vyvexthorne

I'd say it mainly has to do with the hardware of the ps4 just showing it's age. SSD speed doesn't matter since the load time has to do with processing speed and with only 8gb's of shared memory the ps4 is just going to be a bit slow when loading. You have to remember you're playing new games on 7 year old (or if using ps4 pro,) 4 year old hardware. For comparison, I just bought a new PC this year.. My old one had hit 8 years old and couldn't even play Poe2. So the fact that an 7 year old console can somehow play games that a very good 8 year old computer couldn't.. is pretty cool.

Thanks guys. I think I was just having a freak out moment at all the changes which made my cave man brain feel stupid and threatened. I'm having fun with the game and the new character models / animations and maps are great. (I'm still giving the 'choose your own adventure" maps a bit of the stinky eyeball mainly because in Poe1 story time usually meant injury time for me or one of my companions.)

So why are some item effects just not listed on your character summary anymore? If I equip something like the Swordmans' Bracers which adds "glancing strikes" do I just have to trust that it's working as intended? Do item effects still get suppressed? Like do ring of protection, cloak of protection stack or suppress? (and why don't they show up under current effects either?) Coming straight from POE1 and having never played this before I have to say that a lot of the changes feel really, really weird. I knew there were changes but this feels like too much change.

Nah, I was way more paranoid my first playthrough. That was before there was a completed wiki or any walkthroughs. Just looking at my journal and seeing that "keep journeying with companion" and having no answers to turn to made me totally believe it was broken... I don't think I picked up Grieving Mother on my first playthrough though.. I don't have any memory of her quests at any rate. This was the first time I went through with all the pre-made companions and didn't substitute any of my own made ones.

Yeah.. Durance and Mothers quest makes me way too paranoid. . Mother's completes rather quickly compared to Durance but it still makes me constantly wonder if something has gone wrong or will go wrong. On this play through some of Durance's stuff seemed to happen out of order. I went in to pray to gods.. Decided I didn't want to do that yet and left without praying. Durance's persuasion speech about Woedica popped up immediately after leaving even though I hadn't talked to Magran or anybody, .. then about three days later I had the third vision while resting and then the quest ended. Up until the very end of the quest the quest log was stuck on the second "continue to get to know durance."

Yes, that can be annoying. Dialogue trees without rules. Sometimes you have the option of exhausting the entire dialogue tree, sometimes if you had chosen a different starting point you could have gleaned more info and other times you only get to choose one option no matter your starting point. This makes me reload quite a lot to try out different dialogue options just to make sure there's not info I'm missing out on. Dialogue that contains lore, history, backstory or better understanding of a certain situation shouldn't get blocked off because you asked "why" instead of "what." However, this is true of quite a few games. For me most recently it was Greedfall. Great game.. But I probably made the game twice as long for myself as there was a lot of dialogue hidden behind one option lines. I don't think I actually retain the information for that long either so I'm not sure why I do that to myself. Just an in the moment deal and then I eat a batch of forgetful cookies.

Since I just finished up Poe1 after not playing it for about 3 years.. my new thought is that maybe it has to do with Poe1 being fairly convoluted and how it often makes you feel like you've messed up or made the wrong decision. (or you feel like you made the right decision but the outcome isn't what you expected or wanted.) Even though I still remembered most major plotlines and decisions I still found myself saying "huh? what? why?" and reloading quite a lot just because the dialogue choices sometimes weren't exactly clear. Instead of feeling like I was roleplaying a characters response I often felt like I was playing a guessing game or in some situations, like I was trying to solve a dialogue tree puzzle just to get the response I want. Something like that could easily put people off from wanting to play a part 2. Or maybe it just had to do with lack of advertising. ( I honestly don't remember seeing Poe2 advertised anywhere.)

I haven't really done any stealthing past enemies.. I just like to stealth into rooms to get a look at where enemies are and what I'll likely be up against. Then I usually set up my party out of the room sneak attack with the rogue and run back to party. … (and a lot of the time block the doorway with the fighters.) Of course this game now has pick pocket but I'll most likely be relying on another party member for that... If at all. I tend to largely forget about pickpocket in just about every game that has it unless I've played it so many times I already know what to pickpocket because of tips given through walkthroughs or forums. Oh also.. Which do you folks prefer playing on.. Real Time or Turn Based? Most likely I'll stick with Real Time for my first playthrough and try out Turn Based later. I also noticed there's a difference in base damage between the two modes which isn't at all stated in the description. Why is that? Edit: I definitely won't be taking Sap. don't have room for it anyway since I switched it out for driving flight.. (unless I lose the piece of paper I just wrote everything down on and totally forget it was discussed by the time I get to that point in the leveling process.)

Wow.. Lots of good info... Unfortunately I haven't played through POE2 yet so I don't know what a lot of this is. I'll just have to figure out some stuff as I go. Basically I just don't want to get through half of the game and go "oh crap, I shoulda, coulda, woulda!" Knowing that Shadowstep, Sap and Fnishing blow might not be worth it is good info though. (although I might still take shadowstep just because it sounds fun .) Sap and Finishing blow can be substituted for Takedown Combo and Driving Flight as I definitely liked the sound of those. More stuff for the pet companion to do is good.

Mainly looking at Aracana, Stealth and Mechanics I guess. Don't think I need to worry about anything else as I can have other party members do those things. In POE1 I'm easily getting away with a 5 in stealth.. (with gear boosting it to 8)… I can sneak / steal / scout around quite easily. No idea if that's sufficient for POE2. Mechanics obviously need to be the highest. Have no idea how much skill boosting gear there is in the game for mechanics. Arcana is the one I have no idea about. How much Arcana should I think about having? (and how much could I maybe get from gear?).. I'd mainly be concentrating on the rogue aspect with some nice ranger archer boosts and a little bit of pet boosting so the pet isn't a complete waste. (play dead looks pretty fun.) Build I've come up with so far - Cross Passives: Fast Runner, Potent Empower, Tumble Ranger Active: Marked Prey, Wounding Shot, Evasive Roll / Evasive Fire, Concussive Shot, Play Dead / Deadly Surprise. Ranger Passive: Marksman, Resilient Companion, Protective Companion / Stalkers Link Rogue Active: Escape / Shadowstep, Crippling Strike / Arterial Strike, Blinding Strike, Withering Strike, Finishing Blow / Eliminating Blow, Sap Rogue Passive: Backstab, Dirty Fighting, Deep Wounds, Deathblows. Suggestions would be welcome. I've just been playing around with CC and haven't even started yet as I'm still playing POE1.. Current character is a rogue archer that uses lots of magic scrolls so just trying to build off that. Trickster and Arcane Archer seem like the logical step and feel like they'd be a fun combo. (also get a pet companion so that's fun as well.)

Yeah, Time in Party is how long you've played with the character in game.. It's still based on in game time though. (so it's still kind of weird.) It doesn't correspond to any real life play time. So I've now played with the character for 12 in game days.. but in real life I've played the game for 51 hours and I started on the 13th and today is the 22nds. So nothing in real life equals 12 days.

Yep, me neither. Actually made me wonder if they weren't always there. It's been a few years since I last played the game. It's amazing how much I've forgotten.

I guess I figured it out. It doesn't record travel time as time spent in party. (It might not record resting as time spent in party as well but I didn't test that out.) Travel time also seems a little borked maybe. I tested this out with my early saves.. So my character left Cilant LIs with 6 hours in party, 0 travel time and 8 hours Elapsed time (2 hours knocked out?.. I don't know.) Arrived at Valewood with 6 hours in party, 6 hours travel time 14 hours elapsed time. I then ran down the road and directly exited the other side to get to Gilded Vale.. 8 hour journey, Elapsed Time 22 hours, Travel time 14 hours ?? 7 hours spent in party. All in all it has no bearing on anything.. but since I just noticed it today I guess I felt the need to figure out what was going on.

I don't think I ever really payed attention to these stats before. Mainly I just always looked to see who had the most kills and who killed the most powerful creature. At any rate, I'm wondering why "Elapsed Time" states 2 months, 2 days, etc. while my characters "Time In Party" states 10 days, 7 hours. (travel time states 1 month, 1 day.. so that's also confusing.) Do certain quests jump time forward and I just never noticed or something?

Yeah, I watched a video about desperados 3 after downloading shadow tactics and stuck it in my watchlist. I had never heard of Desperados either.. Weirdly enough I own and loved Commandos 1-3 so I'm not sure why I never knew desperados existed.

I got Shadow Tactics through Epic's free holiday game giveaway and it's pretty darn great. I had never heard of it before. One mission can feel like an entire game. A lot of experimenting and reloading. I also got TABS and Bad North through that same holiday giveaway which are pretty fun to mess around with. Nothing I have to heavily concentrate on so good for relaxing or beating boredom. Other than that I'm playing through Pillars of Eternity to make a good save for Poe2. I got a new PC about 8 months ago and I didn't bother transferring game saves. More fun to just make new ones.

To me, it simply looks like the first game didn't inspire confidence in a lot of players. If you look at the Steam Achievements .. Not even half the players got through the first act (46.7%) and only 13% actually finished the game. That's not good. When it comes to the second game it was mainly just the die hard fans that bought it. Less people bought the 2nd game but they were bigger fans and the achievements reflect that with 67% at least getting the first achievement and a story completion rate of 19.5%. (pretty much all games have a crappy completion percent. That says more about gaming culture as a whole than anything else.)

Thanks.. I did a bunch of googling myself and found nothing much. Kind of disappoint. I understand the theory behind why they did it.. but it really takes away some of the roll playing aspects. Like if I want to make my main a rogue then I also want to take all the rogue-y skills and I want to be good at those skills so I feel like a good thief. .. not a mediocre thief who has to rely on their friends. "Bert, can you go pick-pocket that guy?.. I know you are a massive burly barbarian with no stealth but you're the one with pick pocket skill because I'm a too dumb and can't fit all that knowledge in my head.. so go get 'em!"

Are skill points per level hard coded or something? I'd expect to find mods that give you more skill points per level but all I can find are overly cheaty ones that max you out right from the get go. All I want is like 2 or 3 points more a level and only for the main character. Also if anyone knows how to just edit a file to get what I want or there's a thread that tells you how to do that I'd be happy to try to do it myself.

Here's a portrait I just made for myself I thought I'd share. I've had this picture for quite a long time and I've used it for Baldur's Gate a few times. Never knew who the artist was so I decided to track them down with tinyeye for this post.. So credit and original art can be found here. https://www.deviantart.com/rainfeatherpearl/art/The-Scout-165202796 Also, credit to this post for teaching me how to create the watercolor portraits.

I feel the silliest thing in this 27 hour world is that your character still only sleeps 8 hours.

no . and story companions are nothing interesting , their builds are limited and their "story" part is shallow and doesnt make up for bad stats , id rather play with 6 interesting characters with interesting builds that i made myself , there are hundreds of builds in PoE that are worth trying and will be way more fun than listening to some crap lines companions have . Stop offering aloth n co to everyone they are trash Disagree. Of course if you play with the classical cheese build pack of 5 hirelings PoTD is a cakewalk. Try to play a PoTD run without a priest. And prepare your anus for the disabling fest. You can beat the game with NPC companions easily, and they add a lot of fun. I like them all, even Aloth. And his stats are not bad for a disabling wizard because you don't need MIG at all. If you play with 5 recruited mercs, you are not playing PoTD. You are playing on easy mode. Everyone can choose their style but I suggest to give NPC companions a try. Some of them have very good stats (Kana, Zahua, Maneha). Others like Hiravias are very funny to have in the party, and his stelgaer shapeshift is very good. Having a party of mercs is not mandatory for PoTD. If you don't know how to use properly NPC's companion it's not NPC's fault. It's yours. I agree.. especially since you can build story companions from the ground up simply by unchecking autolevel. You can pretty much make them as powerful as any companion you can build.. you just can't choose their starting stats so there's no min/maxing. I find the game much more interesting and fun with the story companions. Building your own team is also fun but it definitely makes the game a bit more easy,,,you never have to worry about switching companions out and your team will all pretty much level up evenly.

I found that I didn't really need two tanks by simply having a ranger in the party. The animal companion adds the second "tank" (not really a tank but it keeps the enemies occupied and off the rest of the party.) The ranger I play as a combo of ranged and melee... so she's usually in the front line but won't switch to melee unless it seems necessary to defend the ranged party members. I keep thinking how funny it would be to make a party of all rangers. 6 rangers and their 6 animal companions. (plus your main characters useless pet.) . .13 characters tromping around the country side. My basic party was Fighter (sword and shield) Ranger Rogue (ranged, war bow... Tiny little rogue with a great big bow... I just like the image in my head.) Chanter (mainly using summoning spells and buffing chants... If all else fails, overwhelming the enemy with summoned critters usually works pretty well. Might be considered kind of cheesy) Priest (I always have a priest.. I can't seem to build a party without one... Berath or Eothas.. your basic good guy priest.) Cipher I really like the cipher a lot. I enjoy taking spells that mostly just aid the fighter and I usually give the Cipher guns for some reason. I don't know why.. they seem cooler with guns. In reality you could substitute Wizard or Druid just as easily for the sixth member depending on whatever your favorite class is... I enjoy not having to micromanage spells too much so I like the chanter and cipher.. lots of passive things going on that I don't have to worry about too much. I've yet to create a barbarian or monk. Those classes never interested me in D&D and I guess that's just a left over influence.

Today after an attack I decided to concentrate all hirelings with only security thus lowering prestige. I also hired an ogre that lowers prestige by 6.. Now with a security of 49 and a prestige of 31 I don't seem to be getting any more attacks. I'll have to see how it works out in a couple days. I guess that would make sense.. the more prestige you have the more attacks you'd get. No idea if it really works that way or not. Also, weirdly haven't got any more stronghold quests, supplicants or any other dealings since I completed the stronghold. I find that kind of odd as well.

Really? No penalty for staying with ranged weapons? Wow, I didn't know that. Here I've been busy giving people bonus back up weapon skills when leveling up thinking it'd help them out when they have to go into melee.