Crucis

Honestly, I don't give a rat's behind if those items are backer items or not. I care that they're nice looking items (mostly weapons) with unique names that are utterly a waste of space unless they're legit unique items. And frankly, there are more than enough weapons and other unique items in the game already to the point that you can have every weapon slot filled with a unique item and have backups. Turning another dozen (?) items into unique items isn't going to amount to a hill of beans. If anything, this game seems to be LACKING in unique weapons for certain weapon types. Crossbows and arbalests, for example. There are only two of each, and one of each is bugged, IIRC, due to the non-functional Speed weapons mod.

I'm aware that there might be a couple of actual legit unique weapons in amongst the generic "cr ap" with interesting names. But that's no excuse for the rest of the generic stuff. I mean, seriously. How freaking hard is it ti just toss on some of the special weapons effects (that can NOT be added by player enchantments, please) to create legit unique weapons? With all the effort these fine devs are putting into the patches (which I appreciate, BTW), can't they expend a little of that effort on making the items sold by VD into legit unique weapons????

It might be too easy, but not to easy.

Then I'm sure you also wait the appropriate amount of real hours when traveling on the map, right? I mean it's just be horrible ROLEPLAYING to move from Defiance Bay to Gilded Vale in 5 seconds, RIGHT? What kind of supercharged magical being can do that? If you want to waste your time then guess what - you can spend as many real hours walking around in every room "looking for secrets" as you want. That's no reason to impose idiotic wastes of time on everyone else. Oh good grief. It's not role playing to require a player to wait 5 real time hours for his party to walk a distance that would take 5 hours in-game. All you're doing with that "requirement" is wasting actual real time when the game has effectively decided that nothing happens in the 5 game hours that it takes to get from point A to point B, then there's no reason not compress it for player convenience. Stop being silly. As far as scouting a room for hidden stuff, it's not a waste of time at all. Seriously, it doesn't take a significant period of time for a scout to move around a cleared (of enemies) room, particularly if you've switched to "fast mode". Has the game compressed the amount of time it might take to do such a search in "real life"? Perhaps. So what? You're making a mountain out of a mole hill here, for crying out loud.

I agree that that particular dragon is a SERIOUS spike in difficulty. So much so that my first two playthroughs I used the "other" way to get around the situation, if ya know what I mean. Honestly though, that particular dragon almost felt so hard that it took too much of a cheesy approach to kill him, though I will concede that some people who may have an extremely good grasp of the game may be able to do it without cheese spamming certain spell scrolls. And yes, I found Thaos to be not terribly difficult. I beat him the first attempt in each of my 3 play throughs, the first play through, I hadn't even buffed my party with various long term pre-battle food and potions. I will say though that if one doesn't do nearly enough of the side quests and gets to Thaos too soon at too low a level, you may have problems dealing with him. And camping supplies would be more of a limit if one role-played the game more (in terms of managing one's camping supplies), rather than looking for every way to get around every rule and limit in the system. However, if people refuse to role play the soft limits and then whine about how there are no limits ... A) maybe the problem is on those players and not the game itself, and/or B) devs might come up with a much more punishing, unfun system that a lot more players would absolutely hate than those who claim that camping supplies aren't really a limit. I will say that it'd be nice if there were random encounters while traveling and there was a chance that resting in the wild could be interrupted by a random encounter, like in the old IE games. Having your rest interrupted was annoying, and yet at the same time an interesting diversion. You actually had to be careful where you rested, unlike in PoE where you can rest pretty much anywhere in the wild with no risk whatsoever of interruption. Actually, if the camping supply limit system were completed (as in, it is no longer trivial to side-step), it could easily be tuned per difficulty setting. Those seeking a challenge might actually get it. There are limitless complaints that hard isn't hard. Heaven forbid someone suggest adding difficulty that isn't just tossing in even more monsters per encounter or giving monsters more HP/damage/special powers/whatever. Respawning monsters is perhaps an ok middle ground. I'd actually like to see both implemented in different places. Given that monster exp caps after killing a certain number, as long as they aren't dropping too much loot on respawn then it shouldn't be an easily abused system. Again, tuned to appropriate difficult settings so there is no room to complain. "OMG hard is hard!" - would be a nice thing to hear, I think. Regarding random encounters, that is also extremely easy to side-step. Just reload the save if you weren't really ready for that random encounter and go again. Basically, it never happened. It's really not random if the player has near absolute control over it. As far as putting expectations on the player to "role play", or in other words, start creating their own rules that are more restrictive than the game rules. That's never a good solution for a digital game. It's nice to leave room for it, but it is never a good solution for game design to just say the players are the problem. Hard not being hard is a design issue. Hardly limitless. Limitless implies infinite, and there are hardly an infinite number of players playing the game. As for people claiming that hard isn't hard, I suspect that these are the same people who are extreme min-maxing their characters. So pardon me if I tune their complaints out. When they're willing to play the game with less than totally OP, extreme min-maxed characters, then their complaints about the game difficulty or lack thereof will matter, because if the devs start scaling game difficulty to make Hard "hard" for the extreme min-maxers, how difficult do you think Hard is going to be for those who aren't extreme min-maxers? Or those who are not hardcore IE and PoE game veterans? As for your random encounter comments, if players are going to skirt the spirit of the game in this way, it's not the devs' problem. It's the players' problem. As for the final paragraph, it's not creating your own rules. It's called playing within the "spirit of the rules", not just the "letter of the rules". If you're not willing to play within the spirit of the rules, again, that's the players' problem not the devs' problem.

I gotta say I always applaude the guys who play this on expert mode. Must be tough; I haven't ticket that box yet... the reason for that is that I found not all reputations perfectly represented in the answers. Often, it's hard to tell, for example, which answer is "honest" or just "rational". "Diplomatic" often didn't feel diplomatic enough for me... more than often I felt that the general response was more diplomatic than the diplomatic choice. Sometimes, "passionate" seems to drift into "aggressive" territory for me. Though the worst reputation, by far, was "clever". I just hated the forced jokes. 90% of them just weren't funny or appropriate. The only "clever" answer in the game that I really liked was when you beat Maerwald and the statue asks you if you beat him, and you tell her that you beat many of him... (because of his split personality) I wouldn't say that this is bad writing, it's just that sometimes the tags are oddly placed, which is why I would never play in expert mode. I agree with what you're saying here for the most part. That said, I wouldn't assume that just because something is tagged "clever" that that means that it's truly meant to come off as humorous to everyone (including the characters to whom the speaker is speaking). "Clever" responses often come off as snarky and aren't well received. And I think that's how it's meant to be, though it seems like an odd disposition for paladins and clerics when you get right down to it. One would think that snarkiness and poor jokes wouldn't really make for a worthy disposition. I'd think that real cleverness would be less about snarkiness and bad jokes and more about inventive solutions to problems and at least a relatively funny quick wit. But oh well.

Well, blunderbuss has an accuracy malus and hit chances in the spreadsheet are fairly optimistic for PotD, at least if you're not always shooting paralyzed targets. You can see that higher deflection hurts BB more by entering an accuracy malus. Also, with superb weapons and rending WB seems to actually do more damage without penetrating shot on average. But yeah, it's pretty close overall. And I wasn't looking at particular weapons, just weapon types in general. Speaking of BB's, one of the things that annoys me about them is that the game just won't tell you how much damage you did. Over the character, it displays how much each of the 6 (?) pellets did, but those numbers tend to overwrite each other and not be readable. And in the combat window, all it says is "X grazes, Y hits, Z crits". I wish that it'd append "for XX damage" to that grazes/hits/crits message, because it is annoying to not have a clear message telling you how much damage you REALLY did with your BB shot. /end mini-rant.

you do realize that boardies tends toward hyperbole, yes? never trust gamer fish stories. HA! Good Fun! Yeah, and they get all bent out of shape when you call them on it.

Meh. Seems like such a waste. Many of those weapons are very good looking and have interesting names. IMO, it's a waste for them to not actually be unique weapons with interesting special abilities. Honestly, this is a pet peeve of mine, along with that merchant who randomly shows up at your stronghold and always seems to sell the same 2-3 items thus far in my 3 complete run throughs of the game, to my CONSIDERABLE annoyance, since I know that Azzuro has some very, very good items that I'd love to get. I wish that Azzuro would just show up and take residence at the stronghold with his entire stock, like a normal merchant.

Thx, AndreaColombo. Very, very nice shield in addition to its good looks.

Which, once again, has nothing to do with the speed at which chars move when scouting. I wasn't speaking to the speed at which characters move when scouting, so shock of shocks, my comments say nothing about it, since I was responding to something else.

Try this one. Wizard Combusting Wounds spell + Barbarian + Carnage: Maybe even add in a Fire Godlike for good measure. And I'm thinking you've got lots of flaming goodness! You might also get a similar, though probably less potent effect from Combusting wounds and either a Wizard's Implement Blast or a Ranger's Driving Shot, both of which can hit extra targets in a single attack.

This is good stuff, Pedro. In my last party (completed last night), my custom rogue nuked one of Thaos' statues for 150 damage, using a combo of an arcane accuracy potion, a crit, sneak attack, dirty fighting, finishing blow, and death blow, plus the gloves that add more to finishing blow damage, IIRC. (And who knows what else.) I was rather stunned to see that stature pretty much get vaporized. Thinking about the final sentence, I'm thinking that having a specific beast slaying weapon for the rogue may be a good thing, since that +25% damage is nothing to sneeze at when you're piling up those multipliers. I say beast slaying because the largest enemies outside of Thaos' statues are dragons and drakes, and it helps to wring every little bit of advantage you can get when dealing with them. I probably wouldn't go as far as spending a Talent point on beast slaying, since it's a little too narrowly focused for such a limited resource as Talents. But investing in the beast slaying enchantment on a weapon is probably worthwhile, if your favorite weapon has room for the 2 enchantment points. Or even a strong back up weapon, if you want to keep one hanging around specifically for beast slaying. Just a thought...

Damn, gromnir. Double the priests, double the seal spells, double the speed of victory? And I have to say that putting a repulsing seal under your squishies is a devious tactic, indeed!

Yeah, I realize all this. But with SiF boots (or just having a priest cast the Consecrated Ground spell, or having a Moon GL nearby), you probably have to be a little wary of having characters who take a lot of damage, but are getting their END healed. You could unintentionally burn through their Health pool if you're not careful, and actually get them killed. This sort of constant healing can be a proverbial double edged sword.

In all honesty, the only real choice I want for the AC is to not have one, and have the option to have better abilities on the Ranger him/herself. The AC's are nothing but a pain in the posterior to me. Others may like them. I don't. I guess that I don't like dragging Lassie around, waiting for him to get nuked on the front lines or having him sitting at my feet like a good obedient AC and doing next to nothing but taking up space.

I'm rather tempted to call this a stupid comment, since by your logic, your characters based on their skills do the whole game. Ironically yours is the stupid comment since the characters can't do **** all in just about any situation without your input. It is however factually true, as I said, that in the specific scenario of the characters walking around (after you've given them the command to do so, durr) detecting secrets takes absolutely zero skill/effort/anything else from the player. You can literally just as well be in another room. The only variable there is whether scouting mode is on or not, and since there is no cost for the characters whatsoever in having it on, the logical thing is to have it on all the time, which adds nothing to gameplay but a waste of time. I'd say I'm amazed everyone can't see this but it's not really even close to the top tier of daily internet stupidity. I think you definitely have potential in that regard though. Maybe those people just don't agree with you. Also, IIRC, I think that you have to be within a certain distance to spot hidden things. If you go into a big room and don't make the effort to have your mechanics character cover the entire room, chances are that you might miss something in those areas you didn't get close enough to. That may not exactly be "skill" on the player's party, but it is an action that said player needs to take.

If this is the one I'm thinking of, the required CON can be on anyone in the party. In my last party, Eder had the highest CON so I had him make the effort.

This is key. Also, IMO, it's a good idea to drop a nice 4th level priest Flame Seal spell in front of your tanks to soften up the enemy as they get closer. Ciphers are great in this battle if only for a single reason. Use their 2nd level spell Mental Binding to paralyze any charmed team mates and possibly any enemies near them. Best way to quickly disable your charmed ones without doing any damage to them. This really was a challenging, but fun battle.

I agree that that particular dragon is a SERIOUS spike in difficulty. So much so that my first two playthroughs I used the "other" way to get around the situation, if ya know what I mean. Honestly though, that particular dragon almost felt so hard that it took too much of a cheesy approach to kill him, though I will concede that some people who may have an extremely good grasp of the game may be able to do it without cheese spamming certain spell scrolls. And yes, I found Thaos to be not terribly difficult. I beat him the first attempt in each of my 3 play throughs, the first play through, I hadn't even buffed my party with various long term pre-battle food and potions. I will say though that if one doesn't do nearly enough of the side quests and gets to Thaos too soon at too low a level, you may have problems dealing with him. And camping supplies would be more of a limit if one role-played the game more (in terms of managing one's camping supplies), rather than looking for every way to get around every rule and limit in the system. However, if people refuse to role play the soft limits and then whine about how there are no limits ... A) maybe the problem is on those players and not the game itself, and/or B) devs might come up with a much more punishing, unfun system that a lot more players would absolutely hate than those who claim that camping supplies aren't really a limit. I will say that it'd be nice if there were random encounters while traveling and there was a chance that resting in the wild could be interrupted by a random encounter, like in the old IE games. Having your rest interrupted was annoying, and yet at the same time an interesting diversion. You actually had to be careful where you rested, unlike in PoE where you can rest pretty much anywhere in the wild with no risk whatsoever of interruption.

It might be pretty cool if you actually had to hunt down some (or all) of the bounty targets, rather than simply know exactly where they are. As for time limits, I disagree. I don't particularly like time limits in cRPGs.

Disagree. I hate, hate, hate games where you only reach the level cap immediately before the final battle. I want to get to the level cap with some game still left so that I can stretch my top level legs!!!

I agree that the animal companion is "a" defining feature for Rangers, but at least to me, not in a good way. Personally, I'd rather that a) they were removed entirely or b) made into an optional in class Ability to be gained at level 3 (talents are gained on even numbered levels, abilities on odd numbered levels). I know that some like the AC. I don't. I like playing archer rangers but find dragging around a damned pet to be nothing but a pain in the posterior. I'd prefer to play a pet-less and care free ranger. Another thing that I think I've come around to wanting to see is for the Ranger to gain some melee abilities. That said, I don't know what would constitute ranger specific melee abilities, unless some of the fighter ones were made available to rangers. As for a Ranger's "critical purpose", I'm not so sure that Rogues are absolutely better at ranged damage production. They are dependent on team mates to create sneak attack enabling Afflictions which are key for a rogue to increase his damage output, ranged or melee, whereas Rangers will generate constant damage production, with or without those afflictions. I won't disagree that it might be nice if rangers' ranged damage production was enhanced somewhat, since IMO, they should be the premier ranged DPS class. But it would be difficult, short of giving them something similar to the sneak attack bonus, since the rogue's sneak attack bonus represents a potential 50% damage increase, which is hard to match. That said, if a ranger's ranged damage production was increased, would that come at the expense of giving them some melee abilities for those players who aren't really into ranged rangers?

The armor is named Autumn Fire, IIRC. As for the shield, what's it's name and what are its stats? It's yet another item that bleepity-bleep Azzuro sells that I haven't seen.

Or just put your Barb in Shod-in-faith and the coat of ill repayment and give him Drake's bell enchanted to superb and he will rock The Shod-in-Faith boots are nice, but they only trigger on a crit. Besides, drain modded weapons are always useful for characters who have a tendency to take a lot of damage. Nothing like having your hits help heal you a little bit at the same time.