Smorensky

I agree on this one. Placing him in a dungeon would have added a nice twist to Devil's quest. But as it stands now in the game, your "dungeon" doesn't really have much impact on the game which is a shame.

Here's a funny thing about the world of Pillars and mass murderers. Pillars is loosely based on Europe's mid to late medieval period. The words "law" and "due process" were interpreted differently from place to place and meant something entirely different from what they mean today. Dyrwood is a feudal society in it's late period, but a feudal one never the less and because of that "The word of Roadwarden of Caed Nua is the law in the surrounding lands". By holding that title officially, as long as he holds it your character has the right to judge people under him. So unless your character commits a blatant crime in public, breaks the Duke's law in any other way or gets into a fight with one of his equals or peers, he cannot be judged before the court of law, because "Your word is the law". By this account even Raedric was not guilty of anything by medieval laws. You invading his castle and killing him (if you did) without valid reason or provocation would be wrong by feudal standards, but it would be overlooked by the royal court simply because Raedric was a madman that began destroying his own land (less people, means less income, less income means less taxes and eventually the royal court would have to act, if nothing else, to protect its own interests). But even here your character cannot be blamed directly for killing Raedric, because his brother (another heir to those lands) pleaded to you for help. So you did not invade Raedric's lands, as once the deed was done you surrendered the land to the other heir of the same house. If anyone should be judged by medieval laws it would be Kolsc. The same logic can be applied to Harmke and the rest of the Cold Mourn mob. Since Dyrwood was riled up after the Saint's War it was perfectly normal that the local lord didn't punish the mob in any way (after all he would have to kill or imprison his own servants for what? a few burned traitors?). However it was Harke's misfortune that Stalwart village "pleaded to you for assistance". Inviting a feudal lord into a "lord-less" region was not the smartest move. One could debate that Stalwart is too far away from Caed Nua and the land belongs to someone else and then you could argue that the local lord did nothing, etc,etc... Therefore Harmke was (in my latest play-through) rightfully executed, because my character judged him guilty of a crime. The other woodcutters that were present at the time were judged as accomplices and dealt with accordingly because they dared raise arms against a "nobleman and his retinue" that had just delivered them the White Forge and saved their village from extinction. As for Devil, she is still paying for her crimes, as part of my character's retinue. The lesson of the story: "Don't be stupid enough to raise arms against the Road-warden of Caed Nua."

We can argue forever on this, some ppl find the faction choices annoying others find them ok. But the main reason this thread exists is because of a rather annoying bug. As the developer said, there was a bug allowing you to pick up BOTH FACTION QUESTS, for knights and dozens at the same time, effectively preventing you from being invited by both sides. As it was stated before, the quests in question are Winds Of Steel and Bronze Beneath The Lake, those 2 quests were supposed to be mutually exclusive, meaning if you pick up one you can't get take the other. The bug allowed you to pick up both. That was the only real issue here. This bug was fixed with the last patch for all new plythroughs, but unfortunatelly the fix is not retroactive, meaning you would have to reload an earlier save or start a new game. As far as the choices go, I find that The Doemenels quest Changing Of The Guard is the most annoying and uninventive as far as all three go. Someone from the dev team should rly check it out and change the location where it happens completely, because atm that quest is just stupid as hell...

Well so far I'm enjoying my potd playthrough. As I expected things are rather hard early on, but level out once you finish The Old Watcher quest, since every location but Twin Elmes is open to you. Gear is probably the main reason, more so than XP, as you can grab a lot of money and some decent gear early on, putting you on pair with slightly inflated monster stats. This playthrough I'm using a 2H rogue and as soon as I got 10k gold I went to Dyrford to get Hours of Saint Rumbald/Tall Grass (whichever you prefer). Once I got the weapon most encounters started melting. My party is Eder and Pallegina as tanks, Aloth and Durance as buffers/debuffers and Grieving Mother for cc. 90% of dmg comes from my Greatsword sneakattacking rogue as both weapons I mentioned come with great enchantments (sword has +12 accuracy (no dmg thou) while the pike starts with exceptional +8acc and 1.3 dmg). So my character rarely misses an attack, the only thing to worry about is keeping mobs off him

Well in most cases the text is pretty explicit. The Doemenels tell you right up front that the job is both illegal and dangerous and that accepting it will prevent any further interactions with Knights and Dozens. The crucible knights are not that explicit, but they tell you, you will probably have to cross swords with other factions (and providing CK with an army of golems would defenetly put you on the Dozens' bad side, even without their views on animancy). The only thing I mind about this is the fact that the main quests for all three factions are rather short. If you had to do 3 or 4 jobs instead of just 2, that would be great. As it is right now I understand why some ppl find it frustrating.

Well would be a shame if that's the case. I'm not a big fan of the rng. Still would be nice to have some confirmation.

Anyone?

Well the way I see it, it does make sense that doing several jobs for one faction would create a problem with the other two. The explanation is in the lore. When you enter Defiance Bay the narator tells you that the city is basically a powder cag ready to blow any second. As you run around the city you find out about several prominent factions that all hold a certain measure of influence in the royal court. To make matters worse, all three factions are at odds. Add Legacy and Hollowborn on top of it and you do really have a powder cag ready to blow up as soon as someone farths... So when any of the factions notice that you are having a bit too much contact with the other group, they will simply stop trusting you (or at least their leaders will). You may be a decent guy in their book, but the fact that the other group is willing to entroust you with a very important job warrants some suspicion. After all they can never be completely sure if you have a hidden agenda. And checking that information will take some time, time you don't have at that point in the game. And as far as "simple fetch" quests go, think about it like this, getting weapons for someone is not a simple fetch quest... Immagine a situation where an ex cop, who is still well respected in the department, is suddenly seen brokering a weapons deal for the Italian mafia. So he takes on the job of delivering a weapon shipment to the crime syndicate and then decides to go into the FBI building and ask them to arrange a meeting with the president... His reputation is still good with his former colegues, so they don't arest him on the spot, but they tell him that meeting the president will have to wait untill he's clear of suspicion. He then tells them he is willing to give them the details about the weapon shipment and that he is on their side all the way... And they thank him and say yes we understand, but you are still under investigation...

Well, there is no harm in trying it out Truth is potd is a bit frustrating in the begining, but once you get a few lvls under your belt, backed up with some decent gear, it becomes fun (at least for me). And no, potd does not invalidate "half of abilities and spells" it simply makes spells you never bothered using during normal or hard playthrough useful, if anything it makes more things viable. Things like food for example...Sure you can still run through encounters without it, but in potd it helps a lot. Traps, you find a ton of them troughout the game and now you actually have a reason to use them Slaying enchantments, they are completely irelevant on hard, on potd, the added accuracy makes things a lot easier. Scrolls, yup pretty useful especially early on. As for niche builds, not sure what ppl mean buy that. I play with standard npc companions, so the only character that was minmaxed is my main char.

So, as the topic says I'd like to now if there is a way in game (without resorting to cheats) to obtain more than 2 sky dragon's eyes and Adra Dragon Scales. I searched through several topics and never found a concrete answer as some ppl claim these items can be bought from Currio Shop, or randomly generated with other ingredients in your stronghold. Having finished the game on hard, so far I have never seen these items on sale anywhere in the game, nor have they been randomly generated in my stronghold. So if anyone knows a definitive answer to this I would much appreciate it.

Hmm you might want to move this to another thread as it is completely off topic. After all the OP asked about differences between hard and potd

So far I did some testing on phantoms and shades in Cad Nua and wolves and bears in Valewood. The differences are indeed big between hard and PoTD. Most mobs on potd have up to 50% higher stats, I tested it on phantoms and shadows. On hard shadows and phantoms have around 52-54 deflection defence, while on potd they have 75, this is also true for other defences. In addition, they also have 50% higher accuracy. In game mechanics this means they also do more dmg, as they will score critical hits on your characters more often. As far as numbers of mobs go, in Valewood on hard you encounter 1 elder wolf and 2 young wolves, on potd it's 1 elder wolf and 4 young wolves. In the bear cave on hard you encounter 1 big bear and 1 young bear. On potd you encounter 1 big bear and 2 young bears. I haven't gotten to Defiance Bay yet on potd, but I did beat the game on hard. If the XP and item mechanics are same for hard and potd, it means that the game will be hard as hell untill you get to DB. After DB, due to abundance of XP and good gear the difficulty should ballance out a bit, but still remain a challenge due to increased monster stats. As far as endgame goes, I can't say for sure but considering that final boss has 150 deflection score on hard, on potd that would be 220... And that's just crazy, so I'm guessing endgame on potd should be a nightmare As I said I can't be certain for mid and lategame, but so far the numbers hold on my early game potd playthrough.

Well, Eder's quest kind of remains open, to a degree. So who knows, maybe we will get something more in the upcomming sequels But yes in general, it makes him come to terms with what happened.

Lightning strikes was broken pre patch, not sure if it works after. Turning Wheel works fine. Keep in mind that for turning wheel to show any bonus dmg you need to "have wounds" on your monk. Get hit a few times to stack 4-5 wounds then attack something and you should be able to see bonus fire dmg in the combat log. Keep in mind that spending wounds on abilities will lower the damage of turning wheel, as only the wounds that you currently have, count towards bonus fire dmg, the spent wounds do not count.

Here's my monk build, playing on hard atm lvl8: Fire godlike M:19 C:8 D:10 P:15 I:8 R:18 Skills by lvl: 1.Torment's Reach 2.Lesser Wounds 3.Force of Anguish 4.Weapon focus: Peasant 5.Turning Wheel 6.Vulnerable attack 7.Duality of mortal presence 8.Two weapon style No weapons, for armor only Berathian robe (2DR, -5% recovery), DR belt for extra 5 pierce and slash resistance. Atm on hard this character runs into the battle side by side with Eder. Usually Eder locks down 3 enemies while my monk grabs everything that's left. So far this build has excellent survivability and crazy high dmg output. Wound generation isn't a problem if you fight 2 or 3 oponents. Most fights I don't even have to use any abilities. For tougher fights, once I get a few wounds, I send a few enemies flying with Force of Anguish and use remaining wounds to obliderate anything that's left by spamming Torment's Reach, for those rly tough encounters, everything is the same except I use buffs from Durance and position him close enough to heal my monk. Keep in mind that I haven't rly bothered with picking the right gear (still using stuff I had on me while I was lvl4), and haven't enchanted anything yet.