Can someone who has finished the game just confirm if this is the point of no return;
Have gained a blessing of a God and am being pointed towards Burial Isle. From the wording I am assuming that once I descend in Burial Isle there will be no getting back up?
I am 22 hours into the playthrough and only lvl 9. I feel like I must have missed a load of quests so want to go exploring one last time before I go to the endgame.
Also bounties give an incredible amount of EXP; just completing three of them and a bit of Caed Nua basically boosted my party two levels (from like 7 to 9, IIRC)
Wizards are actually closer to D&D sorcerers than wizards. Limited spell selection, but cast in whatever combination you want. Then grimoires are a whole thing.
Wizards are actually closer to D&D sorcerers than wizards. Limited spell selection, but cast in whatever combination you want. Then grimoires are a whole thing.
My Edar has a blind that won't go away, and it says (grazed). How do i get rid of this?
Have you tried letting him die?
Weird workaround would be sending him in to fight an enemy with a charm effect, and then casting blind on him when he's charmed. Unless you can blind him when he's still on your team?
I'm starting to think they dropped the ball a bit on paladins because a pc paladin will always have a good chunk of defenses that an npc one will not. so if you want to run a paladin it should be the pc.
Is the fight on floor 15 of Endless Paths at all doable? I just lost half my guys instantly at the beginning of the fight.
It is doable but it requires a lot more effort than any other fight in the game.
Mild tactics spoiler
It is the hardest fight in the game. So it's where you use consumables. Ressurection scrolls are very good, as are the best endurance potions.
This is the fight you do at level 12.
The dragon has insanely high accuracy and defenses. I was able to get Eder to roughly 138 defense, and I had a slash/pierce DR5 belt.
The main danger is it's breath weapon. It will only be cast if the dragon is standing still for a bit, and it will always hit the person engaged in roughly a 120degree cone.
So everyone else should be behind the dragon.
The dragon has high DR so RAW damage is by far the best. You want to debuff and do RAW damage, heal or ressurect, don't waste time on anything else.
You can travel in with an inn buff and eat a dragon meat food buff just before. That's a decent chunk of extra con and damage. War Paint pots from Act III are also pretty nice as they have an endurance and a damage multiplier.
Summons can save your life if Eder goes down.
Cheese spoilers
This fight can be won with 4 scrolls and 1 spell:
The wizard level 6 petrify if it hits lasts long enough to easily hit 4 maelstroms scrolls on the dragon. That will end the dragon in about 10 seconds flat.
I also read reports of enough speed stacking on the tank being able to kite, after engage, together with a buff against prone. This causes the dragon to never breathe.
Wait, really? Huh, I saw Aloth staying level 5 as I kept going and just figured.
They get a reduced portion of exp but still get some.
Yeah, to relate my personal experience:
I used all the first party members I came across and benched the later ones. I collected the later ones at levels 4 and 5, I believe. I also had one barbarian guy I made myself that I dropped at level 4 for another party member I came across.
When my team hit the max level of 12, I went and switched them all out for the benched party members and leveled all of them up. When all was said and done the party members who had been chilling were at level 10, so that's actually quite a nice chunk of XP they were getting.
So has everyone but me beaten this already? Discussion send to have died down a lot. I'm still in chapter 2 :bigfrown:
Yep! I could have probably beaten it 3 or 4 times over, but I keep making new party builds to try things out. My evil party is nearing the end now, though, so I'll be on round 2. I'm hoping for a bleak and hopeless epilogue. I also wonder if the companions I told to get bent still get a mention.
My first party was regular companions +melee rogue. Really fun gameplay, kinda went meh on the roleplay because I started dark and then went benevolent as the game wore on just through trying to see all the quests.
Second was a shakeup. Pallegina as a tank (Do not recommend, by the way), Eder as dual wield dps (he kicks ass), and a dps paladin PC (Bleak Walker. Fun roleplay, wouldn't recommend from a gameplay perspective. Very auto-attacky and positioning isn't that important).
Third is a machine-gun mage (with spells, not the actual guns in the game). Tons of offensive buffs and Minor Blights with the penetrating talents. Basically she throws foe only fireballs every attack, VERY quickly. I also made a henchwoman barbarian and her Carnage also tears it up in AoE. Any group of enemies that engages my party dies in short order and I'm very happy with the gameplay, overall.
Fourth is my pirate party. I'm still playing with the composition, but I'm liking Blackbeard the melee cipher.
I started a priest of Eothas as the PC as well. They get some nice dialogue in the first chapter but A) not as many as I would have expected and it seems to taper off a lot after that. I may not finish that run.
Pallegina can work well as a tank if you give her the Hold the Line Talent and the Shatterstar Warhammer you can buy at the Copperlane market and the Outworn Buckler from the Gilded Vale blacksmith. Just make sure you get her as early as possible so you can pick her abilities/talents.
In the interest of promoting other cool kickstarted WRPGs, I just thought I'd point out that Shadowrun: Dragonfall is on sale for five bucks at the Humble Store today. It's also really, really good.
In the interest of promoting other cool kickstarted WRPGs, I just thought I'd point out that Shadowrun: Dragonfall is on sale for five bucks at the Humble Store today. It's also really, really good.
Does it have a lot of the problems the first release did?
Limited choices in gear/cybernetics. Allies provided by default that leave you needlessly doubled up if you actually built a PC for say... hacking. A single path that has little deviation outside what box of text you end up reading.
I would probably pick up the dlc in a heart beat if they addressed that.
You get a set number of allies that you keep with you through the game. You can upgrade them at various points with your choice of multiples abilities. You can choose which of them you bring on particular missions. You can find cybernetics schematics on runs, which you can turn over to a shady guy to build and install for you.
There are numerous points in the main story where you need to collect money or information or whatnot, and you get your pick of which side missions to take on, and which groups to screw over.
It is a vast improvement over the original (which I liked anyway).
So has everyone but me beaten this already? Discussion send to have died down a lot. I'm still in chapter 2 :bigfrown:
I dunno. It's hard to talk about without spoiling things? The most interesting thing about the game is the story, but, you know, occasionally one person who finishes writes a big thing in spoilers, and then a few people reply, but it's hard to keep having that conversation in spoilers, so it peters out.
The mechanics of the game aren't that new or interesting. Or what parts are interesting are rather face-value - Might/Dexterity/Intellect are clearly the best 3 stats, and screw the others. Skills aren't really well-balanced either, but much more user-friendly. UI is good. Itemization is a little weak, possibly due to the increased generic-ness of characters. A lot of useful information is presented up-front in tooltips, which is cool, but also a lot of useful information is hidden away. Companions range from interesting to trope-y, with Durance perhaps being the most interesting as he's tied rather closely into the story's background. I dunno, what else is there to say?
I guess I can say, I went and fired up Mask of the Betrayer again to do a comparison. What really stands out are the deep conversations you can have with your companions, how ... well at least 4 of the 5 companions are closely tied to the main story - like Durance is - and they all have unique backgrounds with really interesting flavour. Like with Pillars, something "bad" happens to your PC at the start, and you have to forge your way forward to unravel it, but there's not really any major distractions from it (Raderic's Hold, Caed Nua, etc), and NPCs constantly reinforce how critical it is for you to solve it before it inevitably kills you. That fact is also sorta implemented in the game mechanically, although it's a bit fiddly to deal with due to the NWN2 engine, unlike in Pillars, where your being special is mostly just kinda tangential and comes up in dialogue occasionally.
I'm also noticing that there's a distinct lack of engagement with the more critically interesting parts of the Pillars world, namely being animancy and souls. One of the reasons MotB is so compelling is because the world it constructs isn't just unique and fascinating, like Pillars, but also that it really infuses the entire game. Every quest you do has something to do with spirits. Every major plotline has you meeting compelling characters. Even when you're doing a fetch quest, the thing you're fetching is weird and strange.
Obviously the MotB people were more familiar with their engine, it being a second kick at the can, and they made a lot of the same errors with NWN2, which, despite some interesting ideas, really just dragged. Based on the commentaries, it's pretty clear to me that Pillars was developed oddly, because they were also trying out the engine and iterating on it as they went, so areas were kinda designed piecemeal and created in a strange order, so I don't imagine they could achieve the same sort of tight integration between story, environment, and gameplay that MotB does, but here's hoping the next iteration will. (Also, Torment.)
Personally I was waiting for them to patch it a few times and to finish Dragon Age: Inquisition. Just got to Defiance Bay, myself. Loving the speed up function. Not loving getting my PC killed soon as I unpause in my first bandit attack on the keep. Forgot to check what the hell happened, but maybe they did the smart thing and all went for the Wizard first with all their ranged guys...
They were trying to design the system where every attribute was useful for every class so that most builds are viable. However, I think they went about it the wrong way. Instead of having every attribute affect things every class uses, they should have made it so that every class has a wide range of abilities/talents that benefit from every attribute. For example, they could have made it so that some spells benefit more from Might while others benefit more from Intellect or Perception, etc. Similarly, for fighting classes, they could have made different fighting styles that benefited from different attributes. There could be a fighting style that benefit from Might and Resolve, one that benefits from Dexterity and Perception, one that benefits from Might and Intellect, one that benefits from Constitution and Resolve, etc.
They were trying to design the system where every attribute was useful for every class so that most builds are viable. However, I think they went about it the wrong way. Instead of having every attribute affect things every class uses, they should have made it so that every class has a wide range of abilities/talents that benefit from every attribute. For example, they could have made it so that some spells benefit more from Might while others benefit more from Intellect or Perception, etc. Similarly, for fighting classes, they could have made different fighting styles that benefited from different attributes. There could be a fighting style that benefit from Might and Resolve, one that benefits from Dexterity and Perception, one that benefits from Might and Intellect, one that benefits from Constitution and Resolve, etc.
However, they also said that a huge design point they wanted to address was making sure you couldn't screw yourself over in the long run with poor decisions, that any character at all you decide to roll up would be playable and viable.
So you make a might/int wizard like a lot of people do, because damage and range are pretty important, but lo and behold, later on you discover that all the best wizard spells scale off of having high resolve. Sure, there are a lot of spells that use other stats, but it just so happened that the best ones are all resolve, and you tanked that stat. Crud.
If you want to say that this shouldn't be a problem because there are good spells that scale off of EVERY stat...well then you're right back where you started, where might and int are king because who cares if some spells require perception, you can just ignore those. In fact you end up less versatile, because everyone still takes the "obvious" choice of damage and range, but now they also limit themselves to spells that use those stats too.
Plus, the wizard is the BEST case scenario. A lot of the classes only have 6-10 active abilities you can take, and maybe 4-5 passives. You could tie each one to a different stat, or tie some of them to some stats and ignore others...each method has the same downfalls listed above. Either players get a rude awakening that an awesome ability is unusable due to their stat spread they picked long ago, or the effect is negligible and you're back to the current state of the game.
I'm still in act 1 and I'm almost halfway through level 7. And cap is 13 right?
Act 2 feels like the longest, but it's probably just because the side quests are interesting and plentiful. Act 1 and 2 feel like the meat of the game to me.
Act 3 seems very short compared to the other two acts.
Posts
I am 22 hours into the playthrough and only lvl 9. I feel like I must have missed a load of quests so want to go exploring one last time before I go to the endgame.
They do not.
Yep. When you bring them back into the group, you'll level them up if you gained levels.
They get a reduced portion of exp but still get some.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Have you tried letting him die?
Weird workaround would be sending him in to fight an enemy with a charm effect, and then casting blind on him when he's charmed. Unless you can blind him when he's still on your team?
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Yes.
1. You can dialogue your way out of it.
2. You can dialogue her to be weaker.
3. You can abuse petrify and kiting to kick her ass rather easily.
It is doable but it requires a lot more effort than any other fight in the game.
Mild tactics spoiler
This is the fight you do at level 12.
The dragon has insanely high accuracy and defenses. I was able to get Eder to roughly 138 defense, and I had a slash/pierce DR5 belt.
This link shows its stats, though it does not show the most dangerous attack:
http://orcz.com/Pillars_of_Eternity:_Bestiary_-_Adra_Dragon
Middle spoilers
So everyone else should be behind the dragon.
The dragon has high DR so RAW damage is by far the best. You want to debuff and do RAW damage, heal or ressurect, don't waste time on anything else.
You can travel in with an inn buff and eat a dragon meat food buff just before. That's a decent chunk of extra con and damage. War Paint pots from Act III are also pretty nice as they have an endurance and a damage multiplier.
Summons can save your life if Eder goes down.
Cheese spoilers
The wizard level 6 petrify if it hits lasts long enough to easily hit 4 maelstroms scrolls on the dragon. That will end the dragon in about 10 seconds flat.
I also read reports of enough speed stacking on the tank being able to kite, after engage, together with a buff against prone. This causes the dragon to never breathe.
Yeah, to relate my personal experience:
I used all the first party members I came across and benched the later ones. I collected the later ones at levels 4 and 5, I believe. I also had one barbarian guy I made myself that I dropped at level 4 for another party member I came across.
When my team hit the max level of 12, I went and switched them all out for the benched party members and leveled all of them up. When all was said and done the party members who had been chilling were at level 10, so that's actually quite a nice chunk of XP they were getting.
Yep! I could have probably beaten it 3 or 4 times over, but I keep making new party builds to try things out. My evil party is nearing the end now, though, so I'll be on round 2. I'm hoping for a bleak and hopeless epilogue. I also wonder if the companions I told to get bent still get a mention.
My first party was regular companions +melee rogue. Really fun gameplay, kinda went meh on the roleplay because I started dark and then went benevolent as the game wore on just through trying to see all the quests.
Second was a shakeup. Pallegina as a tank (Do not recommend, by the way), Eder as dual wield dps (he kicks ass), and a dps paladin PC (Bleak Walker. Fun roleplay, wouldn't recommend from a gameplay perspective. Very auto-attacky and positioning isn't that important).
Third is a machine-gun mage (with spells, not the actual guns in the game). Tons of offensive buffs and Minor Blights with the penetrating talents. Basically she throws foe only fireballs every attack, VERY quickly. I also made a henchwoman barbarian and her Carnage also tears it up in AoE. Any group of enemies that engages my party dies in short order and I'm very happy with the gameplay, overall.
Fourth is my pirate party. I'm still playing with the composition, but I'm liking Blackbeard the melee cipher.
I started a priest of Eothas as the PC as well. They get some nice dialogue in the first chapter but A) not as many as I would have expected and
Does it have a lot of the problems the first release did?
Limited choices in gear/cybernetics. Allies provided by default that leave you needlessly doubled up if you actually built a PC for say... hacking. A single path that has little deviation outside what box of text you end up reading.
I would probably pick up the dlc in a heart beat if they addressed that.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
You get a set number of allies that you keep with you through the game. You can upgrade them at various points with your choice of multiples abilities. You can choose which of them you bring on particular missions. You can find cybernetics schematics on runs, which you can turn over to a shady guy to build and install for you.
There are numerous points in the main story where you need to collect money or information or whatnot, and you get your pick of which side missions to take on, and which groups to screw over.
It is a vast improvement over the original (which I liked anyway).
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I dunno. It's hard to talk about without spoiling things? The most interesting thing about the game is the story, but, you know, occasionally one person who finishes writes a big thing in spoilers, and then a few people reply, but it's hard to keep having that conversation in spoilers, so it peters out.
The mechanics of the game aren't that new or interesting. Or what parts are interesting are rather face-value - Might/Dexterity/Intellect are clearly the best 3 stats, and screw the others. Skills aren't really well-balanced either, but much more user-friendly. UI is good. Itemization is a little weak, possibly due to the increased generic-ness of characters. A lot of useful information is presented up-front in tooltips, which is cool, but also a lot of useful information is hidden away. Companions range from interesting to trope-y, with Durance perhaps being the most interesting as he's tied rather closely into the story's background. I dunno, what else is there to say?
I guess I can say, I went and fired up Mask of the Betrayer again to do a comparison. What really stands out are the deep conversations you can have with your companions, how ... well at least 4 of the 5 companions are closely tied to the main story - like Durance is - and they all have unique backgrounds with really interesting flavour. Like with Pillars, something "bad" happens to your PC at the start, and you have to forge your way forward to unravel it, but there's not really any major distractions from it (Raderic's Hold, Caed Nua, etc), and NPCs constantly reinforce how critical it is for you to solve it before it inevitably kills you. That fact is also sorta implemented in the game mechanically, although it's a bit fiddly to deal with due to the NWN2 engine, unlike in Pillars, where your being special is mostly just kinda tangential and comes up in dialogue occasionally.
I'm also noticing that there's a distinct lack of engagement with the more critically interesting parts of the Pillars world, namely being animancy and souls. One of the reasons MotB is so compelling is because the world it constructs isn't just unique and fascinating, like Pillars, but also that it really infuses the entire game. Every quest you do has something to do with spirits. Every major plotline has you meeting compelling characters. Even when you're doing a fetch quest, the thing you're fetching is weird and strange.
Obviously the MotB people were more familiar with their engine, it being a second kick at the can, and they made a lot of the same errors with NWN2, which, despite some interesting ideas, really just dragged. Based on the commentaries, it's pretty clear to me that Pillars was developed oddly, because they were also trying out the engine and iterating on it as they went, so areas were kinda designed piecemeal and created in a strange order, so I don't imagine they could achieve the same sort of tight integration between story, environment, and gameplay that MotB does, but here's hoping the next iteration will. (Also, Torment.)
However, they also said that a huge design point they wanted to address was making sure you couldn't screw yourself over in the long run with poor decisions, that any character at all you decide to roll up would be playable and viable.
So you make a might/int wizard like a lot of people do, because damage and range are pretty important, but lo and behold, later on you discover that all the best wizard spells scale off of having high resolve. Sure, there are a lot of spells that use other stats, but it just so happened that the best ones are all resolve, and you tanked that stat. Crud.
If you want to say that this shouldn't be a problem because there are good spells that scale off of EVERY stat...well then you're right back where you started, where might and int are king because who cares if some spells require perception, you can just ignore those. In fact you end up less versatile, because everyone still takes the "obvious" choice of damage and range, but now they also limit themselves to spells that use those stats too.
Plus, the wizard is the BEST case scenario. A lot of the classes only have 6-10 active abilities you can take, and maybe 4-5 passives. You could tie each one to a different stat, or tie some of them to some stats and ignore others...each method has the same downfalls listed above. Either players get a rude awakening that an awesome ability is unusable due to their stat spread they picked long ago, or the effect is negligible and you're back to the current state of the game.
I'm still in act 1 and I'm almost halfway through level 7. And cap is 13 right?
Depends on how much side stuff you're doing. Actually mainlining the story doesn't seem to take very long.
Act 2 feels like the longest, but it's probably just because the side quests are interesting and plentiful. Act 1 and 2 feel like the meat of the game to me.
Act 3 seems very short compared to the other two acts.
Time to go back and see about getting some sidequests done. Including the Endless Paths. The boss of which is scaring me just hearing about it.