MikeTheRed

I completely don't get why anyone is complaining about this. You. Do. Not. Have. To. Click. On. Gold. NPCs. EVER. This is like complaining that the game includes a Russian translation when you play the game in English. It's content whose presence in no way interferes with your game. Don't like it? Don't click on it. It's not like you're forced to talk to read their stories to advance the plot of the game. Tombstones are the same thing. Don't click on them. They do not impact the game. Move on. I bet these same people get really angry when they see someone enjoying a book they don't like.

Vampire: Bloodlines had this system as well, by the way. I think the system is fine, and it reminds me very much of my pen and paper days. I don't think we'd even dream of rewarding our players from running around killing everything in sight, but at the end of each session you'd typically get some XP, even if you hadn't fought anything. Yeah, I'm sure this isn't new to PoE, just that it's pretty rare in the genre in general these days, and the game doesn't explain this as well as perhaps it could. I actually like this XP method, as it's more about what my character does in the world at large, and less about how many kobolds he skewers (a lot).

It probably bears repeating, but it's a HUGE and not immediately apparent feature that can make leveling SEEM slower. There is no combat XP. All XP is earned through questing, unlocking doors/boxes and other special actions. Kill a dragon for fun? Great loot but no XP. Kill a dragon to liberate a group of prisoners? XP bonanza! It never clearly states this that I could find in the game, and I originally thought "Man, I've killed a TON of stuff and nothing has happened yet... what's going on?" It's a big departure from other CRPGs so it takes a little bit of adjustment to get used to. But it has the benefit of letting Obsidian very tightly control the balance of game encounters. They know with a lot of certainty that by the time you reach certain points, you've hit a certain amount of XP, keeping players from being under/over powered by too much.

Pretty sure pets are just cosmetic items.

Yeah, I really wish the soundtrack files were properly named and tagged. I just went through and album tagged them at least so iTunes would sort them correctly.

I was really hoping I could download and listen to the soundtrack ahead of launch at least I had the DAI soundtrack on loop for the 3-4 days leading up to launch.

I only had about 15min last night to fiddle with the beta build and I found myself saying over and over again: This is JUST like playing an old Infinity Engine game. I mean, down to the icons, the interactions, the art style, everything. This is what I'd expect from a Baldur's Gate 3, or Icewind Dale 3. So yay nostalgia!

I'm going to guess March 10th!