Kingdoms of Amalur: Inventory Tips

One of the major issues with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a bunch of well-known bugs with the in-game inventory. Here are the known issues:

1) Some quest items will get stuck in you character's carry-on inventory, namely... House of Ballads Armor (which takes up 4 precious spots), Shine & Shadow and Helm of Hideous Visage. This happens after you stash them and take them out again. After that, you won't be able to sell, stash or destroy them. That's 6 spots total gone.

Unfortunately, there's no remedy for this if you've already got these stuck. Just be sure to get rid of these items once you get them on your 2nd playthrough. Hopefully they release a patch for this.

2) Placing items in the stash that you've added gems to will make the gems disappear.

Be sure to unsocket them before stashing. The bad thing about this is your item will end up taking more than one slot. When your blacksmithing is high enough, you'll be able to create armor pieces better than the socketed ones. Then you won't have to deal with this issue.

3) Sometimes storing a blacksmithed item will cause it to lose its elemental power.

Just stash it and pull it out again to fix.

4) The game is filled with so many cool items that it becomes a problem to keep them all. You get 120 slots (by the end of the game) to carry and 155 at your home. If you have the PC version, I believe both of these can be hacked in the config files, but if you're on a console, you have to deal with it. Here are a few tips to keep things to a minimum.

- Items like potions are stored in batches of 10. 10 of one kind of potion will take up one slot. So don't store more than 10 of a potion. If your alchemy skill is high enough, don't store the potions you can create.

- If you have a lot of potions, just keep the highest level. If you have 10 greater healing potions... stop storing minor healing ones.

- If you find cool weapons that you won't be using right away, salvage them for parts first. Blacksmithing components don't count against your inventory. Craft the weapons later when you need them. I picked up a lot of prismere items on my quests, but salvaged them all until recently. I crafted a full suit, 2 swords, longbow and faeblades... all very powerful end-game items.

- Don't store anything you won't use. You're going to get a lot of nice armor pieces, but if you have a full warrior, you won't have a need for a mage's robe set. There will be plenty of warrior armor to find and fill up your inventory.

- There's often a high level and low level version of each armor set. If you're deep into the game, don't keep the low level items. They look nice, but you'll never use them.

Mel Senshir Reloaded

Two DLCs later and I went back to replay the Siege of Mel Senshir for real. There was a 5 level difference for Alyssa Goldenblade, which made a huge difference. I used the same weapons and same strategy and barely lost any health. Already knowing what happens, I also took more screenshots:

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Legend of Dead Kel

I downloaded the long awaited Legend of Dead Kel on Tuesday and just completed to today. It was far more than the 10 hours they mentioned and worth every penny. It wasn't hard at all, but great for powering up on weapons, armor and crafting components.

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An important tip is that you should start this quest late in your game because it scales up depending on your level. The minimum requirement is 10, but if you enter at 10, all of the treasures you find will have low stats. It's best to do it before Mel Senshir. If you do all side quests, that should put you in the mid to high 30's. You'll then get enough prismere items for free since they're overpriced in Rathir. And for the Mel Senshir siege, you'll be very prepared for the epic battle.

Alyssa Goldenblade vs. Dead Kel

The Legend of Dead Kel is coming out tomorrow and it claims to lengthen Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning by 15%! There are a host of new enemies, friends and treasures. One flaw in this game though is that players will level up too fast if they complete all of the side quests and we get capped at level 40 too. I finished all side quests before the siege @ Mel Senshir and the other DLC, House of Valor, which already put me at level 39. I didn't hang around in any part of the game to purposely power up either! So I should get maxxed out by tomorrow's DLC.

I spent some time today preparing for The Legend of Dead Kel. It was mostly clearing inventory space for all the new stuff. Another issue with the game, and you'll see this across many message boards is the inventory limit. You can carry 70 items, but with upgrades, up to 120. And you have storage space in your house that holds another 155. This is hardly enough to keep all the nice items in the game though. Armor sets take up 5 slots already. In the game, you tend to find yourself spending a lot of time just sorting items after quests. Today, I sold off any unique armor pieces that that I didn't think looked good. I also had to get rid of some weaker weapons. That left me with about 20 open slots in the house and 40 on Alyssa. I should be good as long as I don't pick up any potions along the way.

House of Valor

The House of Valor was a Day 1 DLC for Kingdoms of Amalur... for players who either preordered or waited on line during the day of release. Anyone else had to buy it separately. The game is comparable to the Lord of the Rings series and this DLC adds Gladiator to it. It counts as a faction quest, but is a lot easier because you don't need to travel around and solve problems... just win several rounds of arena combat.

In this DLC, your hero is part of a team called the Crows. It's a team that's supposed to lose to other more powerful ones. Though it's a 4-member team, only 2 are allowed to fight at a time, while opponents can have 4-8. Your hero is the team leader and is required to fight all battles, so you have to choose your partner wisely.

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The quest itself is pretty easy as each battle is just against human opponents. It's usually one leader + 3 underlings. The underlings are like normal enemies in the game, but with more hitpoints. The leader is much more powerful and seems to be pumped on relentless assault (he won't get knocked back when hit). One of the fights is against 2 trolls, but that's not a problem because by this point in the game, players have already gotten used to fighting multiple large enemies simultaneously. The challenge board is hard though as you'll face small armies of enemies that just keep attacking. Some are timed (kill 40 brownies in 3 min) and others you have to do without taking a hit (vs a Jottun).

All in all, the download is not really necessary. You do win a very powerful armor set, but it's still not as good as something you could blacksmith/sagecraft. You also get a user house out of it, but there are already 2 you get from regular gameplay in the desert area.

Lord of the Rings Interactive

The siege at Mel Senshir was the most amazing scene of any video game I've ever played. It was just like being in the Lord of the Rings movie, except I was controlling the main character. It was an interesting perspective because there were hundreds of things going on as I was trying to complete my one task.

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I enjoyed the battle and cut-scenes so much that I actually didn't save the game after completing that segment. I didn't want to advance the game too quickly! I hadn't started the Day 1 DLC, House of Valor yet and there's another one coming later this week. So I want to go back and do those before this epic battle.

Reckoning Screens

I probably should have gotten the PC version if I knew I was going to go crazy with screenshots. With PS3, I can only shoot the non-action scenes because there's no pause function during battle... which seems to be the norm with video games these days.

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These came out OK though. The trick is to turn the flash off, shoot far away and zoom in. Also, it's better to shoot at a high MP and then reduce the size by almost 50% in Photoshop. This will cut down on scan lines.

Alyssa Goldenblade: Amalur Edition

RPG Resume
Alyssa Goldenblade was a D&D character I created ages ago and makes video game appearances in any fantasy themes RPG that allows players to create their own characters. She's a combination of the Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures and Dragonlance campaigns and made her video game debut in the first true RPG for NES, Ultima III: Exodus. That was the first game that had character creation where players could choose classes and distribute points to various attributes. In Ultima, Alyssa was a paladin, the closest thing to a knight. Then came the AD&D PC games, Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn and Dark Queen of Krynn where I was able to create Alyssa the way she was meant to be, as a Knight of the Rose. It was in that series that I promoted her to leader of the party because she rolled the highest HPs of all my characters. Strategically, it was better to put the highest HP characters in the front of the line.

Kingdoms of Amalur
All of Alyssa Goldenblade's appearances were previously in multi-character RPGs, so Kingdoms of Amalur is her first solo role. I usually create my main character, Shadow Dragon for solo RPGs, but couldn't really find a character combination that looked like him for the game. But there was a perfect combination to make an Alyssa with slightly shorter hair. I also wanted to make a female character for a couple of reasons. The sprite is smaller than the bulky males. They say that the 2 are equal, but I've taken more hits as a male character while trying out the demo... even died 3x. The other thing is that many of the enemies are female and the ways you can kill in the game are very gruesome. I would have a problem doing that as a male character. Currently, Alyssa is at level 33. I have most of the ability points allocated to "might" since she's a knight primarily. I also powered up the "finesse" weapons proficiencies in longbows and faeblades and the "mage" weapons in sceptres and chakrams... pretty much the way she was meant to be. In Dragonlance the Knights of Solamnia had some spellcasting ability. And the "finesse" abilities mix in her ninja skills from Oriental Adventures.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

POV: 3rd
Graphics: 10
Controls: 8
Difficulty: 5

After replaying the demo over and over, my pre-order of Kingdoms of Amalur arrived about a week late from it's initial release date. All of the bugs that plagued the already good demo were fixed. If you've played the demo, here are the items that were fixed:

- Crashing: if your audio starts losing some channels, it means the game is about to crash your PS3 and you should quit and restart
- Camera: The auto focusing in the demo was not that sensitive
- Targeting: In the demo, sometimes you aim your weapon in one direction and it auto-targets something in a totally wrong direction.
- Rendering: As you run across the lands, the scenery renders correctly and quickly.

I knew the crashing was going to be fixed, but this is such a great game that I would have lived with the other bugs. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KoAR) combines all of the things I enjoy about previous favorites. It's got vast world that you can explore and return to previous places. That was the kind of thing I enjoyed about early games like Legend of Zelda and Metroid. Then there's the customization and Dungeons and Dragons aspect from games like Ultima: Exodus and Dragonlance: Champions of Krynn. There has never been a game that combined the right parts of an RPG with a 3rd person action game. The moves and combos are comparable to the best action games such as Batman: Arkham City and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. With the 3rd person action, there are also multiple quests and problems to solve. It has a rarely used aspect of collecting components to build your own weapons and mix potions as well. Mini Ninjas was the first game I came across that had the potions aspect, but I've never seen a game that allowed you to build your own weapons and armor. The character building the the best I've seen also. Each character you create is totally unique because you're choosing a mixture of skills, not necessarily a pure warrior, wizard, theif or cleric like other RPGs.

The graphics are amazing for the size of the game. While they don't beat out Batman: Arkham Asylum, the vast landscapes make up for it. If you get the PC version, like most games, there's a noticeable difference in quality. The PS3 version is at 720p and looks a little jagged if you look closely. One of the best parts of character creation is that you get to make your own from top to bottom, something missing from all of the RPGs of today. As you play the game, your character changes depending on armor and weapons you pick up.

The controls are good, but not as responsive as the Batman games. The combos are pretty cool as they combine multiple weapons with magic. The evading takes a bit of getting used to if you're a Batman player because it's less smooth. But generally, if you're good at Arkham Asylum or Arkham City, it's the same idea with KoAR, but with weapons.

The stories and quests are pretty good too as the creators took a lot of time and though in creating a world with rich history. It's almost as detailed as the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings franchises. I've completed over 50 quests already and have only gone through about 1/4 of the map. One thing's for sure, I won't be providing a walkthrough of this game! This game makes Arkham City look tiny!

Kingdoms of Amalur: Unboxing

Last month, I did my weekly check for demos in the Playstation Store. I haven't downloaded one in a while and came across Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I thought it would be another bad D&D themed adventure game. I've downloaded and played many, only to delete them after a few minutes of gameplay. This one was very well done though. I don't think there has been a game like this since the days of Genesis & SNES. It combines the fun aspects of RPG and sword-swinging adventure games.

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In the demo, players are limited to 45 min to explore a small portion of the Faelands. It's packed with several quests and hours of gameplay. You probably have to play from scratch 3-4x to complete everything in the demo. I had so much fun that I knew I was going to buy the full game. And if you know me, I rarely buy video games! I even went along with the preorder fanatics, shopping multiple stores to see which one offered the best bonuses. I was going to buy from Gamestop because they had special armor along with the Fate-touched weapons that came with any preorder. But after adding it to the cart with shipping and tax, it came out to $75. So I ended up buying from the official limited edition store for $90. The way I break it down is... $60 for the game, $15 for the soundtrack, $10 for the dice... then you get the map and cards. So it ended up being a better bargain.

Full game review coming soon!