Sometimes you stumble into stuff you shouldn't fight. That's when you run away. Just like in PnP, not everything you encounter should be a battle you can win.
A GM in tabletop who sends that monster against a level 2 party who camps in a kobold zone without an obvious out is an asshole that I don't want to play with.
Like, if you go into the Demonweb Pits at level 2, sure, you're gonna die. Suicide by Lloth. But, like, the worst I had seen in this zone was a giant frog. Even with some vaguely ominous portents, I'd expect a difficult fight at most, not a completely one-sided slaughter.
Like, I'm not stupid. I heard about a manticore in a different area. "I'm not going to go to the manticore area, because a manticore will ruin my shit." That's fair. But this is resting in a low-level area the plot directed me to and suggested that it was important for me to do reasonably quickly.
I stand by my "bullshit" response, especially since apparently running isn't an option.
This game has several moments like that. It also has an encounter structure that assumes you're going to do certain things, and you wind up getting punished hard if you don't. It gets much more fun once you've got Delay Poison and Protection from Energy.
You didn't notice all the bodies from the last group who decided to use the camp and think "hmm, maybe I shouldn't rest there?"
I did. What I wanted to do was take the supplies and go rest somewhere else. Game wouldn't let me.
It is reasonable to think that you might get attacked there...the game even has mechanics for camping in such a way that you are ready for an attack, but this one used none of them, and just fast forwards to the fight.
It's also simply bad game design to put that fight in that area at that time. The fight should be challenging, but not completely impossible for characters who are likely to be adventuring in the area. Maybe have it spawn at a later level as a bonus challenge fight for folks that go back to earlier areas to see if they missed anything.
Remember, this is Pathfinder, not Call of Cthulhu or Hunter: the Reckoning. The default assumption should not be "make one mistake based on incomplete information, die."
You didn't notice all the bodies from the last group who decided to use the camp and think "hmm, maybe I shouldn't rest there?"
I did. What I wanted to do was take the supplies and go rest somewhere else. Game wouldn't let me.
It is reasonable to think that you might get attacked there...the game even has mechanics for camping in such a way that you are ready for an attack, but this one used none of them, and just fast forwards to the fight.
It's also simply bad game design to put that fight in that area at that time. The fight should be challenging, but not completely impossible for characters who are likely to be adventuring in the area. Maybe have it spawn at a later level as a bonus challenge fight for folks that go back to earlier areas to see if they missed anything.
Remember, this is Pathfinder, not Call of Cthulhu or Hunter: the Reckoning. The default assumption should not be "make one mistake based on incomplete information, die."
Yeah, I found that part to be bullshit as well.
That said, I did come back for revenge on that fucker later on. Reward: A diamond... woo.
I just cleared Bald Hill for the first time and this game is really not pulling any punches. It took me 4 tries and my successful attempt took over 30 minutes. Spoiler for fight details
I show up with my level 4 party to deal with the spiders here. Giant spiders go down a single hit from my buffed Amiri with Enlarge Person/Bull's Strength, Greater Giant Spiders take 2 hits. The problem is the final wave with the deathspider and the sorcerer that chain casts hold person and hideous laughter. My fighter types fail their will save 90% of the time and once they're helpless, the spider kills them in 2 rounds. I can't kill the spider without Amiri and the caster is smart enough to prioritize her with the hold person effects.
The eventual solution I found was to throw out grease and web at the spot where the caster is going to appear. They failed their reflex save enough that it gave me enough time to kill the giant spider with some good rolls. Now the problem is that Amiri can't make it to the caster either and I spent the next 30 rounds slowly whittling down her HP with ranged touch spells as she alternated between casting disabling spells and falling prone in the greased up web.
Battlenet ID: NullPointer
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
In a lot of ways, this game is a bloated over-designed mess. There's some good stuff in there, but often it will come at you like a poorly placed swarm of spiders.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
I mean, no one is saying they game is perfect. But there’s a lot of fun to be had with it if you can accept its problems.
In a lot of ways, this game is a bloated over-designed mess. There's some good stuff in there, but often it will come at you like a poorly placed swarm of spiders.
I will say that I really appreciate turn-based mode when it comes to fighting swarms.
As someone who bounced off the game when I first played it, I'm really enjoying the tun based mode. It makes managing aoe and micro classes really easy. Plus it's a toggle, so you can flip to regular if you're just crushing some kobolds real quick
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
The toggle is the biggest strength IMO. You don’t need turn based for trash fights that your party can auto attack through, all turn based does then is slow you down.
This Kinetic Knight stuff isn't doing it for me. I think I'm going to start over and do my research this time. Either a Scaled Fist Monk/Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple or a Druid/Barbarian that turns into a bear and rages. I was disappointed to learn that Feral Combat Training didn't make it into the game, so no druid/monk kung fu panda shenanigans.
This Kinetic Knight stuff isn't doing it for me. I think I'm going to start over and do my research this time. Either a Scaled Fist Monk/Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple or a Druid/Barbarian that turns into a bear and rages. I was disappointed to learn that Feral Combat Training didn't make it into the game, so no druid/monk kung fu panda shenanigans.
I think you can just respec, I don't think you have to start all the way over.
This Kinetic Knight stuff isn't doing it for me. I think I'm going to start over and do my research this time. Either a Scaled Fist Monk/Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple or a Druid/Barbarian that turns into a bear and rages. I was disappointed to learn that Feral Combat Training didn't make it into the game, so no druid/monk kung fu panda shenanigans.
I think you can just respec, I don't think you have to start all the way over.
I am playing on Challenging. The NPC wasn't giving me the respec option.
I got this for Xbox and am playing on challenging and it seems pretty easy with huge spikes from time to time. I kinda want to bump to hard but the spikes are very spikey.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Restarted as a Motherless Tiefling Mad Dog barbarian with the intent of multi-ing to Defender of the First World druid.
The assassin in the tutorial fight didn't even last through my bear's first two claw attacks.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Started playing this over the weekend. Played a chunk of 3.5 back in the day, so Pathfinder is hitting all that goodness. Unfortunately it's also hitting a lot of the bad elements, with the usual issue with my ultimate badass fighter underwhelming due to the usual issues of enemy BAB and STR bonuses increasing faster than my AC, my damage being limited by equipment, and of course the good equipment costing $TEXAS. It's a fighter, I knew what I was getting into, but it's sad.
And I've been shouting obscenities at the TV as the party can't seem to roll above a 5 or 6 when attempting to throw alchemical fire at the thrice cursed spider swarms. That's in addition to the obscenities shouted when the badass fighter couldn't roll above a 10 over the course of four combat rounds. So much hate.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Started playing this over the weekend. Played a chunk of 3.5 back in the day, so Pathfinder is hitting all that goodness. Unfortunately it's also hitting a lot of the bad elements, with the usual issue with my ultimate badass fighter underwhelming due to the usual issues of enemy BAB and STR bonuses increasing faster than my AC, my damage being limited by equipment, and of course the good equipment costing $TEXAS. It's a fighter, I knew what I was getting into, but it's sad.
And I've been shouting obscenities at the TV as the party can't seem to roll above a 5 or 6 when attempting to throw alchemical fire at the thrice cursed spider swarms. That's in addition to the obscenities shouted when the badass fighter couldn't roll above a 10 over the course of four combat rounds. So much hate.
The spider swarms are kind of infamous for being an early game roadblock. I think you can also equip torches and use those to attack them? Should be better than swords. Or just hold off on that area until you get a caster with a couple levels.
AC really shouldn't be a problem. I only play on Easy difficulty so I didn't have to worry about min-maxing, but I know I heard about builds that get you to like 30+ AC by level 5. It seems like non-full casters (i.e. not Wizards, Clerics, etc) get a lot of benefit out of multiclassing.
Started playing this over the weekend. Played a chunk of 3.5 back in the day, so Pathfinder is hitting all that goodness. Unfortunately it's also hitting a lot of the bad elements, with the usual issue with my ultimate badass fighter underwhelming due to the usual issues of enemy BAB and STR bonuses increasing faster than my AC, my damage being limited by equipment, and of course the good equipment costing $TEXAS. It's a fighter, I knew what I was getting into, but it's sad.
And I've been shouting obscenities at the TV as the party can't seem to roll above a 5 or 6 when attempting to throw alchemical fire at the thrice cursed spider swarms. That's in addition to the obscenities shouted when the badass fighter couldn't roll above a 10 over the course of four combat rounds. So much hate.
The spider swarms are kind of infamous for being an early game roadblock. I think you can also equip torches and use those to attack them? Should be better than swords. Or just hold off on that area until you get a caster with a couple levels.
AC really shouldn't be a problem. I only play on Easy difficulty so I didn't have to worry about min-maxing, but I know I heard about builds that get you to like 30+ AC by level 5. It seems like non-full casters (i.e. not Wizards, Clerics, etc) get a lot of benefit out of multiclassing.
Yeah, I googled around and there's some stuff where you dip into monk and duelist and some other shiz so that you can apply all sorts of stat bonuses to your AC. I can appreciate that level of min-maxing, but it's not really something I want to roll with myself, not on this character at least. Honestly, it's not really a problem with the game specifically, the whole thing with fighter types growing linearly while magic types go exponential has been around for ages.
The swarms aren't the worst. It's more the crappy rolls that were bugging me. There have been some sweet rolls for some of the other characters. Undead scythe lady has gotten some very timely crits for nearly 40 damage a few times, but my guy just has been underperforming.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Reminder that if you are playing on the default "Challenging" difficulty, you are handing all the baddies the equivalent of +4 to every single d20 roll the baddies make, because they receive a raw +2 bonus Just Because, then an additional +4 to all of their abilities.
If you want to play at something more sane, make sure to turn off those stat boosts.
Reminder that if you are playing on the default "Challenging" difficulty, you are handing all the baddies the equivalent of +4 to every single d20 roll the baddies make, because they receive a raw +2 bonus Just Because, then an additional +4 to all of their abilities.
If you want to play at something more sane, make sure to turn off those stat boosts.
I'm playing on the normal setting (or something like that), which is what shows up as the default. It slaps some debuffs on the enemy and gives you ME style combat deaths where everyone is just 'resting' not dead as long as you don't TPK. I scoped out the higher level difficulties and... screw that. I don't even want to think about the slog of trying to play on the super unpossible level. Maybe a few levels in with ultimate min-maxing it becomes something you can manage, but getting going sounds like an exercise in save scumming.
Yeah, AC Fuckery is probably a good idea. At least now I managed to pick up some legitimate arcane spell casters for the group. It's just somewhat annoying to be reduced to a meatshield, and not even a particularly effective one at that since AC doesn't scale particularly well. Somewhat sad that much ink has been spent trying to make fighters more effective and yet here we still are.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Also keep in mind that late game is really rough on armor tanks.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
About the spider swarms. It’s worth repeating:
You don’t have to fight them.
What you are sent into that cave for can be acquired without fighting them. Hug the bottom of the cave and move towards the back and you shouldn’t aggro any on your way to the plant you need to get stuff from.
Careful planning from before character creation, or clever use of respec.
Multiclassing.
Dipping into Monk (1 or 2, Scaled Fist is good) and/or Paladin (2, maybe Divine Hunter).
Dipping into Rogue (Thug 4 is nice) if you want to be better at melee (Dazzling Display and a bunch of little stuff adds up to +5AB).
Dipping into Stalwart Defender (+1 AC, Defensive Stance).
Oh and also you want to turn Defensive Stance on and never off again.
The General Theory of PF:KM AC Fuckery is...
AC from stats > AC from armor.
Your tank needs around 50-55 touch AC to survive the endgame.
So if you spend some time googling about how to spec PF:KM tanks, you'll see a lot of goofball multi-classes that exist to pile on AC from stats: Scaled Fist for CHA->AC, Duelist for Int->AC, etc., etc.
Hey boys and girls , so I’m doing a challenging difficulty run and was wondering if there was a guide to min maxing the kingdom building events and side quests . I’ve beaten the game a few times so I spoilers are fine , I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything this time around.
Hey boys and girls , so I’m doing a challenging difficulty run and was wondering if there was a guide to min maxing the kingdom building events and side quests . I’ve beaten the game a few times so I spoilers are fine , I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything this time around.
I used a guide from the Steam forums. TBH, on a second playthrough, I'd probably just set it to easy and/or use a mod that makes sure you can't fail any of them.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Man I need to pick my run back up. I’m about half way through Mother of Monsters and got distracted.
The amount of times I fail a 2-5 roll and the enemy passes a 15+ ( including two consecutive 19+ rolls that caused a game over) is going to make me lose it. Other then that challenging run going swell. Really hope some news for the sequel is shown soon.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
The amount of times I fail a 2-5 roll and the enemy passes a 15+ ( including two consecutive 19+ rolls that caused a game over) is going to make me lose it. Other then that challenging run going swell. Really hope some news for the sequel is shown soon.
Enemies that are three stories tall shouldn’t dodge like they are fucking orange jumpsuit anime ninjas. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Also using a wizard on this run for something different and cloud kill /stinking cloud really do make sections much easier.
Edit-
Finally did that optional astra demon / thanodemon fights! And then I failed a quest because I entered the area before I had the last step of that quest and you can’t go back in .
Extra spicy take - Armag is a bro and isnt chaotic evil.
Why just challenge mode ? Why not play unfair you scrub ?
Well because I never played pathfinder and only knew about it from overhearing friends talk about it . In fact on this replay the fact that I was more familiar with the rules made it much much more manageable and even easier then normal in some fights,
Kingdom Management has to go or not be a game over conditions. I reached the pitax chapter with a serene kingdom I went did everything and waiting for endgame sequence to begin . However I now had 0% chance to solve any problem and I was being swarmed by them even though I had already solved the war. It was a guaranteed game over no chance to escape after 150 hours of time put in. Had to use a bag of tricks to allow me to continue.
On that note perception checks are good, but extremely high checks for one of a kind stuff in areas you can never go back to are annoying . Even if you get another chance every level up do they expect you to run around in every dungeon to see if anyone can see a hidden door?
The stolen lands dungeon and the story told through the items is good.
The game relies heavily on buffs to make fights manageable . Delay poison is a must in general , deathward on all melee forever in case undead show up otherwise you are eating negative levels and stat drain . If you don’t have freedom of movement on everyone or taking the blind fight feat you will never survive the wild hunt who occupy most of the endgame battles . The constant buffing -> fighting as many things you can-> resting to reapply buffs can get tedious . However when you do have everything up fights become almost trivial .
Chapter 0/1 are by far the most dangerous .
Vivisectionist ( feral mutagen) and arcane trickster are my favorites by far,
Companion quests are good but Valerie is sub par . Nok Nok is the best. Never got a masterpiece from my craftsmen even though they dragged. me everywhere for their missions .
Almost all the fey are some flavor of neutral in game . They are also all massive jerks .
Wish there was more chances to use high level spells . Game ends around when you started getting 7 8 9 level spells a lot of the seem super fun but at that point all that’s left is the final boss.
So that may sound whiny but I do enjoy the game and eagerly await path of the righteous .
IIRC the "impossible to deal with unending wave of crisies" thing is intentional after Pitax/the last Bald hilltop fight. In fact, I believe it's the Bald Hilltop quest, not the main chapter quests, that dictates when the next chapter happens, so actually finishing the chapter rather than waiting for the final countdown will cut down on the amount of story-related crises that take almost a full month to do and give you more opportunities to send your advisors out on the sort of long-term opportunities and improvements that they couldn't do when they were constantly needing to fight off trolls or deal with the Bloom. I believe that some of the unique items you can get from the court crafters are even tied to reaching higher ranks in Kingdom skills as well (though I don't think that includes the masterpieces. That was just bad luck) if you needed more incentive to take a proactive approach to the MQ if you ever do a second playthrough.
The perception shenanigans is the main reason why I took the mod that added Detect Secret Doors, which actually reveals *all* perception-based hidden locations on the game map as long as they are within the caster eyesight (at it lasted forever too, as long as you stayed out of combat, so it became rote to clear a level, have Linzi cast the spell, and then run around everywhere looking for loot.)
Still managed to miss out a location on the world map because of a failed check though. It was in Pitax too, and by the time I realized it I had pretty much zero chance to relevel and return to the spot without getting the kingdom fail game over from all the doomed to fail events of the last chapter. One of several examples in the game of "why you shouldn't put die rolls for all non-combat checks even if that's 'accurate' to playing TT."
I'm also kinda torn about the amount of buffing that many places you need. On one hand, it forces the player to have some meta knowledge of Pathfinder and/or the 3.5e D&D rules Pathfinder is based on to not hit a brick wall because you lack the right spells to protect you and counter their antics, but on the other it makes this one of the few games where I actually bother with buff and debuff effects that I would take and use instead of just more ways of hitting the enemy even harder.
As someone who has played pathfinder pretty consistently since it popped out 10+ years ago: Owlcat is a sadist when it comes to game difficulty. Rather than adding more monsters to fights, making the game naturally more difficult, they just add bullshit numbers onto save DCs, AC, to-hit, etc. True-to-book difficulty is achieved with a mix of normal/easy difficulty. I tried hard mode once, and I kept getting stuck against level 2 Goblin Alchemists that had 30+ AC for absolutely zero goddamned reason, when they should have at BEST an AC of 16-18. Literally six level 1 PCs attacking and missing a fuckin' goblin for over a minute.
Realistically any fighter, barb, paladin, or ranger should hit their (first) attack 70-90% of the time. Crazy ACs and saves really reinforce the 5-minute adventuring day gameplay that I find to be rather boring. Buffing 30+ spells before every combat is also a snoozefest for me. I'd highly recommend just dropping the difficulty.
IIRC the "impossible to deal with unending wave of crisies" thing is intentional after Pitax/the last Bald hilltop fight. In fact, I believe it's the Bald Hilltop quest, not the main chapter quests, that dictates when the next chapter happens, so actually finishing the chapter rather than waiting for the final countdown will cut down on the amount of story-related crises that take almost a full month to do and give you more opportunities to send your advisors out on the sort of long-term opportunities and improvements that they couldn't do when they were constantly needing to fight off trolls or deal with the Bloom. I believe that some of the unique items you can get from the court crafters are even tied to reaching higher ranks in Kingdom skills as well (though I don't think that includes the masterpieces. That was just bad luck) if you needed more incentive to take a proactive approach to the MQ if you ever do a second playthrough.
The perception shenanigans is the main reason why I took the mod that added Detect Secret Doors, which actually reveals *all* perception-based hidden locations on the game map as long as they are within the caster eyesight (at it lasted forever too, as long as you stayed out of combat, so it became rote to clear a level, have Linzi cast the spell, and then run around everywhere looking for loot.)
Still managed to miss out a location on the world map because of a failed check though. It was in Pitax too, and by the time I realized it I had pretty much zero chance to relevel and return to the spot without getting the kingdom fail game over from all the doomed to fail events of the last chapter. One of several examples in the game of "why you shouldn't put die rolls for all non-combat checks even if that's 'accurate' to playing TT."
I'm also kinda torn about the amount of buffing that many places you need. On one hand, it forces the player to have some meta knowledge of Pathfinder and/or the 3.5e D&D rules Pathfinder is based on to not hit a brick wall because you lack the right spells to protect you and counter their antics, but on the other it makes this one of the few games where I actually bother with buff and debuff effects that I would take and use instead of just more ways of hitting the enemy even harder.
I did beeline the mq every chapter instantly! It’s just that I had 0% chance for all events afterwards even after killing irovetti so I would have to wait around 200 days for the last chapter to start , which wasn’t going to happen the kingdom would crumble long before then. This was my third playthrough and that’s never happened before.
As someone who has played pathfinder pretty consistently since it popped out 10+ years ago: Owlcat is a sadist when it comes to game difficulty. Rather than adding more monsters to fights, making the game naturally more difficult, they just add bullshit numbers onto save DCs, AC, to-hit, etc. True-to-book difficulty is achieved with a mix of normal/easy difficulty. I tried hard mode once, and I kept getting stuck against level 2 Goblin Alchemists that had 30+ AC for absolutely zero goddamned reason, when they should have at BEST an AC of 16-18. Literally six level 1 PCs attacking and missing a fuckin' goblin for over a minute.
Realistically any fighter, barb, paladin, or ranger should hit their (first) attack 70-90% of the time. Crazy ACs and saves really reinforce the 5-minute adventuring day gameplay that I find to be rather boring. Buffing 30+ spells before every combat is also a snoozefest for me. I'd highly recommend just dropping the difficulty.
Oh yeah I noticed some enemies were incredibly strong compared to everyone else. Seemed to be one or two types per chapter. Shoutouts to owlbears and mandragora swarms which are apparently the deadliest things on the fucking planet. The later in particular was harder then any boss.
As someone who has played pathfinder pretty consistently since it popped out 10+ years ago: Owlcat is a sadist when it comes to game difficulty. Rather than adding more monsters to fights, making the game naturally more difficult, they just add bullshit numbers onto save DCs, AC, to-hit, etc. True-to-book difficulty is achieved with a mix of normal/easy difficulty. I tried hard mode once, and I kept getting stuck against level 2 Goblin Alchemists that had 30+ AC for absolutely zero goddamned reason, when they should have at BEST an AC of 16-18. Literally six level 1 PCs attacking and missing a fuckin' goblin for over a minute.
Realistically any fighter, barb, paladin, or ranger should hit their (first) attack 70-90% of the time. Crazy ACs and saves really reinforce the 5-minute adventuring day gameplay that I find to be rather boring. Buffing 30+ spells before every combat is also a snoozefest for me. I'd highly recommend just dropping the difficulty.
I'm pretty sure I've played most of the high-profile isometric RPGs at this point and not one of them has come anywhere near close to Kingmaker's difficulty. When I was going through the Varnholdt's Lot DLC I reached a point where I was fed up of how gruelling the combat was, set the difficulty to the absolute minimum that it could be - 20% damage, reduced debuffs, bonuses to hit rolls for my team and maluses to the enemy, etc. - and I still died to the final boss.
It completely killed my motivation to play the game more, which was a shame as I'd jumped over to the DLC at the point it becomes relevant to the main story. It's not even like the fights are complicated tactically, it's just the numbers behind the scenes being set at absolutely bonkers levels.
It really feels like a holdover from a different time that there are buffs that are essentially required in order to handle combat but they have to be recast after every single rest/ every few minutes. If the spell makes the difference between a capital-D Deadly encounter and a walk in the park, just subtract that spell slot and have the effect always on. Or at the very least, have an in-game feature where you make a list of buff spells and the characters will auto-cast them after each rest and re-cast when they wear off do long as they have slots available.
At least Communal Delay Poison is one cast for the full group. Casting spells like Barkskin and other single-target buffs were even worse. Or the one that made a bunch of phantom duplicates of each character. By the end of the game, I spent almost as much time casting and recasting the same buff spells as I did fighting.
Part of the problem is that when you’re playing on the tabletop you can just say “I cast these spells” and they happen. You don’t have to hunt through the UI for each of them and then sit through a lengthy casting animation. The other part is that high-level Pathfinder just gets silly with how big the numbers get.
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I did. What I wanted to do was take the supplies and go rest somewhere else. Game wouldn't let me.
It is reasonable to think that you might get attacked there...the game even has mechanics for camping in such a way that you are ready for an attack, but this one used none of them, and just fast forwards to the fight.
It's also simply bad game design to put that fight in that area at that time. The fight should be challenging, but not completely impossible for characters who are likely to be adventuring in the area. Maybe have it spawn at a later level as a bonus challenge fight for folks that go back to earlier areas to see if they missed anything.
Remember, this is Pathfinder, not Call of Cthulhu or Hunter: the Reckoning. The default assumption should not be "make one mistake based on incomplete information, die."
Yeah, I found that part to be bullshit as well.
That said, I did come back for revenge on that fucker later on. Reward: A diamond... woo.
The eventual solution I found was to throw out grease and web at the spot where the caster is going to appear. They failed their reflex save enough that it gave me enough time to kill the giant spider with some good rolls. Now the problem is that Amiri can't make it to the caster either and I spent the next 30 rounds slowly whittling down her HP with ranged touch spells as she alternated between casting disabling spells and falling prone in the greased up web.
First time running into War Wisps:
Chain lightning
Chain lightning
Chain lightning
Chain...
Party dead.
Second time, after making sure someone has communal Resist Energy:
Chain...
Hahaha fuck you war wisps.
I will say that I really appreciate turn-based mode when it comes to fighting swarms.
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I am playing on Challenging. The NPC wasn't giving me the respec option.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
The assassin in the tutorial fight didn't even last through my bear's first two claw attacks.
And I've been shouting obscenities at the TV as the party can't seem to roll above a 5 or 6 when attempting to throw alchemical fire at the thrice cursed spider swarms. That's in addition to the obscenities shouted when the badass fighter couldn't roll above a 10 over the course of four combat rounds. So much hate.
The spider swarms are kind of infamous for being an early game roadblock. I think you can also equip torches and use those to attack them? Should be better than swords. Or just hold off on that area until you get a caster with a couple levels.
AC really shouldn't be a problem. I only play on Easy difficulty so I didn't have to worry about min-maxing, but I know I heard about builds that get you to like 30+ AC by level 5. It seems like non-full casters (i.e. not Wizards, Clerics, etc) get a lot of benefit out of multiclassing.
I jumped back to the main storyline afterwards and the change in difficulty, even at the same character level, was markedly noticeable.
Yeah, I googled around and there's some stuff where you dip into monk and duelist and some other shiz so that you can apply all sorts of stat bonuses to your AC. I can appreciate that level of min-maxing, but it's not really something I want to roll with myself, not on this character at least. Honestly, it's not really a problem with the game specifically, the whole thing with fighter types growing linearly while magic types go exponential has been around for ages.
The swarms aren't the worst. It's more the crappy rolls that were bugging me. There have been some sweet rolls for some of the other characters. Undead scythe lady has gotten some very timely crits for nearly 40 damage a few times, but my guy just has been underperforming.
If you want to play at something more sane, make sure to turn off those stat boosts.
AC Fuckery includes, but is not limited to:
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I'm playing on the normal setting (or something like that), which is what shows up as the default. It slaps some debuffs on the enemy and gives you ME style combat deaths where everyone is just 'resting' not dead as long as you don't TPK. I scoped out the higher level difficulties and... screw that. I don't even want to think about the slog of trying to play on the super unpossible level. Maybe a few levels in with ultimate min-maxing it becomes something you can manage, but getting going sounds like an exercise in save scumming.
Yeah, AC Fuckery is probably a good idea. At least now I managed to pick up some legitimate arcane spell casters for the group. It's just somewhat annoying to be reduced to a meatshield, and not even a particularly effective one at that since AC doesn't scale particularly well. Somewhat sad that much ink has been spent trying to make fighters more effective and yet here we still are.
You don’t have to fight them.
What you are sent into that cave for can be acquired without fighting them. Hug the bottom of the cave and move towards the back and you shouldn’t aggro any on your way to the plant you need to get stuff from.
The General Theory of PF:KM AC Fuckery is...
AC from stats > AC from armor.
Your tank needs around 50-55 touch AC to survive the endgame.
So if you spend some time googling about how to spec PF:KM tanks, you'll see a lot of goofball multi-classes that exist to pile on AC from stats: Scaled Fist for CHA->AC, Duelist for Int->AC, etc., etc.
I used a guide from the Steam forums. TBH, on a second playthrough, I'd probably just set it to easy and/or use a mod that makes sure you can't fail any of them.
Ah, the XCom curse.
Also using a wizard on this run for something different and cloud kill /stinking cloud really do make sections much easier.
Edit-
Finally did that optional astra demon / thanodemon fights! And then I failed a quest because I entered the area before I had the last step of that quest and you can’t go back in .
Extra spicy take - Armag is a bro and isnt chaotic evil.
Why just challenge mode ? Why not play unfair you scrub ?
Well because I never played pathfinder and only knew about it from overhearing friends talk about it . In fact on this replay the fact that I was more familiar with the rules made it much much more manageable and even easier then normal in some fights,
Kingdom Management has to go or not be a game over conditions. I reached the pitax chapter with a serene kingdom I went did everything and waiting for endgame sequence to begin . However I now had 0% chance to solve any problem and I was being swarmed by them even though I had already solved the war. It was a guaranteed game over no chance to escape after 150 hours of time put in. Had to use a bag of tricks to allow me to continue.
On that note perception checks are good, but extremely high checks for one of a kind stuff in areas you can never go back to are annoying . Even if you get another chance every level up do they expect you to run around in every dungeon to see if anyone can see a hidden door?
The stolen lands dungeon and the story told through the items is good.
The game relies heavily on buffs to make fights manageable . Delay poison is a must in general , deathward on all melee forever in case undead show up otherwise you are eating negative levels and stat drain . If you don’t have freedom of movement on everyone or taking the blind fight feat you will never survive the wild hunt who occupy most of the endgame battles . The constant buffing -> fighting as many things you can-> resting to reapply buffs can get tedious . However when you do have everything up fights become almost trivial .
Chapter 0/1 are by far the most dangerous .
Vivisectionist ( feral mutagen) and arcane trickster are my favorites by far,
Companion quests are good but Valerie is sub par . Nok Nok is the best. Never got a masterpiece from my craftsmen even though they dragged. me everywhere for their missions .
Almost all the fey are some flavor of neutral in game . They are also all massive jerks .
Wish there was more chances to use high level spells . Game ends around when you started getting 7 8 9 level spells a lot of the seem super fun but at that point all that’s left is the final boss.
So that may sound whiny but I do enjoy the game and eagerly await path of the righteous .
The perception shenanigans is the main reason why I took the mod that added Detect Secret Doors, which actually reveals *all* perception-based hidden locations on the game map as long as they are within the caster eyesight (at it lasted forever too, as long as you stayed out of combat, so it became rote to clear a level, have Linzi cast the spell, and then run around everywhere looking for loot.)
Still managed to miss out a location on the world map because of a failed check though. It was in Pitax too, and by the time I realized it I had pretty much zero chance to relevel and return to the spot without getting the kingdom fail game over from all the doomed to fail events of the last chapter. One of several examples in the game of "why you shouldn't put die rolls for all non-combat checks even if that's 'accurate' to playing TT."
I'm also kinda torn about the amount of buffing that many places you need. On one hand, it forces the player to have some meta knowledge of Pathfinder and/or the 3.5e D&D rules Pathfinder is based on to not hit a brick wall because you lack the right spells to protect you and counter their antics, but on the other it makes this one of the few games where I actually bother with buff and debuff effects that I would take and use instead of just more ways of hitting the enemy even harder.
Realistically any fighter, barb, paladin, or ranger should hit their (first) attack 70-90% of the time. Crazy ACs and saves really reinforce the 5-minute adventuring day gameplay that I find to be rather boring. Buffing 30+ spells before every combat is also a snoozefest for me. I'd highly recommend just dropping the difficulty.
I did beeline the mq every chapter instantly! It’s just that I had 0% chance for all events afterwards even after killing irovetti so I would have to wait around 200 days for the last chapter to start , which wasn’t going to happen the kingdom would crumble long before then. This was my third playthrough and that’s never happened before.
Oh yeah I noticed some enemies were incredibly strong compared to everyone else. Seemed to be one or two types per chapter. Shoutouts to owlbears and mandragora swarms which are apparently the deadliest things on the fucking planet. The later in particular was harder then any boss.
I'm pretty sure I've played most of the high-profile isometric RPGs at this point and not one of them has come anywhere near close to Kingmaker's difficulty. When I was going through the Varnholdt's Lot DLC I reached a point where I was fed up of how gruelling the combat was, set the difficulty to the absolute minimum that it could be - 20% damage, reduced debuffs, bonuses to hit rolls for my team and maluses to the enemy, etc. - and I still died to the final boss.
It completely killed my motivation to play the game more, which was a shame as I'd jumped over to the DLC at the point it becomes relevant to the main story. It's not even like the fights are complicated tactically, it's just the numbers behind the scenes being set at absolutely bonkers levels.
At least Communal Delay Poison is one cast for the full group. Casting spells like Barkskin and other single-target buffs were even worse. Or the one that made a bunch of phantom duplicates of each character. By the end of the game, I spent almost as much time casting and recasting the same buff spells as I did fighting.