Boeroer

Since he is - or was - a valuable, reasonable and kind member/contributor on the PoE subforum (especially the PoE Character Builds subforum) I doubt that.

Yes, but they only pop up if you did all the unique ones in the respective "prestige tier" (minor, average, major and so on). The random ones are the only ones that will give you a reputaion bonus. Also see the recently updated wiki page: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Stronghold_random_events_(Pillars_of_Eternity)

I think it also adds a bit of motivation for replaying.

Err... It's not a bug, it's intended.

I give her Firebrand and skill Veteran's Recovery, Weapon Focus <whatever my backup weapon is>, Scion of Flame, Two Handed Style, Biting Whip, Draining Whip, Apprentice's Sneak Attack, Savage Attack Then I'll skill survival 10 + Jack of Wide Waters or Sanguine Plate or that bandana (+2 survival) for +20% flanking damage (getting to 18 for +30% is too much fuzz in my opinion). I'll put on an item with flanking bonus (like Glanfathan Stalking Boots or Crossed Patch or Vengiatta Rugia). Then I'll use Phantom Foes to trigger flanked and try to stuck/paralyze a group of foes (if there are too many or they have high defenses) and then attack with Firebrand. It outputs ridiculous dmg numbers that way with all the dmg bonuses and the high base damage and generates a lot of focus: +15% from Appr. Sneak +15% from Two Handed Style +30% from Flanked +20% from Savage Attack +20% from Scion of Flame +20% from Soul Whip +20% from Biting Whip +45% from Damaging III --------------------------------- = +195% damage without MIG per hit --------------------------------- +100% from Annihilating --------------------------------- = +295% damage without MIG per crit with a base damage of avg. 25 that's an average damage per hit of 74 dmg and per crit it's 99 burn damage. MIG would come on top. 16 MIG would add 4.5 dmg per damage roll for example. With a high dmg roll the numbers would be a lot higher of course, this is only the average. Since ciphers don't have any Full Attacks I like to play the melee ones with two handers mostly because usually one swing is enough to get the focus for another CC use.

You will have to learn (nearly) all spells again, but that's also a feature: Just write all the spells you know into some grimoires. After retraining, before leveling up, learn all the spells from your grimoires. Then level up and pick the ones at lvl-up that you don't know yet. Sure, it's expensive, but you can learn ALL spells in the game that way (except the ones you can only find in a book, like Ninagauth's Shadowflame for example). You will NOT lose the unique spells that you can't learn on level-up but have to find. Again: for example N's Shadowflame or Llengrath's special spells will allways be with you once you learned them during the course of the game.

They should be there after the bounty got cleared. At least that's the case with all other places where a bounty removes other monsters for the time it's active.

Or we can go and watch Demolition Ranch. :|

No need to rub salt into that wound. I would like to see this happening. A minor, cosmetical thing, but a nice one nonetheless.

Patches after release? Count on it!

Sure, it's cool to make it into the game in one way or another. But the gold plated NPCs were all over the place and the stories they had felt totally decoupled from the rest of the game. The stories there didn't offer lore nor any info about the game, the main quest line or anything. And you couldn't do anything with the info you got. If they had any dialogue... There's one npc called "the Vulture" with a very gruesome story. I would have liked to speak to him or just knock him right down to the floor after reading his soul - but this would just lead to the whole tavern aggroing me - unsatisfying. Once I understood that they are contributions of backers you could understand why they have no connection to the rest of the game, but it also completely removed any motivation to read their textual contributions. Because... way too many and too much text. As I said: not bad writing per se - it just felt out of place. That's not the fault of the backers. On the other hand I really liked the backers' items. No spellbinding rogue is complete without Taluntain's Staff. Some of the nicest items come from backers. Obsidian had not much experience with including backer recognition into a game. The tombstones (oh my) and golden plated NPCs were not my favorite at all, but the items and the Wailing Banshee for example were very nice. I also like backer portraits and such. That stuff blends in. Or think about how ol' Gromnir made it into BG2. Very well done integration. I know that the Black Isle Bastards will make a much better impression than "random" NPCs that are just standing at some spot for no obvious reason (some with very weird stories). They'll have a story that's embedded into the rest of the game, they'll have dialogue and thus a connection to the game. And this time OBS had much more freedom when it comes to "fleshing out" the BiBs. I think they will be great. Even the in-game recognition is done in a way that it doesn't break immersion (the ledger that lists the BiB's victims and loot).

If I may suggest a Beckoner/Bleak Walker's to you? Mith Fyr + Shared Flames is so good for your tiny skeletors.

Heheh. :tiny-facepalm:

Yes, drugs get affected by alchemy as well. Tested it 10 min. ago. A certain drug (forgot which one) does +3 to two attributes with 0 alchemy but +5 with 8 alchemy. With the Nalpasca the drug effect lasted more than 600 seconds.

Maybe they will apply those bonuses to crafted potions and this scaling of every potion is just a bug - if they include crafting in the first place. Who knows? I also find it a bit weird that your alchemy skill automatically improves stuff that's already mixed together. But I could live with that as well. At least a skill that's very useful to have. Since drugs also seem to profit from alchemy, the Nalpasca Alchemist suddenly gets more and more appealing.

I wonder why they changed that. It was very useful for testing purposes to be able to attack your teammates in a tavern or so.

Haha - awesome. Now off to building my first char based on potions. I'll name it "Weird Al Chemovich"... Now playing a single class wizard who is addicted to potions of deftness suddenly is worthwhile!

Ah, I see. That is new. I actually never tried to attack a party member outside of combat in the beta. Good to know, thanks for clarifying!

You click on the sword icon (bottom center - left from the buttons that control game speed) and then on the ally. Exactly like in PoE... :D I did it like a hundret times during the beta so far. However: sometimes you can't attack npcs that are in the middle of a conversation (which is new and might be a bug). Try another npc then. Maybe that's what you encountered.

Holy Scarabaeus - what happens at 20 Alchemy?

? Sure you can target allies with regular weapon attacks and also hostile spells.

Well, it's not like Marcel Proust is writing a novel there. It's a rpg that introduced a completely new setting and had a small budget compared to other rpgs out there. I think they did a pretty good job with the writing. The only thing I did not like were those texts you could read when clicking on the golden plated backer npcs. Not that all the individual stories were bad or so - it just felt completely out of place.

Sorry, but that's nonsense (I would have used a softer term here if I only knew one ). Every change to code means that you have to test it afterwards. The code doesn't care if the thing you changed is an "oversight" or a "bug". Every change to code may entail some problems if not everything is seperated/decoupled very well from each other (which it seldomly is). So, for me (in my experience) it's not true to say that it takes more time to fix a bug than to fix a behavior that is overpowered. It totally depends on the individual code that causes the problem. Some bugs are ridiculously easy to fix, some oversights will cause you terrible headaches. For example I think that it was way trickier to fix the Envenomed-Strike-thing I mentioned above than several bugs that MaxQuests adressed in his mod. Also there might be smooth transitions between "oversight" and "bug". For example: Scion of Flame and all the other elemental talents will not affect elemental spells that do damage over time. This could be considered an oversight or a bug. Depends how you look at it. But it's to the disadvantage of the player. Other oversights like retaliation generating focus are to the advantage of the player. Obsidian decided to "fix" the latter with high priority while leaving the first one in - although there was detailed explanation how to fix this. That's their decision and I'm ok with it. The bugs I'm talking about never broke the game for me. It just shows that there were resources to fix things. You have a point there. That might be. They could have said something though.

It was certainly good enough for me when I did my first and also second playthrough (edit: after that I didn't care much about writing of course since it all was powergamer's greatest hits ). What was so weak about it?

Eh? Why that? Actually having single classes adds choice and does not remove it. Even if they happen to be less powerful than several multiclass combos they are still viable choices. The choice is basically "faster ability progression and more powerful endgame abilites vs. powerful synergies and two resource pools". Removing them does nothing good for anybody. If you think they are bad - just don't play them in your game. If you would only allow multiclass chars then it would be wiser to remove classes alltogether and design a classless system (like Josh - and me - like them best anyways). At the moment it's just a matter of balancing. And in my opinion the problem can be easily solved with a) shorter casting times (for our poor single class casters) and b) proper design and implementation of Power Level and how it influences ALL abilites in a meaningful way. That should do the trick.