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jsaving

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About jsaving

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  1. I think PoE1's vastly inferior companion AI is probably the most notable difference right off the bat. More trash mobs and a more linear plotline would be up there as well, along with a stronghold that at random intervals suffers damage unless you suspend whatever else you're doing and run back to it. The other thing I'd want to know when replaying PoE1 today (or playing it for the first time) is just how powerful priests and wizards were compared to the other classes in the game. Good luck!
  2. I'm not sure whether it is better for the Dyrwood to increase the birth rate (Berath), to strength those who are already alive (Galawain), or to right the Hollowborn wrong (Hylea). Similarly it's hard to say whether siding with Rymrgand or Woedica ends up making the Dyrwood worse off, though obviously both are quite bad for the Dyrwood's future.
  3. Well, companions do have quests associated with them so you do lose some xp and insight into the game world if you do without them. A few companions (Eder and Pallegina come to mind) provide useful commentary on in-game events while a couple of others (like Durance and Aloth) enable you to better understand in-game lore. So if you're primarily a role-player, you probably won't want to create any of your companions. For powergamers, on the other hand, the best course of action is probably to create your entire party on your own. The in-game NPCs don't have optimal stats nor do they generally have extra abilities/items that would make you want to adventure with them despite their shortcomings. This is a departure from IE games like Baldur's Gate where joinable NPCs usually did have something unique to offer (like Edwin's extra spell slots, Jaheira's expanded spell selection, or Minsc's berserk ability).
  4. Yes, that's right -- you use the souls to overload the machine, which destroys the machine and sends the souls back to the Wheel. If you instead choose to consume the souls, they "overload" you rather than the machine, giving you a stat bonus at the cost of the souls' permanent destruction and the assurance that the Hollowborn problem will return to that part of the city after you defeat Thaos. It's an unfortunate reality in PoE that you must often choose between the tangible rewards from "bad" behavior and the intangible rewards of the "good" ending slides...
  5. Electing to consume them ensures the "bad" ending slide. It's marked "cruel" because you are destroying some souls who would otherwise have been reborn, but because no one sees you do that, Defiance Bay thinks you simply turned off the machine and credits you accordingly.
  6. On the other hand, PoE2 drastically cuts back on the number of talents/spells/powers you gain automatically. Priests for example completely lose the automatic spell unlocks cited by the OP as his model for how ranger pet talents should work.
  7. There's a (mis)impression that D&D "bard songs" literally involved singing, when in fact they could be delivered through "poetry, chanting, singing lyrical songs, singing melodies, whistling, [and/or] playing an instrument." The only requirement was that there be a verbal component to the song (though some DMs allowed sign and other performance-art "songs" to count as well). So PoE's chanter is very much in the broad thematic tradition of D&D bards. What's different is that, mechanically, chanters can do lots more than bards could while singing. There's also the notion that chanters "charge up" their invocations by contributing to the fight, which wasn't true for D&D bards. To be sure there are problems with PoE using "number of seconds in the fight" as its measure of how much of a contribution you've made, because you can simply cower behind an obstacle or flat-out run from your enemies and still be counted as contributing as long as someone else in the party stays close enough to your foes that the encounter doesn't end. But it's always tricky to measure contribution for support/buff characters (unlike ciphers where the devs could let focus be refueled by damage-dealing).
  8. Exhausting all dialogue options and advancing through the critical path of the main game are the two things you need to do if you want to finish Durance's quest. Check and re-check to make sure you didn't miss parts of his dialogue tree, keeping in mind that PoE sometimes erroneously bolds options you've already exhausted and un-bolds options you haven't. Unfortunately nothing in the White March advances the critical path of the main game and I think you have to reach a certain point in Act 3 before you can wrap up Durance's quest. GM on the other hand you can complete (IIRC) simply by resting at Caed Nua. But with her even more than Durance, PoE's wonky bolding and unbolding mechanic can mean you've missed conversation options that are necessary to move things along. There's also one point where you have to correctly describe a dream to her, without which the quest won't progress further.
  9. You can completely ignore the stronghold once you acquire it (except for one or two quick visits to unlock White March content).
  10. You find enemy spell books in PoE at irregular intervals and they don't, especially in the first part of the game, contain a very broad cross-section of spells. Because of this, it is easy for people to get a few hours into the game and mistakenly conclude that wizards are too weak, unless they happened to pick a good initial spell selection (which is unlikely if they've played D&D as they'll go for something like magic missile which is notably weak compared to say, chill fog in PoE). The problem goes away for players who have the patience to continue (and as spellbooks pile up in their inventory), but it's still a problem in the early game, which is all some people are motivated to reach before they reroll as a different class.
  11. While I wouldn't want to see PoE2 decrease the number of wizard spells in the game, I do think there are issues worth taking seriously as development of PoE2 proceeds. One that hasn't been mentioned so far is that you can seriously gimp your PoE character if you end up memorizing the "wrong" spells, because some spells are far more useful in combat than others of the same level. Worse, players who try to use their D&D knowledge to take the spells they "know" are best, like magic missile and fireball, end up faring so poorly that they mistakenly conclude wizards must not be as strong as people say. Compounding this problem is the lack of wizard scroll shops and the inability to respec your spell book, which leaves some players needing to level up in order to get new spells but unable to progress in the game because of spell selection that retrospectively turns out to be poor.
  12. I'd add a couple of other things to the great BG/BG2 points mentioned so far. Like those games, there is no level scaling so it is entirely possible to enter an area that is just too tough for your party at that particular point in time. But unlike those games, there is only a finite amount of XP in the game because you can't generate new foes by resting. In fact, you don't even get XP for defeating a foe (though there is a modest amount of XP you'll gain from time to time by advancing your bestiary). The other thing I would say is that you do NOT want to assume that PoE classes are exactly like their D&D counteroarts, Priests are probably the strongest class in the game but are very weak if you use them the way you would a BG cleric. Likewise druids, whose shapeshifting ability and call-lightning spell is nearly useless in BG/BG2 but quite strong in PoE. As I think about it, the same could be said for wizards as staple spells like fireball and magic missile are notably weak in PoE while woefully inadequate BG/BG2 spells like grease are surprisingly strong in PoE, not to mention Kalakoth's which is vastly better than the already-strong Melf's minute meteors in BG/BG2.
  13. I've gone through it a couple of times and can't say it's worth going through the first 11-12 levels just to see some semi-interesting content the rest of the way. On the other hand, Od Nua is a great place to advance your soulbound weapons because you can get numerous kills quickly and easily.
  14. High resolve, high lore, high perception, and being a cipher (in that order) are probably your best bets when it comes to expanding your dialogue options. However, dialogue prowess doesn't do much for you in PoE except for occasionally skipping fights (which you may not want to do if you're looking to fill out your bestiary, advance a soulbound weapon or obtain more loot).
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