Althernai

I'm nearing the end of the game and while I've found a whole lot of enchanted armor so far, there doesn't appear to be anything Wizard-specific. Is there something of the sort in any of the shops? I guess I can grab an ordinary set of Robes or Clothing and slap the Superb enchantment on it, but it won't look unique.

While I completely agree with you about the usefulness of open source code, given the way PoE is structured, it is not really Obsidian's decision. Every aspect of PoE is tightly integrated with Unity so unless you have a Unity license or you are good at hex editing, making any changes to PoE (even things one would think are simple and were possible in the IE games) is going to be nearly impossible.

I don't think there is ever a tactical situation in which fewer than 6 party members are preferable to 6. Also, one of my favorite parts of games like this are the interactions between companions and you get more of them with 6 characters. Thus, I always have 6 in my party (well, as soon as you can get five real companions -- I don't bother with the non-talkative ones).

After a long and savage battle (which itself followed about 5 reloads), I finally defeated the Master Below. At this point, Kana gets the little conversation icon on him that characters get when they have something to say. I click on him expecting some comments about how awesome this journey through the 15 levels of the Endless Paths have been or maybe about the Master and instead, I get... Kana - "Looks like there's a clear sky over Heritage Hill. I hope the district can recover. There's a lot of history there. Even more so now that you've saved it. Maybe they'll give you a plaque." Kana - "Actually, this really might do a little something for your reputation. It can't hurt to be known for ending a curse." Kana - "It's good to be on the road again. A wanderlust is nothing rare in the people of Rautai, but often I think of myself alone in loving the land as much as the sea." That can't be right, can it?

I don't see much of a difference between changing those and a complete system overhaul: the biggest difference between the IE games and PoE is precisely that system of counters, immunities, etc. The fights in the former were partly a kind of puzzle: vampires required negative energy protection (or maybe a high level Cleric with Turn Undead), golems were best fought with enchanted weapons (or, lacking those, the Melf's Minute Meteors spell), mind flayers required protection from mental attacks and intellect potions (or maybe the Mordekainen's Sword summons). There were always multiple "correct" ways to deal with an enemy, but most of the tougher enemies had things you needed to know about them to win. On the other hand, every aspect of PoE was explicitly designed to avoid this. Nobody has any immunities -- none of the enemies and not you. You sort of have some protective buffs, but given that they only add +50 to your roll and the enemies against whom it is worth wasting time on these buffs at all tend to have close to 100 Accuracy and they only need a result higher than 15 to Graze... well, it's still a roll of the dice for nearly all characters. Damage immunities are even worse: the extent to which anyone can be immune to a specific element is not really meaningful. If you really wanted to, you can kill the Fire Blights with fire and it's while it is worse than using cold, the difference is not very large (at some point, I tried using Chill Fog on every elemental regardless of flavor and it works surprisingly well). This doesn't mean that PoE is necessarily easier than the IE games. If it gives you an enemy with an AoE attack that does 150-200 damage in one shot when your characters only have 100-250 Endurance and this enemy has around 100 Accuracy and around 100 for every defense and it has a debuff aura and some friends who inflict nasty status effects, that's still going to be a tough fight (perhaps more so since you have no reliable defenses against anything it does). Likewise, in the IE games, once you knew how to approach every kind of enemy, it was not that hard. However, it does mean that in the IE games, the best tactics were necessarily more varied whereas in PoE, most battles can be won with a fairly small assortment of tricks. I personally prefer the IE way, but this is not really a matter of difficulty so much as one of style and it would take a fundamental redesign to change PoE combat into something resembling that of BG2.

So there's not actually anything wrong with my game that I can see, but I would like to check whether I installed things correctly. I had downloaded Patch 1.03 from GOG on April 4th (i.e. more or less as soon as it appeared). More specifically, the file I installed was: patch_pillars_of_eternity_2.0.1.2.exe (83261 KB) Today, I tried to install Patch 1.04 or, more specifically, patch_pillars_of_eternity_2.1.1.4.exe (11757 KB) which GOG labels Patch 1.03 to 1.04, but in fact this fails saying that I'm trying to apply it to the wrong version. I thought this was curious and tried to download and install what is currently called Patch 1.03 on GOG, but it is in fact not quite the same file: patch_pillars_of_eternity_2.1.0.3.exe (82996 KB) This installed just fine and after that I was able to install Patch 1.04 as well. I tried starting the game and it seems to work. As far as I can tell, what is labeled "Patch 1.03" on GOG has been sneakily changed to a very slightly different file which can be installed on top of the "original" Patch 1.03 as well as on top of the base game (since the original Patch 1.03 is no longer anywhere on GOG). Is that the case?

I think it's just about right. In some sense, the problem is not the game so much as us. Most people posting on these forums have either played the Infinity Engine games or some other games which reward optimization (despite the fact that they're radically different from PoE, the better MMOs do satisfy this property). The moment the system starts giving people like us options, we'll find some technique or combination of techniques which makes things easy. Worse, the very fact that we're on these forums means that we learn these optimal abilities much faster than we would figure them out on our own. To make it really hard for the people who claim it is easy, Obsidian would have to not merely add more monsters and change their abilities (as they did with Hard and PotD), but actually change the rules of the game in a way that eliminates most of the "good" techniques and maybe reduces the XP gain. If they did this in general, the people who aren't on these forums (and that's the overwhelming majority) would be utterly screwed. I guess they can add yet another Ultra PotD difficulty mode, but honestly, even if they do that, you'll have the same people coming back to complain about how the newly optimal abilities (worse the current ones, but still decent) make the game too easy.

They are adolescent dragons, but the transition from drake to dragon is more along the lines of caterpillar to butterfly than a human adolescent to a human adult. The technical term for this is metamorphosis, but yes, it's still the same species.

No. But I accidentally did things in the wrong order and came out of the temple through the back of his shop. This caused him to attack me upon which I terminated him with extreme prejudice. This was by far my favorite part of that quest.

They become more powerful at higher levels. Confusion at level 4, Sleep at level 5 and Petrify at level 6 are some of the most powerful spells in the game and can turn a battle around basically on their own. Level 3 also has a decent Haste spell (though like every buff in the game, it suffers from the fact that you have to waste precious time in combat to cast it). The Grimoire mechanic is odd. The Priest and Druid basically work like BG2 Sorcerers, but they choose from any spell on the level and get all of their spells upon leveling up whereas the Wizard is also a BG2 Sorcerer, but restricted to the 4 spells in the Grimoire and forced to pay money to learn spells (and you have to find them in the first place, though it's not that hard). It's also completely unnecessary since the spells are not at all balanced and once you learn to play, it's pretty obvious what are the top 3 on each level (the 4th is basically flavor). Spell selection is more or less a trap for 1st time players. As with many things in the game, I can kind of see what they might going for with this design, but they didn't quite get there.

Yes, but it can't always do that because it is not technically possible to save the game in combat. You'll just have to be honest about it and not quit just before you're about to lose.

I'm not sure whether this is related to the problems people are having, but I also had trouble getting this quest to advance and what actually solved it was resting "in the wild". That is, don't rest at an inn or at the stronghold, but in a place where you actually have to use up a Camp Supply. After the resting cutscene ends, Durance will initiate a conversation and the quest will advance.

I don't think there is a way to win this "fairly" (i.e. walking the whole party into talking range instead of sending the tank forward on his own) with most parties on Hard. It would probably be possible if there was something that countered Charm/Domination, but even that 6th level Priest spell is not fully proof against it and there's no way you'll cast it before they get you if you start within range of them. I managed to give them a taste of their own medicine and hit them with a Confusion, but it doesn't last very long. In the end, it came down to Eder vs. Raedric and a couple of badly wounded Fampyrs and since they basically couldn't hurt him, he beat them down with the aid of a summoned Adra Beetle.

The fact that enemies drop everything they carry is fine. That's the way it worked in the IE games and it's much better than the random loot system where an enemy with a short sword (or better yet, an animal) drops a halberd or whatever. It doesn't actually have that much impact on the economy. Do the math: except for the armors (which are worth 40), most of those items are worth either 5 or 10 whereas enchanted items are worth hundreds. Yes, you get a bit extra if you loot absolutely everything, but it's not that much. You may be able to buy one or two extra expensive items from stores, but you can't buy everything. The stash is also fine except for two things: first, there should be a "Junk" section and second, identical items should stack.

In principle, tough choices are not intrinsically bad. However, they have to be implemented in a way that doesn't leave the player asking "Why the devil can't the character just do this instead?" and this appears to be rather hard to do. For example, in this quest, if you are not a Cipher and you didn't bring along Grieving Mother, there is nothing you can do about the girl's affliction. This is problematic because the game makes it perfectly clear that the Watcher is capable of manipulating souls. You couldn't have missed it because, at the very least, you needed to do it to the Old Watcher to clear the path to this area. It would be one thing if you at least had the option to look at her soul and the game would tell you that repairing this is beyond your abilities, but that's not what happens -- the fact that you have this power is completely ignored. The other branch is even worse. Suppose you have your Cipher or Grieving Mother heal the girl. The single most obvious option is to invite her to stay at your stronghold... and it is nowhere to be found. This isn't even a supernatural action, it's just common sense. You can invite others who have nowhere to go to stay with you (e.g. the Ogre in the same area), so why not her? A "tough choice" that exists solely because an obvious option that would make things work out better was not implemented is bad design.

This is the drawback of random loot. I found a Superb (+12 accuracy, x1.45 damage) Great Sword with some other properties (Wounding, I think) in that cave which I promptly handed to Pallegina. Also, that critter felt like an overgrown Drake rather than a Dragon. The Dragons are nasty.

I tried it in a certain battle on a rooftop where many enemies cast Charm and, for a 6th level spell, it's surprisingly useless. It doesn't help that you can either cast the anti-Charm spell or the anti-Fear spell (there's simply no time for both unless you brought two Priests) and the Fear aura negates about half of that bonus right off.

Thanks. I had the +2 DR from the Knights and got the +0.1 Crit from the Mercenaries, but either didn't realize or forgot about them. The rest are either evil or endgame stuff which I haven't gotten to yet. I suspect you have to fool somebody into feeding the undead scholar near the machine for him to tell you how to do it.

Out of curiosity, how many permanent stat increases are there in the game? I've heard of the pool of blood where you can sacrifice companions, but I was thinking more along the lines of the books or the Machine of Lum the Mad from the Baldur's Gate series or the varied list of things from Planescape: Torment. There seem to be plenty of items, spells and consumables that increases stats, but not much that is permanent.

You are revealed to be a Watcher upon speaking to the dwarf woman hanging on the tree though. Sagani could easily have gone in any of the wilderness areas near Guilded Vale and not trigger the relevant dialog (much like Eder does) on the off chance that somebody went wandering before doing the Watcher quest.

It's unfortunate that this discussion is colored by the recent debates on a nearly unrelated topic because the complaint in the original post is quite fair. There's only one female companion in the entirety of Act 1 (which took me much longer than 4 hours) and she's extremely temporary. It does change in Act 2 and the three that are there are very good, but the placement is not optimal.

If you mean Reviving Exhortation, then I'm pretty sure you wouldn't because it doesn't do what it says it does. It claims that it restores the character at something like 300 Endurance and in a bit of time, takes away half of that (i.e. something like 150 Endurance). What it actually does is restore the character at maximum Endurance which for any character I can think of is less than 300 and for most characters you'd ever want to use this on, is less than 150. On the other hand, it does take away exactly the numerical value of Endurance mentioned in the description (not half of what was restored) so most characters will simply drop after the duration expires and even very durable characters will be reduced to very low health. It's extremely situational. The only usage I can think of is when you have a caster down who needs to cast just one fight-changing spell. Given that you shouldn't be in situations where party members are down in the first place, it's more or less worthless.

I'm OK with Fear and the like affecting constructs and undead or Blindness affecting slimes. If it has enough motivation to attack you, there should be something that gives it pause and if it can somehow sense you, you should be able to dull those senses. On the other hand, oil on the floor knocking down flying creatures... yeah, that doesn't really make much sense.

I wouldn't mind more VO as long as it does not compromise the dialog. Full VO would certainly do that for a game like PoE, but having a slightly higher fraction than we currently do and particularly giving the companions more voiced lines would not be a bad idea. That said, there is one exception: if a line has "grey text" (i.e. expressions, gestures, etc.) interspersed with the dialog, please don't add VO to it. It makes it very difficult to interpret properly as one must read the text synchronously with the VO and even then sometimes the VO doesn't pause in the right place (for good reason -- not all the "grey text" implies pauses -- but it's still difficult). If all of the "grey text" is at the end, then VO is fine, but if it is interspersed, then it does more harm than good.

Make sure you copy his spells (and maybe have him copy yours). You can do it by right-clicking each grimoire, scrolling to another Wizard and then clicking the plus sign on the spell. It costs money and you may not have much in the moment, but I would definitely copy at least Fan of Flames. Crowd control is nice later on, but something has to actually be doing damage and you're kind of short on party members at the moment.