Tigranes

One can revert to their native language when they lack the word they need to express themselves, but would it mean anything? English is a foreign language to me, if I lacked the words in English to explain something here on this forum and reverted to my native language you would not understand anything and would ask me what I meant, and I would go find a way to express it in the English language. It would be interesting to add a companion who insisted using words from their native language, and would not know the translation to common. It makes no sense for them to utter words in their native language and right afterwards give us a common translation. But I totally agree with PoE being a NWN2 to an upcoming MoTB I gave you examples where native English speakers regularly and frequently make use of transparently non-English names and phrases in their daily lives, and indeed, that is a big part of how they understand each other. I don't see how your response addresses that. If there were French people in the game they would never say "So, Watcher, when you aller down to the beach I would like you to pick up a creme glacee but il n'y a pas any drinks." No, they would say "Magnifique! Now go to the Trois Hommes Restaurant and grab me some creme brulee." The threshold is whether POE is so saturated with in-setting words that you have no idea what is going on or you need to look up dictionaries. This is not the case. There is a small set of names you do need to know, like Engwithan, Glanthan, Adra and the placenames. That is the same in any fantasy CRPG. Brynnlaw? Illithium? Sahuagin? Waukeen's Promenade? Ust'Natha? Suldanessellar? And then there are a lot of flavour names, like Pwgra for the monsters, or the various vaguely Italian phrases that Vailians like Pellagina like to utter. Nobody needs to know what those actually mean - it's the same when you speak to many non-native English speakers who pepper their English with native phrases. Hell, let's take super common and well known examples - not everyone necessarily knows what sacre bleu is, but if you talk to a French person in English and he says that in the middle, you don't need to know what it means, you already know how it fits into what he's saying. Another threshold is whether the words are used in a consistent manner. The ideal should be that if you don't care, you can just ignore most made up names and still do fine, and if you do care, you start to connect the dots in many interesting ways. As fgalkin points out, the latter is very well done; you can detect Vailians or Vailian influence by language alone. The former, as I have argued, is also the case. It appears that the fake names offends your sensibilities, which is fair enough, but I haven't seen substantial claims that it is far worse than other games or that it is unjustified or that it stops people from understanding.

Wael, I believe, contacts you if you did his bidding regarding the scroll quest - even if you have already promised to another God. Skaen/Woedica seems to have something to do with your personality. Killing the Skaen Temple people didn't seem to matter. I got it whenever I pushed Aggressive/Cruel, even when I stopped the Skaen plot.

Seems a pretty fair synopsis, especially the breakdown into (1) and (2) at the end. What I always wonder is whether, in a CRPG where player choice is paramount, we as an audience are capable of becoming biased on the side of religion, or even the side of obfuscation. We are so used to this idea that knowing is always better than not knowing, the 'objective truth' is always out there and should be found, that all stories can have closure, and individual choice can and will triumph over the machinations of the Gods. POE story has a lot of significant problems, but I love what it tries to do because it tries to directly address that in a way that almost no other game story ever has. Look at all the people that complain, for example, that you don't get to tell everybody the gods are fake, or that the companion quests are anticlimactic because they don't get closure. Now sure, some of those complaints point out specific problems in a valid way. But on the whole, I think this reflects the fact that we are so used to all of our companions solving their psychological problems and becoming New and Better People, and our adventure resulting in magical solutions that make the Whole World Better as well. Is the Watcher meant to deus ex machina his powers so Sagani can talk to Persoq and Persoq can say "OMG wow your journey was totally worth it for me"? Is the Watcher suddenly meant to tell the whole world the gods are fake and they believe him? The fact that you can't do those things is where the theme you describe - how to live in a godless world - weaves in beautifully with what I personally consider the master narrative in POE1, summarised by Wael's scriptures in the game: what is an answer without a question? (And all the variants: what is a question without an answer, etc...) Literally every major character in the game struggles with a desire for knowledge, for truth, for clarity. And none of them ever get it 100%. Thaos, one of the most knowledgeable (semi)mortals in the setting, as you point out in the endgame dialogue, is plagued and dominated by doubt, and he has denied himself the chance of finding out what the consequences of truth would be. Iovara remains encased eternally waiting to know whether her Crusade was justified, hanging it all on your answer (an inadequate anchor in the first place), and then realises how little an answer can mean. The companions. Lady Webb. You. It's all about the question: if you don't find the answer you seek, what meaning did your journey have? (exemplary is Sagani) and if you will never find the full answer, how will you live now? (exemplary is Eder) There are many big problems with the gods reveal and its delivery in the game. It's too late, it's too dumpy, it's too awkward. But I love it in principle because it is nuanced: it's not just full on "OMFG Thaos made up the Gods the Gods are fake OMFG". The counterargument emerges quite strongly. You say (2) seems much stronger than (1). I agree, but I think that has much to do with the awkward revelation and the biases of the audience as well. I do think that overall there is still a significant case made in the game for (1).

Whenever you find something you don't want to or can't do right now... just come back later? Don't let it give you anxiety in the first place. You will always know what the main quest is by looking at your journal. After all, the dialogue with Maerwald, and the Statue afterwards, all state multiple times that you need to go to Defiance Bay.

We still don't know for certain if Waidwen=Eothas, or if Eothas really was doing it all to stop Woedica. But presuming it's all true: when you ask some of the Gods why they need you to do anything and why they can't get off their arse and stop Thaos, they reply, there is a pact that governs the Gods and how they cannot interfere directly - a pact that Woedica herself has barely kept. It is, in fact, probably the same kind of plot conceit used in Forgotten Realms and specifically the Bhaalspawn Trilogy, where Cyric would love to kill all you stupid Bhaalspawn but he can't, and Bhaal was exploiting that precise rule with his spawns in the first place. Woedica has used Thaos and stayed in the shadows to circumvent the rule, and presumably, Eothas, if he used Waidwen, was trying to do the same.

First try: level 2 wizard needing a rest decided it'll just fan of flames Aloth along with the townspeople to get his armour. A wizard pied-a-pied ensues. I'll have to reroll tomorrow.

Nobody's mandatory, go with what feels good to you.

Yes, it's well known. Adragan is Win button. Really needs to be addressed in patch.

"Talking to a French(Elf) person in English(Common), and they say "I am "aller au cinema", which means I am going to the movies, then I will eat "creme glacee", which means I will eat some ice cream. Seriously who talks like that?" That's actually exactly what we do, you just don't notice it. We talk about siestas, we talk about c'est la vie, we say hasta la vista, baby. You just don't notice it because it's so ordinary. Which is exactly how ordinary it would be in the game setting. Whether the made up names are excessive is another matter. I don't mind them, but preferences can differ. (By the way, people used to say: names like Trademeet and the Sword Coast are so bloody stupid! Who thought 'Sword Coast' was a good name? Why name 'Shield Town'? Or 'Two-Handed Sword Coast'? Did they have so little imagination they just randomly cobbled two names together and called it Trademeet the city?)

Do whatever you want. When you find enemies too hard for you, go away and come back later. None of Act 1 quests will be gated later, and everyone's mileage varies. You have more than plenty sources of XP and more than enough time to upgrade your stronghold. No reason to go out of your way to engineer your game so that you get a few thousand extra gold, when by that point you'll have tens of thousands.

I suspect that they won't get nearly as much support for another POE-related KS, due to the game not living up to expectations of the die-hard BG/IWD/PS:T fans. Guess playing BG2 over a hundred times (literally) doesn't qualify me as a die-hard fan. It's tough being a gamer these days!

You only need to kill one spore. There is one spore that likes to wander a little and you can catch it on its own by luring it to the cave entrance. That's how my ironman monk made it through. Blacksmith bandits, time-honoured way is to lure the 3 trolls to the West towards their location, provoking a pretty even (read: bloody) fight. I'll be trying a wizard TCS soon, excited for it.

25% has been decent for me. But the bounties really do screw with any linear modification of XP, because their XP rewards are so out of whack with everything else. With my 3-man party on 25%, doing almost everything but not doing bounties would mean struggling to reach level 12 - perhaps getting there only by Sun in Shadows. But you do bounties, and you suddenly find that the party is swimming in 80k, 90k XP totals.

I see your point. But I've been doing no death, dead is dead, ironman, trial of iron rulesets for years. The first rule is to never limit yourself in any way, the game shows you no mercy during combat, so you have to do the same if you want to survive. Exploiting bugs is not permitted, I never exploit bugs, but resting over & over for free is not a bug, it may be considered an exploit or an intended mechanic? I'm not sure. I was hoping to gain more info here on the forum. It seems like free resting is a mechanic Obsidian agreed to allow players to use as they see fit, but it makes POTD difficulty much, much easier than it should be. A toggle option in the menu would be nice (no leaving areas until cleared like scrotiemcb suggested). For the record, this is not bothering my gameplay that much, it just makes POTD a bit too easy I think, but still I can't show the game any mercy, so I'll be resting VERY often. If you have your own very personal set of house rules, fine. Deal with it. For most conventional modes of gameplay, there is no reason that spells should be per rest and not per encounter. If it makes POTD easy, then stop making it easy for yourself. Simple.

Again, I'd find that an interesting challenge. I think you'd get ten times the number of current camping complainers coming in to go MY ONLY SAVES ARE AUTOSAVE & QUICKSAVE IN CAED NUA AND I CANT GET OUT THIS GAME SUCKS. Resting is notoriously difficult to balance for various players because it's so punishing for some players. They tried by scaling available camping supplies. I think resting should also have been more expensive (though this leads to people crying "I'm stuck, I can't rest because I'm broke and I can't get more money because I need to rest"), but if you're going to exploit the system in such an inconvenient and time-wasting way by running back to the inn all the time, then you have only yourself to blame if the game is too easy or frustrating.

After you finish the first Knights quest, when you speak to get the second quest, they warn you.

"I insist on exploiting the system to make the game much easier for myself. Clearly, the solution is to make resting much harder for everybody, including people who struggle with lower difficulties. What? You mean maybe I shouldn't run back to the inn every ten minutes? That's just crazy talk! Oh, by the way, you guys all suck, this game is so easy." Awwwwkay. I actually would support more stringent resting limitations, but it's clear this would raise hell from many, many prospective players.

"Keep in mind I play on POTD, TOI, blind playthrough, so I usually don't hold back when fighting. I approach each fight with overwhelming force to ensure victory. The problem is having to constantly use all the camping supplies or having to constantly go back to the inn and rest." => "I play in a way that is extremely wasteful of the limited resources that I am given. This creates some frustrations. I think the game should be fixed so that my decision to ignore the strategic decisions presented by the game becomes reasonable."

Me neither, that's a great thing. Just not salient to this discussion, because no choice was made. a choice were made. you were oblivious to the choice... possibly willful. HA! Good Fun! It certainly is making a choice when someone says "REMEMBER OTHER FACTIONS WONT WORK WITH YOU" and you say "OK!"

Sounds like you're trying to go there too early.

Most games offer limited modding capabilities because.... guess what, it's hard and costly. NWN1 toolset was a massive, massive investment - and the actual main campaign became an afterthought because of that. TES is well funded and also benefits from churning out multiple games in the same engine with a modder toolset designed from the start. I believe Unity assets make things difficult - and of course the pre-rendered backgrounds, which was also a major problem in IE mods. I don't know if that makes mods merely difficult or impossible, though, I hope it is the former.

The game tells you "if you take this quest, you will be with us FOREVA!" Now, let's say, at this point, you think to yourself, "I have no idea what you guys are like and I want to learn more about the other factions." Isn't the obvious course of action to not take that quest for now, and go do some other stuff and try to learn more about the various factions? After all, it's not hard. You can go up to the Crucibles Commander and talk to them. Their first quest & the role of the Justiciars you can see around the city is enough to show what they're like. People also refer to the Dozens often. The Doemenels are the hardest to find out more about. Why in the world would you make a decision you are told is a final one, when you feel you don't have enough information, and then complain that you didn't know enough about the factions? --------------- " For example, how was I to know that earning favor with one noble by further antagonizing the Domeonels when I spoiled the burglary wouldn't result in a positive of some sort by gaining myself a non-Domeonel noble ally? " Why would you ever assume that to be the case, when you never even hear about any other noble family? That's a real stretch. "Mostly I just wish the choice had ended up making more of a difference, even if the process of getting there remained the same." Absolutely. It is the farcical trial sequence that is the real problem here.

I'm not convinced even that is enough. I think a part of the body must pass over the centre of the trap's circle. I've seen enemies that are obviously within the red circle but have had it not trigger. Traps are something you use strategically. They're useful quite often if you make them a part of your strategy. You said lower level traps are powerful at lower levels. Sounds useful to me. You want them to be useful at higher levels? Why? Or are you saying encounters are too easy so you don't have to place traps? I agree the game is too easy. That's not a factor of the trap design, though.

Don't think the concern is that choices are hard and meningful. It's rather a lack of signposting that's annoying. really? am certain there is ways to get too much rep with a faction via a couple o' the tasks and side quests, but the faction leaders made it kinda clear to us that if we accepted Quest X, it would anger the other factions. do a particular quest on entering defiance bay and side against dommel's could result in such a quirky result, but that still leaves you with two options... and the very reasonable animosity o' the family members o' the person you killed. such a choice also not actual prevent you from doing multiple dommel quests. hard choices should be announced, and they is, but at the same time, how much hand-holding does folks need? HA! Good Fun! I won't claim that I didn't miss important peices of dialogue on account of my eyes tiring, but I was surprised at being locked out of one particular faction. I also really didn't have a clear impression of what the faction I had then picked really stood for. So it wasn't a meaningful choice for my character. In BG2 it was more black and white due to the simple good/evil dichotomy and perhaps I was just expecting the same degree of clarity with regards to how my choices would affect the story. Instead at lot of the outcomes in many cases just felt random, outside my control. But heck, I'm not necessarily representative of the people playing this game, and maybe I'm simply not doing it right. As soonh as you enter Defiance Bay, the rabble rouser outside tells you what the Dozens are and what they stand for. The Knights of the Crucible's stance on animancy should be crystal clear by the time they offer you the lock-in quest, because you just helped them make golem animat things. The Doemenels showcase their ruthless power-hungriness in the first quest you do for them (Verzano), making it pretty clear throughout they aren't so much for or against animancy as they just want power. You learn what the factions are for, you get clear warning of the lock-in. What they needed to do was make your faction choice more consequential instead of a crappy show trial.

Of all the reasons, I didn't expect that one. All 3 factions say HEY MATE, REMEMBER, IF YOU ACCEPT THIS QUEST, LOOK, THE OTHER FACTIONS WILL HATE YOU! OKAY? ARE YOU SURE? *shrug*