Any idea what you might have fucked up? There's not a whole lot you can flub before the hydra in all honesty, but there are a few things that could be easily missed.
Nah, that's just how the game presents the quest. The Hydra head escort is a main quest, so it'll wait until you're damned well ready to do it; there are a good amount (most non-board?) sidequests that will fail if you haven't done them/their prerequisites before [X] main quest, though.
It takes a bit to "get it", and you may or may not "get it". I didn't "get it" until my second attempt at playing the game and now it's one of my all-time favorites, but some people hate it and I can understand their perspective. If you end up not enjoying it, that's fine. I hope you do, though.
Its actually good that you did the Witchwood quest before the Hydra quest, because you otherwise would have failed it, and completely missed out on the Witchwood storyline. Dragon's Dogma is the one game I absolutely encourage people to play with some kind of guide, because there are plenty of situations like this. The game world moves through what are commonly called "stages" by the fans, with new stages triggered by completing certain main lines quest or starting a particular quest. And if you move from one stage to the a stage without completing certain quests from the previous stage, those quests will automatically fail, and the game doesn't specify this or tell you which quests are time sensitive. I highly recommend keeping the game walkthrough on hand, particularly the parts on story progression stages and the side quest start and fail points, just so that you can keep track of which quests will fail at which times, so that you know what absolutely has to be completely first.
I'd rather set my balls on fire then use a guide to ruin my first run.
I would be all for people figuring things out on their own...if the game actually allowed you to do that. Instead, the game basically doesn't even tell you that failing a quest because you progressed too far is even a thing, and, outside the wymhunt quests, doesn't sign post when you reach a point of no return. If you actually want to experience what the game has to offer in full, a guide is basically necessary. It shouldn't be that way, but that's how it is, so I have no problem recommending a guide in this instance.
Inferences based on what has been revealed seems to indicate that it will work similarly to the first game, where certain quests will have a hard time limit, and you won't be told which ones they are. Except the time limit is far more strict and not based simply on you progressing certain quests. In that sense, it sounds like it will work more like TES: Daggerfall, where certain quests, including main story line quests, including THE VERY FIRST QUEST OF THE GAME, had hard, in-game time limits, like you only had a few in game months to complete a quest, and if you didn't, you failed, potentially making the final game incompletable. Something like that in DD2 could make the situation more frustrating than the first game, as people may fail quests just by accidently sleeping at camp rather then pressing on when they otherwise would rest.
Maybe that was an issue with DD1 but hopefully it won't be the case anymore.
I bet they are gonna have a "soft guide" with pawns telling you about various quests time limits if their master did it. Like if some one else pawn has done a "rescue the kid from wolves" mission at some point the pawn will state something the lines of "Best we hurry to save the child, the wolves will eat him at any moment" once you accept the same quest.
That's pretty much how pawn knowledge worked in the first game. They'd give hints about monster weaknesses, info on current objectives/quests, and sometimes would even lead the way if you picked up a quest and they had knowledge of it. Pretty clever way of adding in a guide for players without making it handholdy or immersion breaking.
On the contrary, playing with a guide for a first playthrough is dumb. The highlight of this game is beating monsters to a pulp with your squad and the game is best played by just dicking around until you learn what things are yourself. Not a single quest that is necessary for completion can be missed and the main storyline is so short that you can just blitz through it and get that 100% quest achievement quickly anyway.
As someone who hasn't played the first game, I have no idea what more then half of it means. Most of them seem like a basic checklist to me (i.e get vocation, defeat this creature, go to this location etc)
thanks for the info. I will go look at the achievements now. Here’s your Reddit gold.
Of course you'll never miss a mainline quest. You can't even progress without those, but you absolutely can miss side quests, and if you don't want to, a guide is a perfectly valid option.
I'm not saying use a guide to walkthrough every quest, just to let you know which quest need to be completed and which ones don't. The game is mostly linear, so it really won't ruin your run to use one, unless you are looking up detailed information.
Assuming the list floating around is complete, then the four Hybrid Vocations we've seen thus far may really be the only ones, assuming the list is real and complete.
Straightforward - Nonchalant 1 for my fighter/warrior pawn and Gallant Knight 3 for my thief arisen. Agree about the GK laugh being the best.