Tigranes

Everyone can use the beta patch btw, see the sticky in Announcements forum for how.

Everybody has only one quest. GM's one, like Durance's, is just talking. So if you're not interested in that you can leave her out.

Follow instructions here, let us know if it doesn't work out. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76849-patch-betas-on-steam/ They've made beta patches available to anyone who'd like it for POE.

Iiiiiii think we can safely say this one's a non-starter.

You'll be fine - though if you want a 1.05 wizard you might as well just get the beta patch now.

The real reward for killing the bears is to be able to finish that particular miniquest and get that XP / loot / money.

It's also the only way to have a lifeleeching spear, if you're into that. God knows why you couldn't choose the type of weapon, of course.

Interesting. I know that Arcane Veil does an odd thing where it doesn't take a full action to cast. If Eldritch Aim etc are the same where they hardly add any recovery at all, then it might indeed be worthwhile. I'll give it a try next time. It's still miles away from the old IE routines (e.g. Armour, Stoneskin, Chaotic Commands, Fire Shield, Mirror Image, Haste, Protection from Evil, Minor Globe of Invulnerability....) of course. Good times.

Why? On POTD everything has high deflection, which means the majority of actions will likely be grazes/misses. This halves status effect durations, and the rogue sure as hell can't supply his own for long. We are now considering a bunch of support characters dedicated to status effects just to keep 2 statuses on at all times for the rogue, so you can get sneak attacks and deathblows. These are not free actions, the wizard/cipher could be expending their spells to debuff in other ways or use damaging spells instead. They can do whatever they please in the presence of a ranger. Granted, you'll have one sneak-triggering status effect most of the time, but on higher difficulties not necessarily all of the time, and definitely not two effects all of the time. For example, on high levels once you get gaze of the adragan out, other CC is a waste. Damage spells is what you need immediately after that, not stacking hobbled and stuck on top of petrified. This is all true, but my assumption is if you're playing with a rogue then you're playing to maximise him - though yes, by the same logic, the ranger calculation should for example include the Ila chant. In any party with a mage or cipher, for example, the rogue is going to be hitting on one conditional consistently (two is a rarer thing, so yes, we shouldn't assume a rogue that deathblows all the time). Solo is again a different story in a number of ways, of course. But as Moxywoo and peddroelm say, the moment we add anything other than standard attacks, we're now getting to a situation where the ranger and rogue should really both be using all their skills. I think we can't actually just isolate 'standard hits', because it would be equally unfair to have a rogue just strike non-sneak attack blows.

Really? Like, you cast, say, Vital Essence with your wizard every fight? I don't actually think it's worth the time, since what you do with your opening few seconds can often be extremely significant. That's interesting, though. Maybe I'm missing something.

I was going to agree with you, but I guess you don't want to hear from anybody else! (Seriously, I thought it was meant to be so they can just get the Day 1 patch on there. I have no idea what could possibly take them this long.)

Because if your rogue is not hitting a conditional, then something is very wrong.

What's the standard for distributing x to a given tier? Survivability? Damage? Simply the ability to deal with all threats?

Huh. I thought Dex didn't affect recovery, only attack speed. I'm wrong, I guess?

Ugh. Did they again? Steam's 'Stay Offline' used to never work properly, and they only got it to be a bit more reliable the last couple of years. Steam has always been a pile of steaming potato pie to anybody who doesn't behave like they want you to.

Your 1.04 saves were backed up when you went to 1.05. Roll back the beta patch, set it to Do Not Update, finish your game.

You transmute a part of your soul (which has no gameplay effects, you're not giving half your life away or anything) in order to enchant an item unique to you, a one-time process where you talk with the stones in the rooms on the left to choose the enchantments you want. You should speak to the stones in the level and read what they say to get an idea. (It can be a useful spear situationally, but it's not Super Awesome Good.)

BG1's Ranger companion was Kivan, the most Legolasian sharpshooting machinegunning "gonna kill half of you before you get close" Archer there ever was.

There is a bug where if you kill Thaos before he can soul-leap to at least one automaton (e.g. by rendering him paralysed), then he turns into the corpse+spirit node, but you cannot talk to him. You can kill the other automatons, but the situation does not change. You can reload, and the spirit node & the name tooltip will remain, but you will not be able to finish the game. If you are silly enough to save after beating Thaos (as I did), that's your Trial of Iron gone bunk. I believe this is actually an old, if infrequent, bug. Hopefully it can be resolved. Savegame, for reference: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44877548/thaosbug.zip

Yeah, it's a silly change and I assume a bug. I hope they have time to address it.

Second Chance had a stupid bug where if you were counting on it, say, in an ironman solo, the game wouldn't wait for it to fire and declare you dead. It's fixed in 1.05, at least. A character with high accuracy, is a good pick for Lore since character accuracy influences scroll spells. A ranger would be a good one to stock Paralysis, Revive, Maelstrom, Fan of Flames.

That sounds incredibly boring, yes. The druid is capable of being sufficiently combat-ready to go toe to toe with many of the weaker enemies at any given time. Especially with bear form early on, perhaps high resolve and the various healing options, it doesn't have to go to such extreme lengths to avoid close combat. My only solo druid died in Act 2 and I haven't tried since, but in general, as MadDemiurg says, no class needs to get into really hard battles - you can finish Act 1 with the Main Hall of Caed Nua the only really difficult fight (and even then you have a perfect corner to snuggle in), and end up Level 4 or 5.

Yep. No matter what the budget of your game, even if the budget is over a hundred million, having lots of VO has always meant having less dialogue, having dialogue that is less editable (and thus plot / writing of a lower quality).

If you emailed support at obsidian dot net (which I'm sure you did), they should have got back to you. Very strange. I don't have any direct contact with Obsidian but I'll see if I can't ask someone to take a look.

Yep, 18 INT is 14s. It definitely is gamechanging for solo wizards, and otherwise, it again shifts Arcane Veil from a "mage might die, or not, who knows" to a situation where if you build in spells for it, you can reliably say that the mage will make it out of that sticky situation. It makes the various "DR / deflection until damaged" spells and potions worthwhile as well. There wasn't that much point to taking AV previously, now you know that it gives you the time to put out 2 or 3 spells. Melee wizards become a big option. Anyway, 'best class' has way too much to do with difficulty, party composition, solo/not, etc. Monks and rogues can slice up enemies at a rate of 1 per every couple of seconds, almost rendering defense irrelevant under the right conditions. Cipher is probably still the best "pick up, don't think too much, get mileage" class for typical first timer parties.