AeonsLegend

On Veteran mode and I'm picking fights 5 levels above me now. Feels about right. Some are still too easy.

Can't imagine that this is intentional, but stunning surge states it refunds the cost (2 Mortification) if it crits. And it does. Now if you use dual wielding the cost is "refunded" twice. So if I had 2 Mortification left, I use stunning blow with stunning surge and get double crit, I will end up with 4 Mortification. This means that with good accuracy you actually can spam your abilities because you can always build up more Mortification for free.

In 1.0: no, anyone can equip once everything is unlocked. Not sure about 1.1, but I imagine it hasn't changed. I just completed the quest. Perhaps you need to bind it and complete the first 3 requirements untill modwyr tells you where to go and then that person shows up. That's what I did. The sword shows more requirements after telling you where to go, but I just went to Dunnage and then she was there so I could turn Modwyr into a sword for everyone. Sword works the same as in prior patches.

So it went from being a useful buff to my monk to being utterly useless in PoE II... great

Shields are so unnecessary with all the free stats you get. At level 20 end game vs last enemies in the game they miss you more than hit you even without equipment.

How much harder is this than Veteran mode? Because I clear the area in under a minute on Veteran with no one even close to going down. In my first playthrough I did this on Veteran also, but with only Xoti, because I had Eder sacrificed in PoE I. It was challenging, but far from impossible.

Not my experience. Perhaps they are squishier, but they're not supposed to be front liners anyway. At least they're no longer wounded when they revive. I mean people complained about them in PoE I as well and they did their part fairly well. I mean you get a free permanent summon. Sure, they're not full party member, but that would be stupidly overpowered.

I thought Witcher 3 did excellent job marrying open world with storytelling. While your goal was to find Ciri it was never that urgent, even at certain point giving you a story reason to not find her, and do the side stuff. Even to go further, I would say Witcher 3 storytelling improved by use of open world giving you more context to the place you spend your time in. Another example of great open world game is Fallout:NV, which simply doesn't really have urgent main quest. And 1st two Fallouts which give you McGuffin to find and let you discover wasteland on your own. To be completely honest though. I lost track of what I was doing in the Witcher 3 as well. So no, that's not an excellent job. It does slowly feed you side quests unlike Bethesda and PoEII where having over 20-30 side quests active is not unique. So I guess that's a plus in these types of environments. I have not played Fallout New Vegas, but my wife has many many times and she's not able to tell me what it is about. So I'm not sure how well implemented that story is either.

You mean you have to walk around a corner to see what is there. That is so unrealistic.

The issue with all Open world games: main story progression. Fallout 3: wait what was I doing again? Water? I dunno I'm getting a new penthouse appartment and blowing up megaton. Fallout 4: Give me back my baby!!!!! ..... ohhhhhh let's build a town and some crops and help some idiots I've never met before build a bed, because you know, they can't do it themselves. Skyrim: I don't even remember the story here. All I remember is that after I did all side quests in the game, built a bathouse with hot chicks in it I went ahead and killed a dragon in two hits and then the credits rolled.

Oh but you were making a comparison and you are doing it again in your reply just now. You are saying that people generally don't care about difficulty because <your Torment example>. To which I replied that Torment didn't have a difficulty issue because it was evenly difficult all the way. It doesn't matter that Torment wasn't difficult to begin with. It's about consistency. If Torment became easier as the game progressed then people would have complained about that. Not many people complained about the difficulty at the start of PoE II. People have generally complained about the difficulty further into the game and this is due to the points I explained earlier. Open world and levelling system. Things that are completely different from how Torment was set up.

In modern game design it's "for people who actually like RPGs / combat". No. Just no. RPGs can be fun without a high difficulty, heck story quality and game difficulty are not linked. Combat can also be fun without being masochistic. Don't conflate your taste with everyone's standard of fun. Though I am of the opinion that challenging gameplay can often enhance a story, I agree here. Heck, Planescape: Torment is hardly a very challenging game yet there are several in this forum (as shown by this poll I made a few months back for example) who consider it one of the greatest RPGs ever. I don't think the people who take part in the official forum for a developer dedicated primarily on the development of RPGs are not gonna be people who don't "actually like RPGs". Combat, now, that is a very different thing - but again, taking Torment's example above, combat isn't necessarily what RPG fans look at in their RPGs. That's actually a poor comparison. Planescape Torment isn't an open world game. It's difficulty also doesn't go up or down much any way you play it. The issue with POEII is, like with Skyrim, Fallout 3/4 and Dragons Dogma, that you can level yourself to crazy heights and even with level scaling you will overpower your enemy. It's the levelling system that is to blame together with the choice to go open world. Nothing else. This takes the fun out of the game. Planescape doesn't have you completely overpower your enemy, the difficulty remains more or less the same. Whether you find it challenging is a different topic altogether.

I've been choosing fights that had 2-3 skulls and so far found some of them reasonably challenging. Nothing fancy. Anything that is my level gets evaporated pretty fast.

I wish I could use the tab key in real life to see who's worth my time.

Favorite or best?

ok, makes no sense. Whatever.

So the wiki states and other greatswords with it that their base damage should be 12-20. I reforged the greatsword, but the base damage is 9-15. My fine normal sword does more damage per hit than this exceptional greatsword. What gives?

I don't want to get involved in this topic, but claiming PotD players aren't a minority... lol. Sure, each and every player wants to play on the highest difficulty setting. Which planet were you from again?

Does anyone know if this is still an issue?

No, I play fullscreen and get the problem too. It never happened before the 1.1 patch. Have you tried windowed mode? I think he's implying that you get the issue if you play fullscreen. Because I don't get this issue and I play windowed.

Too bad he's like the other sidekicks and loses that spunk when he joins.

I got Windows 10 1803 with latest updates. Windowed mode at full HD res and settings at high (default). I also play with unity console active. Adding again that I never get a crash when I quit.

Somehow killing faction members will only give you a minor rep loss which is hardly noticable.

Multiclassing not worth it? That depends on the class. Or your class. Eder: (If you don't want to pick a rogue for yourself you can multiclass him with rogue, he will still be as tanky as ever, but has more DPS and more skills to complement your party) Xoti: (Priest? There is no value to go pure, adding monk makes her more versatile. You could even put her as a decent frontline then if you want.) Aloth: Pure wizard Always Serafen: Hm, not sure. cipher is not that strong and doen't really suffer from multiclass. But I'm not really convinced on combining cipher with barbarian either. Pallegina: Paladin/fighter and she'll be twice as tanky with more dps. Maia: I played her both as ranger/rogue and ranger/wizard. Not sure on the last one, but whatever. She will have more damage with both as opposed to going pure ranger. Tekehu: unsure. I played him as druid pure, but got bored of him and he wasn't really that strong. Will try multi next. Fassina: she can't use evocation so I don't see a reason to go pure wizard. Konstanten: Howler is very good, but could go pure chanter. Mirke: monk/rogue. Damn that dps. Ydwin: either pure cipher but cipher / rogue would be better because of her crappy stats.

Well in the previous patch I crashed every time I had an untimely death (saying no to Berath on my first game and a little bit further when you say DO IT to Rymrgand). The Gods are so strong that they not only kill my PC, but also my game. I don't recall any Gods from any other game to have that much force.