Walkthrough and Cheats - Daggerdale

Walkthrough and Cheats - Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale

The game is essentially a very straightforward one since there are quest markers to guide you to where you need to go next. I will only have notes for tricky quests.

Cheating

You can cheat a lot by changing DnDGame.ini (in My Documents\My Games\Daggerdale\DnDGame\Config\ ). Here are some of the useful things you can do:

• DefaultCharactersPerSecond=500
•  This speeds up the appearance of text in the dialogs. Since the characters don't actually voiceover anything, you're not missing anything by skipping the text.
  
• ItemSellValueMultiplier=1.0
• You can get gold from barrels or fighting the frequently respawning monstesr again and again. Instead of grinding through boring things like that, you can instead sell at the same price you buy. This gets you about 8x as much gold as normal.
• PercentReductionConvertToGold=0.0
• Normally when you convert an item into gold pieces through your Inventory screen, you lose about 10% of its sale value. By setting this value to 0.0, you lose nothing.
  
• HealthMultiplier1P=1.0, DmgMultiplier1P=1.0
•  This changes the monster health and damage (respectively) in Single Player to 100% of normal. If you find certain areas too hard, change this to a fraction of 1.0, such as 0.1 (10% health). At 0.5 each, the random encounters go by quite quickly and shouldn't bog down the game too much; also, you won't be quaffing potions quite as much.
• Change your starting stats
• Look for [PlayerTemplate DNDPlayerPawnTuningValues] in the file. That stats block in the .INI file is for the Fighter. The stat blocks below that are for the Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard. You can change the Base___ values to change your starting stats.

Characters - Assorted Tips

• You get 2 Skill Points per level, so you can plan which powers you want.
• Ranged attacks can hit something even if you are not targeting it. Therefore, if you fire downhill, you can get more range than firing straight ahead.
• Bows have good range, and a Rogue can stand off at a distance and arc arrows toward the enemy. Sometimes the enemy will not react to being hit. None of them react to arrows falling nearby. The arrow arcs in the direction you last moved forward.
• Spells have a huge cooldown time if you charge them up. For wizards, decide if you want the area effect from charging instead of just charging up all the time. If you don't charge up, you can use Fireball and Spray of Enfeeblement almost continuously, one after the other.
• To take down a single target quickly, it is better for a Wizard to use a fast throwing weapon. After your three shots, you can easily run around or move if you have to. It's harder to do that with spells.
• Wizard teleport is useless on slopes since it aborts when you collide with something, in this case, the slope.

Quest: Lucky Anvil

• I played a solo wizard and got only an unenchanted Long Sword for the trouble.
• If you have a hard time keeping Rheda Slatehelm alive, find the stat block that begins with [RhedaSlatehelm_AI DNDAiPawnTuningValues] and change RaciaJHealthScale or RacialHealthAddition.

Quest: By Your Own Hands

• If you are having trouble killing Garbo before he reaches the water and are tired of retrying, change HealthMultiplier1P into a small fraction (e.g., 0.1) for the duration of the quest. He will also have a fraction of his Health and you can kill him easily.

Quest: Destroy the Spirit Shackles

• There are no quest markers for the 4 ghosts you have to kill. Leave Resil and keep going back the way you came. By the time you are past the bridge with the two red banners, you should encounter the 4th ghost.
• If you are having trouble keeping Resil alive for the trek back, you can try looking for the stat block that begins with [ResilQuartzbellows_AI DNDAiPawnTuningValues] and change RaciaJHealthScale or RacialHealthAddition.

Quest: Morbid Collector

• You can only get Phaerlock skulls from those that are marked quest targets. You may come to a point where you are at the quest location but there is nothing left there (see picture below). Keep going in the tunnel loop back toward the camp. You should encounter the remaining Phaerlocks.

Quest: Skull Lord

• When the Skull Lord stops to rest, the base of the pillars will have a red aura. Attack one to bring it down on the Skull Lord.

Quest: Do You Smell That

• If you have trouble with the knockdown attacks from the boss, then attack the boss first and leave the minions alive. The boss will not move if attacked at range. Once the boss is dead, the minions automatically disappear.

Rocksmasher

• Let it chase you through some Banites. That will cause the Banites and the Rocksmasher to occupy themselves fighting each other. Turn around and use ranged combat.
• If it hits and misses you (e.g., A Rogue or Wizard can dodge out of the way quickly), it's fist gets stuck in the ground briefly and it can't move or make any attacks during that time.

Dragon

• Attack both legs, then head. Use the catapults on the head (there is one lever that turns the catapult if necessary). You can't use the catapults on the dragon until the legs are "defeated".
• When you have defeated it, you need to run to Rezlus and press the interaction button (F or middle mouse button or mouse wheel if you can click that).
• Even though the quest says to defeat Rezlus, you actually can't attack or hit him in any way. This is not intuitive and throws a lot of people off.
• You really only have about a second to run to him when the flame barrier goes down.
• To do this, so stay on the dragon's left side (right side of the screen) to finish off the health on the dragon's head there and start running toward Rezlus when it is defeated.
• You will go past the flames once you are allowed to; meanwhile, the flame barrier will cause you no damage.
• If you don't reach Rezlus quickly and press F, the dragon will land, the wind will push you back, and you have to start all over with fighting the dragon.
• Once Rezlus is dead, you end up on the dragon's back. You have infinite retries.
• Use W to move forward.
• If a key shows up, hit that key. It means the dragon will try a maneuver to shake you off and you have only about a second to react and hang on.
• If the dragon looks over a shoulder, that means he will breathe. If he breathes and you are on the wrong side, you will be shaken off. When he looks over his shoulder, move to the other side of his crest with A or D. There are only two openings, so if you are in between them when he breathes, too bad.
• Once you make it to the head, even if you press all the right keys, you may be forced to retry a couple of times. The sequence at the head is the same every time until you manage to stab the dragon in the eye.

Game Review - Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale

Game Review - Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale

Score +4/-12

Overview
Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale is a multiplayer Action Role-playing (RPG) game set within an authentic Dungeons and Dragons gameworld that will thrill new and more experienced players alike. In this world players must unite as they quest to stop Rezlus and his Zhentarim from invading and conquering the Dalelands. Game features include: multiple ways to play, including single player support and co-op both in local and online play; pick-up-and-play style gameplay; multiple game modes; and deep character development.

+ It's a very beautiful game. Some of the big bosses, like the Skull Lord, look awesome (see very bottom of this post).
+ Animation is smooth for the level of detail you see. If you pay attention you'll see the shortcuts they've used, such as static parts (e.g., no moving mouths when someone is talking) and not drawing smaller objects outside a certain viewing distance (so lights and lanterns will suddenly appear). For the most part, the excellent detail plus smooth animation makes this a very comfortable game to play.
- Missing textures on some items, such as some Cloth armors. If they paid Quality Assurance any money, maybe they can get a refund.
+ The key cutscenes are dramatic and well-directed, almost worth the long slog just to get to them. Fighting the dragon is actually pretty exciting if only it were more intuitive what you needed to do. The action on the dragon's head is actually dramatic and exciting, if the mechanics weren't so bad.
+ The four character types you can play are very different, so there's quite a bit of replayability if you want to see how each character type does.
- It's NOT Dungeons and Dragons. It's only cosmetically D&D, so if you are expecting "real" D&D, play Neverwinter Nights 2 instead -- a very reasonable approximation of D&D rules from pen and paper into a computer roleplaying game. It may be an authentic D&D Forgotten Realms gameworld, but hardly anyone will really care about that or even know that, because just telling us and throwing around a few names won't link it to the wider context of the detailed Forgotten Realms fantasy world. Basically, it's just another Diablo clone, but instead of coming up with their own combat mechanics, they borrowed from D&D 4th Edition.
- It is a very short game. It is made long because of the endless amount of meaningless fights in between since enemies respawn frequently and in large numbers. Also, the equipment available is boring, which makes your character feel very static.

- Game engine needs more work and more QA. Even the interface is garbage, with overlapping text and text left over from a previous information tab (see screenshot below -- notice the red words "Shield Bash" under the big text "Terrifying Impact").


- Gameplay is very limited and samey: All fights are more or less the same: Melee monsters swarm you, archers and spellcasters hang back.

- Not well thought out: Way too many issues here... Just a sample:

• No penalty for shooting in melee, probably because you will be swarmed all the time.
• They let you take feats that base your melee ability off any other stat you choose. Obviously you will be swarmed in melee, and you will need it. It also makes Strength a somewhat useless attribute to develop.
• There are barrels all over the place that respawn every time you reload the game. This means you theoretically have all the gold you want, if you are patient enough for it.
• Obviously it is so that you can buy the tons of healing potions you need, unless you are a Cleric, in which case you can heal yourself every few seconds.

- Not playtested enough for various classes: E.g., I played a halfling wizard, and until level 7 I was using the same staff I bought at level 2, simply because nothing else was as useful to the unique staff I got from a store. Even then, it was a tough choice because the Harpers Staff was so handy to have. There was a lot of equipment for the other classes, but nothing the wizard was allowed to use.

- Rubbish playtesting in painfully obvious ways: See the screenshot below. In the upper right, the mini-compass shows a big red downward pointing arrow indicating a quest location. My character is standing exactly there. There should be monsters to kill so I can collect more skulls. Instead, there is nothing.


- Irritating Quest System: Where you cannot save progress in the middle of a quest. So, if you are tasked to destroy 8 goblin mines or collect 10 skulls, you must do it all in one sitting. If you save and reload again part-way, you must start all over again.
- Way too many meaningless fights: Monsters respawn so quickly that at some point, you will just want to run past them to get on with the game or with whatever quest you are on. The encounter groups are very samey and not so tough that you will probably die, but they take up quite a bit of time to do.
- There is an auto-targeting system that is a nice feature, but poorly implemented. Such issues as:

• How you change targets takes up too much time -- you press a key and move your character until you get the target you want -- without it being clear who the next target will be. Generally in such auto-targeting systems, there is a key to go to the nearest target, cycle to the next nearest target, or cycle to the previous target.
• Without auto-targeting, monsters move too quickly to hit (which in turn makes any To-Hit statistic seem utterly useless since you either hit or you miss, apparently).
• Spells auto-target in stupid ways. e.g., Ice Storm locks onto a target but does not track it -- instead, it drops at the location the target was standing. You cannot abort casting a spell, which means you have to live through the cooldown time to cast again.
• Some spells are directional and will not cast at a target. This is contrary to the whole idea of targeting, especially when other spells lock onto a target.
• Both you and monsters do not recognize barriers in the way of your ranged attacks. You can therefore stand behind a pillar and an enemy archer will just keep shooting harmlessly into the pillar.

- For a real-time combat system, there aren't enough hotkey slots for your powers. As a wizard, at level 7 I had four spells. There are three slots, plus 2 for melee and ranged, and another 2 if you use [Shift] to access them. Also, not all quick slots show if a power has finished its cooldown time.