kvaak

Didn't the Engwithans allow themselves to die out so the knowledge their gods were artificial would die with them? Or did that only apply to Engwithans who knew about it? Then again wasn't the reason for their creation in the first place to give Engwithans something to follow? I'm confused.

I find it weirder that the WM companions all have clearly unique properties or bonuses, after finishing their story mission if not otherwise. That applies to vanilla companions as well to some degree (you can't have a fox or shapeshift into a stelgaer as a PC ranger/druid, Pallegina's order is unavailable to PC paladins) but it still feels like they tried to make the expansion companions "better" for some reason. Including our friendly neighborhood medieval HK-47, IMO the immunities easily outweigh the crappy armour and lack of digestive system.

A part of the (battle-specific) soundtrack is named after chanters' chants. Or the other way around. Some of the ones in the OP seem a bit far-fetched, I'm ashamed to admit I didn't notice the CRPG abbreviation until someone pointed it out.

As far as I'm concerned anyone who kicks kittens IRL is a terrible person. That doesn't prevent me from kicking a kitten in a video game although I'm inclined to not do so. A game has a bunch of animals. You can't interact them, but in a very particular place you find a kitten you have the option to kick. Aren't you curious to see why such a glaring exception suddenly pops up? There's a good chance you'll find out if you kick the kitten. Or maybe someone will reward you later because you didn't kick that kitten just because you could. Regardless of what I end up doing and the consequences that may (not) follow it's entirely possible the game developer put that kitten there just because he's a sadistic person that likes to kick kittens. That would be hardly the first conclusion I'd jump to but OP certainly seems convinced that's the case, plus all these kitten-kicking options could turn players into kitten-kickers. After all there certainly are sadistic people out there who like kicking kittens so when such an option pops up it's clearly the case the game developer is one of them! Also OP: Weren't you supposed to leave this thread and create a new one in reddit?

[citation needed] When you're wearing rose-tinted glasses it's hard to see any other colours. I also found it somewhat baffling that while such dialogue choices do appear elsewhere you can't just say "you know, you might have a point" to Thaos. You certainly get the option to feed the souls to Woedica*, plus apart from the aforementioned exception with Thaos you generally get the 'blissful ignorance' dialogue choices. That isn't of course quite the same as actively following your false (but very real) gods. Some of your followers don't seem to mind this revelation /that/ much either, Hiravias at least seems to stay a follower of Galawain to some degree (or Wael, if you inclined him that way?). * = this might have some specific requirements, I only got the option on one of my playthroughs.

I see you haven't opened your saves folder. Also you can get around ironman by hitting esc just as your character dies. As long as the "you have died" screen doesn't pop up your save file isn't going anywhere. I don't find expert or trial of iron particularly meaningful as they're both essentially just huge amounts of trial error. Ironman suits games like XCOM much better since they have a much larger element of unknown (har har), you're constantly forced to take risks and when poop hits the fan you have the option of bailing out and minimizing your losses (unless you're doing the very last mission). PoE isn't designed around soloing or ironman. Kudos for anyone who has the patience to pull this off though, I know mine was tested several times the first time I finished PoE on PotD. That was on a fully custom party of 6 rangers, not an optimal lineup but extremely straightforward. People did Adra Dragon solo in vanilla and that fight was an order of magnitude more difficult than anything introduced in WM. Expect cheese of one variety or another.

Do bring Durance and Devil along.

The errand boy.

Monks can take and dish a fair amount of damage, my problem is the fact they use attack-tied abilities every two seconds which constantly get interrupted by disengagement and such. Sometimes they just won't use swift strikes until you input it several times. The game gives you no feedback when they refuse to or can't follow orders so you have to keep pausing at half second intervals to prevent them from acting on their own. The fire/ice split is particularly inconsistent, sometimes your monk just refuses to do anything while the ability is in effect, as if it was a "channeled" ability, sometimes he acts just fine. Other classes have these issues as well but they pop up less often since most don't get an instant ability you constantly want to keep up (swift strikes), nor do they use melee abilities all the time. I guess allowing the AI to use abilities might remedy that to some extent but that won't guarantee they'll use attacks I actually want them to use. If it wasn't for the extremely quirky micromanagement/AI I'd replace a fighter in my current PotD lineup with a monk, in their current (and probably final) state I just find them unplayable.

I ran PotD with six rangers, meet team bear. I didn't really notice knockout injuries doing a whole lot, if I had to rest it was due to one of the rangers getting mauled. I'm also fairly sure pets move at the same speed as other characters although they can't get +MS items or talents. And no, I didn't realize elves had a racial designed for ranged combat until I was already done. no slightest idea why the PC is using swift aim

It's not actually that hard. The trick is to boost your deflection so high buffs like Wizard's Double (readily available with potions) never go off. Basically what this guy does. Since you're not solo you can throw in stuff like Crowns for the Faithful plus any number of debuffs.

I'm currently doing a handicapped (+35% required exp, + intentionally using a sub-optimal party composition) PotD run with four melee characters, it's certainly doable although you want at least one of the characters to use a pike or quarterstaff. Tall Grass (sold in Dyrford) is a keeper for the entire game if you use it on Maneha since carnage also triggers the prone on crit effect. Sometimes I wish I had five since the two guys at the back are horribly squishy, PotD has a crazy number of enemies so it's really easy to get flanked in the open.

^ hook, line and sinker. I must've missed the part where atheists claimed powerful, divine entities most certainly exist but they were made by men.

Honestly Devil's single greatest offender is being stuck with -40% recovery speed. -25% if you have some glue and durgan steel. Gloves can also grant a reduction to armor penalty but that means you're stuck using those instead of simply wearing armor befitting a rogue.

It does absolutely nothing if it doesn't trigger in the first place. You could dual wield hatchets or something equally gimmicky but I'd say you're better off using something like a sabre or battleaxe with a shield. Depends on what you have in hand but a rogue critting with Edge of Reason hurts. WM2 also has a shield with bash 3, it's not spectacular but with sneak attack it might do decent damage.

It's most certainly doable but you want to use a shield. For most characters that cripples their damage output but since rogues get crazy mad damage through their sneak attack they can deal a decent amount of damage even while using a shield. Class only determines your base deflection so while a level 1 fighter will have twice as much deflection as a level 1 rogue the relative difference rapidly diminishes as you gain levels. Normally I pump dex on rogues but for shield + riposte con probably works better to offset your low endurance, I'm fairly sure riposte is unaffected by action speed so if you can get it to trigger somewhat reliably it shouldn't even make much of a difference. Reflex save isn't a problem either since you get lots of it from your shield. I'm currently doing a handicapped PotD run, I'll throw in a riposte rogue once I get some levels in. It should work okay since I'm also running two paladins, both of which passively boost nearby allies' deflection. Stat spread could look something like this, you could probably even drop some dex and even more int. Just max your resolve since everything depends on your deflection. Wild orlan has a great passive for tanking, plus orlans get some funny banter if you make him your PC. Starting background is for brigandine, if you prefer the extra point of resolve you could pick Aedyr or Ixamitl Plains instead and drop a level of might or con.

Radiant Spore by far. I did kill it on my first try but only because high level priests can resurrect an absurd number of times, the fight was extremely hectic and by the end I had all chars but one at 0 health. One more hit from the boss could've killed me. Adra Dragon, Sky Dragon and Alpine Dragon all went down on the first try. Llengrath took two tries but only because I was bored of nothing providing any challenge whatsoever and just charged in without even resting. I looked for Llengrath after killing the second dragon but she had already died to driving flight and/or carnage without me even noticing it. Concelhaut also went down on the first try. Aloth disabled him like three seconds into the fight and he stayed that way for the entire fight. Devil's first hit ate more than half his HP... Pre-WM Adra Dragon was something else, I'm fairly sure she was practically impossible without cheesing or chain disabling (which is difficult enough in itself).

You want as much DR as possible early on, having brigandine/plate even on your wizard is a good idea. As the game progresses monster damage scales much faster than your DR so heavy armour is worth it only on tanks with very high defenses. Damage dealers should wear only the lightest armours, the mirror image on crit one sold in Stalwart is fantastic. Early on - heaviest armour you can find. Late - either all in or (almost) naked.

No surprise there. See: Endless Paths.

Depends on how old he/she is. When I was a teenager, expansions were done exactly the way they described. The problem is, that was only a few years ago. Seriously though, if you look at the IE games, ToTSC is the odd man out. Throne of Bhaal was designed to continue the main story and Heart of Winter could be played after the main campaign by importing characters. So I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to expect White March to allow the same. Ultima is probably "the" classic RPG series and it was more TotSC-esque. Ultima VII had a mid-game expansion like TotSC and although Serpent Isle is called technically called Ultima VII: Part Two it's a sequel (or spin-off) for most intents and purposes, with a mid-game expansion of its own. Both types have their pros and cons, as WM demonstrates a mid-game expansion doesn't have to interfere with the main storyline since the base game largely concludes the story of the Watcher (even if it has a somewhat ambiguous and open ending). I think the introduction of microtransactions and DLC has made WM-style expansions/additions more popular during the last decade or so. Personally I prefer the Throne of Bhaal approach over Tales of the Sword Coast one, mid-game expansions often feel glued on top and if you don't want to play through the entire game again you can just pick up and play the expansion right off the bat. Of course if the TotSC approach is done well it greatly increases overall replay value. I guess Watcher's Keep was also available during Shadows of Amn if you had ToB installed but it had little to no plot [integration], it was just a big endgame dungeon for extra loot and challenge. By itself not something I would've picked up ToB for.

Eder makes a perfectly fine tank even for a gimped PotD run. Rest of the melee characters are fairly squishy until you get your hands on some very specific goodies, especially ones found in WM. You only really need one so that's not much of a problem. Minmaxing is fairly important as far as optimal damage goes so NPCs don't exactly shine in that regard, although Sagani does a fairly decent job especially if you can keep Itumaak alive - he (pets in general?) does obscene damage for some reason. Int is important for most classes. Only fighter, monk, ranger, rogue and a tank paladin can safely dump it and all of those have plenty of reasons to still have at least the default amount which you can easily buff by a minimum of 2 with equipment. It isn't used that much during dialogue anyway, resolve is and the only thing annoying about it is the fact it's not just called charisma because that's what it basically is. Plus deflection. Eder is a good tank, Aloth is perfectly capable of crowd controlling ~everything and Durance has enough int to make him a decent priest. Those are the first three companions you get and they can handle just about any encounter with some damage support. PoE has its share of flaws but companions that suck in combat is not among them. The ones that don't exactly shine are problematic mostly because of their class, not their stat spread.

I never bother, their damage/CC is pathetic compared to priest traps which share the same limit. Also you only get a visual indicator of their trigger radius, not the effect radius so you might end up hitting yourself.

BG2 still sort of kept you on your toes with spellcasters/wizards. Even if you were horribly overleveled/geared you still had beholders with ranged touch attacks (lolwut) that basically ignored your AC, characters without immunities were fairly easy to stun/charm/dominate, 500 layers of spell/damage shields, dispels that removed pretty much everything etc. Of course all of those were fairly easy to counter if you knew what you were doing but spellcasters were never really trivialized to a point where you could just let the AI do the fighting. Crowd control is significantly more powerful for the player in PoE since it basically scales linearly with experience level. Slicken hits just as hard if not harder at XL16 as it does at XL1, magic immunity/resistance doesn't exist and no monster is immune or massively resistant to all forms of hard CC. Monsters on the other hand don't dispel your buffs, priests can cast party-wide immunity to pretty much everything on top of crazy buffs like Crowns for the Faithful (+25 resolve? seriously?), suppress affliction rings grow in trees in case your priests and paladins can't provide enough of it and so forth. I'm currently doing a PotD run with 35% increased exp requirements and a gimped lineup although obviously it's not the solution I'd prefer.

Itumaak was outcritting Devil with Sneak Attack and Deathblows... with a crossbow. No idea what's up with that. I did act 3 before starting WM2 since I sort of anticipated this (and WM2 gave me a high level warning too). I'm not really sure what's the point of the high-level scaling option if it doesn't actually scale with your level.

Using this, input F401. A number of boxes should display 500 (like UINT32 - Little Endian (DCBA)). (It's... complicated). Tweak the four numbers (base 16 uses symbols from 0 to F, ie 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F) until the output is multiplied by whatever amount you desire, e.g. if you want to increase the required exp by 50% tweak the number until it outputs 750 (500*1.5). (this is probably a terrible explanation but IT WORKS)