gunman78

I have encountered an issue with the sandswept ruins altar room. In the escape cutscene, I have selected the following in this order: Grenade, Corrosive spell (Necrotic Lance) and Blister Bomb. After selecting the last option, the cutscene closes without any other additional message and my party remains inside the room, with the doors closed, so stuck forever. Since I am playing Trial of Iron, I had to edit the save file to reset the dungeon by deleting it's corresponding file in order to progress.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1wkxnv9dn5wcxi3/Dragos%20%287a71ce72-cef2-4dab-8a60-993f7551a2cd%29%20%28LAX-2ABCDEFGH%29%20trialofiron.savegame?dl=0

I didn't say I want one-shooting all the time, where did I say that? To cut it short, since I don't want to dwell on this: it's just the overall feeling of PoE is too predictable and tedious compared to BG, which leads to boredom.

It's exactly the same with PoE and Deadfire. Not in a literal second, but figuratively speaking. Else we hadn't the two most frequent complaints about them: a) It is too hard b) It is too easy While the parts that are considered too hard/too easy overlap. And: Is it a boon of a RPG ruleset if sheer luck with dice rolls alone lets you win alleged tough encounters? Why not? An unexperienced archer with a lucky shot can one shot a much more experienced opponent. A low level wizard with a simple spell can CC a bunch of higher level enemies and turn the tables, etc. BG simulates such situations better because all creatures have relative low HP and a critical with a two handed sword can often one-shot an enemy, and CC spells duration give enough time to wipe a bunch of enemies. In PoE the hard CC spells have the duration so low compared to BG that often you don't have the time to kill a single enemy, let alone all of them, and the enemies have so much HP that on PotD there are very few enemies you can one shot and most of the time you have to work like at a factory, chipping away at their health.

In turn-based mode, equipped with arquebus, cast free action Shadowing Beyond and move adjacent to taget (under 2 meters). Firing the arquebus does not receive the +100% backstab bonus.

I think it all boils down to the fact of this being a RPG and how the mechanics of the game allows solving situations with any build you make in a smart way. In an ideal game, the developers should give player means to bypass apparently hard encounters with strategies more or less obvious based on the build they are playing, so as not to frustrate those who dislike power gaming but in the same time they want to use their brains. Ironically, Baldur's Gate games, while more rudimentary in their mechanics, with their liberties of roll of the dice luck, allowed far from power gamer's parties to push through hard encounters and live to enjoy another day. In BG if you don't know what you are doing you can be dead in a second, but if you play smart you win in a second. In comparison, PoE feels like a slug, and you don't even get the chance of surviving just for being lucky. In this respect, Baldur's Gate games are way more fulfilling than PoE. For some reason, I never played BG above core difficulty, perhaps because the reason the luck is such a major factor in the outcome of encounters that I don't need an extra layer of artificially bloated attributes. It's almost like real life. On the other hand, PoE is like a mathematical equation. You either play on anything below PotD and there is no satisfaction at all, or play on PotD and have to find the few solutions that see you make it through but, again, those solutions does not bring you any satisfaction from a role playing perspective.

What I don't like about PoE2 PotD is the battles feel like a chore. Especially in turn based mode, due to inflated numbers, I think some battles would take forever on PotD, therefor Veteran level seems more adequate. I didn't finish yet PoE2, but having finished PoE1 triple crown and Pathfinder, I can say the PoE2 PotD feels the least agreeable. Yes, there are several difficulties to chose from, but the Veteran mode is still too easy (feels easier than Pathfinder normal difficulty), and the PotD is too unpleasant, so the sweet spot would have been somewhere between the two.

You definitely don't need a certain class to beat an area. I have never played a cipher myself. What is your average party level? The problem could be you are simply not high level enough for that area. You are not supposed to clear it immediately as you arrive in Gilded Vale. On PotD I think I came back to this temple after finishing Raedric Hold, and I was around level 4-5 if I remember correctly.

I've cast them both on an enemy and hovering the cursor over it shows that Marked Prey is suppressed. According to the description of these abilities, I thought they works independently, Marked Prey only giving bonus to ranger and animal companion, and Sworn Enemy only to paladin. How do they really work?

I also noticed at the same time that accuracy rating shown in the character sheet for one of characters was wrong. After I quit the game and reloaded the next day both the enchant button and the acc. rating were displayed correctly. My guess is that after a long playing session there is some memory corruption.

Sometimes the "Enchant" button disappears for padded armor (see attached screenshot)

Sometimes it appears that using an instant ability, such as arcane veil, gets it stuck, in the sense that nothing happens when clicking on it. First I though the character was just recovering from previous action, but as I left him a lot of time still nothing was happening. But starting a new action such as ordering a regular attack and then clicking back on the instant ability seems to "unstuck" it.

Aren't those ogres too tough for a level 3 party?

It's not only about spells, but also about abilities, some of which are used instantly at the start of combat by some enemies and they also auto pause the game. And this has nothing to do with the difficulty level, or perhaps trying to spot when an enemy uses an ability when the screen is crowded with 10-20 creatures bunched together and spell visual effects is a difficulty level in itself. Playing solo or on some difficulty level is not an argument, this is an RPG and the freedom of playing in as many ways, builds and party compositions as possible should be of prime importance. Anyway this is just a minor request that is potentially easy to be implemented, there are bigger issues that I won't press because I realize it would be too difficult to be changed at this point (such as the visual mess described above, when some lighting effects such as from blights obscures the view and you can't spot anything around them). Also why not auto-pause when chanter has enough rites recited to trigger a chant ? You also have to observe the number of rites and manually pause as soon there are three or four of them (and this is another scenario you could accidentally unpause the game)

When you set the game to auto pause when a spell it cast, it also auto pauses when an enemy cast a spell. When you encounter large group of enemies with spellcasters, it happens frequently for the game to auto pause when you don't expect and you are just hitting the space button to pause it yourself. Let me give you an example. When you spot an enemy group the game auto pauses, but the combat is not started yet, so the Durance inspiring radiance button is grayed. I want to manually pause the game again the second the combat starts, to trigger the inspiring radiance before my party fires the first salvo, but if one enemy cast a fast spell or ability right at the start of the combat, when I hit pause the game just auto paused so I accidentally unpaused and I lose seconds until I realize I have to hit space again,

I think the bug happens also with normal saves... Does it happen when you reload from main menu ?

The reason people want separate buttons is because you can accidentally unpause the game, when you want to pause. You hit the space button just a fraction of second after the game auto-pauses for you for whatever action, and you have the game unpaused again.

Compared to BG1/2, PoE seems more bland. In PoE the combat encounters seem all the same, quite repetitive even with boss fights, while BG had much more unique encounters and you can handle them in more varied ways. In BG you have invisibility, charm (where you can talk with charmed characters and control their equipped weapon slots), summon cool demons, aoe nukes (wands, arrows) that help you quickly eliminate the trash mobs without getting bored etc.

Looking at the description of potions, some of them seem not to be worth at all using. Maybe I miss something about them. For example: Potion of Iron Skin: +8 Damage Reduction until damaged. This seems totally useless. Means absorbing only once 8 damage. The lower level potion Potion of Spirit Shield seems much better, because it provides +3 DR over 45 seconds. Potion of Wizard's Double (+40 Deflection until Hit or Critically Hit, lasts indefinitely) seems better than Potion of Mirrored Image (+25 Deflection until damaged for 60 seconds) Potion of Barring Death's Door - for the potion to take effect means the character would have been killed, but if you reached that point means the character will be knocked out of combat nevertheless, so why prepare to lose a battle with such potions? Potion of Fleet Feet - that would be useful if you could drink it before combat. If you try to use it to escape from a difficult position, chances are your character will be surrounded and locked before he could finish drinking the potion. On the other hand, really good potions seems to be: Potion of Bulwark Against The Elements, Potion of Deleterious Alacrity of Motion or Potion of Llengrath's Displaced Image.

But not if you are fighting in a cave for example. You can't exit the cave (which is absurd) so you can't put enough distance between you and the enemies. Placing artificial restrictions to prevent abuse is never good. Also if a creature retreats from combat towards his spawn point and the combat ends, it has all his health automatically restored (another artificial and immersion breaking solution, why not reset health after 8 hours at least?) I don't see how it's a plus, having only one way to open locked chests - hard tied to a skill. Which brings us to the skill system in PoE in which we have only two useful skills and the rest are dump. Arcanum for example has all these feats. Correct me if I am wrong (I haven't played BG2 in a while), but in BG2 the locations are populated based on day/night cycles. Eg. bandits or vampires appear in different parts of the city at night.

I only pointed out things that gives an RPG depth and PoE lacks, you can always abuse a game engine but that's another discussion (and the more complex the engine is, the easier is to find ways to abuse it). I didn't say I don't enjoy PoE, I like it, but for me it's on the same level with other old-school RPGs released in the few last years, like Divinity Original Sin, Might & Magic X, Lords of Xulima, Avernum Escape from the Pit etc Probably I expected more given the hype, but PoE brings nothing new on the table and doesn't stand out from the other good games listed above.

Limiting the liberties the player has within the game engine doesn't do good to depth of a RPG. Some reasons for which PoE is shallow compared to the classics, that quickly comes to mind: - Locked chest / doors (without key) - PoE only allows you to open these with mechanics, no mechanics => no opened door. Most of RPGs allow you to lockpick, bash/destroy or open by spell. A minus to PoE. - Being stuck in combat - why can't you flee if you have superior speed or a magical meanings to escape (like invisibility)? Fencing the player once the combat has started removes another layer of depth, most of the classic RPGs allows you to change the map if you run away. - Cannot use items on neutral / hostile creatures to alter their stats or attitude towards PC. In Arcanum the humanoid creatures even picked up ground items near them, in PoE you cannot even drop an item on the ground. - No routine for neutral creatures in the game world based by day/night cycles. Even in BG1 some shops were closed at night, in Arcanum the shopkeepers were locking their shops and went to their beds. Not to speak of the living world of Ultima 7 It seems that for every two steps forward in one aspect, PoE took two steps back in another.

It's a good game with great old-school looks but not great as a whole. The experience varied from awesome at the beginning to boring at the end. I can't see myself replaying it again very soon. Compared to the old IE games my ranking is: BG2 > BG1 > IWD1 > PoE = IWD2

RPG codex is the nemesis of fanboys. The god of butthurt has been summoned !

The problem in PoE is HP (or energy) bloat. In BG hold spells were often a death sentence because the HP was low and even the tanks could go down in several hits. In PoE the massive amount of energy and the short duration of prone / paralyze / stuck etc makes these effects a lot less dangerous. I don't know if reducing the HP per level up in PoE would help keep the combat challenging through the entire game.