Neofit

Hi, I am level 11 and have started seeing level 11-12 weapons drop. So I suppose that items are roughly equal to the player level, and should stop at 30 max? Right now I have a few mods stored, I've used one to make a robot-killer weapon, but otherwise, since I am currently not having any problems during fights (normal difficulty), and am trying not to use them. How would I know that this time it's on? On level 30 weapons? Also, how far can you upgrade weapons? Can you technically bring one from level 1 to 30 (if that is the max)? So if in the high 20s upgrades cost as much as they do for level 1s, then at 50-200 bits, one can start at like 27?

Thanks for confirming that I didn't dream this one :). When I did not find him on the ship I had a facepalm moment, how could he climb on the ship without me letting him in, duh, plus I have my trusty ADA totally watching my back, so it looked more or less logical. I don't remember when the patch was. I posted this right after it happened. And IIRC it all happened within the same day, I don't remember seeing any patching between Max telling me "see you aboard the ship" and me gaining access to it.

Hi, This will be spoiler city, so please stop reading if you haven't finished Edgewater. First I recruited Parvati, then done the Vicar Max quest, very early in my adventures there. Vicar Max, during his recruitment dialog, seemed to imply that he wanted to replace Parvati. I thought it was some of the shenanigans we were going through early game, take off with the ship and you'll get storage, and maybe other things like 2 companions. He then said something like "OK, I'll be waiting for you at the ship", or "on the ship", I don't remember. I then went on and spent a few hours righting wrongs in Edgewater. Then I get onto the ship and take off, but Max is nowhere to be found. Hmmm. Maybe I misunderstood about him waiting on the ship? I went back to Edgewater and here he is, in his "church". I engage in conversation, no recruitment option. Again, no recruitment. Again, just a "kthxby" from him, nothing else, I thought I had lost him forever. I went out, then tried again, and bingo, "can I come with you pretty please"? Yesss! So, in short, if you think you have lost him, don't despair, start a conversation with him like 4-5 times, and you will get the recruitment question. Maybe getting out of the church for a second helped as well.

Hello, I am toying with a character planner but it's not easy when you're not sure how things work at higher levels. I am planning a long-range shooter character, with Sneak and Engineering. I am not sure I can rely on my companions for my preferred skills, I mean I won't go fetch one with Hacking or Lockpicking when I need it in the field. How much of a bonus can I plan on having at higher levels from a piece of armor or my companions? I might use one for Engineering, since I suppose that the high-level stuff can be crafted at a workbench having called in the proper toon, but I don't know how far I can raise their skills to be useful. Are there some mods or tinkers that would require a certain skill level in Engineering? Also, concerning Lockpicking, right now at level 6 I've only seen two types of locks: either below my skill that don't require even spending one lockpicking kit, or one a few levels higher that require two or more. Is it the same at higher levels, i.e. higher level one simply requiring to spend more kits? Or will I encounter for example locks that I won't be able to pick no matter the amount of items used? Concerning hacking, I've already seen one that was greyed out until I put in the points to raise it to 30, so I wonder what's the highest level needed? I am not very impressed with the bonuses one gets from raising the skill, so I wouldn't mind not wasting my points here either. Thanks.

Have you read the tutorial pop-ups about engagement mechanic ? The game doesn't have aggro mechanic, because that's ordering enemies what to do. And that would be silly. And the engagement mechanic is not silly? An automatic, poorly implemented taunt equivalent, that gives you only one option is better? A simple example: You are fighting a group of wolves. The tank is engaged with the pack leader and two trash, while everyone is fixated on one of the trash. So far so good, the trash focused on dies. Then the game reshuffles the tank's engagements and suddenly the pack leader switches from the tank to the melee dps. The end. So you gather all your "coherent thought" and throw it at... the only remaining option? Yep, screw tactics, only one thing to do now, throw all dps onto the leader. This doesn't strike as a particularly intellectually challenging kind of combat. Did I do something wrong, like out-dps the hate generated by the tank (another tactical consideration when you have proper aggro management with a taunting mechanism)? Nope, it happened by itself, nothing to do to prevent it, and only one thing to do when it happens. if on the other hand the tank had 1-2 per encounter and per rest aoe and targeted taunts, that would give the player extra options. Do I go all dps on the mob like a 'tard or do I spend one of the taunts? And it's not like mobs are not already "ordered what to do". The game code is already telling them not to go for the squishy healers and casters first. The game has fear and other charm mechanics to influence the mobs (I made him a silly face and he ran away screaming?). Taunting is just another such mechanic, one that gives the tank and thus the player more options during a fight. Not sillier than not having the whole group pummel on the weakest looking ally first.

You repeatedly implied that they were smarter than something. They are not. They are as dumb as the rest, yet players are not given tools to plan their fights. Because when everything is random you don't use coherent thought, you don't plan, you react, you zerg and dps.

Imagine the outcry ... Congratulations, you just made all the tank builds/abilities UTERLY useless ... enemies break engagement all the time and the decorum decoy tanks can only tickle them as punishment ... Only viable talents/builds left -- DPS kill them before they kill you .. On top off all that some encounters designed around tank use might become near/trully impossible to win . You broke the game . I hope you are sarcastic, because even Master Below is killable with Eder specialized for DPS. It's harder, but can be done. He is not sarcastic but serious. And you have proven his point: without proper aggro management, forget about roles and all zerg to dps the mobs.

Oh they are dumb, and on purpose. If they weren't then there is no way a tank would be useful unless there is a door to physically block their path, and how often does the latter happen? If they weren't morons they would never even consider a guy in plate, they would beeline for the healers, then kill the casters, then progress in order of decreasing squishiness or dpsitude once the healers are down. Just like players do. But if enemies did that there would be no fun in playing and no point in having different specialties, everyone would just go max dps and hope enough survive at the end of the fight. What we have here are not mobs that are smart or doing things that make sense. We have the usual dumbed down AIs who would do stupid things to let people play and have fun (it shouldn't be too hard to make a mob target healers and casters first), but with a non-existing or non-deterministic system of aggro management. Which makes less sense than the usual MMO trinity.

Eder is level 3, and the Defender "stance" is on. And he does engage 3 enemies and keeps them on himself until one dies. After this every enemy is on the melee dps. I am not sure, I'd have to replay some fights, but it even seemed that the other mobs, the ones hitting the tank but not directly engaged by him, switch to the dps barbarian even before that targeted mod goes down. So that "once close to the tank, forever stuck to him" mechanic does not seem to work. How is one supposed to aggro mobs on the second line then, when one is killed you just move the tank close to the newly reachable mob and he should aggro? I don't think I am seeing this. Must be the smell on that Barbarian. Auto-attack: I am not dreaming, the "Disable auto-attack" setting does not work, does it? Technically the first dungeon is not very hard, I like that it is somewhat more difficult than the previous encounters. What makes it complicated though is the poor tanking/aggro mechanics.

Basically, subj. I am running with a crew of stock NPCs on Normal. Party consists of my dps specced Barbarian, Eder, Aloth and Durance. I am currently in the Temple of Eothas, the first dungeon below the Gilded Vale. What I am seeing is that Eder has a lot of trouble keeping aggro. I put him on the first line in my custom formation, with the barbarian in the middle and the casters at the back. So typically he would run first into a group and engage them, and until the first one dies he still has aggro. But after that everyone is on my barbarian, or one of the casters if he had the audacity to cast a spell. Then it gets stranger when I try to use a doorway to protect the casters, one that is wide enough for two characters. At the start of the fight I would carefully position Eder and my barbarian at the entrance and they keep their position until the first mob is dead. Then they start changing position to better attack the next one, even though the barbarian's two-hander has enough reach, and inevitably break position and a mob gets through unless I start micro-managing every round of the fight. And thet said fighters don't need micro-management. I have checked the "Settings > Game > Disable Auto-attack" option to no avail. I have no idea what it's for, but whether it is checked or not, after a kill both melees break position to chase after the next mob. Regardless of the setting, if I tell one to change position (to a flanking one for instance), upon getting there he will not auto-engage but stand still. But after a kill, they will auto-engage the next one even if the setting says otherwise. Typically in a trinity-based MMO (tank-caster-healer), aggro is based on a hate list. Every mob has a hate list with each player or character, sorted by how much they hate them, and will engage the one at the top. You go up in the list based on how much damage you did, how much healing, buffing/debuffing, or taunting. Tanks typically do little damage, but since their goal is to always be on top of the hate list, they must have powerful taunting abilities, single-target taunts, AOE taunts, etc. I'm not seeing this in PoE. I went through the list of Fighter abilities and did not find anything that would help him taunt. So it is perfectly normal that when we are fighting a group of say 3 mobs, the fighter engages first and grabs aggro. Then a round later the barbarian is there, focusing on the same mob as the fighter. Now, since the barbarian's default attack is an AoE one, and if the only way to climb in the hare list is to inflict damage, by the time the first mob is killed, the remaining ones are aggroed to the barbarian and will stay on him until the end of the fight. The tank's role is reduced to a poor dpser, racing to kill the remaining mobs before the barbarian is slaughtered. I am "afraid" to use my casters for anything but a small heal, since the tank can't seem to hold aggro. They are only useful as a last dps burst when the barbarian aggro magnet is about to go down. So how exactly do you have your tank keep aggro without any taunting abilities?

I am confused about how Stealth works. From what I read, a rogue is supposed to get a bonus when starting a fight from stealth. But apparently only from a short distance, unlike the Ranger. On the other hand, in the list of rogue abilities/talents, I only see Backstab with a bonus when engaging from stealth, and so only that talent only works from short range? So if I decide I don't want to use it as an opener, I can keep 1 in Stealth and use the rogue as a ranger, using everything else from long range?

I am hesitating between a ranged rogue or a barbarian for my main toon. Since there are dps and off-tank options later on, I guess I'll go ranged rogue, sounds more fun. So I would need Lore for the dialog options, then a bit of athletics for the cutscene checks, then, if I want to start my fights with a stealthed shot, some stealth. I suppose 1 point in stealth will be enough for this? (ideally a rogue should be able to lockpick and detect traps, but Lore sounds more important on the main)

Thanks for the reply. But will they level up with the party, or will I, like in Wasteland 2, come back to the Stronghold at level 8 for instance to find a bunch of useless level 4s ?

Hi, I usually play a new game once then move on, or may replay once some big expansion comeq out. I am usually trying to experience the most I can in one playthrough. So I'd like some advice on party setup, and am planning a Normal difficulty playthrough. I've done a bit of reading, and it appears that one can recruit either named NPC companions with personalities, stories and personal quests, or some generic ones from the inn. I suppose I would want to have my party made of the maximum possible amount of such NPC companions for RPG reasons, and choose one class for myself that does not have one NPC companion, like Rogue (which I think I will make ranged). Unless of course their quests are quick 10 minutes affairs, so I won't bother. From what I hear these companions are already leveled up when you find them in a less than optimal way to remain polite, but I guess I can use that IE mod thingie people are talking about, so this shouldn't be a problem. One thing is not clear: can you, like in the latest Divinity and other games, dismiss an NPC party member (when for instance you are done with his quest), take another one in your party, then if needed re-recruit the dismissed one? And if so, will the NPC keep leveling up with your party, or like in Wasteland 2, become useless after being idle at the base for a couple of sorties ? (since exp is divided among your party members I tend to believe it works the Wasteland 2 way). Skills: From what I gathered, everyone in the party should have a bit in the Survival skill, but for the checks on the other ones, it's the highest one in the party that is taken into account. So every toon should specialise in his own skill. The problem is that I can't find a list of what NPC has what skill. For instance, so far I have played a Human Fighter until the Gilded Vale, to see what's what. The "Noble +2 Lore" sounded like a nice RPG choice, so I thought I'd make this dude my lore master, and pumped all my level 2 points into it to bring it to a whooping 6. Now, arriving at the village, first I find an NPC fighter companion, then I recruit Aloth and his 7 in lore. So that's like 1/10 of my levelup points wasted. Any hints as to which skills to give this toon so they don't clash with the rest of the party? And which companion has what?