Zenicetus

Lying might not be enough. It helps if you use your superior technology to "wow " the natives, so they forget their own invented Gods and believe in your new ones. The Old Gods don't speak into your heads and make statues flame... look, the new ones do! At the quasi-Medieval level of the rest of the world, the natives don't have the resources the Engwithians had, to determine that the created Gods were fake. Something else we don't know (I don't think?) is exactly what happened to make the Engwithains a dead civilization. Maybe most of them entered the God head(s) in some way, as a means of eternal life. So that would be one more reason to go to the trouble of actually creating Gods in some way. There is still much we don't know about the background here.

We know the machines were used to augment Magran's power, and (perhaps) to create the Gods in the first place. But I don't recall anything in the game suggesting that the machines are required to sustain the Gods on a continuing basis. Unless I missed something, we're given no information on what plane of existence they live on, whether they actually require continued worship to exist, or anything else. They're just there in the background, doing their thing like the Olympian pantheon... occasionally messing around in human affairs. It's probably in the best interest of the series that they remain somewhat mysterious, so we can discover more about the setup in future sequels and expansions. As for the Leaden Key, if you destroy the machine in Defiance Bay it's never reactivated. And there is are two endings for Aloth, where he can either go on a crusade to demolish the Leaden Key organization, or become its Grandmaster. Either way it doesn't seem to be very important anymore as far as the Gods (or the game series) are concerned. We shouldn't see it make another appearance, give that option for Aloth to demolish it.

I don't know if you did it the same way I did... ...but it's not unreasonable to think that I was seen leading my party to that location (plenty of eyes on the party on the way there). As the only powerful party in the town along with the Lord and his men, word might have gotten around. It made sense that I lost rep in Defiance Bay where a bunch of fellow aristocrats hang out. It also had no real repercussions (I guess I should spoilertag this, but it's pretty obvious at that point):

But guns aren't the only feature that differs from a "pure fantasy" setting. In many places throughout the game, you'll see different versions of electrical apparatus with cables snaking across the floor, sparks flying etc. It wouldn't look out of place in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory. One could make the same argument; that this represents a level of technology that should have made a greater impact on the world than we actually see in the game. For me, it's all that Engwithian and Animancy hardware that makes it easier to accept guns in the setting. It isn't pure, high fantasy where guns are the only anachronistic feature. Also, unlike the electro-mechanical stuff, they're not featured elements of the main plot or any of the side quests. There are few mobs that actually use them in the game. So it's easy enough to just avoid using them if it breaks immersion too much. Personally, I think "immersion" means buying into the game world as presented, and not wishing it were something different. As long as guns exist in this world, I'm enjoying using them.

My PC was a Rogue, taking mostly benevolent dialog choices in the game, but also stealing everything I could get away with. So the Doemnels seemed a good fit for role-playing reasons. And also because I didn't care for the rigid perspective of the Dozens, and haughty Paladin types have always pissed me off in games like this. I can't say I enjoyed reading the end-game aftermath description of the Doemnels effect on Defiance Bay, however. It made them sound more evil than they were represented in the game, in a "bad for business" kind of way. It just didn't sound very believable.

Same here; Ciphers are the answer. For anyone using the default party members, you get to Grieving Mother before running into most of the mind control stuff in the latter part of the game (well, unless you do Endless Paths early, I guess). If she wasn't available for whatever reason (charmed, dominated, or just out of range for the spell), I had Aloth use Slicken to knock down the affected party member. Although Aloth himself was usually the target, later in the game. It also helps to be proactive, and focus-fire the whole party on whatever enemy is using dominate attacks. It might not stop the first attack, but it will keep the whole party from being affected by things like 'shrooms that have a fairly fast cooldown on their attack.

The higher-level traps set by my high Mechanics Rogue were very useful, especially when selected for enemy type (fireball for spirits, corrosive for ogres, etc.). I sold all the lower level traps and just kept the best ones. I agree the targeting circle needs fixing. I noticed several misfires in areas like doorways where they couldn't have been avoided. There is something off there. I disagree with what seems to be the majority opinion though, about the single trap limit. I think that's okay, because setting up a long string of the more powerful traps would be an "I Win" button in many situations (once the triggering is fixed). Setting a trap is supposed to be one element of your party tactics, not the centerpiece. You could cheese every fight with the right selection of multiple high-end traps, especially since scouting ahead is so easy in this game..

Agreed. My Rogue had all the buffs and gear to let him slip out of engagement while taking minimal damage, so it would have been nice for him. Or for the tank, who seldom takes much damage anyway. But it wouldn't work for the rest of the party. Wouldn't it be nice if we could set that on a per-character basis? The ability is already there for the whole party, so all it would take is a checkbox on each party member's Character sheet, to tell them whether to stop when running into/through engagement. Turn it off for the hardier members of the party, and those with disengagement buffs. Turn it on for the squishy ones that would take too much damage from the free attacks while running through a mob. Leave the default at "on" for all new players, until they learn the mechanics.

I don't see a contradiction, as long as one assumes the Engwithians were a deeply cynical and controlling culture (and they'd have to be, to go about creating Gods from scratch). Maybe they didn't need Gods as a moral compass themselves, but the concept was a useful means of avoiding total chaos in the non-Engwithian world at large; all those savages out there. It wouldn't be the first time a "higher" culture used enforced religious conversion as a convenient tool of controlling "the Other." It's a classic tool of colonialism.

The created Gods in this game are still in the gaps, because it appears that they always operate indirectly, like Eothas "inhabiting" Waidwen and then retreating in the aftermath (if I'm understanding that right). We hear the Gods speak as disembodied voices throughout the game, but they're never walking around in physical form. They influence the world indirectly. That's distinct from other "created Gods" in fiction, like what Roger Zelazny did with "Lord of Light" and "Creatures of Light and Darkness," where you have trans-human, immortal Gods that actually do walk among the lesser mortals. In PoE, the Gods are still a bit ambiguous, and subject to conventional worship. At least that's what I took away from the game. There are things I didn't like about the ending... mainly the inevitable boss fight that requires learning specific tactics to beat a specific scripted encounter. But I like the way the world includes a different take on "The Gods" than I usually see in games like this.

Hmmm.... I must just be unlucky in the loot drops then. And maybe I should revisit Defiance Bay. I think I was probably ignoring rings in merchant shops at that point in the game, because money was still tight and I was prioritizing weapons and armor. I just assumed there would be lots of desirable rings dropped as loot, and that's what I haven't been finding.

Is it just me, or does it seem like there aren't as many unique/enchanted rings and belts as other gear in the game? That might go for hats and helmets too. I'm now at party level 11, pretty close to the end of the main quest. I've done every side quest I could find. I've gone through 5 levels of the Endless Paths and finished the first set of Warden bounty missions. At this point in the game, I've either found or bought way more unique weapons and unique armor than my party can use. It's stacking up in the stash box. On the other hand, half my party is only wearing one ring because I've found very few special ones. Same thing with belts; half my party isn't wearing anything in the belt slot, for lack of anything decent to loot or buy. This feels weird for a party that's getting close to ending the game. Maybe I've just been unlucky hitting the loot tables, or the good stuff is buried down in the last few levels of the Endless Paths. But it sure hasn't been that way with weapons and armor.

A 2H Rogue is feasible, sure. You'll get the big damage numbers that way. Personally, I like my melee Rogue dual-wielding, because he's alternating hits with weapons that have different unique effects and added enchantments. That lets me apply more effects on the target than I could with a single unique/enchanted weapon. The damage on each hit is lower, but the effects make up for it. On the main tank, I experimented with Eder moving to a single 2H weapon later in the game, but he wasn't really doing that much better (damage-wise) than sword + shield, so I went back to the shield. His job isn't really to cause much damage, and with a shield he's a good backup for those fights where I screw up and he's the last one standing.... adding up a string of little 2-hit reductions on the last enemy.

I agree with the other post -- a ranged Rogue needs a second set of weapons if it unintentionally gets into melee, for a chance of interrupts during the fight. You'll take a lot of damage while standing there reloading a firearm, and some of that damage might be interrupted with a different weapon hitting more often. It's always painful seeing any of my party members trying to reload a firearm while getting whacked in melee, and doubly so for a Rogue since they should be in very light armor. On the pistol vs. blunderbuss choice, by the time I got into the last third of the game, I was finding so many unique pistols and blunderbusses that I was mainly choosing based on the enchantment effects. Still, pistols probably do better in the latter part of the game due to the starting DR advantage.

FWIW, I found Escape the least essential of those for my main character melee Rogue. I'm at level 10 and I still haven't taken it. The Fast Runner talent (non-Class) gives +5 Defense during disengagement, and a +1 to movement speed in combat. Very useful for a Rogue. I took Fast Runner, plus I'm wearing a Cape of Deflection that gives an additional +15 Defense on disengagement. Adept Evasion (level 7) also helps avoid taking damage when disengaging. I wasn't attracted to Escape because it's just one per encounter, and you have to manually fire it off before moving. All these other "escape" abilities are passive, they work on multiple disengagements during a battle, and I don't have to think about them. I do take hits when disengaging, but with the +Defense and Adept Evasion they're usually something minor I can shrug off. Regarding the other talents, I used Blind a lot in the early game, but not so much mid-game and later when I was working better with party CC debuffs that did the same thing, or better. Deep Wounds isn't bad, but Dirty Fighting is better because that stacks with other +Crit abilities, and will be worthwhile all the way to the end of the game.