Leaderboard

Re: GoT, this made me chuckle.

I finished Ironman Santa Rosa. Bib #1570 if you want to see the results. It took 15 hours and 7 minutes. I started this whole triathlon thing because I wanted to see what my physical limits were, and I found them. It was humbling. The swim was fine. I got cold at one point, but I only had mild thoughts of quitting. The bike was hard after around mile 50. I just kept trying to get to the next 5-mile segment. It took me an hour longer than I hoped, and I was really uncomfortable by mile 112. I never want to sit on my bike again. I also burned badly, so that was bad planning. The run was pure misery. I walked a lot of the miles. Every once in awhile I'd find someone to jog and talk to, which helped. It was a 3 lap loop, and when I saw my wife after lap 2 I totally broke down crying. I walked for awhile with a blanket (since it was now nightime), ate some chicken broth, vomitted up the chicken broth, then just tried to stumble forward. Oddly enough, with 2 miles to go, I was able to start running and ditched the blanket. I finished on a nice jog, but it was still about a 6 hour marathon. That was so hard. At least I finished. It was not a sure thing.

Fun facts about GoT:

Well, I liked that GoT episode. Only one thing was bugging me this time: the super precise scorpions suddenly weren't super precise anymore. Hell, suddenly soldiers couldn't even move them while in the last episode, we've seen them machinegun-fire the heck out of them.

To clarify, this isn't a rumor from fans, this is a direct statement by the actor who played Ser Barristan Selmy, who has met up with GRRM on multiple occassions. He flat out said "George already has the finished books" on a stage. He may have been talking out his behind, but as far as sources go that one's at least on a higher rung than, say, an anonymous 4chan post.

if only the would add an action point system tied to DEX. That would be ideal for me

Oh, easy. Stop splitting athletes up in "men" and "women" and create categories for those above and below a testosterone threshold. They could even create a "super" league for those who don't mind pumping themselves full of performance enhancing chemicals, steroids, whatever. (edit: It wouldn't be that different from wrestling, boxing etc. where you have weight categories to even the playfield between contestants) On a less serious note, waiting for the first complaint about contestants trying to win races by using viagra (for getting those extra inches closer to the finishing line)!

When are they making swkotor 3 I've played tor very disappointed as it's nothing like swkotor please shed some light on the situation as it's been years and nothing comes close to the swkotor!!!

Hello. I wanted to express my thanks to the developers for the game, but especially for the game mode turn based. I completely forgot how it felt and it's great. I remember playing games like Ambermoon, Amberstar, Albion, and I loved that back then, and it was not without reason. PoE 2 and also part 1 were good games in this sense, but the turn-based fight has only provided new shore for me. That's the way classes that I do not like to play get a whole new impetus and offer me what I've been looking for. In real-time or hand-made breaks, this feeling is completely submerged, where it really comes into its own in turn-based mode. Well, I can only say, in the next part or game again builds such a turn-based mode, it is definitely worth it and it has friends as you see me. PoE2 without the mode I would probably put aside early, I play it actually only in this variant. I always feel good in real time if the game speed is generally manageable and feels like old MMORPGs, for example. Dark Age of Camelot, or the Classic WoW, or a game like Dragons Age Origins. Then healer classes are fun, even if they are singleplayer games. I loved playing a healer in DAO and I always like to play this class design. Sorry for my bad English. I wrote it with a translator. Above all, this post was about thanking you for the great tactical game mode and expressing that this has become rare but brings great joy, please, more of it. Bye

I can almost ignore initiative outright as it is because everyone is guaranteed to get one (and only one) action per round. This allows me to pretty much abuse heavy guns with my backline and completely dumping Dex in turn based is completely viable for most roles right now. I've dumped Dex in every member of my party except for my priest so she can buff everyone immediately, but even if I didn't do this I'd just have my party "wait" until my priest can go. I'm having a lot of success even on PoTD. I think having high Dex should maybe give you an extra action per turn or something like that.

it sometimes works with melee abilities that do full attack so long as you have a melee weapon combined. i think that's the magic with WotW and various weapon interactions. i thought that's what you were talking about with mule kick back when i didn't realize you were talking about the weapon proc (but mule kick is a primary attack so many levels of my mistake). still would work with the shroud of phantasm and using those skeletons to attack yourself first (before using them to trigger a bajillion chill fogs, but like i said boy is it tedious to get that brilliant trigger in the first place.

Skaen without Brilliant is not much more than a class without withdraw because of Woedica's challenge ;). Also how are you guys using melee abilities with hand mortar? It doesn't work in my game at least for Power Strike and Mule kick. (didn't try Clear out since it specifically says Melee weapon but maybe the irony is that one works?)

For me, she's stupid ever since day 1. Can't remember when I didn't facepalm about her.

@SChin Thank you for offering to help! I just sent over some save files, and appreciate any assistance you can offer.

^ Disagree on that last point. Her plot armor was always like that. How else would you survive a knife in the gut and a subsequent swim in the dirty sea?

I had this issue but my monk froze up as if he were casting a priest spell. Couldn't cancel the action or do anything. I ended up loading the save. It never happened again, though, so I didn't bother reporting it as I didn't know how to trigger it. I didn't even think it had anything to do with Stunning Blow or the monk class. Have you replicated it often? Also I find your jab at Obsidian uncalled for. Games are going to have bugs, and these bugs have arrived alongside waves of free content that go well beyond what many other studios would consider. Frustration is no excuse for disrespect.

Hello Axiomaticon, I'm sorry you are having these issues with lockpicking in your playthrough. Would you be able to send me the save file that is having this issue to support@obsidian.net along with a link to this thread as a reference. Once I have that, I'll take a look to see what's going on in your game and see how we might resolve this for you. Thank you, and sorry for the inconvenience this is causing your playthrough.

Exactly! They were only a problem when the plot needed the to be a problem. That is just plain lazy.

IC hit on a good point here. If we never heard of the books and this was just a TV show we'd be a lot more forgiving of all the plot holes, bad logic, and out of character stuff because the bar would just be lower. We EXPECT TV shows to be stupid and illogical. Duckman was ahead of his time (as he often was) in explaining how D&D are operating once the got off the leash of the source material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0N-kgMUbA&list=PLU5D41_64IxLx1cVxHp2a1RHaB1LE3uSW

I've made an interesting find : Upgraded abilities usually use their new PL for scaling. A PL1 ability with a PL3 upgrade will usually count as PL3 and thus will only benefit from PL above 3. However, there are some exceptions to that rule. It does make a difference, but not so much because usually there are a couple of PL difference between the initial ability and the upgraded one. Both Barbarian Shout-line and Frenzy-line do apply the initial PL1 though. And that makes a HUGE difference since their ultimate upgrades are PL7 and PL9. It is basically a +30% and +40% bonus to the PL scaling of these abilities. Now I understand better why Spirit Tornado and Driving Roar are my Favorites Barbs abilities

what i was going to try (when i have an evening free to experiment) was for hauani o whe to pre-buff a lot (a lot a lot, because of the small cleansing effect on each hit), and then use grouping/searing seal (because the ooze only resists perception afflictions) to try to trigger brilliant during combat, so i can spam mule kicks as needed (which will also flank), clear out if i need to interrupt two oozes at the same time. having storm of holy fire active via brilliant spamming (or scrolls of tornado) to help dps down greater/lesser oozes since they spam merge when they appear. since the tactician auto-restore resource upon successful interrupt works less well with Expert mode on because it's much, much harder to correctly time ability interrupts, actively having brilliant on somehow would help a lot.

A, you probably missed Boeroer's gif related to Blinding Smoke (from Hand Mortar) + Avenging Storm interaction. That disorienting effect is not a weapon attack, but AS 'thinks' it is, because it is "originating" from a weapon. With WotW or Clear Out the effect is devastating. Although, dunno, it might cross the line related to "spirit of the challenge". Btw, if tactician/scaen is under the effect of Brilliant Tactician, but does need to regenerate faith faster, he can flank himself and immediately remove it via Discipline Barrage or switching to Kapana Taga / Squid's Grasp. Once he unflanks himself he will get Brilliant Tactician back, and the first tick of it provides +1 discipline/faith immediately. This might be handy, provided that you can do it faster than once in 6s. Tactician/priest might also find useful Searing Seal and Spiritual Ally, for flanking purpose.

Turn Based Combat, no smash button crap like FFXV. Story is in between cheesy and serious, more to the cheesy side, and depending on title. In the titles, which I've played, there was no male abuse. But there is some sexual innuendo going around some NPCs at some point in every game. One of the NPCs in Arland Trilogy is called Esty Dee for a reason I think the game is more for female audiences, but me as 40 years old cis-gendered privileged white male, was able to enjoy most of the games from the series, despite Brie Larsons oppinion, that I should stick only to dude-bro targeted entertainment

well, lol i wasn't even thinking of the disorienting cone upgrade because i always do the other upgrade

Good analogy. But they didn't simply crash, they pointed the nose down to finish it asap. It seems HBO let them have more episodes and they didn't want it. This episode confirmed some leaks and

Imagine wasting more than an hour on that crap instead of reading a synopsis in the newspaper.

Honestly, I think the better idea would've been to make the combat system CTB-based rather than Initiative-based, because Pillars gameplay style would've far more directly adapted to such a system. Pillars mechanics were never designed around every person getting one action per round like in this tabletop-inspired Initiative system, each action is supposed to have a certain speed and incur a certain level of recovery time. You can do this in a CTB, so the effects of Pillars attributes wouldn't have to change and they would all be directly scalable in the same way they were in real-time. Higher dex would give characters more actions, more quickly. Intellect and Resolve could scale the duration of abilities based on the turns of individual characters rather than entire rounds, which makes both useless until you trigger specific break points. And they should've allowed you (and this part isn't even wholly necessary, just switching to CTB would address most of the problems so this is just my opinion) to trade your movement in a turn for an additional attack (or made attacks consume a chunk of your movement) so you don't feel like you're wasting a resource by standing there at the end of every action (and to keep damage output similar to real-time so the encounters didn't drag, and so "kiting" could be punished, etc). Every one of the problems Turn-Based Mode has is a result of them awkwardly forcing mechanics into a structure they weren't designed for. Honestly I feel like if they were going to design a turn-based system this way, they should've based it on the tabletop game Sawyer was making instead of trying to force the game's mechanics into another format. Just my opinion though, because if they were working with a CTB, they would've only had to balance the game by tweaking numbers rather than overhauling entire mechanics and systems. If they make a Turn-Based Mode for POE3, I hope they look at doing that instead.

What a dumpster fire.

When Hades One left he came back as Sand. I think Sharp One should come back as Rain. It is our duty to keep the ancient customs alive.

The fact that I can skip ship "combat" and go straight to boarding without breaking my ship or spamming 11112 is the best upgrade this game got in a while.

I'm going to have to agree: turn based is very disappointing as is. Since it was in beta so long I assumed they were incorporating feedback, but I guess not. What's truly frustrating is the pushing of party members by moving other party members near them, and the same goes for enemies as well. How can you play tactically (which is what turn based should be about) when characters positions aren't fixed. It's so bizarre, and a big letdown.

Choosing single/multi classes happens only (1) at the moment you create a character/adventurer or (2) at the moment you recruit an NPC. You might be thinking of dual-classing as in the infinity engine games, where you could pick up a second class at level up if certain requirements were met - that doesn't exist in PoE2.

Two ways: 1. At end of combat there is a brief window where you qualify for brilliance (when all enemies are dead) so long as you aren't actively flanked (e.g. perception affliction). It only lasts a split second but is good enough to restore 1 class resource each. 2. The big one: withdraw Vela, and then use skaen's Shadowing Beyond. You drop all enemy aggro and qualify for Brilliance similar to what happens in #1. Importabtly, so long as you are far away, when Vela pops out of withdraw she won't aggro enemies so long as you don't, so you can sit and wait while Brilliance let's you buff yourself to high heaven. Obviously you should always keep a spare level 2 and level 5 cast open to do this, possibly more if you don't have interrupt protection.

Come on man, any time anyone on the Internet talks about why they were banned you can always assume it's a load of bull****.

she wanders around the spot where she aggros. this is improtant distinction from "when combat started" because i actually tried a run where i gave Halt to a priest+tactician, thinking I could Halt vela at the entrance of a dungeon and run around easily with brilliant, but if you're far away from vela when combat starts and she's not near combat, she will actually run towards combat, and once she "aggros" the enemies, she immediately goes into terrified mode where she starts wandering around randomly. (needless to say, i failed pretty quickly in that run because of vela beelining towards the fight once halt wore off. also i would have failed anyway because i could have sworn berath's could let you flee from fights but it would just de-aggro enemies instead of ending combat, but either i was remembering wrong or it's the sort of RNG that results in your death) it also means there's no way to shepherd her away from combat once she's terrified, unless you ahve coordinated positioning, fighter's pull effect, or something similar.

Just another reason, why the Live Service model is unsustainable in the long term.

Summoned weapons don't lose durability afaict. at least within any time frame excluding draining/salvaiton of time shenanigans (and even then, my abydon's run with an ascendant+skaen who used lots of salvation of time and lots of spiritual weapon and i never once saw it lose durability) I've been planning out an efficient act 2 to max out quests and minimize time, and I'm still puzzled about getting enough withdraw with sc helwalker in acts 2/3 (if people are used to solo-ing via split pulling i don't think people appreciate how much vela makes that impossible, necessitating lots of withdraw to handle what few fights you have to do early-mid with a mega stealth path). (Also, good thing I have a practice character now, or else Tinny the 19th would have failed on the way to nekataka due to a slaver ship that normally I don't worry about, but is pretty much lethal with Ondra + Wael, now I know how to sail to avoid it.) I've been thinking about Troubadour + Skaen. Because you can stealth so much of the early mid game, the early lack of resource recovery compared to tactician is not much of a concern. Sneak and get the bekarna cloak (blowing a few rests if needed), and then you can abuse Berath's. Start a fight, immediately withdraw Vela and Shadowing Beyond away to deaggro. But Berath's will keep combat active so you accumulate phrases. Keep summoning skeletons and whacking yourself until you trigger brilliant, then Salvation of Time spam like hundred times to max out Brilliant and all your buffs (you'll probably actually have to count the casts since wael will make it impossible to know how much duration you have), then go in as an unstoppable monster or against some megabosses just keep sending in animated weapons while you have perpetual withdraw on Vela. Against Sigilmaster you just have to remember to withdraw+shadowing beyond reset every time the cleansing rune comes up until you can just face tank it because auranic is out of spells and the other runes are destroyed. This would solve ever needing to worry about withdraw shortage and having no boss endgame but requires some act 2 pathing I haven't figured out yet. What do others think? Edit - didn't think that you need to kill concelhaut before getting the brilliant cloak and I'm not sure that's feasible. Edit 2 - never mind! i assumed i had gotten it from the orrery, but it appears to be "hidden object as a pile of books at the intersection, need 16 PER" which is totally stealthable. i think this might be a path worth pursuing. (especially because this will finally crack the nut of a celebrant, which is the only priest multiclass i have never found decent enough to run) edit 3 - once you get the cloak it basically doesn't matter what armor you have, so you can stay naked while whacking yourself so you're not constantly breaking your own gear.

I gave up trying to please him when I realized all of the responses he approves of are the most boring and make your PC sound bland and generic.

Unwarranted Self-Importance: The Thread

To me the spirit of the challenge is (or should be) that you can use cheese but not glitches. For example, doing the trick that lets you stack food bonuses I would say is a glitch. Using shadowing beyond to trigger brilliant is cheese. BDD/SoT shenanigans are cheese. If a form of cheese if found that trivializes the challenge (that's a big if, lots of things sound unbeatable during theorycraft but run into unexpected problems in practice), then I think the best way to handle it is to allow that one playthrough that uses that form of cheese, but only the one. Otherwise everyone else will just copy the strategy of the first. Unrelated question: I'm not on a computer that has the game on it at the moment. Will Vela invalidate the Ring of the Solitary Wanderer bonus?

While I can't compare to how it was before, as this patch was the first time I played it, it's just not very good. That's not to say it isn't enjoyable, it benefits from many of the strengths that Pillars of Eternity II already has as a game, but it also undermines many of those strengths with the mechanical approach it decided to take. The attribute system is way more rigid than a Pillars attribute system should be, focusing the system around min-maxing alike to other games. You're almost completely limited to one action per turn (since there's no AP system or ability to trade your movement for an action), preventing many characters from taking advantage of effects they themselves inflict and overall just making the combat far less dynamic than it is in real-time. Health and damage values are clearly tuned for real-time play, which causes combat in even easier encounters to drag (as you just straight up output less damage in turn-based than RTWP), and I imagine would massively increase the game's run-time. I have to agree with Wormerine's assessment that it's just a straight up inferior experience. I'm sure there are people out there who can and will enjoy it, so I'm glad it's in the game, but if you're choosing between the two or don't plan to go through the game multiple times, just play real-time. Turn-Based, for as much as I usually really enjoy Turn-Based games, is not worth the loss in the complexity of Pillars buildcraft, the slog of the longer encounters, or the reduced depth of many of combat's core mechanics.

I liked TB mode even in beta. I didn't play too much of 5.0, but I feel a bit disappointed by how little it has changed. It's been polished (some abilities rebalanced, tooltips work properly etc.) but underlying issues with the system haven't been addressed. I would say, it is good enough for a playthrough, if you prefer TB, over RTwP, or like me, don't want to deal with stutter during RTwP combat. Depending on how deep you engage with mechanics one might not even be bothered by issues TB combat has. I do consider it, to be inferior however, as it breaks some of the core principles of PoE system.

@SChin Guys, are you insane?! Have you verified translations before patch release, at least? I have no words... I mean, of course i have, but i will be banned if i write what i think about your QA standards and other things. English Russian

For me those are things not intended or exploits - using Gouging Strike and hiding for 1 hour until the boss is dead without fighting is probably one of them. But I think Obsidian should clarify that.

There's one thing I find a bit questionable: Cheating and using mods is clear, of course. About save-scumming, I really hope they have some sort of system in place to flag save files as "save-scummed" or something, if that's even possible. But the real question is the last part, what counts as "in a manner contrary to the spirit of the challenge"? I mean, I don't think this challenge is possible without some major cheese strategies, but having your save arbitrarily invalidated because of that would be quite disheartening.

Time restriction with Woedica's challenge force players to pick class with infinite resources and protecting Vela can be really painful problem. The good part of first ultimate was that players could at least try it with any class. I know it was possible to win as mage, priest, rogue or even druid (there was one succesful druid run?) not only those classes like monk, cipher or chanter. Josh said that playtesters wrote many pages about why it may be impossible to finish new UC. I know that PoE1 Ultimate was in the "impossible" state for some time. This time it actually may be impossible.

FYI, the forum update means we can finally just copy/paste twitter links! Huzzah!