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Malovane

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Everything posted by Malovane

  1. Pfft, all major nobility allowed 4-6 novice adventurers to carve out independent realms from their land. Haven't you read your history? As for not being part of the story - perhaps it's wise for the PC not to discuss what they did openly....
  2. Yeah - walkable area sometimes gets on my nerves. The Endless Paths "Pit", for one particular example, has a fairly wide walkway on screen, but for some reason only 1 character could actually get into combat around it in a number of places. Giant spiders all bunching up in a conga-line in a wide open area is kind of funny too. It's like they all took a number to get served their can of whoopass. Well, whatever the problem, hope they get to put in some enhancements.
  3. I would suggest the original BG1 and BG2. Unfortunately, it's a little bit of a pain to get running right, and with decent graphics, on a modern era machine. While I own both of the original games, I did purchase the Enhanced Editions for the reasons of convenience in this regard. They also seem to have cleaned up a number of issues with the old code, including a number of exploits. I know it's heresy to many here, but I'm a big BG fan and do like the Enhanced Edition. Regardless, I would really start with BG1 of any stripe, then go on to BG2 with an imported character from BG1. It's a great story overall. Afterwards, pick up Planescape: Torment (in my opinion 2nd only to BG2). Then move on to PoE. Good games all.
  4. Runic stone what? They look like a runic stone? Your take on Wael's mysteries is interesting, though. Just a head with humanoid features made of stone, set with runes/text. Law is set in stone. Rulership is based in stone (forts, keeps, and castles). Just seems stone based to me intuitively, that's all.
  5. 1. Abydon, God of Crafting and the Forge? I'd probably represent with various configurations of armor blends within the face and crown of the head. (+3 DR to pierce, bludgeon, slash, +5 fire resist) 2. Berath, God of Cycles, Doors and Death? i had thought death godlike was Berathian, but perhaps not. Would be entertaining if the head continuously shifted age - and I would imagine confusing for the enemy when they're fighting someone with a baby head. (Casts confusion and terror 2 times per rest) 3. Skaen, God of Secret Hatred, Resentment, and Violent Rebellion? Tough one. No ideas atm. 4. Wael, God of Dreams, Secrets, Mysteries, and Revelations? Shifting luminescent tattoos of lost scripts, heiroglyphs, and incomprehensible schematics. A third eye. Lore bonus, and maybe a dazing spell (with a chance to sleep/prone). 5. Woedica, Goddess of Law, Memory, Rightful Ruleship, and Vengeance? Probably best represented with runic stone. Give them some hammer of justice spell a couple times per rest.
  6. Heh, hirelings are utterly worthless, and a complete waste of money. Really, they're all like level 1, and get 2-shot by even the easiest invasion fights. You're lucky if 1/4 of them survive, even if you use crowd control. The only time you ever want to use auto-resolve is if nothing is built. Prestige and security do modify income somewhat. Security generally lowers losses to bandits, and Prestige can increase the volume of money. Problem is, if you get to, say, 50 security and 40 prestige, you're likely to get around 800g out of it. Meanwhile, your awful hirelings have sucked down like 1200g in wages, so you're pretty much always operating at a loss. It sort of breaks even when you throw the "free" crafting materials in the mix (that you pay thousands and thousands of gold to get) - if you use that sort of thing. I suppose you might break even on the investment of the entire keep over 15 game years or so... There are only 2 things that make the thing worthwhile. First is the Warden, which gets you the nice bounties for excellent xp and loot. Second is the occasional merchant with unique items. That all said, yeah, the entire stronghold should be fixed up a bit. Personally I would have preferred there not be a stronghold in this iteration of the game, and save it for the sequel/expansion, as it seems a little early to be handing out titles. In NWN2 you had to basically wipe out several armies by yourself to get handed your ruin of a castle, which while a bit excessive, seems more reasonable than this. Otherwise, with the limited funds and time they had to throw at the project, it fell short of pretty much every stronghold in any major title in the past 17 years. Good ideas - just way too rushed. Hope they go back through - spruce things up a bit. Tie it in with the story or at least the world in general (it's really odd that nobody in the game even knows that you're the lord of Caed Nua). Add in some surrounding lands, so that you can hunt down some of the troublesome bandits, solve some local problems. Make judgments, foster trade deals. Contend with the bridge down South being restored (which threatens your trade). Set up your own little colonial initiative like Raedric. That sort of thing.
  7. Narcissism is quite rampant these days in the West - and criticism of a narcissist always ends up in some form of lashing out. Perhaps if parents were a little less willing to reinforce in their kids minds that they're special little snowflakes, even when they've done nothing of note, we might have a bit of a change in that regard. Oh, and stop reinforcing through media and schools that putting your naughty bits in unusual places makes you interesting.
  8. Ha-ha! That shows that a nice person you probably are. Gratz on that, not caring is a good way to go about life. Because self-flagellation at the behest of every malcontent in the world is, as we know, the joy of life.
  9. Heh, the irony of it all is that the shirt was made and given to the man by a self-described feminist.
  10. AFAIK, it will always say the party leader detects the stashes for some reason.
  11. Heh, I asked this in the spoiler section yesterday - and someone said it's 100% mechanics. I had previously tried a mix of high stealth skill with high perception, high stealth with low perception, and a couple other options that might normally be considered intuitive given that stealth was what enabled scouting mode. Tried a max mechanics/high perception build, and am picking up quite a few more stashes. Not sure if perception has anything to do with it, but would definitely aim to max mech in the future.
  12. I don't know about you guys - but I try and find all the little secrets in the game. I've been trying to find all the little purple hidden stashes that I can. In my first playthrough, testing everything out in Easy mode, I went with a rogue with fairly high sneak, might and dex primary, with perception secondary. I found quite a lot of the stashes - some of which were quite helpful with unique weapons and such. Second playthrough (normal mode), I built a custom adventurer at an inn that fulfilled this role. He didn't have as much perception, and was not picking up on most of the stashes I had found earlier - though picked up some others I had not found. In another start, I maxed sneak and perception, and found some new stashes I had not uncovered before, but couldn't find some stashes or switches I had done previously. So, the question is - what goes into making a successful scout mode check on finding these stashes?
  13. Well, the top level enchantments should be saved for top of the line items that fit your particular build. You can only really do 2 pieces of armor, and 2 pieces of weaponry with the limited materials there are. You can upgrade from any quality enchantment to a better level. So, going from fine to superb is doable, as is fine to exceptional, and exceptional to superb. So, you don't have to worry about it being a one time thing. The earliest components are fairly common, and you can usually enchant a good number of pieces to fine level. Exceptional level components become more common the later it gets in the game. Other than that, the elemental damage and slayer weaponry enchantments have fairly common components. I typically reserve them for special named gear with special effects, but it's not entirely necessary. They're fairly common.
  14. That's what I would expect... but then again apparently there's a high-level Chanter chant that grants AoE +25 fire damage to everyone, which would be ridiculously more powerful since you A) don't have to put yourself in a risky situation to make it happen and B) it affects everyone, not just one character... so who knows? I was pretty sure it was 25% before 1.0.3 (according to my reading of the log). Was I wrong? D: Looks like I was wrong. Even though the explanation says +25 Fire damage, it's more likely +25%, as while the damage is pretty significant - it's not as high as +25 flat fire would be with DR vs. Fire taken into account. Difference less noticeable on my rogue, more on my weaker characters. Overall, still more damaging than a single character with +25 flat - but, I suppose a full party of dual wielding barbs might be fun.
  15. That's what I would expect... but then again apparently there's a high-level Chanter chant that grants AoE +25 fire damage to everyone, which would be ridiculously more powerful since you A) don't have to put yourself in a risky situation to make it happen and B) it affects everyone, not just one character... so who knows? I was pretty sure it was 25% before 1.0.3 (according to my reading of the log). Was I wrong? D: Eh, I'll test. All I can really tell is I mow through things in seconds with it and have rather large damage numbers. It says something like "has effect +25 burn damage", so I took it at its word. But I suppose it could be 25%, considering my damage was already fairly high.
  16. Yes, it's a strong build. You'll out-dps the rest of your party combined, usually. You do want to go dual wield. With two weapon style, you increase speed by a fair margin. Do everything else you can to minimize speed of attack - like wearing the minimum armor you can get away with. Usually you can get by with being in plain clothes, if you pay attention. Dexterity, of course, should be as high as you can afford. Dirty+Vicious fighting adds 20% to crit chance. I'd actually avoid Bloody Slaughter, as the window for it to work is fairly small in actuality, but it's up to you - the larger crits are fun. Side with the Doemenals for a bonus to crit damage in general. As for weapons - there are two very nice stilettos that are available fairly early (good for damage penetration). One of them has a lightning proc which is pretty devastating (this one is available in first town at smithy). The other yields +20% endurance proc (get while obtaining stronghold). Most of the other small weapons have good uses as well, and it might be good to grab a set of clubs in conjunction with the stilettos - for a second damage type. Aside from the small weapons, I might go with swords or warhammers. While slower, they have 2 potential damage types - and some good choices. There's a few things that add +damage per hit (spells and chants). With the speed you have, and the frequent crits, it can be quite ugly. Might and Dex are all you really need if raw damage is your aim.
  17. Double the radius is more than double the area. Radius of 1= Area of 3.14 (pi) Radius of 2 = Area of 12.56 Theoretically this could be very efficient. But then again, how often do you really fill those circles in as it is? In most cases you're probably looking at hitting an extra 1-2 targets by doubling the radius. Usually you can accomplish the same by just piling enemies at choke points. Overall the AoE portion is a more tactical advantage in nature than a damage maximizing one - and thus fairly optional. The extended duration is quite useful, though that depends on the nature of your build. Hard to say it's the penultimate stat.
  18. I built a dungeon but never got the choice to take anyone prisoner. : / Is there a trick? (Or maybe I just didn't complete it early enough?) Also, by the end of the game I was only losing around 15cp per keep turn to bandits, so security goes a long way, I guess. (Or maybe bandits were afraid of my ogre.) Dungeon should be built relatively early in the scheme of things, as you get a couple opportunities to get prisoners in short order after you get the keep. You might have noticed this in certain cases where your enemies went out of combat and begged for mercy - only for you to have one option of killing them. Also, there's at least one who you can take prisoner entirely through dialogue. In my first playthrough I did manage to have a small retinue of prisoners. One escaped, and another had someone offer 300g for his release. Supposedly there items you can get through this method, but I haven't seen this yet.
  19. I guess in terms of past games in the same genre, a number of the classes here have abilities that could be considered overpowered. Chanter (+25 fire damage to all party weapons is pretty serious) and Cipher especially. The major exception would be the Paladin, who is fairly sad and pathetic in virtually every possible way.
  20. Heh, no. Ridiculously overpowered is the chanter phrase that gives a fair bit more than that to everyone in the party. Every level of the big dungeon I ask - "does it blend?", and find, yes.. yes, it sure does.
  21. Your rogue stops because he got engaged once he ran next to enemy and by default it is turned on that AI stops anyone that gets engaged so they don't suffer disengagement attacks automatically. You can turn it off but I would not advise it because characters love to chase others around and with it off they will get hit a lot from disengagement attacks. There is a "hidden" queue system in the game but only for using special abilities. I would love a waypoint system for movement to be implemented, with engagement mechanics (and flanking mechanics) it is a must have. Problem is, it's happening when my character is not engaged. The mob is attacking my tank. Character is free to sail by, but instead decides to beeline the target and engage for apparently no reason, directly contradicting explicit orders. It's as if the AI, which is supposed to attack when idle and in combat, believes "moving" is being idle. Hmm, queue system for movement sounds good. I know you can queue spells - will have to try that when I get home. Good idea.
  22. Hmm, only thing that has frustrated me so far is trying to get a flank on a mob. Will try and run past them with my rogue, but the rogue ignores the instruction on where to move, invariably slows down at the side of the target, and attacks that. To get the flank, you have to then disengage, which gets you thwapped by the creature. So, the only real viable tactic is to either give the critters a *huge* berth while flanking (which makes it time inefficient), or use blind spells and other abilities to circumvent the need for flanking in sneak attacks. I suppose I could turn party AI completely off - but I shouldn't really have to. If I set a move instruction, and nothing stops or interrupts the character from getting there, it should not override that instruction. In fact, the AI shouldn't be overriding any instruction, unless the goal was completely impossible.
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