try2handing

Well, I finally beat this encounter, somehow. And have progressed a bit further. I figured out that "Drug Crash" is a withdrawal effect after using Svef, which is the cause of the movement speed reduction (-40% Stride). Also, apparently the AI doesn't care if the Fampyr is charmed or not. I used Puppet Master on one Fampyr when there was no other enemy left, and "dominated" is reduced to "charmed", since they are resistant to Intellect Afflictions, which is supposed to prevent using abilities. But they still used Charming Gaze on Maia when they are being charmed, and that turns her into an uncontrollable friendly. I'm sorry but this is just plain dumb. And I don't see why you can't charm back a dominated ally, either. This is legit in Baldur's Gate 2, seeing as this "dominating gaze" is pretty much copy pasta of the same thing from BG2. Charming/dominating a charmed/dominated ally will show the effect, but it is suppressed by the previous effect. That doesn't make sense to me. New charm effect should reverse the previous one. Not only this domination spam feels cheap as hell, and these fights leave a rather bad taste, but the AI's handling of this effect feels awkward too.

Right, I forgot to mention my party setup. I play a cipher, have Eder, Aloth, Maia, and Xoti. This means I don't have access to Pallegina's handy charm-dispelling on-hit attacks, or any chanter abilities either. I have the Warped Scale shield, and upgraded it so that it has the 50% chance to reflect gaze attack, but then it's still "only" 50%, against their unlimited casts of domination. I remember it had an upgrade that gives immunity to gaze attack, but decided to take the other upgrade because I never thought I'd run into this kind of encounter. Maybe I'm missing something, but for something that is so tricky to counter, this domination bs lasts way too long. I know there's "raising your resistance" and "reducing hostile effects duration" and all that, but the problem is when there are five of those guys who can spam that ability over and over, it just doesn't help, unless you also have unlimited uses of some counter method. I'll retry this fight later, see if stealth helps any.

Ok, I know I've been thinking to myself "game's too easy" for a while (playing on veteran), but I just ran into this encounter and I'm pretty tilted right now. Seriously what is the intended level for this encounter? This is in the Sea-Lashed Crypt area on the Splintered Reef island. You run into something like five or six Fampyrs, each takes ages to kill. Well, not so bad when there's one or two of them, but these guys are accompanied by a dozen Risen Marksmen, who are immune to piercing damage and can dish out some pretty good damage at range. I've run into these enemies before, but it has never been this ridiculous. My party are at level 17 right now, and the Fampyrs are level 16-17 too. I used some Svef to get immunity to domination, and they cast Arcane Dampener. What the hell am I supposed to do next? And what in the world is the "Drug Crash" effect anyway??? Each Fampyr can actually dominate TWO of your party at the same time. Even when there's only one Fampyr, it's still basically impossible to interrupt their gaze attack for long. They can do this even when paralyzed (how does that even work anyway???). Now there are half a dozen of them. In this particular area, your movement speed is reduced for some reason (because of the water???). Combined with the web spamming and immobilization attacks, it gets ridiculous pretty fast. Tough encounters are fine as long as reliable counter tools are available, but this is infuriating. What am I supposed to do against these Fampyrs? I have the small shield that I upgraded to give 50% reflect chance against gaze attacks, but it's not that useful since they can spam their gaze attacks over and over. I have exactly three uses of Svef among my party - I have never needed it (or pretty much any consumable) before this point so I don't have it in abundance. So my question for anyone who has beat this encounter: what was your strategy, exactly?

The OP on Steam has a very strong personal idea as far as "wizards are supposed to be like this and not like that" is concerned. Me, I think PoE has its own universe and can totally has its own rule. I'm not arguing what is "fun" and what is not, since each has their own taste. Back on topic, personally, I don't have much issue with the "swapping" of grimoires, per se. I understand that this implementation is to give you the ability to adapt to different situations. However, the one problem I find with this mechanics is that, with one equipped grimoire and four in your quick slots, you pretty much cover all spells - or at least all the ones that actually matter - in any level. When I hit level 16 and can pick level 8 spells, there isn't much point of picking two spells to learn, since with all the grimoires equipped I already have access to all the spells of that level. So I agree that this mechanics removes the excitement from leveling up as a mage and learning new spells.

I'm not opposed to a hardcore dungeon crawl, but tbh, with the per-encounter-based combat, where you can fight 10 back-to-back encounters without losing any kind of resources, I imagine it would take away part of the thrill of a classic dungeon crawl. This is aside from the fact that the game is too forgiving in general. If this kind of dungeon crawl happens, they really need to take the combat difficulty up a notch, and limit resting, and so on. The idea is to make you feel the pressure of resource management. Otherwise, even with an interesting background story, I can't see how a casual waltz through a 15-level dungeon would be all that exciting.

Yes charmed/dominated enemies will be affected by friendly buffs and the buffs will persist after the charm effect ends.

Probably summons are (mostly) there for solo runs. I don't know what it's like with level scaling on yet, but without it, if you're a thorough player and do a lot of sidequests, starting from a certain point you'll be overleveled in most encounters, and the game gets really easy without even relying much on abilities in general, let alone summons. Which is a shame, cause summoning should be super fun and you should be able to use it regularly without feeling like you're cheesing the game.

You're right, my mistake. It's the level 7 spells that are completely crap. I'm just skipping 7th-level spells altogether and wait for 8th-level ones.

I've just gotten to Hasongo in terms of story (A Distant Light) and my party are already halfway through level 15. The fact that I'm close to the level cap this early makes it rather less exciting for me to progress, tbh. Not to mention, I'm playing single-class Cipher, and there are a total of SIX spells for both level 8 and level 9. And the level 8 spells sound so underwhelming I decided to take other spells from previous levels instead. That leaves me with three spells in level 9, and that's about it. I don't know about other classes, but as of right now, I have to say that the game gets a lot less exciting for me as far as character progression is concerned. So yeah, I sure hope something will be done about the whole level progression and level cap issue.

I'm not trying to make the OP feel like being attacked, but tbh when you say "fun character" I get a strong impression that that character is someone who can wipe out every encounter by himself, and can singlehandedly manipulate the encounter as he wishes. Now that he can no longer do such things, you feel like he's "garbage". Part of the reason why I feel this way is because you only mention your character. You said nothing about other party members (assuming you do have a party with you). Do your entire party feel like garbage now? Or just your character? So IMHO, I'd like the OP to elaborate more: what do you mean by "fun character"? What was your character like? What kinds of things was he able to do that he was so fun to you? Now you say he's "garbage" and "unplayable" after the patches - what exactly do you mean by that? Can he no longer solo every encounter? He needs significantly more help from party members? And so on. I'm not judging your opinion, since I believe I can understand the frustration when your favorite character/build is nerfed to the ground. I've seen it happen to some twitch streamers that I follow (the game in this case being Dark Souls, lol). I agree that tweaking enemies (greater number, tougher, smarter, etc) is one way to make the game harder. But when your own tools and resources are too powerful, it's only reasonable to tone them down. These two things are not mutually exclusive. As for my personal experience with this game, my party is currently at level 14, and I've been playing on Veteran. I completely lost the sense of being challenged around level 8 or so. I'm not using level scaling, because it's my first playthrough and I want to see the "default" state of things. But I find the game too forgiving in general.

To damage abovedeck crew you have to shoot Grapeshot or Chainshot. Grapeshot almost always damages abovedeck crew. Chainshot has only a low chance. To damage the belowdeck cannoneers you have to shoot Cannonball but it has only a low chance of damaging them. They will swap ship members around when they are injured. From my experience, reducing their crew to 2 or 3 will force them to switch position continuously, reducing their combat effectiveness. If they have a good surgeon onboard though, I think it's not worth it to try and damage their crew. Unless you have lots of fire power, perhaps.

I like the direction in which this topic is developing.

I also find the visual range too short for my liking. Some ranged weapons have way longer range than your default visual range. Many ranged enemies can attack you from outside of your visual range. In the BG games everyone has the same visual range (which is pretty big) and no one can directly target another from outside of that range. In PoE2 this seems to me like a rather questionable design choice and it causes unnecessary inconveniences.

Hi there, I just thought it would be nice if we could have better party management while on the ship. As it is right now, we can only manage inventory and view character record of the members in the party just before entering the ship, even though in theory we're traveling with the entire crew while on the ship. When I wanted to swapped equipment around, it was rather inconvenient cause I couldn't remember exactly who was having what, and needed to swapped members in and out of party. So I thought it'd be pretty neat if we have a list of all party members which offers access to every one of them. By "access" I mean the ability to manage their inventory and equipment, view character record, as well as the ability to edit prepared chants, view their spells/abilities, and so on. I believe this would be a really nice feature because it allows us to prepare the party better in case we board enemy ship (or the other way around) and on-deck combat happens. Another thing, which is minor, is that if we rest while on the ship, I think either the ship should offer some unique effects, or we should be able to assign food to all party members, not just the ones in party before entering the ship.

I don't know if this particular item has been fixed, but I'm pointing it out anyway: The hatchet Vion-ceth has the property Hewing Step that says "+15 All Defenses against Plant attacks while above 0% Health." Two of its upgrades, Green Blooded and Grove Step, have the same issue.

Hi there, According to the description of Trixie: >> Self: +25% Stride >> Party Wide: 5% Hits Converted to Crits But what's showing up in Current Effects in Character Records is two Pet Party Wide Effects: >> Pet Party Wide Effect: +10% Stride >> Pet Party Wide Effect: 5% Hits Converted to Crits The +10% Stride should be main char only, and the amount is wrong. EDIT: I figured out the pet party effects were messed up for some reason. Everyone was getting a permanent 5% Misses Converted to Grazes with Ranged Weapons (likely from the Desert Wurm), whether I have any pet or none at all. After reloading an earlier save, all pets worked fine. I'm not sure what's going here, but there might be some sort of problem with pet effects and/or swapping pets around.

I found out about both these bugs today. Was fighting a Vailian Fighter 4 levels above me, and he had "Unbending Shield" active. I did 23 damage, he healed for 24. I did 44 damage, he healed for 45. I thought that's what that skill did. Then next time I leveled up Eder, I saw the 50% healing in the description, and figured something was not right. Though, I *think* some burst damage did get through: I had Maia do a backstab on that guy for 79 damage, and I'm pretty sure he didn't heal for that amount. The next feedback said he healed for 19 or something. I might be wrong. I've been noticing the feedback "Guardian Stance hits/misses/grazes..." pop up a lot in combat log, but just now I found out why. The knockdown effect is triggered whenever Eder runs out of engagement range. It looks funny.

Seems like when someone mentions "rest" some others immediately think of "Having to rest every two minutes" and like, "Yikes! Please god no!" I also get the impression that factors like counter-based mechanics, full HP regen, and rest buffs lasting essentially permanently until next rest, are there so that resting is as least of a chore as possible. In my first post, I was only pointing out that, the way it is right now, you never have to rest at all, and you get to keep the permanent rest buffs as well as all resources in your stash. I wasn't asking for "Having to rest every two minutes" (funny how someone instantly thought of this). Aside from being a gameplay factor, resting is also a roleplaying factor. To me, having no incentive whatsoever to rest (except to get that cool buff) is a hit to the roleplaying aspect. The fact that your character can get beaten to near unconscious with 1 HP left during a massive encounter, as long as they don't get knocked out, they will simply get all that HP back afterward, no fatigue, no injuries, no nothing, like absolutely nothing happened, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So maybe not "every two minutes", but at least something like *needing* to rest every 5 encounters or so, yeah? That said, I *have* been enjoying the game, including the combat, and I do find combat fun. I'm just pointing out something that could use some improvement. So take it easy.

Having to rest every two minutes doesn't make the game any better/harder, it just makes it more of a chore. The way it is right now, you don't have to rest. At all.

Another thing that makes combat very forgiving in general is the fact that many abilities are encounter-based, and you recover all of your HP completely after every fight, unless an injury lowers your max HP. Others have pointed this out. So basically, you can fight 10 encounters back to back, as long as you don't burn any rest-based ability, consumables, and no one gets knocked out once, it means you lose *nothing* from your resources. I've been playing on Veteran, rather casually, tbh, and I pretty much never need to burn any kind of consumables during any fight just to get some extra edge. My party are level 10 atm. The only time I got knocked out (my main char) was around level 2 when I was still rather clueless about the game, and didn't bother to retry the fight. Just standard class abilities have been enough for combat, in my case.

Hi there, After a quick search I think this has not been posted, so I'm posting this. I've been playing the game for a week or so, and this is one of the things I would like to discuss on the forums. The approval/disapproval thing from party members after another member has just said something, like "Eder points affably in approval", or "Aloth sighs through his nose" - I think this shouldn't happen all the time. It implies every party member always listens in on every single conversation that happens in the game. Some conversations are supposed to be private, like when you wake someone during party rest, all the others should be sleeping; it doesn't make sense if they would be able to approve or disapprove of anything. Some other times, the party members are simply nowhere near where the conversation happens, like when one single character sneaks very far away from the party, then triggers a conversation with someone. So IMHO there should be some sort of condition checking for this, like whether the companions are nearby or not, and it shouldn't happen at all during some specific conversations. Personally, I don't mind if this is done completely behind the scenes - not shown at all during dialogs, I mean. I would love a gameplay option to enable/disable this. Because, from a more realistic point of view, this doesn't work all the time. If Aloth "rubs his temples" and "sighs through his nose" out of irritation because of several things Xoti says (Pride), it's hard to imagine he would smile at Xoti's next line (Dutiful), even if he agrees with it. In this particular scenario, changing all these reactions to generic lines like "Aloth approves" and "Aloth disapproves" actually sounds more agreeable to me. Less specific, yes, and maybe a bit less interesting, but less silly, too. What can be done about this? I don't know. I think it's a hard thing to implement perfectly. The specific reactions of party members, sometimes it works - you do notice such things in real life from to time - but sometimes it doesn't. This is just what I think about this at the moment.