then lvl 2 lightning find you for special single targets.

mage archer is great when you use eclifactus shadowforce . use it first turn and while your mage "loses" that turn the shadow can (triple)shoot immediatly. much more effective then casting hawkeye which has nice effects but its not always guaranteed the extra damage makes up for the lost turn (=lost triple shot)casting it. of course eclifactus is also usefull with a mage-warrior but the lack of armor might be a problem (you could mitigate with distance weapons like the andergaster though)
a nice bonus / borderline exploit to shadowarcher is that you can equip expensive special arrows and when you summon your shadow he ll use them too ... without actually using them up. My mage archer was always summonin his shadow first who proceeded doing the ranged damage while he was on balsam/remove poison duty and occasionally shooting himself. it was pretty much like an extra party member.

one thing i didnt try but could make this even more overpowered is move as the lightning, anyone tried casting move as the lightning and then shadow and see whether the shadow will act twice per round as well ?

anyhow, when the DLC/new patch hits i might replay the game with a less overpowered party-setup.

...

i d be really interested in how high the budget for blackguards was (and if it paid off - hopefully did!), Io can you share some info or is that secret ?
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
The displayed THC includes parry/dodge of the opponent as the game does only one roll. The upcoming detailed combat log will help to explain this as you'll be able to see (your characters') dice rolls. I explained how to-hit works a few days ago on our official company board, so let me quote that to maybe clarify things:

Thank you for the clarification, it certainly makes things more clear to me and explains some observations, although I do wonder now if the displayed ratios are really correct all the time. Will keep an eye on it when I play it next time (but that will anyway probably be after the 1.3 patch).

Can you mention in character creation that pure offencive mage is not viable for Hard difficulty.

Now of course it's an adaption, but in TDE PnP, mages never worked very well as pure offensive damage dealers, it's simply not the "style" of the setting.
What did work better in PnP however, was that it was easier to adjust your damage output, giving you also the option to cause a lot of damage fast to single enemies, at the expense of large amounts of mana (meaning you can do it once or twice, but then you'd need to "recharge"). This is somewhat missing in Blackguards and would add some flexibility to damage spells, I think.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

SO, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS.
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Couldn't hold out for 1.3 so began with my dual warrior group. One with DW 1h sword and axe and the other with 2 handed weapons. Both are taking either bow or xbow.

The Dawrven games final fight was a real bitch on hard. I was having a rough time connecting. Closing the gap on the archer was not a big issue but the one with the mace was a real bastard. I reloaded that fight perhaps 15 times. I have to admit savescumming to get a favourable first round was what allowed me to beat it without turning down the difficulty. That is a really hard fight with shit armour and weapons, low level warriors against elites -- still quite fun. I didn't bother trying to kite them into the mace machines. Has anyone done that? Seemed to me the few times he was ever in range he dodged them easily.

The rest of chapter 1 is proving much easier than that fight to this point. I am in Morbal(sp?). So far so good though I seem to be hanging on to AP until I find trainers. to unlock what I want. Think I am better to pump base abilities and stats until later?
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
Damn, only did the 'slanderous alchemist' quest line at chapter five as I heard you need to do it to get the Kor spear. Turns out he's the only guy who trains you in the advanced melee abilities and I've been wasting AP on irrelevant stuff for my main, Naurim and Takate for two chapters and now finally can't afford actually important abilities and passives.
 

pakoito

Arcane
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Joined
Jun 7, 2012
Messages
3,086
Just bought the game yesterday and I'm stuck at character creation because I'm a minmaxer. I don't know about the Dark Eye ruleset or anything so I'm wondering, are the initial archetypes good enough or should I go to Advanced character creation? Does character creation have tons of impact and sideffects in the game á là D&D or there's a little leniency for mistakes? I want to play a Fighting Priest type but wouldn't mind having some spells available.

I don't want to have to restart the game because I chose the wrong talents even before I knew what they are used in the game for (i.e. Fallout's useless traits)
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
Just bought the game yesterday and I'm stuck at character creation because I'm a minmaxer. I don't know about the Dark Eye ruleset or anything so I'm wondering, are the initial archetypes good enough or should I go to Advanced character creation? Does character creation have tons of impact and sideffects in the game á là D&D or there's a little leniency for mistakes? I want to play a Fighting Priest type but wouldn't mind having some spells available.

I don't want to have to restart the game because I chose the wrong talents even before I knew what they are used in the game for (i.e. Fallout's useless traits)

If you are a compulsive minmaxer, you might have to restart the game a few times until you get to know the inner workings.
If you can live with "suboptimal" builds, you can play the game just fine without much minmaxing - it's really not necessary to have an extremely finetuned char.
In principle every character works, unless you spread your XP too thin. The archetypes work, too, although the mage archetype is probably the worst option due to the type of NPCs you meet (it's still perfectly doable, though).
The one big, lasting choice in character creation, is whether you play a magic user or not - unless you choose magic in character creation, you char can't take it later.
Other stuff can be adjusted quite a lot later, since you are not locked into certain class abilities like in D&D.
The most straight-forward chars would be an archer or a fighter with bashing weapons (either 1h or 2h), 2h swords are good, 1h-swords are versatile, but limited in terms of available items, spears are good for their range (but you get an NPC which uses them), fencing seems sub-par, knifes are mostly interesting for mages due to some special ones you find later.
Magic is so far (patch 1.2) best used for buffing/debuffing or auxiliary damage dealing, but not very effective as a pure offensive damage option.

How do you envision your Fighting Priest? There is no divine magic in Blackguards and arcane magic is affected by metal armor, so no D&D cleric, but a fighter with some buff-spells might work (although it might not be the most efficient character).
 
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pakoito

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So you can't customize your companions that much then, interesting. Given that I cannot go full priest party I'll just stick to tanky spear warrior and hope for the best then.

That's all the info I needed, thank you.
 

Gord

Arcane
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Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
You can customize your companions with the exception of magic or no magic.
What weapons they use, which skills they get, which equipment they use can be adjusted quite freely over the course of the game, since you get enough XP to adjust them to your liking. You can't build them from scratch, though.
 

LivingOne

Savant
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May 5, 2012
Messages
485
Finished it.dis gaem is better than sliced bread:5/5:

btw Io-Daedalic i encountered a bug in the last battle:
if you don't kill the golems in phase 2 then the lizards in phase 3 will get stuck in their turn and do nothing
 

pakoito

Arcane
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I'm not mad about the combat system, it's good enough, and I'm madly waiting for AOO to kick in. My spear-behind-dwarf strategy is stronk so far.
 

pakoito

Arcane
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undead immune to piercing from spear, dagger, fencing, normal arrows. Better keep a 2h bashing weapon as backup. Although you get an infantry damage dealing spear later.
Yeah I saw, that's where dwarfy's axe and the 500AP I spent in magic come in. They seemed a no-brainer, specially with damaging skills scaling on strenghy stats.
 

Io-Daedalic

Educated
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Nov 19, 2013
Messages
34
Location
Hamburg, Germany
Finished it.dis gaem is better than sliced bread:5/5:

btw Io-Daedalic i encountered a bug in the last battle:
if you don't kill the golems in phase 2 then the lizards in phase 3 will get stuck in their turn and do nothing
Haven't heard of that bug, yet. Can you report that (Does this happens again and again? What exactly did you do over the course of the combat? Best would be with additional screenshots.) to bugs@blackguards.de? Thanks.

So, 1.3 is here guys. Here's a list of changes:

General
  • Added an NPC to Neetha who gives advice to new players.
  • Added an additional autosave at the beginning of every fight. This also applies to each fight in a series of fights.
  • Some minor bugs in cutscenes have been fixed.
  • Some dialogues have been fixed.
  • Some text- and NoKey-errors have been fixed.

Blocker / Crashes
  • Fixed a bug where enemies wouldn't stop respawning in the penultimate fight.

Interface and Text
  • A parry tooltip has been added to character portraits when hovered. Blue “Parry” means that parry is still available for that unit. A red “Parry” will mean it is not available any more during this round. If no “Parry” is shown, no parry will is available to this unit at all.
  • Hit chances are now displayed more prominently inside the ring menu when hovered.
  • Reworked the display of item stats.
  • Added detailed battle log option to show individual dice roll results of your characters.
  • Added detailed information on effects of special abilities.

Balancing
  • Reduced the hit chance of Hammer Blow and increased AP costs to learn it.
  • Clarum Purum will now provide additional resistance to poison.
  • Equipment from the advanced character creation is now correctly transferred to flashback fights.
  • Hit chances are now always displayed, regardless of what skills a character has.
  • Warcraft and Animal Lore have been reworked to provide better passive stats instead of showing your hit chance.
  • The difficulty of the chapter 3 flashback crypt lice fight has been lowered.
  • Added a teacher for mages to the Mengbilla arena.


"Untold Legends" will be available tomorrow.
 
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Mangoose

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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity
1.3 looks really great! I took a break to wait for this patch so I'm glad to be playing again.

I would like to echo the animation speed complaint, however. The worst cases are actually "non-character entities" such as the spinning flail thing in the arena. To be honest, I don't think 'normal' character/enemy animation needs to be tweaked, though it wouldn't hurt.
 
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Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
btw Io-Daedalic i encountered a bug in the last battle:
if you don't kill the golems in phase 2 then the lizards in phase 3 will get stuck in their turn and do nothing
Haven't heard of that bug, yet. Can you report that (Does this happens again and again? What exactly did you do over the course of the combat? Best would be with additional screenshots.) to bugs@blackguards.de? Thanks.

I didn't encounter that specific bug (and I haven't killed the golems), but I had a few non-reproducible bugs in the last fight, like enemies not being removed correctly after each phase, or teleportation of unconscious chars rendering them "inactive" (that was with 1.1).

I agree with Mangoose on the animations. Normal animations/speed in combat never bothered me much, but the spinning wheels (both those with blades and fire) could get a bit tedious eventually.
 

LivingOne

Savant
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
485
I sent the bug report,this is what I wrote:
I encountered this bug in the final battle:if I don't kill the golems in phase 2 before destroying the crystals then one of the spellcasting lizards in phase 3 will start its turn and do nothing during it prolonging it indefinetly(other things I did/didn't do that may trigger the bug but don't think had any effect:I had Aurelia in the party,I let Urias catch a breath during the cutscene,had 1 point of encumberance).This happened multiple times,every time I tried.Things went smoothly only when I killed the golems.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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  • Reworked the display of item stats.
  • Added detailed battle log option to show individual dice roll results of your characters.
  • Added detailed information on effects of special abilities.

JUGjDuG.jpg


:thumbsup:

Great job Io-Daedalic , but I'll be asshole to tell you that I'm still not satisfied and wish for the damage rolls as well. ;)
 

Doctor Sbaitso

SO, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS.
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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Grab the Codex by the pussy Serpent in the Staglands
  • Reworked the display of item stats.
  • Added detailed battle log option to show individual dice roll results of your characters.
  • Added detailed information on effects of special abilities.

JUGjDuG.jpg


:thumbsup:

Great job Io-Daedalic , but I'll be asshole to tell you that I'm still not satisfied and wish for the damage rolls as well. ;)


Seconded! Great job! Also, it would be nice to have the damage rolls.
 

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