Gairnulf

She has always seemed amusing to me. My attitude was "yeah, yeah, keep talking, I'll just do whatever I want in the end"

Just loaded the game after exiting and launching PoE again, and the animat isn't there now. Pity, it can't be reproduced it seems.

Is pumpkin head mode reliant on the game being updated to 2.03? If so, then GOG version players will probably miss it because it won't be on GOG by the 31st. :/ I just checked and the patch isn't on GOG yet. Edit: I just read Brandon's post from the "Update 2.03 is Live" thread. It should be on GOG within the day.

I just finished my battle with Maerwald in my Solo playthrough. I had one occurance of the battle state never ending, but that's very difficult to reproduce: After killing Maerwald I used Bewildering Spectacle on the fire blights which had ganged up on me, and I managed to confuse all of them, turn them to green circle. Since that broke engagement, I took the chance and ran away to the room where the conversation with Maerwald takes place, since by now we had moved to the corridor. Some time later, since combat state wasn't ending, I showed up in the corridor looking for the blights. They were nowhere to be seen, combat state wasn't ending, and I had to load game. Anyway, the bug I want to report is from another attempt at the same battle. I summoned the Animat with the Bronze horn figurine which I had bought from Gilded Vale's smith. We defeated Maerwald and the blights, but now the Animat won't go away. Not that I mind that much, but I still consider it a glitch Link to the savegame: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bl9i9hwy7glmtqj/b4182f2badfd4ca2922d3e8a26c5b32f%2010866773%20EndlessPathsofOdNuaLevel1.savegame

This description reminds me of someone quite a lot

There it is. Just force-attack Giacco. https://www.dropbox.com/s/oz3m0xnl1xpij4o/b4182f2badfd4ca2922d3e8a26c5b32f%209901489%20RuinedHouse.savegame?dl=0

I read The Ratcatcher. I liked the condensed style and the main plot driver being less fantasy-rooted and more realistic. However I thought the dialogue didn't quite live up to the down to earth story. Maybe this a symptom of insufficient characterization of the secondary characters. In their dialogue I felt like they were lacking enough depth for their language to sound like the speech of different people. I think that, in a sense, if you are writing in a realistic style, you are no longer writing "a fantasy story that sounds realistic" but "a plausibly realistic story within a fantasy world". The Ratcatcher reaches halfway towards this goal in my opinion. This is just a personal opinion of course, but I for me realism in building the world and narrative should always go hand in hand with psychologism in character-building. That's what makes it hard writing realistic stories, you need to know more about each individual, and can't resort to archetypes as much as you otherwise could in an "epic fantasy". I think the central question about Sagani is, how does she cope with the conflict between her obligations towards the realm of the personal and private - her husband and children, and towards the common and public - her mission. I believe exploring this question through her inner monologue, rather telling about her personality through dialogue with Itumaak, would flesh her out a lot better. Frequent dialogue between creatures capable of speech and mute animals rarely manages not to feel cheesy, unless it's a child doing it. Either that, or if it's a case of the author trying to communicate human emotion through descriptions of the animal and its actions, with an underlying message that the animal has an understanding of events just as good as the human does, and is capable of reason and judgement, just not of speech... but that's a whole different ballpark, and not what the theme is with Itumaak. Or is it? That's something I would ask the author - is Itumaak a character, or just Sagani's pet fox? I think the GoT and ASOIAF characters conversing with animals are a good reference for animal companions treated well in fantasy. Anyway, I could write a lot more, but I feel I'll be overanalyzing it. It's a good enough fantasy adventure novella, it just throws less light upon Sagani than I would like. P.S. A question about Eder's story - is it going to rain all the time in Gilded Vale in the novella too?

You should know that dialogue checks exist for every attribute score, not just PER or INT. There was a list circulating somewhere of all the dialogue checks for attributes and skills in the game, but I haven't looked at it, I think it's too much of a spoiler. In addition, not every use of an attribute score-enabled dialogue choice leads to a good outcome, which I think improves the use of attributes in dialogue for role-playing. One of the things I was pretty happy about in PoE were that it wasn't restricting your role-playing opportunities by giving you different amount of XP for different quest outcomes.

Sure, I'll do that ASAP.

Release Giacco from his cell in Raedric's hold. Then accept Raedric's offer and turn against Kolsc. Go to Kolsc's hut in Magran's Fork and attack Giacco. The rest of Kolsc's crew doesn't react, except for going into combat idle animations. They won't attack you while you fight Giacco. When Giacco is dead and the game shifts out of combat mode, everyone returns to normal idle animations.

I think it was in this thread where someone pointed out that the highest level weapon in BG was a +3 sword and it was just one such sword in the whole game. Unlike other people, I was happy with Soulbound weapons and how unique they felt. The moments I felt like "Are they kidding with this?" were when I would be rewarded with a high-quality or "unique" weapon that was inferior to what I was able to enchant myself. I think this comes down to abundance or scarcity of crafting ingredients throughout the game and to the maximum effects achievable through enchanting. I don't know, but right now, the player doesn't feel properly rewarded. The player's ability to carry all his crafting items in a limitless inventory (stash) adds to the problem. What I can do, and actually do is, I stockpile crafting materials and unenchanted weapons, and when I spot an encounter of tough enemies, I can enchant the weapons as-needed. It's a cheesy way to play, but no one is stopping me. I'd suggest a crafting system in the lines of BGII for PoEII (you bring ingredients to a special character who crafts the item), with more weapons craftable, but not every weapon being ready to be uber-upgraded at any moment the player decides. I don't have enough experience with all the classes to comment on that. At some point I decided to wait until the game is more or less stable before I start experimenting with more playthroughs. I read somewhere that the reason for you being unable to get this data into the UI had technical, not design roots. It's reassuring to know you've registered this problem. With the game feeling easy for me, I was leaning towards the opinion "they've made it for people who don't care about the mechanics anyway" when I got into a pessimistic mood after dashing through mobs without much effort on Hard. Also, I hope the sequel isn't under question, with you saying "If we make a sequel". I still think the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games had the best implementation of RtwP I've played, plus it would be in line with "aiming for the IE feels", but as has been pointed out, I'm a grognard, so what else would I say? That's all, and thanks a lot for the chime-in P.S. Any people insisting that it's easy or not needed to know your exact attack/recovery speed and damage should feel not a little silly, now that it's official that this has been a problem during development.

My strategic use of "lol, no" means that your statement is so far from the truth that it's not worth more efforts than commenting on how ridiculous it sounds. Replying "lol, no" to especially stupid statements is common practice: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lolno Anyone familiar with Planescape, Baldurs Gate, IceWind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and PoE wouldn't have to ask. Anyone familiar with the order they have been released wouldn't claim that "it all started with Planescape:Torment". The first IE game was Baldur's Gate. The phrase "You are full of poo-poo" surfaces in one's mind. OP lists his impressions and opinions of the game. Some of them I agree with. Fanboys like you jump because in their imagination the game has been attacked and they have to defend it. That's the way I see things. And don't bother responding. According to your own standards, "anyone unfamiliar with Planescape, Baldurs Gate, IceWind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and PoE" isn't worth talking to, right.

Lol, no. What does this sentence even mean? It doesn't enhance anything. The guy's written it in the OP, it's a couple of strategies that win the whole game for you.

"No single character can handle every situation. Use the strengths and skills of all your party members." (Doesn't apply if you're a kensai/mage) I don't have enough experience with all classes to be able to gauge if there has been some balance between their damage-dealing and crowd control capabilities, which balance is now being lost. But I'd be happy if the direction the game is taking is to profile classes more, so that characters can combine powers effectively. ​The "cause an affliction which allows the rogue to backstab" + "rogue backstabs" isn't anything inventive, all the more that the rogue himself can cause such afflictions. I'd like more synergies like that.

Will the final notes contain a full list of what creatures get what immunities, once the patch is released? Please?

AoD is a classic and one's reaction to it pretty much demonstrates whether you can tell a good RPG or not. The only recent game of its caliber is Underrail. In my book, if you don't appreciate AoD's quality, you're wasting your time playing RPGs, period.

Steam Spy extrapolates data from a sample of a few hundred thousand Steam profiles that are scraped every three days. It isn't known if these profiles are selected completely at random. I guess not. The longer time that has passed since release, the more accurate Steam Spy is, generally. Also, the more copies sold, the more accurate it will get. Also, I've read somewhere, don't remember where, that usually assuming 1/3 of the amount of Steam sales as the amount of sales on GOG.com relatively accurate.

Yes, it's very probable, and I have admitted this myself, even on this forum I think. I learned D&D in my teen years. It's at least partly the reason I find PoE to be more difficult, but I still think the major reason is that D&D really is more simple. As I said, it's a tabletop game, integers only, no percentages, etc. Thing is, and I'll repeat this yet again - you can't learn PoE's rules the way you can learn D&D's rules, because PoE's rules are not fully documented. A calculation is either correct or incorrect. There is no such thing as "it seems". And it seems to me that you've ran out arguments. After I answered you, you suddenly pull a rabbit out of the hat "I meant in Baldur's Gate!". I find that hard to believe, because: 1. In your previous post your question was related to D&D specifically: 2. You used hypothetical weapons, instead of quoting two real weapons from any two IE games. 3. If you meant me to mentally test the performance two hypothetical weapons, while using BG's D&D implementation, what exactly did you expect? Do you expect me to know BG's D&D implementation in the part concerning the circumstances you've described in your example? 4. Even if I did know it, what use would that be? How would you verify whatever I said or even made up, about two weapons that don't exist in that game? What I know or can look up, are the actual D&D rules. They are something both of us can check, to verify if I'm right or not. Even if I tell you something about how two hypothetical weapons would preform in BG, how would you verify my statement? Therefore, it makes no sense to me that by "how it works in D&D" you meant "how it works in BG". I'm just not buying that, I think it came up now, after I've disproven that D&D can easily be as complex as PoE in your example. P.S. Whatever the implementation of D&D is in BG regarding multiple attacks "per round" -- first of all, BG doesn't implement rounds in the same way they function in D&D -- I doubt it would be something more complex than what's in D&D. Bioware are more likely to have cut rules than made up new ones of their own, especially in their first IE game back in 1996-1997. So, even clutching at this straw will hardly save the argument that D&D in Baldur's Gate is comparably complex to PoE's mechanics.

If it's Advanced D&D 2nd Edition: Weapon 1: does 1d4 +6 + 1d4 = 7-10 + 1-4 electrical damage. Provided the target isn't under the effect of some form of protection from electricity, this would give you a number between 8 and 14, or 11 on average. Weapon 2: You can only do more than one attack every round if you are a fighter and if you are at least level 13. According to the "Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia" you have to hit 2 on your Attack roll (after modifiers) to preform more than one attack: So, this shouldn't happen too often. In D&D, due to turn-based combat, you can choose what action to preform for your "second attack". You can just do a regular attack, or move, or preform some other fighter-specific action, like Disarm or Parry. If you choose to preform another attack, then a second (or third, or fourth) attack is calculated just like the first one. 2d4 + 4 gives an average of 9 damage. So if you preform two attacks per round, that should be an average of 18 damage. If you have a base number of 3 attacks per 2 rounds (which is the same as 2 attacks every other round and one attack every other round), Weapon 2 would raise you to 5 attacks per 3 rounds. So, you are comparing a 9 attacks for 9 damage on average (for 6 rounds) to 10 attacks for 11 damage on average (for 6 rounds). 81 < 111. On average, you should be better off with Weapon 2. How much better the THAC0 bonus will make things depends too much on the enemy you're fighting, its hitpoints and Armor Class. If you are a fighter with 3 attacks per 2 rounds, you are between levels 9 and 12, so your THAC0 is already between 12 and 9 (it's reduced by 1 every level because you are a fighter), so I think you're pretty well off even without the bonus to THAC0 that Weapon 1 gives. I'd use the weapon with the THAC0 bonus vs a well-armored opponent and the weapon with a bonus attack vs an opponent with less armor and more hitpoints, I guess. In conclusion, the calculations I had to go through for this were simple multiplication and addition of integers. This demonstrates, like I said, that D&D can't get nearly as complicated as PoE neither in calculating attacks per a number of seconds/per round, nor in calculating average damage. PoE is more complicated, which would have still been ok, if its calculations were explained in some documentation or better yet, in the UI itself. D&D, on the other hand has an abundance of documentation and a large community, so you can get an answer to even more complex questions than in this example. I should say I'm not any kind of a D&D expert. I looked up the answers to your example in the player's handbook and in the cyclopedia (for 2nd Edition). I'd look up the answers to my own questions too, if such resources existed for PoE.

The point is, with a good interface and a clear set of rules, I should not need to use a calculator. You suggesting I use a calculator to calculate the same things that the game is already calculating and not showing me, is basically an affirmation of my point that PoE doesn't have the aforementioned two things. Even if I would use a calculator, I need to know in what order to apply percentage multipliers, as I have already explained. (10 damage + 25%) + 50% = 12.5 damage + 6.25 damage = 18.75 damage 10 damage + (25% + 50%) = 10 damage + 7.5 damage = 17.5 damage. You don't understand, apparently. I want tactics, not a clickfest. Also, Diablo is a game, not a genre. Completely unrelated - cavemen could count to three and anything more than that was considered simply to be "many". I shouldn't have to record anything. The game should present weapon stats in a clear way. Unfortunately that's either impossible at a technical level - calculating frames and sending this number to the interface, or has never been implemented in the UI for some reason. This is a problem, and this is what I hope is fixed.

A percentage is always a percentage "of something". What times, in seconds, do these percentages result in. That's what I want to know. Isn't higher base damage always better than lower base damage? How do I calculate my action speed in seconds? I assume you are omitting "...vs the enemy in question"? Because you have things various damage multipliers that take effect vs a different combination of enemy. My point this whole time is that the game's interface doesn't provide an easy way to calculate your damage and speed and decide what weapon is better.

Or rather, "compositions". I certainly don't think that we can both have a challenging game and keep the "every character should be viable" rule satisfied, because this was one of the design goals. I'm soloing with a wizard - extra hard in the beginning of the game. I haven't seen anyone soloing the game with a wizard and I wonder if it's possible at all. Also, since everyone is taking Moon Godlike for solo playthroughs, for the free healing, I decided to go with an elf. Do you mind post a source for your claims? The percentage system does allow for small increases indeed, but what follows from that is that they are hard to calculate, and what's the worst - since they're percentages, they are different for every character in your party. It's a hell to calculate at a glance! What is my use for rules which only the computer can use for calculations? I might as well be playing Dragon Age Inquisition or a similar game which requires no thinking whatsoever. It's all so simple apparently. Then would you help me out, I don't know how much is my attack speed: My solo play wizard: Level 4 wizard Dexterity: 10 Armor: Simple Clothing (0 recovery modifier) Weapons equipped: Hatchet / Buckler And my first character: Level 10 rogue Dexterity: 19 (+27% action speed) Armor: Jack of Wide Waters (-20% recovery speed) Equipped items: Boots of Speed (+3 move speed) < whatever that means, it's not clear if it has an impact on attack/recovery Weapons: I alternate between dual wielding rapiers and dual wielding sabres. We won't take into account any speed upgrades they may have. Additionally, I have Fontanero's Rapier equipped. It has base damage 12-17 pierce, adjusted to 14-20. Why is it adjusted to 14-20? My might is 19, which should give me +27% Damage and Healing. And not only that, I also have and Exceptional quality enchantment on the rapier, which supposedly gives it another +30% damage. If these are additive like you say, then I should have a total increase of +57% damage for this weapon. First, I want to see how someone calculates +57% without a calculator, because everything is so easy to calculate, right, what could be the problem. Second, because apparently it's so easy, I don't understand why is the adjusted value 14-20? 57% of 12 is 6.84 and 57% of 20 is 11.4. Why isn't my damage 19-31, assuming that I should be rounding up to the nearest whole number instead of always rounding down? Please someone explain that. No thanks, I want to use the better equipment which requires me to be able to tell which equipment is better. Not being able to tell that easily is a fault in the game's design. Very true. I read that you're best off using the heaviest armor on characters who will wear armor, and no armor at all on characters who will rely on speed. That's because going from 0 to 35% negative recovery modifier is far worse than the move from 35% to 50%.

It was in the "2.03 patch changes teased": I think part of the reason the game was so well received was that on Normal it's accessible for people who have never played the IE games, and even seems challenging for them. And that was Josh's goal, as far as I know. Nothing bad about being a casual player, but for people who are interested in the mechanics and in optimizing their party/characters, PoE is often unclear about its own rules, and as an insurance for being unlcear - prefers just being easy enough that you wouldn't investigate the rules. So, for the hardcore players all that remains is PotD, either with a party of only 2-3 members or just solo. Soloing on PotD (with savegames) does require inventiveness, calculations and eventually luck with RNG, so good job there. I'm not even sure if it's possible with every class in the current patch. However, I would prefer a difficulty which would be very difficult with a party of 6 and impossible for soloing. I miss the party - the coordination of actions between party members and the micromanagement in general.

You just need to create an account like you would on this forum. Please come and update the wiki, it's in a pretty bad shape. I edited some spell descriptions because I got so annoyed a few days ago - the strategy guide is outdated (and never was very useful to begin with, compared to other prima guides), there isn't info anywhere, and the game has been patched so many times by now, it's hard to keep track. So I started fixing the details for spells.

The math in the IE games is easier for me, because the values are immutable: 2d4+3 will always equal something in the range 5-11. In PoE, a weapon's min/max damage varies depending on: 1) whose inventory it's in - the same fine sword will have different min/max damage in Eder's inventory and in Aloth's. 2) whether or not it's equipped And you call that easier than the IE games? Also, as you say yourself, this doesn't take into account additional damage multipliers. For example, the "slaying kith 1.25x" I'll have to calculate on my own, if I know what I should apply it to in the first place (which I honestly don't know). Regarding weapon damage per round being more difficult to calculate in the IE games due to multiple attacks - quite the opposite. It's in PoE where it's more difficult to calculate the time between attacks, because you have to know: 1. the number of frames for attack (for the specific weapon) 2. the number of frames for recovery 3. a modifier coming from the weapon setup - single weapon/weapon&shield/dual wield/two-handed 4. the modifier from Dexterity (in %) 5. the modifiers from weapon enchantments and positive/negative afflictions 6. modifiers to recovery coming from your armor 7. possibly other things I'm unaware of 8. Then you need to know in what order do you apply the percentage and multiplicative modifiers. No one knows that as far as I'm aware. All that in order to know how many attacks per second you have (or how many seconds per attack, no matter). As you see, a lot more complicated than knowing you have 2/3 attacks per round in the IE games. These calculations would be nearly impossible to do on-the-fly if Obsidian had documented all this info. And as we know, they never have. Whatever info we have is from players who have been hacking PoE's code and conducting their own experiments. For D&D it's enough to read D&D rulebooks at least, no decompiling .dlls is required, heh. So, after all this, the IE games' weapon damage is more difficult to read? Weapon descriptions are more difficult to read? Lol. No. D&D was made for people playing PnP, with dice, and face to face. Whatever calculations were needed there, they only involve integers and absolute values (no percentages). It's meant to be used by people doing maths without calculators. To know your precise damage and speeds in PoE which was supposed to have a simple system, you need an Excel spreadsheet calculator. That is why I say again - PoE's whole implementation of RtwP is profoundly and irredeemably botched (to refrain from using a stronger word), and should best be redesigned from the ground up for PoE2 with the goal that it should be possible for players to quickly gauge the quality of items and their chances to inflict damage vs an opponent. Speaking about the "slaying" modifier - what is this modifier applied to? The base damage values, or the damage values adjusted for whoever is holding the weapon? And please give me a source for the info, because I haven't seen it anywhere.