Crucis

Oh really? Let's look at this again, shall we. I'd say that the above comments in red are overly dramatic, wiith the comment about a blind, lobotomized monkey being ridiculously so. Regarding point #1, yes, I agree that it's lame that the bonuses aren't better compared to what you can get at some inns. Agree 100%. That said, earlier in the game, those meager bonuses aren't so bad when you may not want to spend any more than necessary to rest. Later on when you're rolling in money (mostly because you've completely upgraded the stronghold, or at least decided to not sink any more into it), 200cp for a room that gives you a number of +2 bonuses starts looking like chump change. And it does seem a little silly that once you've fully upgraded your stronghold that somehow an inn can provide better, more restful, more bonus worthy accomodations than your own home. But that still doesn't qualify as a "complete waste of time"!!! As for point #2, there are only 4 merchants in the stronghold, so there can hardly be anything vast about them in the first place. And while their inventories ae hardly inspiring, that doesn't qualify as "offering nothing of worth". "Exceptional" grade weapons are hardly worthless. Bland and uninteresting? Yeah, I'd agree with that. But worthless? Not at all. At least when you mentioned the hirelings in point #4 you said that they SEEM like a waste of time, which is a reasonably fair way of stating whether true or not. Also in point #5, I'm not sure that I'd say that "nobody interesting" shows up at the stronghold. I think that some of the characters that do visit might be very interesting, if, as you later suggest, you could actually talk to them. In short, you seem unable to criticize without resorting to excessive hyperbole, otherwise known as being a drama queen. If you toned down the hyperbole and stuck to the logic of your points, you'd make much more convincing arguments. Stop derailing the conversation Crucis, a thing you tend to do in many threads you participate. Then stop with all the ridiculous hyperbole. Intelligent, productive conversations are not truly possible when those who claim to be participating contribute nothing but useless immature hyperbole. If anything, I'm trying to get the conversations BACK on the rails by trying to get people to talk like intelligent adults, rather than immature drama queens.

I think that any money rewards are dump directly into your coin purse. And any items gained are put in a treasure chest that's in a room to the right of the talking "Steward" throne. FYI though, don't be expecting any good items. At least on my first run, I found nothing but scrolls or potions, in addition to the hordes of various special plants, herbs, and what not. A little underwhelming, to be honest. When you send one of your non-arty member companions out on a SH "grand adventure", you'd think that they'd come back with something more substantial than a mere potion of minor healing.

And having a list of locations where to find various grimoires to let you go straight to them without exploring and dealing with things as they come isn't cheesy?

LOL!!!

You need to be a little cautious with ranger animal companions, because as I've been told, if they are knocked out, their ranger takes a -20 acc hit, which can be the difference between getting lots of hits and crits and ending up with lots of grazes, some hits and some misses. I tended to hold back my ranger's animal companion from the initial wave of enemies, letting my tanks take the brunt of their attacks. And saved the AC for an early rear guard, in case the enemy teleported something into our rear to go after my Aloth. But occasionally, I'd send the AC up to reinforce the front lines, after my tanks were fully engaged. I didn't have Sagani in my party for long (long enough to finish her personal quest) because my PC was a ranger. But in the time she was in my party, I felt that she held her own.

One criticism that I have with actual dungeons in these games is that they're too well lit. That's why I found the dungeons around Sun in Shadow interesting ... because they were dark ... very dark. I liked that I felt like I actually needed to carry a torch to see where I was going (at least a little bit), though it'd have been nice if the torch shed a bit more light. It seems to me that dungeons seem more mysterious and dungeon-y when they're dark and you can't see much of anything. Note that I'm not talking about the "fog of war" (or whatever it's called in an RPG) where you can't see or reveal what's on the map beyond 12m or so. I'm talking about the level of darkness that was seen on Sun in Shadow where you could barely see 3-4m ahead of you and even then it was dark. Seemed much more real.

Rather than just throwing out the 90% number, why not go down the entire list of talents, particularly the "all-class" talents and review them? Tedious? Perhaps, but the info would seem to put your topic in a clearer light, I'd think. (BTW, I'm assuming by "all-class" talents, you're talking about the offense, defense, and utility talents.) I'm not sure that I'd say that 90% are weak. Some are, no doubt there. The weapon focus talents seem pretty good, though some of the choices of weapons to put in a mix seem strange to me. There are a number of ranged weapon talents that seem well worth taking if your character is going to be a dedicated ranged combat specialist like a Ranger or a ranged Rogue. Weapon and Shield Style seems well worth taking for any character that's going to be tanking a lot and wants to maximize his deflection. One thing that disappoints me a little is that it seems that the mechanics of the game are skewing players/characters into either looking to go maximum armor or the lightest armor possible. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to want to use medium armors like chain mail. This seems like a "diversity" issue to me. And another diversity issue. It seems like the fighter class has been turned strictly into a max armor, tanking meatshield only character class. Maybe I'm wrong here, but in the IE DnD games, it seemed like there was room for Fighters of various combat styles, not merely tanking meatshields. Some people would go for non-ranger archers. It was possible to play something swashbuckler-ish. There was room for variety because IIRC, the class' abilities/talents didn't focus on any certain style of combat. And another issue. The Ranger class. It seems to me that the Ranger class in PoE went in 2 different directions at the same time. On one hand, to a degree, it became the ranged combat specialist fighter but without ability to get a weapon specialization for ranged weapons, though I suppose that that's made up for with the various special ranged combat class abilities. OTOH, the class seems to have moved away from the Ranger as a woodsman warrior, yet at the same time you're stuck with an animal companion that you have no choice but to accept. Personally, I wish that the animal companion was a class ability that you chose to take or not, say at level 2, so that the player had the choice of having the AC or not. Frankly, Rangers don't feel much like rangers to me. They feel more like Archers (or ranged combat specialists) who got stuck with an animal buddy.

I have to agree with Bugged Wolf. The game is truly meant to be played by teams, not solo, and should be balanced thusly. I will say that I find it annoying that the game's party AI isn't smart enough to know not to target charmed teammates. I find that the moment I have a charmed teammate, I have to go into total micromanaging mode to keep my team from attacking a charmed team mate. A different gripe that I have is that in the IE games, I'd just cast a Dispel Magic spell on a charmed team mate. But in PoE, I don't know if there's a Dispel Magic spell because far too many of the darned spells have these ridiculous names that make them hard to know what they really do. I personally like nice, SIMPLE, descriptive names, not spell names that hide the spell's actual purpose behind a bunch of ridiculously flowery language.

Thanks, Luckmann. Lucky (pardon the pun) for me, I completed my first run-thru of PoE last night. I beat the final boss on my first try, which surprised me a little because I really wasn't expecting to do so. I didn't buff up my party with those food and drink "buffs" mostly because I was just fighting the battle to get a taste of what it was going to be like for a second, more serious attempt. But surprisingly, I beat the boss, though half my party went down, leaving only my Ranger PC, Aloth, and Durance remaining. And my Ranger PC got in the final killing blow on the boss, which felt very fitting.

Actually, there's an argument against firearms here. The problem with guns vs bows/xbows is that guns are limited to an 8m range for the blunderbuss and 10m for pistols and arqabus, whereas bows/xbows have a 12m range. Where this factors into the equation is when you want to fire that first shot of an engagement as a rogue, you'd really like to be behind your front line tanks so that the enemy will charge after them and not you. Thus, arming your front liners with the shorter ranged weapons while your rogue hides behind them with a 12m range weapon lets you take the shot without suddenly becoming the target of every charging enemy. So, if you want the best of both worlds, long range and high damage, then an arbalest would seem like the perfect mix. Just an observation.

Ah. Thx billy. Shame. That sort of item would be GREATLY appreciated and valued. Perhaps a lot more than the 8th copy of some ring of cloak of minor deflection, if you know what I mean.

I don't know that I'd call the DnD Forgotten Realms and thus Baldur's Gate setting "bland", though as you rightly point out, different strokes for different folks. Whether one actually liked the FR setting, one thing it had going for it was a massive amount of pre-existing depth going for it that the creators of BG didn't have to create when they were designing BG1/2. All they had to do was create their game within that pre-existing toybox, which perhaps might have meant that its developers could spend more time on the story and less on creating the environment where the story would take place. Just a thought. I wouldn't call a huge catalog of fantasy cliches "pre-existing depth". I actually kind of find it amusing that in one go a game design company made a more interesting world than the most popular D&D world of all time. You can choose to not accept it as depth, but it is. There's no denying that it exists, whether you like the content or not. And I'm not entirely sure that I'd call PoE's world more interesting. Matter of taste. "Amount of content" is not equivalent to "depth of content." Depends on what you mean by depth. The way I'm using the phrase, yes it is equivalent.

the keep poses a ridiculous difficult balancing problem for the developers. in a game with abundant copper/gold, making the keep produce copious amounts o' wealth for the player would be inimical to their overall design philosophies. sure, the player wants something for their investment in the keep, but rewarding with gold is bad. the keep could be an effective gold sink, but so far, players appear less than enthusiastic with the results. a gold sink is not a popular feature in single-player crpgs. get a largely cosmetic or illusory benefit from a huge currency investment works in an mmo 'cause conspicuous consumption is an exploitable social failing. what is the point o' such stuff in a single-player game, eh? likewise, the keep should not be providing enormous amounts o' additional xp, but it does via the bounties. am realizing that it sounds a bit silly, but the keep, ideally, should reward you with nothing, and make you happy with your nothingness. HA! Good Fun! It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head: Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect AFFECT in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature. Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds. Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new. Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things. Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies. Some interesting ideas here. Not sure I like idea of changing the enchantment on an item beyond merely upgrading it. OTOH, the idea of custom orders is interesting. Don't particularly like the idea of being able to respec pre-made NPC's either. They should be made reasonably well in the first place. To me, this smacks of powergaming which I'm honestly not a fan of. Hell, in a game like this, if I had my druthers, I'd set some hard caps below which a character's stats could not go. Extreme min-maxing of stats in IWD2 always bothered me, because the idea of having a character running around with the intelligence of a ferret or a toad just seemed wrong to me, and still does. But if the devs are going to provide a mega-hard game mode, then I suppose that role playing concerns sort of fly out the window and the idea of "realistic" stats with it. Back to pre-made NPCs. A different way to deal with them could go something like this. As long as the # of pre-mades was small, what could be done is provide the character's scripted background, dialogs, and so forth. And have their class and race and so forth be fixed, but let the player select the NPC's distribution of stat points, skill points, and other abilities and talents. This would let the player customize the NPCs to be more to his liking. Having said that, this could seem like a lot of work for people who are really new to this sort of game. And I suppose that for that sort of person, you could also include traditional pre-mades as well. A training room sounds pretty cool. It'd be great to be able to test out strats for fighting mobs of ogres or vithracks, for example. OTOH, I'm not entirely sure how one would justify what amounts to a fantasy world "holodeck", except possibly through magics though I suppose that that's rather obvious. The first item sounds good, but I could see some people complaining about it breaking the immersion of moving around your stronghold. (Heck there was some poster complaining about the upgraded loot picking up feature of PoE, for crying out loud. Somebody actually wants to have to go pick up every single freakin' item that gets dropped after a battle? Wow.) Still, good stuff. Keep in mind that the respecs could be limited to talents only and even for the premade companions you'll be picking some talents that you might make mistakes on. Also keep in mind that there are completely custom NPCs available as well. I'm also not sure why replacing talents with ones you're more likely to use is automatically power gaming. I can understand why doing something like dropping stats to 3 would be power gaming, but how is "Kana, I hate that story. Stop telling it. Go spend a week in the library studying something else." power gaming or immersion breaking? Rose, my powergaming comment was really about extremely min-maxed stats than anything else. Respeccing skills, abilities, and talents isn't nearly that big a deal, at least to me. Honestly, I probably wouldn't mind respeccing those things in the least because it seems to me that some of the pre-made choices are rather suspect and seem to have been intentionally chosen to make the pre-mades weaker. It seems to me that the NPC's basic character isn't going to change much, if at all, based on the choices a player makes with those things. I could even see a minimal degree of stat respeccing. Perhaps by setting each pre-made to a certain set of values to which you have, let's say 6 more stat points to add amongst the 6 attributes. This would all for a mild degree of adjustment without allowing for any extreme min-maxing. You couldn't lower any of the base stats. Only decide where to add the remaining 6 points. Just an idea. Back to skill/ability/talent respeccing. Here's another idea. This is going to date me quite a bit but the first DnD computer games, the gold box games required you to go to some sort of a training hall and pay gold to level up. What if there was some training hall where you could pay some gold (and not an insignificant amount, perhaps 1000 gold?) and get a one time chance to respec an NPC. One time, one fee for each NPC, not one time/one fee for all of them. So, let's say that you don't like Durance's skills/talents/abilities. You go to the Acme Training Hall, pay 1000 gold and you're allowed to completely respec Durance's skills, talents, and abilities. ONCE. Now having said that, if you wanted to allow it more than once per character (something that could be really abused, but what the heck), first time you pay 1k gold. Second time, 5k gold. Third time, 10k gold. Fourth time, 20k gold. And so on. Basically, the first time would be affordable. , but each succeeding time would get increasingly painful to the coin purse. I suppose that you could even allow PC's to be respecced because we all know that we can make a choice we later regret along the way when it comes to our skill/talent/ability choices.

Confusion is IMO the way to make the fight against any mob of Ogres a lot easier. Nothing like getting them to turn on each other. The problem with trying to kill them without any sort of mental spells that get some of them to turn on their buddies is that a mob of ogres has a LOT of health, and taking all that health before they chop you down is rather difficult and painful. But when you use confusion or any other mental spells to get them to switch sides and attack each other, you're turning their strength against them and getting them to work for you. Get'em to turn on each other and help the ones who are attacking the red ones. And when the spell wears off, time to rinse and repeat as needed.

I don't know that I'd call the DnD Forgotten Realms and thus Baldur's Gate setting "bland", though as you rightly point out, different strokes for different folks. Whether one actually liked the FR setting, one thing it had going for it was a massive amount of pre-existing depth going for it that the creators of BG didn't have to create when they were designing BG1/2. All they had to do was create their game within that pre-existing toybox, which perhaps might have meant that its developers could spend more time on the story and less on creating the environment where the story would take place. Just a thought. I wouldn't call a huge catalog of fantasy cliches "pre-existing depth". I actually kind of find it amusing that in one go a game design company made a more interesting world than the most popular D&D world of all time. You can choose to not accept it as depth, but it is. There's no denying that it exists, whether you like the content or not. And I'm not entirely sure that I'd call PoE's world more interesting. Matter of taste.

Sounds good, though that room that gives you something like three +2 bonuses at the Celestial something or other inn in Heartsong is pretty sweet too.

the keep poses a ridiculous difficult balancing problem for the developers. in a game with abundant copper/gold, making the keep produce copious amounts o' wealth for the player would be inimical to their overall design philosophies. sure, the player wants something for their investment in the keep, but rewarding with gold is bad. the keep could be an effective gold sink, but so far, players appear less than enthusiastic with the results. a gold sink is not a popular feature in single-player crpgs. get a largely cosmetic or illusory benefit from a huge currency investment works in an mmo 'cause conspicuous consumption is an exploitable social failing. what is the point o' such stuff in a single-player game, eh? likewise, the keep should not be providing enormous amounts o' additional xp, but it does via the bounties. am realizing that it sounds a bit silly, but the keep, ideally, should reward you with nothing, and make you happy with your nothingness. HA! Good Fun! It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head: Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect AFFECT in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature. Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds. Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new. Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things. Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies. Some interesting ideas here. Not sure I like idea of changing the enchantment on an item beyond merely upgrading it. OTOH, the idea of custom orders is interesting. Don't particularly like the idea of being able to respec pre-made NPC's either. They should be made reasonably well in the first place. To me, this smacks of powergaming which I'm honestly not a fan of. Hell, in a game like this, if I had my druthers, I'd set some hard caps below which a character's stats could not go. Extreme min-maxing of stats in IWD2 always bothered me, because the idea of having a character running around with the intelligence of a ferret or a toad just seemed wrong to me, and still does. But if the devs are going to provide a mega-hard game mode, then I suppose that role playing concerns sort of fly out the window and the idea of "realistic" stats with it. Back to pre-made NPCs. A different way to deal with them could go something like this. As long as the # of pre-mades was small, what could be done is provide the character's scripted background, dialogs, and so forth. And have their class and race and so forth be fixed, but let the player select the NPC's distribution of stat points, skill points, and other abilities and talents. This would let the player customize the NPCs to be more to his liking. Having said that, this could seem like a lot of work for people who are really new to this sort of game. And I suppose that for that sort of person, you could also include traditional pre-mades as well. A training room sounds pretty cool. It'd be great to be able to test out strats for fighting mobs of ogres or vithracks, for example. OTOH, I'm not entirely sure how one would justify what amounts to a fantasy world "holodeck", except possibly through magics though I suppose that that's rather obvious. The first item sounds good, but I could see some people complaining about it breaking the immersion of moving around your stronghold. (Heck there was some poster complaining about the upgraded loot picking up feature of PoE, for crying out loud. Somebody actually wants to have to go pick up every single freakin' item that gets dropped after a battle? Wow.) Still, good stuff.

I beg to differ. I gave you my reason. I like paladins from a role playing perspective. This is a role playing game and choosing to like a particular class from a role playing perspective is a completely valid choice. I also happen to like Rangers, and my first PC happens to be a Ranger. My decision to like Paladins (and Rangers) has nothing to do with game mechanics. I liked Paladins in BG1 and 2, and in IWD1 and 2. And I still like Paladins ... for reasons that have nothing to do with game mechanics. And IMO why I choose to like paladins is every bit as valid a reason for doing so as some game mechanics reason. I prefer games like this for the role playing. I'm not looking to create a party of min-maxed OP characters and have no intention of judging any class from that perspective. It's a completely valid choice when deciding what to play. It has literally nothing to do with the balance or mechanics of a class. I keep seeing people bring up that this is a rpg as if that somehow negates the stats and abilities and all the other aspects of an RPG and only leaves you with the stories you tell. If your decisions and opinions have nothing to do with mechanics, then might I kindly suggest that you should not be in a sub-forum dedicated to mechanics in a thread that discusses mechanics. Nothing that has been suggested in this thread, nor any of the criticisms that have been levied, touch on the flavor of the class. It would have the exact same flavor if flames became an at will ability, a modal, 3 times per rest or was completely replaced by something else. And I would kindly point out that the subforum is doesn't include the word "mechanics" anywhere.

I'm trying to remember when I last heard such a call for moderation being said on the internet, a place that is famous for being anything but. Usually, the one that can shout their point the loudest in the most drastic language wins in that at least they get vastly more attention from either side of a debate. So this truly impressed me. In an ideal world it shouldn't but in this one it does. besides which you werent really overstating it tbh. The stronghold is useless, the only thing ive enjoyed it for is the endless paths but over than that its actually just a money sink nd a rubbish one at that. Mine is almost fully upgraded and it still feels dead as hell. How much effort would it be to drop some NPC farmers and villagers to make it fell less like an empty castle. Dont even get me started on hirelings lol. I utterly disagree that the Stronghold is "useless". That's rubbish. Does it seem less than great? Sure. I can accept that in a heart beat. Less than exciting? Yep. Seems difficult to get your investment in the repairs back? Yep. But useless? No way. This is what I mean by hyperbole. If you got nothing other than access to the dungeon and the game warden bounty missions, it'd still have value. Even if you got no resting bonuses at all, it'd still be a free place to rest when you wanted to crawl up out of the dungeon, before heading back out to do other quests. Even if the merchants had literally nothing to sell, even a single merchant where you could sell off your loot from the dungeon or various other quests would have value. Saying that the SH is useless is just plain wrong. Saying that it underperforms and could be better, perhaps much better, would be entirely fair. I disagree with you completely. The two pieces of the Stronghold that have merit are the Od Nua Dungeon and the Bounties. Both of which could have been tacked on, literally, anywhere else in the game. The rest of the Stronghold is RP/window dressing at best, garbage and a waste of time and money at worst. edit: Specifics: Resting...why would anyone choose to rest here? Money is no object in this game. So 'free' resting is not a strength. Further, there are better bonuses in almost every inn. Lastly, and most importantly, resting in CN has more loading screens and in-map travel time to deal with than other rest areas. The Merchants...they are really a slap in the face. First off, for the purposes of selling, there are Merchants on tons of maps. So just being able to BUY a merchant to put here, is not a point in the Stronghold's favor. But maybe the merchants would offer you unique items, or at the very least, a discount. Nope on both counts. What else is there? The Prestige/Security concept. This is broken. Hirelings are terrible, if you auto-resolve combats you lose buildings which can cost you literally 5K+ cp. Even in a game where money is trivial, this is ****. The attack events are cool the first time but really you have nothing to gain from them. Adventures and random guests? Great idea, just like the Stronghold. But also like the Stronghold, terrible execution. The guest do nothing other than cost you money or time. The adventures sound great! Legendary adventure? Sign me up! Wait the rewards are a ****ing scroll and some common crafting mats? What? The Stronghold, as it is implemented, is objectively worse than almost every other type of content in the game (I say almost but I literally can not think of any system or content in the game that I dislike more). Saying that is not whining, its providing valuable feedback to Obsidian and doing a service to both them and their customers. Hozz, I'm sorry, but I can't agree with anyone who resorts to hyperbole such as saying that something is "garbage and a waste of time and money". If you can't discuss a topic and try to convince someone without resorting to hyperbole, then it seems to me that you're going to have a hard time making your case, because some people will be turned off by the hyperbole.

I beg to differ. I gave you my reason. I like paladins from a role playing perspective. This is a role playing game and choosing to like a particular class from a role playing perspective is a completely valid choice. I also happen to like Rangers, and my first PC happens to be a Ranger. My decision to like Paladins (and Rangers) has nothing to do with game mechanics. I liked Paladins in BG1 and 2, and in IWD1 and 2. And I still like Paladins ... for reasons that have nothing to do with game mechanics. And IMO why I choose to like paladins is every bit as valid a reason for doing so as some game mechanics reason. I prefer games like this for the role playing. I'm not looking to create a party of min-maxed OP characters and have no intention of judging any class from that perspective.

I like picking a weapon focus for nearly every character if possible, so that they can get an easy +6 accuracy with a set of weapons. Of course, if you intend to stay within that set of weapons, it can feel constraining at times, but the +6 acc bonus usually seems worth it. I also picked up weapon and shield for fair number of my characters, because I guess I like that style over 2H weapons or dual wielding for most characters most of the time. But as they say, different strokes for different folks.

I don't know that I'd call the DnD Forgotten Realms and thus Baldur's Gate setting "bland", though as you rightly point out, different strokes for different folks. Whether one actually liked the FR setting, one thing it had going for it was a massive amount of pre-existing depth going for it that the creators of BG didn't have to create when they were designing BG1/2. All they had to do was create their game within that pre-existing toybox, which perhaps might have meant that its developers could spend more time on the story and less on creating the environment where the story would take place. Just a thought.

Why did it feel like she was hitting a plateau? How did this manifest? I'm curious because I was thinking of going with a ranged rogue on my second run through the game.

Someone told me in another thread that there was a pair of gloves that gave a +2 bonus to Mechanics skill. Anyone know where they are? (The most obvious place would be in the crime lord's mansion in Defiance Bay, but that's just a wild guess.)

This one's kind of a shame, IMO. It's such a sweet looking hammer, but its stats seem a bit on the weak side by the time you find it. I wish that it'd been placed at a location where you could find it earlier when its stats would have been more worthy, or have it in the same location but with stats more in keeping with its later game position.