Ichthyic

I think even POTD will be soloable likely with several classes. I've hit a point with my tank chanter where she pretty much can't be killed unless I do something extraordinarily silly. ...like run over a trap. I'm finding ALL the traps on even hard mode do at least 100 damage. unless you have some detect ability... there will be places you just have to avoid, or make sure you pump your con with food so you are over 100 endurance any place there might be traps.

What about it? It's a good, free heal 1/encounter. Aye. If you're tanking, take it over Flames. totally, TOTALLY disagree. this ignores the path bonuses you get to the flames ability that aid defense in an AOE fashion; especially if you play shieldbearer. the bonuses to lay on hands are very minor in comparison, and healing abilities and potions are common from your companions, drops, and you can of course make your own. your first bonus as a shield bearer to flames (shielding flames) gives you +10 deflection to all of your allies whenever you use the flames ability; which of course you can start rigth off any battle with. so yeah, since the OP was talking ideal build for paladin as tank, you want to pick shieldbearer, flames, and then upgrade flames with shielding flames. pick Orlan for the perception and resolve bonuses (wild gives you even more defense; but it doesn't add much value until enemies start using will attacks, which really isn't common in the first half of the game; you can pick hearth to add a tad more offense to your build from the crit conversions, since your might is so low - both are workable choices for a tank). then use the stat distribution posted by gkathellar. that's pretty much ideal for tanking. By level 2, you should be near 75 deflection already. at level 3, you can buy the special pally only shield from the smith in the first town, which will not just add +5 bonus to YOUR defense... but if you look at the bonuses during combat... it adds that to your entire party! pick hold the line at some point to increase your aggro. You and Eder together make basically an impenetrable wall, but you don't even need Eder once you get "hold the line". so, you could, if you wanted, build Eder as an off-tank more oriented towards DPS instead, and he will do quite well in this role. or, you can give him "defender", and double down on your defensive abilities. I went the later, and am quite please with the result. so far, not much makes it through that wall, and I can pummel from the back row with my custom rogue archer, Aloth, Kana, and durance. anywho, yeah... tank paladin. FWIW, I soloed the bear in the cave on normal at level 2 with that build. deflection is *just* high enough to force the bear to miss about 33% of his attacks, which, so long as it doesn't get a crit on you, is enough to win that fight. I found this site a big help in planning my build, as it has all the abilities you can gain dependent on your chosen order, etc. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Paladin oh, and don't forget to add in your faith and conviction bonuses when you calculate what your defense will be in combat. those just get better and better as you gain in your preffered dispostions. with just 2 points each in your preferred dispositions, you get: +11 deflection, +18 to fortitude, reflex, and will. none too shabby. so basically, at level 5, my pally is running around 100 in all defenses except fortitude, and that's at about 70 (during combat). add on the bonuses when I use flaming shield, and my deflection is well over 100. no bugs, no gimmicks, that's the bonus you can get with a shieldbearer pally built as a pure defensive tank. you can go even higher if you use the larder door, but it doesn't add the extra defense bonuses that the little pally shield does.

treat your bug nicely... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlVqfC8-UI

I noticed this with other armor I had enchanted. put +1 perception on a piece of leather armor (the armor the mage comes with). later put it in the stash. when I pulled it back out, it no longer had the +! enchantment on it, though it still glowed blue as if it was magic.

when you are sneaking, you notice traps (turn red), to disarm, you should get something like a little mechanical wheel when you roll over the trap with your mouse pointer. then you just click on the trap to automatically try and disarm it. if your mech skill is high enough, you succeed, if not, you don't. if you aren't seeing traps at all, you probably have a very low mech skill level. might need at least level 2? not sure. but once you see them, you just click on them with your character with the highest mech skill, and they will try to disarm it.

Maybe she just has issues with unemployed monsters? Would explain why she terminates them so violently. "It's not working!!" - Headshot! ..maybe she's thinking of her ex every time... "It's not working!" headshot. Or maybe she just has tourette syndrom? "Hey guys, don't you think that hat suites m- ITS NOT WORKING ... ahem, sorry ... I was trying to say that ITS NOT WORKING ... damnit!" Anyways I don't have this bug. Maybe that only happens for one of the available voices? actually, ALL of my characters do this now, but I have noticed it only happens when they use abilities. so the priest is always complaing his interdictions did nothing, my paladin complains her flaming strike didn't work, my wizard complains his fireball missed everything... etc. on normal attacks, no comments are made. only when combined with an ability. so that at least narrows it down.

a lot of you are not getting what the OP is asking for. he's not asking for a slightly easier mode where all you have to do is change tactics. others have mentioned it; he's looking for something like the story mode from the updated infinity engine games. hell, even the new Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition offers that, and IWD was probably the most combat oriented of all the infinity games. it's for casual gamers, who really play the games as if they are a storybook adventure, and the combats are for color and pomp, but not for planning and tactics. to watch the pretty fireball spells go off, but not to worry about damaging your teammates, or that it won't annihilate your oponents. no, I get it. it's EXACTLY why they added a story mode to those earlier games. there are actually quite a few people around who, go figure, don't LIKE to grind through combats, and play these games for the visuals and story. frankly, this game has a lot more to offer in character depth and story than most of the old infinity games do. I put in on par with BG, only slightly below planescape as far as story and character depth goes. don't give this guy advice on how to play better. that's NOT what he's asking for. what he's asking for is a reasonable request for a story mode, and I'm sure someone will mod that in eventually, or the devs will add it.

i love this... two posts below this self-titled "impossible level is too easy" thread, there is a thread with the title: "easy level is too hard!" FWIW, I've played every infinity engine game ever made at least twice, and I find this game exactly matches those in difficulty level for the most part, and I'm finding, without looking at guides or planning ahead for a given encounter, that hard difficulty is a good level of challenge for everything past your stronghold, and acceptable before that even, give most of the early fights are designed to be "learning" experiences. with a few exceptions.... like the bear in the cave before you get to the first town. If you can solo that bear, at the level you first arrive in the area (2, IIRC), on hard, let alone POTD, my hat's off to you, because you must have found the fatal flaw in the game that allows you to make the most uber monster hero without cheating. ...but the vast majority of people playing this game will indeed find it challenging on normal, and die hard vets like myself will find hard to be a good challenge. POTD? on a first playthrough.... yeah, it does not need to be tweaked. ... *watches video* oh.

not at all. some traps are meant to be just irritations, or trip traps. having every level trap do the same damage seems like oversight instead of planning.

uh... wtf? no... unpossible. sorry, there are a ton of tiny bugs in this game. you experienced them. somehow, you just never bothered to even notice, or deliberately ignored them. Or you just really feel like insisting that everybody must have the exact same play experience as you. I guess if you count the journal years counting up to much as a bug then yeah, sure. I've got a buggy game to. In other news I have a slight tickle in my throat. I'm deathly ill, you know. no. I was a game dev for 6 years. I know what bugs look like, and there are a lot of very consistent bugs in this game. there is no possible way any playthrough could have avoided them all. none. perhaps you are confusing "game breaking" bugs, with any bug at all. as for that, there indeed are relatively few gamestoppers at release. only a couple I can think of, and if you're not using a ranger, you can entirely avoid one of those. the other is Raedric's Hold, and I haven't even gone there simply out of fear of running into that one, as it indeed will end your game. but... you never got the insect swarm bug... never got stats bugs... never saw any abilities bug... yeah, sorry, not buying that.

"I'm too stupid to wait for the enemy to just die, die now!" Int should do the very opposite for DoTs - reduce the time it takes to apply the damage. Same for Crits. And if that is the route Obsidian will take - in b4 "my DoT does X damage in -10 seconds!" If not - the tooltips should update to reflect new total damage (I assumed this is the case now, DPS from spell doesnt change, just the number of seconds) That could be problematic if you have a spell that debuffs and deals damage over time (you want to have the debuff to last) or if you want more "hits" to get some special effects (or a more stable dmg by crits vs a big lucky one) ------ I wonder if this error is just a problem of how it is showed/explained to the players: I think that Dots should be explained with DMG per SEC + TOTAL DURATION & TOTAL DMG, so if the spell is 1 dmg per sec during 5 secs, you know it will deal 5 dmg total. Then INT should increas the "during" part and it will be intuitive to the player to know that the total dmg is increased thnx to int. yup. there's a special ability that add 5 burn damage per "hit" (can't recall the name). so if you have a wide AOE that does DOT.... you WANT that to last longer, as every time the dot goes off that counts as a "hit" for the other ability and the enmies take another 5 burn damage.

uh... wtf? no... unpossible. sorry, there are a ton of tiny bugs in this game. you experienced them. somehow, you just never bothered to even notice, or deliberately ignored them.

Maybe she just has issues with unemployed monsters? Would explain why she terminates them so violently. "It's not working!!" - Headshot! ..maybe she's thinking of her ex every time... "It's not working!" headshot.

I have run over a couple of traps now in the endless paths on hard. one unintentionally, and one intentionally. the first one was a level 1 dart trap. it did 100 damage, and knocked out my 100% healthy level 4 fighter. the second one was at least a level 6 trap (could not disarm it at level 5 mechanical) it did 100 damage. um.... something tells me nobody looked at trap damage at the hard level, and just assigned all traps to do 100 damage, period. verify? if so... fix? also... level 6 trap on the very first level of the endless paths?? seems a bit harsh. maybe if we could make something like a potion of master thievery, but other than that, or someone you entirely specialized *just* to disarm traps, I can't see being able to disarm this at the level you normall would try to tackle this (level 4 is the most likely).

There seems to be missing some classic potions which would do well in this game. especially missing are things like potions of master thievery, which would at least boost trap disarm skills, lockpick and stealth. should be able to make this potion as a level 2 potion. hell, there are traps even on the first level of the endless paths that cannot be disarmed by a rogue with level 5 mechanics! also, maybe be able to make potions of invisibility. again, probably should be a level 2 potion. some diversity at higher potion levels would be good too. there are so very few, and they actually do so very little for the effort and materials needed. scroll making seems to have gotten much more attention. ....also... traps on hard are BRUTAL. just fyi for thems that don't know... yet. even a level 2 trap can do over 100 damage on hard. in fact, it looks to me like ALL traps do over 100 damage on hard. that might even be a bug. YOUR traps, OTOH, rarely do over 20 damage.

yeah, I saw something pop up like a journal note when i ran into the high priest, but i was already too busy killing the roomful of lizards to see what it was it said. if I had actually waited to attack until he said something... I think I'd be dead. that actually was a pretty tough fight on hard.

wondering the same, although you can just leave him. it *sounds* like one of those things you could use as information when you converse with some later xaurip chieftan or something like that. maybe you can come back later and cure them. *shrug*

I just enchanted my larder door.. and after I did, it lost its ability to be used as a secondary weapon. it's still listed in the description, but it no longer functions as a secondary weapon. I consoled a new one in that I had not enchanted, and it works fine, though it too will fail to act as a secondary weapon if I enchant it.

actually, I just discovered that if you enchant the larder door to "fine".... you lose the bash ability (which is a bug). so if you want to use the door as a shield, but only use your primary weapon, then enchant it. well, at least until they fix the bug.

I finally gave up and swapped it for invisibility. it saves you from getting smacked multiple turns, but doesn't save you from retaliation after a backstab. OTOH, I also decided to make my rogue an archer instead of a backstabber, and for that, invisibility works pretty well. you can pepper the bad guys from distance for a blinding sneak attack, go invisible, and they lose focus on you; all engagement lines are immediately broken. then you can move, and do it again. make yourself some potions of fast step; also very useful. now if they just made invisibility an instant instead of something that requires you to wait for cooldowns, you actually COULD properly disengage. in fact, I think the key thing that is missing from combat strategy in this game is instants that can bypass cooldowns. there's a couple, but not very many. each class should have an instant they can use while their primary attack is on cooldown. chanters can chant, paladins can keep on producing an aura, but the rest need something like this too. make escape an instant, or invisibility, for rogues.

I've actually gotten criticals where my character was still saying her attack wasn't working. I've seen her say it.... when she outright kills something on a single hit critical. uh, i'd say doing 70 damage on a critical hit at level 4, and annihilating the opponent is definitely... working.

It did not work for me. but then, I never even GOT the dream that is supposed to trigger. Have traveled with durance for almost a week of gametime, rested at least half a dozen times. never got the dream. tried resting after I overwrote the conversation files with these ones.... still no dream, though it DID add new lines about the staff... but nothing about a symbol missing. the quest did not progress. sorry chief.

at some point, not sure when, my main character started shouting: "IT'S NOT WORKING!", every time they make an attack, no matter what kind of attack, no matter successful or not, no matter what it is she is attacking. it's become irritating enough to actually notice. I could understand saying that... ONCE, during a combat, IF a particular attack type was mostly or completely ignored by a specific type of monster (like trying to use cold against shades for example). ...but this is for every attack. not game breaking... just irritating.

also reported in the "gamebreaking bugs" thread: so there it is. seems the bug has been noticed by many others, and defined as to how it works.

thanks muchly. ah, yeah. It's not just Eder. I have noticed this with every NPC that wears an item with a stat boost on it. but... not all stat boosts seem to repeat themselves. I have noticed that items that boost: -intellect -perception -resolve tend to randomly duplicate the effects. -I have not noticed this happening with items that boost constitution, though again, that might just be random. -I don't have any items that boost might, and have never seen that stat get duplicated. -of the people wearing things with stats that get duped, all of those are wearing items that I enchanted to have +1 to either intellect, perception, or resolve. -my PC, and my mercenary (from the Inn) NPC do not ever show any duped stats. -if I look at the list of active effects for my party members, I often see effects on my PC being duplicated to other party members. for example, my pc, a paladin, is using the "outworn bucker", which gives a bonus of +5 to deflection and all defenses. If I look at Aloth's bonus sheet, his stats reflect MY bonuses for this shield, and actually show up in the text list of bonuses applied. This results in Aloth, a freaking mage, having 71 deflection (with no spells or potion buffs)!