thestigma

Also worth mentioning that you are not really supposed to be able to disable those traps (well, most of them anyway). The traps present a obstacle that you can solve in one of three ways: - Find a different path around it - Use someone with at least lvl1 mechanic to disable a narrow path of traps that makes it barely possible to squeeze through (some of the traps are easy to disable - making it possible to Indiana-Jones your way across) - Disable the traps via lighting the pillars in the adjacent room Of course if you want to do extreme optimization - you can leave the traps and then disable them all later when you can come back with more mechanics skill, as all traps do give some xp reward... -Stigma

I think there was a bug that got corrected in 1.04 about that ... -Stigma

Is that actually an option - to go back and defend your keep yourself every time it comes under attack? I haven't had invasions yet. I think I'd prefer to do them myself if that is a possibility - especially if that means saving money too. EDIT: it is also very unclear to me what prestige actually does.... security I suppose lowers the risk of attacks, but all I know about prestige is vaguely that it "increases the chance of positive events". I'm not at all sure what that entails. -Stigma

This thread is kinda long now so I havent read though it all - but basically there is nothing wrong with a melee cipher. The main problem is just that a cipher will never be tank-worthy (and hardly even suitable to off-tank) unless you heavily sacrifice the actual strengths of the class by wearing heavy armor and stacking deflection stats. If you do that then your spellcasting and offence will suffer, and you will be left with a very lackluster cipher. If on the other hand you run your cipher squishy and just make sure that he is never the focus of attacks while meleeing then it works just fine. Dualwielding will net you a ton of focus and do pretty decent damage too - which you further augment with your spells - and you get to really take advantage of those "line AOE" spells. Doing this works, but it is very finicky and hard to pull off reliably - and if the AI goes for you then you will probably just die so... it's a very high risk high reward kinda thing. Meanwhile a ranged cipher remains highly effective and is many times easier - which is exactly why it is so poular. -Stigma

Hmm, so since income is tied to turns but expenses are tied to real-time, essentially you will want to minimize how much you rest/travel if you want to optimize use of the stronghold? I read that the stronghold is a bit of a money-sink no matter how you handle it though. It is a bit of a weird mechanic for sure. -Stigma

The stronghold seems to operate on realtime, as well as some sort of "turns" , but it is never explained what a turn is... they just pop up in the events log seemingly at random, and I can't see any obvious pattern to it... -Stigma

Just equip it - it works like a second weapon essentially (still works with shield-talents, but doesn't work with dual-wielding talents, so it's not REALLY a weapon either... its sort of both) As far as I can tell it is just a free extra low-damage attack. -Stigma

I think I've seen an entrey for one other shield with this effect somewhere on a wiki (I try not to spoil myself TOO much, so I'm unsure of the details) Ideally what we should have had was a more developed enchanting system (and crating in general perhaps). The enchantment options you have currently are often very unexciting... I think a cool idea would be to have a way to deconstruct items and research them to gain access to new types of enchantments - sacrificing good items as well as sinking a lot of money and rare components into it - but getting access to otherwise unique attributes for enchanting. Takes a bit of balancing to do right, but it beats the very flat one-button-crafting that is used now. -Stigma

That logic is valid for a lot of games, but not really in PoE. Lots of very powerful items you can get early and will remain useful forever. I think the blunting belt you can buy (cheaply) from Gilded vale is a good example, but just one out of many. Also - you have to consider that enchanting can increase many base stats, so there is much potential for low-end gear with unique abilities you don't find elsewhere to be very powerful when upgraded - possibly being better than much of the "higher tier" gear you get later on. -Stigma

Hey all, If you are familiar with the "larder door" that you can get early on in the game, it is a large shield that grants the "bash" ability, so that in some ways it acts as a second weapon as well as a shield (but apparently it does not act entirely as a second weapon in some ways - like not qualifing for dual-wielding talents and such...) My question is - since this shield has a very unique ability of being able to add an extra attack (even though it is small), is it worth enchanting up as an endgame item? How does it affect your attack speed relting to your main weapon? If it just adds bash but otherwise does not affect your primary attacks at all it seems like its purely positive to have, but if it is eating into your primary attacks then it would scale very poorly as the damage output of bash is quite poor compared to decent weapons... Anyone with detailed knowledge of the game mechanics able to answer how this works out? -Stigma

What he said^ What you referred to is the master staircase that lets you skip back past all the levels so you don't have to go up and down through a ton of loading screens. The entrance to level1 is through that doorway that was forcefielded before you speak to the throne-spirit. Also a small correction - the ruins are called "The Endless Paths of Od Nua". Caed Nua is the keep that sits above it. -Stigma

Even if it doesn't reduce reload speed it surely reduced the cooldown - and the cooldown is typically much longer than the actual reload for the shot, so I don't see why that isn't viable. Besides - with a chanter you can buff the reloading speed too if you want. -Stigma

Well, it's for dealing damage when not casting obviously... I mean, you don't have unlimited spells, and when you do run out of spells you aren't well suited to much aside from ranged DPSing what you can. If I wanted a pure range-DPS I'd do a ranger or ranged rogue I guess, but that's not really the question. -Stigma

Hey all, What do you think is an optimal build for a wizard (for POTD) when it comes to weapon choice? You can go blast, which nets you weak AoE on auto-attack, including decent DR override, although implements in themselves do seem a little weak-ish. I guess you can maximize blast by using a scepter/wand as they are fast - but I don't think blast scales by their damage, so more attacks = better. Alternatively there is the option of guns. Guns are pretty good on their own - but they also combo with so many things. There is the marksman trait (more accuracy is king), and gunner for faster reload - also the chanters faster reload chant is golden for a party with many guns. What opinions are there on this? -Stigma

Good info all around. I've heard about the druid spell too which seems like a great "start of the chain" to debuffing tough opponents down into the beatable range (talking about POTD here, as hard isn't really hard enough to warrant that level of tryharding unless you are fighting way overleveled content). I think that another good good debuff starter is painful interdiction (priest talent + expanding talent). Weakness is a huge debuff on typical spell resist stats, and interdiction is huge AoE, fast, one-pr-encounter, and also has +15accuracy (with another talent,empowered interdiction, possible to buff that even further making it crazy accurate). Short of the unresistable druid spell I think this is one of the best "defense breakers" I've seen in the game that gets you a way into landing further spells - and being able to use it once pr encounter is really powerful for any party that uses spells. I will have to think about carrying around a few eldritch aim scrolls... Those could be real clutch in a tough fight. -Stigma

Hey all, This topic is half to inform and half to get a confirmation from someone else... I've been doing some very quick&dirty tests of marksman and distant advantage to see how they interact. This is what I've tentatively concluded so far: - Marksman applies to ranged weapons only (not spells) - DIstant advantage applies to both spells and ranged weapons- - If you have both, they seem to stack (ie. +10 acc on ranged weapons for distant targets, meaning more than 4 meters, which isn't very far) Can anyone else confirm this for me? I'm playing POTD so finding ways to increase my accuracy (especially spell accuracy, as that is not easily modifiable by gear) seems essential. Distant advantage seems to be a very very good choice for any typical backline spellcaster since it is one of the few ways to increase spell accuracy. What other good ways are there to increase spell accuracy in reliable ways? Let me know. I'm going to check that inspiring radiance works for this when I get to it (but painful interdiction is too good to not take first IMO). I did read some stuff about distant advantage being bugged somehow and the effect disappearing on transitions, but I wasn't able to find evidence for that... EDIT: A talent for +5 accuracy on spells would have been so nice... -Stigma

Are there any spells further up in levels that can protect against confusion and charm? It sure would be really useful in spesific fights since nothing has the potential of messing you up quite as bad as you tank getting confused and then letting every enemy in the encounter rush past him into your helpless line of squishies. There was this level2 preist spell that I thought might help called "supress affliction". I mean, confuse is an affliction right? It didn't seem to help against spores confuse though. If casted after the fact it doesn't affect the character because he is deemed hostile - and if cast before I'm pretty sure the confuse just went through it anyway. -Stigma

Perception seems to be fairly strictly tied to "noticing stuff" that you can then use in the dialogue. Intellect seems to be more general "being smart" and is used in differing aproaches. The into-areas first introduction of perception and intellect options seems to be fairly representative of how they are used - but to be honest I haven't played through enough of the game to have enough examples for you to give a strong opinion. (I've mostly played the first few areas a couple of times while deciding my final build and difficulty level - and I've just recently started what I think are my "final" settings for the campaign). Neither intellect or perception have been very heavily used in dialogue so far, but I expect that may very well change. -Stigma

I noticed this as well... I would have expected resolve to be a "great inner strength and convictions" so that you might rouse someone by your confidence, charisma and sheer force of will. Instead it seems like resolve checks are mostly about downright threatening people - usually in a very brutish and unrefined way. There is till lots of the game I haven't played but it seems resolve isn't really all that compatible roleplay-wise with a overall good character. It almost seems like the name is just ... wrong. It is fairly consistent with itself between dialogues, but the options just don't seem to fit the idea of "resolve" - at least to me. It seems like it almost overlaps somewhat with aggressive. If resolve is consistent with something I guess it is that it usually related to calling bluffs (or making ones), which I guess makes sense. You just often do so in a very rude and forceful manner rather than a persuasive one. Passionate to lesser degree is a bit of a weird one too (though not so far off the mark I guess). It just seems that passionate (so far at least) tends to lead mostly to negatively-slanted responses. It makes sense that you have a few emotional overreactions in there, but I don't see a lot of positive ones. My favorites so far that tend to resonate most with me are: - Intellect (although sometimes these seem a liiittle bit forced in the writing) - Diplomatic (usually very reasonable aproaches) - Honest (as long as it's not honesty to a fault) - Rational (very detached matter-of-fact and neutral) Of course that's just me, as I prefer to play a chaotic/neutral good type of character. Kinda miss a "persuasion" skill ... it was always one of my favorites in IE engine games. -Stigma

Ok so this is clear as mud... when doing a knockdown that is an attack + the knockdown effect. it makes sense that the weapon accuracy affects the attack part - but from what you say it does not affect the knockdown part. Does that mean that it DOES help in some small measure because it is essentially a double-check to land knockdown? (need to hit + need to land knockdown) or can you actually miss and also at the same time sucessfully knockdown? ... I are confuse. -Stigma

Hey all, I just want to clear something up: Do weapon accuracies affect any abilities at all? I suspect not, but let's say if you equip Eder with the magical +40 accuracy sword of awesome vs his rusty hatchet - does that affect how often he will be able to land his knocksdowns? Which +accuracy bonuses DO affect such abilities? I'm guessing that buffs and non-weapon-spesific +accuracy gear does?... I'ts not really clear though -Stigma

Should have made them into randomly appearing "lost spirits" like the ghosts that you see after coming out of the intro dungeon. Would have made more sense and been a lot less immersion breaking. Having random stories come of random roaming spirits that only you could see would make sense while being fairly easily surmised that they were only there for the flavor. I don't hate on the backer idea. Only the implementation. It inserts a non-gameplay element into the game, which is just confusing (for new players) and annoying for the rest of us. -Stigma

Assuming you have a priest in your party doesn't it work to just "withdraw" the petrified partymember to save them if they are in danger of being gibbed under paralyze? Haven't run into much paralyze yet so I don't really know for sure... of course if it's broken OP in the hands of the player too then that's an issue that should be addressed. -Stigma

Yeah, I'd wait for player created mods that re-tune difficulty for more added challenge. In a difficulty mod, I'd be looking for: Party experience reduction (which I mod in myself now @ -33%) Spell immunities (don't know if we could do this exactly, but we should be able to do something similar) Increased cost of resting in towns (you really shouldn't be able to sleep for free at any inn. 75 gold minimum.) Remove camping supplies from all stores (they should be limited resources, right now they just have the illusion of being limited. Either that or prevent shop keepers from restocking them -- ever) Monsters respawn on dungeon levels that you don't fully clear if you leave the dungeon and x amount of time passes (this would be difficult to do intelligently. And it will probably not be possible without the game engine being upgraded to Unity 5.0 due to the availability of the free personal edition) Hard is cooler than normal because it adds more and varied enemies. Potd doesn't actually bring anything new to the table for me -- just inflated numbers. Except for camping supplies not being renewable I like those general ideas (because you could get stuck having no way to rest, I think that should be balanced via cost instead). Pretty good ideas about partial respawning enemies too - it provides an incentive to push forward. Currently there is nothing but the small inconvenience of having to go through a few loading screens that prevents you from resting between every encounter (for free even) - and trading ingame power/currency for pure tedium is not a good balance mechanism. Once modding gets underway I envision someone will just make a "any difficulty" mod where you can customize the difficulty to your liking. Just have an ini file with numbers you can tweak as you like I like POTD because fights last long enough to seem to require deeper strategies. On hard I just seem to nuke stuff down for the most part. Much more focus on CC and control in POTD by neccessity - but some sort of middle-ground is definitely lacking. I can absolutely see some players thinking that hard is too easy, but POTD being just a bit much. -Stigma

i just wanted to say thanks to those who encouraged me tot try POTD. its just right for me. doesntfeel cheap but genuinely challanging. i think they made a mistake in how they did difficulty levels. hard should be like 2/3 of what potd is now probably, and potd maybe even little harder if it was intended for that "crazy trial" level difficulty mode that it sounds like it is. id i remember to do so i will try to go back and see if i an shed more light on stats differences once i have more playtime and data. sorry for poor spelling -mobile device... -Stigma