RPG Progress Report

[Ack]

I was wondering when I'd be able to get that, or even if. I know PoR has some kind of level cap, but I don't know how high it is or whether it's likely I'll reach it. Since this adventure is spread across multiple games, will I be Overkill at some point, or do the games get crazy?

[MrPopo]

I believe the cap in PoR is in the realm of 7-9, depending on your class. All the game caps are experience based, so different classes will cap at different points. So you'll definitely get fireball before the end. You'll notice you are much more powerful in Curse of the Azure Bonds, then in Secret of the Silver Blades they start putting in more enemies that counter your power. Then in Pools of Darkness you go back to feeling like you're fighting against huge odds because everything has nasty spells and super high magic resistance, so every fight becomes a major production.

[fastbilly1]

10 hours into Octopath, just finished the apothecary's story and now working on getting Cyrus...6 of the 8 characters obtained.

[MrPopo]

The apothecary is the last one I have to snag. I'd just finished the intro before you get to do the dungeon when my plane landed yesterday and I haven't been back since.

[Ack]

Pool of Radiance

I had a little bit of time to put into PoR last night, so I took on the denizens of the Sokal Keep. There are only a few preset fights, a couple of which you can talk your way out of. In fact, if you really want to be specific, there is only one fight you absolutely have to do, but it's a pretty massive one. Despite being able to handle the 2 scorpions and 4 frogs found in side rooms, the big fight is far different and more daunting despite the lack of status-inducing monsters, because the big fight is against a full company of orcs, orc leaders, and hobgoblins.

Unfortunately, this fight showed the trouble with hidden dice rolls. By all accounts, I should have been smashing the enemy: my two fighters have a THAC0 of around 14 or so, and the enemies all have ACs of around 5 or 6, meaning I needed to roll around an 8 on a d20 to hit. Roughly broken down, I should have been hitting for an average of 60% of all attacks with them. But that's not what happened. Instead the random number generator that PoR uses behind the scenes must have decided that I was going to roll low, because what should have been a relatively easy slaughterfest turned into a slog of waiting for 40 enemies to move before I could try to hit with my 6 characters, only to see all of the miss...and then miss again...and then miss again. Yes, spells worked (sometimes). About half of my Hold Person spells were resisted, but Sleep still did wonders to knock a chunk of enemies out of the fight, and Stinking Cloud worked to hinder some enemies moving through a choke point. But Key the Wizard ended up felling more foes with her regular quarter staff than any of my Fighters, Clerics, or my Thief, despite all of them having higher levels and magic weapons to boost their ability to perform their bread and butter.

The end result? I eventually managed to wipe out enough of the enemies that they failed their morale check en masse and fled the field, but three of my characters were dropped and had to be bandaged in the middle of the fight. Thankfully, the Clerics, Sarge and Bone, managed to stay upright and keep fighting, as did my Fighter Ack. End result: everyone embarrassed themselves except Key. Fuck these dice, where's my personal purple d20? It would roll circles around PoR's.

Anyway, complaining about that aside, I did end up talking to the ghosts of the keep, convincing them to lay off the people of Phlan, and find a secret room with more magical gear. At least both of my Fighters now have a -2 AC, and Bone now has a +2 mace. I headed back to town, claimed my reward, and received word on new quests in the area.

I'm now sitting at the town well area. I have to push into another overrun neighborhood to find out about an auction happening nearby, but I want to render this section a safe zone for the townspeople first, even if there isn't an associated quest. Plus, lizardmen aren't so tough to deal with, and they're what I'm mainly finding here. I'll use them as an excuse to snag more xp. I'm still in the 3-4 level range, but I did have another character reach 4, and two others are closing in on their next levels as well. Mopping up around the well should be enough to put Exhum and Popo over the edge into their next levels, which I'm gonna need if the dice decide to keep being whores.

[noiseredux]

I finished up all the Chapter 1's in Octopath and then there was a huge difficulty spike. I had to spend the last few hours grinding, and I'm still stuck on a boss fight for um... the thief dude's Chapter 2. It's the first time the game didn't feel fun to me, as the momentum just slowed way the heck down.

[MrPopo]

Have you been paying attention to the recommended levels? I haven't had to grind yet, but I also took time to get subclasses for my primary party and most of the ones for the secondary party. But it's easy to accidentally wander into a higher level area than you can do.

[noiseredux]

when I finished all the Chapter 1's, my active party were all ~18 or so. As such, I made my way towards the only Chapter 2 that was close to that - level 21. And I got destroyed, so then I spent 2 or so hours grinding everyone to level 21-22. And I'm still getting my ass handed to me. Part of it might be that my party members aren't really maximized for this boss fight, but swapping in Primrose or Tressa who are more suited would mean then having to grind THEM up from level 9 to 21-ish. Ugh.

The other thing is that I have been playing totally FAQless, so I didn't even know about secondary job classes or whatever. And given that I'm currently in this Ch2 story quest - and I only keep one save file (shrug) - I can't leave this town to go look into job classes or anything. Adding insult to injury, I don't find the thief dude (Thierron or whatever?) all that helpful in this boss battle either, but you're forced to have him in the party since it's his story. I'd probably be less annoyed if I had chosen to work on a Ch2 quest of a character whose story I found more interesting.

So yeah. My annoyance mostly comes from the fact that I spent a solid 15 or so hours without the need for grinding. Each Ch1 story seemed to be manageable just from the 'natural grinding' that comes with walking from town A to town B. But then there was that gap between where I was at the end of all the Ch1's, and where I needed to be to proceed with Ch2. It just really slowed down the progress that I had been making in a breezy fashion.

[laurenhiya21]

Currently I'm a good way through Tales of Hearts R. I don't know how far along in the game, but I've gotten most of the shards and I'm currently in the middle of the enemies base, trying to save the Kohaku. I wouldn't say that it's an amazing game so far, but it's definitely enjoyable enough for me to continue playing it. Battles are super quick and not too difficult (I am playing on Easy ha), and the story is interesting enough to hold my attention. At times the dialogue can definitely be... interesting (ranging from random puns to things that don't make any sense), but I don't mind too much. As an example of one of the weirder things that has been said in the game, here's the screenshot I shared on the Slack:

I'm still not sure what this is supposed to mean.

[noiseredux]

Octopath Traveler is my front-runner for favorite game of the year again. While it's true that you can't leave a town while in a story quest by just walking out, it turns out that you CAN leave by fast-travel. I'm glad I thought to try it. So while I had been annoyed that I was stuck in a less interesting quest, I was able to get out of there and swap out the thief for Primrose and start making my way to Ophilia's Chapter 2 story instead.

Now, Primrose was only level 9 at this point while the rest of my party was ~21. That's okay because as it turns out grinding with Primrose is plenty of fun. First of all, I stumbled upon one of those shrines totally by accident so now she's a Dancer/Warrior. And also her skill that just casts random effects is super fun to play with - so rather than feeling like a mindless grind, most battles have been silly games of chance. It's pretty amusing.

My preferred party is now Ophilia, H'aanit, Cyrus and Primrose. I've now got Primrose around level 19 or so and Ophilia's Ch2 is a recommended level 21. The rest of the party is ~25, so we'll be starting that quest soon. I seriously love this game.