El Zoido

Meh, it took me ~60 hours to finish the game, wouldn't call it small in terms of playtime.

Well, you see both, apparently - the souls of the recently diseased (or of people that refused to let go) and memories of your past lifes. It seems that they deliberately kept that memory thing vague, though, so it's probably no wonder that it's confusing at times. In Defiance Bay they either forgot about it or there's simply no reason to have memories appearing to you - the city is likely too new, being founded long after the Inquisitor incarnation, where most of your memories come from had died. There are several occasions of soul-reading in Defiance Bay, however. I'm not sure if the Biawacs are always caused by the Engwithan machines and only happen since 15 years. In fact I think that they are just a minor side effect of the machines and usually happen naturally.

Oh yes, I know about the likely reason, but it could have been avoided had they set the right limitations (e.g. Obsidian reserves the right to restrict Backer NPCs to ensure compliance with background lore or something) and announced them before.

I think Obsidian shouldn't have allowed for so many backer godlikes, given the background of them. It doesn't really fit with the setting...

My impression of the whole Watcher theme was this: First it seemed to me that going mad was simply a possibility for watchers, not a certainty. When, over the course of the game your char showed signs as well, it did kinda seem that it would inevitbly happen to Watchers. Eventually however it looked more and more as if the cause for going mad is an unresolved issue in your past life, not the condition of being a Watcher per se. It just seems that Watchers have higher chance to become awakened and encounter those unresolved issues. The way I understood it, those torture visions happen at places where tortures by the inquisition took place, or rather, your older incarnation witnessed them while he worked for Thaos and the Inquisition. Maybe in Defiance Bay that wasn't the case, for whatever reason? What happened at Ondra's Gift in particular isn't related to your time with the Inquisition, but to the Dyrwood's battle for independence, afaik.

There have been a few encounters where I came back later as they proved difficult and I didn't see an immediate reason to fight them. I think in the end I did all that I had encountered, though (I didn't complete every quest on my first playthrough).

I've played through the game and think that esp. since 1.03 it's definitely playable. The biggest remaining problems in my opinion are the difficulty bug (the game seems to sometimes reset to easy on the higher difficulties, but no one knows why or what triggers it) and some general difficulty/balance issues. That aside you should likely be able to play the game and complete it without any real problems already.

Well, you could make your own customized party through the adventurers in taverns. That aside, people are dramatizing the consequences of having your backline characters attacked. I had a wizard for main char, never used more than light armor ("Rundels Finery") and had almost no defensive spells (he had some stuff like confusion, blinding and such, though) and while he was attacked several times and got knocked out a few, he could certainly survive multiple hits - I never had chars go down in one hit (with the exception of some nasty traps and a certain fight on the lowest level of the Paths). One thing I found particularly useful was to let Durance cast Withdraw if things got hairy.

I think think that a few improvements to the AI would certainly make sense. It would create a bigger challenge and potentially increase the variety of combat. Aside from a smart AI that's able to do some assessment of thread levels, I would also like to see some attempts to disable your frontline fighters to get to your other chars. The player would then need to counter these attempts or deal with it if the enemy succeeds. To compensate the higher challenge and smarter AI it might be necessary to buff a few abilities, however, especially those that deal with disengagement. There already are several ways to deal with engaged squishies, but if it happens more often, they might not be enough - and they more or less require an additional character to help the engaged char - interrupts can really be nasty.

LadyCrimson, are you sure the highest stealth level applies? I had the impression that the stealth level is applied individually - i.e. when my whole party was sneaking the different chars were detected at different speeds.

Assuming we are talking about the same news-piece here, the date of that news should help you to put it in perspective...

I tried that and characters died. As I said, I was under-levelled so I couldn't soak up the damage. Hm, then you can either retry until the trap misses (use a char with high defenses) or load the auto-save from when you entered the level.

And lose out on the experience? Don't be ridiculous. Sure, considering one's OCD when it comes to accumulating all possible XP that solution might be obvious but highly unsatisfying.

Superficially that's true. Keeping a character conscious through healing his endurance will accumulate health-loss, thus bringing him closer to death. On the other hand losing the character for the remainder of an encounter, due to being knocked out, can mean losing the game if you can't win that encounter without him/her. Overall low health is anyway seldom a real problem with the current health levels and difficulty. My main melee chars (currently Edèr and Hiravias plus Durance as backup) seldom reach red health (mostly Durance) and without any real penalties to it it doesn't matter that much as long as max endurance > max health. I do think it would be interesting to get some penalty for reaching red health levels, at least on hard and up - but then it might also make sense to buff the health-healing abilities (field triage) a bit. @Hiro: You can always just trigger the traps, if disarming is not an option. Many chars should be able to soak it up, and there's a good chance the trap will miss. I think the Vines are mostly a way to evade the big fight with the 'shrooms.

I had it happen to Eder with 1.03. Reappeared after I dismissed and rehired him. Seems to be a bug, so post it to the technical forums as well, or ask a mod to move it there.

The things I want "balanced" in a single player game are simply: Make enemies (through AI, abilities, resistances, etc.) provide a good challenge and make classes varied and give them a as-wide-as-possible selection of useful abilities/spells - they can be circumstantial, but they should have some obvious and useful application. While I'm enjoying PoE a lot, both points could still use some work, imo. E.g. too many encounters can be won through "block the door with a tank and shoot them from afar". It would be fun if the enemies would counter that more often. There's plenty of stuff at their disposal, in theory.

Emergency shutdown always sounds like a serious problem with cooling. I have seen reports that some games using the Unity engine made systems run hot, but if the cooling fails to keep the system stable, that's a hardware issue, imo. You say that you keep your laptop clean, so I assume the problem isn't with dust clocking your vents or such. It can still be insufficient cooling though - maybe the heat-spreader has come loose from your CPU, or the thermal grease has dried up too much (if it uses grease that is). Apparently sometimes the manufacturer simply fails to design the cooling system right, though.

The wizard's mechanic is strangely restricting in comparison to Druids and Priests. For the purpose of crowd control, the wizard is a very good class with some good spells, also his spell selection is quite large - although it's unlikely that one will use more than 3-4 from each level and you need to acquire them first, which is a challenge in itself. Druids and priests in comparison get them all for free once eligible. I guess that the idea originally was that the large selection (thus flexibility) and the effectiveness of wizard spells are countered by the limited space available in grimoires. Unfortunately that only works to some extend currently. Some spells are clearly the superior choice, while others fall somewhat flat, reducing the actually interesting spell selection already. The number of spells effectively available to the player's wizard also will be lower, since you will need to acquire the spells in some way (enemy caster's grimoires, level up). Makes me wonder why they aren't available for sale at some place. While the Wizard works as a class, the restriction feels a bit arbitrary in comparison to other classes. I think it would make sense to a) make spells available more easily to the player (e.g. add a shop in Defiance Bay) and b) increase the number of different spells available to the player over the course of the game, either through level-ups or finding/buying improved grimoires with a larger capacity.

I think it's a result of the miss/graze/hit/crit system. Per default, most attacks/spells will do something, even when the effect/duration might be reduced. Depending on the difference between your guys defence and the attackers accuracy, +10 defense can well mean a couple of more misses, but it can also simply result in more grazes, which will still affect your chars. The system in itself has some advantages (like e.g. supposedly trained fighters being able to hit a barn door even on low levels), but in order for buffs to be noticeable, they need to be stronger, imo. To achieve any serious and noticeable effect in your example, I'd say that +25 are necessary at least.

Because breaking engagement equals death. That is not true, or at least a big exaggeration. Most of the time the fighter classes can easily suffer disengagement attacks without problems. Even if the attack hits, their endurance and health is large enough. In case of the more fragile classes, a disengagement attack is a serious thread indeed, but can be countered with the right tactics in many cases. See my post on the last page for some possibilities. That's my experience on Hard, anyway. Best way to deal with it for them is, of course, to avoid getting engaged in the first place, but if it can't be avoided there are several ways to deal with it. The engagement system in its current implementation is not perfect, though. Some of the abilities offered to deal with it could use some adjustments - e.g. I found the rogue's escape talent to be rather wonky. It's too slow to activate, has low range and sometimes doesn't seem to work at all. Definitely something the devs should look at. Also there are talents that offer increased defence against disengagement. Considering that those are relatively rare I would increase their effectiveness, too. Finally, some people have reported that disengagement attacks triggered too easily - I think the engaged char should have some "wiggle room", e.g. by making the attack trigger only when he moves outside of a certain, sensible radius around the attacker.

From a point of encounter diversity (or rather how the different encounters play), early-mid act 2 has so far been the low point in the game for me. Which is funny considering that's also the point where the player has the biggest amount of content at his/her disposal. Anyway, esp. in act 3 and the lower levels of the Paths, the amount of encounters where the simple "tank'n'spank" strategy won't work so well is higher again. If (or when) Obsidian decides to do another balancing pass, I'd like them to adjust the game a bit such that a) AI smartly uses some of the more nasty abilities, esp. to make the above described strategy more difficult b) enemies have higher resistances in some cases where it makes sense (both DR and defenses) c) health (not endurance!) and defense of fighter classes is reduced to make them more vulnerable; currently Edèr often will barely get a scratch despite being attacked by multiple enemies. d) make buffs and debuffs a bit more varied and more effective to counter higher resistances (and in turn making them more useful) f) just a small adjustment to the engagement system: make it a bit more forgiving to movement before triggering an attack and make the disengagement-abilities effective A few more words about the engagement system: I'm fine with it and found it far less limiting than some people say. Ok, it prevents a certain playstyle favoured by a certain prolific poster. But for the most part, it's an interesting mechanic. There are also several ways to deal with it (decisions!): Suffer a disengagement attack - largely inconsequential for fighters, but dangerous for squishies Use an ability (e.g. escape talent, currently a bit wonky and ineffective, unfortunately) or spell (e.g. Withdraw, 1st level priest), give characters perks that give defense against disengagment attacks Use another character to disable the attacker (e.g. knock him down, confuse him, etc.)

I think balancing in a single-player game should focus on making as many classes/abilities/spells as possible useful in some way. That doesn't mean that everything has to play the same or be equally effective - far from it. Just that there should be some clear reason to exist for all of them. It can also make sense to remove/nerf obvious exploits, since they will reduce options for players that don't want to cheese their way through the game or make other abilities seem useless and weak in comparison.

I had some issues with that as well, although it seems to work lately. There's definitely at least one bug with custom formations: 1) Set up a custom formation and activate it 2) Move around a bit, then change the custom formation 3) Move around again, notice it's still using the old formation 4) Switch to a pre-made formation and back to custom 5) Only now is the new custom formation applied.

I very much doubt your core-count has much to do with it, unless one of them would be faulty - but that would likely cause different issues. The short flashing could be simply the moment PoE locks up and becomes unresponsive. Don't think area transition is linked to your GPU. Did you consider checking the installation through Steam (or re-installing if using the GOG version)? Maybe some files got corrupted.

Well, aside from the titles, all "books" in the game contain just a few short passages of text and could be considered merely letters or short treatises. I was assuming that it's indeed a personal diary at first, too, but when I found several of them I suspected that it's more like a religious text/piece of propaganda.