I have fallen into the same trap that I always do with this type of game, and which I begged myself not to this time, to no avail: Roll a character, be having a good time. Suddenly think, "I wonder if there's another way to solve this area if my character were any good at stealth..." Roll another character, replay the same 8-10 hours of the game. Think to myself, "that was interesting, but how would that play out if I took the bad guy path? Or if I was a magic user? Or if I had a mustache?" Replay the same 8-10 hours of the game, ad nauseam.
And this is even after the 100 hrs I sank in Early Access.
I didn't even have any hype for this game because I don't do anything DnD related and I typically don't like how complicated CRPGs are, but this game has me by the balls and I constantly think about it. I find myself having to avoid some fights even on easy (those god damn phase spiders in the well at the goblin village) but it's so freakin' great either way. I played co-op on Friday with a friend who has been playing DnD for 30 years and he was impressed by my experimentation and creativity which is something I'm usually pretty poor at.
The phase spider fight was my favourite fight so far. So many options, so many little things you could just see to make it easier. (Spider eggs are probably bad, right.)
I've put almost 40 hours into this game since it came out, I'm only just finishing up Act 2.
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(Moonrise, Nightsong, Blood of Lathander and I think there's a fight I missed in Reithwin, left to go.)
And I have no doubt I'm going to do at least 2-3 more full playthroughs, plus a dozen odd partial playthroughs messing with different builds, permutations, modded content, etc. This game is going to be the death of me. :P
Mate I’m 25 hours in and definitely not done with Act 1 yet, so you are just fine.
I just hope that the difficulty scales appropriately. I would be somewhat disappointed if we did all this exploring and that caused Act2 to be a breeze.
But not that long ago we got our asses kicked in a certain zone. We have avoided it since then but time is running out.
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If you reach the under dark do not try to sneak left. Or do it, it will be quick fu