AnjyBelle

Right to the point: Dragon wiped party except the monk. Party could defeat the minions before they went down. Monk survived and faced dragon alone with Cladhaliath (spear from Lle a Rhemen). She was perma terrified by the Dargon's fear-aura but hit him from time to time with min dmg of 3 or 4. I summoned her figurine ("Noble Creature") and the dragon stomped the summon within a second. Then I activated her dichotomous duplicates, but the dragon killed both within a second. That means, that the dragon was still able to do something. Nevertheless, he never attacked the monk, neither with a physical attack nor with his breath-AoE. It took about 20 minutes, but gradually she brought him down, with her 3-4 points of dmg. The spear had a stun attack, which never hit. Other than that the only unique equipment she had was that Cape of the Master Mystic, which grants invisibility on a critical hit, once per encounter. Now I figure, that either the cape is bugged and grants a permanent invisibility or it grants the invisibility on EVERY critical hit or the dragon's AI is somewhat broken. She got critted by the fear aura every few seconds and thus, she was practically always invisible. In any way, something is totally wrong. Opinions?

It's not about casting. In this point I agree, because the AI fires off the spells on any mob, regardless if dangerous or just an annoyance. Here it's about shapeshifting. That's a per encounter ability and should work properly. BTW, the AI can handle autoattack and also some of the specials like the monk's abilities. But special scripts like "disruptor" are at least suboptimal if not broken at all.

Meanwhile I'm convinced, that the term "broken" is totally justified. Adding to the above posted issues I noticed - She casts area spells - e.g. insect swarm - on moving enemies with the result that the spell hits an empty space - She tries to cast when shapeshifted I just wonder - again - why there are not more observations and / or opinions posted. Are we really the only AI-lovers?

So, I checked "schapeshifting", "use per rest..." and "aggressive". Currently she is level 4 and I did Raedric's castle (except Raedric). Until now I saw her (AI-)shapeshifting twice, both times when the fight was over. Instead of immediately shifting, she charges into battle with the hatchet I gave her. When "shapeshifting" is checked, she won't cast any spells. Another AI-issue or did I misunderstand something e.g. "AI shifts only when the enemy is strong" or the like?

There is at least one scripted event for which it is useful if not required to solve the problem. As a consequence there will be a nice item later. BTW, it doesn't cure maimed, just what above posters already wrote.

For me that would be more than enough, because especially in towns you run from one zone into the next. I wouldn't mind a loading screen if I go from my fortress to another area, e.g. Magram's Fork. When I explore such an area for the first time, I won't see the next loading screen soon. So, "open towns" would be a good compromise.

Ok, I see. But it's not only about loading times. The question is about the need of zoning in particular. You invested in a SSD, I'd invest happily in another 8 GB of RAM, if I could get an open world for that.

On a HD. Ok, not all loadings are that long. I tried to estimate the average time.

It was in 2001, when Gothic 1 was released. It had an open world and almost no so called zoning. This was amazing at that time, when e.g. the devs of Baldurs Gate defended the zoning with arguments like "gaming would only happen on high end PCs, if we had the entire (game-)world in 'one piece'." Perhaps that was correct. My PC had 256 MB RAM at that time. Indeed, for Gothic 1 I had to spend about 100 DM (~ 50 US$) to upgrade my RAM to 512 MB. But then it ran flawlessly AND without useless time consuming because of countless zonings. If someone would ask me, if there is something I dislike about PoE, then there is just that sole exception: Ways too much zonings. Example (mild spoiler): When we decide to go for the peaceful ending in the lighthouse quest, we have to zone from Lillith one level down, another level down, out to Ondra's Gift, then to Brackenbury, into the Charred Barrel, up one level. That's six zonings for one way and then three for the way back to the questgiver. Altogether nine zonings. On my current PC one transition takes about 20-30 seconds. You can imagine, how much time we stare at the "zoning screen" throughout the entire game. My question: Gothic 1 was just one game which showed (14 years ago!) that it is possible to make games in "one piece". There were several in the meantime. Nevertheless, even top developers like Obsidian, BioWare etc. resort to this - in my eyes - ancient technique of cutting the game world in pieces and let the player stare at their loading screens. Must that really be? Are there still arguments like in the 90s ("... runs only on high end....")?

Yeah, respec and everything is good again.

This!

Oh...then the shops seem to spawn their stuff randomly, too. Not good.

Uhm... that's another shop I didn't visit for ages. But if I remember correctly, they sell scrolls there, "maelstroem"-scrolls in particular, which are useful against the dragon down in the endless paths. But you are right, with the exception of the curio shop (virthak brains!) there is nothing really useful. It's kind of annoying. To upgrade the gear it is necessary to travel to Ondra's Gift because of the rubies and the shops in the stronghold just sell junk.

Just checked this shop with a level 12 party for the first time. In all former games I never bothered about this building, as I always have traps in abundance. But now I was a bit... amazed. The guy had one single boiling spray trap to sell. That kind we really find so often in early explorations of Raedric's Hold and the first few levels of the endless paths. I realize, it's just a minor issue, but an "artificer" should IMO have something special, at least some better stuff than a (single!) common trap. As it is right now, the only reason to build this shop is the resting bonus, right?

Thx for the insights As I wrote above, I am not one to min/max and / or the intention to build "immune to everything"-heroes. Perhaps I'm still a bit too much influenced by AD&D-rules, where high wisdom plus iron will made a character really VERY resistant against that kind of spells. BTW, I learnt to simply ignore it and started to storm the places with these mushrooms, vampyrs and whatnot. Works well.

When there is something I really hate, then it is a mob, who casts confusion or charm spells. Because of this, I always take "mental fortress" at level 6. But does it really help? It seems to be a lottery which ignores all stats and that talent. Sometimes my characters resist, most of the time they don't. I don't min/max and thus, ALL my (custom) partymembers have at least 10 INT and I play on "normal" difficulty. Nevertheless, the mobs charm or confuse them at will. Even the high INT characters like chanter or cipher can't resist most of the time. I'd like to know about the experiences of other players. Perhaps I misunderstood something? PS.: Please note, that this is not about tactics, like pulling mobs away and the like. It's only about the capability to resist.

I posted a link there to see a screenshot I made some minutes ago. Unfortunately I am not allowed to paste directly in this forum, for whatever reasons.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=06451239385403438150 I could not figure out how to post a screenshot here. Neither .png nor .jpg are allowed, although the picture is less than 1 MB. Anyways, the screenshot shows the sometimes strange behaviour of partymembers. The rogue is not affected by any charm- or fearspell. She wants to apply an "eyestrike" as you can see (icon over head). The dungeon is cleared, there is no enemy remaining in the direction she runs. You see, too, there would be a lot of space where the others are fighting, even more for a ranged fighter with a blunderbus. As described before, this happens quite often.

Perhaps. But the spiders in Lle a Rhemen are certainly no Ghosts

I can confirm that.

I just posted this in the bug section: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/81956-ai-bug/

I think I can narrow down the strange behaviour of the team-mates, when they run elsewhere during a fight and pull new enemies: Just in Lle a Rhemen I got messages about traps and my rogue said her "I see something..." But there were no traps in the vicinity. From former games I know, where the traps are: One level below and / or in a yet not explored room. These messages occur frequently, especially in dungeons and buildings. As described in other threads, members of my party run off the fight to attack mobs far away or in rooms, which cannot be viewed and are covered by FoW. My conclusion: Somehow the AI has no limits of observation. It can "see" through walls, floors and FoW. Thus, the companions who cannot engage an adjacent enemy because of the narrowness of the location run to the normally hidden enemies to engage these. When the pathfinding fails because of a closed door, they run against a wall and stay there if not micromanaged. I don't know how hard it is to fix stuff like this. Anyhow, a soon coming hotfix would be great, because this AI-behaviour is really annoying.

Now I understand, why I can win the fight against these boars sometimes relatively easy, whereas sometimes it is very tedious. With a paladin in the party it seems to be the latter.

To be fair, there's a lot of nostalgia involved when it comes to DA:O. I used to order them to take potions when certain stats fell and if that happened too frequently for the cooldown, they just got stuck in that animation. Switching between melee and ranged also didn't work so well. I had Leiliana doing nothing but switching back and forth in some encounters. I know what you mean. But that's not because of the script, you just forgot to define her target, once she switched to melee or ranged. Thus, the script became "stuck", which might be considered as a small glitch in it. In regard of nostalgia: DA:O was 2008, NWN 2 was 2006 and NWN 1 was 2002. All had good AI-scripts (NWN 1 thx to Tony K., who contributed a lot for NWN 2, too) But let's stay at PoE please Did someone ever notice a monk using her force of anguish (FoA)? I always must trigger it manually, although the monk's health is down, she is surrounded and will undoubtedly die in a few seconds. With the use of FoA two or three times the problem is solved. Hard to understand why basics like that aren't working.

Yes, she uses it in this battle and then in the other but in the next perhaps not. It's unpredictable. And - yes. When she uses it and gets engaged, she won't disengage to attack the enemy which she has chosen before. I wonder if these AI-scripts are similar to those we had in NWN 1/2, DA:O etc. If so, where is the problem to give us more options?