Ichthyic

you can test your knowledge easily enough just by going to the map with the flooded canyon in it in ch1. the flooded ruins near there have a rune ring nearby that is written in engwithan. you can't read it before you know the language, you can after. ezpz.

agreed. in fact, ALL of the companion stories could use better markers to indicate story progress.

also, intellect DOES make a difference if you are playing hit and run with your DOTS. I often used my rogue to do DOT damage with blunderbus, then go invisible. you get to do quite a bit of damage if you just wait for the timer to run out. but of course, if your intellect is only 4....

got the same bug on my playthrough with the release version of the game (Gog 1.02). it's tagged as enemy, but does not initate combat mode, so it's not a big deal, just a weird glitch. solid object tagged as a faction or something. IIRC, the only way to even notice it is to use the "tab" key to highlight.

I always wanted to replay BG... from Irenicus' point of view. like when "dungeon keeper" came out... turning the whole "gotta be the hero" thing on its head is a good thing, IMO. it's really past time a clearly supervillain oriented crpg was released. I mean, if Maleficent can be a box office hit, so could a game that features the perspective from the supposed "villain" POV.

actually, that isn't at all the case. but, to know that, you'd have to have grieving mother with you. it wasn't grieving mother ALONE that fixed the girl, she could only do it with YOUR help. however, you're right that you wouldn't know this unless griieving mother was in your party.

yup. How about an item that gives you the ability to summon a blight once per rest, just like the druid level 4(?) spell does. that would make perfect sense. make it more interesting? it has a 25% chance to call a greater blight instead of a regular one. more interesting still? you get to choose the realm of blight. more interesting STILL? Kana refuses to use it, calling it one of "Gabrannos' abominations"; not only that, but you gain a point in cruelty if you have him in your party and choose to use it anyway.

yes, and that's good, but... why on earth would you NOT tell Azo yourself? it makes no sense. plus, you're never quite sure he ever learns the truth. riots, remember?

bugs I have run into during gameplay: -game crashed on start (workaround: delete specific font in windows directory). -unlimited stat increase. could fix via console to some extent -unlimited damage reduction. could NOT fix via console to any extent; character ruined. -permanent blind (it's just an irritating icon AFAICT, but it's there) -permanent insect swarm (ogre druids. first time... death. workaround with save load sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, still leaves insects buzzing around you) -savegames getting progressively longer and longer to load/save -casting bug where casting would go into infinite loop (with fun sound echo), stoppable by recasting the same spell, again, but very very irritating. -attack bug with arbalest where character would repeat attack motion infinitely but without attacking -negative damage reduction after storing companion in keep (unrepairable - character ruined). -disappearing items from characters stored in keep. -spell abilities from weapons (or items) randomly disappearing; will reappear on reload, but rather inconvenient if you were already in combat. -charcters getting stuck on things (oddly seems to happen most often with Kana... large model size perhaps?) -"already active" notice on abilities that had not actually been used yet. -accuracy stacking on characters stored in keep. -"unpaid" hirelings in keep -characters not going where you direct them in combat; instead heading off in some random direction. those are just the ones I can recall off the top of my head. they were frequent enough, and irritating enough, that I finally stopped playing (second playthrough) and will wait for whatever the patch state is in a month or so before trying again. this, just for people who said: "I had no bugs, is there a buglist I can double check against?" I would not consider any of these bugs gameSTOPPING (well, excepting the one I had where the game wouldn't even start), but I would most certainly consider bugs that permanently ruin your character stats as entirely gameBREAKING. so yeah, I worked for a developer for several years, and RAN the bugtesting team for our products, both games and internet entertainment, and there are indeed quite a few very irritating bugs in this game. On the whole though, it feels about average for a crpg release.

If you don't like being overpowered, gimp your character. as I said, and I predicted someone would say... this is the singular dumbest advice you can possibly give for game design. really.

if it helps any, the only character I had this happen to (Pallegina) also had a problem with her damage reduction score being -2. that happened after putting her in my keep for few days, and if I had my dr aura on my main paly going when I pulled her out, she got that. once I forgot to turn it off, dragged her along for a while, and then realized it... and I just gave up and wasn't willing to backtrack for hours. So, she has a permanent -2 to dr now. also, at the time the permablind status happened, she was wearing several items that all gave pierce resistance, and the extra items that gave pierce resistance were noted as "suppressed" in the character details page. blind is not noted as supressed; it just shows the icon. this is still release version, 1.02, so it's definitely not a bug that was introduced in a recent patch.

this bug has been there since early beta: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76702-bugpermanent-blinded-icon/?hl=blinded

meh.

um... a fertiilzer bomb in a van took out an entire 10 story government building in Oklahoma once upon a time. that was for reals. not even involving magic/spirit/whatever.

no matter what, you're gonna get riots I think. the difference seems to be most noticeable in the endgame summary regarding how you handled that hearing.

yup. plenty of room to roleplay in this game. even in potd, even SOLO, you can decide to play it "nice guy" and not take the bonuses from the machine or from the blood pool and still do just fine. there's tons of equipment to give you boosts, and tons of food, and spells, and resting at inns.... +1 might isn't as important to me, as roleplaying your character to fit. really bad if you're playing a shieldbearer paly for example; you might actually get enough of a cruel bent to lower your defense a notch.

you know what's really funny? you didn't even notice that that paly was one of the first potd solos posted. before anyone posted a fighter run. hmmm.

because the information was utter ****e? think of that did you? of course not.

so you could go to the inn at dyrwood, hire a couple o level 1 companions, run back there, have them stand on the right symbols, then just get rid of them. simple. you can actually make a decent spear, though I'm a little unclear on what you're "sacrificing" to do so.

so.. the part where everyone is telling you that you MUST go to the palace and present your case, because it will change everything! that kinda implies that yes, you are supposed to indeed magically fix things by being protagonist mcSquarepants. You must have forgotten that part.

I just got to the riots in Defiance Bay. I played totally to character all the way, full diplomacy and honesty on every interaction, honesty and diplomacy both at 4 by the time I did the debates at the palace.... not only did what I said there make ZERO difference to anything, but I also note that EVERY time I had the opportunity to use diplomacy as a skill before a fight started... it started anyway. I don't know who wrote the dialogues and interactions, but whoever it was must have been a huge cynic, who very clearly wants to make it know to anyone who plays this game that your actions, especially good ones, mean absolutely squat. OTOH, if you're a complete evil douche, you have a much larger impact on almost everything, albeit in a usually negative way. I kept waiting for diplomacy to you know... diplomatize... things. but nope, I can't recall any time it had a positive effect. it was just another random dialogue choice. honesty had a *slighty* more effective usage, whenever it had a usage, but again, those were pretty rare. Usually, as with diplomacy, it was just a random dialogue choice. Also noted, most of the companion stoylines end in what I would call... "nebulous disappointment", meaning they weren't necessary *bad*, but just as much not definitive in a postive direction either. I can't recall ever playing a game where all the dialogue, both story and companion-wise, was so... flattened? is there a better word to describe it? very strange.

LOL

Except destroying the economy by making you richer than all the kings in the world? Looks like the game is trying to beat Skyrim's record of "Get mega rich by doing nothing and have no challenge at saving money." It's a single player game, there's no such thing as an economy. There's no AH or trading among players. Also PoE is not a game about economy ala Eve. There's a lot of things that can be improved in PoE, trash drops being the least important... ridiculous. if stores simply gave you items for free, then there indeed would be no economy, but you KNOW what the person you are responding to was talking about. stuff costs money in this game, but, with unlimted junk to sell, that makes it meaningless in all but name.

it's also a fantasy game, one where the words "realistic" are laughably meaningless. frankly, it's actually NOT realistic you would recover a perfect set of the exact same items from every enemy of the same type you defeat in combat. what world do you live in where it is so? what games have you played before where it was common to have this much junk to process? plus, the way inventory management works, if you sell all that crap to a store, you better buy everying else you want first, because likely your're then gonna have to scroll through pages of inventory to find what you're looking for. this game has VERY little challenge to it as it is, and with unlimted storage space available anywhere, at any time, and unlimted junk to cram into said unlimited magic storage space, it removes that much more challenge. you might then reply..."then just don't pick up the junk", but that would be a stupid answer, because self-gimping is kludgy, and you know it. I could literally apply that same argument to ANYTHING in the game.

There's a forge on the second level of the ruins that is guarded by an Adra Animat. If you sneak up, you can see him working the forge. anyone figure out if there is any way for you to either use the forge yourself, or convince the animats to use the forge for you? it just seems like one of those things that might have more to it...