Crucis

After having played Zahua's personal quest last night, I have to say that his is far and away the best personal quest. I've never played Hiravias much, since I just can't get into druids. I haven't played Maneha much either though I did play her just enough to do her rather small personal quest. After Zahua, the only other one that comes close is Sagani's. All of the others seem to pale in comparison. And some of them are so minimal that they seem to feel like they were afterthoughts, like Pallegina's and Aloth's.

Hmm interesting. Well I think you can see from my screenshot I have a Rogue a Monk a Druid a Ranger + wolf A Mage and a Cleric Maybe I need some sort of tank either Elder or Pallegina. So brawlers are like monks then? That explains a lot then. Instant damage is something I don't need to inflict but I would still like to find a way to stop them running so fast because trying to predict where they will be a second later is pretty tough. My favourite tactic is to corral fighters from each other so they cannot run to aid another who is about to die. But the brawlers just run though everything I have to stop them, they even break off combat sometimes to support a fellow baddy who should be dead. Maybe I will just admit defeat and see if I can regroup and maybe swap things around. Thanks. Ahhh, this may be the source of your problems. I won't say that this is a bad party. I believe that one can win pretty much any battle with pretty much any combination of classes. That said, I also think that some class combos will be better suited for certain types or groups of enemies than other combos. For a comparison, this is my current party. An Aumaua Fighter PC. Pallegina (paladin), Zahua (monk), Devil of Caroc (rogue, but a naturally heavily armored one), Sagani/Ittumak (Ranger and pet), Grieving Mother (cipher). Also, I've switched GM and Aloth quite a bit, but I'm currently running with GM in the arcane caster slot. As you can see, this party is much more heavily focused on physical combat, and tends to do quite well in pretty much any fight. I will admit that going without a priest was a little scary at first. But after surviving some battles against fampyrs unscathed (Aegis of Loyalty on Pallegina is just about a MUST if you're going to go without a priest), I've found that Pallegina has been more than enough of a healer to get the party through almost every battle.

I don't think that knowing an enemy's weaknesses and exploiting them is "cheese". It doesn't matter if the enemy is a lowly wolf or a mighty dragon. The best way to defeat an enemy is to totally immobilize them, whether it's stunning, paralyzing, or knocking them down. If it can't attack you and you can attack them because you hit them with a spell, etc., why is that "cheese"? IMO, it's not. Also, given that dragon breath attacks are usually so massively devastating, the player needs to have something devastating to use against the dragon in return. And in this case, it's immobilizing attacks. And if dragon attacks were less devastating, frankly, they wouldn't be nearly as big a challenge as they are currently. And then what would be the point in having dragons in the game. Of course, I suppose it depends on how one defines "cheese". I tend to think of "cheese" as exploiting the game mechanics in a way that abuses the physics. An example of this would be to put a character in a doorway and then cast a withdraw spell on him, thus blocking the chokepoint and preventing anyone from passing. That's not the intended use of a Withdraw spell, and hence it is "cheese" to me. OTOH, casting a paralyze spell on a dragon can hardly be "cheese" because you're using the spell in exactly the way that it's meant to be used.

No kidding. There are just some people who can't seem to talk in anything but hyperboles. Everything is the worst or best EVER. Everything is extreme this or extreme that. It's down right annoying.

The way that staffs have been implemented in PoE has always galled me. Staffs just aren't reach weapons. They're not meant to be held at one end and used like a really long club. They're meant to be held in around the middle and used as a relatively fast and light, close quarters weapon. Also, it's mildly annoying that there are no really nice mage staffs. I'm not necessarily thinking that there should have been a mage staff like the Staff of The Magi in BG2. But it would have been nice if there were some mage staffs that were conceptually similar. And thinking of "reach" weapons, frankly, even pikes seem wrong. Oh, not because RL pikes weren't capable of having that kind of range or reach, but because I don't think that long "reach" pikes would have ever been particularly useful except by combat formations designed take advantage of massed pikes. One on one, it seems to me that a 10 foot "spear" would be far too unwieldy to be an effective weapon. IIRC, there was one or two "reach" weapons in IWD2, but honestly I thought of their reach effect as more of a magical enchantment than a weapon being that long and unwieldy.

I like using Fast weapons (daggers, rapiers, stilettos, clubs, etc.) on my monk rather than Average speed weapons, even though they'll have a lower damage range. It seem to fit in well with a monk's fast attack speed. Of course, that may be less of a concern with a heavily armored "Juggernaut" monk, since your heavier armor is going to be slowing your monk down quite a bit. And for what little it's worth, the idea of a heavily armored monk using fists seems wrong. I'll concede that there can be a paradigm where heavily armored monks are possible, but at the same time, those heavily armored monks should probably be using weapons, not fists. Conceptually speaking, at least.

Zombie, from the pic, I can see that this is the Torn Bannermen group outside of Concelhaut's place. These guys are supposed to be tough, very, VERY tough!!! Toning them down would be defeat the entire point. And it's not necessary to lock out Craghold just because you're not high enough level. If you have trouble against the Torn Bannermen in the first few engagements as you move into the area, no one's forcing you to keep trying to move forward. You are more than able to fall back to Caed Nua and lick your wounds and return when your party is stronger. Hmmm well truth is I have already cleared out all the other areas save the undead and the main gate area. The others were tough sure.. but this group of 5 seem super tough. I pin it mainly down to the brawlers because there is no way to pin them down, They run incredibly fast and straight through walls of force or thorns ignore ice spike rock spikes anything that might knock them prone and then they are able to create 2 duplicates each of themselves both fire and shock which is just way too much. That means as a party of 6 you are fighting effectively 6 unstoppable Brawlers and clones 2 pretty strong soldiers and a quite powerful battlemage. 9 - 6 . Oh and someone else mentioned and I can confirm if you do manage to kill a brawler his clones don't die with him. That is just unfair. Taking out the battlemage is easiest because I can at least hold them in place, while running attacks one after another. But the brawlers zoom to whoever has the lowest defence and bam! They are down. I honestly don't see what a few levels will add to this problem unless there is some spell that can stop the little suckers from running around like crazy. I have consider going up from the cave through the undead but that is no easy task either. I am going to have to look for some other way to think about this. Hmmm The very first tome I went to Cragholdt, I barely survived the first encounter at the front gate. My party was around level 12 at the time. So I decided to retreat back to Caed Nua, and I didn't go back until I was around level 15, IIRC. And at that time I was able plow through the Torn Bannermen without too much difficulty. I will say though that those last couple of battles against the TB in the NW are fairly difficult. But to be honest, I don't recall the merc brawlers as being overly difficult, any more so than any of the other enemies in those fights. Just focus fire on them, particularly when you get them "badly wounded" or "near death". Don't let them get healed. Get them dead. As for them going after your softest team member, yeah, that seems to be a fairly common tactic among high level monks. Try not to let your softest team member, presumably a wizard or perhaps a rogue, be alone. If he gets caught alone, some monk will massacre them one on one. Also, if you have a priest in your party, a good way to help save your softest character is to have the monk cast a Withdraw spell on him. And bingo, they can't target him any longer. Also, if your "softest" character is a wizard, right at the start of the battle it may be a good idea to have him throw up one of the DEFL enhancing spells, like Mirror Image, etc. It may cause those that would target him to go after someone else, i.e. someone better able to defend themselves against an enemy monk.

Exactly. If the traps did little damage, people would just walk thru an area without a care in the world. If the designers want to make traps matter, they have to hurt enough for the players to bother having a well skilled traps and locks specialist in the party. that's crap. raise your hand if you found the level 14 trap on the first level of the forge? yeah... that is UNDETECTABLE, unless you have at least 12 mechanics up and running (i tested this, repeatedly... 11 is not good enough to even detect it... has to be at least 12), and you can't get close enough to disarm it without triggering combat. 1st time I ran across it... I literally RAN ACROSS IT, and for fun and lulz... it wiped out my entire party AND the entire enemy party at the same time... yeah, ONE trap did that. it was a level 14 poisonous cloud trap. my entire party was level 15 at the time... all dead. no, sorry, you suckers are just plain wrong about this. it's nutz. Horsesh*t. It is NOT crap. When I absolutely, positively want to find every trap, I have a Rogue in the party who has as much skill in Mechanics as possible. If you want to run around with a sub-par traps "specialist", be my guest. But you shouldn't get any freebies for doing so. And no, it's you who is wrong here. You just want a free pass to find and disarm every trap with sub-par "rogues". LOL this assumes you have some idea where there are going to even BE high level traps... but unless you've played the game before... you don't. that's the damn problem... you will find level 14 traps in areas where all the other traps are 6 or 7. then, when you detect the lower level traps, you assume you have the right skill level for the area... but it ain't so. And it's not that traps are dangerous.... it's that they can cause complete wipes.... even the little ones. look, you really are not even listening. sub par rogues? WHAT ROGUE HAS LEVEL 14 MECHANICS AT LEVEL 7? run along. What kind of noob is in Twin Elms with a 7th level party in the first place? Run along, noob.

Exactly. If the traps did little damage, people would just walk thru an area without a care in the world. If the designers want to make traps matter, they have to hurt enough for the players to bother having a well skilled traps and locks specialist in the party. that's crap. raise your hand if you found the level 14 trap on the first level of the forge? yeah... that is UNDETECTABLE, unless you have at least 12 mechanics up and running (i tested this, repeatedly... 11 is not good enough to even detect it... has to be at least 12), and you can't get close enough to disarm it without triggering combat. 1st time I ran across it... I literally RAN ACROSS IT, and for fun and lulz... it wiped out my entire party AND the entire enemy party at the same time... yeah, ONE trap did that. it was a level 14 poisonous cloud trap. my entire party was level 15 at the time... all dead. no, sorry, you suckers are just plain wrong about this. it's nutz. Horsesh*t. It is NOT crap. When I absolutely, positively want to find every trap, I have a Rogue in the party who has as much skill in Mechanics as possible. If you want to run around with a sub-par traps "specialist", be my guest. But you shouldn't get any freebies for doing so. And no, it's you who is wrong here. You just want a free pass to find and disarm every trap with sub-par "rogues".

Damn, monks are great with Reaping Knives. But if RK's work with a barb's carnage attack, the, well, carnage is going to be spectacular with all that raw damage flying all around. And the cipher may have more Focus than he can expend with spells (well, maybe not, but who knows until you try).

Zombie, from the pic, I can see that this is the Torn Bannermen group outside of Concelhaut's place. These guys are supposed to be tough, very, VERY tough!!! Toning them down would be defeat the entire point. And it's not necessary to lock out Craghold just because you're not high enough level. If you have trouble against the Torn Bannermen in the first few engagements as you move into the area, no one's forcing you to keep trying to move forward. You are more than able to fall back to Caed Nua and lick your wounds and return when your party is stronger.

This is so true. People who just attack every monster and enemy with the same old tactics they use in every other battle are eventually going to run into some enemy against whom those same old tactics don't get the job done. And dragons are almost always going to be one of those enemies that require different tactics.

The thing is that I don't play the game with an eye towards DPS statistics. I'm trying to build a well rounded party that's able to meet any challenge. And possibly have a nice "bench" of reserves who I can call on if I run into something that my party seems unable to handle. I like having some ranged combatants, because they're great for dealing with enemy spellcasters who are hiding behind the lines. The problem with trying to deal with those behind the lines spellcasters with melee characters is that unless you're using some ability that lets you evade engagements, it can be difficult to get TO those spellcasters (or enemy archers) without getting engaged by an enemy melee-er who tries to block you. I will say that Devil is giving me a rather different perspective on Rogues, due to her low DEX and having her body's "armor" being the functional equivalent (in terms of recovery speed) of breastplate. Enchant her body as much as possible, throw in a Blunting Belt to further enhance her DR's, and give her as many DEFL enhancing talents as possible (the Deflecting Assault upgrade to Reckless Assault, Superior Deflection, and Weapon+Shield Style), not to mention a good DEFL enhancing ring, bracers, or cape, and a good shield and Devil can be one surprisingly nasty customer in melee. I will say that the idea of a heavily armored rogue seems wrong to me. But since I want to use Devil in this party, I've got to work with what she brings to the table. And that means a heavily armored rogue.

Dave, dragons are supposed to be nasty as all hell. They're not supposed to be oversized sheep-lizards with wings that are a walk in the park to kill. You have to earn it. You have to use all your skill as a player to evolve a strategy to take one down, not just walk up to it and say, "Hey, look! It's a dragon. We can kill it and still get back up to the keep in time for supper!" Also, IMO, part of the point of the high resistances/defenses is to force you to learn to use your debuffing spells to reduce them to more manageable levels. If you're not debuffing those resistances and defenses, you're making the fight harder than it needs to be. And for the record, the Alpine Dragon is (IIRC) immune to those paralyze spells, so you have to develop a different tactic for dealing with them, preferably immobilizing them for a while so that you can kill it without getting nailed by its breath weapon or wing buffeted.

Dave, in PoE combat, often the difference between massacring the enemy and getting your butt kicked can be in the tactics, spells, abilities, etc. you're using. You can get blown away one time and then with completely different tactics massacre the enemy in the next. And this is probably even more true with dragon battles, because the margin for error is so narrow. When i first fought the adra dragon, it took me maybe a dozen tries to kill him. Now, I can take a party down there and probably crush it on the first try, 90+% of the time. Why? Because I have a plan that work, unless an underlying bad dice roll goes against me in the critical opening phase of the battle.

Ok I know it's designed to be one of the most challenging but if the game at the same difficulty level goes from easy to frustrtating for me it's bad design. I have a priest, I didn't protected from aura the first try then yes. I don't have scale-breaker talent. I was already trying the tacting you indicated but the crappy artificial demency keeps doing silly things. Anyway tired of reloading (reload times are way to long for a savegame inside a small cave) I killed the dragon at lowest difficulty, collected loot and raised again to normal. @baltazar the game is surely badly balanced. And path of the damned: no thanks or maybe abusing eternity keeper. Dave, sorry, but the dragon's aren't all THAT hard. Oh, there's no doubt that they're very, very difficult for a beginner, even with a high level party, if you haven't evolved proper dragon fighting tactics. But once you have done so, dragon fights just aren't all that difficult.

Pretty much all of the dragon fights are meant to be among the most challenging fights in the game. And IIRC, all of them can be avoided, though some of the non-violent paths may have attribute limitations, I don't recall. And you don't even need a priest. Just the protection from fear (or whatever it's called) scroll will do the job (and they're very easy to make on your own). Just have some character with 2 points in Lore fire it off and you're good to go. I would suggest having some character with very little Lore do it so that your high Lore characters are free to cast more dangerous scrolls or spells. And yes, the Scale Breaker talent is definitely good to have. Another thing that an be nice to have is a really good rogue who is really good with Finishing Blows (preferably upgraded with Devastating Blows). You just wait until the dragon gets to "Badly Wounded" and then start trying to hit him with a Finishing Blow. I prefer doing it with a high alpha weapon, like a pistol, arbalest, or arquebus. (And it doesn't hurt either if the rogue has some sort of accuracy enhancing spell or potion going for him to increase his chances of a hit or better yet, a critical hit.) In my battle against the Alpine Dragon a couple of days ago, my Rogue nailed it for around 197 or so damage with a Finishing Blows attack with a pistol. It didn't kill the dragon, but the dragon didn't last more than a few seconds after that devastating hit either. I've never found the dragons all that difficult once I discovered the formula for dealing with them, though it does differ from dragon to dragon, due to different immunities. Paralyze scrolls (or the wizard spell, Gaze of the Adragan) are great for any dragon that's no immune to paralyzing effects. Also, whether they're paralyzed or not, early in a dragon battle, it's probably better to spam some debuffing spells on the dragon than attempting to punch through damaging spells against a dragon's un-debuffed defenses.

I've had Sagani in my party since I picked her up as early as possible. And I've gotta say that her pet fox, Ittumak, is absolutely deadly when you use him like a rogue, and seek to create flanking opportunities or just have others in your party set up sneak attack afflictions for him. I've got Ittumak upgraded with everything except "Faithful Companion", and damn, he's nasty. And that doesn't even account for Sagani using Stormcaller. Some would say that Persistence is a better bow (even better than Stormcaller) due to its ability to create wounds that can trigger Ittumak's Predator's Sense ability that adds some like +30% or +50% to his damage when the target is affected by a damage over time effect. My problem with that is that the archer/pet combo becomes too focused on supporting the pet and limits the archer's ability to do damage against targets other than the one the pet is attacking. That's why I prefer Stormcaller, plus the fact that SC is a piercing OR lightning damage weapon, which comes in handy quite often. (And of course, the Returning Storm effect is quite nice too.) Still, if one really likes to play their ranger and animal companion as a tightly knit team, I can definitely see the value of using Persistence to constantly keep a DoT effect going on the pet's targets.

Enough with the friggin' hyperbole, for crying out loud. I get annoyed whenever someone proclaims that something is the worst (or best) game/book/movie/whatever ever. And I suppose that you've played every game ever created to be in a position to make such an assertion. Yeah, right. Pull the other one.

You don't need to fight Raedric at this point. You can side with him against Kolsc, and accept his reward, and walk away. And later on, when you feel up to it, come back and take him out. Or not. Fighting Raedric isn't particularly important to the critical storyline, but it is fun.

But as mentioned, unless the Watcher is specialising in mechanics the only companion who can reach high level mechanics early on is Devil of Caroc who is also the last companion most people get, and even then if you are low enough level you might not be able to disarm or even detect some of these traps. Or you can bring along a merc. Also, if you try to disarm a trap and are unable to do so, no one's saying that you absolutely MUST trigger it. Furthermore, it's not like you have some right to ignore traps. You need to be prepared for them. And that means having along someone who is very well skilled in Mechanics. Don't expect the game to give you freebies all the time where traps are concerned. Mechanics is a skill where you pretty much either go all in, or not at all. And if you're not going to have an exceptionally well skilled Mechanics person, then you have to accept that there WILL occasionally be some traps you won't be able to disarm or some locks you won't be able to open, or some hidden items, etc. you won't be able to spot.

Exactly. If the traps did little damage, people would just walk thru an area without a care in the world. If the designers want to make traps matter, they have to hurt enough for the players to bother having a well skilled traps and locks specialist in the party.

Yeah, I read that post as well. The problem I have with it is that you can only lay a single trap (or at least that's all my nearly maxed out Devil can lay), what's the point in bothering if all it will do is scratch the enemy. If you could lay a bunch of traps, that'd be one thing. But when you can only lay one, it seems to me that that single trap needs to be nastier than they currently are, if the devs want me to bother laying traps at all.

When I first went to Caed Nua, I tried the first level and was getting my *ss kicked, so I just figured it was too soon to go to level 2. I came back later and got through a few more levels. I'm currently in Act 3 and have gotten through to level 7 with relative ease, so I probably should've come back a little sooner. Based on this, I get the feeling the levels were designed to be done in spurts, not necessarily all at once. Yeah, the idea is definitely to break it up. If you start going through the dungeon early, you may do okay for a while, but you will very quickly get outclasses. You need to be very well outfitted and at higher levels for the latter levels. This is also a reason for the main stairway, so you can return easily to deeper parts of the dungeon. Plus, who wants to wade through 15 levels of dungeon without a break? That would be pretty grueling. Agreed on all counts. It's hard to discuss this without spoilers, but the 3rd level of the EP is a pretty hard break. Dealing with the 3rd level's inhabitants is quite a challenge. The 4th level's not particularly hard. And the 5th isn't all that hard, except for a single encounter. But yeah, trying to wade thru all 15 levels of the EP would be rather tedious. And I'm honestly not sure that it would be doable, from the PoV of having a strong enough party unless one waits quite a while.