Gairnulf

Not the only one. I play with my own texture for background and original buttons' textures. I've released them on the Nexus too. I rarely need anything else from the IE mod, apart from slowing down slow mode even further probably, but that's something I can live without. Unlike you I have a some criticisms of the PoE UI, for example on how viewing the properties of an item shows you the applied modifiers of the character in whose inventory the item is, and not of the character who is currently selected whose model is visible in the Inventory screen. That's often confusing. Similarly, when viewing the properties of an item in the store, you have no way of seeing what its stats would be if used by character X in your party.

The whole soundtrack is great, and I think "Defiance Bay" is completely on par with "Waukeen's Promenade" from BG2, although that one is much shorter. If I may suggest something for the future Justin - please let's have a separate theme for battles against dragons, that doesn't play in other circumstances, like BG2 has.

I'm not debating the usefulness of game guides. Their usefulness is beyond any doubt. What I am wondering, and asking, is if it would make sense, in light of the game reaching complete state, to give players access to an updated version of the Prima eGuide for PoE. I do not know if this eGuide itself is up to date, nor, in case it is not, wether it would be updated, how much would it cost to be updated, and if it's possible for Obsidian to strike a deal for owners of the original, out-of-date guide, to get access to the eGuide for free, or at a discount. I think now is the time to ask this because first, the game is nearing complete state, or at least a state beyond which there will be no more patches, and second, because it's my opinion that from a client-vendor perspective, the original guide doesn't deliver at all. So I think it's an opportunity for something good to come out of something bad.

I think it's you who got me wrong, I'm not talking about a physical strategy guide at all. I don't really want a physical guide. Just a one-stop source of information on rules. Games are not patched/rebalanced all that often, provided they have been released in a mostly complete state. Adding new features post-release which the developers themselves commented that they wanted to have at release speaks enough. BTW, some inconsistencies between PoE's strategy guide and the game have never been patched and will never be patched. They are not due to the game diverging from the guide material because of patching, but because there were things left incomplete. The unnamed "online sources", to which you refer, do not contain such a one-stop source of complete information on rules, mechanics and strategies. And that's understandable because when the game is changing underneath you, it's very difficult to write coherent advice on anything. This is why I'm asking this question now, as I explained in my first post.

So the consensus seems to be "Since the guide for PoE was a failure, all guides suck"? Obviously that's not true. This argument, if that's what anyone is implying, is absurd. I find guides useful as an encyclopedia on the game. At some point I'll be curious to know what taking a given path in a game leads to, but I can't be bothered to start a whole new playthrough, or load a savegame from way back in the game just in order to test something. That's when I usually resort to guides. The other case is when I'm going for completing every quest, checking out every side area and character. So, no, guides have their use if they are made well.

That's not necessarily true for all games. For example I've read a very useful guide for the Witcher 3, by Prima.

I know of this of course. The guide itself lacks depth, although it's good for the quest walkthroughs. Anyway, it has nothing to do with my original question.

I made the CRPG clarification for the overly enthusiastic "old-school, like Oblivion" players, who seem to think it stands for "classic RPG".

With the game nearing stable status, I thought I'd raise that question. I don't care much about the novella, but the lack of a good strategy guide is a disappointment for me, and was so from the start. Prima's strategy guide for PoE is the single worst, least helpful guide I've read by Prima, containing copy-pasted text from the game descriptions, lacking any strategies and advice for specific encounters, consisting of mostly dumped weapon and talent stats. The majority of its contents is out of date, or was never correct in the first place. There are quest walkthroughs referring to things which don't happen in the game, and what parts of the data are correct for the current version of the game, and what are not, nobody can really say. Basic concepts such as recovery/attack speeds are not explained or only vaguely explained, with copy/pasted text from the ingame descriptions. Well, thanks, Prima Games! In effect, we might as well never have had a Strategy Guide. So, since the novella is coming eventually, and that's a question that has been settled, I want to ask this - is a Strategy Guide also coming eventually? To add insult to injury, Prima have an eGuide for PoE which I guess is up to date, but it's inaccessible for PoE backers or for people who have bought the Strategy guide as part of their respective PoE "edition" - Hero, Champion, etc. Is it possible for Obsidian to negotiate with Prima Games, so that the eGuide is available for those PoE players who have the outdated pdf guide?

Just to clarify - "CRPG" stands for Computer Role Playing Game.

People who play on Story Time and Easy are probably not on the forum. I guess there are quite many of them though.

Your story is almost exactly like mine, though on my fist playthrough I solved almost every quest in Defiance Bay and the vicinity, and finished Act II before dropping the game. I also played rogue then. Now I'm on a second playthrough with a Bleak Walker paladin and it's quite fun. My stats are pretty balanced out but I've left my intelligence on 11 and I'm concentrating more on damage-dealing. I was very lucky to have chosen the "Sworn Enemy" ability on my level up to lvl 5, because it was 3 times per rest before the patch and after the patch I saw they've made it 1 per encounter. I've bought the outworn buckler from Gilded Vale, to give some deflection bonus usually to Eder when using him as tank while I flank enemies. I switch between weapon and shield and an estoc, depending on wether the enemies have high enough DR for the estoc to matter. I'm playing on PotD and just until reaching Caed Nua, I was playing with a party of 4. I played on 2.03 up until after the battle with Maerwald, then I installed 3.0 before getting the fortress, just in case there are any bugs to avoid. Playing as a paladin and being encouraged to make choices appropriate to your order really adds to the roleplay. Together with the largely fixed combat since April last year, I'm pretty satisfied with PoE right now.

I've been killing backer NPCs for free all this time, so it's a welcome addition.

If that was possible, I would, for instance, only cast fire lash once and move it between weapons every time I find a better weapon.

Thanks a lot guys. So it's +15 to Accuracy and all Defenses. Then I guess I'm doing quite well, cleaned the Temple of Eothas with a 4th level party of Paladin, Eder, Aloth and Durance.

How precisely? Sorry if this is a stupid question. The wiki doesn't mention the concrete changes. From what I recall, and don't know if it's true, PotD raises enemy Accuracy by 15 and Deflection by 15. Is that true, or is there more?

The jump is too much "Dragon Age Inquistion". It struck me as being over the top.

No. And by extension of this logic, you get the least amount of loading screens when you don't play at all.

That's not what I'm asking. Anyway, Josh answered my question in the twitch stream: I'm glad that the answer is that it was due to development time limitations, and it wasn't balance-related. I really think all types of wearable gear should be enchantable, without stacking of bonuses. However this will most probably necessitate a rebalancing of the possible enchantments, to prevent people from upping their stats so much that the game stops posing a challenge. Being able to enchant gloves, boots, hats may open opportunities for players to build suits of armor, which some may find fun to do. I wish for PoE to have a revised crafting and enchantment system, where NPCs are doing the enchanting for the player, instead of it being available anywhere, anytime, through an interface. I can provide solid though longer-winded reasoning for that

I've always wondered this, but never asked. Has it ever been answered? It feels weird.

If that's all the Barbarian is good for, I'd rather cast Chill Fog on that group of enemies than keep the Barbarian around. Much better guaranteed area damage. You may be right, but I never played long enough to see that. I test classes by seeing how far I can get in soloing Act I on PotD, and beyond, if I happen to like the class and build. With the exception of the Chanter and the Priest, which are only really useful in a party, I'd say if a class is good for soloing, it will be even better in a party. I'm kind of prejudiced against the Godlikes, they seem too powerful to me, compared to the other races' racial bonuses, and they also break immersion by the fact that no one in the world seems to react to them being Godlike. But that's just me of course.

I have an idea for a challenge. Every now and then, when exploring wilderness areas, your party members take turns to attack and defeat encounters one at a time. Only one party member carries out the fight, and the others supposedly observe how he goes about it, and only intervene if he goes down. I'm currently doing a Bleak Walker PC game, and imagine I'm leading a band of grizzled mercs who do this thing for fun and for proving their strength. - Added rule - if a party member fails particularly badly, he may be dismissed from the party.

The deflection is the problem. Getting surrounded results in the Flanked status effect which takes 10 deflection. The Barbarian already has the second worst deflection in the game - 15, sharing that second-to-last place with the Rogue. The difference is, with a Rogue you tend to avoid engaging multiple enemies, with the Barbarian, you are expected to. And the health pool can't compensate for that. (I'm playing on PotD, the only difficulty that's worth playing at for me).

I wrote a big post a few months agon on why the Barbarian is weak in comparison to other front line classes. I agree with your points on other classes, and I'm still looking for someone to justify the Barbarian's current state. Strange that no mention has been made by developers of revising it a bit. I'd suggest by upping its base deflection. Here is my analysis of the Barbarian class: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/82781-most-overpowered-builds-post-patch-202/?p=1746008

A post I made in another thread was deleted without any explanation or motivation brought up, by an unknown moderator. The post was made in jest and its contents was: Apparently someone considered this to be such a serious offense, that my post was duly deleted. You can see it's not the most important post in history, not even remotely important. This makes it all the more strange to see such zealousness in censoring a meaningless post where someone made a joke. The second reason this leaves a bad impression is that whenever I see forums' content censored, for me this comes across as considering your forum members too stupid to tell troll bait, or too immature to see curse words or phrases. My conviction is that the logic should be the opposite - allow the stupid people who occasionally arrive at your forum to easily find their way out, instead of accommodating them by establishing censoring policies, and treating everyone as immature and unable to bear responsibility for his words by default. I give this moderator a chance to iron out his mistake by explaining here what provoked him to delete my post in the other thread. Like I said, the post itself is irrelevant. It's the manner and the degree of "moderation" which bothers me here.