My tale of mechanical woe (minor spoils)

[Cantousent]

The only real spoilerish thing regards the identity and duration of questions for the joinable NPCs.

 

Anyhow, my first run is a mage, pretty much always my first character given the option.  The game did a great job giving us a couple of joinable NPCs early

and then killing them off!  at least wasn't my pet dog this time, or there'd be hell to pay!

 

 

Anyhow, I was then in the first town with Aloth and Eder, and deciding which skills went with whom.  If you don't have mechanics, the game has a certain tedious element.  When you're not beating your head against a locked door or trying to figure out how your 1 mechanics  skills monkey can use 5,000 lockpicks on a chest, you're disarming traps all over the place the easy way, which is to say, by taking several flaming arrows to the chest.  I had to choose someone to stack a few points of mechanics to pick locks and I certainly didn't want to miss any NPC interaction, so here comes Aloth.  Unlike some folks on these boards, I like Aloth.  Being a mage, he's kind of redundant and can't seem to figure out exactly who he is, but he's got some great intraparty dialogue and it seems that Eder has a flame burning for one of his past souls.  All's good.  So, since you miss out on a lot of stuff without mechanics, and since I see that Lore tends to play more of a role in dialogue than mechanics, I stack my PC with Lore and dish out my mechanics skills to Aloth. 

 

...But you

finish Aloth's quest pretty early in the game and I wanted to make room for a different NPC in order to check out as many side quests as possible

.  I bade Aloth a fond farewell and packed him off to the stronghold to sip a few brews with the only adventurer I'd hired up to that point who was... you guessed it, a rogue I'd made to be my mechanical monkey until she got squeezed out to make room for an NPC.  So, my max mechanics at that point was 3.  Everything stays locked and every step might be another trap which, incidently, are far more likely to knock out a character than actual combat.  My party members were going down faster than a 2 bit courtesan in a 12 dollar brothel.  The doors aren't that big of a deal because I know you'll find keys to anything vital.  The chests?  Well, no biggie.  There's plenty of good loot and, on normal, the game is super easy anyway (*Not* a complaint).  Traps?  Egads, my characters needed to start wearing kneepads.

 

So, my lesson of woe?  After progressing quite a bit afterwards, I got tired of the slog and went back to an earlier save and jettisoned Sagani.  She and her dog can spend quality time baby-sitting the overpaid and largely useless hirelings for the rest of this game.  I'll just have to finish her quest in the *next* run, I guess.  Next time is either hard or PotD, so I better square away how some of this works beforehand because on the job training can be a real bitch.

 

EDIT:  It wasn't so much "wow" as "woe."

[Karkarov]

Just as an aside I believe mechanics 12 pretty much locks you for success on everything in game.  11 was where I ended up on my first play through and that gets "almost" everything, there are still some traps you can't beat without the 12.

[Achilles]

I hire a rogue after meeting Aloth and before recruiting Eder.

He will get you through Raedric's Keep and Od Nua.

Everything else can be handled by Durance.

[Gromnir]

The only real spoilerish thing regards the identity and duration of questions for the joinable NPCs.

 

Anyhow, my first run is a mage, pretty much always my first character given the option.  The game did a great job giving us a couple of joinable NPCs early

and then killing them off!  at least wasn't my pet dog this time, or there'd be hell to pay!

 

 

Anyhow, I was then in the first town with Aloth and Eder, and deciding which skills went with whom.  If you don't have mechanics, the game has a certain tedious element.  When you're not beating your head against a locked door or trying to figure out how your 1 mechanics  skills monkey can use 5,000 lockpicks on a chest, you're disarming traps all over the place the easy way, which is to say, by taking several flaming arrows to the chest.  I had to choose someone to stack a few points of mechanics to pick locks and I certainly didn't want to miss any NPC interaction, so here comes Aloth.  Unlike some folks on these boards, I like Aloth.  Being a mage, he's kind of redundant and can't seem to figure out exactly who he is, but he's got some great intraparty dialogue and it seems that Eder has a flame burning for one of his past souls.  All's good.  So, since you miss out on a lot of stuff without mechanics, and since I see that Lore tends to play more of a role in dialogue than mechanics, I stack my PC with Lore and dish out my mechanics skills to Aloth. 

 

...But you

finish Aloth's quest pretty early in the game and I wanted to make room for a different NPC in order to check out as many side quests as possible

.  I bade Aloth a fond farewell and packed him off to the stronghold to sip a few brews with the only adventurer I'd hired up to that point who was... you guessed it, a rogue I'd made to be my mechanical monkey until she got squeezed out to make room for an NPC.  So, my max mechanics at that point was 3.  Everything stays locked and every step might be another trap which, incidently, are far more likely to knock out a character than actual combat.  My party members were going down faster than a 2 bit courtesan in a 12 dollar brothel.  The doors aren't that big of a deal because I know you'll find keys to anything vital.  The chests?  Well, no biggie.  There's plenty of good loot and, on normal, the game is super easy anyway (*Not* a complaint).  Traps?  Egads, my characters needed to start wearing kneepads.

 

So, my lesson of woe?  After progressing quite a bit afterwards, I got tired of the slog and went back to an earlier save and jettisoned Sagani.  She and her dog can spend quality time baby-sitting the overpaid and largely useless hirelings for the rest of this game.  I'll just have to finish her quest in the *next* run, I guess.  Next time is either hard or PotD, so I better square away how some of this works beforehand because on the job training can be a real bitch.

our fist play were as a rogue... which got stymied by the reckless assault bug.  even so, traps were not issue.

 

our second run were a priest, whom we gave the merchant background precisely to get the +1 mechanics skill boost.  as a priest, we frequent ran into traps/locks that were one level outside our disarm/unlock range, even with lockpicks.  we lamented the absence o' a rogue companion for many hours.  even so, being a stalwart gamer, we considered our options rather than weeping over the inevitable.  we always took the mechanics bonus at inns.  this were sufficient for better than 80% o' locks and traps we encountered, but it were still a bit frustrating.  halfway through act 2 we found the +2 mechanics gloves... is a random drop though, so good luck.  gloves made us finally sufficient.  

 

the thing is, even if we had a rogue in our party, we would still max mechanics on durance and any priest pc.  mechanics math controls seal spells.  not only is mechanics maths more forgiving than is priest, but we get to add traps accuracy from mechanics to any seal spell.  with a functional 13 or 14 mechanics by end game, we would crit with seal spells more than a little. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Cantousent]

heh, I never realized that mechanics impacted the seal spells.  Just goes to show you.  I didn't see it on the tool tips for the seal spells and so I thought might was much more of a governing factor for them.  ...But I trust you.  Hmmm, next run, there's a good chance I'll stack Durance with it then.

 

On normal, Durance has tons of awesome healing spells that are unnecessary.  I still love hurling spells, but for a lot of battles, auto-attacking does the trick with the odd AoE smackdown.  I usually play normal then next hard and, if there's a setting, next hard until I get the hardest setting.  It seems to me that PoE has real legs, so I've got a few runs left.  I'll probably do a chanter and rogue.  I'll keep Durance my mechanical monkey for the chanter run and then make my rogue the primary locksmith on that run.

 

I like the twist on things with the skills, though.  I like the fact that I can give my front line tank just enough lore to use some scrolls that are most useful where he's standing in contact with the enemy.  I like the fact that I need to have a spread for stealth for all my characters. Frankly, I was so tickled by stealth that I probably pumped too much into it.  On the other hand, there are some bad guys past which my party can stroll at leisure.  It's just that they'll walk past the bad guys and fall victim to the trap if I don't have a mechanical engineer with them.  :Cant's rueful grin icon:

[Gromnir]

am actual understating the value o' mechanics for seal spells.  a 10 mechanics is gonna get you +30% trap accuracy bonus to seal spells.  the traps accuracy equation also results in an inherent, approximately, another 30% boost.  ~60% accuracy midway through the game for extreme useful spells?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[kaiki]

Just as an aside I believe mechanics 12 pretty much locks you for success on everything in game.  11 was where I ended up on my first play through and that gets "almost" everything, there are still some traps you can't beat without the 12.

 

You can use the scrolls that give +3 to mechanics and the +mechanic inn bonuses. Helps you to not need going to 11 in mechanics.

[Karkarov]

 

Just as an aside I believe mechanics 12 pretty much locks you for success on everything in game.  11 was where I ended up on my first play through and that gets "almost" everything, there are still some traps you can't beat without the 12.

 

You can use the scrolls that give +3 to mechanics and the +mechanic inn bonuses. Helps you to not need going to 11 in mechanics.

 

There are tons of better inn bonuses though ;p.

[kaiki]

 

 

Just as an aside I believe mechanics 12 pretty much locks you for success on everything in game.  11 was where I ended up on my first play through and that gets "almost" everything, there are still some traps you can't beat without the 12.

 

You can use the scrolls that give +3 to mechanics and the +mechanic inn bonuses. Helps you to not need going to 11 in mechanics.

 

There are tons of better inn bonuses though ;p.

 

 

For increasing mechanics? Don't think so.