Crucis

Much as I agree with most of your points, does everyone have to be a damned drama queen when something isn't perfect? Jeez.

One way to get better melee accuracy is to select a weapon focus talent, if you haven't already done so. I will say that it may be hard to do so with some classes where they have special class talents that are just too good to pass up. Still, a +6 accuracy bonus for using weapons in the weapon focus set seems like a worthwhile investment for every "warrior" class, and some non-warrior classes as well. You may feel a little constrained by the limited choices in those WF sets, but that +6 acc seems worth the cost. I'd also suggest not having more than 2 characters using the same WF set, because there are only a limited number of great weapons in every type. Better to have a good spread of weapon focuses across your party so that you're able to use all the best weapons and get the +6 acc bonus as often as possible.

Is it possible that the Northwaeld part not to end with a fight? No matter what i say , the Fangs turn aggresive and I loose reputation with them. Yes, it is possible for the confrontation to end without a fight. I don't remember the exact dialog option, but it basically amounted to the PC asking/telling Sagani to back off. Also, I do seem to recall that if the PC tried to say something like "let's not fight" (in so many words), it only triggered the Fangs to start a fight. The non-violent way out of this comes down to convincing Sagani that that she performed her rituals and it was time to let the Fangs perform theirs.

After having been promised two major cities during the Kickstarter, Twin Elms really was a let-down compared to Defiance Bay. But that being said, there's no way the XP gain is right. You should have to do everything in the game and scrounge for experience to cap out at level 12 just by the end of the game, not hit it casually playing, well before the end. Additionally, you are almost always overleveled for the content you're facing past Act 1. I'm not so sure about this. I'm not sure that everyone playing this game is as anal as some of us here about doing absolutely every possible quest they can scrounge up before the end of the game. So I'm not sure that designing the game to force players into playing this way is a good thing.

Yeah, I first thought that over time you'd really build yourself some awesome rest bonuses that would make it worthwhile to travel there. But when I realized that you have to choose which of the +1 bonuses you get I was a bit bummed. Also, it doesn't really make sense why you can't build yourself a room as nice as that of any of the inns you go to. It's your own castle and you poured thousands of coppers into it already so what makes those inns special? I'm sure that there's some game balance reason to justify it. And yet at the same time, by the time you are in the final (?) Act of the storyline and are spending all your time over in the east, you'll be wanting to rest at tree inn where you can spend 200 copper for a room that gets you something like three +2 bonuses. And 200 copper is chump change for the party by that time.

Not sure if you're doing this, but don't constantly overwrite your last save game when you do a save. Having multiple save games lets you have some fallback options in a situation like this.

I have seen it suggested that the best ranged weapon for a Rogue is an arbalest. Why? Because it has greater range than any of the guns, which in turn means that you are ale to shoot from behind your party's tanks when the enemy is charging your party ... because this, in turn, means that those charging enemies will (or should) choose to attack the people that are closer, i.e. the party's tanks. That said, crossbows, hunting bows, and war bows have the same 12m range as arbalests, whereas IIRC pistols and arqabus' have a range of 10m and the blunderbus' range is only 8m. (Also, wands, rods, and sceptres have a range of 10m, IIRC.) Arbalests are the hardest hitting of the 12m ranged weapons, but also the slowest to reload (hunting bows being the fastest reloading).

Having an additional weapon slot can be useful in a number of ways. 1. If the character is using guns, you could use 2 slots for guns and after firing the first one, switch to the second one which should have already been loaded prior to combat. 2. If the character is a melee-er, it doesn't hurt to have a couple of choices of melee weapons (even if you reserve one for ranged combat). I could see going with one blunt weapon and one slashing or piercing weapon, and/or a mix of 1H weapon and shield in one slot and a 2H weapon in the second slot. I actually spent a talent to unlock a 3rd weapon slot for Eder (my primary tank) so that he can have a 1H and shield option and a 2H weapon option. In most battles, he sticks with the 1H/shield for maximum tanking. But occasionally, one runs up against an enemy that's so tough that you need the extra offensive punch of a 2H weapon.

After reading the OP's post, I'm thinking that perhaps the problem really isn't is choice of classes. Instead, it seems to me that it's more a matter of weak tactics and possibly going places and fighting battles that are too tough for his party at its current level. For example, Ogres in PoE are relatively difficult when you run across a group of them, because they have a large health pool and hit very, veyr hard individually. And it only gets worse when some orgre druids are thrown in the mix. Just chucking a couple of fireballs at them just isn't going to do enough damage to deal with a group of Ogres. What seems to be needed is some sort of crowd controlling mental spell that gets those enemies to stop attacking you and hopefully attack each other. The mental spell can be something like a wizard's (spell level 4) confusion spell or any similar Cipher "spell". Obviously, if you can charm or dominate them, so much the better. But even leaving a number of them confused helps since their unconfused buddies will likely start attacking them anyways. And even if you happen to confuse the entire group of Ogres, just have your team attack a SINGLE confused ogre to turn him red again, because then the remaining confused ones should start attacking that one. Given a choice, I tend to prefer to pick an ogre druid to be the one I "un-confuse" so that the rest of the confused ones help do my work for me and pound on him. Another key tactical point here is for the wizard to not waste any of his precious level 4 spells on anything other than confusion spells when facing a large group of Orges, particularly if you don't have a cipher in the group. Tactics can vary depending on the type of enemy you're facing and the composition of your party. One thing that I'm doing is to have all my characters be armed with a ranged weapon, even my melee fighters. What I like doing is to have everyone in the party get off one round of fire at a single target, usually the first one they see, to get in a kill at range or at least severely damage one before the battle is well and truly joined. OTOH, if I know that I'm facing an enemy that's going to have spellcasters, I might hold my fire, ignoring a charging enemy melee-er, and look for an enemy spellcaster instead. Seems to me that taking out an enemy spellcaster right at the start is one of the best things you can do to make a battle go more easily. (Obviously, my tanks immediately switch to melee weapons to deal with the charging enemy horde.) As for the OP's party, I don't see anything wrong with it. If handled well, it should be more than capable of handling most battles at its level. Regarding the chanter, yes they're not all that powerful in shorter battles. That said, if handled decently, they can still be effective party members. You just have to keep them close enough to the front liners so that their chanting effects are affecting both the front lines and the back liners, while they're using their ranged weapon (preferably a low rate of fire, high damage one). Regarding the ranger, they can also be entirely useful if handed well. I would suggest being careful with the ranger's animal companion (AC), since if the AC dies n battle, the ranger takes a penalty (-20, IIRC) to his accuracy. Sometimes it's not the best idea to send the AC charging into melee at the start of the battle as that may get it killed more quickly and hit the ranger with the accuracy penalty sooner. It seems better to me to hold the AC back and only throw it into the fray at a critical moment in the battle. It's also worth noting that this tactic can be quite useful if you're up against some sort of enemy that can "jump" into the rear of your formation, since it will give you a rear guard to help defend your spell casters. Think of the AC as a tactical reserve.

I'm up to (or rather, down to) the 13th level, but I'm stuck at that door where you have to answer some question to get it to open. And I have no idea what you have to do or say to get it to open for me. (If I could say "Open Sesame", I would.) Any help would be appreciated.

I pretty much agree with this. If you're going to have a tank whose job is to hold the front line, his job is less about dealing mega damage than it is staying alive to hold that front line. And to do this, he'll probably need to maximize his defenses, meaning that a 1H weapon and shield combo is probably the best choice for this sort of character. He may not have quite the high damage potential of other tanks, but this sort of sword and shield fighter can be monsterously hard to kill, if one selects the right talents and items to get the job done. I have Eder filling this role, and probably well over half the battles, he hardly takes much damage at all, because he's simply so hard for the enemy to hit. And yet at the same time, he's leading my party in damage by nearly 50% more than the 2nd best damage producer, my ranger PC.

The secret to stronghold is to pretty much ignore it, rush for the shops if you can but other than that all it really serves as is a drain for money, EG the building that gives you herbs costs like 3000k and you are gonna get like 5-10 herbs out of it, you could buy that elsewhere for a fraction of the cost. In my first run i tried to plan out my stronghold but now i just click random upgrades when the last one finishes and pay basically no attention to it otherwise, not even when it is going to get attacked i just let it autoresolve. Its not worth your time or effort unless you are roleplaying and like having your own castle Actually, I think that the game warden's house may be the best thing to invest in because those bounty quests are well worth the effort.

Mudd1, thx for posting this pic of the map. I wasn't even aware of the Pearlwood Bluff or Searing Falls areas until you posted this map. Actually, I should say that I very recently got a bounty from the stronghold about someone in the Pearlwood Bluff area, but haven't had the slightest idea where it was or how to get to it. Now I do. So, thanks.

Agree with both points here. You can max out mechanics on any class. I used the cleric, Durance, as my mechanics specialist. And as for a ranged combat specialist, Rangers all the way. Their class talents seem focused on ranged combat and their animal companion. (I haven't taken a single talent for my ranger's animal companion.) One thing to be aware of is that if the animal companion is knocked out in battle, the ranger takes a big accuracy hit. I didn't know this early on and just kept sending my ranger's wolf into melee. But knowing this little fact, the best thing to do with the AC is to hold him out of melee for a while (sometimes the entire engagement), unless it's necessary to get him into the fight if only as a distraction. From my perspective, what you gain by having the AC in combat doesn't seem as useful as not losing 20 accuracy off your ranger if the AC takes a dirt nap.

What difficulty level are you using? I'm playing Normal and I've never been over 30k and that wasn't until I'd finished upgrading the stronghold, i.e. I could stop flushing copper into the money sink. I pick up ever single piece of loot, find everything that I can find, etc. and yet I don't come close to that level of copper, so I'm wondering if maybe playing on higher difficulty levels gets you more money. For one thing, supposedly higher difficulty levels have more enemies to kill, so that probably means more stuff to loot. Is that enough to explain the difference in income?

On a side note, I didn't realize the value of building the Game Warden's house in the Stronghold until well after I'd done it. The bounties that the Game Warden has are fairly straight forward ways to earn some XP, money, and an occasional item. And speaking about Ogres, one of the bounties in the first set of 4 is a bounty on a pack of ogres ... which was easily the toughest of the first 4 bounties. (They spanked my party around bad until I replaced Kana with Grieving Mother and came back later and returned the favor.)

I aligned myself with the Crucible Knights, but managed to get in good enough with The Dozen (the adventurers' group) to get access to their arms trader as well. Don't know about the crime family, because for whatever reason, I never visited them. Maybe I'll try and go back and check them out, though since I'm fully aligned with the Knights, they may not want anything to do with me.

Mk1, I'd probably suggest waiting until you've gained another level or 2. I don't remember what level my party was when I completed the Ogre level, but I'll give you this suggestion. How I've managed working the Endless Paths dungeon was to only do a level or so of it at a time, and then go back to working quests on the surface for a while. And when I decided to come back to Cad Nua, I'd work the dungeon again for another level or so. There are a number of advantages to doing this. First, your party will be getting stronger, level wise as you go to the deeper levels of the dunegon. Second, it helps prevent any boredom or frustration from the long dungeon crawl of the Endless Paths (and it's a BIG dungeon). Also, I suggest completing the major quest over in the Heritage Hill section of Defiance Bay before you get much deeper into the dungeon. Won't tell you why, but it is absolutely worthwhile. As for dealing with the Ogres when they have orge druid back up, yeah, they're tough. Trying to take them all down with nothing but physical force is probably going to be difficult. I know it's been that way for me. Orges have a LOT of health and can take a LOT of damage before they finally keel over. One spell that seems to work well is the level 4 wizard confusion spell. Don't remember it's new name, but it's just the ol' Confusion spell. It'll confuse everyone in its area for a decent time and maybe get them attacking each other. Let them attack each other, and only attack the "red" ones. Or if by chance you've managed to get all of the ogres confused, pick one of the druids and attack him, turning him "red" again, and hope that the other "green" ogres will turn on him. And even if they don't turn on him, you only have a single active enemy for a short while to focus everyone on. Just don't use any area effect damaging attacks (like Fireball) on a mob of confused (green) Ogres, since doing so just turns them red again. Let them stay green as long as possible except for one, if you've had to turn one red to try to get the other green Ogres to attack him. Confusion seems to work very, very well against the Ogres, probably because they have a very low Will defense. (Indeed, any attacks against Will defenses would probably work well. Something to keep in mind.)

I recently completed this level. And quite honestly, I was less concerned sabout having a character get charmed than I was that my uncharmed characters would start attacking the charmed one, if I didn't pay really, really close attention to preventing it. Also, all six of my party members has a ranged weapon option, which I usually have selected when I'm sneaking around a map. And in any engagement where there's a caster or an enemy that I know to use charm spells a lot, I make them my primary target for that first focus fire volley of arrow/bolt and gunfire. Nothing like chunking one enemy spellcaster to start a battle. Of course, they're often found behind the first enemies you spot, so I often have to hold my shots. But it's usually a decent tactic that pays divivdends in longer engagements.

You're absolutely right. I find it unrealistic that Edér who wears a chainmail armor and holds an actual house door on his arm as a shield can sneak up on forest creatures in the forest with high stealth skills. The body armors and shields don't have stealth modifiers at all. I have just checked. I don't see a great need for shields to have stealth modifiers. My reasoning is that shields are generally a single static "unit", whereas armor, by necessity, has to be a collection of linked parts that cover the body and need to move as the body moves. And when the body moves and those parts move, they're going to make some noise. Your plate armored tank is going to be going clunk-clunk-clunk as he's walking thru the forest trying to be stealthy. Or you chain mail warrior is going having a sort of ching-ching-ching sound going on as the mail moves as you move. And so on. Hence the (negative) stealth modifier. Oddly though, if you have a shield, but it's unequipped (on your back) while you're trying to be stealthy, it might make more noise there than if you had it on your arm. Maybe.

Oh, I got my answer already. I think I already thanked the guys above. I merely think that the skill system doesn't fit organically into the game mechanics (race, class system, character histories, etc.) and I am discussing this with all those who are willing to discuss this with me. This discussion helps me to better understand the game world and to build more realistic characters which improves the game experience for me. That's all. Nevermind then. Agreed, the skill system isn't this game's strong point, think they made it intentionally simplistic so you aren't stuck having to bring along "skill monkey" characters (something I actually appreciate though!). I'm not sure that I like the lack of a fairly deep set of skills or not. Oh, I can appreciate not having a bunch of useless skills. I do appreciate that skills aren't strongly linked to the various classes, though it seems to me that some of the skills could have had included modifiers based on a character's stats. For example, I'd think that Athletics could be modified by the more physical stats (i.e. MGT, DEX, and CON). Perhaps an average of the three. Possibly Resolve as well, since one might argue that one's resolve to soldier on thru one's fatigue could be a modifier there. And Lore might be linked to INT. And perhaps Mechanics, at least when looking for traps and hidden stuff might be modified by Perception. And Stealth could be modified by DEX. (Heck, Stealth should probably be modified by the type of armor you're wearing. I have a hard time buying that anyone wearing full plate could be at all stealthy, short of it being some sort of magical plate armor specifically enchant to be less noisy and more stealthy.) Just some thoughts.

Why is it 'bad' roleplaying if your Barbarian has high Lore? Because Barbarians train their physique not their minds. I am not saying they cannot be educated but not too educated. You can't do everything in one lifetime in real life either than how could one achieve that in this harsh fantasy world? It's not realistic at all. I think that this way of looking at it doesn't allow for characters to grow beyond the stereotypical paradigm for their class. I don't really see it as bad role playing, as long as one role plays the barbarian in keeping with his education (i.e. the high Lore). OTOH, if one just keeps playing the barbarian as a typical dumb barb (even with the high Lore skill), that seems like weak role playing to me ... unless perhaps the barbarian character is putting on a front to try to make people see him as a dumb barb when he really isn't.

What the heck is "aggro"?

Except that it's supposedly made legendary by a portion of your essence, not anyone else's. You define what makes the weapon powerful but if you didn't build a character around using spears you're out of luck. Even then it's not an amazing weapon and considering you flirted with genocide and sacrificed a piece of your immortal soul for it you'd think that'd merit something but as it stands it's at best a small piece of extra income and at worst going to make for a few frightening games of lawn darts at the stronghold. I'm not sure that I'd say that the weapon is made "legendary" by a portion of your PC's essence. "Powerful" seems like a more appropriate word here. The weapon might become legendary in the future when your character has become a legend. The weapon may become legendary depending on the deeds one does with it. Still, I could see having a choice of weapon here, as long as one thinks of it as powerful, but not yet legendary.

I won't deny what you say here. But I think that one also has to factor in whether the bow-user in question has a weapon focus on only one type of bow, but not the other. For example, if you have a charcter with the WF Adventurer but not WF Peasant, he'll have a +6 accuracy on his warbow, but not on the hunting bow. And in this case, it seems that it wouldn't be all that wise to throw away a parfectly good +6 acc bonus, just because you find yourself in a situation where a hunting bow might be a little better, if not for the WF issue.