xzar_monty

A monk has better unarmed penetration than a superb mace at the point I am in (or maybe equal, and can definitely be bettered with Haymaker). And yes, I know all about Expose vulnerabilities, Rusted armor etc., but the point sort of is that their duration is negligible compared to the duration of N's safeguard. It's something along the lines of 120 seconds versus maybe 10 seconds. As I said, I had two Rusted armor scrolls, and one of them missed; the other lasted for about ten seconds, which isn't much. I have checked SSS a bit and indeed didn't enjoy it very much: there was very little storytelling but plenty of fighting, it seemed. I'm totally fine about skipping much/most of it, that's no big deal. I have now finished BoW, and I thought that apart from N, it was excellent. Really well written. Funnily enough, btw, the very last fight against a big bad boss was a lot better, less cheesy and more interesting than the dragon fight.

Well, for me, with my experience of the game so far, I would maintain that the difference between Neriscyrlas and everything else so far is huge. No difficulties with flame blights, flame nagas or anything else like that. With those, for example, the combination of what's available (like, for instance, there's no way all five of my group have the equivalent of stiletto and arquebus equipped) has always been good enough. Also: nearly all monsters you can get a look at, think about and even retreat from to gather your resources or refine your strategy. Not so with Neriscyrlas.

Just out of interest: why did you buy the new ship? At level 16, I haven't yet seen anything that would suggest there'd be any need to buy ship upgrades, much less a new ship. They're just not necessary. Of course, things might change in late-game, and if it's about that, please don't tell.

I've got no Paladins or Druids in the party. Grimoires can't be switched in battle. None of my party members specializes in one special thing. Interesting what you say about fampyrs: I haven't had any difficulty with them whatsoever. Not using guns on skeleton warriors is obvious, given their structure, and besides, even if I do have a gun equipped (which I do), I can always switch to a melee weapon when skeleton warriors come around. The big cheesy thing for me is the (at least) thrice-cast Safeguard which changes the complexion of the battle completely. And in this, the main thing is that it happens when you've already spent a lot of resources without knowing that that's what the dragon's gonna do. I mean, it's perfectly ok that it uses it, but the amount of time that it casts it and the amount of the time the spell lasts per casting turns the battle into a heck of a useless grind. If you come perfectly prepared, things are going to be a lot easier, but that's meta-gaming again. So, when you come into battle the first time, chances are it's going to turn into a huge grind midway through, and that's just cheesy. Or, then you come in knowing what to expect and prepared for it, and that's cheesy too. I don't think it's a good fight. In PoE, the Alpine Dragon battle was poor and cheesy, but not because of the difficult dragon itself. It was because of those spirits suddenly teleporting in -- it looked like pure cheating from the game developers, and that was disappointing.

Yeah, burn is probably the best damage to deal, but there again: you have to have plenty of burn damage options prepared before battle. You can't go to your inventory in battle. If you didn't have the right stuff, well, it becomes cheesy again.

His armor goes up to 19 with the Safeguard. Even with meal boosts (which I had), it is very difficult to bring penetration close to that. You can bring his armor down with Rusted Armor scroll, for example, but given that he has the Safeguard for at least approximately 300 seconds (he casts it at least three times), one scroll is going to reduce his armor for approximately 5% of that time. I had two of those scrolls equipped before the battle (and you cannot re-equip in battle). One of them hit, and the other missed, so their effect was close to nil. I was able to deactivate the Safeguard with the arcane dampener (was that was it called?) spell, twice, but again, these amounted up to for about 10% of the spell's duration. I would still argue that this is cheese because you need prior meta-game knowledge before you can make even close to optional choices. Like with Kangaxx. I agree that there are multiple ways for both, but the fight is still designed in a way that is not so much challenging, it's just wildly annoying. Hands down the worst fight in the game (so far) in this sense. It's not the difficulty as such, it's that without those optional choice made before the battle (either by chance or through meta-gaming), the battle is such a huge grind.

Veteran. First and only playthrough -- it's obvious to me that the game has zero replay value. There are ways of making the spell end quicker, but these entail having the right stuff available (as you can't switch spellbooks or scrolls during a fight). Also, the power Neriscyrlas gets on the spell (90 seconds or so, and it can add to it by using its siphon, so maybe 120 seconds or so per casting) is a lot longer that what you can get on your dampeners or insectoid stuff, for instance. What I'm saying is that it's doable if 1) you meta-game, i.e. check out what you need to do, or 2) you just happen to have the right stuff equipped, or 3) you are willing to grind it out by running around for at least three castings of that spell (given how unlikely it is that you can interrupt the casting -- and yes, I know the thrust of tattered veils, for instance, but you'll have to have some luck to get everything work at the right time). And so, to me this combinations spells CHEESE in capital letters. I agree with your last point. The way the game is made doesn't really lend itself to properly challenging enemies, only HP stuff. BoW has been excellent so far. The Bridge Aflame in particular was superb -- boy that was well done. So, Neriscyrlas after that was a huge disappointment.

Some people on these forums have -- quite justifiably -- criticised Baldur's Gate II for its cheesy fights where you have to know just the right things, otherwise you're doomed. I just came across a dragon called Neriscyrlas and noticed that it is pure BG2 chesse through and through. Reason being: it uses a very specific super-powerful ability to make itself quite invulnerable, and you have to know beforehand that it does so if you want to have a good chance of survival. When you start the fight, it'll take some before its strategy becomes obvious, and at that point your resources are likely to have diminished quite a bit. Also, if you do not have the right spells and/or scrolls prepared, you have to run around the map (or otherwise waste time) rather a lot. My solution was to give up on the third time it did its "yo! you can't hit me now!" type of thing, and set the difficulty real low. Grinding it out is just not worth it, I can't see how there could be a proper reward. Worst-planned fight in the game, hands down. It's cheese, through and through, because you have to meta-game (i.e. know your tricks beforehand) in order to get a good chance.

That's an interesting BG2 choice indeed: to do the quests before Underdark or not. If you do, the whole of Chapter 6 is just that one encounter with Bodhi, there's nothing else, and nothing of significance anywhere else in Athkatla.

Right. But Eder quite clearly isn't a comic relief character.

How and/or why? Do you mean the animal love? I can remember a total of one (1) voiced line concerning that, but of course there could have been more and I'm pretty sure I haven't heard all of his lines. I think the comparison is both untrue and unfair in the sense that Minsc is a comic relief character with precious little potential for depth, given his lack of both intelligence and wisdom, whereas Eder is a genuine person whose responses aren't inherently silly the way Minsc's are. Not liking Eder is perfectly fine, of course, but the comparison doesn't ring true. (I only used Minsc once in BG2, disregarded him for my only playthrough of BG1, and did not use him in my only playthrough of SoD, either.)

I agree that Durance was very good. I didn't know he was written by Avellone. But I do think that the Grieving Mother was also. I liked them both, but they both also had a problem: their story developed when you rested in the wilderness (or something like that), and because the game was so easy that you essentially never needed to, I never got to see the end of either's arc. And some of the vocabulary in the Grieving Mother's story was a bit trying-too-hard-to-sound-literary. I have met Jubilost, but he's only been in my party (like, an active companion) for a second, so no comments on him.

When it comes to Eder, does anyone else get the impression that this character got about five times more care and attention than any of the other NPCs? This is the general impression I constantly get. It's like, the dedication on display with Eder totally eclipses everything in all of the other characters. Now, this is just an impression, mind you, but it's very strong. It can also be caused by: 1) The fact that whoever wrote Eder is simply a much better writer than the others, 2) The fact that Eder's voice actor is very good (which he is), 3) Quite obviously, combination of #1 and #2 above.

3. Neither potions nor scrolls are that necessary. I may in fact have never read a single scroll, although I have used potions -- but only healing potions. I think this is a bit of a shame in both games: you have plenty of potions and scrolls available, but there's never a time when you feel need any of them (except the healing potions). It may be a different story on PotD (especially with challenges on).

I would argue that money in Deadfire is fairly irrelevant because there is nothing to buy. You don't need to upgrade your ship or buy a new one. You don't need any of the slightly better items that can be bought at the shops. There is nothing to look forward to in terms of earning money and making purchases. I see that as a direct result of the somewhat overly balanced system and mechanics of the game. I.e. everything is as valuable as everything else. It is not quite as drastic as that, because a legendary item is undoubtedly better than a fine one, but you get everything you need and plenty more for free, without much difficulty(*). (*) Again, with PotD and all challenges on, I'm prepared to accept that there's plenty of difficulty, but only in terms of numbers, not strategically or conceptually.

Could be that, yeah. Adding that kind of realism might not make the game any more fun to play. As I said, I haven't seen a game where they've tried it, and although I would like to, I can imagine that it might not be worth it.

Can you give an example of such a game? I don't remember any, but it has to be said that I have not played most games, even of this genre. I would prefer a more realistic economy, at least in theory. But it would have to be implemented well. I understand it's a bit of a given that the game world only exists for the player (nobody else ever buys anything, nothing happens anywhere unless the player does something, and as soon as the player has done something, the whole game world knows it, etc.), but I'd love to see a game that at least tries to change this somehow.

Thank you for that. Much obliged.

Ok. How would you go about giving this to the Watcher via the console?

That's a good question. My answer is that I don't even know what the talent should be. How could I know? The game says you receive a part of your soul back, but I cannot deduce the name of the talent from that.

Incidentally, all of this would be fixed if the economy of the game world was "real". What I mean by this is that the ships you intimidate could only give you money from the amount they actually have (and which you will find out if you board the ship, for example). It's actually a bit strange that this obviously hasn't been taken into account. But then, maybe nobody foresaw the intimidation exploit. Another thing that hasn't been taken into account in just about any CRPG is that shops shouldn't have infinite amounts of money, either. But that's another topic altogether.

I agree. The bug is so obvious and annoying (and in that last example, debilitating) that if it was common, it would have caused an uproar. It's probably really difficult to pin down the special circumstances needed.

There is no implication of higher moral ground in the comment, it's your interpretation and getting upset about it is unnecessary and unhelpful. For instance, there are plenty of people who argue that eating meat is ethically dubious. I do eat meat (although I tend to choose it quite carefully), but I don't get upset with differing opinions, and when discussing this, I don't get upset with people who argue for vegetarianism on ethical grounds. What would be unacceptable is them telling me what to do based upon their personal preferences. But I already emphasized that this is precisely what I did not do. I agree that solution #1 is a good option; in fact, I commented on this straight away.

Incidentally, I just saw this bug occur in a way that was more severe than before: a character got stuck in a loop so seriously that it was impossible to get them out of it even after combat. Strange. So, it was possible to click that character and they even made a comment, but nothing worked. They didn't move or do anything else. The only thing to do was to load the most recent quicksave, everything else was futile.

That's an astonishing thing to bring up, it's extraordinary how rancorously petty you can get. What can possibly be the problem if I don't min-max because I find it ethically dubious, given the limitations and exploitability of a CRPG? There is no judgement there on anyone else. It feels like cheating to me, so I don't do it. Why does that offend you so?