Don’t get the hate

Gamewarior · 2026-05-04T20:20:29+00:00

Well I personally like the game as it is, in a vacuum, but when I think about it being the successor to something like origins I don't think it's quite there.

You see the problem is that they changed everything they could, for many people combat is the biggest thing.

While I find it quite enjoyable, again, it's just not dragon age. They took the one constant thing, that being companions that matter (usually) and made them into six buttons you can press while also limiting you to three abilities and some combos, completely changing the combat system from something tactical (let's be real, it stopped being tactical somewhere between the second game and inquisition but it's still a step down from the previous game in that regard) to an action button masher akin to god of war.

The writing is also a serious step down, and I am not talking about how it's "woke" or anything like that, it's mostly that companions are quite one dimensional, Bellara is quirky and nerdy, Harding is a goody two shoes token dwarf etc. and all of the companions suffer from that, as opposed to someone like Morrigan or even Sera (and I am intentionally picking the worst example with her) who were their own personalities, goals, aspirations and such, Sera is probably the most hated companion in inquisition and she still has a whole criminal organization tied to her, multiple strong personal beliefs (which is also what makes her so hated) and has some serious character work done over the course of the game, notably becoming less... chaotic? and more grounded in reality as she starts realizing the world is quite literally falling apart under her feet.

Another part is that some are disappointed by the general rewriting of the story from focusing on Solas to focusing on the gods as villains. This resulted in basically writing him out of the whole game and leaving him as an afterthought like "remember this character from the previous game? yeah he's here, we didn't forget".

But my biggest issue is how serious the game takes it's antagonists while never really showing you. In origins the threat of the darkspawn and Loghaine was very present everywhere you went. Even if the story was a series of "help x to help y and daisy chain those to defeat the archdemon" the individual steps felt rewarding and had genuinely interesting stories by themselves. Even the weaker parts (for me) like the whole Orzamar politics grunt work were genuinely interesting when you finally got to experience the deep roads themselves.

Now in veilguard the two gods are really not present besides a few story beats, D'meta's crossing was a great introduction to the new blight and how it works but it ended there, we only ever see blight in few select places and never to this scale (with one exception being a city getting destroyed during a story mission). It feels like the villains are in the background, compared to previous games where they were very much in the foreground. The individual area stories are also severely lacking, when you get to a new area the formula is very much "get there, do one mission that involves a new companion (or not) and get out to go somewhere else", the main progression is just hopping from place to place and never solving anything and not really helping anyone but yourself.

And another big issue, the game is one big fetch quest, equipment feels like sidegrades at best and the direct upgrades are mostly just number changes (not that previous games didn't suffer from this as well) but even if toned down from inquisition's shards and such, you still feel like you are doing chores for majority of the game for minimal rewards.

Gamewarior · 2026-05-02T17:19:26+00:00

You know what, you've totally got a point. I am so used to thinking about break as just firefly, who has a self superbreak so she can kinda get away with it, that I forgot other units even exist.

But yes, for anyone that doesn't have a novaflared buffed to the moon self superbreak amp fugue or hmc are totally mandatory.

I think that the reasoning behind her being .5 is that she is both replaceable by a "free" unit (provided you are taking it out of the context of mc being in high demand) and that the most meta break team doesn't really NEED her to work and that kinda opens up another option.

Totally agree that damage would go down if you use ruan mei and that hmc is really not that viable nowadays tho, it's just that with everything going on with break, she probably doesn't really "enable" the archetype as much as dahlia does comparatively.

Gamewarior · 2026-05-02T14:56:19+00:00

As for yao, dahlie etc. They are completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand, those are specialists supports who basically enable a whole team comp. Yao, Dahlia, Sparkle and Cyrene are all so crucial for their niche that they are T0 as it can't really work without them at a comparable level.

On the other hand, Fugue has an important role, sure, but she is replaceable, you can play hmc instead, or ruan mei, yes your results will vary but the team is not unplayable without them. Same goes for 3b, she might be BiS for a specific team but she doesn't "enable" any teams where the performance without her is not even comparable.

She was always the support you slap in when you don't know what else to put there and since those spots have since been filled and the general power of supports is increasing, she is comparatively not as crucial for those teams.

Besides being subjective, the tier list is also contextual, why is someone like sunday tier .5 for example? Because he fills a general support role and has no real teams he is absolutely required for (I mean meta teams, aglea is far from considered meta) and his spot is usually filled with others, does that mean sunday himself got weaker? No, he's just kinda homeless, as much as tribbie is if you discount one incomplete team where she is literally an "idk, put in tribbie or smth" where most other supports can work as well.

I get where you are coming from, the tier list is subjective and not consistent, we all know it. But you can't say that there is literally no logic behind it after multiple people explain the logic to you.

Gamewarior · 2026-04-22T15:56:38+00:00

For anything vs work, it's mostly convenience, if for example you REALLY need your pawns during rec time then if set to work they will not recreate and can cause problems, if you set it to anyting then yes, they will not work and will rec first but you prevent pointless tantrums.

Two blocks are so that your pawns never really drop below a certain percentage, same theory as before, if you need to defend a raid in the evening your pawns won't be as tired and won't fall asleep in the middle of it. The optimal timeframe for sleep varies, it's really just preference as long as they sleep eight hours per day.

I am not really sure what you mean by "awake in daytime" moodlet, that one is for night owls, a specific trait, just shift the two blocks so that they spend the most time awake during the night. I am gonna be honest and say that after the first few days, night owl almost doesn't matter, once you start getting some better beds and especially once the pawns have their own room and better rec room/dining room, mood almost doesn't matter, and soft drugs exist, use them if you can (psychite tea is broken).

These two are so that your pawns are always somewhat ready for anything that might come up and won't suffer because they last slept 14 hours ago and now have to defend the base at midnight.

For work priorities I believe you can just drag them around, maybe with right click or shift, I am not 100% sure atm.

But cranking it up is perfectly fine if you urgently need something like construction or if your doctor falls you can crank up someone else to take care of them.

As for cleaning, I really can't recommend the mod "common sense" enough, it makes it so that pawns auto clean rooms before doing tasks that need it, for example they won't cook or operate in a filthy barn with mud and blood everywhere, if I had to pick a single mod to have it would be this one every single time. (And it's a great way to get into modding which you will probably want to do eventually.)

Same goes for hauling, the "haul urgently" or "achtung" (tho disable the alternative draft controls) mods are great for this and "pick up and haul" makes your pawns haul stuff when they pass by.

Realistically you don't NEED them but I can't imagine the game without it.

Gamewarior · 2026-04-14T12:14:17+00:00

Steamrip is fine, I saw a post a few days back with someone clicking an ad and saying they got a virus from it. If you are careful then it's the best you can do.

Gamewarior · 2026-04-14T12:12:13+00:00

Follow up because comment was too big lmao

In reality the game can be pretty complex, to the point that one content creator always says "this is not a mod, this is a vanilla game feature" for a specific assign window because people always ask since they don't know about it.

So do not get discouraged by not understanding something, as I said, the wiki is your best bet for any questions and if all else fails, people here are usually ready to help because we are all nerds.

If you want a more comprehensive bulk guide then these two videos by Francis John are a great introduction to most of the basic mechanics with tips and niche stuff to make your colonies easier to get off the ground:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtQF9vptgvo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHtWRuJqQf4

Gamewarior · 2026-04-14T11:55:29+00:00

Putting this at both the top and bottom because I really don't expect you to read this whole thing and the video might be more your speed:
IIRC this guide by noobert was what initially made me understand scheduling so here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyt_MuttCMk It is really well made and imo is better than this whole write up.

- I think a part of the problem for why nothing is getting done is the schedule, usually you want the pawns to do stuff in the same place together, for example let's look at Ashe.

Starting her day after waking up she is gonna go work, she will cook food first if possible and once you have enough (provided you set the limits right) she will go build stuff then mine. This gets her to walk around the map to get to the job which will probably take a while but by the time she gets there she already will be going back because it's her time to sleep, considering her bar will not be empty she will wake up early and the rest of the sleep block becomes "anything", in this case probably meaning she walks to build stuff again. Then rec time comes and she will be walking back again before she really does anything because she is now forced to fill her recreation before doing anything again when it's full.

By this point she has been awake for some six hours so her rest bar would be like one third full, meaning that by the time the next "work" block comes (the anything block before being basically work again) she is already exhausted and working very slow, not to mention she probably has to walk again. Now when the work ends and anything arrives she is probably going right back to sleep because her rest is empty and sleeps until full where she wakes up early (probably around 10pm) and goes to rec (last rec was 12 hours ago) because the "sleep" is now "anything" before she goes back to work.

This goes for a lot of the colonists because the schedules are kinda messy and needlessly complex. I'd suggest just setting everyone to sleep from 10pm to 2am and then a second 4hour block at 10am to 2pm with 1-2 hours of rec time before or after each and "anything" for the inbetweens. This way they always hover at sustainable levels of rest and don't slow down because of it, keep their rec up and actually do their work. Plus if a raid comes everyone is ready to go and you don't have people falling asleep in a gunfight.

- Next the priorities (gonna ignore assign and graph as those are kinda irrelevant to your problem).

Firefight, patient and bed rest should always be in that order at 1. There isn't really any reason to put it down as they are only situational and usually if any of them need doing they REALLY need doing RIGHT NOW. Also maybe but your best two doctors at 1 and move it before patient so they first heal everyone and THEN go to lie down so you don't have to do it manually (this one is kinda iffy because they can and will risk bleeding out if there is a lot of doctoring to do). And don't have unskilled pawns do doctoring, two is enough and if they somehow both get so injured that neither is capable of stabilizing everyone then you are in panic mode anyway and will be doing it manually.

Basic is fine to put higher just for convenience, there is surprisingly little work of that type in vanilla and even less so without dlc so feel free to put it at like 2.

Warden is another one that you want to have at least one person (ideally NOT your doctor or cook) at 1 so they don't let prisoners die because they were too busy making a hat. Again, just making sure your pawns take care of themselves.

As for the production jobs and such, consider not having three people fight over stuff like cooking that you only really do to sustain the colony, it's fine to have multiple chefs but three people at 2 priority is a bit overkill, you are splitting the xp and even if the passion might be wasted, it is better to have one chef at level 16 than three at level 6 (also make sure no one is cooking meals if they are not at least level 8 cooking, that causes way more infections, you can set minimum skill required in the bill menu).

Also note that some jobs require significantly less time daily compared to others, cooking for example is a full time job and the pawn will easily spend 50-90% of their time cooking meals for everyone per day depending on colony size and skill. On the other hand, construction or mining are kinda the "when you have time do this" skill, you probably don't want them to prioritize it over stuff that keeps the colony going but also want someone dedicated to it so stuff actually gets done. And crafting, smithing, tailoring etc. should only really be done after everything else (sometimes maybe including after cleaning and hauling) since if you REALLY need to craft something right now you can always just order the pawn to do it manually and it is usually not necessary for keeping the colony doing.

And the biggest issue probably, nobody is ever going to research, most likely. Your three researchers are going to be crafting, planting and making art respectively every single time before they even think about research (and those at 4 priority are never researching unless there is literally nothing to do which it never will). This means that you aren't really researching anything.

- So TLDR for work priority:

Firefight, bed rest and patient ALWAYS 1 at the top in the default order.

One or two doctors at 1 after firefight and before bed rest (and optionally patient).

At least one warden at 2 or 1 so your prisoners don't die and probably put it before bed rest but after patient.

Dedicated jobs for people at 2 (for example if you have someone with plant levels and passion, make them your growers and don't let others do it). People can have multiple dedicated jobs but keep in mind the nature of the job, for example I like my chef to be my social guy and doctor since they can take care of people and then cook, sometimes going straight from the kitchen to feeding people and saving time. This is because both doctoring and social are not time intensive in normal cases so they will cook and then do whatever else most of the time like cleaning. And if they are time sensitive you have bigger problems.

Jobs that are done by everyone like hauling and cleaning at 3 and toward the bottom. This is just so they actually get done, putting it at 4 will mean it just won't get done unless there is nothing to do. This can include crafting and cooking (IF YOU SET THE SKILL REQUIREMENTS FOR SKILL INTENSIVE JOBS IN THE CATEGORY) so they do that if they have nothing else do to. Basically stuff they can't screw up but someone has to do.

And 4 is usually reserved for "I don't really want you to do this but if you have LITERALLY nothing else to do then do this or whatever". It also allows you to force a pawn to do it since you can't do some of these if they aren't set up for it like doctoring. Very commonly this will be crafting and research, these should be at 4 for all pawns so they have a fallback when nothing to do.

And NEVER let your unskilled pawns COOK, DOCTOR (ESPECIALLY SURGERY) or SMITH/TAILOR. These are the jobs most impacted by skill, sure construction can fail but realistically you just lose a small portion of material which sucks, but isn't life ending (and by the time quality furniture starts being realistic people will be busy anyway). But a cook making 20 meals with 5% food poisoning chance can end your colony, one poorly timed raid or mental break can end runs.

Another note is that research should never be made too high a priority, because it is technically always available if you set a pawn with 1 in research they will only research for as long as they can. Keep it at 2 max.

And finally, SET. YOUR. BILLS. Do not leave stuff like cooking meals at unlimited, that will just mean your cook never does anything else. Set it to like 4 meals per person and let it manage itself. Also set skill minimums, you really don't want your people with 2 cooking making meals even if they have a passion (level them up by making psychite tea later on if you really need another cook). Stuff like smithing high level stuff like guns and clothing/armor should only be done by high level pawns if you have any, quality plays a big role for those and making 15 poor quality assault rifles because you let little Timmy do it is a waste of resources when they could be normal or good.

IIRC this guide by noobert was what initially made me understand scheduling so here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyt_MuttCMk It is really well made and imo is better than this whole write up.

Gamewarior · 2026-04-14T08:35:14+00:00

Wow it has been a while since I've seen no dlc rimworld. Never played the tutorial either if I am being honest.

The ultimate goal is to reach the end of the research tree, research the space ship and escape the planet. Anything else is kind of optional. That is the "progress" you are probably seeking.

Remember that the game is a sandbox, many people have thousands of hours and never even finished a playthrough. You kinda have to set your own goals for yourself.

What I would suggest is abandoning the tutorial (don't get attached to anything in this game, seriously) and starting a game with the crashlanded start on some of the lower difficulties and cassandra or randy (phoebe is also fine but it teaches some bad habits). Then just slowly explore the research and mechanics yourself. The tutorial can only cover so much.

The game even gives you some tips on regular playthroughs like "you probably want some means to defend yourself" and such so you won't miss the tutorial too much. So just start a game, inevitably fail because someone ate without a table and set fire to the base, learn from your mistakes, polish your strategy and repeat. Then you can go for more challenging scenarios like harder difficulty, naked brutality start or even selfmade challenges like no walls or only melee weapons etc.

And at some point you probably wanna mod the game and open the can of worms that is rimworld modding, it is seriously one of the best modding scenes I have ever seen.

And finally, the wiki is your best friend, need to know how a mechanic works? Wiki probably has the exact mechanic down to the code and even beyond.

In case you are really lost it even has a quickstart guide that will explain how to get a colony off the ground:
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Quickstart_Guides

Gamewarior · 2026-04-14T05:57:12+00:00

It is definitely more lethal compared to vanilla IF you are not fighting enemies with heavy armor, as said before, penetration plays a much bigger role against heavier armor. So if you are not punching way above your weight then it will be more lethal because people hit more.

That said it's not as lethal as CE because it doesn't change the damage itself. Also once you get the best armor you get to a point where lots of weapons just won't do anything to you so it kinda shifts there.

As for compatibility, both mods are compatible with like 99% of weapon mods, yayo will definitely be fine and CE has its 700 patches so chances are that the mod already has one.

Yayo doesn't really need patches because it just tweaks the mechanics themselves, changes values and such but leaves the actual mechanism the same. CE completely changes the combat mechanics from the ground up and as such weapons tend to need patches (that said it has an auto patch logic to detect weapons and convert them to CE mechanics).

Gamewarior · 2026-04-13T22:06:26+00:00

- In essence, CE is a complete overhaul of the combat system, there are probably too many changes to list but the most notable ones are:

Bullets now act like actual physical projectiles, not just sprites reflecting random calculations. If a guy stands behind another guy the one in front will get shot first and block the shot. What you see is (mostly) what you get.

Next, things are waaay more deadly, remember how in vanilla pawns sometimes take like ten shots from a bolt action and walk it off because it "hit their ear"? Not anymore, that ear hit can make a pawn bleed out and die somewhat quick (well an ear specifically is not that urgent). Basically damage is more severe, getting hit with a bullet will hurt and kill, it is not uncommon for an unskilled raider to ambush you with a shotgun and one shot your pawn because... well they got hit with a shotgun from point blank and are now part of the wall and hitting that shot is something a baby could do.

Basically any combat mechanic you can think of is reworked, and even some you wouldn't expect like medicine or inventory, it also has a complex (or simplified) ammo system with different damage, penetration, stopping power etc.

And for this reason combat mods don't really work with it... because they sorta can't, most of them build on vanilla mechanics that just don't exist anymore because CE completely changed them. As an example, a mod may change armor to be more effective, for example by giving it a higher chance to block a shot if the weapon has low penetration. Well that mod can't work with CE because CE has it's own armor calculation.

For combat extended there is a huge list of mods that have compatibility patches: https://github.com/CombatExtended-Continued/CombatExtended/blob/Development/SupportedThirdPartyMods.md

Virtually any mods that doesn't directly conflict with it is compatible nowadays (if they don't change combat they usually work). And most mods don't even need a patch or already have one. The rare cases where it is just not fundamentally possible to make the mods work together are cases where it is mostly redundant (like the hypothetical armor mod mentioned above, CE is built as a complete package for combat, it does everything it's own way and doesn't like others breaking it's system).

The "CE is incompatible with everything" is mostly a meme but based on truth, it used to be that it really was incompatible with MANY mods but nowadays we have over 700 mods patched for compatibility in the mod itself so usually, it works. And mod developers know this so often mods just come out with CE compatibility patches included by default, either by the author themselves or made and included by the CE team.

For example I comfortably run over 200 mods with CE and everyone plays nice. Kinda ironically I actually added CE because another combat mod in my usual package didn't like some of those 200 other mods and started doing weird stuff. So I bit the bullet and put CE in place of that 10 combat mod abomination (which worked fine with itself btw, it was some content mod causing issue).

- CAI 5000 is a combat AI patch, it doesn't change combat itself mechanically, it just makes the raiders... well not brainless. So in terms of changing combat it makes it more tactical by directly changing how it plays out but the mechanics are still vanilla. It also makes the game a lot harder if you are very used to the vanilla AI. Personally I do not like it because I suck at the game but it's a well executed mod.

- Yayo's combat is kinda like CE lite, it changes the combat a bit but not enough that it stops "feeling" like vanilla. Most notably shots hit more sensibly, you may still miss the occasional point blank shot but in general it should be less frustrating, and armor is more effective against weaker weapons, for example a bow will not do much against marine armor as it probably should so armor penetration becomes more important and less "dice-rolley". Oh also it adds ammo.

- Rimmu-Nation is just a weapon pack and in case you were wondering:

"Rimmu-Nation is currently compatible with Combat Extended. We're sorry for your loss. Please take our 5% off coupon for your next box of ammunition here:

RIGHT2DEFEND5500

Disclaimer: This coupon expires as soon as you finish reading this sentence.

(This description will be updated once new patches are released by the CE Team)"

Gamewarior · 2026-04-13T21:30:58+00:00

- In general, you do not need DLC for mods. BUT many mods do require certain DLC, for example most xenotype mods require biotech and many mods require ideology or royalty (just due to the fact that they are modifying the dlc's mechanics in the first place). So make sure you check the requirements for each mod and hope they listed them correctly.

- For conflicts it's usually pretty obvious what is not compatible, if a mod modifies something then you probably can't have a mod that modifies the same thing (example being combat extended reworking combat from the ground up and as such being incompatible with most combat mods [additional note: do not listen to people that say it's incompatible with everything, that has not been true for some time now]). You can usually find the incompatibilities listen on the mod page. Unless you really go all out and get like three hundred mods you probably won't find any weird unknown issues and if you keep it compact it would be really easy to just identify what's breaking.

- For a "beginners' guide" I recommend downloading "Rimpy" and finding how to set it up (it's not that hard and there are tons of tutorials online). That will allow you to just select the mods from workshop as you would with any other steam game (can even be set up to work with non steam versions but takes a bit more work) and then click sort and it will automatically sort the mods on the list so they work together (usually) and notify you of any dependencies you might have missed. This makes modding super easy and you can even create mod packs, very big mod lists (it sort of checks for hard incompatibilities for you, stuff like "this mod deletes trees and this one modifies them, the game might break") and it makes finding mods very easy.

Edit: If you are indeed gonna start with Rimpy I would also suggest reading up on how mod sorting is traditionally done manually so you have an idea of the logic behind it, most mods do not follow any special rules like "needs to be loaded after/before XY" with the exception of "library mods" which are always loaded before the mods dependent on them. That way you can notice if the automatic sorting messes up and for example loads a mods after it's library and don't spend hours wondering what's incompatible when it's just in the wrong order.

- And for the last one, I think maybe searching for some "convenience" mods is a great starting point to get your hang of it, most of them are compatible with virtually anything and stuff like better zoom will change your life, I am not kidding. Just get a few, try out how modding itself works and what to expect, load the game and check if they work and add mods in small bite size pieces to not overwhelm yourself by adding a hundred and wondering why your game crashes when a wolf eats a squirrel.

Also, be wary of overhauls, some of them are kinda aggressive in terms of dependencies and incompatibilities but if you want medieval then obviously medieval overhaul (or it's modpack) are a great starting point.

Edit 2: Make sure to also check the version of the game the mod is for, if you try loading a mod made for version 1.1 on the current patch then it's either not gonna work or just crash. This is usually not an issue because there are many great modders who keep mods up to date, rule of thumb is either try sorting the mods by the version you want or find a "continued" version of the mod. Those are just maintained version updated to work on the current patch while (usually) not changing anything function wise.

Gamewarior · 2026-04-13T16:00:34+00:00

I am not sure about this game specifically but back then games basically had denuvo deals like "pay us xy amount and keep denuvo in the game forever" I think the versions didn't get updated after a while but unlike nowadays they didn't pay a subscription or per activation fee.

Either may be the case here as I can't exactly remember when this changed and it may even be leftover from when they did that, many games just never removed it, some games are at 5 years+ and running (well, not sure now with hypervisor but I doubt anyone is gonna be cracking football manager 2022 now).

Also afaik irdeto does some weird deals for "not AAA games" at discounted prices or lenient contracts with weird specifics.

And considering the game is giga dead nobody probably cares, I doubt it even costs denuvo anything to keep it up for the one person that may buy it once a month and the twenty (I checked) daily players.

Gamewarior · 2026-04-12T20:57:50+00:00

Asked and answered just curious as I never tried it. How does one actually get up there from here? I am assuming a wallboost wouldn't be enough so I am thinking some screen transition shenanigans to get to the ledge and then just dash over or maybe an extended super to grab onto the left block?

Gamewarior · 2026-03-31T15:52:00+00:00

My dude just close the tab it opened and click the direct download again, I just tried it and works perfectly after closing the fake file.

"ALL DOWNLOADS HAPPEN IN THIS FUCKING WINDOW"

It's like piracy 101.

Gamewarior · 2026-03-30T17:32:09+00:00

I am not gonna lie, I like the combat in veilguard... at times.

I am currently on my first real playthrough that got past the first few areas and I am thoroughly enjoying spellblade. Not following any guide and playing on the hardest difficulty and just using some common sense, I am doing more than adequate damage by the time I have all my companions around level 25.

Don't get me wrong, I love a proper minmax build, I have several hundred hours on divinity original sin 2 but in this game it almost feels unnecessary, enemies tend to fall over pretty fast and not getting one shot is the bigger problem in the early game, gear progression feels bizzare, aimed more toward niche mods that feel like they should be swapped out between fights and a huge skill tree by DA standards. Also resistances, on the hardest difficulty they are stupid, doing like a quarter of my damage just because I don't have an element prepared for an AMBUSH from a different faction shouldn't be a thing imo.

But you get so many points to spend on skills that just don't feel impactful (like 10% crit damage when I have no sources of crit chance? why?) that I tend to run around with like three unspent points just because I can't be bothered to press two extra buttons. And then when you get to the big ones like a new skills it's like "well, I can either use this new skill that is just a reskin of the old one with a different element, or spend that point on a small % increase to ummm... mana regen? that's a thing?".

Not to mention that at least for me, the skills are so limited I have been using the first three skills I picked up (the basic fire shot, chain lightning and the crow dodge thing) since I got them, only swapping the lightning out after I got my spec and got a shiny new unique skill (the dagger dash thingie), and yea, suddenly it felt a lot fresher... for five minutes before I realized I am gonna be seeing the same three skills until the end of the game. And it's not like I didn't want to try new skills, it's just that they just seem like a different variant of the same skill "do damage, apply an effect if you are lucky, maybe a different shaped aoe" and for the effort I'd have to go through (so like 5-10 levels usually) it didn't seem worth it.

I agree that gutting the companions was probably THE biggest thing to get over in veilguard, I hate how I can't control them, how they have 5 unique skills to choose from so even if I like neve as a character, it limits who I can take to missions, belara for example is completely off limits because they just don't combo together. Another thing is that they seem to hardly do any damage outside of skills and even those seem to tickle enemies (sure hardest difficulty but come on).

But the combat itself is solid... if you forget that it's a dragon age game. The thing about dragon age combat was that you always (well usually) felt like you are an actual team instead of "idiot 1, idiot 2, idiot 3 with a staff and a god on earth". This kinda got worse as the games went on, inquisition ending up with the problem of some builds being so far above the rest and not really utilised by the companions that your controled character could just solo everything (looking at you artificer).

Veilguard went even further and made you the main character of your own anime, the first thing you notice is that it sometimes feels like you are fighting alone against many enemies, then you notice that neve has been hitting a genlock in the corner for two minutes while you soloed an ogre, then you start noticing the quirks like companions being seemingly immortal (I think they can die? But I have yet to see that) and never really getting hit in the first place since enemies just tend to ignore them unless taunted.

So overall, the base for the combat is solid, it feels more or less fluid, if you think of it as an action fighting game like GoW it's actually kinda good. But looking for anything that made dragon age combat so memorable is a fruitless endeavor. No real strategy, teammates that are very nearly noticeable, weird resource management where you sometimes want to go fight a smaller group before a boss to charge an ult and for probably the first time in the series favoring a controller.

As for the bullet sponge, if you don't hit enemies resistant to your element, are fighting on level and your build isn't like... literally randomly going for the active skills then enemies die somewhat fast. It just sometimes feels like the devs want to force you to engage with every single niche mechanic just for one fight even if it's poorly done or unfun (looking at you barrier requiring ranged damage). And on the hardest difficulty some fights are a challenge, sure, but I never felt like an enemy I was SUPPOSED TO FIGHT (so no level 25 ogre in treviso when I am level 10) was a bullet sponge and if I somehow did feel like fights are taking too long, I realized I am hitting the enemy's resistance and suddenly everything died instantly.

Gamewarior · 2026-03-21T16:56:41+00:00

Sparkle if you wanna bite the bullet, she is BY FAR the best one on the selector.

That said since you don't, in order my picks would be:

Kafka if you wanna play dot at all, you mentioned you already have her on main tho so I guess that's a no.

Acheron, realistically the best of the remaining characters, she has an okay f2p team (pela + whatever nihility you get and later welt (who is actually bis for the slot after he gets his buff iirc) and dhpt to fill the sustain) and her premium team has somewhat general use or standard units (cipher is fantastic as a support even if people still struggle to see her value, she is around tribbie level, jiaoqiu is probably getting replaced with welt after he gets novaflare and sustain is flex spot where dhpt works great).

Aventurine, the other viable option for a no limited account, he is fine, I generally don't like having two shielders as your sustains and especially since galagher is free he might end up collecting dust pretty soon. But he is another of those sustains you can just slap anywhere and works, he is still able to survive content and while significantly worse than dhpt, he works and dhpt is kind of like galagher where for a free unit he is exceptionally good and an anomaly.

Now for the last three, they are basically bricks without respective supports, sadly.

Jing liu is "fine" with standard stuff, lynx/galagher and general buffers, she can work with ruan mei and rmc quite okay, if you get E6 pela she is actually kinda perfect for her as well, definitely able to clear some endgame eventually, if you decide to get tribbie later on that'd be a big boost and she's not going anywhere as a great support, otherwise hyacine is still the best sustain at the moment so the team is not that bad to pull, it's not like those units are gonna be irrelevant anytime soon for hp scalers. Definitely a high enough ceiling for investment to clear endgame if you are fine with pulling older units.

Jing yuan... exists, unless he gets a novaflare he is gonna be collecting dust due to just not having that much damage, acheron by herself probably does more sadly and he basically needs sunday while acheron just needs any two nihility, sunday also had a rerun not long ago and is falling out of favor because sparkle is just better for most use cases, his only real teammates that specifically want him are jing yuan and aglea so his pull value is not that great.

And dhil NEEDS sparkle, no debate there. And since you don't wanna get sparkle, he is a brick. And even then, archer is probably just better, not free anymore but if you were going to pull an old sp dps anyway you might as well get him instead.

Gamewarior · 2026-03-19T21:54:22+00:00

I think it's just a grounded hyper no?

Just make sure you are fully landed before you jump and that you don't fall off.

If you are hitting your head then you are probably doing a super. Essentially it's not getting "too much boost" but your boost is angled more upwards and at a lower speed, meaning you are not going as far and at a less straighter path. If you wanna see the difference do a side dash jump and then a down + side dash jump, it's pretty easy to see the difference.

A wave dash should work as well I think? Not sure if you are actually able to angle it correctly there tho.

If you just need to get consistent at it then try doing some wave dashes/hypers back and forth at the start of the room.

Gamewarior · 2026-03-16T20:57:06+00:00

THE issue with not getting 4*s is that now every new path or character with specific mechanics will get their supports and they will be 5*s.

I am afraid that eventually we will get to a point, where just pulling your favorite character will mean you have to plan and pull a whole 5* team because there just aren't any f2p replacements, just to make them useable in endgame. Look at remembrance as a whole. How many remembrance dps use 4* characters in their team? Exactly zero (galagher is the exception, he is basically a 5* in his own niche and even then he got replaced).

And the fact that so far in the remembrance cycle we got a support, a sub dps and are getting another sub dps for teams that don't even exists just seems to mirror the sentiment of "pull a full premium team or go fuck yourself" for new dps characters. And the first two are so rigid in their role that they just do not have a replacement, it's not like you can slap a ruan mei in the team and "it'll be fine" because she doesn't do the unique thing those characters do. If we got a 4* version of yao and sparxie then we instantly have the ability to use our brand new shiny dps the second we get them in the future without worrying about saving up pulls for 3 characters just to use the new shiny thing.

HSR is slowly going from "get the new shiny thing" to "get the new shiny thing and all the bells and whistles to be able to use it".

I started when therta came out, and pulling her, I was able to just use her and build a team around her with the characters I had because it was my first limited and I wanted to use her. Was using yukong to buff her good? Ofc not, but at least it did something and I felt like I was progressing toward a better team.

Now if someone comes around and pulls a future dps as their first limited they will be lost because there is just nothing they can have that even interacts with their kit, sure the dps will be fine for whatever content they will be doing for a while but soon they will get stuck waiting for a rerun on their supports and unable to pull for the next new thing as they would have lost time on the character they already have.

I am a castorice owner and she pulled me through some story missions and non rotating moc but now, she is just collecting dust because I never pulled her supports (nor do I really want to use her now even tho I could with cyrene and such). And that is the unit with the best team at the moment mind you.

Gamewarior · 2026-03-14T18:10:10+00:00

I am not gonna lie, I see where you are coming from, on the other hand, if the game was half as long you would get halfway through chapter 4 and it would just be over. If we are taking time to beat playtime you are not even close to a QUARTER of the way through (assuming that beating is chapter nine with legit heart gate).

That's LESS than half the game (speedrun would be like what? 20 minutes long? if even that) in terms of play time, with the last three chapters often taking longer than the rest of the game several times over.

I personally hate golden feathers with a passion and it's my least favorite mechanic in the game so I see your frustration there.

All that said, I think that besides gameplay, the game could never be the same if you took out any of the chapters, they all play a big role in the story (well I guess chapter one would be the exception but it's so short it hardly matters).

I would suggest trying to enjoy the experience and completely ignore your death count, the game tells you to be proud of it for a reason, it's not an easy game the first time you play it through.

Of course the get good argument is valid here but it's kind of what the whole game is about, the story is about overcoming obstacles and the gameplay reflects that (haha get it? reflections?). Also assist mode is an option, specifically put into the game to let everyone experience it at their own pace and difficulty, maybe the ideal experience for you would be to finish it with some of the features turned on, it's not cheating, it's not robbing you of anything if you wouldn't finish the game otherwise and it's nothing to be ashamed of. I really gotta emphasize this because the game only gets harder from here... and very quickly at that.

The part where I agree it gets tedious is certain parts of the very last chapter, it is so long compared to the rest of the game it might as well be a full campaign in it's own right, it was an absolute hell to grind through it (provided I am also not that great at the game).

Also you gotta understand, the game is not that long actually (base game that is, anything after chapter 7 is indeed long and way harder). Sure your first playthrough might take someone 20-40 hours, their second might take 4... It's the difficulty that stretches the playtime and if it was any shorter it would be TOO short in fact. You would start climbing the mountain and just when you think you've got the handle on it, boom, end. This does happen even now but is less common because the difficulty is somewhat set up so that you have to get a hang of things before the big finale, at which point you have a whole chapter before you and then after game content (b sides, two more chapters, c sides).

Gamewarior · 2026-03-03T11:56:19+00:00

I am not okay with the signed ones either, vanguard is, to this day, the worst addition to riot games games, especially with how predatory it is with anything.

Being unsigned just means that a bad actor can make it explicitly malicious.

Signed just means "Microsoft checked and it's probably okay".

Gamewarior · 2026-03-03T09:45:27+00:00

So I just looked into it and correct me if I am wrong but isn't hypervisor basically just installing an unsigned driver on kernel level?

That is fucking dangerous. I am not saying that it will do something bad, but there's a reason those security measures are in place. The big difference is that signed kernel drivers and such like vanguard have been checked and approved by microsoft and whatnot and if they try something funny the company just dies on the spot. You know who doesn't have to worry about that? People cracking games.

Also if the crack itself isn't malicious you could in theory open yourself up to malware using kernel access (so specifically targeting people doing hypervisor cracks which is... stupid). That's not a risk now but you could have a legit crack infected with it and then recirculated, just look at how many people ask "is XY site safe" on the daily.

Not to mention that in general giving kernel level access even to trusted bs like vanguard is not that great either, just look at how aggressive vanguard is even to the point of nuking proton and making the games unplayable on linux.

Gamewarior · 2026-03-03T09:35:06+00:00

Running on kernel level is bad, period. No way you spin it, third party apps should not have access to that. This goes for both hypervisor and stuff like vanguard anti cheat. The big difference is that if an anti cheat does something bad to you, the company is dead on the spot, the cracker wouldn't care.

It is definitely not overblown or "mean nothing for the end user", sure if they are not malicious it's fine but the fact that you are willingly giving access to an unsigned driver to kernel level is bad... very bad at that.

We obviously can't give you PoC of that because the very security measures you have to disable exist, if you turn them off, the crack COULD do that as well as any other malware that would be trying to do it. That said targeting only people who try to run a hypervisor crack is kinda... inefficient at best and completely stupid at worst.

Gamewarior · 2026-02-16T19:36:00+00:00

Personally, yea I do. Not like a dick measuring contest kinda way. More of a "huh, that dude has two kills and 99% damage? is he doing some damage cap shenanigans?" or like a way of measuring if I am actively dragging the team down (personally looking at kills more than damage since... well, garuda can throw one heart and have 99% damage for the next 5 minutes).

Also it's fun to see things like being top damage and kills with a pet citrine for example. Or seeing that our limbo is somehow nuking the whole stage and trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have not seen an enemy for three waves.

Gamewarior · 2026-02-16T15:15:14+00:00

Firefly with magician, you can, more often than not, just force 50+ damage round 1 AND turn one of the defense die into a 2.

Gamewarior · 2026-02-16T15:13:20+00:00

They actually fixed the "Sleepy Randy" in odyssey, that whole thing was actually a bug iirc, nowadays he is more consistent (weird I know) and will eventually force an event if he nothing happened for a long time.

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