Pus-in-Boots

Care to elaborate?

Not a clear winner among female companions. Maia is refreshingly down to earth and easy-going BUT she's a secretive nationalist with supposedly a long history of rather casual relationships from mission to mission. Xoti on the other hand seems all nice and faithful, and has hots for ya BUT she's kinda Gaun fanatic and all her life revolves around religion. As of men, I think all of them are too flawed to be viable as partners although all of them seem nice enough. Save Aloth who I don't really like very much since the introduction of a reputation system.

Please, not Aloth again! I would like Eder (of course), Ydwin, Vatnir, Rekke or Fassina. Maybe Kana or Hiravias from the first game?

I would say you are being punished for not rotating your companions enough. I guess it is a reason for not leaving your companions on a bench for too long but I'm not convinced it was intentional.

I fell in love with Tyranny and I completed every path and collected every achievement. It captures the vibe that I also felt playing Planescape Torment. The premise (playing as a servant of an evil overlord on a brink of total domination), the world (an Iron Age setting, which is unusual), the characters - everything clicked with me. You have so much freedom in roleplaying and the game world is very reactive. A spell system is brilliant. I love the game for its brevity, too. I like Pillars very much as well, but Eora is much, much closer to the standard fantasy setting so - more boring and cliche (but I appreciate an addition of guns and other post-Medieval elements). Pillars are more stuffed with filler and a little bloated and bland. I find Tyranny's companions more interesting as well. A reputiation system is superb because you don't get punished for your choices. Archons also are more interesting than Eoran pantheon, in my opinion. I could go on and on but I think my opinion is too incoherent already so in conclusion I just can't recommend playing Tyranny enough. A top notch cRPG experience.

Is it now? K. Next time I'll play blindfolded as well. In all honesty, after level 18 I think I probably could. Developers should probably add this options under "normal difficulty" settings then. When a player with almost zero knowledge about game mechanics (that being me, it's hard to get used to MIGHT not being equivalent to STRENGHT after 2 decades of BG2) finishes the game with virtually no deaths, no reloads, no magic spells, no food buffs - on (what is supposed to be) hardest mode, with virtually no manual imput on game's final battles (not talking Dorudugan here) I'd say game difficulty is deeply flawed. Copmpare this with BG, for example. The game keeps you on your toes from day one to ToB (not me, but I've played BG since '98). Fwiw, I did play with Challenges. Sort of - I never ate food aside Fruit (apart spider battle), and pause is unneccecary. I doubt I ever used it. Same as with fleeing from combat, which I tought is impossible anyway. There were two instances where I felt difficulty to be "as it should be" - namely, S,S,S DLC battle against that annoying disintegrate Cyphers and the one where you fight against your own party. Those were spot-on and required tactics. Naturally, the big lizard afterwards was smooth sailing on autoattack mode again... The second one was in Port Maje, the flooded area. That felt great to beat. I doubt I'll be replaying PoEII again any time soon so no triple crown for me. Unless something drastically changes in combat/XP system. And those ship battles. Not to say that PoEII isn't great - it is. I wouldn't bother posting on it if it weren't. You must wear a seriously thick nostalgia gogles. I don't remember BG or BG2 to be anywhere near as hard as PoE or PoE2 in some places, on hardest difficulty setting both. A very, very exagerated judgement on your part. I have a passable knowledge of the mechanics by now and the game is challenging for me (but take note that I don't min-max and use only story companions, not the kind constructed for ease of play). Firkraag, for instance, is a lot more difficult than anything I've seen in Deadfire, or anything I saw in PoE. I know that there are techniques, but I had to come up with some of them myself. That's one interesting thing: I had to discover a way to beat the dragon. There has been no such necessity in these two games (which are very good, don't get me wrong). I disagree. I needed multiple attempts for every dragon present in PoE (I only talked to those encountered in the Deadfire) just as was the case in BG2.

Yeah, BG(2) combat is extremely gimmicky. Once you know what you need, previously hard encounters turn to being trivial.

Is it now? K. Next time I'll play blindfolded as well. In all honesty, after level 18 I think I probably could. Developers should probably add this options under "normal difficulty" settings then. When a player with almost zero knowledge about game mechanics (that being me, it's hard to get used to MIGHT not being equivalent to STRENGHT after 2 decades of BG2) finishes the game with virtually no deaths, no reloads, no magic spells, no food buffs - on (what is supposed to be) hardest mode, with virtually no manual imput on game's final battles (not talking Dorudugan here) I'd say game difficulty is deeply flawed. Copmpare this with BG, for example. The game keeps you on your toes from day one to ToB (not me, but I've played BG since '98). Fwiw, I did play with Challenges. Sort of - I never ate food aside Fruit (apart spider battle), and pause is unneccecary. I doubt I ever used it. Same as with fleeing from combat, which I tought is impossible anyway. There were two instances where I felt difficulty to be "as it should be" - namely, S,S,S DLC battle against that annoying disintegrate Cyphers and the one where you fight against your own party. Those were spot-on and required tactics. Naturally, the big lizard afterwards was smooth sailing on autoattack mode again... The second one was in Port Maje, the flooded area. That felt great to beat. I doubt I'll be replaying PoEII again any time soon so no triple crown for me. Unless something drastically changes in combat/XP system. And those ship battles. Not to say that PoEII isn't great - it is. I wouldn't bother posting on it if it weren't. You must wear a seriously thick nostalgia gogles. I don't remember BG or BG2 to be anywhere near as hard as PoE or PoE2 in some places, on hardest difficulty setting both. A very, very exagerated judgement on your part. I have a passable knowledge of the mechanics by now and the game is challenging for me (but take note that I don't min-max and use only story companions, not the kind constructed for ease of play).

I did what you asked and I really hope there is a way to make the game playable again (because I noticed it isn't just ship combat, the crashes occur on every attemt of transition between a world map and a scripted interaction) because I enjoy it immensely (when it works). Thank you and have a wonderful day.

Hello. My game crashes more often than not when I attempt to enter a ship combat. I can't think of a solution and it seriously lessens my enjoyment. What say?

It is pretty close to the Beast of Winter quality-wise. It's worth it.

Any pointers on how to build a monk/chanter hybrid? Which subclasses, which abilities to pick? I thought nalpazca/skald, although after browsing the fora I conclude that helwalker and trubadour are far more popular choices. In the words of my dear friend Tekehu - what say?

So, I guess it is a similar mechanism as when you decide to strengthen Dyrwood with the hollowborn souls.

My favourite moments are in BoW DLC, particularly the moment I realized that I could convince an undead dragon to commit a suicide by a god.

I had to have it strange because in my first playthrough he was with the Night Market AND was somewhat disillusioned with religion and Eothas. EDIT: Also, he disliked Xoti.

It is a simple statement of intention, but surprisingly profound one. And benevolent as well which is as rare as kith-loving gods amongst the Eoran pantheon. I also like it very much.

I wonder, is it at all possible to convince the magma dragon to attack Eothas?

Maybe this is where the Beyond and In-Between are? Perhaps before the Wheel souls of the deceased freely found a way to a next life, into the nearest newborn? Who knows.

Nah, Durance is referenced once at the beginning of the game, I believe. Zero appearences, even in a segment of one of the DLCs where he could have very well make one.

No Durance-like companions this time around. Discard whoever you like. Every companion has about the same amount of content.

Well, destroying the Wheel completely results in a rather sad ending so because of whatever reason life isn't possible without the Wheel anymore (for the long term at least). I'm curious though what the flow of souls looked like before the Engwithan interference. And why it isn't possible to recreate the original world state after the Wheel is destroyed. It seems there isn't any hint about it. Yet.

I would rate VTC above the Kahanga because of the animancy. I consider the prospect of scientific progress very promising, giving hope for better understanding of the life itself and for dethroning the Eoran pantheon. I'm aware however that animancy can be used for evil, like in the case of Engwithians.

That's true.

Which are?

If I remember correctly, the wand is in a container to the east in the restricted section of the archives.