Or hard evidence like in 9:00... i did not know atributes alone dont do anything... that changes a lot! Cant fkin understand why there are no numbers in the game, HPs, stamina, damage stats... nothing
Thanks for the video! You covered a lot. Some more Tips: 1) Handgranades doesn't have requirements. Jax can use them at the beginning. That was my way to defeat Big Jim in the arena. Just make your way to the Fort and look for an outlaw merchant. 2) Join a faction to get the stamina potion receipt from the local healer, or make your way to the hangars in Ignadon to find the receipt. You can sneak through the entrance of the building, without being spotted, by the mutants. Gather many gold whisper and wolf leaf, to make lots of stamina potions. Each increases Jaxs stamina at 20 points permanently. You can make up to 18, due to the amount of gold whisper in the game. You can do approx. 20 hit combos with that much stamina.
this is something i hope Piranha bytes never loses, the fact that you are so weak at the start is a rarety nowdays, everyone expects to log into a game and slay everything in an instant. i hope they never change from that path.
So may reddit posts about this game are people bitching they can't kill a mech walker 30 mins into the game. I find it laughable that CoD-Simps cant understand that taking on a killing machine with a lead pipe and leather armor is, in fact, something that should be insanely hard to do.
@@zigfaust that's true, though. I fought a killing machine with a flamethrower and a laser rifle. But even then it was still hard to kill, it took so much ammo just to kill one.
The problem in this game though, is you are TOO weak. I dont mind being an average nobody, but here, even just in the woods around the starting town you cannot fight anything at all, because literally every enemy kills you in one shot.
@@zigfaust I just picked up the game on sale went wandering around and got ruined by some T. rex looking thing after telling myself “doesn’t look to bad” I’m loving the game so far and I’m only about 90 minutes in. Also a big fan of the X character will remember that or X character respects that
Yep, the games sadly become less immersive since gothic 1,2 Like npc schedule, main character interactions with the world picking up items from the ground, crafting and so on...
I'd like to add to this with the suggestion that your first time play-thru involves pumping Constitution to 30 using your first couple levels. And then buying the Survival skills Extra Hitpoints (grants bonus hitpoints each level and is retroactive), Good Eater (extra healing from food), and Armor (will require five points into Strength but does what you think it does). All of these make combat a little more forgiving for your first play-thru earlier in the game. Many people will tell you to rush intellect or cunning for crafting and pickpocket for money and powerful upgrades and such. But those are best rushed when you have a better handle on the combat and nuances of the game. The ones I mentioned (and the video mentioning Stamina) may make the difference between adapting and making it through the learning experience of playing a Piranha Bites game. Or just rage quitting because you keep dying to the weakest mobs because you're struggling to grasp the combat and aren't equipped well.
Thank you so much! i'm level 6 and STILL have not been able to ramp anything to buy skills and it really didn't feel like a cost/benefit kind of skill package, in fact, i didn't know WHAT the hell they were going for. ONE of the worst parts of this jankfest is that leveling up feels just like: "So friggin' WHAT??" Since other than acting as "gear keys" attributes are basically useless, i just wanted to find a "basic kit" to use to TRY to come to grips with what is really a very, VERY poorly designed and CONSTRUCTED game, just for a few interesting ideas. As is i'm probably out as soon as the JetPack get old. What? The game is utter JANKTASTICA!! (in fact i probably just NAMED these HACKS next game! There's factually more elegant and functional programming in a freakin' Speak n' Spell!) If it weren't free there's no way in hell i would have even touched it!
I was a bit daunted to start this game but this video was exactly what I was looking for. I don't want my hand held through a rare experience like this, but knowing a bit about how the systems work and some of the quirks that aren't explained is the perfect amount of help. Great work!
Well done. I'd add something regarding melee combat, there's a timed parry you can use against humanoid enemies, I don't remember the game ever explaining this, you have to basically click on the attack button while blocking, if timed correctly (when the enemy attacks you) you perform a counter that staggers the enemy,
I just started a new game a couple of days ago and had no idea this function existed, thank you for sharing! Ill be sure to try it out next time I play
Use the environment to your advantage. Lure enemies into choke points where they can't use their massively powerful weapons (i.e. rocket launchers). Sometimes enemies will get stuck behind in enclosed spaces, making it possible to rush in, swing a few attacks and then retreat or just wear them down from range. That's sort of exploiting, but in a game which doesn't go easy on you this should be alright.
I love the difficulty design in Piranha bites games. Kicking butt in Skyrim feels pointless, because it is always the same difficulty. But outsmarting tough enemies and or coming back later to pay them back is super rewarding.
That's what a real RPG is. There's no sense of progression if you level up and enemies level up with you to counter it. Only reason Elder Scrolls is so popular is because it's mainstream gaming but they're not very good. Elex has like 3 ways to complete the most trivial of quests lol which is unheard of. Elex is hands down in the top 5 RPGs ever made and I have a feeling they ran out of time and didn't finish everything. Some mechanics and items in this game gives me an unfinished feeling.
@@trecherous00 nah not at all. That's just their art design. I've been playing it in 4k and it looks great. Especially for a game that has no loading screens made by a team of like 17 people
I'm starting Elex today so I'm really thankfull for your great video. It helped a lot to get to know the game a little better. Let's see how it goes. Cheers mate.
Thank you! I'm about 30 hours in and juts hit level 20 and I still learned a lot here. Great game, rough around the edges sure, but the world is so fun to explore and I love how reactive the characters and story is to your choices. One of the best RPG's I've played in a while.
Really fantastic video! I just got this for like $5-$6 on my Xbox, and was having fun, but had a bunch of questions. Well not anymore thanks to your video! You hit all the things that I was wondering and cleared up a few confusing things, like what I should and shouldn't sell! So I really wanted to say thank you for explaining everything you did, I really feel like I will enjoy this game so much more now!
Gothic 1 & 2 prepare you very well for this game. I grew up with these two games and find very little satisfaction in other RPGs because of that. There will never be a third game like those two masterpieces ever again. While Elex is a good game, these two are even more masochistic than Elex but the most rewarding in my opinion.
Completely spot on! I am playing Elex last few days, and I must say, is not bad at all as I was afraid. It's not Gothic 1 and 2 of course, but much better then I expected. Definitely have Pyrana smell in it. One major thing that I don't like is low XP you get from killing the animals, and very high xp for finishing quests. It should be more similar, and balanced, like in Gothic. I like rewarding research, and nonlinear quests twists, environment design... and hell yeah... I like the fact I can't beat (almost) anyone when I am level one... unlike some other games. Maybe my impression is increased because before this I was playing that demo gothic playable teaser. :)
I'm currently in a late playthrough of Risen 1 and felt like it was an excellent follow up to Gothic 1 & 2. I'd suggest it to lovers of the first 2 Gothic games as it feels and plays just like them. I haven't tried the following Risen games though.
@@TheSliderW Risen 1 is good, but it's too short unfortunately. Chapter 3 and 4 are very very short. It felt to me like 1/2 of Gothic 1 (in length), and 1/4 of Gothic 2.
I'm doing my second elex playthrough now because of the video. Finally got the stats to wield better equipment so I don't get rekt by 80% of the enemies anymore. Now I can finally start playing the game for real. :) Might play as a berserker this time. My first one was as a cleric. I only looked at a few videos of the playable gothic teaser to know that in it's current state I probably won't buy it. It's simply not gothic (doesn't give me those gothi vibes) but I'm still hopeful the devs will listen to the community.
@@bobankrsmanovic9398 It actually makes perfect sense to give more XP for quests and less for monsters, quests are used as a way to level up, monsters to get elex and various components. The only exception I see would be killing a much stronger enemy with conventional weapons (meaning just a bow/sword and not exploits) in that case having a certain multiplier for wasted time, otherwise this is the devs way of telling the player that they should not waste time on killing monsters. The same idea was in G1/G2 with the exception that because of a smaller world there wasn't as much content so they could balance quest/kill XP, ELEX is too big to have that.
I play it two years ago that was awesome game... in the beginning it feels like hard to play or annoying but if you go through it it’s so good and relaxing game.
This video is kinda old. Still i was able to pick this gem up for 6$ yesterday. Started playing for an hour, then went for a nap. After waking up (game still on) i closed it and started again 1h later. I wasnt going through the ruines with duras early on and later sold my standard weapons to get a new one. Well, this one had stat restrictions ofc. So i was starting all over again. And enjoyed all the rpg stuff. Since i've never heard or seen about this game i didnt know what to expect. Now i see, that this game is my fcking favourite game next Skyrim. Still i was like damn, am i not in like a "starter area" in goliet? Why can only fight the early helldogs and the biter stuff. EVERYTHING else kills me and even duras. So i thought to myself okay.. u need some tips but u dont wanna get spoiled too much. This video was perfect. It will help me today playing this absolute gem. Thanks alot!
Nr 14 caught me off guard since in other Piranha Bytes games the factions are a lot more gostile towards each other so picking one early locks you out of a large amount of quests in other factions. Good tips all around
friend of beasts: there's something in the world that you wear that you can find means you don't need to waste a skill point on that, the start location building has a roof and a upper floor that can only be reached with the jetpack and one of the rooms has a lot of toilet rolls.
Thank you for this , I am jumped into this game on easy mode, thinking I will cake walk through it but the game still kicked my ass, I deleted it and for some reason I want to give it a 2nd chance…. This guide explaines exactly where I went wrong… thank you for it
Great tips. You've hit on all the non-spoilery stuff I can think of. But, as someone who has ~300 hours in the game - half of that unmodded - there's one thing I'll heavily recommend - get the Elex Overhaul mod from the Nexus. It fixes the base game's balance to increase the amount of available playstyles and just makes the game more fun. It makes all the spells at the very least viable to use, it improves Outlaws so that they are no longer by far the worst choice of faction, it adds to the variety of weapons by making thought-out balance changes to them, it makes gemstones actually useful throughout the game rather than only at the very end, and more. It removes an easy way of becoming *literally immortal, forever*. I genuinely have no idea what PB were thinking when balancing this game. This would be fun if it was at the end of an epic quest or something, but no - it's actually trivially easy and mostly ruins the game. I highly, highly recommend the mod. I also recommend *not* using the sunglasses buffs to find items. It's hard to stop yourself, but the exploration is far more fun that way - I genuinely think they were a bad addition. I'm looking forward to your review of the game. There's a lot to say about it, both good and bad. And I'm very eagerly looking forward to Elex 2. Oh, and some bonus tips for reading this much: In the unmodded game, the one-handed hammer-class weapons outclass every other weapon type due to their special attack. You can pretty much beat the entire game with an unimproved forge wrench and some player skill. And money = elex potions, elex potions = power. You can get a shitload of money fairly easily by robbing every person in every settlement with just the pickpocketing amulet. This is not overly fun, but it's available if you like to min-max or are having trouble with the game.
I considered mentioning the balancing mod, but I've never actually used it so I couldn't vouch for it. It didn't exist when I originally played the game in 2017, and I wanted to base my replay on the "official vanilla" version for review purposes. Elex definitely has some questionable balancing issues and would certainly benefit from something like that, assuming everything in it is reasonable and doesn't move the game too far away from its original intentions.
One thing that I discovered quite early on my playthrough of vanilla version, was that hand grenades can basically let you kill anything as long as you have enough of them. The supply is not an issue after you reach the outlaws town, the merchant outside of the town has a stock of 200 grenades and he buys everything you have for sale. And the beauty of this exploit is that he restocks his grenades basically instantly: you buy all his stock, then leave conversation and then initiate straight back again. The 200 grenades will be back in stock again 😉. Even the tough strong enemies that were way above my level, were easy targets especially if i could climb somewhere out of their reach. And because of their stunt/interrupt effect, the grenades are good even against ranged enemies.
This is literally the biggest question I have right now. I'm about to start my first play through and I've been wondering if I should do it with or without mods. I usually don't shy away from mods. I'm not like a first play through purist. I just want to have the best experience--even if that means having it altered somewhat from what the devs intended. Thanks for the comment, I think I'm going to go for it and install the mod.
@@questtttttttt I haven't played Elex since shortly after writing that post, but I still highly recommend the mod, even for a first playthrough. Most of it is common sense fixes to the game balance that I think the devs either just didn't grasp or didn't have time for. I'm not one of the people who likes balance for balance's sake - an unbalanced single-player game can be *extremely* fun (see: Binding of Isaac, the original Gothics). It just has to work well regardless. The imbalances in Elex, once you find them, suck the majority of the fun out of the game. The combat is really good once you learn it - but you won't need to with infinite mana and the black hole spell. Or with the amulet that gives you functionally infinite HP (yes, really). And there's a bunch of smaller imbalances and issues that are simlarly annoying. It also has a bunch of genuine bugfixes that Piranha Bytes never fixed and probably never will at this point.
"We can't make a good game because of time and budget whinewhine.. " - *Modder fixes all issues for free on a WEEKEND* Modern Gaming developers in a nutshell. A bunch of amateurs wanting money from us. So I understand to never play vanilla and go straigth to the balance mod, right? But this way you can never experience the intended game. Tough choice.
I started playing Elex in 2020 for the first time and I love it more than Skyrim Fallout 4 Dragon Age Inquisition Final Fantasy IV Assassins Creed Odyssey Greedfall Shadows of Mordor Dying Light Etc. It’s up there with Dragon’s Dogma
It's one of the best RPGs ever made easily. It's better than Gothic and Risen too so they're heading in the right direction. Hopefully they expand further with Elex 2 that's coming out this year
I appreciate that you don't want to tell others how to play!! You just guide them in a way where they can learn to play how they want! I love your video!
This is honestly one of the best game guide videos I've come across, if this is what the community for this game is capable of then i can't wait to get into this game, 6 minutes left until installations complete woooo
Thank you for the kind words. The Elex community is small, but those of us who enjoy it (and the developers' other games) are deeply passionate about it. It gets a bad reputation from people who struggle with clunky mechanics and get hung up on its "janky" looking presentation but it has a rich soul and deeply rewarding gameplay if you can get past the superficial problems.
A Tip: Retrive the Stones from Your Wapon befor you sell it, as these one can be combined to a stronger version and there are only 16 of each kind in the Game. Its not that its gone forever, but you will need to find the one you sold it to and remember which weapon it was.
Just bought the game after complete for 45th time gothic 1/2 and heard good things about the game, since the gameplay looks clunky a little i check the youtube guides and found out this one. Happy to actually see the information you gather, because it will be very helpful for me, cheers and gl with your channel :) !
Just picked this beautiful game up for $10 on GOG & enjoy it, but there is a steep learning curve for sure! Thanks for this guide! It will definitely help me!
I just go for straight intelligence regardless of build to get the skill that gives you one more skill point every level. It really helps in the long term.
Started playing through this 2 days ago. That's exactly what I did. It's brutal, as I gotta avoid the majority of combat situations, but I'm expecting this to pay off in the long term. Now shifting focusing from Charisma to Crafting, then finally Combat (mixing between Combat and Crafting once I got Crafting where I want it to be).
@@anomaloushost4865 Naah it's much better to just get to point you can use a good weapon (tier 3), get trophy hunter to 3/3 > now mutants drop elex, and you have infinite source of money and attribute poins and skill points. That extra 1 point is just a small thing. It's nice but it's really not worth it going 50 int before getting a really decent weapon.
Great vid. I have returned to Elex, 5 years ago and 9 hours total played. The reason is I bought Elex 2 and thought I maybe didn't give the first game enough of a chance, due to many of the issues you address here. Since returning I have put in about 3 hours but still not sure what I'm doing! hence watching your vid! I love eurojank rpgs and I'm familiar with PB work and their quirks. The having to save after each and every encounter is a given for their games! Cooking meals, meeting trainers, all very familiar, anyway I hope I enjoy enough to stick around this time before moving onto Elex2.
The best advice you can give is: play Elex. This game is overlooked because you need to invest some time in it to see its value. It starts you weak and doesn't dump the main quest in your lap for a considerable time and you are not the evident Chosen One. Consequently impatient and short sighted game reviewers gave it poor scores which hurt the games visibility even more than is usual for a Piranha Bytes game.
I played Elex 2 and Dragons Dogma 1. And I realy like the fact you beginn this games so weak most enemys can kill you instantly. It gives a strong feeling of geting stronger, and it changes your approach to play a game. In the first 10-20 hours you have to sneak and flee, later you just kill most of the enemys you were to weak in the beginning. I like it! I started Elex 1 now and it is a really good game, for me way better than Witcher 3 which bores me from the beginning. I stopped it after 20 hours.
Thanks for this vid! I'm a long time Gothic fan but I've heard mixed opinions on Elex so didn't pick it up when it came out. Now with the news of Elex 2 I decided to finally play the original and got it for cheap during the Steam Winter Sale. I really do hope they rework combat for Elex 2, meele feels better even in Gothic which is 20 years old. Crazy to think about. Ranged feels a lot nicer though. Good thing it's an option to go ranged only.
I tryed this game a while back and Frankly I'm glad I found this video I really wanted to like this game but I just couldn't do it as a big fan of fallout and mass effect I loved the game world as it feels like those two got smushed together and while the story is a little boring I was interested in learning more about the world and exploring it. And while part of me says that having to watch a video on how to play a game so it isn't horrible is a sign it's not a very good game at least you don't try to hide that and point out all the BS that comes from a game that can sometimes feel half finished. Regardless thanks for all the info maybe now I can try out this game again and it will be actually fun. Although I'm still uncertain as I usually like to play games for the combat.
Thank you. This guide helped me endure the gruesome early game. Elex was the kind of game I absolutely hated but wanted to keep playing. Once you understand that this is not the kind of game that you play in "Goopy gamer braind mode" it becomes a very enjoyable game. It's far from perfect, but I'm lvl 14 on this game as I type this, and I'm excited to play the second game already lol
Man, this was a great beginner's guide. This game has been sitting in my backlog for a while and I just got around to it while I'm waiting for the new fo76 content to drop next month. This will be a great help, thanks
@@TheNocturnalRambler I played all the Risen games so I'm sure it can't be any worse than those, lol. The story and progression is more important to me than the combat mechanics anyway. Which faction should I join on a 1st play thru? Cleric seems the obvious choice, but I like the idea of the outlaws tbh
I'd recommend berserker or cleric. The outlaw skills revolve mainly around passive stat boosters with chems and stimulants, while the other two use more active "magic" abilities that help to make gameplay more fun and engaging IMO. The clerics, however, have some of the most broken/OP weapons/skills which could either be fun or boring for you, but it's your choice if you use those options or not. If you're more interested in the story, then the clerics tie in a little more closely with the background lore of Infinite Skies and Calaan; you don't have to join them to uncover those secrets, and those backstories will play out the same regardless of your faction choice, but you might feel more invested in it if you're a cleric. Personally, I like clerics best but the berserkers have some fun skills, too. I like the aesthetic and general nature of the outlaws but their skill tree is just abysmal to me. Ultimately I don't think there's necessarily a "best" one to choose, so unless one faction's skill tree looks more interesting to you, you should be alright just going with whatever aesthetic/culture you like better.
This guide helped my first few hours so much, liked and subscribed. It's a shame such a good game is put down at the start because of the learning curve.
Nice video! As an old school gothic fan I really wanted to like this game. And the first half or so was really good. But somehow the later portions didn't do it for me.
Elex definitely front-loads its content, which can make the second half of the game feel underwhelming when there isn't much in the way of new things to discover. It also kind of detracts from the pacing and enjoyment of the main story when so many of its objectives are things you can complete yourself in the open-world long before receiving those objectives, because then the main story just kind of flies by without much build-up. So, it's really not surprising to me that you didn't enjoy the second half as much as the first. Although I enjoy the game overall, I can certainly agree that exploring the world for the first time is a lot more fun in the first half of the game, than going through the main story in the second half of the game.
@@TheNocturnalRambler i just finished it and this exactly happened to me at the end 90% of the quests that thorald and zardom gave me were already completed long time before i even met them i think this is because of the somewhat unbalanced difficulty in the area where u are suppose to find this characters.....anyway for me this was the best rpg since witcher 3 the only rpg game that i liked more than the original gothic
I'd like to add my own experience here to what's been said: 1) don't be afraid to explore early, you can find a lot of stuff, just dont be ashamed to run. 2) Various packs of enemies are not friendly to each other. You can lead one group into the other and watch as they rip eachother apart and finish the survivors. 3) About melee combat, not only is it had and bad at the beginning and it stays that way, i cant stress hard enough how much it fucking sucks. I played as a ranged cleric and then as melee berserker and playing as close combat fighter is pure suffering. You never catch a break, you never feel powerful. While endgame cleric destryors armies with a single spell, endgame swordsman farts and dies miserably. 4) While it is necessary to geed a companion asap, dont pick Ray. Stick with Duras. Rays ai is bugged and he wont attack unless you get hit. And you want to avoid getting hit most of the time. 5) Do not force yourself into the game thinking it will be good after x hours. If you are not immediately sold on the atmosphere of the game and how it mixed knights, robots and mad max, just stop. Find a better game. 6) Elex 2 is not a better game to try.
nice video just bought this game yesterday since its on sale. tbh never play any gothic series so yeah this game mechanic are fairly new to me. not gonna lie i did run most of the time in the early hour of play and still run till now.
"Just" started playing again - well over 10 hours in it already and a filthy Outlaw. I tried to become a Berserker (first play was Cleric) but Outlaw is waaaay easier to join and after beating a certain NPC companion I said - nah I want guns, baby. Getting used to it again - and death happens faster than light sometimes. I am surprised that this one can bind me more to it than the always praised Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn and I have some problems with Elex for sure.
Tip 1: Get the mace from a house in the north early on for free and slay mobs with the 3 hit special attack easily. The mace is easily the strongest weapon. I killed the Hybrid within one rotation lol
On easy difficulty maybe. Which is still hard btw I'm not making fun of anyone who plays it. But the regent swords are the best in the game. Any weapon with a dot lowers their defenses and causes them to take damage over time.
I just got Elex in 2023 and I'm really impressed, especially with the way quests seem to play off each other and really take choices into account. It would be nice if they had made the movements smoother, because transitioning from an attack to a dodge or parry, or from a jump to a run, is clunky enough to get you killed on it's own.
Big fan of G1+2 and Risen 1. Didn t try so far Elex because of the SF elements, but it feels it has a lot of the old elements also. Maybe I ll try it one day. Nice video btw.
In the beginning the game actually feels more like a normal fantasy game because of the first faction and area you encounter which then makes a smooth introduction to the sci-fi / post-apocalyptic world
Wish I'd seen this video before putting in 70+ hours of gameplay, lol. Never mind, still some really great tips for my next walk through. Thank you. Super video.
Wow, that was a lot to think about, but probably useful. I actually bought Elex a long time ago after seeing a single atmospheric screenshot (I knew practically nothing about the game), but I never played it and it ended up collecting dust on my shelf for many years. Now, in the final days of 2023, I felt it might be time to give it a try, but after watching this video I suddenly don't feel very confident at all...😄 I do enjoy the feeling of being underpowered at the start of a game, as it adds tons of tension and careful sneaking (or running away like a coward) to avoid unnecessary danger, but Elex seems to take this to another level. At least for someone quite inexperienced like me. Oh well... I guess there's only one way to find out how punishing it is.
Invest everything into int until you get 50 points, up all the snowball skills, then do whatever you want xD Basically means you can't fight shit until you level 10+ (assuming you are playing on a hardest difficulty and you totally should). But that's a cool little challenge =P
I'd like to add something considering Elex potions. I recommend not buying natural Elex from merchants. This may sound crazy, but I seriosly think it has a huge negative impact on the character progression of the game, since you essentially get an unlimited supply to crafting permanent stat potions, since merchant wares restock when you leave the shopping window. You already get a decent supply of natural elex by getting the 3rd rank of hunting trophies, and by just exploring the world, so buying the stuff feels almost like exploiting the game. The option is there if you so choose, but I think it will rob you of some sense of accomplishment.
Yeah but then the whole elexit economy doesn't make any sense, meaning you don't need to sell anything basically. You just need money to buy ammo and that's it. I wished they balanced it a bit better. :(
good explanation, and it is true.. it is good to hit and run often and use your jet pack.. get high to attack till you feel stronger to do melee attacks and still you will want to hit and run.. still a great game.. Plus steal what ever you can to build up armor and weapons. I have both games.. Elex 1 and Elex 2..
24:00 latest patch with bright night ruined my gameplay on PS4 game version. Why didn’t developers made a toggle option in graphics menu to switch lighting.
I'm about to start playing Elex for the first time. I'm glad to see it's just as expected from Piranha Bytes although I'm starting to get tired of the old school number based equipment and combat system and wished they improved on it and made it more organic instead of mathematic. Also, I remember the nameless Hero of G1 would bleed and limp when hurt. How about taking that to the next level and applying it to every living thing ? Anyway. I'm sure i'll enjoy it just as much as G1-2 or Risen. Thank you for your videos, they were invaluable in helping me decide which of the PB games to tackle and understand their fundamentals.
If you want an organic rather than a mathematical presentation, and you like XCOM-style turn-based combat, try playing _Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children._ It has an amazingly well-done and very deep build/progression system involving things called "Masteries," which are bundles of perks that obviously do have a mathematical core (which is exposed), but they're named in such a way that you can intuitively make a good build just from the feel of the names of the Masteries and their little attached poems. Be warned: the game has anime. But not in the combat - that just looks "realistic" like XCOM - rather in the story presentation. It's Korean anime and it's not terribly exaggerated or pervy, and it's actually quite beautifully painted, but if you don't like anime you won't like the game; however, if you don't mind it, the game does exactly what you want in terms of presenting a build system that allows you to build intuitively, and it's a huge game in terms of hours too. The basic scenario is kind of like a "licensed superheroes" type of deal.
out of curiosity: why would you buy the same game for 2 consoles? If you'd buy a game for the console and later for the pc 'cause of better graphics, ok, but otherwise it makes no sense to me.
@@msfForti i mained ps4 this console generation. Have Elex digitally on it. Then i played all the games i wantes to play on my ps4. Then i bought an xbox at the beginning of the year for dirt cheap. Went into a gamestop and saw elex physical for like 5 bucks and i liked the case. So i got it for my collection.
The fact that you can't beat every quest given to you right away will most likely throw off most casual RPG players who're spoiled by games like Skyrim which treat you like a god of war who's enemies magically scale with him. Piranha Bytes has always made games where enemies are intentially placed roadblocks which you simply can't beat, even if you master the combat system. Eventually that big orc will land a hit and your 90 pound weakling armed with a stick and only wearing cloth pants and shirt will die. Instantly. Even if you manage to kill one wolf, they're rarely alone and the rest of the pack will shred you to pieces.
I think you miss out on a big chunk of XP if you join a faction early. Before i joined the Zerkers I did all the faction-related quests in Hort and Fort first and it was like 10k XP in total, which is a lot in Chapter 1.
You don't actually miss out on those quests and their experience, however -- you can still do 95% of all quests in the other factions after you've already joined a faction. Literally the only quests you lose access to are the faction leaders' official membership quests, which amounts to 4000 experience, I think, which really isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things. Especially since, with infinitely respawning enemies and elex potions, you can easily make up that lost experience throughout the game. Ultimately, getting those faction benefits early on is a much, much bigger boost to your character than the few thousand experience you miss by skipping those two other membership quests.
@@TheNocturnalRambler But don't the official faction quests involve many other branching subquests (to join Zerkers you have to gain trust of the Warlords which include many subquests, same for Outlaws where you have to settle the debts of the regional leaders and then another long questline for William; only the Clerics have like one or two short quests)? Wouldn't you miss all of those?
Can't believe they murdered the lighting for no reason. I've been trying to google why but nothing really comes up. Can't install mod or revert to old patch because console and digital version. Combat is pretty much scuffed witcher 3 but that's fine. A very minor complaint I have is the purple teleporter blips on the radar should show when it's not active as well. It can be pretty rough when you miss teleporters. I suppose you gotta get the skill to reveal them though, hope there is an amulet or something for it.
I really need to play ELEX, i'm finishing Might & Magic 6 to 8 (almost there with the last one) and having to find trainers to improve your skills reminded me of PB games :) While quite different in many aspects they share quite a more "focused" concept of openworld (while the 3D enviroments are in many cases quite basic looking).
@@admiraltonydawning3847 I'm playing them separately because i didn't experienced them before (only 6 but never completed it before). I heard about that mod recently and i'll check it, don't know how the balance works with the changes to the rpg classes between the games.
What really got me during my first playthrough was "join a faction sooner rather than later" and "periodically advance the main story." I played Elex like a typical Gothic-style PB game vowing to do everything I could before joining a faction and before advancing the main story, in hopes that it would pay off with more total experience in the long run and would make me stronger for the main quest. In reality, that actually made me *weaker* for a lot of the main quest because I was unwittingly completing a bunch of later, main quest objectives before they were given to me, without the benefit of faction armor or abilities. Plus, if you take that approach like I did, you end up completing the majority of the game's content without any of those fun abilities, which robs you of a lot of the game's fun and makes the second half of the game fly by so quickly because you've already done most of what the game has to offer.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I also finished my first playthrough recently and did the same, I didn't end up using much of the faction-specific abilities as well as it almost felt pointless at that point. On top of that I was very much burnt out by the end of it
I was thinking of buying this game when it released but the review weren’t good and I was playing other games. I saw it was on sale recently and have been thinking about finally jumping in to play it.
These kinds of guides/tips - based on heavy experience - are exactly what I appreciate.
Absolutely. Clearly spoken, not talking too fast (like so many now) and very helpful.
Subbed!
Or hard evidence like in 9:00... i did not know atributes alone dont do anything... that changes a lot!
Cant fkin understand why there are no numbers in the game, HPs, stamina, damage stats... nothing
Thanks for the video! You covered a lot. Some more Tips: 1) Handgranades doesn't have requirements. Jax can use them at the beginning. That was my way to defeat Big Jim in the arena. Just make your way to the Fort and look for an outlaw merchant. 2) Join a faction to get the stamina potion receipt from the local healer, or make your way to the hangars in Ignadon to find the receipt. You can sneak through the entrance of the building, without being spotted, by the mutants. Gather many gold whisper and wolf leaf, to make lots of stamina potions. Each increases Jaxs stamina at 20 points permanently. You can make up to 18, due to the amount of gold whisper in the game. You can do approx. 20 hit combos with that much stamina.
This game has been my pandemic hideaway and I’m very thankful for it. Beautiful, challenging, continually entertaining
this is something i hope Piranha bytes never loses, the fact that you are so weak at the start is a rarety nowdays, everyone expects to log into a game and slay everything in an instant. i hope they never change from that path.
Huge True!
So may reddit posts about this game are people bitching they can't kill a mech walker 30 mins into the game.
I find it laughable that CoD-Simps cant understand that taking on a killing machine with a lead pipe and leather armor is, in fact, something that should be insanely hard to do.
@@zigfaust that's true, though. I fought a killing machine with a flamethrower and a laser rifle. But even then it was still hard to kill, it took so much ammo just to kill one.
The problem in this game though, is you are TOO weak. I dont mind being an average nobody, but here, even just in the woods around the starting town you cannot fight anything at all, because literally every enemy kills you in one shot.
@@zigfaust I just picked up the game on sale went wandering around and got ruined by some T. rex looking thing after telling myself “doesn’t look to bad” I’m loving the game so far and I’m only about 90 minutes in. Also a big fan of the X character will remember that or X character respects that
I miss that trainers would have dialogue for everything they taught you like in Gothic.
That feature was less and less present with every piranha Bytes game every since risen 2
Yep, the games sadly become less immersive since gothic 1,2
Like npc schedule, main character interactions with the world picking up items from the ground, crafting and so on...
I'd like to add to this with the suggestion that your first time play-thru involves pumping Constitution to 30 using your first couple levels. And then buying the Survival skills Extra Hitpoints (grants bonus hitpoints each level and is retroactive), Good Eater (extra healing from food), and Armor (will require five points into Strength but does what you think it does). All of these make combat a little more forgiving for your first play-thru earlier in the game. Many people will tell you to rush intellect or cunning for crafting and pickpocket for money and powerful upgrades and such. But those are best rushed when you have a better handle on the combat and nuances of the game. The ones I mentioned (and the video mentioning Stamina) may make the difference between adapting and making it through the learning experience of playing a Piranha Bites game. Or just rage quitting because you keep dying to the weakest mobs because you're struggling to grasp the combat and aren't equipped well.
Thank you so much! i'm level 6 and STILL have not been able to ramp anything to buy skills and it really didn't feel like a cost/benefit kind of skill package, in fact, i didn't know WHAT the hell they were going for. ONE of the worst parts of this jankfest is that leveling up feels just like: "So friggin' WHAT??" Since other than acting as "gear keys" attributes are basically useless, i just wanted to find a "basic kit" to use to TRY to come to grips with what is really a very, VERY poorly designed and CONSTRUCTED game, just for a few interesting ideas. As is i'm probably out as soon as the JetPack get old. What? The game is utter JANKTASTICA!! (in fact i probably just NAMED these HACKS next game! There's factually more elegant and functional programming in a freakin' Speak n' Spell!) If it weren't free there's no way in hell i would have even touched it!
I was a bit daunted to start this game but this video was exactly what I was looking for. I don't want my hand held through a rare experience like this, but knowing a bit about how the systems work and some of the quirks that aren't explained is the perfect amount of help. Great work!
Well done. I'd add something regarding melee combat, there's a timed parry you can use against humanoid enemies, I don't remember the game ever explaining this, you have to basically click on the attack button while blocking, if timed correctly (when the enemy attacks you) you perform a counter that staggers the enemy,
I just started a new game a couple of days ago and had no idea this function existed, thank you for sharing! Ill be sure to try it out next time I play
Just as I'm about to start my very first Elex playthrough, this video pops up in my feed. Thanks a lot :)
I started literally yesterday and then saw the vid. What are the odds!
@@Virian900 me 2
They are listening lol
3.5 months later finally finished the game XD
big brotrher is...
Use the environment to your advantage. Lure enemies into choke points where they can't use their massively powerful weapons (i.e. rocket launchers). Sometimes enemies will get stuck behind in enclosed spaces, making it possible to rush in, swing a few attacks and then retreat or just wear them down from range. That's sort of exploiting, but in a game which doesn't go easy on you this should be alright.
Great guide without spoilers or taking things away! BEST KIND OF GUIDE, thank you so much!!!😍❤️👍🏽
I love the difficulty design in Piranha bites games. Kicking butt in Skyrim feels pointless, because it is always the same difficulty. But outsmarting tough enemies and or coming back later to pay them back is super rewarding.
That's what a real RPG is. There's no sense of progression if you level up and enemies level up with you to counter it. Only reason Elder Scrolls is so popular is because it's mainstream gaming but they're not very good. Elex has like 3 ways to complete the most trivial of quests lol which is unheard of. Elex is hands down in the top 5 RPGs ever made and I have a feeling they ran out of time and didn't finish everything. Some mechanics and items in this game gives me an unfinished feeling.
@@ryanglacier30 so then how is it in top 5 if it isn’t finished?
@@trecherous00 every game has unfinished aspects that linger into release
@@ryanglacier30 I mean my biggest issue with this game is that I handles and looks like a random RPG or mmo from like 2010
@@trecherous00 nah not at all. That's just their art design. I've been playing it in 4k and it looks great. Especially for a game that has no loading screens made by a team of like 17 people
I'm starting Elex today so I'm really thankfull for your great video. It helped a lot to get to know the game a little better.
Let's see how it goes.
Cheers mate.
Thank you! I'm about 30 hours in and juts hit level 20 and I still learned a lot here. Great game, rough around the edges sure, but the world is so fun to explore and I love how reactive the characters and story is to your choices. One of the best RPG's I've played in a while.
Really fantastic video! I just got this for like $5-$6 on my Xbox, and was having fun, but had a bunch of questions. Well not anymore thanks to your video! You hit all the things that I was wondering and cleared up a few confusing things, like what I should and shouldn't sell! So I really wanted to say thank you for explaining everything you did, I really feel like I will enjoy this game so much more now!
Gothic 1 & 2 prepare you very well for this game. I grew up with these two games and find very little satisfaction in other RPGs because of that. There will never be a third game like those two masterpieces ever again.
While Elex is a good game, these two are even more masochistic than Elex but the most rewarding in my opinion.
Completely spot on!
I am playing Elex last few days, and I must say, is not bad at all as I was afraid. It's not Gothic 1 and 2 of course, but much better then I expected. Definitely have Pyrana smell in it. One major thing that I don't like is low XP you get from killing the animals, and very high xp for finishing quests. It should be more similar, and balanced, like in Gothic.
I like rewarding research, and nonlinear quests twists, environment design... and hell yeah... I like the fact I can't beat (almost) anyone when I am level one... unlike some other games.
Maybe my impression is increased because before this I was playing that demo gothic playable teaser. :)
I'm currently in a late playthrough of Risen 1 and felt like it was an excellent follow up to Gothic 1 & 2. I'd suggest it to lovers of the first 2 Gothic games as it feels and plays just like them. I haven't tried the following Risen games though.
@@TheSliderW
Risen 1 is good, but it's too short unfortunately. Chapter 3 and 4 are very very short. It felt to me like 1/2 of Gothic 1 (in length), and 1/4 of Gothic 2.
I'm doing my second elex playthrough now because of the video.
Finally got the stats to wield better equipment so I don't get rekt by 80% of the enemies anymore. Now I can finally start playing the game for real. :)
Might play as a berserker this time. My first one was as a cleric.
I only looked at a few videos of the playable gothic teaser to know that in it's current state I probably won't buy it. It's simply not gothic (doesn't give me those gothi vibes) but I'm still hopeful the devs will listen to the community.
@@bobankrsmanovic9398 It actually makes perfect sense to give more XP for quests and less for monsters, quests are used as a way to level up, monsters to get elex and various components. The only exception I see would be killing a much stronger enemy with conventional weapons (meaning just a bow/sword and not exploits) in that case having a certain multiplier for wasted time, otherwise this is the devs way of telling the player that they should not waste time on killing monsters. The same idea was in G1/G2 with the exception that because of a smaller world there wasn't as much content so they could balance quest/kill XP, ELEX is too big to have that.
I play it two years ago that was awesome game... in the beginning it feels like hard to play or annoying but if you go through it it’s so good and relaxing game.
Just bought the game for cheap cause it looked interesting and realized it was more complicated than I thought. Thanks for the tips!
great video!
just started my first run and i‘m about 20h in and your tips really match with my experience so far
Thank soo much, i just picked up the game and caught on rather quickly but was really confused about what everything does. Thanks a ton
Your videos are so well done for someone with a smaller subscriber base! You've earned yourself another sub!
This video is kinda old. Still i was able to pick this gem up for 6$ yesterday. Started playing for an hour, then went for a nap. After waking up (game still on) i closed it and started again 1h later.
I wasnt going through the ruines with duras early on and later sold my standard weapons to get a new one. Well, this one had stat restrictions ofc.
So i was starting all over again. And enjoyed all the rpg stuff. Since i've never heard or seen about this game i didnt know what to expect. Now i see, that this game is my fcking favourite game next Skyrim.
Still i was like damn, am i not in like a "starter area" in goliet? Why can only fight the early helldogs and the biter stuff. EVERYTHING else kills me and even duras.
So i thought to myself okay.. u need some tips but u dont wanna get spoiled too much.
This video was perfect. It will help me today playing this absolute gem. Thanks alot!
I needed this thank you! I just started this game since I’m gonna be ordering part two in a month or so
I really loved this game and it came closest in expectations to my beloved Gothic 1 and 2. I'd daresay I found this even more enjoyable than Risen 1
This game looks, AMAZING!!! Both, the graphics/art-style, and the world, itself !
Nr 14 caught me off guard since in other Piranha Bytes games the factions are a lot more gostile towards each other so picking one early locks you out of a large amount of quests in other factions.
Good tips all around
friend of beasts: there's something in the world that you wear that you can find means you don't need to waste a skill point on that, the start location building has a roof and a upper floor that can only be reached with the jetpack and one of the rooms has a lot of toilet rolls.
Hey thanks for this. I bounce off games all the time due to not really having a grasp on direction.
Thank you for this , I am jumped into this game on easy mode, thinking I will cake walk through it but the game still kicked my ass, I deleted it and for some reason I want to give it a 2nd chance…. This guide explaines exactly where I went wrong… thank you for it
Great tips. You've hit on all the non-spoilery stuff I can think of. But, as someone who has ~300 hours in the game - half of that unmodded - there's one thing I'll heavily recommend - get the Elex Overhaul mod from the Nexus.
It fixes the base game's balance to increase the amount of available playstyles and just makes the game more fun. It makes all the spells at the very least viable to use, it improves Outlaws so that they are no longer by far the worst choice of faction, it adds to the variety of weapons by making thought-out balance changes to them, it makes gemstones actually useful throughout the game rather than only at the very end, and more.
It removes an easy way of becoming *literally immortal, forever*. I genuinely have no idea what PB were thinking when balancing this game. This would be fun if it was at the end of an epic quest or something, but no - it's actually trivially easy and mostly ruins the game.
I highly, highly recommend the mod.
I also recommend *not* using the sunglasses buffs to find items. It's hard to stop yourself, but the exploration is far more fun that way - I genuinely think they were a bad addition.
I'm looking forward to your review of the game. There's a lot to say about it, both good and bad. And I'm very eagerly looking forward to Elex 2.
Oh, and some bonus tips for reading this much: In the unmodded game, the one-handed hammer-class weapons outclass every other weapon type due to their special attack. You can pretty much beat the entire game with an unimproved forge wrench and some player skill.
And money = elex potions, elex potions = power. You can get a shitload of money fairly easily by robbing every person in every settlement with just the pickpocketing amulet. This is not overly fun, but it's available if you like to min-max or are having trouble with the game.
I considered mentioning the balancing mod, but I've never actually used it so I couldn't vouch for it. It didn't exist when I originally played the game in 2017, and I wanted to base my replay on the "official vanilla" version for review purposes. Elex definitely has some questionable balancing issues and would certainly benefit from something like that, assuming everything in it is reasonable and doesn't move the game too far away from its original intentions.
One thing that I discovered quite early on my playthrough of vanilla version, was that hand grenades can basically let you kill anything as long as you have enough of them. The supply is not an issue after you reach the outlaws town, the merchant outside of the town has a stock of 200 grenades and he buys everything you have for sale. And the beauty of this exploit is that he restocks his grenades basically instantly: you buy all his stock, then leave conversation and then initiate straight back again. The 200 grenades will be back in stock again 😉.
Even the tough strong enemies that were way above my level, were easy targets especially if i could climb somewhere out of their reach. And because of their stunt/interrupt effect, the grenades are good even against ranged enemies.
This is literally the biggest question I have right now. I'm about to start my first play through and I've been wondering if I should do it with or without mods. I usually don't shy away from mods. I'm not like a first play through purist. I just want to have the best experience--even if that means having it altered somewhat from what the devs intended. Thanks for the comment, I think I'm going to go for it and install the mod.
@@questtttttttt I haven't played Elex since shortly after writing that post, but I still highly recommend the mod, even for a first playthrough. Most of it is common sense fixes to the game balance that I think the devs either just didn't grasp or didn't have time for. I'm not one of the people who likes balance for balance's sake - an unbalanced single-player game can be *extremely* fun (see: Binding of Isaac, the original Gothics). It just has to work well regardless.
The imbalances in Elex, once you find them, suck the majority of the fun out of the game. The combat is really good once you learn it - but you won't need to with infinite mana and the black hole spell. Or with the amulet that gives you functionally infinite HP (yes, really). And there's a bunch of smaller imbalances and issues that are simlarly annoying.
It also has a bunch of genuine bugfixes that Piranha Bytes never fixed and probably never will at this point.
"We can't make a good game because of time and budget whinewhine.. " - *Modder fixes all issues for free on a WEEKEND*
Modern Gaming developers in a nutshell. A bunch of amateurs wanting money from us.
So I understand to never play vanilla and go straigth to the balance mod, right? But this way you can never experience the intended game. Tough choice.
What a great guide, I liked the relevant footage in the background. I gotta make one of these myself someday.
Great guide thanks! I just bought it today. I'm glad I saw this video while waiting on the game to download.
I started playing Elex in 2020 for the first time and I love it more than
Skyrim
Fallout 4
Dragon Age Inquisition
Final Fantasy IV
Assassins Creed Odyssey
Greedfall
Shadows of Mordor
Dying Light
Etc.
It’s up there with Dragon’s Dogma
It's one of the best RPGs ever made easily. It's better than Gothic and Risen too so they're heading in the right direction. Hopefully they expand further with Elex 2 that's coming out this year
you can really feel the butterfly effect in all of your actions and you have so many choices
Def not better than Skyrim, Odyssey, Fallout 4, Odyssey, Shadow Of Mordor, and Dying light. Dumb
@@shadesensei bruh… my perspective and opinion. You have them as well. Don’t name call, it’s unbecoming.
My favourite thing to do as early as possible is getting crony u4 it’s hard to do but having a robot that doesn’t care about what you do is helpful
I appreciate that you don't want to tell others how to play!! You just guide them in a way where they can learn to play how they want!
I love your video!
I had no clue that those options were hidden under difficulty. You may have very well saved me from giving up on this game.
This is honestly one of the best game guide videos I've come across, if this is what the community for this game is capable of then i can't wait to get into this game, 6 minutes left until installations complete woooo
Thank you for the kind words. The Elex community is small, but those of us who enjoy it (and the developers' other games) are deeply passionate about it. It gets a bad reputation from people who struggle with clunky mechanics and get hung up on its "janky" looking presentation but it has a rich soul and deeply rewarding gameplay if you can get past the superficial problems.
A Tip: Retrive the Stones from Your Wapon befor you sell it, as these one can be combined to a stronger version and there are only 16 of each kind in the Game. Its not that its gone forever, but you will need to find the one you sold it to and remember which weapon it was.
Just bought the game after complete for 45th time gothic 1/2 and heard good things about the game, since the gameplay looks clunky a little i check the youtube guides and found out this one. Happy to actually see the information you gather, because it will be very helpful for me, cheers and gl with your channel :) !
Just picked this beautiful game up for $10 on GOG & enjoy it, but there is a steep learning curve for sure! Thanks for this guide! It will definitely help me!
I just go for straight intelligence regardless of build to get the skill that gives you one more skill point every level. It really helps in the long term.
Started playing through this 2 days ago. That's exactly what I did. It's brutal, as I gotta avoid the majority of combat situations, but I'm expecting this to pay off in the long term. Now shifting focusing from Charisma to Crafting, then finally Combat (mixing between Combat and Crafting once I got Crafting where I want it to be).
@@anomaloushost4865 Naah it's much better to just get to point you can use a good weapon (tier 3), get trophy hunter to 3/3 > now mutants drop elex, and you have infinite source of money and attribute poins and skill points.
That extra 1 point is just a small thing. It's nice but it's really not worth it going 50 int before getting a really decent weapon.
@@Skret2 After playing through to completion, I can confirm you are right.
Just started Elex 1 since Elex 2 just came out. This was exactly what I was looking for.
Great vid. I have returned to Elex, 5 years ago and 9 hours total played. The reason is I bought Elex 2 and thought I maybe didn't give the first game enough of a chance, due to many of the issues you address here. Since returning I have put in about 3 hours but still not sure what I'm doing! hence watching your vid! I love eurojank rpgs and I'm familiar with PB work and their quirks. The having to save after each and every encounter is a given for their games! Cooking meals, meeting trainers, all very familiar, anyway I hope I enjoy enough to stick around this time before moving onto Elex2.
Great video. It made my current playthrough way more enjoyable. Thank you!
The best advice you can give is: play Elex.
This game is overlooked because you need to invest some time in it to see its value. It starts you weak and doesn't dump the main quest in your lap for a considerable time and you are not the evident Chosen One. Consequently impatient and short sighted game reviewers gave it poor scores which hurt the games visibility even more than is usual for a Piranha Bytes game.
Yoo this here.very informative,this video is the reason I went and bought the game.cant wait to play it!thank you!!
I played Elex 2 and Dragons Dogma 1. And I realy like the fact you beginn this games so weak most enemys can kill you instantly. It gives a strong feeling of geting stronger, and it changes your approach to play a game. In the first 10-20 hours you have to sneak and flee, later you just kill most of the enemys you were to weak in the beginning. I like it! I started Elex 1 now and it is a really good game, for me way better than Witcher 3 which bores me from the beginning. I stopped it after 20 hours.
Thanks for this vid! I'm a long time Gothic fan but I've heard mixed opinions on Elex so didn't pick it up when it came out. Now with the news of Elex 2 I decided to finally play the original and got it for cheap during the Steam Winter Sale. I really do hope they rework combat for Elex 2, meele feels better even in Gothic which is 20 years old. Crazy to think about. Ranged feels a lot nicer though. Good thing it's an option to go ranged only.
I tryed this game a while back and Frankly I'm glad I found this video I really wanted to like this game but I just couldn't do it as a big fan of fallout and mass effect I loved the game world as it feels like those two got smushed together and while the story is a little boring I was interested in learning more about the world and exploring it. And while part of me says that having to watch a video on how to play a game so it isn't horrible is a sign it's not a very good game at least you don't try to hide that and point out all the BS that comes from a game that can sometimes feel half finished. Regardless thanks for all the info maybe now I can try out this game again and it will be actually fun. Although I'm still uncertain as I usually like to play games for the combat.
I bought this game forever ago tried playing it and ended up not being able to get into it well I've decided to pull it out and give it another go.
Thank you. This guide helped me endure the gruesome early game. Elex was the kind of game I absolutely hated but wanted to keep playing. Once you understand that this is not the kind of game that you play in "Goopy gamer braind mode" it becomes a very enjoyable game. It's far from perfect, but I'm lvl 14 on this game as I type this, and I'm excited to play the second game already lol
Man, this was a great beginner's guide. This game has been sitting in my backlog for a while and I just got around to it while I'm waiting for the new fo76 content to drop next month. This will be a great help, thanks
Thanks for the kind words! I hope you end up enjoying the game. Just remember it's pretty rough around the edges, so temper expectations a bit.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I played all the Risen games so I'm sure it can't be any worse than those, lol. The story and progression is more important to me than the combat mechanics anyway. Which faction should I join on a 1st play thru? Cleric seems the obvious choice, but I like the idea of the outlaws tbh
I'd recommend berserker or cleric. The outlaw skills revolve mainly around passive stat boosters with chems and stimulants, while the other two use more active "magic" abilities that help to make gameplay more fun and engaging IMO. The clerics, however, have some of the most broken/OP weapons/skills which could either be fun or boring for you, but it's your choice if you use those options or not. If you're more interested in the story, then the clerics tie in a little more closely with the background lore of Infinite Skies and Calaan; you don't have to join them to uncover those secrets, and those backstories will play out the same regardless of your faction choice, but you might feel more invested in it if you're a cleric. Personally, I like clerics best but the berserkers have some fun skills, too. I like the aesthetic and general nature of the outlaws but their skill tree is just abysmal to me. Ultimately I don't think there's necessarily a "best" one to choose, so unless one faction's skill tree looks more interesting to you, you should be alright just going with whatever aesthetic/culture you like better.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Ok, thanks I'll keep all that in mind
Thanks for this! I am playing Risen 3 now and plan to get this soon!
Oh man I loved Elex so much! Got over 100hrs in....
When I first played this game it was just too damn hard but no that I’m feeling bored I might try to play this game again
This guide helped my first few hours so much, liked and subscribed. It's a shame such a good game is put down at the start because of the learning curve.
Nice video! As an old school gothic fan I really wanted to like this game. And the first half or so was really good. But somehow the later portions didn't do it for me.
Elex definitely front-loads its content, which can make the second half of the game feel underwhelming when there isn't much in the way of new things to discover. It also kind of detracts from the pacing and enjoyment of the main story when so many of its objectives are things you can complete yourself in the open-world long before receiving those objectives, because then the main story just kind of flies by without much build-up. So, it's really not surprising to me that you didn't enjoy the second half as much as the first. Although I enjoy the game overall, I can certainly agree that exploring the world for the first time is a lot more fun in the first half of the game, than going through the main story in the second half of the game.
@@TheNocturnalRambler i just finished it and this exactly happened to me at the end 90% of the quests that thorald and zardom gave me were already completed long time before i even met them i think this is because of the somewhat unbalanced difficulty in the area where u are suppose to find this characters.....anyway for me this was the best rpg since witcher 3 the only rpg game that i liked more than the original gothic
Thank you for this guide! It was very helpful for me and has made my first few hours a bit easier!
I'd like to add my own experience here to what's been said:
1) don't be afraid to explore early, you can find a lot of stuff, just dont be ashamed to run.
2) Various packs of enemies are not friendly to each other. You can lead one group into the other and watch as they rip eachother apart and finish the survivors.
3) About melee combat, not only is it had and bad at the beginning and it stays that way, i cant stress hard enough how much it fucking sucks. I played as a ranged cleric and then as melee berserker and playing as close combat fighter is pure suffering. You never catch a break, you never feel powerful. While endgame cleric destryors armies with a single spell, endgame swordsman farts and dies miserably.
4) While it is necessary to geed a companion asap, dont pick Ray. Stick with Duras. Rays ai is bugged and he wont attack unless you get hit. And you want to avoid getting hit most of the time.
5) Do not force yourself into the game thinking it will be good after x hours. If you are not immediately sold on the atmosphere of the game and how it mixed knights, robots and mad max, just stop. Find a better game.
6) Elex 2 is not a better game to try.
nice video just bought this game yesterday since its on sale. tbh never play any gothic series so yeah this game mechanic are fairly new to me. not gonna lie i did run most of the time in the early hour of play and still run till now.
This game is so underrated. One of my favorite open world games. Never listen to much te reviews just try a game sometimes
"Just" started playing again - well over 10 hours in it already and a filthy Outlaw. I tried to become a Berserker (first play was Cleric) but Outlaw is waaaay easier to join and after beating a certain NPC companion I said - nah I want guns, baby.
Getting used to it again - and death happens faster than light sometimes.
I am surprised that this one can bind me more to it than the always praised Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn and I have some problems with Elex for sure.
Tip 1: Get the mace from a house in the north early on for free and slay mobs with the 3 hit special attack easily. The mace is easily the strongest weapon. I killed the Hybrid within one rotation lol
On easy difficulty maybe. Which is still hard btw I'm not making fun of anyone who plays it. But the regent swords are the best in the game. Any weapon with a dot lowers their defenses and causes them to take damage over time.
You are obviously paid to do stuff like this. Your voice is amazing. All credit to you. What I hear is helping greatly.Thank You.
I just got Elex in 2023 and I'm really impressed, especially with the way quests seem to play off each other and really take choices into account. It would be nice if they had made the movements smoother, because transitioning from an attack to a dodge or parry, or from a jump to a run, is clunky enough to get you killed on it's own.
this is great ill pass this vid around when I recommend that game
What I needed to enjoy the game. For some reason I think this should be told by NPCs for the most part.
Big fan of G1+2 and Risen 1. Didn t try so far Elex because of the SF elements, but it feels it has a lot of the old elements also. Maybe I ll try it one day. Nice video btw.
In the beginning the game actually feels more like a normal fantasy game because of the first faction and area you encounter which then makes a smooth introduction to the sci-fi / post-apocalyptic world
It's hardly sci fi. It's more post apocalyptic than anything sci fi. I love Elex and I hate sci fi lol
I just got it..and I'm so lost ..thanks for this video :
thanks innos for this channel
@De risa Adanos ?
Nah he is shit
Wish I'd seen this video before putting in 70+ hours of gameplay, lol. Never mind, still some really great tips for my next walk through. Thank you. Super video.
Very helpful guide! Thank you for putting this together.
Use Elex 4 Casuals, IF you dont want quest-grind to beat anything early.
It allows you level up by explore... :)
yeah i spent 5 hours running around with a rusted hatchet trying to figure out how to get better gear. thanks for the guide
Thanks for putting this together. Very helpful!
Great Tips!!
The first thing I did was deactivate the stamina system! The game is so much more fun without it. At least for me...
Thanks for these tips, friend.
Very informative and concise. Thank you!
Duras, this little piece of grrrrrrrrrrrr... / I might give this game another chance, thanks for the effort this video is. You are a nice guy :)
Wow, that was a lot to think about, but probably useful. I actually bought Elex a long time ago after seeing a single atmospheric screenshot (I knew practically nothing about the game), but I never played it and it ended up collecting dust on my shelf for many years. Now, in the final days of 2023, I felt it might be time to give it a try, but after watching this video I suddenly don't feel very confident at all...😄 I do enjoy the feeling of being underpowered at the start of a game, as it adds tons of tension and careful sneaking (or running away like a coward) to avoid unnecessary danger, but Elex seems to take this to another level. At least for someone quite inexperienced like me. Oh well... I guess there's only one way to find out how punishing it is.
Invest everything into int until you get 50 points, up all the snowball skills, then do whatever you want xD
Basically means you can't fight shit until you level 10+ (assuming you are playing on a hardest difficulty and you totally should). But that's a cool little challenge =P
Justice and honor it’s not cool because you need lots of stuff to even use a fucking gun
I'd like to add something considering Elex potions. I recommend not buying natural Elex from merchants. This may sound crazy, but I seriosly think it has a huge negative impact on the character progression of the game, since you essentially get an unlimited supply to crafting permanent stat potions, since merchant wares restock when you leave the shopping window.
You already get a decent supply of natural elex by getting the 3rd rank of hunting trophies, and by just exploring the world, so buying the stuff feels almost like exploiting the game. The option is there if you so choose, but I think it will rob you of some sense of accomplishment.
Yeah but then the whole elexit economy doesn't make any sense, meaning you don't need to sell anything basically. You just need money to buy ammo and that's it. I wished they balanced it a bit better. :(
good explanation, and it is true.. it is good to hit and run often and use your jet pack.. get high to attack till you feel stronger to do melee attacks and still you will want to hit and run.. still a great game.. Plus steal what ever you can to build up armor and weapons. I have both games.. Elex 1 and Elex 2..
24:00 latest patch with bright night ruined my gameplay on PS4 game version. Why didn’t developers made a toggle option in graphics menu to switch lighting.
Thank you for the great vid.
I'm about to start playing Elex for the first time. I'm glad to see it's just as expected from Piranha Bytes although I'm starting to get tired of the old school number based equipment and combat system and wished they improved on it and made it more organic instead of mathematic.
Also, I remember the nameless Hero of G1 would bleed and limp when hurt. How about taking that to the next level and applying it to every living thing ?
Anyway. I'm sure i'll enjoy it just as much as G1-2 or Risen. Thank you for your videos, they were invaluable in helping me decide which of the PB games to tackle and understand their fundamentals.
If you want an organic rather than a mathematical presentation, and you like XCOM-style turn-based combat, try playing _Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children._ It has an amazingly well-done and very deep build/progression system involving things called "Masteries," which are bundles of perks that obviously do have a mathematical core (which is exposed), but they're named in such a way that you can intuitively make a good build just from the feel of the names of the Masteries and their little attached poems.
Be warned: the game has anime. But not in the combat - that just looks "realistic" like XCOM - rather in the story presentation. It's Korean anime and it's not terribly exaggerated or pervy, and it's actually quite beautifully painted, but if you don't like anime you won't like the game; however, if you don't mind it, the game does exactly what you want in terms of presenting a build system that allows you to build intuitively, and it's a huge game in terms of hours too. The basic scenario is kind of like a "licensed superheroes" type of deal.
I'm loving it, even bought part 2. Finishing this first though. Scratches my Fallout-vibes itch
That is good old Piranha Bytes tradition. The first thing that happens in Gothic: You are beaten up by a bully. And much later, you can pay him back.
Good stuff! I just bought this game and this will surely help. Also, new sub and thanks.
Have this on xbox and ps4. Love this game and there is always something else you can learn. Doesnt matter how many times you have played it.
out of curiosity: why would you buy the same game for 2 consoles? If you'd buy a game for the console and later for the pc 'cause of better graphics, ok, but otherwise it makes no sense to me.
@@msfForti i mained ps4 this console generation. Have Elex digitally on it. Then i played all the games i wantes to play on my ps4. Then i bought an xbox at the beginning of the year for dirt cheap. Went into a gamestop and saw elex physical for like 5 bucks and i liked the case. So i got it for my collection.
The fact that you can't beat every quest given to you right away will most likely throw off most casual RPG players who're spoiled by games like Skyrim which treat you like a god of war who's enemies magically scale with him. Piranha Bytes has always made games where enemies are intentially placed roadblocks which you simply can't beat, even if you master the combat system. Eventually that big orc will land a hit and your 90 pound weakling armed with a stick and only wearing cloth pants and shirt will die. Instantly. Even if you manage to kill one wolf, they're rarely alone and the rest of the pack will shred you to pieces.
I think you miss out on a big chunk of XP if you join a faction early. Before i joined the Zerkers I did all the faction-related quests in Hort and Fort first and it was like 10k XP in total, which is a lot in Chapter 1.
You don't actually miss out on those quests and their experience, however -- you can still do 95% of all quests in the other factions after you've already joined a faction. Literally the only quests you lose access to are the faction leaders' official membership quests, which amounts to 4000 experience, I think, which really isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things. Especially since, with infinitely respawning enemies and elex potions, you can easily make up that lost experience throughout the game. Ultimately, getting those faction benefits early on is a much, much bigger boost to your character than the few thousand experience you miss by skipping those two other membership quests.
@@TheNocturnalRambler But don't the official faction quests involve many other branching subquests (to join Zerkers you have to gain trust of the Warlords which include many subquests, same for Outlaws where you have to settle the debts of the regional leaders and then another long questline for William; only the Clerics have like one or two short quests)? Wouldn't you miss all of those?
Wow,very good guide, with actual and useful tips, not just halfassed shit that someone did after playingthrough the tutorial :D
Can't believe they murdered the lighting for no reason. I've been trying to google why but nothing really comes up. Can't install mod or revert to old patch because console and digital version. Combat is pretty much scuffed witcher 3 but that's fine. A very minor complaint I have is the purple teleporter blips on the radar should show when it's not active as well. It can be pretty rough when you miss teleporters. I suppose you gotta get the skill to reveal them though, hope there is an amulet or something for it.
I really need to play ELEX, i'm finishing Might & Magic 6 to 8 (almost there with the last one) and having to find trainers to improve your skills reminded me of PB games :) While quite different in many aspects they share quite a more "focused" concept of openworld (while the 3D enviroments are in many cases quite basic looking).
But did you play them separately? Cause there's a mod that merges all three games into one. Just like the Wizardy 6-7-8 or M&M Xeen.
@@admiraltonydawning3847 I'm playing them separately because i didn't experienced them before (only 6 but never completed it before). I heard about that mod recently and i'll check it, don't know how the balance works with the changes to the rpg classes between the games.
Much appreciated. Thank you for producing this!
Really good tips, wish i would'bve known those before i played it and died so much :D
What really got me during my first playthrough was "join a faction sooner rather than later" and "periodically advance the main story." I played Elex like a typical Gothic-style PB game vowing to do everything I could before joining a faction and before advancing the main story, in hopes that it would pay off with more total experience in the long run and would make me stronger for the main quest. In reality, that actually made me *weaker* for a lot of the main quest because I was unwittingly completing a bunch of later, main quest objectives before they were given to me, without the benefit of faction armor or abilities. Plus, if you take that approach like I did, you end up completing the majority of the game's content without any of those fun abilities, which robs you of a lot of the game's fun and makes the second half of the game fly by so quickly because you've already done most of what the game has to offer.
@@TheNocturnalRambler i played it 100% the same as you :D it's just trained into me from the old gothic games
@@TheNocturnalRambler I also finished my first playthrough recently and did the same, I didn't end up using much of the faction-specific abilities as well as it almost felt pointless at that point. On top of that I was very much burnt out by the end of it
Elex 2 March 1st 2022!! Cant wait, Elex is one of my favorite games.
I was thinking of buying this game when it released but the review weren’t good and I was playing other games. I saw it was on sale recently and have been thinking about finally jumping in to play it.
elex 2 is coming, i need to continue to play first one