Ichthyic

not my experience. only times any of my characters got close to unconscious on hard mode, it was because of melee attackers. early on phantoms, ogres and the ocasional uber kith, later on high level fampyrs and things like... dragons. I can't recall any time my characters were getting a lot of damage from physical ranged attackers. oh, and traps. got knocked out by traps a couple of times.

whoah. to get all the way to copperlane, and never use scout mode? so.. much... loot.. MISSED. makes me wince just thinking about it. also makes me wonder how many traps he found the hard way so far?

nope, you can entirely bypass everything in the level except the area in front of the exit, and once you kill all the monsters there, there is a switch to open the door. you don't need to do anythng with the forges at all, if you don't want to. some might argue it actually takes less effort to do that one hard fight than all the lesser fights needed to activate the forges. in fact, looking back on it, i would make that argument. you're actually better off ignoring the forges if the idea is to limit unecessary combat. again, poor design IMO.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I wholeheartedly agree with your disagree. PoE does look tremendously better than the IE engine is capable of. the artwork just is done in a similar style to the old IE games, but the details? not even close. all of the effects are more detailed, all of the characters are better animated and much more detailed. and I JUST finished playing IWD enhanced before I played this... like the day before. there is really no comparison in graphic quality, this is miles ahead of the IE engine.

Yeah.. (Dis)Engagement is broken like that. AFAICT the engagement system is a mimic of the old Attack of Opportunity system in DnD. reach weapons got an automatic AOO if you moved inside of their range, in all of the games that featured an AOO system that I recall. the only real thing that has changed in this system that I can tell is the name. probably "attack of opportunity" is trademarked by WotC or some such inanity.

or saws... which cut..

every autopause game ever, the only ones I found generally useful: -pause on sighting enemy; stop movement -pause on sighting hidden; stop movement and both of those are just to avoid blundering into dangerous things. that's it. to underestand how turns work in this game, I tried pause on finish ability. annoying as hell, but it's instructive in figuring out the cadence of how your team operates with various spells and attacks, so you learn not to waste time with characters standing idle during combat. once you get the rhythm though, I turn it off again. the just spacebar for pause/unpause works great for me. fully agree with that though. more flexibility is always a good thing.

which you can do with anyone, with scrolls instead if need be. so you're saying a priest is a giant walking scroll. frankly, I typically use durance as offensive caster instead of buffer. seals are the things that are brutally effective and unique to priests. so no, I don't agree with your assesment.

the most important enemies... to you. which, btw, are also affected by corrode, just not as much. so you're only talkign a few points of diference in most cases.

the only thing I find overpowered about priests is painful interdiction. I start EVERY fight with that, which tells me it's likely just a bit too good. Other than that? not sure what the OP meant by Durance specifically. priests in general are not nearly as overpowered in the early game as ciphers are. and ciphers eventually balance out with the rest towards the end, imo.

gotta disagree on the party banter not being interesting, at least the first time around. I found it just as entertaining as the party banter for BG was, better in some cases.

let me guess... Fampyrs? egads, I hit level 8 in the endless paths, and it was like Aloth must have been here before... because they all knew him and loved him, charming no other characters, but ALWAYS charming Aloth, without fail. I had to basically plan my fights around only having 5 guys and no mage, AND having to paralyze or knockown Aloth on my first turn. which, btw, is the easiest and cheapest thing to do when your mage gets charmed... just knock him down, with slicken, or a priest seal, or whatever have you. by the time he gets up, the charm will have worn off. that said... supress affliction works against any spell that disables your characters, debuffs your characters, or gives them a DOT effect. it's actually extremely useful. charm does not disable your character... it makes it NOT your character. that's why it doesn't work on them. if you want to have your best chance at resisting charm, you can create 2nd level "scroll of defense" that boost all your defenses for your entire party by 20 for about 20 seconds. only takes 4 lore to use, so most of your characters can use it at the start of combat. if you manage to cast it before the fampyrs see your mage, you at least have a 50/50 chance of avoiding him being charmed. unfortunately, you can only cast it in combat, so the timing is a bit tricky.

Just tossing this out there from experience, because I'm seeing people wonder if they built their team right after they got their butts handed to them in the endless paths. OK, first off... the paths overall seem to contain creatures that are a bit tougher than what you would expect, given the level you are probably at when you can first start doing them. Also.. plan for lots of traps. and nasty ones too. you should have at least level 6 mechanics before you go too far, and level 8 preferably, as there are not only traps but chests that need mechanics 8 to open. or just carry a lot of picks. the levels are small enough that I actually recommend staying in sneak mode until you have explored the entire level. lots o traps, lots o secrets, and the stealth helps you get the jump on enemies anyway. Oh, and speaking of traps, they are actually useful here, as there are a lot of chokepoints, so you can reuse some of the traps you disarm to good effect. as a general rule, if you are pretty good at games like this already, and find hard mode relatively easy, you still will likely want to be at least one level higher than the level of the endless paths you are tackling. so with a full party, you can probably do the first couple of levels with your party at level 3 or 4. if you decide to jump down the well on level 1, you will end up on level 5, which actually almost all xaurips, so not that bad. However, avoid going north when you land, or you'll have to fight a full sized drake along with about 9 high level xaurip. save that for later. you can fight your way through the xaurips to the south and find a staircase that leads back to the surface. watch out for traps. level 3 is where you start getting ogres, and you really will have an easier time of it if you wait till your party hits level 5, but it's doable at 4. use stealth so you can get close enough to start casting spells on ogres before they know you are there. confusion (even the level 2 version) is very useful. spells or scrolls work fine. sicken works great, so again, Noxious Burst, Fetid Caress work fantastic. anything that slows them is good, because they are already pretty slow. sneak up and cast fetid caress on an ogre druid to take it out of the combat until you have full control of the situation. lots of options, but unless you have really good deflection scores, I'd recommend magic and ranged against ogres. they hit very hard. make sure to take out druids first, as they are worse than regular ogres in every imaginable way. if you have slayer enchants free, you will want a "wilder slayer" enchant for ogres, and corrode damage. again, careful if you plan to melee, even the regular ogres commonly hit for 50 a pop, and the druids can hit you for 90. the next few levels are actually easier IMO. ooozes and beetles, then lots and lots of xaurips, which should hardly give you trouble, though there IS a full sized drake on level 5. pretty much 6-8 is all undead (vessel) and spirits (both elemental and shade), getting progressively tougher as you go. One thing to watch out for: when you hit the level with the elemental forges (level 7), it actually helps to rekindle all the forges BEFORE heading to the exit down to level 8. you will know when you are getting near the exit, because a spirit will pop up and warn you of danger. if you want a nice, tough fight, ignore it and plow ahead. If not, do the forges fist before proceeding further into that area. You'll also be able to finish Kana's quest on this level, so make sure to bring him along. this is a good place to stop.... before you go to level 8, make sure you finish the main quest in Defiance Bay relating to the tower. find the Leaden Key, and do the missions they tell you to do. make sure you finish the tower in Heritage Hill, and learn a new language (no, not Spanish). that new language is very useful on level 8, though admitedly not absolutely necessary. you'll miss out on a ton of fun dialogue without it though. level 8 is mostly tough vessel, with some nasty fampyrs, and the ocasional adra beetle group tossed in. things can get out of control quick if you don't pay attention. recommend stealth until you see just how big any particular group you're about to launch an attack on is. by this time, you might be level 9, so your fist level spells are now "cantrips" and can be cast per encounter. use that to your advantage. even nerfed, slicken is still a great spell here. use fire. lots and lots of fire. plan for at least one of your characters to get charmed unless you take fampyrs down quick, or stun them, etc. that's pretty much everything you need to know for the first half of this dungeon.

having thought more about the endless paths... if you plan to do those... a good vessel slayer weapon is really useful for level 8, especially. so... many... fampyrs... ...and one of them, though optional, is REALLY tough. worth kicking his butt though, if you want some sparkly heavy armor. I'm playing on hard, and I found that fight tough (by "tough", I mean at least one character knocked out, 1 close to it) even with a full party at level 9. mostly because the fampyr rushed my casters instead of the tank... that was standing right in front of him, while my casters were on the bridge.... 40 yards away. watch out for insta charm. not looking forward to that fight on POTD.

i've looked and looked, and frankly, it's really hard to tell if all three (lash, paladin fire, and chanter fire) stack at the same time. there's enough variability to wash out anything short of listing damages dozens of times for each configuration. that said, on a non crit I saw 55 fire damage from my paly as a maximum, which suggests all three damages do stack. but I wouldn't be my life on it or anything.

true. steam is indeed even worse. LOL so much more broken. it's sad people are so incapable they no longer are even able to just click on a link from a developer site. sorry, but frankly, I don't care about your inability to click on a link. if steam is catering to your sort, that's another reason it is ending up so terribly.

that's how kolsc died in my game as well. he casts an aoe spell at whoever is closest to him. If that character is right next to him, he hits himsel with it too. since he's usually weakened by damage already when he casts the spell, he croaks. not sure which spell gives slash damage though. might be some custom spell he has. also, not the only enemy to have killed themselves in this manner; I've noticed it at least a dozen times in my game. any creature/npc that can cast or do AOE damage that is not foe specific can kill themselves like this. frankly, if the AI is so bad that it can't target spells away from itself, perhaps they should just make enemy aoe spells not able to harm same faction npcs.

I had this, I think its because when you trigger the event where the place spawns mobs, they actually begin to fight the NPC guards... If you get near these guards and fight the mob they are fighting with lets say, with a Wizard his "blast" ability which turns rod/scepter etc attacks into small AOE will hit the guard.. even tho its not registering and he stays friendly. When u transition above the whole place will remember that and agro. Dont go near the NPCs when they are fighting other mobs, your auras and stuff will trigger passive agro on them somehow and you will get faction attacked I always closed the doors behind me whenever I passed by a previously locked door. none of the guards ever got attacked in my game, because the enemies did not open any doors. fwiw, I tried it 6 times and 3 of those I killed Azo before heading upstairs, and never had any aggro from anyone once I left the lower level. Again, closing all doors behind me. even shot an escaping prisoner before he could hit the stairs up and escape.

I guess that none of the beta testers accepted the quest, talked to the statue, but then instead of actually doing the quest... turned around and left to go do something entirely different. gotta admit, I can imagine that one slipping through the cracks.

I'm laughing at myself, really. like most people, I entirely cleared the level before I started activating the forges. this needed to be designed better I think. the spirit warns you, but it should actually give you direct advice to activate the forges, and why. also, I agree that it should be actually a minor quest, which activates when you talk to the spirit near the exit area, and updates when you activate all the forges. meh, probably got lost in the rush to finish.

yeah, I figured it would do something like that, given previous games where this kind of thing exists. *sigh* this time I'm playing an honest, diplomatic paladin. cruel is the polar opposite of what my character is all about, so had to give this one a pass. OTOH, after you get the information from Icantha, and talk to the now very much degenerated Aldhelm just ONCE (talk to him again and he will attack). If you then destroy the tower, you can talk to him again. seems you helped him out after all, so at least there's that.

I wonder how much money one can make doing these guides? this guy has been doing this for quite a while now; half a dozen games I'm aware of, probably dozens I'm not. can you actually make a living just doing this?

perect example... at one point (after you finish the sanitarium), Thaos appears to you and says: "The gods... do not judge our actions by their outcomes. They judge them by our reasons. Act out of love for the gods, and you can never be wrong in their sight." ugh, what utter nonsense. if your philosophy on life has your actions not being judged by their outcomes? that's an utter failure to learn from your mistakes. ...and then excusing that failure because you've convinced yourself some deity loves you. that, my friend, is exactly why religion has failed humanity throughout history. that. right there. even if there WERE real gods, this kind of "outcome irrelevant" thinking would ALWAYS inhibit learning and progress. best to tear down the gods, so there are no excuses for not learning from bad outcomes.

fwiw, I would go exactly the opposite direction, and tear down all the gods. nothing but constructs, all of them. all corrupt. have a world ruled by wizard magic, nature magic, and science. but that's just me. I'm more of a Michael Moorc0ck fan. frankly, I would have converted Thaos to MY cause.

So... during your investigations, you learn that the leadbellies, lead hand, illuminati, whatever... have used their soul jumper to sabotage his experiments. but, after learning all of that, and having it be an entire exposition by the soul jumper, there is NO option at all to tell Azo what you learned; no way to tell him he might have been on to something, but for the interference of this group of anti-animancers. it's sad, really. why not add an option to the dialogue you have with Azo, where you CAN tell him about the sabotage? convince him to start again, but use saner methods? nope, all you can do is either leave him to his mistakes or kill him. it seems rather bluntly inane to me.