r2d23

Boeroer, DR <3: Curious ideas about druid builds. What exactly affects shapeshifting, both in positive and negative way? What would you recommend to change in such build if it goes solo, compared to builds posted here on the forum? demeisen: Thanks, all good observations. I still consider a compromise between giving enemies decent AI and more staying power to be a good solution to the difficulty problem. No one would spend too much time working on AI for reasons that you've pointed out. However, If the enemies can live longer, they have more opportunities to show off whatever AI that they have. Of course, a knowledgeable player can still overcome that. Continuous scaling might be annoying, but the game world of PoE is large enough to provide variety at a certain stage of the game without loosing the ability to partition the game into clusters of areas that are easier and tougher, respectively. E.g., Defiance Bay and its surrounding areas would be an example of the former and Dyrford and its surroundings - of the latter. Maybe throw in a couple of more challenging fights into the mix in Defiance Bay for some variety and less linearity. What is definitely annoying is addition of numerous "trash" monsters to the majority of encounters when playing on PotD. It lengthens the game and makes it more tedious without necessarily adding anything to the tactical depth and actual difficulty. It's fun whet it happens maybe a couple of times as a themed encounter, where party has to fight off waves of enemies. Overall, I have realised after playing PoE some more that it is not really about sustained tactical difficulty. Rather, about finding a good synergy between your characters' talents and abilities that allows to conquer even tougher encounters with relative ease. It is obvious that developers have spent lots of time considering various combinations and allowed players like Boeroer who possess an in-depth knowledge of game mechanics come up with curious and novel builds and party compositions.

How can druid over-DPS opponents in melee? Spiritshift form is rather short-lived in duration and only suitable for quick burst damage, I imagine. And druid does not possess as many spells that improve melee performance of the character unlike wizard. Dr <3, I've just read your cold-based wizard build, very intriguing. I've noticed low dexterity, doesn't it impair the ability to cast spells quickly? How do you deal with that early on, before DAoM and various items? I've noticed you didn't mention cipher in your analysis. Any experience with that class in solo?

So, barb won't be able to solo the entirety of available encounters, am I right? I wonder if someone has successful experience with that. As for HoF, I saw a video of a fight made by someone on youtube, barb fighting the magran's faithful, pretty impressive. Shame that nobody writes more of the early stages in their solo endeavours. It's much more interesting to know how to get to high levels. When you already high up there, you have plenty of opportunities and equipment (with free re-specking) to experiment and figure things out. As for ciphers, that's what I thought about ranged ciphers when I read a write up about 2.03 solo run with a ranger on reddit. Cipher can do a gun-cycling style of combat at least as well, quickly gain large amounts of focus, then start charming monsters to shift the advantage in his favour. Since one can re-train a character whenever he wants to, it is possible to adjust the build for specific encounters, maybe even going into melee when the need arises (e.g., close quarter combat without much room for manoeuvring). I haven't given it more thought, but it's something that might work in theory.

Very interesting. Can you clarify more on how do you approach earlier stages of the game with such character?

I did some reading on solo play in PoE and curious about some things I haven't found answers to. 1) is there a class that can solo all the game, completionist style (i.e. "the ultimate" challenge, not necessarily with ToI aiming for the achievement itself, just the fact of doing everything)? It is my understanding is that paladins, rangers, chanters are more or less proven to do so. 2) there's no public proof of somebody doing the aforementioned with ciphers or druids. Are these classes somehow unsuited for solo play? Nobody writes much barbarians or fighters either, for that matter. 3) is there a class that can relatively safely dispose of packs of mobs solo without resorting to kiting or splitting enemies on regular basis?

I have no doubt that the game can be broken. What is the point? I am no expert in the game and don't intend to be. I want to do one, maybe two complete playthroughs while enjoying a reasonable challenge. It felt fun and enjoyable up to a point where the party had started outpace the monsters in levels. Then it got boring. If changes in XP gain will compensate for this issue somewhat, I'll be happy.

Perhaps I am still curious to see how the XP tweak affects the overall difficulty and progress. I am planning a play-through with a melee-heavy party that has no dedicated casters. This, together with the aforementioned tweak to required per-level XP gains, should provide an interesting challenge. I expect I will have to rely on food, potions, scrolls, per-encounter abilities and so on more in order to thrive. Maybe also explore how to adapt equipment (DR on armours and slaying enchantments on weapons) to encounters better. I am curious until what point in the game this kind of micromanagement would actually matter. I also aim at using all the in-game companions, substituting hired adventurers with the same stats until a respective NPC becomes available.

The key change I find enjoyable in IA is that it simply gives more staying power to the enemies. I'd love to see something like that in PoE on PotD. The amount of enemies and their AI is fine with me. But when they don't have staying power it doesn't matter if they are dangerous and intelligent, you simply cut through the opposition too quickly. In IA, even a well-balanced party consisting of three dedicated fighters that progress from focus on high armour class early on to high damage resistance later, one priest and two arcane casters will have to deal with enemies that have staying power (dragons, golems, powerful skeletons, etc.). You have many advantages and variety of tactical instruments at your disposal but they never allow you to cut down through the enemies in 30 seconds. What I like about PoE is that its combat system has many opportunities for discovering tactical approaches. Positioning, flanking, variety in application of AoE spells, synergy between characters' abilities and so on. I am not a big fan on "house rules" and self-imposed limitations (except for above-mentioned hit & run and similar strategies) but I was considering trying out a party composition that would abandon classical approach (two indestructible tanks, two insane DPS, two crowd control casters) and force to apply more creative thinking. Maybe a DPS-oriented melee party without dedicated tanks, CC and AoE DPS casters, thinking Paladins, Monks, Barbarians, Priests, Rogues, Rangers, Ciphers. Or vice-versa, a full caster party without dedicated melee classes. This will not add difficulty but would definitely add variability. Now I only need to figure out how to do the XP reduction without hacking the dlls. PS (off-topic): is there an alternative skin or theme for the forums? Reading white text on dark background is incredibly straining on one's eyes. I end up always using the print version. EDIT: turns out, I was mistaken. The Mac version of the game ships with the same DLLs and editing them scales the required amounts of experience for level ups. This is nice, I will ponder on another walkthrough with this. For those who are interested, the files are located at Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/Pillars of Eternity/PillarsOfEternity.app/Contents/Data/Managed in your home directory. I recommend using iHex editor, it's free and straight-forward.

Thank you for the suggestion. However, I am playing on Mac OS X and therefore cannot locate files that are specified in the thread, they are platform-dependent. I doubt that this solution will work in my case.

Point take on the expert mode. I might give it another try if I decide to do another run (no ToI this time). I did actually play my current game on expert until I turned it off somewhere early in act 2. So you're saying that whether I enter White March now (at 10th level) or later, I won't find any challenge in either case?

Is there a class that could solo the game right from the start, without the need to rely on "cheesy" tactics (running around, splitting groups of mobs, kiting, etc.) or avoid any encounters at all? Indeed. I tend to approach encounters without taking too much risk no matter what. Although sometimes it feels like a waste of time because you can steamroll through everything. Well, it's no surprise that the AI can be broken with stunts like that Shame that the game isn't modder-friendly. Somebody surely would have polished the AI and difficulty a little bit. I am not a big fan of achievements, to be honest. One reason I don't like Triple Crown is that it includes Expert mode in it. It feels more like a set of crutches rather than an honest improvement of challenge. I don't mind "no maim" or "stash restriction" options, I have them both enabled in my game. Not showing defences is useless because I can go into the journal and look up a creature's record if I need to and things such as comparison of enemy's stats to your char's combat power are only truly needed when your char can't hit or deal any damage. You have two auto-pause options for that and they fire pretty often and not only when the enemy is completely impenetrable, far from it. As for not showing the radius of spells and so on, it's ridiculous. There's no way to make a reasonable decision from information on ranges and radiuses on whether or not the spell would hit you that is not a simple guess. I imagine that with this option turned on, many players would opt for being more defensive and using FoE spells primarily (unless they do the math beforehand and know for sure that a particular AoE spell will not affect the party in a serious manner). The feature limits player's tactical arsenal by introducing extra guesswork, and I don't like that I came to the same conclusion with the story companions, having played a couple of times the initial segment with them. But wouldn't playing four-man team make it easier due to faster leveling?

I am a bit unsure about what's hidden behind those *-s in your sentence, but the comment still doesn't sound very encouraging True, but mods like SCS and Improved Anvil makes you think and spend time on each fight even if you know game mechanics. The latter mod more so, but it's quite controversial in the community, many feel it makes the game ridiculously difficult, which is right up my alley That's why I was kinda sad to see such drop in difficulty in PoE. Does the mod you pseak of remove Spell Immunities? If not I stand by what I said about SCS as soon as you have spell Immunity Abjuration the game just gets ridiculously easy especially when you get even more spells to strengthen that base like spell trap and Timestop. No encounter in all Poe is as easy as a fully prebuffed mage class in Baldur's Gate. No, it doesn't remove the spell immunities. But it revamps the combat system rather heavily, rendering many of the usual crutches such as the cloud and unconsciousness-inducing spells quite ineffective. You employ a lot of spell protections and so do the enemies. There's a nice variety to encounters as well. Sometimes you have to outlast a tough enemy (dragon fights are notable examples, they are truly epic), sometimes the enemy has the ability to de-buff you so you have to think on how to keep the buffs running as part of your strategy. Quite diverse and fun. By the way, I find the fact that one can't pre-buff the party in PoE before combat (with exception of food, maybe) quite refreshing if not somewhat illogical. It is both a blessing and a curse however. On one hand you have to think about protecting your party and setting up the battlefield so that it works in your favour. On the other hand it reduces the fighting power of the enemy for he might not get the chance to get his buffs running at all. Good point about Go But I'm rather old school and believe that games like chess and go should be played in real life, with a real opponent. After playing chess a lot in my youth I could never bring myself to playing it online or with a computer. It just doesn't feel the same. Not sure I agree on the AI issue, though. I do believe that it's possible to make the game challenging without making it easier. It does require more time and feedback to do so however, which is why it is not very realistic to expect from a computer game (at least, the "vanilla" version, not refined further by enthusiasts), with a limited budget, a deadline and a diverse audience.

Thanks for your replies! True, but mods like SCS and Improved Anvil makes you think and spend time on each fight even if you know game mechanics. The latter mod more so, but it's quite controversial in the community, many feel it makes the game ridiculously difficult, which is right up my alley That's why I was kinda sad to see such drop in difficulty in PoE. I've considered going with lesser amount of party members but it feels like a bit of a self-imposed crutch to me. I am not a big fan of those. As for solo, I never liked it very much. There isn't as much tactics in it, in my opinion, as in party gameplay. Then there's lots of stuff that I feel very negative about: sneaking around, kiting, splitting groups of mobs. Or, in case of a sturdier class, it would just take forever in each battle. I like long battles when they are challenging, not boring and tedious. Hope nobody takes it the wrong way, it's a good way to challenge oneself, just no really the way I prefer. Thanks for the tip. I guess I might as well continue my current run and see what the game has left in stock for me. Either way, it'll end sooner or later since it's trial of iron Yeah, paralyze and such are nasty things. I have just scouted out the first fampyrs on the 8th level of Od Nua and taken some time to think on the best way to approach them. I figured they would do something nasty like charm in a similar manner of BG's vampires. As for IEMod, does it run with the 3.03 version of PoE? It was my understanding that the mod became outdated at a certain point. Would it run on Mac OS X? I don't own a Windows computer, playing on my Mac.

I've been reading forums for quite a long time while I was playing around with PoE. I restarted the game a couple of times to get a good grasp of mechanics and classes, settled up on a party composition, made a decent chunk of progress in the game and I am kind of disappointed in PotD, to be honest. This is a bit long and ranty, so apologies I'm a big fan of BG series and tactical mods for it (specifically, SCS and IA, for those who know what that is). I love the challenge, I enjoy spending time devising a strategy for a hard battle, thinking on my next move, employing auto-pause features heavily. It is normal for me to spend 30-40 minutes to execute a combat encounter even if it takes 2-3 minutes of actual real-time combat. I always play without abusing things like area structure, kiting, hit & run and so on. This is a big issue for an RPG AI which hasn't been resolved yet even today, as it seems, and makes the computer inferior even on a difficulty level such as PotD, with improved enemy stats and larger groups of mobs. I am doing a ToI run (no expert, though, I find it idiotic), very well realising that it might be too risky and I might end up losing and abandoning the game (for I don't have the time to restart complete runs). However, there were very few times when I was in a huge danger of losing my party. I am currently at the end of act 2. All the quests done except for progress with Durance's and Mother's personal quests (I don't use in-game companions). Levels 1-7 of the Od Nua dungeon are completely explored as well. Fire Dragon defeated (it took about 1 minute of real-time combat and 10 minutes with autopause, kinda sad). The party is 10th level. Only the Cliaban Rilag dungeon is left before the animancy hearings and two bounties from the first pack (one of them, the Dweller creature, I am going to do as my next move). After that I'll probably advance the plot enough to finish the act 2, explore one or two more levels of Od Nua and advance to White March. My party is built to be sturdy and resilient with a bit of a bias towards defence, no min-maxing, almost everyone has good Resolve and flat Con, the rest is situational. 1) Darcozzi paladin MC, Orlan (the one with the Will bonus). The class is completely indestructible and doesn't go down no matter what happens, very low maintenance, built completely into defence, provides solid support with heals, suppression of harmful effects, revivals. 2) Chanter, Amaua (the kind with prone defence). Another incredible, low maintenance tank, the party mechanic. Since he doesn't have any spells to cast in the beginning of a fight, he's perfect for summoning stuff from figurines while being engaged in the frontline. Healing passive + veteran's recovery keeps everyone going. At level 9 I took Dragon Thrashed, and it's a game-breaking ability, as many of you are aware. Then there's the White Worms, of course, the Paralyzing chant, the Ogres, etc. 3) Monk, Boreal dwarf. Built as Juggernaut. Kudos to the build author. Incredibly sturdy, very low maintenance, absolute monster even on auto-attack. Has Shod-in-faith, sanguine plate, Chanter with Ancient Memory alongside, keeps standing despite all the wounds. I had an orlan rogue in this slot before the monk, but the rogue died due to my stupidity (got hit by 230 hp worth of damage from a trap in Od Nua). So I took a monk instead and he's so great despite being 1 level behind the rest of the crew. 4) Cipher, ranged, Coastal Amaua. My favourite. Built as ranged maniac, inspired by one of the builds on this forum. I took arms bearer and quick switch. A bit low in terms of defence, but she starts the fight with a sequence of four burst shots (3 from arquebuses and 1 from Persistence bow, at the moment), this gives an insane amount of focus as well as completely taking out one or two enemy casters. Now I can dump whatever I want on the enemy, depending on the situation (beams, domination, stun, raw damage, you name it) and keep shooting. This class is so broken. 5) Priest, moon godlike. Very straight-forward, high might, intelligence and resolve. With axe + shield and heavy armor reaches incredible defence numbers, main role is party buffs, of course. 6) Wizard, pale elf. I was thinking to make this a blasting build, but due to the game being ToI, went for a classic sturdy CC wizard with high Int, Dex and Resolve. The majority of abilities and talents were taken simply to increase the amount and power of the spells. She's great at CC and AoE damage. The game is very easy with this party. I can only remember a couple of notable, difficult encounters: the Sly Cyrdel bounty, the fight with adragans and animats at the 7th level of Od Nua (mostly because of their domination I can't protect my chars from yet; otherwise it would be trivial), ogres at level 3 of Od Nua (somewhat difficult), some encounters in the early game, Forge Knights in Crucible Keep (made trivial when I finally bothered to forge Bulwark against the Elements potions for my party). There was something else, but I can't remember it. My approximate progress was: do all the stuff in the act 1 prior to cleaning out Cad Nua. Only left Raedric and two Forest Lurkers for later. Caed Nua and Mairwald next. Go to the city, do the majority of side quests. Od Nua, levels 1-5 next. Clear out easier areas around the city. Next, Dyrford village, the areas around. Some of the areas such as Fire Dragon area (where all the drakes are) I left for later fearing insurmountable challenge (boy was I wrong). After that steamrolled through Caed Nua 6-7, finished one or two leftover quests in the city and did the Fire Dragon, the poor sod. By the time I got to the harder areas around Dyrford my party was two levels above the monsters, it made most fights easy, if not trivial. This tendency continued from there on. I was expecting heavy usage of scrolls, potions and food but I'd never gotten to that either. There was just no need. I am torn right now. On one hand, I would like to finish the run for it is my understanding that further content, the White March expansion and Act 3, could be scaled up. Does the scaling function well? Would it provide a decent challenge for me? On another hand, I am considering restarting the game, maybe with the default companions. They aren't the same killing machines I've devised for my custom party, so it would make things more interesting. Perhaps, also review my approach to quests. Avoid over-leveling inside the city, maybe do the quests but not report them for huge XPP gains. Right off the bat start exploring Caed Nua and the wilderness areas when the party is still around 5-6th level and does not have too big of an advantage over the monsters. What are your thoughts, dear players?