xzar_monty

I think I'm close to the end of Act 3 now, and I'm getting the feeling that my crusade might come crashing down eventually, because of something I have neglected. Let's hope it won't happen, but you're absolutely right: it's almost impossible to know what's important and what's not. By the way, does everybody else keep getting a whole bunch of unnecessary army units? I've got some mongrel archers, some shieldbearers and whatnot, and essentially no use for them. I get them as rewards for quests and choices, but they sure don't look useful.

This is by far the most annoying aspect of the game for me. Owlcat doesn't care one bit for fair play, it just blatantly cheats. I don't understand this. I recently had a boss fight with a fellow who seemed pretty difficult at the start (but then I made him useless with one spell). When he died, he metamorphosed into something else entirely, which was understandable given his mythic status (at least according to how I read it). But then, after I destroyed everything he metamorphosed into, he turned into yet another thing which made no sense whatsoever, and after I destroyed that, he came back around for a chat. This stuff makes no sense.

King is very talented and much more than a horror writer, but he's also very uneven. I think his best, by far, in the 2000s is Under the Dome (silly ending but that was only to be expected). Duma Key is also quite all right, and the beginning of The Outsider is superb but the end is rubbish. Doctor Sleep is not bad at all. Not great King, but not bad at all. FWIW, I think King's best are 'Salem's Lot and IT. Of the shorter stories, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is probably the finest

Yeah, I noticed this (sorry for the double quote by the way). I generally dislike metagaming but I did read some info on the units, because what the game tells me is just so vague and difficult to assess. Also, it seems to me that some units really are rubbish, definitely not worth investing in. One example would be shieldbearers. Maybe I'm not a good player of the game, but the only legitimate use I can think for these is meat shield: if the enemy has large teleporting units such as glabrezus, you can move your shieldbearers in front of your archers so that the glabrezus can't teleport next to them and destroy them. And that's it. Even this is a rare enough instance, so shieldbearers are not worth it even for this occasion. Do correct me if I'm terribly wrong. (I received some shieldbearers after completing a quest or doing something like that, I can't remember -- I certainly didn't invest in them.) I have come across an enemy army with shieldbearers in it, and they were useless there, too. Took some time to take down, obviously, but posed no danger whatsoever.

Oh heck, I hadn't thought of this at all. Let's see if I run into a fatal morale drop later on. I have definitely waged a war of conquest. Surely there was no way I could have known otherwise (from within the game).

Wow. I agree that it's weird. Maybe I'll eventually see him. When it comes to random encounters, by the way, I must say the design leaves a lot to be desired. I am in favor of them as a concept, but the application is poor. Essentially every wilderness encounter has been one where the enemy is already right at melee range, closer than melee range, almost on top of / in the middle of my group. That's inexplicable to me: there's no reasonable way to assume that a group of ash giants, for instance, could ever walk right into my group without me noticing them from, say, 30 feet (heck, I should notice them from 300 feet and further!). But they are at 5 feet and closer right from the start. Makes no sense.

I am now in Act 3, I guess, and I have not seen the skeletal merchant yet. I only thought he appeared in Pathfinder: Kingmaker...

I decided to carry everything (that wasn't heavy) from Areelu's lab, and there were indeed legitimate junk items there. So, I was able to finish this silly quest. Thanks!

I already carry some pieces of junk, such as letters, porcelain plates (worth 2 gp each), a cracked cell key and so on. None of these appear in the inventory, although I think they should, as they qualify as junk. If not, what does? It's really peculiar that when I try to interact with that enchanted piece of land, the only thing appearing in my inventory is potions. They appear in the "all items" and "usable items" categories, but nothing else appears anywhere else.

Btw, I just came across my first bona fide non-trivial bug. In my azata run, I get this Court that houses several creatures related to my mythic path. At one point, I'm supposed to give one of them 30 enchanted pieces of something for his mural. There are three spots in my court where I can supposedly enchant items (junk items, they are supposed to be). But when I hit one of these spots, all my inventory shows is potions, and they cannot be enchanted because they are already magical. All other inventory categories show nothing at all, and the usable items category shows potions, and that's it. I reckon that's a bug.

It's not a blind playthrough if you're asking this question. I'm not trying to be clever here. If you want a blind playthrough, just carry on. You'll be fine.

Those putrid clouds, by the way, were a bit of a disappointment in the game. Yes, they caused unpleasant things, but once you moved away, everything was back to ok in a minute. So, they never mattered in the end, and I couldn't really see how they could have mattered to anyone in any way.

It's astonishing how many things don't work, actually. I'm sure you know the dragon encounter after Drezen. The one where you have to take that slayer with you and where you can set up an ambush. Well, the ambush was supposed to give me a +8 circumstance bonus on saves against fear. It didn't work. Unbreakable heart, the spell, was supposed to give me a +4 morale bonus against fear. It didn't work. So was missing a legitimate +12 there. No wonder my group didn't do well initially. (My PC was at +6 on will, when it should have been +18. I checked the log, and it was +6.) When I say "initially", I mean that after everything went wrong very quickly (i.e. everybody ran away), I reloaded my save. And I think at least some of that stuff did work, then. I don't get it.

I understand there's something called Playful Darkness in the game, and I also understand it's something that has bothered an awful lot of people an awful lot. I'm looking forward to it. I'm at level 10, right after capturing Drezen, and I have no idea how long I'll have to wait for that one (I also don't want to know).

I am now in Drezen, and I must say I haven't been annoyed by the crusade fights so far. The only foolish thing (and let's be frank it was foolish indeed, just awful design) was one enemy general that had scorching ray as a weapon. It just one-shotted my troops, and I couldn't do anything about it. Amazing that something like that can go through quality control. I know the answer was and is increasing the size of your units, but still: awful design.

Thanks for that!

Here's another example of some things that are just badly designed in the game -- or, to be more precise, badly documented. There's a tutorial but it definitely leaves out some fairly important parts of the crusade management side of things. For instance, I have now captured Drezen, and it seems that the tactical side of things is going to get more important. This, however, brings up a couple of questions. For instance: how many armies should I have? Up to this point, I have done all my battles with one single army, and I have never once used the other two that I have, because I haven't had any need for it. But now it definitely appears that demon armies are going to attack me at some point, which would suggest that I should have multiple armies at my disposal. How many armies? Each one of them with a different general? Or not? The game gives me NO CLUE.

You know, I had the most awesome luck in that one, and I was left wondering that if that hadn't been the case, I'd probably be saying the same thing: the fight is pretty terrible -- and it's also yet another example of how Owlcat blatantly cheats in its encounter design. What I did was this: I was able to cast three controlled fireballs into the summoning circle, which took care of pretty much all the mages. Then the main mage appeared (and here's the blatant cheat: that character simply appears on the scene after the minions are dead, you have no way of knowing that it's coming up, and in my view this sort of thing is just not done, it's so cruel and dishonest towards the player) and I realized I wasn't going to be able to deal with it, it was just so awfully high-level and fast and buffed. So I figured what the heck, I'll throw in one of Camellia's slumber hexes. And it worked. Next up: coup de grace. I won.

After all that trouble that Eothas went to, it would definitely be a huge shame. Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

Ok, thanks for all the answers re: evil! Btw, Owlcat makes some really strange decisions in some of these boss fights. For instance, I just had a fairly difficult battle against three enemies, all of them definitely non-trivial. After several tries it turned out that I essentially had to beat just one of them for the story to proceed, and when the story did then proceed, another one of those enemies who I had managed to kill was alive again so that we were able to have a brief conversation. I don't know about people in general, but for me this is poor poor design. However, the game is quite good, I do enjoy it a lot. Even if the writing is what it is and some of the design choices are just odd.

I have now played the game for quite a bit, I'm at level 9 and I suppose I have battled through most of Drezen and the citadel, although this part is not complete yet (I chose my specific mythic path [azata, it was a tough choice between that and aeon] and have done a couple of encounters in the citadel area after that). Now, two questions: 1) Is it sensible to play this game as an evil character? I don't see it. Even if you want to make evil choices, the storyline is so clearly a "good" one. I mean, surely you can't join the demon army or anything, can you? So how does evil work? It would seem very forced to me, but I must say I haven't even tried. 2) What do you people think of the puzzles in this game? I think they are poorly designed: there is a distinct lack of clues(*) and often very little you can do in terms of determining what went wrong or not, i.e. it turns out to be just guessing in the end. For instance, in one of the earlier puzzles you had to put down four domino-like pieces in the right order. This was, in theory, a good puzzle, but in fact the implementation was poor: you could only make a real choice with the first piece, and after that you could only choose one of the remaining three (and then two, and then one). If you got the first one wrong, there was nothing to it, and if you got the first one right, there was also nothing to it, because you couldn't make a mistake after that. So instead of a real puzzle, it was actually a toss of a four-sided coin. (*) I may be wrong here, as it's possible that I'm just too thick or inattentive to see the clues. Which is why I'm asking.

Yeah, fair enough. I'm mostly interested in story, so Disco Elysium was excellent for me. I'm not very much into combat mechanics, as engineering, for the lack of a better term, is not really something that interests me very much.

Yeah, I can understand that. I can't get over turn-based in cRPGs, it's an instant no-no for me. Many of us have these preferences that are stronger than preferences. But just out of curiosity: did you play Disco Elysium? I'm asking because there's some pretty fine writing there.

The writing is awful, in approximately the way you describe. There is essentially no understanding of narrative, drama, subtlety or psychology in the writing, and to balance all of that, there's a huge amount of cheese. I totally agree: the writing is a bit better than P:K but it's still awful. I only wanted to address this briefly, since you're playing in German. All in all, a good post, and I agree with quite a lot of it. I'm playing the game these days, and I do enjoy it, despite the writing -- but boy how I pine for a title that has all these mechanics AND good writing. That would be some game, wouldn't it? In my view, Deadfire and Disco Elysium are head and shoulders above WotR, but WotR is quite nice, too.

You can always interrupt spell-casting. As for general strategies, check what kind of damage the dragon is most and least vulnerable to.