My list of honour mode tips

[littlelostkiwi]

I've now plat'd the game, going through normal and then honour mode. Surprisingly, after taking what I learn from my first time into my honour mode play-though I found it incredibly easy, much easier than normal mode since I had a better setup.

 

Here are what I would consider my top tips:

 

 - 2 mages, 1 marksman and one tank is an ideal setup. Mages are very useful, and having 2 allows for much more crowd control, healing and summoning options. In my case my 2 mains were mages, + Madora & Bairdotr

 

- Both mages should get Regeneration as early as possible (preferably start with it). Other spells to get early is summon spider, and especially Rapture. Rapture can be purchased from the NPC in the upstairs room in the King Crab Tavern. Rapture can trivialize the game, especially when you have 2 casters with it. Headvice and Bitter Cold are also both really good early access crowd control spells.

 

- Both fireball (for removing traps) and Rain (for removing burning surfaces) is really helpful and will be used a lot. You only need one copy of each across your two mages.

 

- Your ranger should get both Winged Feet and Walk in the Shadows. Walk in the shadows means you can pickpocket at will (if you want to) but more importantly lets you bypass obstacles such as sentry statues later in the game. Both last for 5 turns which is a decent time out of combat. Winged Feet trivializes traps, lava or any other ground based obstacles. Do you have a long corridor of traps to get past? Give one of the teleport crystals to your Marksman, get them to cast winged feet and simply walk across the entire thing, then teleport to them with the rest of your teammates using the other crystal. Winged feet essentially removes the threat of traps from the game, which in honour mode is probably one of the easiest ways to die. Another example of places to use it are those super annoying patches of ice that make you trip in Hiberheim.

 

- Between Rapture and summons you should be able to keep your entire party away from the combat for most fights. Typically I would charm (rapture) 2 opponents in my first round, and then summoning allies in the next round. Usually by then they are all fighting among each other and usually too distracted to focus on you. I would usually keep my tank near my party, initially casting Encourage and then saving their action points. I only use them if an enemy strays too close, or the pack thins out enough that I can charge in without risk of being killed between rounds.

 

- In terms of summons, you should have at least 2 available for each mage so that if one dies then you have another available that isn't on cooldown. Summons are always cast at your level so the early summon skills are just as viable as the later summon skills. In terms of summons, summon spider hold up the entire game, as do the Witchcraft summons. Most of the others are situational, especially the elementals. Also, if you complete the headless nick quest (required for the platinum) then you receive a book that grants you the skill to summon a Zombie. I gave this to my tank (even though she wasn't one of my main characters) so that I could have 3 summons on the field.

 

- In the earlier more difficult fights, don't forget that you can flee. When doing so you will return to the closest waypoint, and any enemies you killed will remain dead. Therefore for large battles you can pick off an enemy or two and then flee, re-prepare and then return to the location. The battle will restart but the enemies you killed will no longer be there. It is a viable way to thin a larger battle. Later in the game it's no longer an issue since most of the time the combat becomes pretty easy.

 

- This will be obvious but before entering combat, if you stay just outside of combat range and cast a summon next to the enemies then that summon will initiate the combat. This is useful because not only will you have an expendable NPC to distract the enemies, your caster will start with all of their action points. The same goes for AoE spells like fireball.

 

- When creating your initial characters make sure to set their companion AI to 'loyal'. Not only does that mean you're less likely to mess up your traits, it also means you can't accidentally mess up the 'Sister Of Mercy' trophy by choosing the incorrect partner response (which is what I did on my first play-through)

 

- Over the long run it's worth investing in a trader and getting your reputation up with them. In my case I picked Cylia in the marketplace in Cyseal although there are plenty of choices. Over the course of the first few hours donate your lesser worth items to them until their attitude hits 100 and then you can repair from them much cheaper, as well as sell items to them for more. Their gold restocks every time you level, so make a habit of returning to that vendor to offload all of your excess items every time you do. On that note misc items such as gold cups or paintings can sell for quite a lot in the early game. To be honest though later in the game gold becomes less of an issue.

 

 - In terms of leveling, always focus on your primary stat first (Int for mages, dex for marksmen & strength for warriors) until you hit the cap, which is 15 unbuffed. After that focus on either speed or constitution. I mostly focused on speed on most of my characters, plus a few points in constitution for my warrior.

 

- In terms of talents, I would say that Know-it-All & Far Out Man are essential for mages, while Bully is essential for both your marksman and tank. Opportunist is also an essential tank skill (although Madora starts with it if you use her). You should have Pet Pal on one of your mains, and I chose Light Stepper for the other. Bigger & Better as well as Walk it Off are also both essential party wide talents. The last couple come down to personal preference.

 

And finally, this last point defeats the purpose of honour mode so feel free to use or ignore

 

 - As you are probably aware in honour mode you only have one save slot, and if one of your characters dies it immediately saves over it (therefore meaning that character is dead on the one save slot). However if someone does die, if you immediately hold the ps button and close the application you will quit it before it can complete the save. Therefore when restarting the game it will instead load back to the previous save before that death. On a character death you have about a 5 second window to do this before it's too late. That, along with the option of copying your saves to usb or uploading to cloud storage removes all of the risk with honour mode.

 

Anyway, I hope that helps anyone, and please feel free to add your own tips.

 

Edited January 22, 2017 by littlelostkiwi

[Griffon234]

Some extra tips I can think of off the top of my head:

 

- Make sure you use the environment to your advantage in fights, both the ambient environment, as well as environment you can create on your own. Example: Midnight Oil + Fireball/Rain + Blitz Bolt

 

- Avoid combat when it is completely necessary with Charisma checks. You don't want to fight unprepared.

 

- Stock up on Resurrection Scrolls early. Arhu stocks them, as well some other magic vendors.

 

- Do put SOME points in Bodybuilding/Willpower, being crowd controlled is the fastest way to die. Remember you can get points of these from your armor as well.

 

- Some spells that are not mentioned that are useful, Bless and Burn My Eyes for your Ranger in combat, as well as for Perception checks. Oath of Desecration is an amazing spell which you only need a single point in Witchcraft to use as well.

 

- Morning Person is a great perk for everyone.

 

- Don't put points into useless skills like Bartering on your main characters. If you want to use a character for Bartering, just throw Bartering points on Wolgraff because he's useless anyway.

 

- Swallow your pride and don't be afraid to flee. It's better to live than die.

 

Edited December 23, 2016 by Griffon234

[littlelostkiwi]

Great additions.

 

Also, Max Leadership skill on one of your characters is actually really useful. The maximum level is 6 (additional points don't improve the benefits), so take that into account with gear that adds to the leadership skill. At level 6 you get: +10 Initiative, +10% Damage, +15% Chance to Hit, +5% Critical Chance, +7 Armour, +1 Willpower, +1 Bodybuilding & Immunity to Fear. Unfortunately it only affects your other characters outside of the one whom has the skill though, so you may want to invest it in the character who is the least active in combat (or invest it into 2 characters).

 

The Righteous trait grants +1 leadership, so you would only need to invest in 5 levels in Leadership if you wanted to use it on a main character and has that trait, even less if you had leadership gear.

 

Speaking of traits, these are the better choices:

• Independent / Obedient : +1 Willpower (plus a trophy is tied to this trait)
• Compassionate / Heartless : +3% Critical Chance (unless you like to use backstabbing) 
• Altruistic / Egotistical : Debatable. Altruistic gives +2 Reputation while Altruistic gives +1 Bartering.
• Righteous / Renegade : +1 Leadership 
• Blunt / Considerate : Immune to Charmed
• Bold  / Cautious : +1 Initiative
• Pragmatic / Romantic : +1 Lucky Charm
• Forgiving / Vindictive : Immune to Cursed (plus a trophy is tied to this trait)
• Spiritual / Materialistic : Immune to Fear

 

EDIT: One final tip for the platinum after I got it last night:

- The Wolfpack trophy requires you to finish the game with the Lone Wolf talent on a main character. On honor mode that could be considered quite a challenge since it reduces your party size by one. However if you save the talent point you get at level 19 on one of your main characters then you can apply it after beating the last boss since you will have a short section in a new area where you are free to walk around and talk to people before the game is finished. That way you can keep your party of 4 until after the last fight.

Edited January 3, 2017 by littlelostkiwi
Update of advice

[Kallume]

*casually walks in and sees someone loves this game* Oh! Hello there!

 

I like coming back to these forums from time to time to see if anyone needs any help with the game. The list you've compiled has good info (I like the bit about Fleeing... I don't think I thought of that). As I thoroughly enjoy keeping my guides up-to-date, please take a look at my gameplay guide found here and look at the initial set up (found under Character Selection). Anything that you would recommend would be greatly appreciated to ensure I am up-to-date with patch additions / improvements.

 

PS - Grats on your Plat!

[Doom]

You can have a high STR character carry around 5-6 explosive barrels and place them down before starting hard fights.

For example, I killed the giant spider/crab in the caves with a single arrow by exploding a mix of oil barrels and goo barrels under him.

[Doom]

Another advice I can give you is this.

Don't sell too much shit.

 

I finished the game with 250000 gold and a satisfactory geared group.

I'm saying this not because I think it's a waste of time, but because it could be seriously game breaking.

 

After you sell too much stuff the following starts to happen:

• If you sell too much to a specific vendor, that vendor's trading interface will lag like crazy
• Items sold do not disappear from your inventory, while in the trading interface (and can be sold indefinitely for 1 gold)
• Said items will not be present in your inventory outside of the trading interface, but will reappear in any trading interface you open
• If you change character while keeping the trading interface open, something really absurd might happen where the items you are seeing in your inventory differ from what they really are. Meaning if you sell something you don't really know what's being sold (I managed to sell and item that was equipped on a different character. Magic.)

 

Near the end I seriously started leaving items on the ground (unless divine) and stopped selling altogether for fear the game would crash on me, or corrupt my save file.