Age of Decadence

is this game really that good
I brought into it due to user's opinions and reviews, really striken up my fancy
but 4 hours in I'm kinda let down with some elements of it

As it would be in a decadent society.
Decadent societies can’t fund wars.
Only in a decadent society is literature a chore.
Because decadence doesn’t reward the outstanding.

Sounds like an extremely accurate game, user.

not if its just bait but anyway…

makes no sense, and what I meant is you're forced to quick travel between places
having to walk between the wastes (and possibly finding stuff) would add to the world

also doesn't make any sense, wars and people fighting aren't the same thing, if anything you would to fight more in a decadent society

got lazy to bait the others

Combat kind of sucks and unless you are specced full-combat from the beginning the game is closer to a visual novel with added walking around. Lots of different endings but you kind of need to know exactly what to do in advance to get most of them.

The lack of combat bit is your fault since you either picked a jabber route or are just diplomatic enough to avoid most of it. The specialization bit is crap - some branching is alright but in the long run you're fucking yourself. And I'd call it alright/10 but that's me.

is that darkholme? what is going on with is nipples?


but anyway, I got into some combat and got fucked over
the only thing I was able to beat was the bum bringing in wine to the camp,
but even then there is not much I can do since the poison doesn't really matter that much I later I can't taken them on fighting

I went some sort of ranged loremaster, but I can't shoot for shit and I get fucked over a lot of other skill checks

It's Billy Herrington you fucking git.

Ayy

You should've bought that Underrail instead.

Let's say I bought this and spec'd my character for combat right out of the gate.

Is the combat entertaining enough for the game to still be worth it?

Go get Dungeon Rats if you want combat. Takes place not to long before AoD if I remember right.

makes me question why you have such pictures saved,
but then again, I wouldn't you with such a hunk like this

It almost doesn't look like Aniki on your image.

Vid related sums up AoD pretty well.

Also, I have no clue what route you are playing. Which guild did you join and what stats do you have?


If you go combat build you need combat stats or you need to be very good at the game. If you want to poison the camp, there are degrees of poisoning, by the way. Unless you have 6 alch skill or you're Assassin's Guild, you probably didn't fully poison them. There are three degrees of possible poisoning for the mines, and it's also possible to attack the mine without poisoning them at all. Even with the maximum poison, you still have to finish off the stragglers but the fight turns into a real joke.

There are numerous ways to clear out the mining camp though. Poisoning requires you to finish them off with violence, but there are numerous other ways to resolve that situation. If your strength is shit and you're ranged build, I strongly recommend crossbows, since their damage output does not depend on your strength score. If you add alchemy you can also poison your crossbows for better damage. That said, I would not recommend doing insane shit like attacking a heavily fortified mining outpost solo just because you're playing a RPG. You will die unless you have a serious combat build or you're fucking good at the game or you poisoned the shit out of the mining outpost.


Yes. Also your combat playstyle varies considerably based on your choice of weapons, your stat allocation, and whether you use alchemy. Getting 2 alchemy is strongly recommended so you can make healing salves to treat your own wounds instead of going to the rather expensive healer though.

Honestly combat is one of the more fun ways to play the game imo, but it depends on what you're after.


Dungeon Rats is fine but I think it's better to play AoD first as Dungeon Rats is just 100% combat.

Well honestly you don't get to fully appreciate the game until the 2nd or 3rd playthrough, the 1st one is to learn stuff. it's a short game anyways

It's one of those games that demand that you either play it with a guide or get stuck and restart from the very beginning. At that point, it might as well have not given you a choice at all.

Depends on how you play it, really. There are 7 main quest paths and numerous endings you can achieve. Some of these endings are reached more swiftly than others. And based on the way you play through the game and the major decisions you make, there are still more variations to play through.

Non-combat routes are usually the fastest by far, but a combat route can have you spending 20 hours on a single playthrough.

It's a game that demands you specialize. Playing your character as a jack of all trades will get you stuck, but focusing on your role's strengths will see you through.

No, it was extremely overrated and dull as fuck. The entire game feels like it's building up to something super cool happening, but then it just ends with like a paragraph explaining that something cool is in fact going to happen, but you don't get to see it.

Very true. You only got the game wrong.

When is the guy going to release the damn expansion? I want my shotguns, jet skis and time psi

Is the expansion going to be completely separate, or will it continue your save game from the base game?

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Expand on the original campaign last I heard


Nice thumbnail

I feel like the reviewer, 5 hours in and now questioning my character skills
that explains it, I went with the poison rat, which probably is the weakest, I also have low level alch if that helps
I wen t with a "ranged"/loremaster crafter as character, which are my strongest skills, the bow is strong and does damage, but he can't hit for shit…
(I mean what kind of fucking archer can't reach something 10 feet from him?)

So at first I trying playing the loremaster in the mines but failed the impersonation, now its either trying to sneak in at night or poisoning them
like I've said, I would try the violent route but he can't hit a elephant if it stood in front of him
it doesn't help too that I'm trying the commercium quest line, and have weak persuasion/impersonation/trading,
trying that quest line and shortly I was having to join the Imperials and getting massacred in a fight

I liked the game eough to give it several playthroughs.

there's a shitton of choices, actually, only you are rarely presented with ALL of them at once. Usually, you are presented with two or three, each then leading to a a set of two or three choices that, however, entirely differ from the ones in the other branches. Locations may seem limited, but there's actually quite a few of them, only many require you to discover them first through chatting up an NPC, doing a side quest, etc.

Well, not finding battle is your fault entirely; there's a shitload of them. As for wepons, some are better and some are worse, but all are viable when matched with the right build. In fact, build is the single most important thing in this game. Distribute the statpoints badly during character generation and you are utterly fucked. Also need to be smart about distributing skillpoints.

if you can do that then you obviously don't have a combat build. Hybrid fighter/talker builds are possible, but difficult and something you shouldn't attempt on your first playthrough, because you'll likely just get your ass kicked.

I don't mind that, but then again, I did love Planescape. Just make a combat build; that should keep you entertained with frequent combat.

As I said, the main difficulty in this game is building your character right. You will likely shit up your first character.

how does underrail compare to it?
it was on my wishlist too, but since I already have it pirated I decided to wait a bit more

on that matter how it also compares to Pillars of Eternity? I really just had started it but was pleased somewhat with the play

Don't spend your character points willy nilly. You aren't going to be able to do the combat oriented tasks if you are planning to run a talking character so forget about combat skills on that. You are only crippling yourself if you are running a hybrid character.
Save your skill points and spend them as you need them. Loremaster is easy mode as you don't need to engage in combat at all.

Underrail is great

not even worth a pirate

Underrail is the closest thing you are going to get to one of the older cRPG games and it's good. Although it suffers from some shortcomings.

First of all, this game is very much combat based and diplomatic skills are only useful occasionally. Fortunately, the combat is pretty great but this game is hard and you might need to start the game from scratch multiple times to get a character you are comfortable with.

Second, this game very much requires you to min-max your character. The skills you tag in the character creation screen are the skills you pretty much have to stick to and dump all your points in in order to stand a chance in this game unless you make an utterly broken build for example stealth + sniper = one shot the final boss.
And that is not to mention the fact that you HAVE to take some skills like hacking and lockpicking no matter what otherwise you're pretty much fucked.

There are probably more things I could list but I haven't played this game for a few months because I'm waiting for the expansion to release

I never finished it because I switched computers and lost my save file, but I think I just remembered I joined the one 'imperial' and went to some outpost and was told to look around for stuff. It's been a while. Do you have any idea how far into the game that is? I want to know how far away the end was.

Truly it's an Age Of Decadence™®

No idea how far you got it's been a couple of months for me as well. But I don't remember any imperial factions in Underrail, are you talking about the Protectorate?

Anyway, it's hard to tell how far you've gotten exactly because there are only around 10 actual main quests but said quests needs a couple of side quests completed in order to progress. I want to say you were probably around half way through

...

Yeah, that sounds like them.

Jesus, I was thinking more like 75%.

Supposedly it's still coming out some time in the first quarter of '18, but knowing Styg that's just another line in the sand. I can't fault him for delaying it though, I already put up with Underrail being in development for what felt like a decade.

Around the 65 - 85% mark you infiltrate the Tchort Institute. Of course, this is assuming you only count the main quests and the bare minimum amount of side quests you have to do

Playing as a jack is hard, but still doable. The more you spread out though, the better you have to be at the game to make it work.


You uh didn't mention your stats. Your build sounds like extreme shit though. You took a loremaster, went combat build (with I'm guessing poor combat stats), joined the merchant's guild (with bad persuasion/trading/streetwise), and ended up failing at everything. When it comes to the bow not hitting, the enemies do have dodge or block. They won't stand still for you to get a clean shot at them. You do get a penalty to ranged attacks at far distances, but you don't get a bonus for them being close to you. If you're having trouble hitting enemies with a bow, I would inspect two things: Your perception attribute, and your bow skill. I'm not sure how high your bow skill is, but I'm guessing not high enough. You'd probably want 5 or 6 bow skill to hit those guys. Really, you're attacking an entire outpost of soldiers in a fortified position by yourself, which is the single most suicidal way to try to resolve that situation, unless you're just that good.

Your own alch only matters if you're making your own poison. You used rat poison, which is the weakest. If you were assassin's guild, you could've asked your guild's poisoner to fix you up. Personally, I really think it's too easy to poison the mine. It takes almost no skill or investment to use a rat poison on them and turn a hard fight into an easier one. Originally there wasn't any alchemy skill or poison option at all, and you also had to choose between going further in and finishing off the miners or going back to the healer's only to discover they fortified the mine and set up traps while you were gone. Now you should be healing yourself with salves and poisoning the outpost, making it a much easier encounter.

Were you trying to impersonate Sohrab? Because you didn't need to do that. You can just convince them you're a wandering loremaster, and if you're actually playing the Loremaster background you won't need an Impersonate skill for that. You might need a bit of persuade, though.

Uh, you didn't have to do that either. That only happens if you try to convince the Imperial Guards you want to switch sides. You would've been better off directly convincing Antidas or forging the evidence.

I forgot to mention but you should also consider using nets and bolas in the harder fights. Also bombs, if you can purchase them. They're pricey, but they make a real difference if you can afford them.

Nets + aimed strikes are usually a great way to cripple foes.

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>He didn't see the God arise from his tomb

I WANTED TO FLY THE FUCKING SPACESHIP AND OBLITERATE CITIES GOD DAMNIT

While we're on topic involving spoilers did anyone else feel a little disappointed when you entered hell's gate and the robots were piss easy? They got hyped up as unstoppable killing machines but their easier than scorpions

so out of curiosity, how would I go about getting a refund for this?

Be sure to put a lot of points into alchemy so that you can actually win fights.

Really? They raped the shit out of me and it was fucking HARD to kill that one you were required to kill. I avoided them.

I just didn't have the stones to go in there my first playthrough since it looked like it would be a dialogue stat check. That or certain death in a dialogue. For my second playthrough I tried to mimic that one assasin that kicked my ass and made a really powerful dodging character. Those never laid a finger on me and I went through them pretty easily with my dagger.

is dagger a viable weapon, I mean can you take down even the armored ones?

yes, you just level up critical strike

that's one thing that annoys me, leveling up skills doesn't actually increase hit chance,
so you're still techinically blind even if you're a master bowman/assassin

but it does

Did it on my pure combat/crafting spear character and didn't have much trouble. The laser gates were a bigger obstacle in there.
Then I did it again on a spear hybrid character with power armor and it was pretty easy.