Tigranes

Even one trap can make a difference. Early/mid-level, Noxious Burst traps can do enough damage to enough creatures to take several down to low health. Adragan's Gaze traps are obvious win buttons given how overpowered the spell is. Chain Lightning spells are also pretty useful. The weakest ones like Tanglefoot or Dart obviously don't do too much.

How do you know you 'discover' something? There isn't anything there after the ooze and the ordinary loot sack.

"Should I just come back to get him later?" You already knew the answer. No fun if you kill everything whatever level you are. Also, not everyone opts to fight him. "Funny, I finished ALL the quests in that village, except for this battle. The area and other quests were quite easy for level 5 party, which is why I thought the game was unbalanced. If all the quests and enemies were easy, but the final boss un-beatable, then there is something wrong." The ogre in the cave is brutal for low levels, as is the spider queen. Of course, difficulty of each encounter varies wildly depending on your party and your playstyle (which is the case for any good CRPG). For some parties, they can actually be worse than Wyrmund.

All we know is as much as the OP says - some kind of conduit / holder / transmuter for soul essence, comes from centre of planet, necessary for animancy and other manipulations of the soul but also necessary for the regular circulation of souls. It really is basically identical to

If they can make a good stronghold, then great. NWN2 OC was a decent attempt with some unique moments, like the invasion.

Playing with 25% increased XP requirements for level up, 3 characters, and I reached level 12 only after doing 8 bounties, half of Act 3 quests and half of the Endless Paths on a fairly completionist playthrough. That's pretty great for me. Of course, you couldn't make this the default - then everybody not doing bounties or skipping some quests would get stuck at level 9 or something. The wailing and gnashing of teeth will be ten times as loud as now.

I like limited camping supplies as a way to produce strategically interesting challenges (as opposed to resting whenever I want), and I like custom made companions, which only 'devalue' NPC companions if you somehow believe you don't have a choice, and contribute greatly to longevity of the game, just like they did in IE games. Strongholds are cool but POE's is crap and you can tell it's a consequence of ambitious KS stretch goals making them unable to scrap it. It should either be expanded / improved greatly, or removed.

Referneces to 'her children' are about children she helped birth, not GM's biological children. The memory dungeon aspect also explains how Durance and GM ended up pretty loredumpy. Because a memory dungeon 'minigame' would have been too resource intensive, what we get instead is exposition that was meant to be stretched out over that dungeon squeezed into a few chats.

It's extremely powerful at levels 1-4 or so, but by end of Act 1 it becomes irrelevant. The benefits of, say, the bear's recovery-free DR is not worth it when it takes you a full turn to initiate shapeshifting. I'd say the bear is the best, though it depends on the character. Having lost several ironman druids, I can also tell you that shapeshifted druids can't drink potions.

Something tells me that we aren't going to have any substantial criticism of the game in this particular thread. Just my gut feeling. Don't know why. Just got that feeling.

This, of course, is why the world's greatest Neanderthal, Cleveland M. Blakemore, has worked on his masterpice Grimoire for 17 (18 now? 19?) years without yet releasing it. He understands, unlike the trollops at Obsidian, the supreme art of video game release experiences. (I'm not even joking, Cleve and Grimoire is real.)

Another huge oversight when the bizarre poll was made to delay discs being sent out (that digital only backers could vote in anyway). Still waiting on the box. Still waiting on shipment notification. If you're waiting for your physical box key in addition to your digital key, Obsidian appears to be offering a digital key to use in the meantime (though I am not sure which exact 'tiers' of orders it applies to). You should contact support at obsidian dot net with your details and ask.

Never needed those gloves. Skill points are plentiful and as long as you have at least 3 party members you should be able to spare one guy to go up to 9 or 10, which is enough for almost everything. Gah, see its things like this that should be more apparent to the player. Perfect example of this is 2nd floor of catacombs, I always find something very nice in there, whether I can use it or not and its frustrating when you cant reload to find a better item It's a random loot table. Players aren't meant to know exactly how it works and to incessantly rest and reload.

It's more comparable to Baldur's Gate than Athkatla. Some zones don't have much, some zones have a lot, and it's a decently sized but not superhuge city. Athkatla, of course, is almost incomparable.

Normally we'd close duplicate threads, but we just closed the main one (the forum has a weird quirk and starts to go crazy when threads get too long). So let's make this one Part Two.

As Elerond says, that's exactly the point of the plot to pose that question; does it matter? If so, in what way? Thaos clearly thinks it shouldn't matter, and he's willing to do anything to keep the secret so that he can guarantee it continues to not matter. One could easily argue Iovara's Crusade was not justified - we simply don't have enough information to assess whether the gods as a whole have been harmful / beneficial in what ways for the development of this world. The only way to have a sure attitude towards it would be a dogmatic secularist "durr truth is always best also gods are stupid and primitive EVERYONE BECOME MODERN".

Wait, what? I don't think you can even go to Defiance Bay before talking to Maerwald. Usually Aloth's quest only fails if he dies permanently, or possibly if you finish Act 2 without doing anything about it.

Resting with a Cipher to regain abilities? What?

They're not "level 1 mobs". You find enemies that are too tough for you congregating in an optional area (& a main quest area that is meant for levels ~4). Instead of going to other places, you insist that they should all be killable because they're level 1 in the bestiary. *shrug* I don't see why the latter is more reasonable than the former. Would it be OK if they were apparently level 4? But wait, in that case they'd have way more health, because they're actually super super squishy when you can hit them right, so much that a level two character can take one out solo in a few hits. The only way for them to be how they are and be level 4 is if they had a ridiculously low algorithm for health calculation. But wait, are you saying that creatures should be created with artificially low or high numbers? In that case, isn't the whole 'monster level' thing meaningless? Finally, you might say, it's better to screw with the numbers so that at least I can see they are level 4. Well, we come back to the point: if you're having trouble beating something, the common sense response is to go kill something else and come back.

I don't know what "this does not feel good" means. You've minmaxed the typical attributes. Your cipher's going to be most useful in the back line, with a blunderbuss or something, relying on generating focus for the abilities. Soul Shock and Mind Wave are decent, but Whisper of Treason is the best level 1 power that will stay strong for the next few levels.

Dual Stilettos are great and there is a nice lifeleeching stiletto in Act 2, so Ruffian works well for an aspiring ranged/melee mixer.

It's impossible to make every stat equally worthwhile for every character type, because of course the whole point of specialising is you don't need some things. INT is already a dump stat for certain characters, for example. All you need to do is (1) prevent stats that are dump or no brainer for everybody, and (2) make sure most common character types have some dilemmas about which stats to choose. I'm generally OK with what we've got right now, but Con definitely loses out, while Per is one of those 'sucks to have too low but no huge incentive to jack up high'. One solution for Con might be to make health/endurance more dependent, i.e. reduce base E/H and make the Con gains/losses higher.

You didn't miss XP for the kid's quest, I believe you still 'complete' the quest this way, though I could be wrong. I'm not sure why you'd expect to get quest XP for.... slaughtering the entire caravan? There's no reason to slaughter the caravan unless you're a crazy mass murderer. Do you mean people in the Gilded Vale attack you when you tell them you killed the caravan? I've never seen that, but then I didn't expect them to design around people nuts enough to slaughter the caravan.

With Knights, Doemenel and Dozens, they each have a point where they say to you, flat out, "if you accept this quest, you will be choosing us". They communicate to you in dialogue a point of no return. I haven't played the Knights path in a while but it seems you had already passed that point, and now the other factions will give you some quests but won't go to bed with you. Sorry I don't have an answer for the most important bit, which is how you can still continue and get into the animancy hearings. You killed everybody there?

Wizard is pretty powerful. You need to tell us more about what you're doing. (After all, if you whacked wolves with a staff at the start of BG1 your wizard would die, every time.) Talents? Attribs? Strategies? Rest of party?