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Jasta11
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Posts posted by Jasta11
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-Chose Galawain's path and spread the souls into the Dyrwood. I RPed my character with old Gala as his patron deity, and it seemed the best way to let the people decide what to do with the souls robbed from them. Or somesuch.
-Tore Thaos's soul apart, so he would certainly, completely, definitely trouble no one anymore ever.
-Dozens took over Defiance Bay, and learned from their nemesis the Knights in order to become an organized force.
-Didn't destroy the machine in Heritage Hill. The Leaden Key reactivated it and turned the district into zombies again. Oops.
-Leaden Key was blamed for the riots and the Duke's assassination. Animancy thrives in Defiance Bay.
-Caed Nua is basically the best place ever. Probably because I killed the Master Below.
-Éder became mayor of Dyrford and made it the second best place ever.
-Aloth picked up Thaos's robes and continued his work. I knew I couldn't trust the two-faced bastard.
-I made Pallegina follow her orders and broker trade with Twin Elms. With the Dyrwood strenghtened by the souls, they immediately went to war with the Republics. Yeah, I should have seen that one coming. At least Pallegina gets off scot free.
-Durance sworn off Magran completely, and went on a quest to find some means to kill gods. I wish him luck, I guess?
-Hiravias went back to his village, beat half the elders to a bloody pulp, and when it was announced that they took him back as a hunter he turned away and left like a boss. I love this guy.
-Kana went back to Rauatai and became a voice for isolation after seeing how destructive the teachings of the Engwithans were.
-Grieving Mother birthed the first non-Hollowborn child.
-Sagani searched for her elder for 20 years more, then found him but returned to her village barely recognizing anyone and with her husband dead. Yeah, I'm not skipping on her quest from now on
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I tossed Sagani for Pallegina and Aloth for Hiravias. Never looked back.
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The difficulty curve is weird in this game. Early on it can be a veritable nightmare, especially in the second level of Eothas's temple and trying to beat Raedric without cheesing. Then it takes a nosedive, and the only hard encounter in Defiance Bay and its surroundings is the lighthouse. Then it becomes a bit harder towards the end game, with the final boss and a few bonus bosses (Raedric 2.0, Nalrend the Wise, that fcking Adra Dragon) being pretty damn hard.
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It's not explicitely mentioned in the game, albeit you can bring it up as a theory in a conversation with Durance later on. But it's something that seems to make sense once you complete the game and have an understanding of the bigger picture, as well as the respective portfolios of Eothas and Woedica.
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snipped for brevity
Yeah, sorry but it's obvious you didn't play Inquisition. The reveal has a crapload of foreshadowing spread out across all the game, and the post-credit scene explicitely mentions why the Elder One was able to act out his plot and how X person was able to help.
If you're going to critique plots, at least critique plots you actually know about.
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A little pet peeve of mine, but.. Strenght (or Might or Fitness or whatever you want to call it) should affect bow damage just as much as it affects melee damage. Other ranged damage can depend on Perception or Coordination or Prescience or something like that.
As you were.
Sorta, yeah.
Str/Might/Fitness should improve the damage of war bows, but not crossbows or firearms (and not really Hunting Bows either, since a hunting bow is gonna have pretty low max poundage - you'd just snap it if you tried drawing it too far).
A hunting bow made for a stronger person would still have comparatively higher draw weight - i.e. higher damage - than one made for a weaker person. The difference to a war bow is that it doesn't go for the maximum draw weight the user can handle.
Of course, if we're really getting technical, every single bow should have their own draw weight and draw length which the archer must be able to match to be able to use them without hefty penalties (or at all), any extra strength wouldn't be of any use. A smaller person with small draw length could use a bow with higher draw length with less strength, but would also get less damage out of it.
But I guess that's a bit too simulationist. I prefer a system where a bow functions as if it was made for its user - just like things are right now with armors.
I'm not sure if that much complexity is a good thing for just one weapon type. Either you start being stat grindy and simulationist for all weapons (such as making slashing weapons completely worthless against plate, and piercing weapons not pass harmlessly though allies), or you have the current PoE model where it's more generic, with different weapons getting different bonuses but not being used in drastically different ways. The game is probably complex enough as it is.
Plus, tying damage to another stat than Might just means that Might becomes useless for that character type in favor of X other stat. Personally I like the concept that, if you want to hit harder, you put points in Might, period. I realize some don't, but I don,t see the point of separating stats into, say, melee and ranged damage increase. It just means you have several stats doing the exact same thing, as I see it.
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If companions are optional, you can't make them fully integral to the plot. That's the short and long version of it. Especially in PoE where you can solo the game or have a party composed of generic adventurers.
Besides, without Morrigan the Warden is stuck in the Korcari Wilds without finding the treaties at Flemeth's place. And she provides one of the important ending choices. So she's pretty important to the plot for an optional character.
Plus, you dismissing inquisition is a bit silly, given thatone of the companions caused the entire plot to happen. And happen to be a god.
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The cities were OK to me. They don't need to be as ginormous as Athkatla was, albeit Twin Elms could have been a bit bigger.
Dungeons are more than big enough.
The wilderness could have stood to be bigger however, that one is true, and a bit less packed with monsters.
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I don't think the stats need an overhaul, just a rebalance. Might, Resolve, Intelect and Dexterity work fine. Constitution needs to be buffed (adding resistances and perhaps resistance to disengagement) and Perception needs to be more useful for damage dealers (+accuracy is my best bet, transfer some of its defensive bonuses to Con).
I kinda understand why Obsidian didn't want a stat to give +accuracy, since accuracy is critically important to every single character build in the game. But we already have Con and Res as tank stats, Per doesn't need to be one too.
As for Might increasing bullet damage, wel lthat makes about as much sense as high Resolve increasing your deflection or intelligence increase the AoE of a barbarian's attacks. Stats are always an abstraction.
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-Focus on one giant at a time. if you spread out your damage Thaos heals them.
-Spread out your party! Thaos's damage output is fairly low if you don't bunch up, only his Pillars of Faith/Fire spells do significant damage.
-The giants have fairly low resistances to anything but Fortitude. You should be able to keep them CCed. If you have no spells that can do so, craft Scrolls of Paralysis. Your Cipher should have a CC spell or two.
-You have a priest, and one of their 6th level spell burns positive effets on enemies. Use that on Thaos, if his defenses aren't buffed he dies very quickly. Like, his deflection goes from 150 to 80ish.
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Honestly, immunities are only good in spare quantity. Fire elementals immune to fire, OK. Creatures without eyes that can't be blinded, fine. Oozes immune to Prone, well I simply interpreted it as you distrupting its form but alright. Beyond that, I don't think they are a good gameplay concept. Especially the immunity to +2 weapons or lower in D&D or the like, that was just boring and arbitrary.
Perhaps what they should have done is simply make some creatures have higher defenses against specific attacks than they do now. So give Ogres massive Fortitude, Vithrak massive Reflex, Animats massive Will, etc. By massive I mean 150ish, so you need very high accuracy to crack their defenses, or give them 200+ so it's just downright impossible.
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Yes, I've noticed that and it sucks. Whenever it's a bug or a feature, I hope Obsidian changes it.
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Loads of spells are poorly balanced. For druids, Firebug does only slightly less damage than Sun Lance, but can rebound 7 times (making it a veritable room clearer by itself) while the latter is single target. They are in the same tier, for some reason. The Priest's 6th level spells are very situational at best, compared to their level 3-5 spells which are mostly good. The Wizard has several borderline OP spells (Slicken, Fan of Flames, Gaze of the Adragan for example) and a lot of junk ones (Necrotic Lance is downright useless).
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After finishing the game;
1. Durance. Classic Avellone charatcer, but he works very well, and you can (at last!) talk back to him. He has a lot of interesting things to say and is probably the biggest source of information about the backstory. Plus, it takes a rather special sort of priest to refer to his goddess as a whore. Also great voice actor.
2. Hiravias. At first I thought he would be the comic relief midget, but there's much more to the character. Hats off to his writer, he has loads of hidden depths. Plus lots of funny lines. And his comeback to a certain someone at the end of the game is just brilliant.
3. Éder. Another one with hidden depths. You need to do his personal quest to understand him, but he has a pretty interesting blend of cynism and optimism. His VA did a great job.
4. Pallegina. Just the right blend of idealism and pragmatism that makes paladin types interesting.
Kana, Sagani and Aloth kinda blend behind those. I was a Cipher so I didn't use Grieving Mother much.
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Jasta11- I think you've hit the major problem with the plot on the head. Thaos' motivations are actively nuts and indefensible, as are all the people who followed him (especially the Engwithans in the beginning of it all). He has caused more pain/suffering/insanity than any speculation about a godless society could contemplate even in theory.
How anyone could find him convincing is a complete mystery and falls flat. The game resorts to simply just telling us (primarily through lady Webb) that they do. Because reasons. But aside from being presented this as Ultimate Truth because Writers Said So, the story doesn't do anything with it. His followers are demonstrably idiots, and most of his successes seem to hinge on him personally taking over the minds of weak-willed fools, and never convincing anyone of anything. Luckily for him, the people of the Dyrwood are also idiots*, so are easily stampeded by poorly hidden tricks.
*and this, sadly, is demonstrated over and over again.
As for creating Skaen...I'm willing to consider it an aftereffect or byproduct of all their research. Their society was hyper focused on stealing, sacrificing and manipulating and even destroying souls, in the name of their great cause, and it seems, just day to day life under their leaders (to make weapons, as in that other ruin). An undercurrent of spite and hatred would probably be present in every Engwithan soul, just for how their leaders treat them. And in their leaders themselves, for their attitudes toward lesser races and their omnipresent insanity that results in all this in the first place.
@abhelhabel- well, don't know what to tell you, but you ignored the major plot points outright. 'that woman' is the fulcrum of your past self's relationship with Thaos, and that 'thing' isn't really under dispute.
Well I understand that, since Thaos is the villain, him making perfect sense and having the right answer to every problem would kinda defeat the point of having a villain. Maybe it would be interesting in an ''Oh, you chased a good guy all this time!'' way but that doesn't make for a very interesting video game, I feel.
But yeah, he has the same problem I had with Ulysses and Cesar back in New Vegas: his ''solution'' directly creates a much bigger problem and he's completely blind to it. Thaos even brags about how other atrocities he made are even worse than the Hollowborn epidemic and I was just thinking, well, way to completely ruin your own point, dumbass. I can get behind Well-Intentioned Extremist character types, but it seems that Obsidian kinda failed at that with Thaos because his extremism is pushed so far that any good intentions he had are completely secondary, his reasoning is just poor and it becomes obvious he's just a destructive, delusional ****. Much like Ulysses and Big C. Or the Catalyst in ME3.
And yes, I also find weird that the Leaden Key was able to attract so many people yet remain secret, especially since its ''public'' mission doesn,t seem very attractive. This is also kind of a problem with the Cult of Skaen beneath Dyrford, which outnumbers the actual town 5 to 1 at least. Fantasy video games in general tend to portray secret cults as full fledged underground armies rather than persecuted, secretive religions.
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I'm pretty convinced Eothas invaded to prevent Thaos from triggering the Hollowborn epidemic, mostly because his portfolio is most directly opposed to hers. This also gave the Leaden Key a convincing front for their activities, by blaming the Legacy when their own activities caused the epidemic. It's possible Eothas went to the other gods to tell them what was up, but they either refused to listen, didn't believe him, or were too bound by their precepts to intervene, so he took matters into his own hands. In doing so he overstepped his bounds, causing Magran to help build the Godhammer. Woedica helped too, for obvious reasons. Eothas probably could never have foreseen such an act, and without the bomb it's highly likely he would have taken over the Dyrwood and put an end to the Leaden Key. As such the Godhammer did more harm than good.
Thaos's motivations are a bit murky, however. Okay, he wants to preserve the secret of the gods, mostly because he feels that if the people are godless, they resort to atrocities. Yet atrocities still happen, many of them in the name of gods (the Purges post-Saint's War to name only one) and Thaos himself has directly or indirectly caused the deaths of so many people you cannot count them anymore, all in pursuit of his goals. So it feels that his arguments are really empty. I mean cripes, almost all of the bad stuff that happens in the game can be traced back to the Leaden Key (all of the main plot, riots in Defiance Bay), religious fervor (Skaen's temple in Dyrford, Raedric), or the Engwithan leaders being a punch of pricks (Endless Paths).
I mean, I get that we're not supposed to agree with Thaos. But I do find that he's not really as convincing as the game makes him out to be, albeit that may just be because the PC knowns more than the average joe.
As for the revelation about the gods, I honestly don't think it changes that much. They are still very much real, and wield power that makes them worthy of their name. They could probably have been more proactive in preventing Woedica from unleashing hell, rather than wait for the Watcher to stumble into Thaos's plots.
Albeit I'm still at a loss about why the Engwithan leaders would want to create a god like Skaen.
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Weird, I have them all and talked to the armorer in the Keep and had no option. Maybe because I sided with the Dozens?
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Where's the smith that you need to bring it to? I tried the one in my stronghold and in both the Adventurer's Hall and Crucible Keep.
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The missing point of yours being that Obsidian shouldn't have done anything at all.
That is up to them and Firedorn, not any of us.
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-Create your formation. I like this, so much.
-Engagement: One thing I loathed in IE games is that holding a frontline was close to impossible unless you were in very specific circumstances. The system is not perfect (pathfinding is an issue) but it allows you to setup a frontline more easily, if you use the right tactics and equipment. It allows you to control the flow of combat much better.
-Transparent game mechanics. If you weren't a D&D veteran, there were a lot of obscure mechanics in IE games. PoE lays it out far more clearly, and adds lots of convenience such as AoE markers and the exact formula for hit/miss and damage, spell descriptions, the precise impact and duration of status effects and enemy vulnerabilities.
-No weapon/armor limitations. Want to have a druid packing an arquebus, a mage in full plate or a paladin dual wielding daggers? Who are Obsidian to stop us from enjoying the fine things in life?
-No overpowered mage protection spells. This drove me (more) insane in BG2. You basically needed to have a mage on hand to dispel those stupid protections if you didn't know the rules of the setting by heart. None of that annoyance here.
-All classes have abilities. In BG1 and 2, if you weren't a spell-caster, auto-attack was the extent of your playstyle until HLAs came around. I'm so glad Obsidian left that behind.
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It's funny that anti-SJWs (or whatever label one wants to use) complain about their hated foes overreacting to everything.
Then, there is one tweet (that is potentially fake) denouncing violence made to children in the game (whose point I vehemently disagree with, the quest definitely has its place in a 18+ game), and those same anti-SJWs light up the forums like a christmas tree in their sheer outrage. But sure, they are so much more level-headed and wise in the ways of the world than their counterparts, and are not just as guilty of looking for an excuse to be outraged. Honest.
The whole thing is completely absurd. I'm so glad I never took a side in this worthless debate.
Why would people start by assuming that it was fake? Was the bull**** anti-tombstone movement fake?
Assuming it's fake is one thing (albeit these days, always assume fake until double-checked is my own policy). But the knee-jerk, Obsidian is RUINED reactions in this thread within minutes of the image being posted are quite frankly pathetic. You'd think people would be more level-headed, but nope, just as guilty of being easily outraged as those they denounce.
If Obsidian laughed off the first case of offense I would agree with you, they didn't.
You'd have a point if they actually did that. Instead, they calmly asked the author what he wanted done. He replaced the offending message with one making fun of the whole thing. See the keywords? Calm. Cool. Acting, not overreacting. That's how you actually solve problems.
In this case, both Obsidian and the author acted far more maturely than those who were offended by the joke and those who were offended they were offended. I trust Obsidian to do the right thing far more than I trust those two glorified internet lynch mobs.
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It's funny that anti-SJWs (or whatever label one wants to use) complain about their hated foes overreacting to everything.
Then, there is one tweet (that is potentially fake) denouncing violence made to children in the game (whose point I vehemently disagree with, the quest definitely has its place in a 18+ game), and those same anti-SJWs light up the forums like a christmas tree in their sheer outrage. But sure, they are so much more level-headed and wise in the ways of the world than their counterparts, and are not just as guilty of looking for an excuse to be outraged. Honest.
The whole thing is completely absurd. I'm so glad I never took a side in this worthless debate.
Why would people start by assuming that it was fake? Was the bull**** anti-tombstone movement fake?
Assuming it's fake is one thing (albeit these days, always assume fake until double-checked is my own policy). But the knee-jerk, Obsidian is RUINED reactions in this thread within minutes of the image being posted are quite frankly pathetic. You'd think people would be more level-headed, but nope, just as guilty of being easily outraged as those they denounce.
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It's funny that anti-SJWs (or whatever label one wants to use) complain about their hated foes overreacting to everything.
Then, there is one tweet (that is potentially fake) denouncing violence made to children in the game (whose point I vehemently disagree with, the quest definitely has its place in a 18+ game), and those same anti-SJWs light up the forums like a christmas tree in their sheer outrage. But sure, they are so much more level-headed and wise in the ways of the world than their counterparts, and are not just as guilty of looking for an excuse to be outraged. Honest.
The whole thing is completely absurd. I'm so glad I never took a side in this worthless debate.
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Finally managed it on Hard, using a variation of the strategies posted. Edér was tanking the dragon and chugging potions while everyone else (Durance, Kana, Hiavaras, Cipher PC, Paladin women whose name I always forget) went around and killed her hired help. First came the Adragans, who were nuked by Hia's Sunlance, ranged weapons and tied up in melee so they couldn't dominate or petrify anyone. That was what usually doomed my other attempts, I had Kana take 800 damage once by eating a breath while pretrified.
Next, the Xaurips who died easily. One Firebug spell from Hia killed half of them, and traps mostly got the other half. I made the mistake of letting a High Priest live once and it started healing the dragon back up. Not twice let me tell you.
By this time Edér ate three breaths and self-revived once. I used all my Raw damage spells, including Disintegrate and Hia's Insect Swarm, and Durance used Maelstrom scrolls. I thought I had it in the bag when I got her gravely injured, but the dragon used Tail Lash and instakilled Durance, Edér and my paladin (the latter got hit for 400+ damage- how the hell is armor with 18 DR supposed to help here by the way?). So i was down to kiting the dragon with my low health stragglers. I pretty much only won thanks to Kana who summoned two ogres who served as adequate meatshields. One of them actually got the killing blow via a 100 roll hit.
Summoned units in general greatly helped me. I got brooches that summoned wood and adra beetles, who don't hit very hard but tie up Adragans in melee combat very easily. The Adra beetle actually hurt the dragon a bit too.
I could have cheesed the encounter further, I suppose, but I wanted to take her down with my usual party and did it. I honestly think the instakill moves from the dragon are pretty cheap, but it was a great fight. Once her reinforcements are dead and if you spread the troops out she's not that hard, you just need to make sure the help dies fast.
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So...the End...a bit anticlimactic, isnt it ?
in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
Well the problem is that the opposers of animancy, such as the Dozens representative at the Duke's hearing, use pretty piss poor arguments against it. Oh, things man was not meant to know! Oh, science and progress is bad! it's barely above ''think of the children!'' level of discourse.
Besides, animancy was sabotaged by the Leaden Key in a major way. I'm pretty sure Thaos wouldn't have bothered to scuttle the efforts of Brackenbury if they weren't reasonably close to a breakthrough. And of course, no one but Thaos knew exactly why the Legacy existed in the first place, but that's not really a reason not to try and fix it.
I also approve of the shorter final dungeon. I don't need to have swarms of enemies thrown at me before tackling the final boss. There's the Endless Paths for that. Thaos himself could have been a bit harder, however. Maybe an extra statue on Hard?