Crucis

I particularly like Pallegina's voice. There's definitely an exotic nature to her accent that makes her a lot more appealing. OTOH, while I don't mind the tone and timbre of Sagaini's voice, for someone who supposedly comes from a very isolated island culture, she has no accent whatsoever. She could come from anywhere in the Dyrwood (if one assumes that the Dyrwoodan accent is a somewhat generic American accent, that is). One voice that I liked and wished wasn't wasted on so minor a part was that of Calisca, in the tutorial. While her accent was relatively Dyrwoodan, her voice was a little more, I don't know .... husky (?) than most of the other female voices used in the game, and that, IMO, gave it a more unique character. For what it's worth, if someone told me that the same voice actress did Sagani and Calisca, I wouldn't be shocked. That said, Sagani would have sounded a little better if her voice had sounded a lot more like Calisca's.

If you don't get any assistance from any of the gods before you go to the Burial Isle and go down that hole ...

Role playing considerations aside, which of the three factions do people think is the best for the player's party? Which gives the best item? Which gives the best special ability? And so on. I've sided with the Dozen and the Knights thus far with my first two parties, and I think that the Dozen's item, the cloudpiercer bow is an excellent item, if you like bows, of course. I've seen what it's said the Domenals supposedly give you and it doesn't impress me as much (the Misery's Fang stiletto) as the Cloudpiercer warbow or the sword (the Shame or Glory sword, IIRC) that you get from the Knights. Of course, I suppose that it could be very much a matter of taste regarding which faction's reward weapon one prefers. While the Misery's Fang stiletto could be used by anyone, it really looks like it'd be best used a rogue, due to its Vicious effect (i.e. Vicious: x 1.2 Damage against Prone, Stunned or Flanked enemies).

Which is weird, considering that the people went all Kiev on Defiance Bay, yet there's not a trace of it happening. Yeah, Defiance Bay cleaned up real good, didn't it? If it weren't for the torched Sanitarium, you wouldn't even know there'd been riots in the first place.

Also, if you return to the Vallian embassy, you'll find Leaden Key assassins (IIRC) at the throats of the Vallian ambassador and his staff. I don't know if you need Pallegina in your party for this to happen (though you probably do). And I don't know the exact sequence of events. I do know that it's after the start of Act 3. Maybe on the way to Twin Elms, or maybe after Pallegina's spoken to the Glanfathen leader about the trade negotiations.

I was down there with ten or eleven mechanics. It didn't show. So how much would be sufficient? I don't think that any amount of Mechanics is enough to find that hidden room. What you need is the knowledge you get from Maerwald, rather than letting his soul go or binding to the keep. I tried finding that room with a Rogue who had 12 Mechanics and couldn't do it. It's all about Maerwald's knowledge.

1) That. 2) Loot. It's too good not to meta-game. 3) Fampyr Raedric is hard enough without six bodyguards. Kill all of his future undead minions. ^This! At this point in the overall story, you don't have much gold and killing everyone in Raedic's castle for the loot is the best way to get a quick infusion of gold into your pocket. You don't even have to attack Raedic at this point. You can make a deal with him to delay killing him until your party is stronger, while still getting a good strong infusion of XP. Meta-gaming. Yeah. But effective. In my past 2 parties, I let Raedic live and took out Kolsce. This time, I did the same, but fully intend on going back to finish off Raedic when I feel that my party is up to the challenge.

I was just in the Sven Den, if it's Pursic's (sp?) house just north of the Goose and Fox Inn. And I had an unrelated observation. In that side quest, the wizard that disguised himself as Pursic was supposedly sent by someone else to deal with Pursic, IIRC. But the side quest wasn't extended to deal with the person who sent the wizard. It seems to me that if you don't deal with the person who sent the wizard, then Pursic and his girlfriend would still be in some serious trouble, unless they left the city.

This is what I was thinking too. One of those simple leather armors actually looks pretty sharp. Much as I like many of the armors in the game in terms of looks, it'd be nice if there was at least one or two leather and/or padded armors that was less ostentatious and more suited to a seriously stealthy thieving rogue, rather than a flashy, stylish dandy of a rogue. Preferably in dark colors, with a good, dark enchanted (with a decently thematic effect) hood. Hopefully providing a look similar to the pic that you posted earlier.

Trials of the Luremaster was a truly excellent side adventure and dungeon crawl.

Actually, I think that monks are very competitive damage dealers. The thing is that they're not about the single high damage strike. They're more about producing a LOT of respectable damage hits that add up over the long haul into a lot of damage done. They don't require someone creating afflicting conditions to do sneak attack damage like a rogue. They can just get in just about anyone's face and take them one on one. They don't have the defenses to hold their spot in the melee wall, nor do they do barbarian's AoE attacks. They're great for flanking and/or streaking into the enemy's rear and going after their softer targets, their spellcasters and ranged combatants. Sure, if you enjoy that single high damage strike, rogues are probably more your speed. But don't sell monks short as 1v1 damage dealers. They just don't do it the same way as rogues.

^Same here.

I think that saying that CON has only one effect is understating it a little. It affects END, Health, and the FORT save (along with Might). That said, that's not very much and not really enough to get players to not dump some CON at creation. They could have the FORT save come 100% from CON, but I don't think that that would be enough to change peoples' minds about the stat. Here are a couple of off the cuff ideas for things that CON could affect in a rational way. 1. Allow CON to positively or negatively affect fatigue (both versions). Characters with low CON's would get worn out more quickly than average. This would be on top of the Athletics skill. Low CON characters would need more Athletics skill to offset the low CON fatigue penalties. And visa-versa, high CON characters would need less Athletics to maintain the same level of fatigue. 2. CON could affect a character's resistance to poison and disease effects in some way. Reduce the length of time affected perhaps?

Indeed, I liked my ranger build, but I think I like this monk a lot more. I always play with a custom party and this time around my monk, Serenity, is ruling the damage board. Often I find it is the wizard that dominates in my games but this time around Serenity is bringing the Hurting Bombs, closely followed by Arcana, the wizard and Kull the Conquerer an Estoc wielding Barbarian. Monks can do an amazing amount of damage. They just don't do it in big chunk like some other classes. They do it with moderately sized hits, but a LOT of them.

This is an interesting idea, though I think that it would work better when you were only playing a single character, rather than a party of 6. In the party of 6, if all 6 characters were alert, you'd have eyes looking around all the time, whereas the single character can only look in one direction at a time.

I think that what you've posted isn't really the same question as the thread title. As for the thread title, no, I don't find exploration tedious at all. I find it fun to slowly creep around a map, scouting for traps or hidden treasures, while trying to find enemies before they find my party. As for the Fog of war issue. while the distance may seem unrealistic, I think that you need to look at it as the cost of doing business. (I'm sorry, but the word I'm really looking for is eluding me.) If the game used realistic spotting distances, the maps would need to be MUCH larger, and the load times for those maps would be longer, and the development time for those maps would be much longer (as Luckmann pointed out in an earlier post). But to keep these issues at reasonable levels, it's necessary to accept shorter than realistic view ranges for the sake of the game.

That's why Sanguine Plate and other items that trigger on crit are best used on characters with low deflection. Sanguine Plate would be wasted on my Paladin as he has deflection around 100. Absolutely, but if you have low Deflection, you're (hopefully) not going to be dumb enough to wear Plate to begin with - why would you? It's not going to save you when you're getting critted repeatedly. Crit-for-Effect items are incredibly counter-intuitive, because those that could easily get critted shouldn't be in situations where they are getting critted to begin with, and this goes double for heavy armours. I beg to differ. This Potd run is proving to be the easiest one yet. Barbarian in Sanguine Plate and Shod in Faith. When he gets critted he proccs frenzy and healing at the same time. Pair him up with a Paladin with zealous endurance and a moon godlike monk and my meele fighters are kicking butt. Probably the playthrough where I've had minimal resting Razor, as you may have already seen, when you combine taking a lot of damage with consecrated ground (and even "worse", the moon GL's aura), you may heal your lost END quite well, but you'll also be burning through your overall Health pool and may be at risk of dying if you're not careful. The upside is that you end up with your END pool almost resembling your Health pool. The downside could be that you'll need to rest whenever you burn up that health pool since only rest can restore it. Just an observation.

I found this to be somewhat true myself. As the game progressed, I found that my monk PC wasn't able to tank in the melee wall nearly as well, because too many foes would overwhelm her. She was better if she could stick to one on one duels. So what I did to avoid getting he stuck in the melee wall at the start of battles was to keep her in the row of a 2-2-2 formation, and start off using a bow (for RP reasons). Since she had good DEX and a fast armor recovery speed, she could pump out a lot of shots with pretty good accuracy. But usually I'd switch her to fists and have her flank the enemy, particularly if the enemy had some squishies in its rear that she could take 1v1. I'll readily admit that her overall damage production probably went down some when she was playing the archer, but it still felt very much within character for a monk to be using a bow, when she wanted to hang back for a bit.

Pistol wielding gunfighter comes to my mind. You may want to take vulnerable attack in addition to the DR bypass that a pistol gives. You'll want to support Eder as much as possible. Let Eder be your TANK, you be the GUNFIGHTER. Does anyone know if it's viable to have four weapon slots, with a pistol in each slot? Then you take the talent that lets you switch weapons really fast. Bam, four pistol shots in a row baby, HOLY **** THAT'S SOME GUN FIGHTIN SON!! Yeah, that is a lot of firepower, though rather short ranged, given that they're 8m ranged pistols. Regardless, if I was playing such a fighter, I'd never leave myself without a backup melee option. In fact, I'm in the early stages of playing such a character. An Island Aumaua who comes from a Deadfire raider background, who will be a mixed style of Fighter, and will focus on Ruffian weapons. Saber and Pistols, primarily.

It seems like this armor really isn't meant for high DEFL warriors, if you intend to get the most out of the Frenzy ability. A character like a barbarian might be better suited to using it, since IIRC don't most barbs have lower DEFLs? OTOH, you end up putting such a character in slow recovery plate armor, which seems contraindicated for low DEFL, high offense characters. And if Pallegina using a greatsword (i.e. no shield to boost DEFL) only gets critted rarely, it can only be worse for a real tanky fighter. It seems to me like this armor wasn't well thought out, synergistically speaking. It seems like an ability that'd be better suited to being on something like Hide armor.

I think that this suggestion is a very good one. I used a monk as my last party's PC, and one thing that stood out is how great monks were at dealing with enemy squishies in their rear, particularly if you could get at them one on one. And this was without Long Stride or the general Fast Runner talent. I'd think that with a speed enhancing talent, a monk would be able to zip into an enemy's rear (best done after their melee fighters are engaged with your own, I'd think) and get at enemy spellcasters or archers and pummel them to death in a real hurry. The one thing that slightly concerns me about Long Stride is that it's apparently a combat only ability, unlike the Fast Runner talent or the Boots of Speed, which work outside of combat as well. I bring this up because one of the great uses of fast movement with a monk is to run in while under stealth and get really close to the enemy before you're spotted to initiate combat. But if Long Stride is combat only, then it won't help you in this regard. That said, combining Long Stride and Fast Runner may (if the speed bonuses stack, which I don't know), create one scary fast monk! Might just have to call him The FlashTM. Maybe put him in that late game red padded armor, too.

View, the problem is that a fair amount of the stuff in game is so darned vague that it can be difficult to tell what is what. As for two handed weapons, honestly I'm not a huge fan of 2H'd weapons. Not saying that I don't occasionally use them, but I don't particularly like spending a talent on the 2H weapon feat. If I spend a talent point on a style, it's usually on weapon and shield style because I like the extra defense. But that's a play style thing for me. OTOH, I suppose if one *is* a fan of 2H'd weapons, then the 2H style feat may be worth taking. Personal taste, I guess. I listed Two Handed Weapon style because I'm pretty sure it adds damage to ranged weapons as well, since they are two handed. The game says that the 2H style only works for melee weapons, in the Talent's description. Whether this is actually true in practice is another matter. (I was wondering if that was why you liked it though.)

Aren't Orlan eyes supposed to be more cat-like? Just asking.

Hey, I just noticed that in patch 1.05, the devs fixed some of the item avatars (? or whatever you call them in the inventory). The Dandy Hat of the Diseased Yak used to use the acorn helmet avatar, but now it's a proper avatar that looks like the duelist's hat. Also, that "hat" that was actually a monocle now shows up AS a monocle in its inventory avatar. And I assume that there are other examples of this that I haven't noticed yet. Excellent stuff.

I wish that the devs would shift the recovery times for all armors below plate down by 5% each. It sort of bothers me that Brigantine armor has the same recovery time as Plate, so there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of reason to wear it. Also it kinda bugs me to see Leather classified as "medium" armor. Leather seems like it should be the toughest of the "light" armors to me.