Hulk'O'Saurus

Yeah, how's it going? Just wondering whether performance has improved at all with patches? For the most part the game was ok when I was playing it, but I do remember areas where frames would drop. Busy battles, large districts, ect.,ect. I played the game when it came out, haven't been in touch since.

I am ok with the narrator. There should have been an option to silence her in the game, though. On the vocabulary issue I disagree 101%. Because English is the language with the most words out there and in every case the first meaning of the word conveys something quite particular. I understand that most writers and critics would settle for usage of simpler language, which is quite ok with the flow of meaning in English. On the other hand, it is refreshing to learn some new words and listen to some unusual narrative.

Voted wizard. They have kind of ****ty spells to do damage, but their afflictions are great, plus you can always use weapons to finish them off. I just think that wizzard has the easiest time disabling hordes of enemies at once, despite their last tier of spells.

Let both dragons go. Don't remember seeing either of them again. To be honest, I would always do that if I find myself in the watcher's shoes. You don't just attack a dragon, right? Well... in easy poe2, apparently, you always do.

The Dyrwoodan ship was renamed to 'The Watcher of the Sea.' My only other ship to sail was a fully upgarded galleon to go into the end-game--'The Watcher of the Storm.'

My Watcher! Beware!

I remember Serafen being so powerful that he was blowing my entire backline in a single Wild Mind surge...

I think PoE and PoE2 will always be an acquired taste for a lot of people and less so for others. Some just ease into these games quicker than most. I say that because I will come back to PoE2 after some time, find more things, and like the game more than I did when playing it the first time. The same thing happened with PoE. I also took quite some time off before writing this to let memory sort out which of the things stood out to me. And also, I will talk about these things in the order I thought about them when deciding to post this. Right from the bat I can tell you that I really liked how the old companions had evolved. Too bad their quests were so short... but perhaps they didn't want to bore the lot of us with too much reading... or maybe pay too much for voice acting. Who knows? I wouldn't mind more reading, though. Wasn't that enthusiastic on full voice acting, too. They could have saved a bit of gold for something else. Was there a guy that wanted to fly in the other gods' faces?... Think there was... Ah, yes. A giant statue I used to gawk every detail at when strolling down the spider infested cellar of my keep. It is very important for a video game to establish SOME background of the main playable character simply because if we are let to imagine too much about our characters, we would end up being disappointed. 'The keep was destroyed' bit was done ok. But I just couldn't get the vibe of the giant, unstoppable, soul-sucking statue, marching through the middle of the ocean too much. Think there is a clash in this game's (almost) open world design and main quest. I think Eothas' persona should have been exhibited more often for shorter periods. More of the various locations you visit having smaller bits of info, that you piece together the more you look around. Maybe have (short) conversations with each of the gods here and there, with some degree of optional shenanigans for the ending? Speaking of the gods, I am quite positive about how they appear in the game. I think here they built upon the first one well. There really is no surprise when they start bickering about and I think that's exactly the way they should act. Quite pleased with their personalities, too. In the same vein of thinking, the companions' quests were kind of short, but again, like in the first one, they served more of an expositional role to talk to you about the world you live in. But since this is a rambling on how the game made me feel, I wished there were longer, harder, with more story content, companion quests. Speaking of harder... not only is this game way too easy for it's own good. The formula it uses does not utilise the resources well enough. There are way too many unique items and not enough various fights to test them out. Even if there is a fight that you think might be difficult, a single spell turns that into a cake walk. The only fight that came close to what the fights in this game should have been was the Guardian of Uknowhere. I don't mind the absence of dungeon crawling. Come to think of it, without proper per rest mechanic, dungeon crawling becomes useless. Why? Because you test yourself versus the game with the amount of rests you need to do. No per rest mechanic, no need for dungeon crawling. What we have instead are instanced locations with singular encounters. For instance, in one I could toss a grenade at a Naga totem during a lithographic sequence before the fight. During another one I needed to fight the Fampyrs in their cave somewhere to the north-west. That one I liked, because two of my backline were charmed and I needed to paralyse them, because otherwise Maia would have stun-locked the Watcher with her arbalest(broken modal, imho). Thinking about the first one, I wish the game had more punishing lithographic sequences where you really go--Damn! How will I get out of that?! Once, Eder slipped a rope while crossing a chasm, him being top athletics in the team. The game wants to hold your hand so much that my Watcher, a hairy Orlan with almost sub-ten might, reached for him and managed to grab him, while holding himself to the rope with one arm, and in doing so Eder's shoulder got wrenched for some minor injury that you couldn't possibly care about, because he still stun-locks everything with mule kicks, aoe two handed weapon and good attack speed. The second fight I mention because it was one of the very few that broke the monotony the game quickly settled for. Earlier I wrote about the Guardian fight and how more needed to be like it. The instanced location mechanic, together with more singular, but much tougher encounters, with some of them having punishing lithographic sequences is what this game should have had. Challenging you more. Hell... could even do some rng for some of the lithographics. Imagine a fight in PoE2 where you had to aim cannons at a dragon. Only your strongest team members can move the cannons, and only those with good mechanics can do decent damage with them. But in the mean time there are small critters swarming the place, trying to interrupt you. Take too much time, the dragon flies away. Sorry, no loot. Things like that are needed in this game. There are a bit too many generic and copy pasted mobs around and a bit too much hand-holding. Something similar applies for the ship shenanigans. You should have been able to gather more water and food the higher your survival skill is, while food and water being an ACTUAL thing to worry about during long sailing times. Sailing wasn't easy back then and they do it some justice with proper writing, but it has no impact on gameplay. A mutiny from the crew should bring you very close to game over. But no, you can drive your ship by blowing mouth into it's sails. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On a general note, I did enjoy the game. There is a lot more colour in this one, for instance. The music I absolutely adored. The writing is still very coherent, just shorter--to appeal to more people. All in all, I think that as a piece of art PoE2 is VERY GOOD(VERI GUD!). I wouldn't have been able to finish it if I didn't care about my Watcher and the world he lives in. Graphically very pleasing environments, most of which I can recall right now. My main personal issues come from the main plot not being too well integrated into the game's semi-open world, and the excessive hand holding at top difficulty.

My ending had Xoti and Eder become really good friends because the Watcher helped her overcome some of her issues, after which she went on a killing spree in the south of the Deadfire.

If that isn't the most boring thing, though :D

You becoming the next Watcher of Caed Nua is part of the general story line and cannot be ignored. You can leave your keep in a state of disrepair, though, if you truly wish to impersonate the wandering vagrant of yore. Though, methinks, you can also roleplay the vagrant to lord scenario, too.

It's how effective your currently selected type of attack vs their deffence will be. It's hit chance. You can also deduce your crit chance with it.

Ugh... I don't know, man. I think it might be a subjective thing. Honestly, I really can't dig what you're at with this post--pausing works for me just like it does in PoE. And I don't mind the micromanagement either. That said, I don't use any AI behaviour other than the fighter aggressive because they just spam the knock down. Then again, I am a MOBA player and for me pausing to reassess the combat every second is not an issue; I actually enjoy it, so it might be that.

With the amounts of Fortitude available to the baddies, I really dont think Chill Fog is that good... Ryngrim's Enervating Terror, though... It trivializes the majority of the encounters. But I don't mind it too much. I think it's just a matter of time for these things to get put into place. It is a single player game after all and not a moba.

It just doesn't trigger until you do. So you can ignore it as long as you like.

Gee... I can't really say anything else than, why not try PotD and Trial of Iron?

Personally, the game left me with a very strong impression that the machines have area of effect(lol) and they needed them over all of Engwith(modern Dyrwood and Eir Glanfath) in order to get maximum efficiency... Now we just need the killer robots... err, vessels.

We don't know how to make a dragon retreat and I was thinking about offering one of 'em to join the keep for extra deffence... Silly me.

Just evil without any reason is kind of bland. A sentient/living item, with drives of it's own, trying to use the main character because otherwise it cannot fulfil it's agenda(because it/he/she cannot move) is a decent start. You can get involved and uncover more or you kinda do something and then the artefact goes away with just some reward left behind.

You could easily respect that.

Wondering if the +20 accuracy vs beast works on scrolls of paralysis...

Try having a lot of reflex for the Faithful. They cast fire storm thingy on top of their own. If you paralyse them it crits. Decent damage. For Brynlod I actually picked up a fight in the open without knowing about the mages, so I ended up fighting half the team... I swear I didn't know they wouldn't come. But oh well.

I am down with couple of wizards. Why? Dunno. Think it would be cool, though.

Paralysis scrolls till they puke. It works with most encounters. You can combine with prayer against imprisonment scrolls for easier targeting. Very effective in the bog dragons fight. You could have a scout character to repeatedly try the tough encounters out until you get the best strategy or at least until you get their lowest defence. All in all, triple crown solo is just a lot of foot work... don't really think it adds anything meaningful to the game.

I thought about making this a sort of partial strategy guide included with a rogue build, but in the end I have different things to say about that run. I've done it on PotD without Trial of Iron on because I wanted to see how much of the game I could explore and do in this mode, and also because the mechanics of the game are still so shaky when it comes to stealth and avoiding killing things. I think it's a shame and a missed opportunity, because there were very fun parts like Cliaban Rilag level 2, for instance, and very frustrating parts... like Cliaban Rilag level 1 last room. Shadowing Beyond is a good friend, and you can replenish them by respecing, though people may disagree on how valid this is, even though one can RP around this--by paying money for scout intel, for instance. The levels of stealth you need are abnormal. Stealth level 17 wasn't enough to sneak safely around the Battery Sirens at Durgan's and level 13 wasn't enough to do it safely around the spores in Cliaban Rilag. The game also forces you out of stealth in scripted situations, such as the drake at Endless Paths level 5, and also in some cases it doesn't end combat in some of those scenarios, even though the enemies are not pursuing you - again, Endless Paths level 5 is an example. Sometimes your defeated enemies counter goes up, even though you haven't even scratched a bug, or a spider... or Maerwald for that matter, like in the case of... Maerwald, where you can aggravate a pack of angry spiders to kill him without you having to lift a finger. In the case of the slavers at WM1 you can finish the slave orlan's quest without killing anyone by bringing in a pack of angry lagufaeth on top of the slavers and then attacking the slavers one by one in combat in order to keep the combat going on, otherwise the combat ends, and each party just leaves. Generally speaking, the game shows little respect for sneaky characters, and sometimes doesn't even anticipate you trying not to kill much. Like getting to looters at Madhmr Bridge without killing the two who are on post(you can do that by pulling them away with a potion of fleet feet), they still say that they heard fighting and your conversation options are still situated around you killing them. At Trygil's shop he attacks you, even though you've made peace with the Skaenites... also the game keeps you in combat there, even though no body is attacking anybody. You also quite often need to play tag with the enemies while in Shadowing Beyong, because they still chase you while you're invisible, so you need to touch them to make them go away. It's surprising how much polish PoE is lacking in this regard. Durgan's Battery has got an interesting design... you can actually make it to the last room - I suspect with stealth level 18 or 19 - without killing anything, though I ran out of patience trying, plus I don't know if there is any way not to fight the angry spirit dwarves. In comparison, Act 1 and 2 allow you a bit more freedom in this regard because you can bargain and flip sides more often. At one point at Durgan's, enemies attack you while you're sneaking and no body is spotting you, locking you out of a room full of loot, though not critical for the plot. At the end I sort of gave up and finished the game at level 11, at which point Thaos wasn't much of a challenge. Some parts of the game were alright, some were fun, some were atrocious and some showed complete lack of developer foresight. I suppose you can finish the favour of the gods by killing one or two things only, though I am not sure, because I just got the cat... which is killing 7 things, if memory serves. The dragon, if the little drake doesn't chase you, should count for one - but like I said - I don't know. I am pretty sure you can do the two of the White Marches, but you need to really plan your rests. I included the transition to WM1 and the passing out of the watcher at the end of act 2 into my rest count, though I didn't plan those out. So, I sort of ran out of rests and couldn't continue. And there you have it... some thoughts on pacifist less than ten rests run.