Hulk'O'Saurus

Got hold of a few bugs and strange interactions. Might as well let people know.

Blunderbusses with ranged DR penetration make sense for cipher. So much the better with quick switch. Though, the best ones you craft yourself, with the exception of Leadspitter, which doesn't have accuracy bonus, but hits the hardest of them all.

It doesn't indicate that the AoE increases with more int. As well as the blind duration. But then again, I can't be certain about that. It's a good weapon, but requires a more specific use.

I got something similar with the Explorer Achievement. Was thinking that I still need to enter a room or a second floor of an inn, then it unlocked when I was just strolling around areas I had already explored. Weird.

'Adds damage to each attack or spell equal to 25 % of the range between your minimal and maximum damage.' Are Obsidian opposed to something like that?...

Thanks. Confident aim's description is a lot more intuitive. I thought it could mean something like that, but it just doesn't explain it in the same way(which is one of the biggest troubles with PoE...). It's a good item, then. I should see if I could fit it somewhere.

Ugh... Sorry. Tried looking this one up, and I still can't figure out what '25 % of damage range guaranteed' means.

If anything, the game shows that nothing is black and white. Even some of the innocents during the Purges were not so innocent.

Newer hardware has issues with good ol' Pillars... Sounds a bit funny. I, too, have got issues when it comes to that, though they are more in the area of fps drop rather than low fps overall. Pillars of Eternity is the only (new(seriously!)) game that does that and refuses to change despite any tweaks I do with the various software tools I have. It's just poor optimization.

Thanks for the post! I did not read through your builds, but I did see that they are all custom, and I do not doubt that they are very powerful. I quickly read through the conclusions. It's only because I'm the type of guy who (perhaps, still) enjoys his party to have weaknesses from that point of perspective. Then again, I barely hit my two hundred hour mark, haven't even entered the White Marches content(though I suppose I will do that later today or tomorrow), and am on my very first Trial of Iron/Tripple Crown run. Also, for some reason, I rarely use more than one extra custom character besides the Watcher. But to be more on point. I, basically, came to the same conclusions as you, though I haven't used anything else than Durance and Hiravias for Priest and Druid and the only custom Wizard I have is my current Watcher--a hairy Orlan. I find Aloth to be quite flexible, although he just can't do the melee damage. All in all, when Durance goes through the buffs, the party becomes a wrecking ball, be it range or not, though I do not doubt that your results were far superior to mine. I currently don't play Durance in the party because of that. Didn't really find anything from Hiravias' arsenal to improve my party over all, and I also don't really enjoy the Druid spells that much, ao I also don't play him, although the various storms clearly performed very well and his Staelgar form is a raking machine. Aloth and my Orlan Wizard, though... I love them. The Orlan could handle melee, to be honest, but between the two of them they can do a lot, do it at range, do it quick, and with a substantial boost to accuracy if need be. My level two spell mastery is Merciless Gaze, which I like a lot. Deflection bonuses are still there if something passes through the frontline and focused missile barrage has shown to take care of every priority target out there. So yeah... I basically think that Wizard is top tier in this game, too. Though I still very much enjoy having frontline fighters.

I am not against your interpretation. Personally, I take another conversation between Pallegina and Aloth into consideration here--one where he admits to being overly careful with details as he has seen first-hand what careless use of 'Arkemyr's Capricious Hex' can do. Also, the first interaction between Durance and Aloth is quite aggressive, whereas the second time they exchange lines, they seem to have some things worked out. I do not think that Aloth has a particularly high opinion of Durance at any point, but I do think that Aloth - maybe reluctantly - agrees that wizards used to be more arrogant. Just my pair of glasses here. EDIT:PS: Come to think of it. It might be that Aloth finds Durance arrogant, as well as the rest of the wizards. ^_^

Durance is a man in search of answers, ... Also, Durance cares a lot for the plight of the common folk. I saw nothing in that game that indicates that Durance care one iota for the common folk. He killed Eothas on orders from Magran. Afterwards he was abandoned by Magran and he is searching for only the answer of why he was abandoned. Durance has a void in him left by the abandonment of Magran and he is seeking in vain to fill it. The two endings for him are both appropriate and suitable for him. Durance lost the central reason for his life, the worship of Magran. Suicide is one obvious ending for someone like him. The other is a total rejection of Magran. Generally correct. We seem to differ on how much sympathy we have towards Durance, though. There is a section - I can't tell you where exactly - where he speaks in a levelled and even voice, saying how the land and nation are deceased. He goes on, in a surprisingly poetical way for him, talking about the people and some of the ways they would treat each other. In another section he talks proudly of the progress that Magran brings with her inventions, albeit the narrower meaning here being that mages were brought to an even playing ground with the rest of the folk, and so reducing their arrogance--something Aloth agreed on. He trusted Magran to be making the correct choice when she got them making the bomb to end the war. It was, or so he believed, a way to quickly stop the conflict. We learn differently, of course. I think that he meant well all this time. It's just that he finally realizes(at least in one ending) that being somebody else's plough horse doesn't really bring personal happiness, nor does it necessarily improve the condition of others. I know some men like that irl... and anger at some point is a common trait.

Durance is a religious fanatic like Raedric. Durance's saving grace is this fanaticism only led to him killing another god rather than slaughtering innocents. In the game the gods really talk to their worshipers so for Magran to stop talking to Durance is a major blow to his faith. The only way he can ever have any happy ending is if Magran talks to him again. Durance is a man in search of answers, although for the major part of the game he also wants to come across as stronger than that. The Watcher is the one who ultimately helps give him the courage to doubt completely. Also, Durance cares a lot for the plight of the common folk. It is because of the suffering of the common folk that he took part in the creation of the bomb and the purges. Impatience is another trait of his, too. That, and his affinity for action and earlier want to belong to something greater. I believe that Durance ultimately shows that a man can be perfectly fine and happy living life for their own sake without any external validation. If anything, his journey symbolizes exactly that. Interestingly, his opinion of women reinforces that idea. Religious zealot is a bit denigrating, to be perfectly honest. Unlike Durance, Raedric never allows himself the benefit of doubt. Religious Zealot is thus more fitting for Raedric than Durance. That is not to say that both didn't commit a mistake at a point in their lives--'mistake' here meaning an act that brings personal suffering rather than something to be praised by the community.

Well, Durance is a very particular character. I, personally, like him a lot. He is intricately tied to the lore of the game, too. Maybe you, like me, are fond of him if you say neither of the endings is better. But if you look at Durance and the way the story describes him, together with his interactions with the rest of the team and what Hiravias says about him, I think the ending in which he finally manages to assimilate the truth of his abandonment is the better one. Imho, at least.

The things people complain about.... My loading times are getting longer, too, though I haven't clocked how long they take. I am on a GT83VR6RF Titan SLI MSI with PoE on the SSD, and I know most of the issues with this game as well as others are due to optimization, so it never bothered me. For instance, I get a massive FpS drop in the battle for Caed Nua. I suspect it's because of the oPenGL, as other games have also done the same for me. Although here the different settings don't change the end experience.

Yeah, searched exactly for that one. Yaz Mataz on steam here. Maybe we could jam something together sometimes... or just chat. To be completely honest with you, I think it's a bit self-contradictory from a role-playing perspective. The Watcher, be it a Bleak Walker or not, encounters something completely new in his/her life. They cannot sleep, they have doubts they will lose their sanity, there are voices incoming from all directions and apparitions appear in the peripheral vision. People observing the Watcher notice how he/she stares off suddenly and seemingly randomly and awakes with deep circles his eyes in the mornings, and try to extend a small portion of sympathy. If the Watcher was previously concerned with obtaining power, this new condition brings new challenges. Quite simply, methinks, they cannot forego the help of either of the companions or the rest of the people he/she meets, neither can they let go of the tracks of the Robed Man. The Watcher is vulnerable, the Watcher knows it and if he/she is a Bleak Walker, I think, they would sooner fight tooth and nail to go back to their previous state which should look like total freedom to him/her now. Thus the Watcher pursues the Robed Man with all the strength he/she can muster.

Well...the way you put it, NVidia doesn't have a choice but to stick with Vulkan. I mean, what else can they do?

You mean chase the antagonist, right? Well, taking into consideration the way they portray the Watcher, I don't think he/she merely does it for money or power. The Watcher does it because they cannot be left at peace to do whatever else it is that they're doing. We get all the cues for that, but we only get them once. I think if we were constantly reminded of that, we'd have become pretty bored with it. Thing is, the Watcher can be whoever - their world is still turned upside down when he/she meets the Robed Man. I think you will witness that in a much more pure form if you only stick to the main story. That's what I did on my very first playthrough. It was on second highest difficulty. I did minimal side content, and I was fully committed to chasing down the Robed Man, no White March whatsoever. It was a good run. I was convinced that earning the favour of Berath is the way to go because that seemed the most logical choice after reading about all of the gods. Didn't even bother praying to the rest. Took me about forty hours. For experienced player it should take about thirty. You could even do the less than ten rests thing. With the risk of sounding a bit vain--perhaps such a purist run will reveal details from the story you have forgotten with so much side content watering down your playthroughs. You could just save the game before taking the fall and then come back just to make those choices for the White Marches. Edit: PS: Tried looking for you on Steam, btw. Couldn't find you.

I believe Adragans to have like 100-110 accuracy on PotD...

I am on a triple crown run at the moment. My Watcher is an Orlan wizzie. 65 % of time time he is on auto attack duty with AoE implements and DR reduction blast talent plus his per encounter blasts. The damage is great. 15 % of the time he is on missile barrage duty on soft targets together with the ranger. 10% of the time is scrolls/consumables and the other 10% are for all the rest of the spells which comes down to the situation--pretty much have fun here, unless he's facing a pack of angry spirits each about to cast a frozen spike at his hairy ass.

To be honest with OP, that sort of behaviour is good. If you want to benefit, though, you need to micromanage more, but it's not a bad situation. Perhaps you just didn't read the entry on confusion in the cyclopedia(not that I know there is one). If you use wizard's confusion, you'd get the same results but across more enemies. Can be quite devastating for them--them fighting each other and you doing damage on them.

So Vulkan is basically specifically designed to handle the graphical side of games? That's what I am gathering from everything I've read plus your post on top of it. Not that it doesn't help--it clarifies a few things quite succinctly. Cheers for that! There is also that bit about multiple processors being utilized more fully, and I did notice something like that when I was looking at the performance metrics. It's just that before I've never had to change the OpenGL setup, whereas suddenly my old DOOM configuration was unplayable after like a Nvidia update. Its good there is somebody who can explain, because otherwise people like me would be lost .

Just wanted to jam a bit in DOOM for fun... Aah... GT 83VR 6RF Titan SLI GTX 1080 MSI. Nvidia had another update on GeForce experience before I played and I remember very well that I never had to touch the OpenGL option in video settings. I play the game with vsync on and frames drop to like 20 when there are more than 3 enemies on screen. Smoke and such drop them, as well. I fiddle a bit around with no success and then I notice the OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan options. Switch to Vulkan, vsync off and frames refuse to drop under 150 at the most hectic of times with 200 most of the time. I shrug and read why Vulkan is better, but I still don't think I fully understand. Maybe somebody could shine a bit of light in plain English? Please?

Just avoid the bloody spirits and phantoms.

Yeah. How's it going? Sorry for bloating Obsidian forums with this, but I quite literally can't think of a better place to post it. Both steam and the official D:OS2 forums have got issues when it comes to this, plus I think I will find gamers of a different sort here. So I want to give For Honour in Original Sin 2 a go and would very much like to try and go co-op, as well. If you're interested shoot me a private message or post down here to talk about it further. I think two lone wolves is a very interesting and fun setup, but 3-4 man party is fine, too. Cheers.