globalCooldown

Protip: you can cut east through Woodend Plains, along the road, and head to Stormwall Gorge to grab Hiravias (and onward to Dyrford and Grieving Mother) before ever entering Defiance Bay. My barb just did it last night.

First two questions are going to depend on the player and the character they roleplay, and are meant to be thought about. As for the last question: not as of yet, as far as I know. Maybe in White March part 2?

No AI was the thing that turned me away from the game ._. To each their own! A bug's a bug, and that's why this thread exists. Would be nice to know I don't have to micro to such a great extent without my party falling all over each other, though.

This is why I just turn AI off and micro everything. ._.

On the one hand: places like the lighthouse could definitely benefit from not having to go through loading screens just to go up a floor. On the other hand: for open-world areas, like Black Meadow and Magran's Fork, you're suddenly looking at A LOT MORE WORK defining all those square miles of terrain. If done well, you're going to get a bit of an Elder Scrolls vibe, marching through a wide open world as you see fit. If done poorly, it'll just serve to make the world empty. So, I think the system Starwars up there is talking about is a good compromise.

Poke around Russetwood in the expansion area. You get a vision from one of the abandoned camps, after which you can enter sneak/search mode in that area to find a hidden loot box. There's a grimoire in there with the spell in it. (Assuming you're talking about the cold fireball. Killing Bolt, I believe I got that at Craigholdt off of some mercs?)

Awesome play, OP! I would've loved to see it go down! Only assassins I've seen were during Act 2, out in the open near the fountain in Brackenbury. Only collateral damage there was some kickstarter backers' npcs.

Jesus chalupa, that sounds like the installation time for an MMO that's been running for any length of time. My condolences on your long as fug install time.

I think Gaun's Share has some kind of health leech effect?

Nope, my priest aint my mechanics person so I think its unrelated. I think people ask about your priest's Mechanics skill because Repulsing Seal counts as a trap (or used to? idk i don't keep up with patches). Traps do better damage and effects when placed by a character with high Mechanics. Therefore, a priest with high Mechanics would have an amazingly powerful Repulsing Seal.

#2, 3, and 5 are definitely up my alley, and I can see the appeal in #4 as well. (And #1, but mashing F5 seems to be a tic of mine, so I have less experience with those situations >.>) The counterargument to #4, of course, is that there need to be downsides to changing a character's allegiance mid-combat, but the counter-counterargument is that for the duration of the enemy's charm/dominate effect on your character, you're stacking buffs on someone who is in the process of beating your a**.

Ditto basically what everyone else is saying: stronghold shops suck. Back before White March p1 hit, I checked the Artificer Shop and it was stocking a grand total of JACK SH*T.

Ditto. A Wait feature would be great. Get players used to the weird 26-hour day the setting has.

At least it's a xaurip and not, you know, ACTUALLY DURIEL FROM DIABLO 2. God, I hated that fight.

Actually, this sounds really fun. I might try that with a wizard Watcher sometime!

On #4, the Reputation system--if you'd rather not roleplay it out for whatever reason, there's an option to turn on indicators of what sort of reputation you'll get from what dialogue options.

It's generally not a good idea to sell your grimoires. Every time you retrain a wizard you forget every single spell you've learned, and you'll have to pay coppers to relearn them from those grimoires. So if you're not careful and sold the wrong ones you end up unable to relearn some spells. We've pointed out the absurdity of this design before; since there's no reason to unlearn wizard spells whatsoever, not to mention charging for spells you already paid for. But the devs insisted on it. Wouldn't even discuss why. Probably laziness. Baaaaasically. I gotta hang on to all of these so that in the event I bork myself over buildwise, I don't have to choose between "better build" and "90% of the spells you've learned throughout the game" Shhhhhhhh!

Seriously, I had a LOT after just the core game, and after blazing through part 1 of White March, I have, like, twenty five of them. I appreciate all the chances the devs put in to learn all the various spells, especially the special ones like Concelhaut's Crushing Doom which SHOULD be earned, but that's still a lot of books! Anyone else have a similar experience in their wizarding?

Holy necroposting, Batman! I have a Hearth Orlan Chanter (Aedyran merchant) and a Pale Elf Barbarian (raider from Deadfire--hey, Naasitaq is in the archipelago, and they have contact with glamfellen, so....)

No idea, but like these fine fellows I suspect November at the absolute earliest and Spring 2016 at the absolute latest. (Also, I quite enjoy Chanters, thank you very much.)

To be fair, the mercs ARE brutal. For me personally, it was because entire groups of them would wander into a fight already in progress and decide to jump in.

There IS a cave you can get into by sneaking by them that opens out into Cragholdt proper. There's a switch inside the keep to open it; not sure if it's openable from the outside.

Running is possible! I discovered that for myself back during my first playthrough, when I was still learning the game, and I tried the second floor of the Temple of Eothas without knowing what I was doing. Aloth got knocked out, PC ran away. Combat broke, Aloth got back up, whoops he passed out on top of the monster, now I'm in combat again. PC rushes back to give him some time to get away, PC gets knocked out while Aloth runs away. Combat breaks. PC gets back up, monster can see her, combat resumes. Repeat until the party inches their way toward the limits of the monster's aggro radius. Garnish with Yakety Sax and serve.

Slow down there, friend. Do you have auto-level up on? Because I got DoC on my Pre-Pit Save, and she joined my party at level 1 with enough experience to get up to where my PC was. And she didn't come with Weapon Focus of any kind.

Mechanics is essential, but just for one person. Lore and Athletics are great; endgame, almost everyone has a few points in each for scrolls and staving off exhaustion. Stealth is good to have, but not necessary. Survival is...garbage. As a whole, skill system could use some retooling. Or at least, giving Survival something better going for it than just improving items no one uses regularly.