Bersercker

Hm, isn't it like 1 focus per 4 damage without additional talents currently? Gonna see if thats indeed so when i get home. Upd: Yep, i thought right. Its about 1 focus per 4 damage currently. So with this change fast weapons will become really bad at focus generation, so might as well not bother with them. Slow weapons will also suffer, since grazes would give almost nothing and cipher's accuracy is not the best to begin with, though +33% might compensate it somewhat. Along with decrease in starting focus: chanter v1.1 seems like an apt analogy. I don't use blunderbuss because exploit. Hatchet with small shield and plate armor for more tankiness seems good enough. Ofc i would have switched to greatsword or estoc if i were to install this patch.

Cause they nerfed focus gain across the board just to fix it for one weapon. Also i think cipher will have to use slow and powerful weapons if he wants to get some focus (though it still will be less than with fast weapons currently imo), whereas now in 1.04 all the weapons are perfectly viable.

Aren't you overreacting here? All that was changed about ciphers is their starting focus and the focus gain through certain weapons. They are still just as powerful and cheesy as ever. It's just that you can't immediately mind-control and stun-lock three mobs at the beginning of every battle anymore. And seriously, using the blunderbuss pellets to exploit the focus gain was hilariously broken to begin with and I'm glad this is fixed now. Well its just that i saw these "chipher OP" threads popping all the time (like "mind blades OP" threads before they were nerfed into oblivion), and here is the result. I too believe they decided to fix "blunderbuss exploit" this way, istead of, say, making blunderbuss shots to count as one hit for purposes of focus gain. But i doubt you'll have enough focus now to cast much more spells than a chanter with focus gain nerfed so much. Imo, that blunderbuss exploit wasn't even a big deal, one could always not exploit it after all. See, thats what is wrong imo. Balancing based on how loud people scream always leads to medicority. For some unfathomable reason people tend to scream "nerf cipher" much louder than "buff ranger". And ofc its much easier to make cipher to be as boring to play as ranger, than the other way around.

Uh, so ciphers will be pretty much like chanters now? Well, thumbs up to all the "balancers" and meta-gamers. Thought to wait for this patch before continuing my playthrough, but i guess i shouldn't have bothered. Looks like POE goes the same path as some MMOs, even though it has no multiplayer. "Balancers" will whine "OP", unitl everything becomes bland and boing. I guess next the'll say fighter is OP and lobby for removal of his +defenses class ability. Also, why not unify priest, druid and wizard spells and have them be the same, clearly it will be so much more balanced this way.

Using +100% xp per level. As in 100%+100% . Got about 50k xp, same as you it seems, but thats only level 7 with double xp requirements. Well, the original pitch (iirc) was that players would not hit max level unless they did a lot of side content. Otherwise, they would be around level 9/10 if they stuck to the main patch which is why the end game encounters seem balanced for a party of that level. Instead, we get lop-sided xp gain that completely contradicts the intended design goals. This. It's annoying as hell that they deviated so extremely from the stated design, especially when the whole thing is really easy to fix. Yea, removing that excessive xp gain would be a good idea. There is also a problem with intended level for fights though, as It seems that like 95% fights in act 2 are for level 4-5 parties. Would have been much better if it was like 25% for level 4, 25% for level 5 etc, or something like that. So that you would be like "hm, this one is definetly too hard, gotta return later", like in act 1. Alas they probably won't change it now, cause too much work.

With +100% i've got 7th level by the start of 3rd act. Not a big deal imo, combat is mostly adequately difficult and thats the main reason why i bothered to adjust leveling xp gain in the first place. Unless it becomes impossible to pass any skill checks in 3rd act due to low level, +100% is fine by me.

Played about 60 hours since last restart i think, finishing 2nd act now. On stronghold: they should have just tied it with the rest of the story, like it was in nwn2, the prices/traders etc are fine. Need more quests and npcs (subjects?). As it is its the fact that PC owns a stronghold (is a landlord?) is mentioned like two or three times(?) in dialogue outside of the caed nua. I guess nothing can be done to make stronghold relevant, only if the PC owns it in an expansion as well...

Agreed on making AI smarter, thats always welcome. I don't get all this "meta" talk though. Its a single player game, It shouldn't be balanced with two progamers playing against each other in mind, you don't have to abuse the system if you don't want to. Ofc i agree that, fights should be challenging, ideally, without single tactics to win every fight. But "oh, i minmaxed me a fighter and i'm putting him into the doorway every time, damn this game\engagement system is crap" is stretching it too far. If you don't want to use minmaxed fighter, don't use him. Its like "aw, this Power Armour on 1st level meta is driving me nuts. Fallout 2 is crap!". My meta is "Eder is tending to botanical garden at Caed Nua".

+100% exp requirement? That might be kind of extreme. Think you'll get to level 9 before the end of the game? I was a bit 'overleveled' when i changed the requirements, so i needed 15k exp to reach level 6 but for 7th i need 12k. I didn't do leaden key quests, dyrford, any bounties, and searing falls yet, so i think i will. Never reached act3 yet though, so if there is little xp there it might be harder to pass skill checks and win fights...

Done most (i think) quests in act 2 with double xp requirements and only reached level 6. Probably gonna get level 7 before act 3 if i do bounties and the rest of the quests. So, kind ok so far, killing ogres at od nua at level 5 was quite challenging . The only things i don't like is that i was level 5 throughout most of act 2, and cant get enough mechanics for dyrford dungeons (might have to use scroll to raise it). On the other hand most of the fights in act 2 were made with about 5th lvl it mind it seems.

Um, are people complaining about "OP" cipher actually play PotD? Also, whats up with mental binding "OP" when 1st level wizard's slicken is clearly superior in every way and also truns into per encounter later on? And mental blades? Cmon they are just garbage. Also LOL at "bringing wizards up to ciphers level". Imo currently its like wizard>priest>druid>cipher>chanter for thougher fights, while cipher and chanter are better for easier fights since you can preserve per rest spells.

Imo if they started with zero focus, they'd be garbage compared to wizards, druids and priests. They are pretty underwhelming already on higher levels. I imagine they could be changed to start with zero focus and in exchage get increased focus gain along with some increased combat abilities, but imo their are fine as it is.

Yea, double xp may be too much. Certainly too much for the 1st act. But i don't mind if i finish the game at 10-11th level, at least the battles are more challenging. Even had to use summoning artifacts and potions a couple of times. Hm, i guess better not use the sites that give exe instead of dll.

Yea... the string you suggest looking for is not in the unadulterated Assembly-CSharp.dll file. Alas. How did you go about finding this value so perhaps I can find it in the unadulterated Assembly-CSharp.dll file? Thanks for your efforts. I just searched for F4 01 00 00 in original file and compared a bit of symbols around them. It was 3rd and 4th instance like Daemonjax said. Or search for F4 01 00 00 5A 2A, there is only two of them afaik, the ones that need changed. Uploaded it here for use in other forum: http://www.multiupfile.com/f/31ec184f (v1.0.3.0530 without ie mod double xp requirements)

I think I did all the possible side content that was offered up until that point. I went through Valewood, Gilded Vale (and the temple in there), Magran's Fork, Esternwood, Black Meadow, and Anslog's Compass. But even when I reached Caed Nua, I was still getting owned on Hard. Abilities would always miss or resist, especially Mental Binding, and my party was all around Level 4. I set it to Normal but that made it too easy. Given that this is an RPG, I just assumed that all the misses meant I was too low level to do a certain piece of content but there wasn't anything else for me to do. To be honest, tabletop-based combat systems are not really my cup of tea. What made me enjoy Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate, and Fallout was the writing. The combat was just something I tolerated to varying degrees. Was pretty hard on my first attempt with barbarian PC(Path of the Damned), but i didn't go to Raedric keep same as you. I guess you can avoid the blob of shadows, shades and phantoms in the courtyard until you get one more level so that leaves only the one indoors. Done it after about 30th save load i think. xD Better focus shades first, cause they'll keep summoning new shadows. On my second playthrough with cipher PC Caed Nua was much easier, but i did Raedric keep before that. The, um, last fight in raedric keep was like 2 times as difficult at these shades though, so better leave that fight for later as well.