Tigranes

This may not be the most helpful way to rebalance the attributes, but what I'd love to see is some 'special' penalties and bonuses for extraordinarily high/low attributes. E.g. extra low con (below 6?) could introduce a chance for fortitude hits against the character to turn into crits, like a negative version of Merciless Gaze; extra high per (above 20?) could add a percentage bonus to the range of weapons, and so on.

You can always try again later. I haven't seen your savegame but Adra Dragon's definitely beatable with any decent party, and without using Adragan either. Lot of threads in this forum with tips.

Use imgur or some other thing, yes - dropbox is often iffy.

If that was directed at me: Act 2, my bad. And I played till the end of Act 2 but couldn't be bothefed to go into Act 3 and started my cipher instead, beat the game with it, and then beat the game with pala, both Potd solo. Right, I thought it was strange, since you probably spend about 3 minutes as Level 2. Fair enough.

Or, you know, they disagree with you, and your 'truths' are actually not gospel. Shocking, I know. Let's take an example in this very thread, albeit from a different poster: Enemy AI is impossible in a game with such bad combat mechanics as PoE. All the AI has to do is aim straight for the squishies and they are dead with no tanks in the game there is no way to prevent this to happen other than abuse the AI and make one squishie play the lure, running around in circles. Given that one of the most common complaints about POE combat is that "tanks" are too prominent and it is too easy to "tank and spank", one can clearly see that roller12's working off a pretty wildly different experience. Of course, that doesn't make him wrong. But if he were to then call everybody else fanboys, it would be pretty silly.

Higher prestige attracts a merchant who sells some items, and a couple of them are pretty good unique ones.

Above post lays it out much better than me. In my experience (1.05 wiz, TCS Solo) the big deal with Thaos was to make the most of the time you have with Arcane Veil, and to take those initial steps to increase your accuracy & reduce his deflection before you waste your Adragans (or whatever else). I tend to be more cheesy with TCS Solos, and a pretty cheesy way is: -Run left as soon as you start; as you are solo, you won't trigger the second automaton. -Dominate? Who cares? They won't attack you either at that time. Don't worry about it. -Positioned behind a pillar, Thaos and Statue 1 will be close together. -Arcane Veil as protection while you.... -Scrolls of Valour, Eldritch Aim, War Paint - whatever mix you need to get your accuracy up. -The Weaken/Hobble ability from Rotfinger gloves, and/or whatever else to bring his saves down. -Essential Phantom, then Adragan. -Jolting Boots from Animancer's Boots from both yourself and Adragan. Probably get off 4-6 charges before Adragan ends. Due to Spellbind's curious mechanics you can do up to 234 crit damage - and due to the bounce you'll probably kill both of them. In fact, my save with that is still bugged out because I killed Thaos before any statues and couldn't get the dialogue scripts to run properly. The strictly non-cheesy way to do it would be to not use Adragan, Animancer's Boots there. Or even scrolls of paralysis and maelstrom, since you could stock up with 15 of each. But whatever you do, I think the point is to have enough survivability (with and without AV) to last - e.g. to me saves v. Prone were important - and then get your accuracy over the 'hump'.

You only played up to level 2? So, uh, you only played the Valewood and not even did stuff in the Gilded Vale? It is true though that the monk is best off foregoing most other active abilities and just loading up on passives to maximise TR. A monk can basically smash everything in Act 1 with impunity, and then gradually declines, but is still decent for the end. I solo'd on Hard, I'm sure POTD is doable too but might take a few tricks for survivability late game.

Too many.... keys?

I guess when I buy a game with Real Time With Pause, I expect to pause.

It's a decent ARPG romp. Very different from DS1/2, and also quite different from Obsidian's core offerings. Has a few unique quirks which, typical for Obsidian, elicit a love/hate response.

It's... unfair people tell you to use a high level spell... so you should cheat to make it fair? Petrify is incredibly powerful, and it's meant to be end-game. You should have plenty of paralysis options that can hit for quite a long time with high INT and accuracy boosting spells/scrolls/potions.

Fantastic. It's been my experience that scrolls of defense and scrolls of valor, regularly recast on the whole party (who gathers just for it, and then spreads out again to avoid Breath), can really change the battle - you're suddenly starting to hit things more often than not, especially with high acc characters like rangers. If plague of insects can be made to reliably hit that would be a huge boon. One thing I noticed is that if you don't kill all the xaurips quickly (e.g. if you retreat a little towards the initial 'drop cliff' area and the dragon's arse blocks them from coming to fight), then xaurip priests will start healing the dragon from behind - not to mention Adragans' moonwell spells. Maelstrom spells make quick work of them from distance, but arguably, they are also cheesy since you can stock up and bring like 30.

Vithrack isn't the weirdest. Obsidian's NWN2 xpacks had One-Of-Many, basically an unholy amalgam of various tortured souls in a giant divine furnace that was chaotic evil schizophrenia at its best.

First time round, I climbed up the vines just to be contrarian, and then I ended up in the courtyard somehow, killing everybody.

Your INT can go higher than 18. But maybe your base INT, which is what the console command sets, can't? Try it. The boots Veyne mentioned should also help. But I don't know if that will get you to where you want it to be.

Melee, ranged? I find all-out slashing melee rogue a lot of fun. High Might&Dex, dual wield stilettos (or similar), Sneak Attack & Finishing Blows, and that's usually enough to be shredding stuff at 50+ damage a second.

There will be a Xaurip companion in POE2 that is a homage to Deekin is a homage to Jar Jar Binks. It will speak like a Saturday Cartoon moron for most of the game, but it will then demonstrate that it can pronounce all the crazy Glanfathan words. It will then call your PC an inelegant buffoon.

Fighter, Paladin, Monk, Wizard, Druid, Chanter, should all be able to do it. Barbarian has lost the buggy ability & one relatively easy source of Retaliation, but a reworked build should still be able to do it. I can imagine Rogue is also possible. Less sure about Ranger or Cipher as I've never tried to build them in any solo-able manner.

If your wizard is dying all the time in the party, even at early levels, then I'd guess that that's more down to your general playstyle (how you are managing the enemies, the space, the engagements, etc) than just about whether you use AV or not. AV is a "holy crap" lifesaver button in early levels to be sure, but even if you never use AV your backline wizard shouldn't be dying all the time. Indeed, he/she should rarely be targeted in the first place, because either your other party members are engaging them, or blocked the pathway, or paralysed / hobbled them, etc.

*shrug* POE stats still have dump stats. It's probably extremely hard to not have any dump stats, or at least, not have slightly less useful stats. "Are there dump stats" is from the beginning an unproductive line of inquiry. What's important is whether the stat system allows the same class to produce multiple different types of characters through the attribute system. The answer in POE, broadly, is yes. It allows much more flexibility and creativity than most other attribute systems. I'll give them a big thumbs up for being able to create relatively high deflection wizards as well as real glass cannons, etc., even if they didn't get it all right.

Some weapon types always come with DR reduction; others always come with accuracy bonus (dagger); and so on. The benefits are always situational. Some enemies have 0 DR, or at least, you can reduce their DR through other means like spells, and you might also have even more DR bypass yourself through talents like Vulnerable Attack. In those cases, the 20 damage weapon would actually win out. But in cases where you're facing an enemy with a rather overwhelming DR, you'd want to go with the DR reduction. In your specific situation, yes, the result would be the same. But that's not really how it pans out in the game.

Seems like they just went a bit overboard, either by design or by bug. -25 or -30 would be appropriate. Strangely, I just finished a 1.05 playthrough and I never noticed, and my rogue was hitting traps pretty OK with under-5 mechanics. Wonder what's up with that.

I wouldn't take any of those, but depending on your playstyle there's a good case to be made for one elemental talent, and/or Two-handed. I don't think even the most weapon-oriented wizard will make Int Blows worthwhile, and Bloody Slaughter is probably never going to be. For Solo defensive talents, weapon accuracy talent & deep pockets / fast runner are more crucial (along with of course Arcane Veil + Hardened in early levels). In a party with a two-hander? I suppose that would mean Two-handed, weapon accuracy talent and maybe vulnerable attack.

Full voice acting is definitively known to cause less text, less edited text, and generally shorter dialogues in CRPGs. it is also extremely expensive.