Xosmi

To be fair, having all the bonuses be cumulative would make for one overpowered buff - at a certain point all you'd be doing is backtracking to your stonghold to rest there since resting at town inns just couldn't compare. The resting bonuses are just icing on the cake anyway, the upgrades that give resting bonus unlocks have a good objectives on their own as well.

I agree with you on your first points. They can just stick to their current crafting system as far as i care, i just think a deeper system would add more to the game. Nothing more. You are also right that you don´t need to use it, as i didn´t most of the game, so..it is kinda pointless in the sense that you don´t really gain anything from it. (where you did get better weapons in BG2 as an example) I do have to disagree with the BG2 craft items though, most of them were very useful the dragon armors were great, Gesens bow was awesome, Crom Faeyr was your weapon against Golems and Trolls, Silver swords was almost instant death against low lvl enemies, the Wave was one of the most powerfull weapons in the game. That is hardly useless, however you could do easily without them. Thats the whole point. You got reward for doing it, but you could go without it, that was very well handled i think. And yes Caspenar made them even better and had new ones, which however were rather easily obtained in ToB, but the mainfocus of ToB was combat, so that came naturally. (you still could miss a lot of stuff though) Anyway i´m not against PoE crafting system, i just wish it would have more depth and there would be some iconic items in the game. Thats all I suppose the dragon armors were nice, i've never had much use for them though since i never take a lot of characters in my party that wear such heavy armor, and since my main PC for most of my playthroughs is some form cleric, i prefer getting the Armor of faith +3, which is much easier to get early on in the game, has the same defense as the shadow scale armor, and i find the +1 saving throws is more useful then the 50% fire/acid resistance. I don't think i've ever used the wave except for on one playthrough where i threw it on minsc, same thing for the silver sword. That said, in pillars i have used the crafting system on almost all the armor/weapons my party is equipped with, even the items you can find buy that have good enchantments on them already can usually be improved with elemental lash for more damage, an added stat bonus, or proofed for extra DR against a single damage type.

Early on shades and ghosts are bad news, one cheesy tactic to take care of them is to equip a character with a ranged weapon and have the rest of the party stand some way off in a corner where its safe. once you shoot an enemy mob, they will only follow you for a certain distance before they return to their spot. So, shoot them, then run away from them, then when they disengage (and none of their buddies are still trying to get you) just shoot again. Takes some time and is really cheesy, but it's helped me take out the ones at the stronghold with my party members only at lvl 2 (since i rush all the companions to get them at the lowest level possible, before the game can mess them up by auto distributing their skills and talents) Also, in the black hound inn's 2nd level you can *possibly * find a nice mantle that reduces the amount of frost damage you take, making it a lot easier to take on shades/shadows. i say possibly because it is randomized loot, so you might find some other item instead. i find that you have a good chance of the mantle spawning if you are character level 2 on entering the gilded vale town.

If you have the rogue-like npc with you he makes a comment as you approach them the first time.If you hold the TAB key down they highlight and clicking them gives you a message I think. Then you just click each one to light them with the torches (if not a fire godlike). Once disabled I don't think you can reenable them. Although I think the pillar method does not disable ALL of them. More like disables a path through them. Can confirm, once you light the pillars it only disables some of the trapped tiles, but there's no option to re-enable the ones it deactivates, so you lose out on the possible exp for disarming them.

solid 4/5 here. Great game, albeit having some flaws here and there, and even those i'm certain will get ironed out in future patches. That said, it's not the cRPG to end all cRPG's, but obsidian never claimed it was going to be in the first place. To me, it's just the right amount of nostalgia as a throwback to the infinity engine games, but also a good game that can hold up on its own merits.

Shhh, high-atlethics characters just secretly gain caffeine IV-drips, don't tell anyone

Honestly, the crafting being available and there is fine. If you don't see the point in using it, at no point during the game are you *forced* to use it. I see it more as a tool to imbue my existing gear and make that marginally better, instead of a way to create all-powerful items from scratch. i prefer this system over the one in BG2, where you simply had a static set of items to craft, most of which weren't that great in the first place, and the majority of the ones that were great to have, you had to wait till the beginning of the expansion, because only cespenar was able to create them. Honestly, the only items i feel were great to get and were available for crafting at cromwell were crom feyr, and the short bow of gesen.

I took it because i try to stack might as high as i can. I find out that if you keep stacking it you gain more and more damage because there are also other factors that increase your damage depending on your base damage with a weapon. So the impact of 2 might can be more than 1 or 2 damage. I started with 19 might i get +3 might from an item and when i activate upgraded frenzy it becomes 28 might which means %54 bonus damage and you can tear through the high DR enemies with a two handed weapon and aoe carnage attacks will also have big damage numbers. Also there's a level 5 priest spell that gives a big might bonus u might want to check that out. I find that stacking on might is really not an optimal way of increasing your damage output beyond a certain point, like savior99 pointed out, the +2 might doesn't amount to a lot of extra damage, on top of it only being active during frenzy. First and foremost, taking one stands alone is absolutely necessary, the tooltip only mentions how you do extra damage when engaging 2+ enemies, what it neglects to mention is that this actually amounts to +20 damage after the hit/grace check and on both the initial hit and the carnage AoE. This on top of the fact that the skill is a passive, and you will be engaging 2 or more enemies 80%+ of the time, easily - so you get a lot more mileage out of it. Now, don't get me wrong - having a decent might score is important (my barb has 16 base, +2 from gauntlets) but int is more important, so your carnage's AoE is bigger and you hit more enemies in 1 hit. For example, having a huge AoE and slightly less damage, i can be hitting 4 or 5 (or more) enemies for 40 damage a strike, which translates in 160 and 200 damage per strike respectively, whereas focusing completely on stacking damage and neglecting the AoE range means i'm only hitting 3 enemies max in 1 strike for 50 damage, which is only a total of 150 damage per strike. Granted, you're not always engaging more then 3 enemies, but the potential for a lot more damage is there. So you see, damage is not the problem with the barbarian, in fact i would say accuracy is a bigger issue, since if you miss your initial hit, carnage won't be triggered at all, meaning 0 damage for you. Personally i'd take Accurate Carnage over Greater frenzy. as has been pointed out, greater frenzy is only active when you actually frenzy, only adding 2 more might on top of the 4 the standard frenzy already adds, whereas accurate carnage adds +5 accuracy every time carnage triggers, which is every time you strike a melee hit, regardless of if you are using frenzy or not. As a cherry on the top, because out attack rolls are resolved by subtracting an enemies defenses from our accuracy, the higher our accuracy is, the more critical hits we will be scoring. (read this post for an explanation on how accuracy helps you to hit/crit : http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/77153-attack-resolution-accuracy-how-exactly-does-it-work-with-graphs/ ) So, in conclusion : Yeah, over-stacking might and damage bonuses might get us a nice on-screen display number of our damage, but it is by far not the optimal way of reaching the highest damage output possible.

The hardest levels to get through as a barbarian are 3 and 4, savage defiance will really help at that point, until you take one stands alone which will mean you don't get flanked nearly as often. After level 5 I've not had much problems with soaking up damage, most battles are over fast enough that he can pull through just fine, though still needing the occasional heal from your priest for the tougher ones. I'm interested to hear if you tried to change sagani's animal companion or not, and if you did what the results were ? let me know

In the beginning on the game, i just focus on getting all the companions ASAP, so i power through all the early areas without killing anything - the exception being the mobs that patrol the outside of the stronghold the first time you go there. By the time i'm finished with that i have a full party of 6 and at level 3, and there's plenty of easy quests to pick up in defiance bay that involve little or no fighting at all so i can stock up on some gear/copper and exp. At this point i just backtrack to valewood, clearing those areas i've skipped without much trouble, and all the new areas i come across from that point on i fully clear

Passage of time, also during fights the rate of acquiring fatigue is increased (not sure by what rate though). The higher a characters athletics is, the slower they will get fatigued. I find that characters with 0 athletics hardly last for 3-4 fights before getting fatigued, while characters with 3 athletics can clear out an entire map, or even 2 if there's not too many enemies around.

Some thoughts on this build : #1 - i would pick crossbows over war bows. not that bows are bad, but they do have issues with overcoming DR. #2 - Why no swift aim ? x1.2 Attack Speed x1.5 Reload Speed at the cost of -7 accuracy is too great to pass up, especially since you are taking Vicious aim as well. #3 - binding roots isn't exactly bad, but if you are playing with a party, your spellslingers are going to have plenty of debilitating abilities allready, there's more useful talents to focus on first. i'd take swift aim at creation, then wounding shot and accurate wounding shot over binding roots any day. #4 - missing bloody slaughter especially - causes more crits on low endurance targets, but more importantly makes all your crits do more damage.

Yeah, i was kinda missing out on the default scripts in the record section, like we had in the infinity engine games. So far though, it's only a minor issue - in some of the IE games the scripts were so terrible i usually opted not to use them at all anyway. For example, in Icewind Dale 2, where the default generic fighter script made your characters backtrack to the rest of your party regardless what enemies/traps they had to wade through as soon as you deselected them.. made it virtually impossible to scout out the map with a thief/ranger with it on...

This game is well worth the money. I personally feel that all the negativity is coming from 2 groups of people, the ones that have never played the old infinity engine games and are more used to the hack-and-slash rpg genre, and the ones that did play the old IE games, but were expecting it to be a 1 on 1 clone of those games, down to the setting/ruleset/mechanics. Sure, pillars has it's flaws just like any other game, but it shines in a lot of places too.

Not a bad idea, but instead of removing it completely, make it a toggle in the options, so people can decide if they want the game to auto-level for them or not.

Thanks, I took Savage defiance" indeed, it seemed too useful to skip, since endurance is what i am always lacking...and I was planning to take one stand alone at lvl 7. Even though my barb is not a tank so i would not want to engage too many enemies at a time...i do not see that a real DPS talent, but more a tanky one. I do not remember what i took at lvl 1 and 3, maybe I will decide to reset my character (i do not wanto to restart, at least now) I am quite decent with computer skills, i would really love if Sagani had a bear instead of a wolf as companion...maybe i will give this a try. Do i risk to spoil my save game though ? Well, barbarians are made to engage a lot of enemies at once - the more enemies surounding you, the more of them will be hit by carnage (the passive skill that makes your melee attacks function as AoE) Editing your savegame through console commands shouldn't corrupt your savegame, but it will mean you cannot unlock any achievements anymore. As far as i know though, it's not possible to change sagani's animal companion. quoted from the IEmod console info page : Though I don't know if this means that you can't change her companion at all, or that you can change her companion, but that she will keep itumaak on top of the one you changed it into (effectively giving her 2 companions) Try it, and find out i suppose Personally, i don't care about achievements, and to be on the safe side concerning your saves, simply create another save before toying with the console command, so you can allways roll back to that one if you do encounter problems.

Initially, their spells can be cast a limited number of times per rest. As a priest gains levels, their lower level spells eventually shift to per-encounter use. You can find a table on what spells you can cast #amount of times per level here : http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Priest#Abilities

But you could farm Ankhegs for XP and gold. An hour of killing Ankhegs in that hole and you're level 6. Yup. clerics loaded up on command, and wizard + ring of wizardry loaded up on sleep spells made this so easy as well.

#1 - you can use it to sneak past mobs, so far there's only been one quest for me where i needed to have a decent stealth score, and the cipher the game supplies you with has a good stealth score already so i just used her. #2 - 3-4 if you just need to sneak past the edge of their vision (i.e they are just visible at the edge of the fog of war) 8-10 if you need to sneak past them at a close distance, like small rooms/passages. #3 - for every level in a skill you need 1 more skill point to level it. so for lvl 1->2 = 1 skill point, 2->3 is 2 skill points needed, and so on. you get 6 skill points per level, max level possible is 12 for a maximum of 72. there's nothing stopping you from maxing out a single skill, you can max the one your PC isn't focusing on on one of your companions instead. #4 - Yep, though usually any opportunity to get a stat increase comes at a cost #5 - Take savage defiance @ lvl3, no substitute for it. #6 - you should be able to take it each level up if you haven't gotten it yet, but the problem is a lot more useful abilities might be available thattake priority by then. for example, if you don't take One stands Alone at lvl 5 you're just gimping yourself. so if you havnt picked up savage defiance when you level up to 5, you're best off not taking it then either since one stands alone is so much better to have. ideally though you will want both of them. #7 - only at level up, same for the cipher and their skills. wizard is the only spellcaster that can learn skills from spellbooks. with a sufficiently high enough lore skill though, any character can use scrolls to cast spell. #8 - Priests get access to all spells anyway, but the best ones in my opinion are : Armor of faith, Halt, Dire blessing, Triumph of the crusaders, and pretty much all of the seals - try to put down the highest level seal you can cast before each fight with a group of enemies. Wizards - Chill Fog, Parasitic Staff, Slicken, Curse of Blackened Sight, Miasma of Dull-Mindedness, Firerball, Crackling Bolt, Alacrity of Motion, Displaced Image, Confusion, Essential Phantom, Blast of Frost, Malignant Cloud, Gaze of the Adragan, Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst (the only minoletta spell worth getting imho, the rest of them are crap.) #9 - if you are going to play without a priest, you're gonna have a bad time. #10 - besides one or two skills, resting is really the only viable way to regain health. just put it off untill your characters are allmost at 0 hp anyway, it's endurance you want to worry about. allways have a priest for the heals. druid has a small amount of (endurance) healing spells as well. #11 - nothing out there besides IEmod. Honestly though, it only takes 1 console command to find your characters name as he is defined by the game, and one more to reset him back to level 0, so you can re-level him up again. if that is too much effort for you, you're better off restarting anyway.

Int really is only for the spellslingers, and barbarians (since it increases the range on their carnage ability which turns melee attacks into AoE.) Arguably for the paladin as well, though you can get away with a medium int score on them and still make decent use of their buffs.

Paladins can be built for damage but they really excel as tanks. Building your PC as a tank, i personally feel like moon Godlike is the best possible race, since their Silver Tide passive is really useful, healing endurance to you and your companions every time you drop below 75, 50 and 25%. If you want to go 100% tank, dropping Dex to the minimum is a really common tactic - the attack speed penalty from heavy armors, and the fact that you will be taking defensive talents over offensive ones means you won't have great offensive capabilities anyway, so why bother with it ? You can make up for the penalty to reflexes easily as well. Also, my darcozzi paladin for example, got the "Fires of Darcozzi Palace" talent at lvl 2, which does 10 fire damage to enemies every time i am hit, which is really good for a tank and has made the first half of the game a lot easier on me. If i recall correctly, this talent is order-specific, so you'll want to think about that too when picking your order. Also, getting an armor with retaliate on it is really good for a tank, it will automatically make you counter-attack when hit by an enemy's melee attack. There's only one out there i know of that is available relatively early in the game, though it is not a sure thing, and that's Hiro's mantle - It can be bought from the rare item merchant at your keep, however it does require you to unlock the merchant first and the mantle appears in his inventory at random, if you are unlucky it might be a while before you can buy it off him. There's also the "Coat of ill payment" and "Vengiatta Rugia" armors, but you probably wont be able to pick them up until you are mid/end-game Some of the staple talents to get on a tanky paladin as you level up are : Zealous endurance(Bonus DR) Hold the Line (can keep +1 enemy engaged, don't pick this if you are using IEmod with the option to disable the engagement system on though) Sword and Shield style, (gives deflection, also takes care of the reflexes penalty you get from the low dex score) Cautious attack (You're not attacking fast anyway, so why not trade some % of your allready low attack speed for even more deflection?)

I spend a lot of time making the character that is "for me" so to speak, but at a certain point i get on and start actually playing the game. With Pillars, i guess i've made ~15 characters, before settling on my current one that i am actually playing the game with, a moon godlike barbarian. I really like getting to know a game's mechanics, and to have a feel for what a class plays like, so i can theorycraft my ideal character before actually starting - in hopes of avoiding a situation where i'm allready ~10 hours into the game before i realize i need a restart because i messed up my build, or don't like my character. I do feel like everything has to "fit", for example i use the moon godlike face with the 2 horns, and didnt feel the default moonlike male portrait fitted with his look, so i used the horned fire godlike portrait which i edited to be blue instead of red : i also managed to find a really good blue armor that fits with what the armor in the portrait looks like, so i'm pretty happy all around with how my portrait matches up with the character model.

After some 30 minutes googling, these were pretty much all the portraits i could find that i feel are suitable for orlans : dont have source for any of them, though i *think* the second and last one are from some mmorpg

I couldn't point you to the topic/post where i saw it discussed before, but iirc, i've seen devs mention that both durance and grieving mother personal quests will only progress when you camp in the field, and never when you rest at an inn.

Like the people before me said, Nexus =/= obsidian The nexus account creation is a bit confusing, i will agree with you on that there. But, even though its a bit hidden out of sight, during account creation on the nexus, at step 1, just don't select any of the $ package options, and just press the "Create Account" button at the bottom. this way you can make an account without paying. all you lose out on is access to their premium download servers, meaning your downloads from the nexus will not be as fast, but IE mod in't that big anyway so who cares. Oh, and the site will display ads, but if you use adblock, not even that. Like i said, i agree that the option to do so is not made obvious at all, probably in a ploy to get as much people to actually pay $$$ as they can, but next time read instead of raging.