Okay so since I don't see one already, we'll make this the "officially unofficial" Broken World thread.

I happen to have a dvd drive still, and a spanking awesome copy of DS2 on GOG, and I'm seriously considering reinstalling Broken World.

From what I remember, BW is like *super hard* on normal mode if you start from the beginning. Does anyone have tips or tricks for how to get going with it? I'm most likely reinstalling it regardless, just curious what people think of it vs vanilla.

Back in the day, I was already on Veteran mode and had to go back to Normal to finish BW because Veteran was too hard. I also remember starting a playthrough when I had a twitch channel and getting absolutely smashed on BW on a brand new playthrough.

I think iirc, the secret is getting one of the new classes and rolling with that.

Anyway, post thoughts, tips, tricks, anything you want, even questions, on BW and enjoying it.

-HG

BW rebalanced a lot of things to make the game harder than the vanilla game, which was overly easy. Most skills got nerfed, armor ratings of armor pieces got cut by about 30% and enemies got many buffs.

Never started a fresh campaign from BW, always played the original campaign first before going to the expansion. Never ran into issues or difficulty spikes in continuous play. But I can see how it could be difficult starting BW fresh, when you don't have a party of characters you built yourself at hand.

As for general tips, having a tank is pretty crucial. A character solely focused on drawing aggro a being as tanky as possible while completely ignoring anything damage related. That alone take care of most things and you mostly have to worry about AoE attacks. Which the bosses in BW have a lot of. The only somewhat problematic part can be the final boss of BW. He has some nasty attacks that cover entire screens and will simply annihilate your backline if it gets hit.

Never really made a character whose main focus was one of the expansion classes. Always only used them as support later in the game, as I generally don't like the forced 70/30 experience split the expansion classes do. It will make it so you are always behind on skill level requirements for gear and won't be able to equip the best you can, unless you grind for multiple levels. And I generally don't like hybrid classes.

And yes, Normal is actually the hardest. It's around character level 40-50 where you gain the most power for your characters as you start stacking resists, find set/unique items or multiclassing etc. Before that, encountering a Mimic is akin to a raid boss :P

Great points, and thanks for posting in the thread.

I would like to say I went ahead and got a physical copy of BW for $5 off amazon (NIB) and using my trusty mobile dvd drive, installed it. I had to look up how to get it to work with the GOG version of DS2 vanilla, though.

In terms of the new classes, I did some research and apparently Blood Assassin is hella op even for BW. Fist of Stone is pretty op too compared to vanilla classes.

The 70/30 split is an issue for sure, but I think I would really like to enjoy the game with BW difficulty from the beginning just as a point of pride. Not saying I'm going to, though. I suspect I will finish the base campaign again and then start BW.

Some random ARPG thoughts: I had gotten Last Epoch in early access back in 2018 or 2019. It recently released, and I really enjoy it but it feels samey. DS2 (and BW by extension) is one of the most original arpg's I think I've ever played.

-HG

Fist of Stone will be OP early on due to all the free AoE damage you can get, but will fall off later. The most OP thing about it is the first passive skill that gives armor and health based on Intelligence. It basically makes your mages tankier than rangers (not Warriors though).

Shadow Assasin can be strong, but requires heavy micro. Which given how they absolutely ruined the controls compared to DS1, will be a pain, no matter which way you look at it. But it's a great support class for rangers, offering a lot of extra damage, especially with the weapon enhancement.

I mostly just utilized the expansion classes for synergies with the main ones later on in the game, once my characters ran out of thing to grab in their main classes.

Thanks. I decided to start the campaign from the beginning with BW balancing. So far, it's definitely punchier than vanilla.

I have never played SA or BF in broken world, so this will be completely new for me. And this is coming from a person who played both vanilla and BW on launch back in the day.

Do you think it's worth playing through all 3 difficulties? I wonder if the loot is good enough to justify the number chase, or if it's more of like a grail thing from D2 where you just do it to check it off the bucket list.

Depends on if you enjoy the game mostly. But as the party size limit goes up in each difficulty (5 on Veteran, 6 on Elite), it gives you an opportunity to hear more of the party banter, which was one of the things that kept me going. As far as items go, there are some that only start dropping in the 80+ level range, which you will only really see on the final difficulty. The progression is pretty well done, so if you enjoy getting new, more powerful items as you go, then you will probably like it. But the game remains mostly the same in most regards. I just recently played through them all and don't regret it.

There are some mods that I'd definitely recommend:
https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiegeii/mods/21?tab=description - fixes a bugged lore book in Broken World
https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiegeii/mods/82?tab=posts - can help with conversations getting interrupted when taking damage (especially party banter in hostile areas).
https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiegeii/mods/3?tab=description - Makes it so that all the characters, not only the ones in your active party, get the skill points from quests that reward them. Meaning you can freely mix and match the party at any point without worrying that some of them are missing skill points.

Some mods might make your saves disappear. To load your saves again, use this:
https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiegeii/mods/23
Launching the game through this mod also enables a camera mod, which gives you much more freedom with controlling it.

Cheers!

...but what about the well-known framerate issues with Broken World? Did you experience them? Were you able to find a workaround? Or maybe you weren't bothered by them that much?
I'm asking because I would like to try and do the same, possibly.

I haven't noticed them at all, tbh. I've never noticed frame dips enough to bother me with Broken World, across multiple systems over multiple OS's.

Might be a personal preference thing, idk. I use an AMD processor so idk if that helps, either.

OK, I think I might look for the expansion eventually, and then hopefully find a way to make it work. Thank you.

Finally got around to testing the new classes at least for the first few levels. So far so good! Though the difficulty ramp of Broken World in the base game is pretty outrageous early on.

Been kind of busy, but planning on getting back to it soon. The champions hit SO HARD in BW lol.

Yep. Especially on the first difficulty before you get your physical resistances up. A tank is very important or your squishies will get obliterated.

I'm learning the fist of stone ultimate buff is really good and needed for certain packs.

I kind of gave up on Broken World. It ended up being too hard for me lol. Even getting the new classes up and running didn't help much.

I think I'm going to set it aside until I play through the campaign again on vanilla.

Thanks for all of the advice, though.