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A good basic trick is to engage an enemy with Eder, then attack him with a weapon which has Reach. A staff would work. Unless the bad guy also has reach, he won't be able to respond. If enemy switches targets, punish him ! Take your guy which is not tied by the red arrow and position him on the opposite side. Flanked enemies get -10 to Deflection. The Eothas temple ruins are just hard like that. Shadows teleport and you can't do much to stop them. Make your squishies wear something tougher, and make sure one of their weapon sets contains a shield. Hatchets are also worth looking for, the weapon gives +5 Deflection bonus.

this is exactly why there should be some kind of limit on summons, a 6 chanter team can clear pretty much any map without moving from the first encounter using this, i killed the spider boss over by maerwald lol I believe I've found an elegant limitation to this! How about... Each invocation can be only be used once per encounter. This would mean you can only summon Ogres once per combat. If you wish to keep summoning, you would have to summon Skeletons next, or Wurms, or Will-o-Wisps, or a spectre. A limit like this would enforce diversity in combat. Instead of thinking which summon to spam, you would think in what order to cast your 6 or so invocations. Multi-chanter parties would be limited, and forced to specialize those chanters. One guy summons a drake, another does a tidal wave. It would also serve as a hard limit of how much a single chanter can do in combat. After a very long time he would be reduced to phrases. On the other hand, he would still be able to use all invocations per encounter.

I just realized something that gives Hunting Bows an edge. Marked Prey is +20 damage per hit. It's one of very few damage boosts in the game that is not based on percentage. +20 damage * fast is better than +20 damage * average. ------------------------------ Regarding realism and hunting bows: - it's not realistic for each human warrior or bandit to be fully covered in armor. It's expensive, it's cumbersome. Sailors in particular were known to avoid armor, no one likes to sink like a rock. Heavy armor was typically worn right before battle, because it's too exhausting in the long run. Lots and lots of soldiers were light infrantry and peasant conscripts. The best they could get was farming implements. Also, take a look at helmet designs. The heaviest ones, "pot" helmets, barely left two slits for eyes. This is how much they feared a random stray arrow. A proffesional knight would fight for living in many cases, and they couldn't afford a random critical hit. Unless you are completely covered in armor, an arrow can always find a way. - PoE heavily underplays the difference in firing speed for gameplay reasons. A good bowman could shoot 12 arrows per minute. A good crossbowman managed 2 bolts per minute. Against unarmored targets, a simple bow can be up to 6 times more effective. - I wouldn't overstate the penetration of crossbows. Ultimately we don't know how medieval crossbows worked. Just because we are more technologically advanced doesn't mean people of the era didn't have a myriad of tricks to make weapons more effective, or use them better. A big plus of crossbows was they were very easy to train. That's why a pope supposedly banned the use of crossbows against Christians - because they threatened social order. To give you something to think about, Gutenberg wasn't very keen to share his invention of print. No, he was hogging it for himself to make maximum profit. When a court ordered him to reveal his invention, he didn't comply. He was stopped while destroying the printing presses. Keeping an invention secret was a very popular attitude. I give Josh and other designers benefit of doubt. It's rare to get balance just right straight away. PoE is not printed, it doesn't have to worry about backwards compatibility etc. Balance patches will come, one has already come. How do you recognize that balance is good ? Balance is good when people stop talking about "the best ranged weapon", and start arguing which one is the best. When multiple threads like "Hunting/War/Scepters/Crossbows/Pistols are overpowered/underpowered" exist at the same time. People arguing what is best is a sign of good balance.

I've found a great way to reduce loading times a lot. Start a new game. Make sure your character is a Wizard. Then cast SlickMajestic's Solid State Drive.

Marked Enemy on Ranger also says exactly +20 damage. For the ranger AND the familiar. Somehow I don't notice it on Sagani. When I use it, it doesn't seem to have a big impact.

It does for Obsidian, they wanted to use this KS and game to finally get rid of publishers and their rules. Do they also want to get rid of Kickstarter, and become self-published ? Because it's safe to say they can fund next PoE-like game with another Kickstarter.

I just wish we had some indication if a creature has loot. Often it's common sense, but sometimes even animals drop surprising stuff. If Stealth allowed to see what loot (roughly) an enemy has, it would make pure stealth play more viable. Past early game I don't pick up weapons for selling unless they're at least Fine. 10 copper is not worth it. If I knew beforehand if the enemies have some Fine equipment - or just a bunch of plain ones - I could make a decision to sneak past them.

Multiclass was interesting in a dull, inflexible system like D&D. In PoE's system, there's no need for it. There's great flexibility when it comes to weapon and armor choice. I don't know about Wizards, but Priests and Druids don't have to memorize a specific spell. You get a wide selection right away, and don't have to prepare before resting. Also, D&D didn't have talents for a long time. PoE starts with talents. I have two druids in my party - PC and Hiravius. They don't feel boring and repetitive. One is more of a caster, the other a savage melee machine with some artillery abilities.

The lead designer of PoE does not like Wizards. They represent everything wrong about class design (according to his opinion). Right now even my fighter/tank is using more abilities per combat then my PC Wizard on auto-attack...Its really ironic... Good. Nice to play a system which doesn't dramatically favor wizards. For a change.

Is there only one smith in the world that can reforge it ? What if the smith is no longer available for me ??

Does it really need to have huge post-Kickstarter sales, though ? The point of Kickstarter is the game is funded before sales come in. This is assuming that 100% of costs were funded by Kickstarter, of course. Anything on top of that is a bonus.

Knocking a target down with Arbalest gives you a few seconds to reload the weapon in peace, while other party members get bonuses for attacking the prone target.

Actually one of major functions of the Stronghold is to be a money sink. It's not supposed to earn money, not much anyway.

The whole Stronghold thing feels forced, like someone at the dev team REALLY REALLY wanted one. And Torment: Tides of Numenera is going to have one, too (. I never wanted a castle, I prefer to be an explorer than to sit on my butt. Aside from that, it looks soooo sooo empty ! With a population like that, it's not attackers you should worry about. The place would be overrun with thieves. No way 8 hirelings would catch all thieves!!! They have to sleep and eat.

Thanks ! I still want to finish my first game, of course.

So I have this idea for a fun build, and want to try the 3 unused companions (Grieving Mother, Pellegrina, Aloth). My problem is that I can't name savegames. They name themselves automatically and the most recently made is on the top. This makes it somewhat easy to override a savegame by accident, if you don't pay attention to the companion portraits in the thumbnail. And I typically save in a hurry. Also I believe there's only a single quicksave slot. Is there any workaround ? Is making a backup of savegame files the best I can do ?

Dangerous Implement is a sweet, sweet talent on a... Monk.

Using Hunting Bow on a 0 DR enemy* is an optimal use of Hunting Bow, for sure. But is it actually better than a War Bow in that case ? Does anyone have a table of weapon delays ? * I remember to turn off Penetrating Shot in such rare case.

I use Metacritic, and there I mostly rely on user comments too. 8 is not an excellent score on the 7-9 scale most big review sites use.

Admit it, the music had a part in this ! Music in PoE ranges from utterly forgettable and generic to incredible. These are my favorites: mus_town_defiance_bay.ogg, mus_dungeon_engwithan_ruins.ogg mus_dungeon_od_nua_a.ogg mus_dungeon_temple_of_skaen.ogg mus_dungeon_temple_of_woedica.ogg mus_scripted_prologue.ogg mus_town_oldsong.ogg mus_wilderness_elmshore.ogg mus_combat_g.ogg mus_combat_e.ogg GOG still doesn't have the 1.03 Linux patch, so Ogre Druids in my game have Insect Swarm of infinite duration. Before I realized it's a bug, I watched my party slowly drop dead one by one. It's raw damage so no way to absorb it with a beer or ale. Not possible to cast healing spells outside combat. Nothing I could do. That music, the forest at night, and companions having their last words. When it was time for Eder, he said "Yeah... we had some good times."

In case you haven't noticed, firearms in PoE have at least -5 to Accuracy and a long reload animation. This is to indicate they are early firearms, unreliable and awkward to use. It would be more believable if they would also randomly not fire or blow up in your hands. But not necessarily fun to play. Actually I think it's Arbalests that gain the most from high Accuracy. These things inflict Prone on critical hit !!! Yes, when it turns out your companion is already trained as a Peasant, it makes sense to stick with Hunting bows. I'm not denying this.

It has a lot of synergies, in fact ! Swift Blows, Turning Wheel, the talent that adds shock damage to Swift Blows... I would actually go with Human, so I can get more accuracy and damage below 50% endurance.

A SIMPLE TRICK EVERYONE CAN USE TO CAST BIG INVOCATIONS OFTEN: 1. Locate a group of enemies (encounter). 2. Locate a second group of enemies (encounter). 3. Engage the first group. 4. As you are about to clear the first group, send someone to provoke the second group. 5. Cast the high level invocation. Summons work best. The downside is you won't be getting your per-encounter abilities back and your Endurance may be drained. That is not necessarily a problem if you have fighters, monks or chanters in your group.

The difference is relevant if the lasher has damage multipliers affecting the lash portion, e.g. Scion of Flame. So if lash gives +25% damage, and a scion talent boosts that by 20%... Would that be 0.25 * 1.2 = 30% damage bonus instead of 25% bonus ? Is that noticable ?

"Adventurer" specialization might just work. Two nice 2-hander types to choose from, Wands as an implement. "Noble" has rods and scepters. Yes, there is a wand with a cute spell on critical, but being less limited is nice. On the other hand, I believe there's a Pollaxe with 1.2 damage against prone and stunned, both of which monks can do!