What are you playing at the moment?

[Juan Carlo]

Best to just make potions in Dragon Age: Origin. I think the elves stock unlimited herbs need for them, and the city stocks the other materials, so if you run back and forth you can make a bunch. I made like 60 health potions and it kind of broke the game for me.

I much prefer "Drakensang's" method where there are only enough materials available in the world to craft like 20 health potions total (and that's after like 2 hours straight of searching for herbs on the the different maps), so you have to ration them for only the big boss fights.

In fact, now that I think about, I actually think I prefer Drakensang: River of Time as a whole to Dragon Age. While Drakensang's story isn't as good, it's a much better balanced game all around. In Origins Mages were too powerful.

[lukka5]

waiting to play Botanicula

[Vexing Vision]

While currently not having a machine to run the Mount&Blade Warband Napoleonic DLC (and crying big, bitter tears), I'm also playing Avernum. I like the conversion to the new skillsystem a LOT better than I thought I would, after only feeling lukewarm towards Avadon.

[Anthile]

What exactly is the new skill system in Avernum?

[Blackcompany]

I like Skyrim and the Witcher 2 for bats. Their more background...you hear them. In one cave, you even see them. And they behave realistically. Screeching and looking for cover, moving away from the noise and light of your approach. Nice change of pace, that.

[Casimir Effect]

I stalled out fairly late in the game, myself. I'm curious, does Mask directly connect to the plot of the base game? How hard would it be to follow if you hadn't finished the original campaign?

Not hard at all. NWN2 finishes in a very disappointing way. The gameplay at the end is excellent - some of the best in the game - but the story just goes quietly into the night, almost certainly due to the usual Obsidian problem of running out of time.
MotB has 2 NPCs make a brief reappearance and references NWN2 very little, eg. the silver shard plot point is dealt with/removed immediately. The 5 rectruitable party members (of which you can only ever have 4 in a game) have no relation to the base game, and the location is entirely different barring a few dream scenes.

Mask also plays quite different because it has a Mechanic; actually of the sort that might appeal to you seeing as you seem to enjoy survival-mode-type things. Also, with people tending to be above level 20 combined with all the prestige classes the game offers allowing for weird character builds, things get a good bit more fun.

[cosmicolor]

I've been playing Phantasy Star Online 2, having got into the beta for it somehow. Only got to play 15 mins so far, but I liked what I did play. Divine Divinity isn't quite behaving well with my PC, with at least one hard crash so far. Bah.

[Vexing Vision]

What exactly is the new skill system in Avernum?

It's like a cross of Avadon and Diablo 2, if that makes any sense. Each skill has one or two follow-up skills, and you get two points per level to distribute among skills. Higher skills need a skill below them of at least the same level you're trying to raise it.

It's not bad, but it rewards min-maxing. Every three levels or so you get to pick a trait like More Experience, Higher Intelligence, Bonus Damage, etc.

For the first time in any Avernum game, I'm actually using predefined classes as opposed to self-created ones.

[Anthile]

I don't really like the skill system in Avadon. Well, mostly because the order of the skills is often a bit strange (you have to raise your melee skill in order to raise your ranged skill) and it often forces you to invest in skills you don't want to use.

[alms]

That didn't turn out to be much of a problem for me, I was only forced to invest in one skill that I didn't use, for the shaman. But, of course YMMV.

[SirKicksalot]

Sniper Elite v2 demo. What a satisfying game! It's going to be fun replaying it and memorising everything to get the perfect kills.

I'll replay the demo until I:
- shoot a sniper through the scope
- blow some fingers off
- shoot the grenades someone is carrying
- get an X-Ray cam when I shoot some dude's balls off. I'm pretty sure I exploded someone's testicles already but I didn't get an X-Ray so I'll keep trying
- kill 3 guys with 1 bullet. I only managed two so far
- shoot the three fuel tanks of the moving trucks

It may be a linear game but as long as you make up such goals it's going to be FUN.
Now Rebellion should make a sequel to Rogue Trooper and everything will be good in the world.

[Vexing Vision]

I don't really like the skill system in Avadon. Well, mostly because the order of the skills is often a bit strange (you have to raise your melee skill in order to raise your ranged skill) and it often forces you to invest in skills you don't want to use.

This is handled much, much better in Avernum. You only need ONE base skill to level up the next higher skill, you don't need all of them anymore - so you can mix and match pathes quite nicely.

I know what you mean, but Avernum works much smoother. Also, you can just download the demo and check for yourself - I'd recommend giving it a try and see if it settles your doubts. :)

[Flint]

Completed Grimrock. As much as I loved the game, the final floors really felt far less exciting and interesting. A lot of combat focus, not enough nice puzzling. Plus the final boss managed to tick one of my largest boss fight pet peeves, ie endless amounts of respawning enemies distracting you from the main combat.

Still, regardless of the ending fatigue, a great game. And probably one of the year's bigger surprises for me as I had little interest for it until a week or so before release.

Now onto more fantasy RPG romping! Snagged Kingdoms of Amalamalamalamalur from the Steam sale a day or so back. Loved the demo and been wanting to play the game for quite a while so excited. Just hope they've managed to fix the keymapping wonk from the demo so I can actually map arrow keys to movement like a normal person.

[airtekh]

My recent addiction to MTG Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 is easing off now that I've unlocked all the cards for the decks I was interested in. It's a solid game that's highly suited to Magic newbies like myself and I'm very much looking forward to the 2013 version.

Finished Mass Effect 3 singleplayer so I'm resuming my Fallout: New Vegas playthrough. I haven't even reached Vegas yet, I keep getting sidetracked wandering all over the wasteland. I'm trying to remain neutral with all the factions, but I've a feeling I'm going to have to pick a side sooner or later.

Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was getting a bit grindy so I've been on the lookout for a new multiplayer game. I was intrigued by Tribes: Ascend, so I downloaded it to check it out. First thought: Wheeee! Sliding is fun. Never played a Tribes game before, but this reminds me very much of Section 8: Prejudice, which I played last year; except Tribes has the whole body-as-sled mechanic.

[Giaddon]

Tribes: Ascend is soooooo good. I'm playing that too. A lot. If you dig it I recommend buying the 10 bucks worth of gold: it'll let you kit out one class (do not spend the gold on classes, just on equipment) and give you VIP status, which means more XP forever. You can also get more gold from facebook, the Tribes launcher has details about that.

So yeah, playing that.

Also playing DC Universe Online, which is quite good.

[eRa]

Tribes: Ascend, as everybody seems to be doing. Also, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic.

[alms]

Finished Breath of Death VII: The beginning. Took about 9h on normal, trying to do and see everything. I've been inches from quitting a few times because of the grind and some difficulty spikes, but somehow pulled through. And now I've begun Cthulhu Saves the World too.

[Anthile]

This is handled much, much better in Avernum. You only need ONE base skill to level up the next higher skill, you don't need all of them anymore - so you can mix and match pathes quite nicely.

I know what you mean, but Avernum works much smoother. Also, you can just download the demo and check for yourself - I'd recommend giving it a try and see if it settles your doubts. :)

Oh, I actually bought it at release. I was merely curious what awaits me.


Meanwhile I still spend a lot of time in Avadon getting ambushed by vicious bats.


Do the blankets boost their AC? I hope not.

[cosmicolor]

More PSO2, got my character up to level 5 now. Will be a shame to see it wiped when the closed beta ends.

[agentorange]

Finished Lonesome Road, last of the New Vegas DLC. I chose [Spoiler]Apocalypse[/Spoiler]. I picked up The Missing Link for DX:HR on Gamersgate, so I suppose I'll be moving onto that next.