Smorensky

Then make a mod your self, or go to nexus forums and request one. If what you are saying is such a big issue there will be other ppl thinking the same way as you do and a mod will be created... And as for what you said about DA: Origins... It is amazing what 2 mins off google search can accomplish: http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/1729/?

Guys, you are not rly being constructive here... But here let me jump onto the bandwagon. Obsidian made a game the way they belived was right and no amount of ranting is going to change that. Atm I'm playing on hard (lvl 6) so far I ran into some rly easy encounters, and some that handed me my arse on a plate. For all who claim hard is too easy, yea you might be right, but then try playing on PoTD. Belive me I tried and decided I would rather finish a game on hard, so I can figure out how stuff works. For example my lvl 2 party on hard, had very few issues making it's way to Madwran on hard. It was a challenge but not impossible. On PoTD the same party couldn't even clr the first grp of shadows in the cortyard... after 10 retries... +50% stat buff on mobs is huge. I'm sure if you hand craft a party of 6 player characters it gets easier, that's why I don't do it for my 1st playtrough. Now, on the topic of ppl "demanding" more challenging experience... POE IS A PC GAME!!! Or did you all forget that? That means that in a week from now someone is going to make A MOD, a mod that will do exactly what you want! If you ask me Obsidian did a damn fine job in trying to please many of the backers and original IE games fans. They put in numerous settings (and they rly could have just left them out) like 4 diff settings, expert mode and path of iron. That speaks volumes in my book, as I have yet to find an unmodded game that gives you all those options... There is no sense in asking Obsidian to create a custom diff setting in order to please ppl that have special requests, when A 3rd PARTY MOD can do exactly that... On the topic of BG2 and IWD2 difficulty... They were not harder than PoE, at least not by much... IWD2 had hearth of fury diff and yes that was pretty damn hard untill you figure out the breakpoints in the mechanic...Then it was cakewalk. For BG2 soloing Demogorgon with almost any class is proof enough that once you figured out the system, diff plumets trough the floor... So what did I do after that in order to make my latest BG2 experience new and challenging? I downloaded the BigWorld mod offcourse, and picked the options that custom tailored that playthrough exactly as I wanted. So plz, play the game, up the diff to PoTD, if even that isn't enough for you, turn on path of iron. And if you still aren't satisfied, just find a mod that works for you... Just plz... stop whining allready...

This doesn't take into account misses. That is one of the reasons why Dex > Mig. Another aspect is that Dex also reduces all animation time and more crucially, recovery time. DR also doesn't reduce 100% dmg if you do less dmg than DR value. True, DR can't reduce dmg completely, but it does it considerably. As far as misses go, that woul probably be a lot bigger issue on some other class as monk accuracy is top notch among all classes. At least on hard dif, once you pick up weapon focus: peasant and hit lvl 4 to get Transcendent suffering 2 your unarmed attacks will hit almost 100% of the time. As far as recovery time goes, it is a valid point, but mostly if you plan to go low def high constitution and wear hvy armor. As I said: It depands on the build and prefered playstyle. I just like to hit hard

There will always be minor and major bugs on release. It is inevitable, since as many ppl posted, bugs and problems with PC games vary wildley from one machine to the next. Some bugs are consistent on all systems, while others are unique to some components. Not to mention that BETA TESTING does not involve 100.000 ppl but rather, a fraction of that number, so accounting for every instability during a beta test is impossible. As for "good old times" when games "were released when they were done and not a moment too soon", I am confused... Was that before or after computers were invented? Because no matter how much I love some old games, they were as bugy as most games of today... (ok slightly less bugy). Anyone who played Fallout 1/2 knows how painfully bugy both games were... Baldur's Gate series? A ton of bugs, some of which were never actually fixed unless you downloaded all official updates, then the unofficial comunity patch and finally a specific mod... Gothic 1? Buged as hell, Gothic 2, even worse, Gothic 3, a disaster at release day. Sacred 1? The game infamous for it's "wasser" console cheat, needed to progress the main quest. VTM: Bloodlines? Where you had to use a teleport cheat code to progress the story, and most skills were broken. Starcraft 1? Where ppl demonstrated new bugs during official tournaments? Were those games bad? Hell no!!! I loved every second of them and I still play them from time to time when I get nostalgic. The only difference was the gaming comunity was much smaller back then, not to mention a lot more civilized... Most ppl back then were content to play their games and occasionally post on forums if they encounterd some rather gamebreaking bug to ask for a workaround untill the patch comes out. Today I find ppl on forums posting questions such as "where can I check my skills" because they didn't even bother to look for them in game. Posts about bugs where ppl scream "why no one mentioned this" even if a post about the issue is staring them in the face, but they didn't bother reading through it because it was 2 pages long? Bottom line is: STOP WHINING! If you can't wait for 24h for a patch to come out do something more productive with your time than flame all accross the forums about "being dissapointed, offended and emotionally hurt". IF YOU LIKE THE GAME play it anyway and help devs pinpoint and solve all the issues. And if you feel like "I didn't pay to be a beta tester" GO DO SMETHING ELSE UNTIL THE PATCH IS OUT!!! Ok rant over, back to playing...

It all depends on how you plan to play. I play on hard and so far I didn't run into any specific problems. The dps output of a monk is insane, offcourse you can just go for "no wounds" standard DW dps, but IMHO that's a waste, as generating wounds fast enough increases your DPS immensly. I personally run with 19, 8, 10, 15, 8, 18 as I find Constitution is far less important than resolve and perc. As a rule of thumb, deflection wins over extra HP. The reason for this lies in the way hits and crits are calculated. Low deflection means monsters will not only hit you more often, but will also crit you more often as well. At max lvl constituton of 18 will net you around 60 more HP compared to having just 10 con. Early game crits can easily hit for 20+ dmg on a low DR character and later mobs hit even harder, so by maxing out constitution you will be able to take up to 4-5 more hits at best, but will be loosing HP at a faster rate since most of those hits will be crits. On the other hand dropping con in favor of perc or resolve gets you more survivability even if you have less HP, as you get hit less and don't take too many crits, allowing you to drop hvy armor for that extra attack speed. Keep in mind that even with high deflection you WILL STILL GET HIT, so you will still reliably generate wounds, but you will be able to run into the fray right along side Eder or Pallegina, keeping more mobs of your squishees, while also doing incredible dps. Later in the game, you will want to have a ton of mobs around you to maximize the effects of rooting pain, flagelant's path and (if you took fire goodlike) battle-forged fire dmg. Early game survival is a pain, I can tell you that right away, but once you get to around lvl 5 you start to shine with a monk, as you will have access to a wider selection of gear. Unarmed vs Armed: Untill you get access to late game wpn enchants, unarmed is your best friend as it will consistently outdmg any weapons you find or make. Once you gain access to late game enchantments you can switch to hatchets or spears. The only thing you will get from this is life-drain and mby a bit extra accuracy if you go with slaying ench. As for armor, something with DR 5-6 will get you through the early game. Later on you want to use enchanted robes to maximize on the dw unarmed attack speed. Might vs Dex: unless you are going for a "high interrupt build" (redundant as you allready have access to some of the best cc skills in game) might beets dex hands down. Dex lets you attack faster, while might gives you more dmg per strike. Since both skills add the same %bonus hitting harder is better than hitting faster, simply because DR reduces all incomming dmg by a fixed ammount. so it's better to hit 10 times for 13 dmg than 13 times for 10 dmg.

After I started playing again today (carefully avoiding all reported bug issues), while in Caed Nua I noticed that bonus DR from battle-forged stayed under the active effects even after the combat ended and is once more stacking with it self. So I loaded an earlier save, where the bug hadn't happened yet and decided to test it out. The game does not let you save in combat, BUT once combat ends saving is available almost immediately. At the end of combat it takes a few seconds for all "combat only" buffs to deactivate and for auto-healing to kick in, but you can quick-save during that timeframe. When you do that, your DR from battle-forged stays on as a permanent effect once you have reloaded. To avoid the bug, simply don't save immediately after combat ends, use fast-healing as an indicator when it's safe to quick-save Hope this helps.

I read a lot of posts about various bugs both major and minor and I even reported a few (mostly minor, tooltip issues and some skills not working properly in combat etc.). Just as everyone else, I am eager to see a patch that resolves most of the reported issues, but in all honesty I would rather wait for Obsidian to release a proper patch than get a quick hot-fix. As many ppl said, a rushed hot-fix can do more harm than good, so I vote we give ppl at Obsidian the time they need to fix these issues so we can all get back to enjoying this game. Besides, if this game wasn't good, most ppl wouldn't even care to post in these threads but would instead be running around screaming for their money back

Guys, just plz, ignore this thred. Luzarius is basically your run of the mill troll, and the worst part of it is he's not even a good troll. Instead just search his posts and have a good laugh You know how the 1st rule of forums goes: "Don't feed the trolls!"

Well so far the system seems to work, but I agree "the skills" could use a bit more diversity, as there is so very few of them. But I still won't stop fighting for NPC rogue rights!

Well here is my 2 cents on how one should "roleplay" a ranger: A lone and battered ranger finally finds his way to the otiskirts of Gilded Vale. He is confused and exausted from a long trip and feels his muscles giving up. To tired to carry on he decides to set up camp. It is a dangerous risk and he knows it. He is still a stranger in these lands and if the last few days have thought him anything it is that all his years of hunting and living of the land ammount to nothing in this strange place he ended up in, a place he hoped he could call home when this journey started... He brushes those thoughts aside and focuses on the job at hand, it will be dark soon and he must set up camp before nightfall. Strugling with his almost numb limbs he manages to finish a make shift shelter for the night. He can only hope that fire will keep wild beasts at bay, as for the other dangers, like those fanatic savages they encountered on the road, he can only pray they don't find him before dawn... As he sits down to eat what is left of his traveling supplies the bushes at the very edge of the campfire begin to move. He hears it too late and is too tired to move swiftly. He barely manages to reach his bow by the time a hulking shadow looms over him from the darkness, two eyes glowing bright yellow in the fire's dim light. He is only a second away from drawing his bow with what little strength he has left, when his numb senses finally pick up a familiar scent. He breathes a sigh of relief as a familiar shape slowly walks towards him. It is a magnificent brown bear, his companion, his guardian, his firend, his everything in this god forsaken land. "I, I thought I lost you old friend..." a whisper escapes from his dry lips and a small tear rolls down his cheek. The two of them have been inseparable ever since he found him 16 years ago. He was still a boy back then, when he stumbled uppon a lone bear cub at the edge of a forest near his home village. Abandoned by his mother, the cub wouldn't survive long on it's own, so he took it uppon him self to nourish it back to health. The beast never forgot this kindness and returned it with firce loylaty. Two of them made an excellent team and went trough so many adventures together that imagining one without the other seemed impossible. The moment he woke up after that storm, sorounded by lifless bodies of his companions and realized his friend was nowhere in sight, he feard the worst... But now, now everything was allright, he thoguht to him self, there was nothing two of them couldn't handle. "Watch over me tonight pal, I don't think I can keep my eye...", without finishing that thought he finally fell asleep. But even in dreams he was still haunted by the memories... A savage attack on the caravan, the dying words of the Glanfathan leader, the soul reaping storm the locals call Bîaŵac and the mysterious Engwitan ruins... The ruins surounded on all sides by mysterious living stones called Adra, the ruins Glanfathan tribes swore to protect untill their dying breath, the ruines where he withnessed a ritual, the ruins where he saw that man... A man he knew, a man who knew the answer... The dream continued to drag him further and further into a whirpool of memories and fiction... The bear quietly stood watch over his sleeping master, while all around them Adra faintly glimmered under moon's fading light. The Ranger woke up at dawn, the nightmare still fresh in his mind. He expected to see a malweolent spirit, or a demon or another lost soul, but instead he felt a familiar warmth at his side. "Mornin pal!", he muttered trough a long yawn to the tired animal at his side. "You get some rest while I go catch us a breakfast." They had fish and eggs for breakfast, his furry friend especially liked salmon, a kings meal if they ever had one since they arrived to Dyrwood. The ranger could still see them, it wasn't a dream after all, he thought to himself. Shapes moved just on the edge of his vision, but as soon as he turned to face them they were gonne. And the worst part was he could hear them. All around him voices whispered, too low to understand, but there never the less. He felt like he was loosing his mind and even caught himself stairing at his own reflection in a small puddle of water, unable to recognize his own face. "That's it I guess. I am offically crazy now." he whispered to him self and then caught a worried look from his companion. "I'm kidding buddy, don't worry. C'mon let's get out of here and find some amswers!" They moved quietly through the woods, two shadows gliding over the grass without making a sound. One could never tell by looking at his furry friend, but despite their size bears could move with amazing grace and speed. Shortly they arrived near the cave Nonton mentioned and were immediately overtaken by the smell of mold and stale blood comming from the entrance. Fortunately they were down wind from the cave, otherwise the animal could have smelled them both a mile away. The ranger took a few small steps towards the entrance when he heard a low growl comming from his friend. He turned around and noticed his companion crouched with his head almost entirely to the ground, teeth uncovered and hairs on his back standing on edge. There was somethign sinister comming out of that cave, something the ranger couldn't explain. Maybe it was just his mind playing tricks on him again, but this time his companion could feel it too, and that got him worried. "What do you think buddy? Should we check it out?" The ranger said with a hushed, slightly trembling voice. The bear responded only by further lowering his head and exposing his fangs, low growl still comming from his mouth. "Then you can feel it too I guess. Good thing I'm not the only one!", with those words both of them slowly backed away, moving quietly, down wind, from the dark entrance. "Ok, let's get to Gilded Vale, it's about high time we found someone with answers! And once we find them, we're going back to hunt us that monster!" Instead of:

No I don't think it makes "everything allright" if I did think like that why would I even bother posting anything on this thread? Let's just focus on pinpointing bugs in this thread and leave other discussions for other threads (sry for sidetracking during that last post) Anyways another minor issue I noticed (mby it was reported I don't know) is that many of the skills in game, especially skills that in some whay modify wpn dmg during combat are not working corectly, another one I found is Monk's lightning fists that should add +10% dmg, instead they add just 1%, also when used in combination with Turning Wheel ability (but only when you stack 2 or more wounds) the Lightning Strike works as intended, once you spend the wounds it reverts back to doing just 1% dmg.

Well as I said, you could have a lvl 14 character but if he went around wearing nothing but his birthday suit those extra 2 lvls wouldn't rly help much... There is more than 1 way to improve your party, you have levels and you have gear. So reaching a lvl cap without obtaining the best equipmnet still provides an added incentive for me to keep exploring in addition to the story.

On a side note, playing on hard difficulty + IM is doable on a first run. The only thing you need to do is know how the game system works. If you ever tried playing a HC character in any Diablo game you would know that massive overtanking is preferable to faster kill speed. So basically if you want your first playthrough to be IM + Hard (PoTD is not intended for that, as it is the only game mode where monsters actually cheat for stats and attributes), you can do it, but make sure you create a character with high survivability and higher some help, because if your main char dies it's GG. Historically during the middle ages, bears and wolves vere a serious menace for ordinary town folk. In case where a bear wandered too close to a settlement and made his lair there, ppl would usually petition their lord for help in dealing with the beast. A large hunting party would be gathered consisting of experienced warriors and hunters in order to hunt down the beast, as bears were among few animals that could singlehandledly take down a heavily armed warrior wearing full mail armor. Therefore I like the fact that I also got "one shotted" by that bear Made me remember that THAT IS ACTUALLY A HUGE BROWN BEAR!!!

Oh btw... There IS A VERY SUBTLE WAY THE GAME WARNS YOU ABOUT THAT BEAR... You see there is this NPC called Nonton that is packing up tent some way south of that bear cave and he DOES TELL YOU TO AVOID iIT since that bear just ate his friend... You see I play a lot of PnP RPGs, and usually when someone warns you about something and tells you it's "dangerous" you normally don't go straight to that place... You do a bit of research first, ask around see if a few ppl might be willing ot help etc... Because no sane GM would allow you to "save" and "load", and in my case if my players do something extremely stupid, after they have been warned, I normally don't allow them to create new characters in a while... Since they pissed me off... Since you have been "roleplaying" you decided that attacking a bear inside a cave (where that bear allready killed one person) would be the best way to "check" if you can beat him... Ehm... in real life that would be a prize candidate for a Darwin Award... In a cRPG when playing on IM that is just stupid. You could have moved on, hurried to Gilded Vale (btw if you were "roleplaying" then getting to Gilded Vale should have been your top priority, since your character is "sick or going insane", you see dead ppl for cryin outloud!!!), found out about your "condition", and recruited 2 extra companions along the way... Then when you were sure you are not dead or dying, you could go back to that cave and check it out with a heavily armored warrior at your side and a dude that shoots lightning from his fingers... You know strength in numbers and all that, better safe than sorry... Oh and btw, I don't think there is a person on this planet that could run away from an enraged bear inside his cave... Mby Husein Bolt could...

Barbarian has a talent called Brute Force, that allows all of your attacks to target fortitude if it's lower then deflection. In combination with Threatning Presence that does aoe fortitude reduction it is a crazy effective combo

Unfortunately Lightning Strikes ability is bugged atm did a test a while ago and most of the time it only adds 1% dmg instead of 10%. Occasionally it works as intended adding 10% dmg (noticably only when Turning Wheel is active with 2 or more wounds) but without it it adds only 1%, so I would avoid using it untill patch 1.03 is out. As for Vulnerable strikes, it's a must have

True, but as it was said before, once you hit that magic 50% mark you transform from a punching bag into a tactical nuke... "The ultimate deterent Barb" literarly. That non-stop 56+ aoe fire dmg to everyone around you is just insane... And you still have Barbarian Yell for a rather long aoe fear in case things get messy. After all 20 seconds should be long enough for Durance to drop a simple heal on you

Yup, Baldur's Gate 1 had a hard XP cap at 89.000, 161.000 with ToTSC. For most classes that meant lvl7 (lvl9 with expansion). If you explored every nook and crany you could easily hit that cap mid-way through the game. But honestly it didn't bother me at all back then. One reason is that leveling up wasn't the only way to improve your character and party, since equipment you got by doing various quests made as much difference as leveling up. I haven't beaten PoE yet and I'm only around lvl6 atm on hard, but so far the game provides a decent mixture of easy to beat encounters and rly tough chalenges. I only hope the end boss is as dificult as it was in BG1 with ToTSC, seriously that was by far the most dificult fight in my memory among many rpgs I played. Even with a full party of over geared characters, going in unprepared was just suicide, but all that was explained in BG2 ToB, once I got to see Sarevok's stats "after" his death and ressurection, he rly was a demi-god (or some developers spent 5+ hours rerolling stats during character creation )

This isn't a bug at all!!! It's all those evil good for nothing "animancers" messing with your souls!!!

Well I wouldn't exactly call it "inexcusable", considering this game has far less "gamebreaking bugs" than most AAA titles these days and those have budgets that amount to 100s of millions of $. Personally I did notice several bugs while playing, but none of them were "game-breaking", some repeat audio problems (when I turned short tutorial msgs), that I fixed by disabling tutorial msgs all together, several small combat issues when I got interrupted while trying to drink a potion, stacking active effects bug (strangely only on my main character, I noticed totaly by accident that my fire-godlike's battle forged DR stayed active non-stop and stacked with itself) and a minor issue of Monk's Transcendent Suffering not being affected by Might dmg increase. Still the game is more than playable, especially when compared with some other recent games that were launched in a state so broken you couldn't play for more than 10 minutes without crashing to desktop due to memory leaks, directX violation or just plain simple code problems. Not to mention some older games that had their main quest totally broken that you needed to use cheat codes to progress further (Sacred 1, VTM: Bloodlines). All in all PoE came out in a pretty decent state (IMO), there are still buggs but hopefully Obsidian will fix them soon enough, and TBH I prefer to wait for them to make a good patch and address these issues corectly, than have them rush a hotfix that ends up causing more problems than it solves (Hello Bioware!).

Both of these!!!! ROFL!!! Well I understand why there are no monk or barbarian NPCs, they were added as stretch goals during the kick-starter campaign, if I recall corectly, but rogues are still a mystery... ... ... ... Discrimination!!!!!!!! AAAAHHHH CALL THE ROGUE'S RIGHT ASSOCIATION!!! Now on the serious side, I know not having a rogue as a companion isn't rly a problem in this game like it was in BG2, but still having one around with an interesting backstory couldn't hurt... Come to think of it I do remember some rogue characters that were totaly different... NWN2 MoTB - One of Many (The Child) also he did have a severe multiple personality disorder and oddly enough there is Cole from Dragon Age: Inquisition. Regardless, I did have a terible SoA dejawu once I realized Heodan died and I couldn't help but scream: "OMG THEY KILLED KENNY!!!"

Yup that build works pretty damn good (had it tested today on PoTD), add accurate carnage, threatning presence and brute force into the mix and the second your endurance reaches 50% everything around you gets vaporized. Threatning presence and brute force work amazing with this build, as most enemies will have lower fortitude than deflection anyway. Threatning presence will further reduce fortitude making both battle-forged and carnage almost guaranteed hits, while also improving critical hit chance. You can also reduce constitution down to minimum value since you will want to drop down to 50% as fast as possible anyways.

No. Seriously? I know they wanted to make a game as close to the original IE games, but this is a bit too close It's like Shadows of Amn all over again... You find one rogue to add to party, he dies, only faster this time around ... The first other guy you find with mechanical skill is a mage (who said Nalia )... And afterwards not a single rogue NPC in sight for the rest of the game... I demand equal rights for rogue NPCs!!! That includes a full time rogue NPC, with paid vacation, paid overtime, personal story, decent skill spread and a retirement plan that does not involve horribly gruesome death, at least not without player's consent

This is actually a decent idea, the only other thing I would do, is set their lvl to 0 so you can manually choose skills and talents for them, so players can experiment with their builds. Because let's face it speed running through the first portion of the game to get them as early as possible totaly kills the immersion and story flow (at least for me).

Well I did have to make my monk a bit tankier :D the build I use is on hard atm: fire godlike, 19 might, 10 con, 13 dex, 10 perc, 10 int, 16 resolve. I used leather armor for some added DR early on and fire godlike's racial helps out a lot, since it gives +4 DR and burn dmg when struck, once your endurance drops below 50% (and it tends to happen a lot :D). It does require some micro-management in combat but it's not a big issue. Looking at the stats, if survival is being a problem you could move those 3 points away from dex and into resolve and perception for +3 deflection, since monk's attack speed is pretty good even without investing in dex. Another thing worth mentioning is that in order to generate a wound you have to take 10 points of dmg within a certain time frame, I cannot be 100% sure about it without some added testing, but so far that seems to be the case. If you have high DR it is possible that you can loose most of your HP without generating a single wound (but it will take along time). That's why I recommend getting lesser wounds as soon as you can as it improves wound generation a lot and greatly improves survivability. Also my advice early on is to send Eder into the fray first, followed by your monk, ideally you want Eder tanking most of the mobs with you dealing with only 1 or 2 at least until you can get your hands on some better gear and higher lvls. As for the gear, as I mentioned I used leather armor early on for 4DR and tried to get my hands on ring of deflection as soon as possible, additionally I used dual spears (for added accuracy bonus and higher dmg) until I reached lvl4 and got Transcendent Suffering 2, for that extra unarmed dmg. Aside from that you want an amulet of endurance, boots with +1 constitution and the belt sold by the blacksmith in Gilded Vale (adds bonus slashing/piercing DR). Later on once you find quality robes you can use them instead of leather armor for more attack speed. And yes, early on playing a monk is a bit more dificult thant other classes :D