Dungeon Siege has gotten better, since I figured a few things out. Here's some tips I found on other sites. They may be obvious, but why not...

1. Pause! Press the spacebar to stop the action and regroup, plan your strategy, etc.

2. Set up your hot keys. From the options menu you can change the hotkeys and assign new ones. I use the numeric plus and minus keys to control game speed, 'q' for health potions and 'w' for mana potions. Tab, q, w and e are close together, making it easy to do most everything with your left hand, mousing with the right.

You can also define a hot key for each spell slot. After that, you can select a character and hit the appropriate hot key to scroll through the available spells.

3. Slow the game down when you get into battle. When a battle starts, I slow the game down to .5 or so. You can easily switch from melee to ranged attacks and if you zoom in with the mouse wheel, it looks really cool.

4. Define your function keys and the number keys.

Function keys are used to define groups of people in your party. For example, select all of your characters (including your mule) and press CTRL-F1. Anytime you hit F1, all of your characters are selected. I use F1 for all, F2 for all minus mule, F3 for melee fighters, F4 for ranged fighters, etc. This makes it easy to order just the characters you need to a specific location.

Number keys are used to define the specific actions of your characters. For example, select all ranged attacks for your characters and hit CTRL-1. When your party is approaching a group of monsters, hit '1' and everyone switches to their bows and ranged spells. I use 2 for melee weapons up front and ranged weapons in back, 3 for all melee and 4 for melee with healing spells selected for magic users. If a magic user has a healing spell equipped, he/she will automatically cast it when someone gets below 50% health. When the fighting gets up close, I switch between 3 (all melee) and 4 (all melee with healing) as my characters' health changes.

With the game slowed down, you can easily hit the number buttons to switch to different strategies. Note that you can also define the attack, defend and movement characteristics too.

5. 'E' selects your entire party. Self-explanatory.

6. 'Z' picks up everything on the ground. Hit 'E', then hit 'Z'. All items will be picked up and placed in your mule's inventory.

7. Use 'C' to force cast protection spells multiple times. Between battles, equip you armor spell and cast it as many times as you can. They accumulate, so the duration just extends. Same for offensive boost spells.

8. Move with the left mouse button, attack with the right mouse button. If you left click on a monster, but you miss and click nothing instead, those characters will move to that location and THEN start attacking. Instead right click on the monster. Ranged attacks can then commence.

9. Don't put all of your spells in a spell book. Just put the ones you need. This makes it easier to hot key to the next appropriate spell. Depending on the character and the circumstances, you might want an offensive spell book, a healing spell book, etc. That way you can quickly switch spells without having to navigate through several that aren't appropriate for that situation.

10. Use the transmute spell. I haven't had a need for it yet, but if you're hurting for inventory space, use the transmute spell to convert items that would be sold later to gold. Gold doesn't take up room in your inventory.

I think that's it. I'm still not completely on the Dungeon Siege bandwagon, but I'm trying to get my $40 worth!

Thanks for the tips.

I have only played an hour or so and like it. The graphics are really nice and the gameplay is good.

thanks!
but the game runs like poopoo on my gf2mx (<12fps)

gonna have to wait till my new pc is built...

Set shadows to 'simple' or turn them off entirely. Apparently they cost a lot (resource wise) and don't add that much.

I've also heard that defragging your hard drive can make a big impact.

Fortunately, this game doesn't need 50 fps to look good. I think 25 fps is really smooth and lower frame rates are tolerable.

I read a post from one of the developers who said that the game benefits from a fast CPU, lots 'o RAM and a fast hard drive. A bad-ass video card doesn't help as much as it would with other games.

Can someone tell me how good the multiplayer is? Is it worth it or not fun? I might buy the game, but I need to try it first since very few games appeal to me.

The multiplayer is pretty fun. I've only played over LAN with my friend, but we play for a really long time cause we're addicted now. You can choose from the single player map or the other map (which is just as large as the single player map). You can also import your single player into multiplayer (but not vice versa). There are mission objectives and also team play within the huge worlds that take forever to explore. Only thing that bugs me is that you can't save your progress in multiplayer, so if you were in the middle of a mission when you quit, you have to start from scratch again when you log back on. Other than that it's similar to Diablo except that it feels more like an epic battle on the scale of Everquest.

FOr those that have the Strategic Commander, it works wonders for this game.
Lots of hot keys at your finger tips, and ease of rotation

I've been playing through the SP and just started the 3rd mission (or whatever it's called). I have 7 total people in my group now as well as Mable the Mule. My friend who is also playing only has 5 people in his group and is amazed at how quickly I dispose of all the baddies with my 3 melee guys, one ace archer, and 2 sorcerers. Sure they cost me some coin, but man are they worth it when you have 25 baddies running at you at once. My tip, pick up as many people as you can along the way. Some will come for free, others will charge you money to come, but if they offer to come, pay for them. There is only one person I did not pay to get, it was a female archer. I didn't have enough coin to get her to come. I wish you could bargain with them.

It's almost too easy

I'm really debating about picking this one up. With no broadband in my area since we've moved, I've been looking at good single-player games more than multi. I've heard the quest is a little short, and that you basically find yourself clicking on a bad guy and then sitting back and watching your fighters do all the work. The criticism is that at least with Diablo you had to physically click every time you wanted to hit an enemy.

But you all seem to be enjoying it, so maybe I'll grab a copy...

Bottom line its a great great game