Crucis

Damn. At least 13 levels in the Endless Paths dungeon? Wow. How many are there in total? I'm currently on about level 8 or 9 I think (don't remember which). I've only been doing a level or two at a time when I visit the strong hold, then leave to work on other quests.

After the "armored assault", things are messed up at Crucible Keep. You can't find the smithy or the knight at the front door either, immdiately after the battle. leave and come back later, and I suspect that Wyla will return. I know that the smithy and the "front door" knight returned when I played through this part of the story.

b0rsuk, you make some good observations here. My PC is a Ranger whose primary weapon is a warbow. I chose warbow oer hunting bow early on because I just wanted a harder hitting bow, though I didn't know squat about the details of the PoE system at the time. I don't think that I've taken Pen Shot yet, because I saw the slightly slower recovery time and didn't fully consider the ramifications as you've described them above. I'll probably try to pick pen Shot next time I level up and have the option to do so, as long as there's not a class talent that's more important to take. As for your question, when is a Hunting Bow better than a War Bow, I have one answer. If by chance you pick up a NPC who has the weapon focus: Peasant auto-picked, then it'd probably be the better choice. Why? Because WF: Peasant includes Hunting Bow, and it seems to me that using a warbow instead and giving up +6 to your accuracy may not be worth the cost in the long run, since the greater accuracy should be helping you get more solid hits and crits, in spite of it having a somewhat lower damage range. Just a thought.

If the character has borderline accuracy, it'd probably be betterto use a slow, high damage weapon like a crossbow/arbalest or a pistol/arqaba. Faster firing bows seem more effective when used by high accuracy characters since they may be less likely to get grazes, and more likely to get solid hits or crits.

This would have made the whole world much less believable. Got a bow fan proving my point right here. Yeah a world where guns have relegated archery to a status and hobby symbol. SOOOOO unbelievable. Sorry, but you've got another bow fan here. And I've gotta say that the idea of a bow-less fantasy world is just ... wrong!

They pretty much said "the cruicible Knights won't like it". That's it. So no, it's NOT clear. Not in the least. Why am I, a neutral mercenray, suiddenly personana non-grata? Why the hell id it an insourmantable obstacle, when I have a excellent relations with the Knights? A fetch/exploration job is treated as a decelaration of utter loyalty. How can one expect loyalty out of me when I was never invited to be part of the group to bein with? there never was a "Do you want to join us?" with the knights. And the Dozen seem like a loose group. They organize contracts and expeditions, so how is "Hey, do you need a extra hand on one of the expeditions?" the same as "I'm loyal to you and only to you!" Trashman, without getting into the details of the dialog trees, I can agree that it seems like the 3 factions are much too black/white about whose side your on. The way you describe it, it's getting rather close to saying that if you do any work for the "other" factions, the faction you'd prefer to align with will reject you. There doesn't seem to be any room to be neutral here and do some work with all three, at least for a while. Oh, I can see how once you do fully align yourself with one faction that the other two would probably then reject you. But it seems to me that UNTIL you've taken that final step, if your reputation with the other factions is still respectable, they shouldn't turn their backs on you. Of course, I suppose that from a real life perspective, some "good" group might say that if you're doing work for a crime family, then they want nothing to do with you. And vice-versa. (Not sure how to look at the Dozen, because I don't know much about them beyond them being some sort of umbrella group for adventurers.) OTOH, from a game play perspective, it would seem like trying to let the player string the 3 factions along as far as possible (as long as their reps with each group were good enough) could possibly be good for game play.

While the original Attributes suggested that to be true, it's been established that it's simply not true, from a design perspective. When people complained that the Attributes are lopsided and unbalanced, and that the Attribute spread of the CNPC:s suffered because of it, Obsidian changed the Attribute spreads of the CNPC:s to "better" or more "min/maxed" (or at least attempted to; in at least the case of Edér, the decision was.. odd.. to say the least) without any regard for the personalities of the characters. So I really wish that what you said would be true, but it's unfortunately not. Luckmann, I have a hard time not seeing that stats shouldn't be reflected in an NPC's personality. Oh, mind you, I doubt that a difference of a single point in a stat either way probably matters that greatly to an NPC's basic personality. Also, it would seem that the more mental stats, i.e. intelligence, perception, and resolve, would be more important to a character's personality than the more physical stats. Not that the physical stats would be UN-important, just a little less important. For example, a high INT character should have a distinctly different personality from a low INT one. Ditto for Resolve. OTOH, if you looked at two characters having the same INT, PER, and RES, but with different mixes of MGT, CON, and DEX, one might be able to argue that the two characters might have fairly similar personalities. Maybe not, but possibly. Regardless, I don't buy into the OP's opinion on this. NPC's need to have their stats and class choice be a reasonable reflection of their personality. The idea that you could have an NPC with an already fixed background story which almost certainly reflects certain facts about said character and then just let players build that character from scratch seems entirely unreasonable to me. I will say that following my logic, one could make a not unreasonable argument that players could get to pick the NPC's skills, talents, etc. from scratch, since those are probably much less linked to the fixed backstory of the character. Still, I'm not sure that every player would want to stop and do an NPC's skill/talent build from scratch the moment they let them into the party. Some might forget to do so or not even realize that they needed to do so. A better way to deal with it might be to have the NPC's skills/talents fixed as they are now, but allow the player to rebuild an NPC's skill/talent once per NPC. Or possibly at their first level-up while they're in your party. Still, it seems an unnecessary complication to me. Also, NPC's are designed by the game's "dungeon master" whether it's in a pencil and paper environment or a cRPG. And in the case of a cRPG, the DM is the developers. And maybe the players should accept that and worry about their PC, and leave the NPC's to the game's DM's (the devs).

That doesn't seem as bad as Pallegine (and maybe some others) picking Field Triage. I won't say that FT is entirely useless, but at the same time, when it's likely that you have a Priest in your party, FT seems like a really wasted talent pick when there are so many others that should be more useful, like weapons/combat related talents or class-specific talents. Oh well.

That's a whole different issue. I think many people will agree that sometimes when picking a talent there is 20 available and all of them useless. I would prefer less choice but really really good stuff. The kind of stuff you would spend 30 min contemplating on instead of playing. I kind of wish that there were 2-3 more skills in the mix. OTOH, doing so would have required additional programming and design to incorporate them into the game. For example, a diplomacy skill might be useful, but it would also require its inclusion into a lot of the dialog trees to make it worthwhile. As for the talents, part of me wishes that they'd be split up somehow and that you'd get to pick from those different lists. That is, you might be alble to pick one from a weapons/class ability list and pick one from a more general talent list. Obviously not at every level-up, but often enough to be useful. It seems like it'd be a way to allow/get players to pick some of those general talents without feeling that they're having to give up picking from the more useful talents. Just a thought.

Chip, I was paying attention ... closely. And I don't recall many people making that big a deal over Minsc's class, odd as it was. They just rolled with it. As for "is that too much to ask", yes, it is. That's just a tactic to try to get people that disagree with YOU to shut up. I think that the fact that you want me to shut up means that I hit the mark dead on with my comments. Yet changing him into a barbarian/berserker was in much demand, a demand that modders eventually met. Quite a reasonable change considering that he is from Rashemen and described as a berserker. Really? Shut up? Where on earth did I even remotely entertain that notion? Do try and read what I wrote instead of going round the bend like that. I wrote about you instead presenting arguments for your case, as opposed to what you just did in your reply. Agreeing to disagree has to do with maintining a civil tone and not resorting to personal attacks when there really isn't much else to discuss after having presented all ones arguments. Is an option too much to ask? How so? Does it harm your gameplay? Is it harmful to the gameplay overall? Is it too much to ask that, instead of having players forgo early questing in order to gather their companions as early as possible, it be possible to level them up yourself? If there's enough demand for it from the playerbase then why force people to use somewhat buggy console commands? You could of course argue that at some point mods will come along and allow for such an option. Edit: I would propose adding in a slider with three settings. First: Have companions level up automatically Second: Have it as it is now Third: Have them be level one when you meet them Yes, really. Chip, I see saying "agree to disagree" as a polite person's way of telling you that they want you to shut up. That's how I see it. Think on it. Whenever someone says "let's agree to disagree", they really, really are trying to say that they don't want to discuss or debate the topic any further and they really just want you to shut up. As for the option, what it comes down to me is this. If you don't like the game the way it is, you can play it as is, you can mod it (if it's modable, of course), or you can choose to walk away. What I would prefer is rather than handing over pre-made NPC building over to the players is for the designers to not make such "weak" decisions when it comes to the various factors of the NPC's such as stats, skill/talent/ability choices. I'm not looking for anything close to uber-min/maxed perfect. Just solid choices when it comes to skills/abilities, etc. that won't leave people tearing their hair out. Like with Pallegine, instead of having Field Triage as a pre-picked ability, pick a decent paladin special ability or a solid combat skill. Something in keeping with the character and yet isn't such a weak choice that it feels like an utterly wasted pick. For example, with any character that's going to engage in physical combat regularly, selecting a "weapon set" skill doesn't seem like a waste to me. Or with classes that have special class abilities, selecting any of those may not be a waste either. As for Minsc, it's been a LONG time, but I don't recall berzerker existing in BG1, and the designers probably felt compelled to not change Minsc's class when they were designing BG2.

Magru, I'm playing my Ranger PC with the exact same group of pre-mades and feel that I'm doing quite well. I think that it comes down to how you manage your party, its tactics, spell choices, etc. This is how I manage my battles. I have Eder decked out as an uber-defensive tank. Full plate, uses a large shield, defensive stance (or whatever it's called), sword and shield style, and so forth. After firing a blast from his blunderbuss at the softest enemy in range, he switches to his saber and shield, and moves up a little (not a lot) to draw enemies on to him. I don't expect Eder to be mowing down enemies. His job is to get enemy melee-ers focused on him because he's really hard to hit wit his great defenses. I have Durance fire off his Holy Radiance talent to give the party a quick buff, while the rest of the party also targets the same enemy that Eder first hit to try to remove an enemy from the battlefield ASAP. I keep Pallegine and Durance as my second line tanks, but have them stick with ranged weapons if possible. If not, I have Durance be the second tank in the fight ... usually, and have him target the same enemy as Eder, because Durance is using a mace that has bonuses for doing this. I'll move Pallegine into melee if necessary. I try to keep my Ranger (named .... surprise... Crucis), Kana, and Aloth hanging back blasting away with ranged weapons and spells. In some tougher battles, I have to hold Durance out of melee because I need him alive to constantly be firing off heal spells. But those battles aren't that common. Also, I tend not to have Aloth casting all his spells every chance he gets when I'm in dungeon crawl mode. I prefer letting my party take the enemies out physically, if it can be done easily, and save Aloth's spells for the tougher battles and tougher enemies, since his spells are on a per-rest basis, not per-encounter. (If you have a character that has per-encounter abilities, then you can feel free to use them more aggressively.) Another thing for the OP to consider. Some of the nice party buffing abilities of Durance, Pallegine, and Kana the chanter have a limited range, so keeping your party relatively close together matters, unless there's a critical reason for doing otherwise.

Guys, thanks for the replies on "acts". PoE is more like BG1/2 here than IWD1/2, given that the IWD games were very linear in their storyline (and any side quests only existed within that linear progression) whereas the BG games were very non-linear. Oh, the BG main story was linear, but all the various side quests could disguise the main story line from the rest of the things and have you going off in many directions, and not in the same order if you played the game multiple times. As for getting to Twin Elms, I've been assuming that you can only get there through the cliffs area (don't remember its exact name) and only after it stops freakin' raining so that the water level in the river below the cliffs can receded. And I'm assuming that it only stops raining here when some given event occurs, thus blocking access to that area before that event. This is why I've been focusing on clearing out the various major and minor quests in Defiance Bay as well as working on the Endless Paths cave system from time to time. Indeed, I think that I'll be heading back there for another round of dungeon crawling, since my PC has just learned that ancient language that I've heard helps you more easily succeed in the Endless Path's lower levels.

People keep talking about Acts within the game and I'm left feeling confused. Of course, I know what an "act" is within the context of a story or a play. But within the context of PoE's storyline, I have no idea what events, quests, whatever define Act 1, Act 2, etc. My party is at level 7 or 8 at this point, just to give you an idea of how far I'm into the game. Don't remember whether it's 7 or 8 without getting into the game, but I think that it's close enough to give you a sense of where I am in the progress of the storyline. Edit: I have Pallegina in my party, but have not yet been able to find a way yet to get to the Twin Elms region on the east side of the global map.

Chip, I was paying attention ... closely. And I don't recall many people making that big a deal over Minsc's class, odd as it was. They just rolled with it. As for "is that too much to ask", yes, it is. That's just a tactic to try to get people that disagree with YOU to shut up. I think that the fact that you want me to shut up means that I hit the mark dead on with my comments.

The level 4 wizard Confusion spell (or whatever it's called in PoE) is quite useful. Zap a mob of enemies and maybe they'll all start attacking each other. If you zap a mob of 3, have two of them attack the 3rd, and have the rest of your party focus down on that same target. Also, make killing orge spellcasters a top priority.

I agree with both of your gripes above. It *IS* tedious to have to enter Brighthollow and THEN have to go to the second floor to get to your bedroom to get some rest. I'm willing to not count entering the Stronghold map in the load screen "count", but it is a pain to have to climb to the 2nd floor. I'm wishing that Brighthollow was a ranch style house. As for the SH being about a day's travel from anywhere else in the game, I also agree with this. It's a pain. Like Yenka suggested, it might have been more useful or perhaps less tedious if the player's "stronghold" was a single house in a city or town, like perhaps somewhere in Defiance Bay or Dyrwood.

I've just started having Pallegina using a warhammer as well so that she can use a shield to boost her defenses. At least at the moment, her base defenses aren't particularly special, so using a greatsword leaves her somewhat vulnerable in melee. And if I want to make the most of her weapon skill set of Soldier, the only 1H melee weapon in that set is warhammer.

Back in BG2 and IWD1/2, putting your squishiest targets, usually your mages, in the very back was often a little risky, because there were a decent number of battles that were ambushes where you'd get hit fro both the front AND rear. So it was often a good idea to have at least one fairly strong party member covering the rear of the formation instead of the party's weakest member, usually the wizard.

Why is it suddenly Min/Max to be able to choose the skills of companions at level up? We should be happy that the game auto picks absolute tripe at level up for us? Just one of the symptoms of the breed as I see it, and as I suspect RevBlue sees it. I don't recall anywhere near this much kvetching about NPCs in BG2 back then. People who loved BG2 were willing to accept the NPCs as they were. IMO, the complainers sound more like IWD1/2 type of players who prefer making their own NPCs, even at the cost of losing any ability NPC interactions.

This is the real killer in my opinion. You sink a lot of money into the stronghold and the return seems extremely underwhelming. Indeed, i seems like the stronghold is just a way to drain money out of the PC's coin purse. To be honest, unlike Dirigible and the 71k cp in his coin purse, I've never been about 9k, and so the stronghold feels like a big money pit to me. Mind you, the resting bonuses are nice, as well as having a free place to rest. And the massive dungeon complex (that I've only partially cleared out thus far) is great. That said, the entire area could have restored itself (well, by workers moving into area behind the scenes) without it having to be a player's stronghold to lord over. And the dungeon could have been included without it being tied to a stronghold.

This doesn't specifically addres the OP's point about a "tactics" system, but one thing I miss from the old IE games is at least one of the combat buttons that told your party or a single character what to do in a simple way. Specifically, the button I miss is the one that told the selected character(s) to hold a position, rather than simply go charging after the nearest enemy (if you were equipped with a melee weapon). It was great for telling a tank or 2 to set up in position X (such as at a choke point) because you then knew that they wouldn't do anything stupid like charging away from your otherwise well thought out defensive position. Without this ability, in PoE, you can set up a position at a doorway, but once your doorway holding tank has killed one enemy at his initial position, he might decide to go run off towards another enemy rather than hold the position you want him holding. (This gets really, really annoying after a while!) There were probably other action buttons like this in the IE games, but none of them were as memorable or well used by me as the guard/hold position (or whatever you want to call it) action button.

The system that PoE uses is subtly different from DnD (3rd or 4th Ed) that it can cause some confusion among past players of the BG and/or IWD series. It certainly has for me. I think that I've made my share of mistakes when it's come to picking skills, assiging character attributes, and so on. From what I'm reading here and on the wiki, maxing out Athletics at 3 does seem to be the way to go. There doesn't seem to be any significant advantage to going beyond 3 that I can see. I think that Stealth is a skill that you usually can't go wrong with, as long as you enjoy a stealthy play style (which I do). Having a couple of points in various skills is probably useful for the PC when it comes to dialog options. Of course, if you do this for your PC, you may find that it slows your progress on a class critical skill like Mechanics or Lore, since getting to higher values in any skill certainly eats up a lot of those skill points along the way. Also, be aware that any skill points that you don't spend when leveling up are saved for the next time you level up. I suspect that some people may not realize this.

Greyhair, if you're where I think you are (i.e. the 2nd level below the main hall), that location is on the far left of the map and you don't open that door from where you are. There are more levels below that level. (How many, I don't know yet because I haven't completed this dungeon system.) But the way down is over in the lower right side of the map. That door you can't open is a way up (?) out of the levels below and can (seemingly) be opened when coming up from a lower level.