PangaeaACDC

Cheers guys. Good read that, and fairly close to what I had. Don't have White March so won't be able to pick some of the equipment, and I wouldn't be able to sacrifice Eder either, but a good guide nevertheless. Party could be pretty heavy on fighters with main guy, Eder and Pallegina, so will be interesting to see how that pans out. I was unsure whether to go for CON, PER or RES, but landed on PER for one speech skill (for RP reasons) and it also gives some combat benefits. I figured some extra accuracy could be useful. With the character being a fighter, endurance/health should still be okay. Main issue is the low intelligence and therefore very low Will. Bound to bite me in the arse, but then I always seem to struggle with Will anyway, so maybe it won't matter a great deal whether it sucks, or sucks a lot. Only arrived in Gilded Vale so don't even have war hammers yet, but I do look forward to see how this character pans out, and intend to do some role playing too, if I can force myself away from a goody-twoshoes approach. Btw: Confident Aim is fixed now, right? Would like to build this guy as a high-damage dealer, while Eder soaks up pressure, but prior to 3.04 I read Confident Aim was bugged to hell and back. Speaking of Modals, what do people prefer or suggest for a dual wielder?

Hi guys. Been thinking about having another go with the game lately, despite having an almost-completed Cipher going a few months back. Looked around the wiki and here, and oddly enough got a hankering for a fighter. Usually I prefer wizards as they can do more varied stuff. But fighters are all right too, if not as 'fun' to play (imo, of course). Been playing around with attributes and can't really decide on what's most sensible. Help? The idea is to have him dual wielding warhammers, with a nod towards Baldur's Gate. I like weapons with two damage types, so I can care less about immunities, and they look pretty sturdy. Some cracking unique ones too. Not a fan of not having "conversations skills", but can't get plenty there while keeping him a mean bastard. Am also worried about low Will, as a mind buggered mean fighter isn't fun to have ravaging your own party (like against those annoying insta-hitting "flowers"). I've pumped up Dexterity here, as I figured that even with decent armour, he can wield those hammers at a half-decent rate. Dumb as a brick, but something had to give Currently: MIG 20 CON 10 DEX 18 PER 16 INT 4 RES 10

Do you mean prior to this time? Because the Linux patches are very small. The 3.04 patch is 13 MB. It does require a great deal more free space than that to unpack and apply, but the actual download is done in seconds.

Agree with your post, and particularly this part, because I thought the same before coming to your post. It was my experience with Wasteland 2 as well. I did enjoy the game, but combat was very samey-samey, and I didn't see the need for it to be turn-based. There were only a few combats in the entire game that were a bit chaotic, but the great majority was swift sailing -- it simply took much longer because it was turn based. This is why I'm worried about Numenera being turn-based as well. It could be a heavy stone hung around its neck. And for a game intended not to have great amounts of combat, and many ways to get out of it, it doesn't make much sense to me to have it turn based. Hopefully it will turn (!) out good, but I am concerned they will fail to live up to the admittedly very high expectations.

Don't see mention of this Knock-Down issue, so has it been fixed? http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88371-303-issue-with-knock-down-and-necrotic-lance/ (I see the Necrotic Lance has been sorted, so thanks for that )

GOG patches the files, so there is probably some good magic behind the process. The patch is pretty small, but the process took a while, with thousands of files and maybe 2 GB in action. I thought the process had crashed, but after maybe 2 minutes it was done. And during the process the folder was maybe 2 GB bigger than at the end. So well done GOG (although I don't like the delay with patches) PS: Steam sucks!

Another advantage with real-time with pause over turnbased, is that with RTwP you can run away from combat. In TB, at least the games I've played with it, you get stuck in combat mode, which won't end until you or the enemies are dead. Hopefully it will be different in Numenera. As long as the game itself is good, I'll be able to overlook the disadvantage of it being turn-based, so here's hoping the story, setting, characters and so on are excellently done. Expectations are very high, and I hope the game won't turn into a dud.

****. I hadn't heard Numenera went turn-based. That's a kick in the balls. Slowly.

Completed the survey (thanks for posting the link to it on GOG). Was a bit baffled about the focus on Pathfinder. Both art styles looked crap, I had to choose one, but mentioned in the comments that I didn't like either. Not a big fan of turn-based either. It worked for Wasteland 2, but it also means that every tiniest battle takes forever. Real-time with Pause is superior. Think the questions about story, dark/light, lighthearted/whatever weren't so grand either. It felt like missing the ball a bit. But I added some comments that hopefully helped explain my opinions. Also wholeheartedly agree with the person who mentioned earlier that dark/light shouldn't necessarily come from art style and whatnot, but from what happens in the game world -- so excellently portrayed in Planescape Torment. That game has a very special place for me, probably even more special than Baldur's Gate. I'd love another Isometric RPG, however, so I'm intrigued at what may come next (but am not filled with euphoria about Pathfinder).

Is his first name Geralt?

^^ Think that is pretty harsh. For example, I'm no Obsidian fanboi, the only game of theirs I've played before is Neverwinter Nights 2, and I gave up on that before the end because I got bored. I think Pillars of Eternity is a good game, but not a great one. There is *something* missing, or aspects missing the target, which is kind of hard to put my finger on. The story is a little bit off perhaps, and the end of the game felt a little rushed. I would have preferred more NPCs. The game world and lore was interesting, but also confusing or hard to wrap my head around. Then there was that huge info dump at the end of the game, with a somewhat odd story, so all in all it didn't quite hit the mark for me. That said, I still enjoyed the game and am glad I bought it. It's a solid RPG that is made for PCs, instead of all this consolitis scourge we see everywhere, so that alone makes it stand out quite a bit. Hopefully they improve on some of the faults/weaknesses for PoE2, but keep the focus on PCs and don't dumb down features or gameplay to cater to the inferior console technologies and user interface. The difficult thing with games is that sometimes we don't know what we want, until we have played something and know whether it had that "right" feeling or not. To capture that "magic" experience from Baldur's Gate is extremely difficult, and one can't just clone the gameplay in a new game world either. Ultimately I think they did a lot of right things with Pillars of Eternity -- but not everything.

For what it's worth, I think the OP's point has some merit. Of course it's subjective and others prefer the less-epic world of Eora and PoE, but I have to be honest and say that I felt the loot to be a bit underwhelming and "samey-samey". Some of that can perhaps be applied to spells too, though I didn't really miss the "epicness" in that part of the game. The world itself I liked, and look forward to how we can explore it further in PoE2, probably in a different region. But after killing so many nasty things in PoE, I did miss some more "oomph" from the weapons and other loot we came across. It may not be a universal complaint, but I've seen it often enough for it to hopefully register at Obsidian HQ. (It should be mentioned, however, that I haven't bought WM yet, so whatever the developers introduced there, I haven't seen yet.)

If I were to choose ONE thing I want changed/improved for PoE2, it would be this: drastically reduce reload time between areas and such. It's actually baffling how this can take such a long time on top-end computers on a game that isn't really that demanding.

Don't see the need for party members to get bent out of shape and leave if you do a certain quest, kill a certain person or have a certain disposition. It's arguably more realistic than the alternative, but it's also one aspect I didn't like in Baldur's Gate. And if we're given relatively few recruitable NPCs again, it could be a huge slap in the face if somebody important left. Most likely it would just cause people to reload or use a wiki to prevent such events, or mod it out like happened with BG. Keep 6-member parties. Don't drop it further down. Keep separation of health and endurance. It was a good change, once I got used to it, and meant we didn't have to mass-heal after every big combat, but could move on unless our health was diabolical. I'm one of those players that don't like to rest every 2 minutes and like to go on for as long as we can, so this was a good change for my playstyle. [Very important] Stay DRM Free and support Linux. If I can't buy the game on GOG for Linux, I won't buy it.

Sawyer actually talked about this whole number of party members dilemma a while back: https://soundcloud.com/usgamernet/axe-of-the-blood-god-episode-46-obsidians-josh-sawyer-reflects-on-pillars-of-eternity Skip to 36:10 Start at 35:03 if you wanna hear the "question" that's posed. Thanks for this. What I took from it, also due to the talk a little later, was that Pillars was made for PCs, and Tyranny may also have consoles/tablets in mind, hence it made sense to reduce the party size, to make it easier to control for the inferior platforms. I know next to nothing about Tyranny, so maybe I'm talking out of my arse, but that was my interpretation. I find it hard to believe a person like Josh genuinely belives controlling a 6-member party is confusing, so he's kind of making arguments around a topic that isn't mentioned (or mentioned later): consoles/tablets. Hopefully Pillars of Eternity 2 will be made with PCs in mind, so we can keep 6-member parties and not have to endure consolification of the user interface. One of the things I really disliked from Witcher 1 to 2, is the obvious console friendly user interface and inventory, which made it a pain in the arse on a PC. I'd hate to see something like this happen to PoE2.

I wish games came out with no achievements. It's a scourge. Instead of just playing the game, people are playing for achievements. One of the reasons I don't use GOG Galaxy is so that I can keep that scourge out of my games.

Bummer!! That is extremely disappointing. Don't think the PoE combat was too faster either, at least for the most part. I used many auto-pause functions, so even easy combat took some time. I'd love another option for auto-pause, so that we didn't get into the silly situation of trying to pause combat, then it got auto-paused, try to pause again, et cetera... BG games had the same issue, but after 15-odd years, you'd think it was possible to come up with a solution to this, like a separate button for pause and un-pause, in addition to a general pause/un-pause button (space iirc).

Interesting slides. I'm one of the people who for some silly reason never got to supporting it on Kickstarter (intended to, but there were many, and suddenly it was too late), and I'm yet to buy the expansions. I liked the game, but I didn't love it. It does a lot of things right, but there is something about it that isn't perfect, that is kind of hard to put my finger on. I liked the scripted interactions, but am a little worried by "make more of them". It could very well be that they got the balance right in PoE, and pumping the world full of these would take away from the experience. Spice is good -- but not if you choke on it. Didn't miss "funny or silly" characters either. Admittedly there isn't a Morte type character, but there are some funny moments, like when Eder (?) remarks that he travels with friends -- and Durance. More could perhaps be done with such party interaction / banter, but I'm not sure if "silly" characters would be the right move. It may just feel forced. Spread it around instead of making a 'clown'. The Stronghold was really disappointing to me. You kind of just check off items on a list, and that's more or less that. Not much real content or interaction, apart from underneath it. The combat on Yenwood Field was great, the whole thing, but especially the big and chaotic combat at the end. There was a LOT of lore to sink our teeth into, and for most of the game the whole world felt a bit overwhelming and I never really got my head properly around it. More than once did I look up the wiki to try to get a grasp of the various wars, factions, races and politics. And then you have that massive info-dump at the end of the game, which felt like "oh ****, we better conclude things now". Was the game intended to be bigger, and you had to quickly wrap things up? Whatever it was, it didn't feel good. Having just completed Witcher 2 for the first time, there was a bit of the same there, but it simply felt better, and made a lot more sense. I've seen many say that there should have been more focus on the main antagonist (if we can call it that), and I sort of agree, and then don't. With the way the world was set up and the role the antagonist played, it didn't make sense to have him pop up very often. But the whole thing did feel a bit strange and 'off', so perhaps it would have been better with a whole different type of story instead. I wasn't a big fan of the soft counter system. But one advantage of it is that we don't necessarily need to die several times in an encounter first to know what we are up against, and then prepare for that. But it also means less complexity in combat in terms of strategy, so most often we can just burst into combat and deal with it there and then. Generally I think the GUI is good, but one thing I hated with it was how darn hard it was to figure out how to distribute items to reduce the amount of 'wasted' extra attribute points and various bonuses. Suppressed effects should be much more accessible, like with a hover over the items on the main character/inventory screen. Although it's hardly realistic, I loved that we had an infinite backpack, and could pick up every tiny or big piece of loot around. Very early on in Witcher 2 I had to install a tiny mod that reduced weight on small items, so it was possible to pick up monster parts and so forth without getting encumbered. Running back and forth to shops to load off is NOT fun, and would have been a right nightmare in this game where we pick up so many xaurip spears and so on. And no, leaving that stuff behind is NOT an option :D Partially because accuracy and so forth kept rising, weapons and armour often felt rather poor. The added accuracy on the best weapons was at best of marginal importance, and very few weapons truly felt great or epic. The soulbound weapon I could get without the expansions was good, and some of the 'normal' weapons had nice additional non-craftable properties, but hardly anything to write home about compared with Crom Faeyr and so forth. Of course, this may have been a good thing, as there is more variety in the type of builds people tend to wind up with, instead of pretty soon going for the best gear and designing your characters that way in terms of proficiency and suchlike. As good as the music is in the game, I'd love more customisable options, particularly so that it's easy to turn off combat music in the settings. Pretty soon I had to simply delete those files, because hearing the same somewhat jarring music over and over and over again becomes annoying. There is a LOT of combat in the game after all. Other than that I loved the music in the game, and the atmosphere felt really good. I'm sure it was nice for all the Kickstarter backers, but pretty please give us an option to remove those 500 or so NPCs, if you do the same for PoE2. Same with the tombstones. This was a funny touch in BG, but in PoE it was ridiculous, and the only option was to try to utterly ignore them. On recruitable NPCs, I would like more, and with deeper interactions. Greedy, I know. One of the reasons the BG games have so high replayability is the many recruitable NPCs, and party interactions that comes with different makeups. Also, for the love of Eothas, get on top of bugs much sooner. I bought the game over a year after release, and there are still some fairly serious bugs in the game. I know that a lot of releases use their customers as beta testers, which made it all the more disappointing that it was much the same for PoE, which was Kickstarted and didn't have a publisher breathing down their necks with threats of water boarding.

Really like "Defender" modal on my tank (Eder), and usually he's able to keep quite a few guys busy with that. If the OP doesn't have that, maybe respec and give it a shot. Quite useful. IIRC, even with Chaotic Commands, the brain eaters could punch through with natural 20s. It certainly helped a great deal though, plus/or Berserk or whatever it was called. They always gave me a fright though, because it was always such a pain to beat them. Vampires and their level drain was horrible too (and it's tempting to say the worst was having to re-do spells all the bloody time after getting your levels back), but the worst was a certain demon in a certain basement. Wall of summons and hope for the best. Currently I'm playing without a Priest, so that limits my options a bit, and don't have the expansions either, meaning lower levels and surely lots of great equipment I can't get my hands on. Naturally I tried different tactics and approaches against those damn Gwlas, but it's hard to contain them when they can paralyse your entire party and teleport at will. I just gave up for the time being, and will try again later when we are topped up at level 12. We were level 10 so a pretty hard bunch, but they still tore through us. Challenge is good, don't get me wrong, most combat in the game can be won on autopilot after all, but I've always despised teleporting enemies, so that's part of it.

One of the things I didn't like all that much about BG2 was that there weren't many wilderness areas. It was really interesting to wander through some of these in BG1, and you met quite a few people there too, with quests and other stuff going on. PoE had a good balance here tbh, though there could have been more quests in the 'wilderness' areas, at least for my taste. It would have given us some more options for taking a break from Defiance Bay to go elsewhere for a little while. I felt the pacing in the early part of the game was better, and it got a bit overwhelming or messy once in Defiance Bay. I was really excited when getting there the first time, imagining maybe it would be like getting to Baldur's Gate. Although BG city could be pretty overwhelming and confusing too (with a million buildings), Defiance Bay simply didn't work as well. A minor point maybe, but for such a big-ish city, it's odd that it's only possible to recruit one companion there. Most of the districts don't have all that much going on either, mostly just a few buildings with liberal littering of backer NPCs. Perhaps we shouldn't look back to BG so much, but it's such an easy thing to do since those games worked so marvellously well. Also, cake is awesome!

When I've played (on Hard now) the enemies have mostly focused on my tank and off-tank (the fighter and paladin companions), but especially the bastards that can teleport are causing all sorts of issues. In a certain deep dungeon I came across a whole pack of cheat gwlas yesterday, and they tore us to pieces, three times. BOOM, and the whole party is paralysed, and they're teleporting this way and that, and quickly knocking out the weaker guys, like a mage and ranger. Not cool. Seem to have 1000 HP each too. It certainly adds difficulty, but mostly it just adds frustration I think. It hasn't been a big problem for me though, as the enemies mostly are funneled into my tank and off-tank. But take absurdly OP abilties, teleport at will, and a truckload of enemies, and you're quickly in totally out of control combat situation. If this is something you see quite often, I can certainly see the frustration, because I got a strong urge to punch the screen yesterday. Reminded me of those boundlessly frustrating intelligence draining enemies in BG2, that it was nigh on impossible to defend against.

That will differ a degree from person to person, but with more to choose from, more people are likely to find somebody they like. Then you have people like me who like to experience them all, over several playthroughs. Especially if they have very different outlooks on life, like generally the traditional good/evil separation. With the options we have now, I'm unlikely to ever play a game of PoE without taking Eder, because he's a very capable tank (and the only fighter). But I'd prefer to have more options, but also have the companions deeper integrated into the game, with more integration and party banter. Bigger or more quests would be grand too. Essentially what I'd like is to take PoE and build on it. The base is very good, so I don't see a particular need to throw it out and start anew.

Maybe it's being greedy, but one of the reasons I want more companions with deeper interaction/integration is that it improves replay value. I've used different characters in my 2nd go through PoE from the first, and it's different and interesting (though trying to beat a pack of cheat gwlas without a priest is a pain in the neck!). If you for instance only have 5 possible companions in a 6-party game, that means you will more or less have a similar experience every time through the game. In PoE there were many times I wanted to continue talking to the companions about their background and whatnot, but it wasn't an option. I want more of that, but also more companions to recruit and interact with.

If PoE2 is intended for a different crowd, then I'd be less interested in it. Maybe not interested in it at all. The reason I bought this game is precisely because it is similar to the good old classics. That is what I want. Not another Dragon Age: Turds with staffs (and awesome buttons). I don't want them to re-invent the wheel. What we have works well. They created a very interesting game world, where they can also play around with philosophy and deeper things than "kill the big bad guy". I'd be more interested in innovation here (the story and gameworld), while improving on some of the things that didn't work so well in PoE. I'd be extremely disappointed if they after basically getting a second life with the Kickstarter, decided to say screw those guys, we'll toss out everything and start anew, aiming to go after the big crowds. We know what that means, and it's not higher quality games.

Damnit. A little later, and it happened again This was on a lower floor of the Endless Paths, so maybe it re-activates when you come to a new area after loading the save? Just a thought. This time Aloth didn't even get off his Chill Fog. As soon as combat starts, Grieving Mother is instantly stunned. http://i.imgur.com/NirESYP.jpg