Luckmann

Bu- buh- buh muh "nuh hard counters" policy!

Since we're on the topic, has anyone ever figured out a way to unlock/unrestrict enchantments, whether through modding or otherwise? The fact that the enchanting in the game is so limited has always stood out to me, and I just realized that there's some fun things I'd like to try out, such as the Piercing, Slashing and Crushing Lashes. It's especially annoying that there's no 1-point weapon enchantments that you can use yourself, meaning that you'll regularly lose 1-3 enchant points for no sensible reason and without choice.

There is no IE Mod for 3.0-> yet, and there's no word on whether there will be.

Personally, I would never want to do a spiritshifting-focused Druid. Being able to only shift once per combat, for a short duration, I don't think it's worth it. Honestly, I very rarely spiritshift with Hiravias, at least until I just found out about the bug mentioned earlier. When he spiritshifts, it's in real "oh ****"-moments or when he's out of spells. Spiritshifting can be powerful, and can do a lot of damage, but it's too short of a duration, a duration I'd rather spend casting spells, which would be worse while spiritshifted (unless the mentioned bug is not a bug) and waste the time spent spiritshifted, and I can only do it once per combat. One stun, one paralyze, and the spiritshift might be completely wasted. But if the bug is not a bug, well... then at least I'm going to spiritshift to cast AND maybe go bananas in melee a bit, it won't feel as wasted, but I also realize that +30%, and then let's take another Wildstrike Talent.. and then another.. and another... and we're talking about an insane amount of hurt. So yeah. Actually, I think there's good argument that it might be intended behaviour, but I took it up in that thread, instead of polluting this one.

Actually, is it possible this is intended? The Talent itself says nothing about it being restricted to melee: If this is indeed a bug, I would suggest amending the Talent text to reflect the fact that it only affects melee. While I had always assumed that it only affected the melee damage of the spiritshifted druid, the Talent actually doesn't specify, and it could be considered an incentive to cast spells while spiritshifted, or to spiritshift just for casting, since Spiritshift usually tends to clash with a ranged or primarily-caster-druid (which, tbh, is what druids usually become, anyway, but the potential issues of the druid class is another topic). A possible compromise (since +30% is absolutely crazy for spells, really) would be to expressly make it apply differently to melee and to damage in general, such as 30% to melee, and 10% to all other damage. Or something.

That's extremely generous, really. If anything, culture and race are far closer in other games than it is in PoE. Use whatever excuse, really, the fact still stands - there's no shortage of games that have no trouble depicting sub-races as quantifiably different, whether you blame it on "culture" or not; it tends to not be defined which it is. Having human subraces be different is no different to having elven subraces be different, no matter how you cut it, and either way, the last thing we want to do is be held hostage by cultural marxism and politically correct outrage.

Yes.

Alright, so, first of all, I haven't actually updated the game yet, since I had issues applying the patch and I'm not feeling like reinstalling everything. However, nothing seems to really touch upon this in the patch notes, so I can only assume that it doesn't matter, in this case. Anyway, feast your eyes on this: The yellow arrow added by me. That's the path the beetle took. Notice that it's still in Engagement with Maneha. It was in Engagement the entire time. It never broke engagement. And yes, when I moved Maneha right after taking this picture, she was attacked, hit and interrupted. There is not enough paper in the world to adequately explain what a monumentally bad idea Engagement was from start to finish. Is all the work and aggravation and broken stuff really worth it, to force the mechanic into the game, come hell or high water, no matter the cost in time and effort to try to patch every hole that crops up, every issue? God. Dammit.

The way I remember from somewhere, there were some extremely serious undertones to the characters of Durance and Grieving Mother, where the one had tortured the other, believing her to be a Watcher (which is still part of her backstory), and if memory serves, there was some hint of rape-y things, too. Supposedly, this lead to the shattering of both minds, which is why Grieving Mother is so screwed up when you find her and why Durance may not even remember his real name. I have no idea where I picked that up, by the way, it was in some discussion way back. Presumably, they shied away from such serious content matter, especially since you interact with these characters on more fundamental level than NPC #321 that was implied to be tortured at some point. As is often the case, you willfully missed the point. The relative power of the staff is largely meaningless, because it should be soulbound either way. If it is this powerful or that powerful ultimately doesn't matter, and you should just aim somewhere in-between, regardless of individual complaints. The issue with caring too much about people is shown no clearer than with your own example given, with Icewind Dale 2. Because you're right, and I agreed with you, as often is the case, unless you now want to argue that because the careometer should always be set to max, it should take precedence, and thus the staff should be overpowered, because as you say, if you make it a weak-ish soulbound, it would still not be enough. Should, or should not, the staff be soulbound? Yes, it should. Should it be soulbound, whether it is powerful or not? Yes, it should. Should we care about people that no doubt would constantly argue that it should be more powerful than it is, no matter how powerful it is at any point throughout it's career as a soulbound weapon? No, we should not. Do what's right for the game isn't always the same as doing what people want. That's what you should care about, the game, not what people want, because most people have no idea what they want, or what it'd do with the game, as evidenced by any remove-all-resource-management-thread ever, or the fact that people complain about Wizards, Priests and Druids no longer having utterly insane power spikes compared to any other class. People want instant and constant gratification, but instant and constant gratification rarely make for a good game. Or a good dish. Or a good anything, really. As for the proposed solutions, my preferred one is to make it Universal or note it down as specifically affected by Inspired Flame, even though it normally does not apply to Staffs, make it Soulbound, and have it be soulbound to Durance and ever usable only by Durance, and actually have it progress rather powerfully. Like you noted previously, Durance is actually rather ineffective with the staff, either way, and making the staff progress rather powerfully would help compensate for that. But again, I always wanted it to be an Arquebus anyway. Categorize it as an arquebus and have him shoot fireballs with it, using a wand or sceptre animation, or something, I dunno. It'd arguably necessitate kicking the established narrative in the jewels to make it fit elegantly. Huh, well good. I thought they just didn't give her any bonuses like that because the effects from being a Construct were already so powerful. That makes her crazier than I thought. That said, I still think it should be a soulbound. It's actually a pretty good armour, thought, especially once you've upgraded it a bit. I just want it to be soulbound for thematic reasons, it's unlikely to be balance-upsetting in any way.

just a thought. you could make the weapon soulbound w/o actual having it improve. have soulbound exclusive to durance. this would allow durance, as a priest who is not particular effective with a staff, to actual make use o' his eponymous weapon. HA! Good Fun! The problem is that soulbound weapon can't be enchanted. So making it simply soulbound would actually make it potentially weaker. It is basically more simple to keep the balance by making it evolving soulbound. fair enough. a weak soul bound weapon exclusive to durance doesn't sound bad. have the thresholds for improvement simple be levels... or levels and companion quest thresholds. that being said, am doubting that fans is gonna be satisfied with a weak soulbound... at least based on past experience with such scenarios. fanbase iwd2 kit suggestions were a low watermark for a game from these developers, but has never improved. HA! Good Fun! Honestly, the power of the staff is completely irrelevant to the discussion, imo. It should be soulbound on principle, based in the narrative, and it should be upgraded at least partly as part of the narrative. If people whine that it's too powerful or too weak, it doesn't matter. It could be a twig, and it'd still be the right thing to do, or it could literally kill gods, and it'd still be the right thing to do. Hell, based on Durance's narrative, I'd even be OK with the staff going completely f***ing inert past a certain point. Had completely slipped my mind. Given that the Devil of Caroc is literally soul-bound to her armour, having it soul-bound to her would probably be even more appropriate than having Durance's Staff soulbound to him. And the progression should be level-based. Just flat scaling; +DR and some stat (since she gets no bonus as a Construct) would be appropriate.

They're children of regular people of any race, born with a god's blessing. Or curse. My personal theory is that the gods are in the same state of decay or "splintering" as every other living thing is believed to be. They make this up by usurping or consuming or incorporating slices of other souls, but some of the "soul-matter" from the gods goes on to merge with other souls in the great wheel, and the offspring that receives such a shard will be born as a godlike. ...although that'd imply that there's a Deathlike Bunny out there somewhere, and that's a horrifying thought.

What bothers me is that there's still not colours to match the portraits. For example, one out of the two (?) male wild orlan portraits show grey-white-ish fur, but they can't pick that as their colour. Similarly, if I'm not mistaken, there's only two female orlan portraits, one of which has red skin/soft fur and black hair/fur - neither of which is an option, either. And don't get me started on how Aloth starts with an assigned colour to his clothes that isn't even available. If you change it, it's gone forever. The palette is pitiful.

I always figured that his "staff" should've been an arquebus. But either way, I absolutely agree.

I'm sorry, but if I'm getting half of what you're trying to say, I don't think you've understood the issue. This has nothing to do with the AI at all, and nothing to do with the selectable scripts of individual party members. This is 100% a pathing issue, readily apparent when giving orders yourself, manually. There may be other issues with the AI scripts, but that has nothing to do with this. It could possibly have something to do with the don't-move-while-engaged option, but if it does, it's under the hood of the game. The party members acknowledge the commands, but they either run the wrong way, spazz out, or just stand still - they don't "snag on engagement", for lack of a better term. For instance, in my second example, the entire party was fighting a single mushroom, which was engaged with either Edér or Kana (the two guys closest). The mushroom cannot possible engage anyone in Engagement, yet multiple units refused to move. If I want them to move, I have to move them in the opposite direction, and then back again, in a V-shaped pattern, and then tell them to attack again, manually pathing them to where I want them to go. There's no reason to think this has anything to do with the AI/Scripts, either. They might have their own infuriating issues (or not, I've set them to Defensive and that's it; it appears to be the least aggrevating, even though I still lament the absence of a bloody Hold Position order) but it doesn't seem to affect pathing at all.

Options are more important than the balance between available options. That being said, no, you can't balance "too much".

100% agree. I also wanted to have full control over companions builds and attributes. But without losing their banter and quests.In v2 I simply used console to redistribute their stats. But in v3, they reset back to default values on save load. Heh, before I noticed that, I've got quite puzzled why the hell did Kana start to go low so fast. And that's annoying as hell. I usually set the companion's characteristics to their original values before they were "optimized", because I consider them more flavourful and more in line with the characters themselves. But it's not possible to change them anymore. Annoying as all hell.

It indeed does. And I must say, I love the character. Someone at Obsidian clearly nailed the whole "characters are not defined by their class" thing. Devil of Caroc and the barbarian-woman-whos-name-escapes-me-right-now are perfect examples of that.

No clue, I've never had it.

Whatnow?

Yeah, I agree with you pretty much, especially the sideways walk and the hold position. I also played the game since release, but this is the first time I'm running an all melee party without reach weapons and the first time potd as well. I think the amount of engagement problems scales way too well with the amount of melee units being present, it was much more bearable with half the party in the back and less monsters. Not that I'm complaining about that, that style of play was my decision, but it makes the problems with engagement much more noticeable. As much as I've heard some argue otherwise, playing on PotD now, apart from a dodgy beginning, the old tactic of a super-heavy tank in the front and ~4 shooters at the back is still the best and most "abusable" tactic. This is doubly true if you've got a Priest. I currently don't, and it's really noticeable.

Did.. did Google Translate write that for you? Because I have absolutely no clue what you're saying, apart from, like, the first row.

Again: The bottom 2 party members refuse to move, despite there being plenty of room. After manually repositioning: Yeah, it's very noticeable in PoE, too, because combat often plays out over less than a minute in realtime. Losing several seconds when there's buffs that lasts for less than 10 seconds is pretty frustrating. And the examples given here are just the ones were my party members gets literally stuck - it doesn't show the ones were they run in circles or start running left and right like headless chickens, or start pathing around entire groups of mobs - sometimes getting stuck on Engagement, and sometimes mysteriously being completely ignored. Sometimes Engagement seem to be instant the second you even come close to an opponent, and other times it seems (emphasis on seems; I'm not sure) I can literally smack an opponent around for several seconds without getting into engagement.

I've always liked the idea of engagement, but I've long since given up hope on there being any good implementation of it - I just don't think that it can be done. The idea is good, but I don't think it can be implemented in a good way. That being said, the fact that you can't move "sideways" around an opponent is the source of enormous frustration when it comes to the pathing and crowding in the game. Do I suffer Engagement and squeeze in the third guy, or do I just let the two guys that are already there wail alone while the third guy just runs around like a headless chicken? Decisions, decisions. That, and the complete absence of a Hold Position function. Enemy dies, you better pause real goddamn quick and then just spam X, because otherwise they'll run up, lock everyone else out, and get stuck in Engagement. Been around since Day 1.

Another example, just as the fight ends: The Devil of Caroc and Hiravias, in the "second line", lefthand side, refused to path around the others to attack the 'shroom.

I've been having the most hilariously bad pathing issues lately. Mind you, I haven't been playing since before the last expansion, and I remember pathing being bad at times, but it didn't use to be quite this bad, did it? I've had issues that were with the apparent world geometry; places you could clearly stand, but couldn't, and pathing around certain objects clockwise but not counter-clockwise for absolutely no reason. But this is different, I think. I've had repeat issues with party members simply standing there, dumbfounded, or trying to dance left and right trying to get somewhere, instead of taking the clearly available route. And then this happened. Everyone in this picture is currently targeting the leftmost enemy. Only the party member at the bottom has a ranged weapon - all others are equipped with melee weapons. Everyone is selected, and told to collectively attack the leftmost enemy. Nobody moves. Nobody. They do a little stutter in place, and proceed to move nowhere. The entire left flank of the enemy is open, and there's plenty of room to move around, and nobody except the one party member that is actually attacking in melee is in Engagement. Nothing happens. Zilch. They're just standing there, and can't find a route to the opponent. People throw the word "broken" around a lot, but I think this in particular illustrates that pathing isn't just bad at the moment, it's just broken.