MortyTheGobbo

I just realized I could upgrade the Hours of st. Rumbaldt to Superb, now that I have killed the sky dragon. Thus getting Overbearing without such a damage disadvantage compared to Tidefall. But I've already used up durgan steel on Tidefall, so I guess I'll stick with it.

I don't get why some people are so opposed to romance, either. They're stories, like any other, in a game where we pick and choose them. We can already take different attitudes towards our companions. Why not add romance and/or sex into the mix? If you don't like them, well, don't pick them. That said, I do hope we can't accidentally end up on a romance path with an NPC. Looking at you here, Kaidan "I can't take a hint" Alenko, but also Jaheira in BG2.

Where are you even getting those numbers from? Here is the list of hirelings you can get. The highest per-day cost is 350. Korgak is 50. The run-off-the-mill ones are 10 coppers per day. That's pocket change.

You're free to disagree, but without an actual counter-argument, it's pretty empty. I have laid out why dragons need minions in order to be threatening. Can you do the same for your case? Yeah, I get the design reason, but unless there's a storyline reason why the dragon has an army hanging out with him (like Xaurips worshiping him), it still feels excessive. If it's impossible to come up with more creative boss encounters, then how about an option for the player to do something (stealth or quest) to get the dragon alone? People who beat up the dragon and his minions together can get a shiny Steam medal or something, whereas us crafty dragon-slayers can do the logical thing and corner him alone. Define "more creative". How would you make dragons more threatening without minions? If you gave players the option to remove the minions without fighting, most of them would do that, unless they're the kind who love a challenge. All the dragon fights are optional to begin with. Besides, we've got four dragons in this game. Two have xaurips. Who are kobold knock-offs and worship them. One has smaller dragons. One just has smaller drakes, I think - the Sky Dragon. The only one where it's remotely an issue is the Alpine Dragon. And really... what's so odd about an ice dragon summoning ice spirits and ghosts?

Which is not the case. If all your party members were able to focus on the dragon without distractions, it'd be easy to drop a bunch of debuffs on them, disable them and kill them, as your frontliner occupies their attention. The mobs add an extra layer to the encounters, because you need to take them into account and prevent them from messing up your back line - AKA the people who soften up the dragon for the fighters/shooters to kill them. It's difficult to create a single boss that can stand up to a whole team of people with varied abilities. Not without hideously bloating its health and making it flat-out immune to disabling effects. Which would be out of place in Pillars.

If the dragons didn't have minions, it'd be too easy to gang up on them and stunlock them. BG dragons didn't have flunkies, but Baldur's Gate was a very different game, despite the similarities.

I've never felt the hirelings' cost actually affect me. A few hundred coppers every week or so just doesn't register, really. Even on my first playthrough. The only thing you need to be rolling in cash is to pick up every Fine or better item and sell them all.

You do need to consistently pick a given option for it to go up, yes. There's a hidden counter for it, and different dialogue options increase it by various amounts. You need 25 of those points to reach level 1, and 50 to reach level 2. Here are the numbers on it.

That as may be, they still take the enemies out of the equation for a while, so you can take out the rest. And if not Charm/Dominate, then Mental Binding is an easily-spammable cipher power that targets will, I think.

I started making progress against the Alpine Dragon by using Bulwark Against the Elements and spreading out my party. That limits the mayhem caused by the breath attack. After that, it was basically luck for me, as far as I can tell. If I got lucky enough not to get annihilated, I could actually put a plan in motion and kill the dragon. If Hiravias has level 7 spells, he can cast Weather the Storm, which helps a great deal. That's the Alpine Dragon, mind you. I've never actually tried to kill the Adra one, after my first attempts. And fighting the Alpine Dragon also took many attempts and a lot of frustration. Many attempts that had been going well ended when the dragon suddenly breathed and killed everyone.

If you play on Normal, the game isn't going to get hard enough that using a suboptimal choice is going to be too hard on you.

There will be better choices and worse choices in every RPG. That includes Deadfire, no matter how the developers will try. No game will be perfectly balanced. More importantly, a choice doesn't need to be bad for me to want to change it. Maybe a given option just doesn't work like I hoped it would. Or I just don't like how it feels in actual play. Or I'm undecided about what sort of character I want to play, exactly. In all those cases, a respec option removes a lot of stress. I'd much rather change things than grit my teeth and stick with it. Or meticulously plan my build from beginning to end. Which isn't really an option during a first playthrough.

No. They're perfectly functional for characters who aren't dual-wielders. Particularly since many of them have non-damaging traits anyway.

I do have Wodewys, but I'd need to upgrade it to Exceptional and a lash. And I suppose I could go to Twin Elms and get We Toki. Overbearing is a very nice trait.

I'd give the Devil a crossbow, but my previous run had a crossbow rogue as the MC. Besides, I've never really used a pike. She seems to do alright with it. Eder's using two hammers, Pallegina has the BotEP, Zahua has his fists and Maneha uses Edge of Reason + Sheathed in Autumn. Mostly because those are the best axe and sword I have at the moment.

I think there definitely comes a point of... dragon oversaturation. Dragon-slaying is a noble tradition of heroic fantasy RPGs, but that's why it shouldn't become routine. I also agree that I'd like to see more types of "titanic" monsters.

My plan is to run a Fighter/Rogue. It's a thematic choice more than a mechanical one, but combining the rogue's damage with the fighter's stickiness and toughness should be interesting.

In a classical RPG like Pillars, encumbrance serves no real purpose. It's not going to be restrictive enough to be realistic, but it will be restrictive enough to be annoying. Carrying a dozen weapons and a few suits of armour with you makes no sense, even if you put in an arbitrary number that lets you carry eight suits of full plate, but not nine. If you want a realistic inventory, you need to put in really sharp limits, which clashes with the style of gameplay Pillars offers. So might as well go full hammerspace and not worry about it.

The solution to this particular issue is not to include traps you can't possibly disarm in a given area. This way, not having access to +Mechanics items wouldn't be a problem.

Random loot is a minor annoyance, usually. It becomes a major one in this particular case, since the game delights in using traps that you can't disarm, even if you've been pumping Mechanics since level 1. And valuable hidden items requiring mechanics 10 to find. So every bonus counts. I've never found the gloves myself, though. And there seems to be no reliable source of the scrolls.

I think I can live without consequences of picking the wrong option when making my first character. Or making a character type I've never played before. I enjoy being able to advance my characters without worrying I'll bungle something up if I don't plan it painstakingly. Which, again, isn't really an option without playing the game at least twice or following Internet guides. You don't have to use it if its existence offends you. Also, just to skewer the "choices" chestnut - since it's a level-based game with a set number of abilities and talents you can have at any given time, the choice is there anyway.

I plan to, but I won't be fighting the sky dragon just yet. Until then, Strike Hard will serve me fine. It's not like money is an issue in this game. The reason I didn't just give Eder a two-hander is that my fighter uses a greatsword and Pallegina uses an estoc. And I don't like repetitiveness. On a tangentially-related note, I'm wondering if I could make Devil of Caroc into a ranged rogue... my frontline's getting crowded.

Seems to me like they're trying to prevent endless stacking of the same bonus in a more intuitive way. Clearing up which bonuses stack with which is a worthwhile goal, generally, in a game with as many moving parts as Pillars.

Dual-wielding warhammers sounds pretty good. I had the foresight to buy Shatterstar before Defiance Bay became inaccessible. Now I figure I'll just grab Strike Hard from Twin Elms and I'm all set.

So I'm making my way through a replay of my DPS greatsword fighter. I've learned a great deal since I played Pillars for the first time, so I'm doing much better. My party's mostly doing what I want them to. But I'm not quite sure what to do with Eder. In my last two playthroughs, I've given him a sabre and a shield and put him in the front. But it leaves him without much offensive capacity, except for knockdowns. I was going to give him Blade of the Endless Paths, but I ended up deciding to give it to Pallegina - to maximize accuracy bonuses from her. And the only other marking melee weapon available in this playthrough is a poleaxe I can buy in Salty Mast. I could give it to him, I guess. But maybe there are some other alternatives. Like a way to make him less passive while wielding a shield. Or dual-wielding. What do you all usually give him?