- I definitely find Book III more challenging than Books I or II (this is mostly a good thing) - the Alpha & Beta testers really did a good job on "balancing", right down to figuring out near perfect numbers of XPs for Level Ups.
- Along these same lines, I actually got "doubly-stuck" in Book III! (i.e. couldn't figure out what to do next, in two separate locations, which stymied my game progress...), which is something that basically never happened to me in Books I or II. But it's actually good that the forums were down, as it forced me to think and retrace my steps to figure out what I had missed, rather than just running here and asking for "Spoilers".
- The storylines and plotting in Book III are definitely improved over Book III: the plot is keeping me involved here, and I'm liking the "See 'A', Who Then Tells You To See 'B', Who Then Tells You To See 'C'" quest plotting.
- Neat trick with the "secret areas". And that was a clever solution to the "Cartography" issue that was brought up here before Book III came out - I definitely feel like I needed Cartography in my early playthroughs, though, to make sure I didn't miss anything.
- I still wish we got 20 Skill Points at Character Creation like we did back in Book I - it would allow for more variety in starting character types. (Then maybe we wouldn't need that "secret area" near game's start!... )
- Love the new Rogue Title skills! - Wonder who came up with those!!
- I also like the minor tweaks to Mage and Ranger titles.
- I've ended up liking that the game is stingy with Gold early (the start of Book III really is a "limited money supply" challenge for players...), but starts yielding much higher amounts of Gold mid-game...
- On Skills: Believe or not, I still think that Foraging is overpowered (at least in terms of food acquisition), even in Book III. And Repair definitely is. Once again, Level 1 in Foraging (for food) or Repair is pretty much all you need. Dunno if there's a solution to this, but I thought I'd mention it... However, even Level 2 in Foraging is not yielding up reagents for Alchemy, so that's probably good...
- On Alchemy reagents (and empty flasks) - I'm finding Book III to be too stingy with these. I haven't tried an Alchemy-focused character yet, but I am worried that merchants don't actually stock enough reagents to make such a build workable...
- I'm still seeing issues with Hide in Shadows, with my Level 5 Hide in Shadows Rogue - HiS seems to "break" during combat and then be very difficult to "restore" (forcing you to go way beyond mobs' LoS to find a corner where it'll regenerate). So I'm thinking HiS coding may still be partially "broken".
- The new spells are interesting (though I do miss Fire Dart), though I haven't gotten a chance to play with them yet (playing a Ranger with only Divination on the side, so far...).
- I really like the new ranged-weapon foes (esp. the bow-using thugs). Hopefully we'll get to go up against magic-using foes later on in the game...
- I dunno if I like the changes in Goblins, for continuity reasons - if Book I Goblins were under-powered, I feel like Book III Goblins are over-powered (esp. when compared to Book I), which introduces a bit of a continuity problem for me...
- One of the questions before Book III was: Will arrows be plentiful enough (for Rangers)? What I've found is there are enough arrows early in the game. By mid-game, I was starting to run in to problems with the supply of arrows - not enough to "officially" complain yet. But I thought I'd throw it out there.
I have to work this week, so I'll only be able to stick some playtime in here and there... So I may have to avoid the restored forums to avoid SPOILERS...