Sensuki

Copy-pasted from my Something Awful post I have found that I only really care about the Athletics skill in combat, because it forces me to rest when I don't want to. Characters with 0 Athletics get fatigued after a pitiful amount of time without rest. I don't care about Lore because you'll most likely get the Bestiary XP entries anyway, and even though I do look at the monster stats, I hope to be able to disable Combat HUDs altogether when the combat feedback is improved. I haven't really been using consumables, so Survival hasn't mattered, and I don't try and avoid combat, so Stealth hasn't mattered ... stock Stealth appears to be fine for setting up on enemies. Traps have not been working up until this patch, so I haven't needed Mechanics in combat yet, and all the traps were removed from BB Rogue's inventory so I haven't set one yet. I really don't think it's a good idea to try to remove autonomous skill maxing, because that logic is just a simple reaction to how RPGs are designed. From what I've seen, Pillars of Eternity's out of combat scripted interaction and dialogue design also encourages it. The reason people just max two skills (or whatever) is because when you do that, you are guaranteed to experience all of the available environmental, scripted interaction and dialogue related options to that choice. Spreading out skills is almost always a bad thing when it comes to environmental checks and dialogue checks because it locks you out of higher tier options. You get access to more lower tier options, sure, but if you want to experience the skill choices of the higher tier options, you have to max those skills, not just dabble in them. If I intend to play a game a few times to try and experience all of the content/choices then I am going to max different skills on different playthroughs so I can see all of those options. No mechanical changes to skills at the low level (such as trying to give them an in combat benefit) is going to change that mindset, if I don't max a skill, then I'm going to miss out on the highest checks, and thus miss out on content - no thanks. If I'm going to play through the game 20 times, then yeah, on some of those playthroughs I might not max my skills, but I'm always going to max skills on the first few playthroughs so I can experience all of the highest tier options for each skill ... and then on any playthroughs after that I will decide whether or not to max skills based on that information, usually games still promote maxing skills because the content that max skills lock off is too good to pass up. Tying skills to talents only forces people to either pick certain talents to get the skill allocation they want OR build their character the way they want for combat at the cost of missing out on the options locked out by the skill allocation they wanted. Personally I think that stinks to high heaven. If you want more people to want to spread out skills, you have to change the RPG design.

dw

Changing cloth tint colors only updates on the character after you exit the inventory and then re-open it again

You can change colors in the inventory screen (although it doesn't update correctly in the game world, you have to reset something).

You could already do that in the previous system though ? The only thing I thought was superfluous about it was that it was needlessly complicated to assign skill points at level up. You spent like 15 mouse clicks leveling up skills with triangular points that don't actually give you a bonus until you hit the threshold - Why? That's the only good thing about the new system, is that you no longer have to do that, but it would still be nice to choose your skills, rather than having to accept whatever the talents have.

This has actually always happened, they're just showing for longer this time. In most of my videos, they capture this happening when opening the inventory.

What class / difficulty tho? Some classes are more powerful than others - Druids, Ciphers and Chanters were the best in v278, Rogues were amazing last patch, although this patch I'm not getting the super huge hits I was last time. Had a couple of ~120 crits on beetles, but a lot of casual hits and grazes too. e: it's because of the increased Deflection. Just crit a Wolf for 162. 30 points in Deflection on Stone Beetles does a lot

Finally got a build that's dominating this patch Hearth Orlan Monk, 10 18 10 20 10 10, Turning Wheel, Swift Strikes, Stunning Blows, Lesser Wounds, Lightning Strikes Carving up beetles atm

happens to me too

It's got worse with every build IMO.

The floating items bug is from the last build, v301. I think it's gotten worse now though - more items are doing it TAB showing every character tooltip is a horrible decision, should be removed.

Happens when you press quit from the death screen, doesn't happen when you choose load.

I am not the best player, nor am I the worst - but I am getting smashed this build. BB Fighter cannot hold the line, even with the Priest spamming dedicated heals on him he still falls pretty quickly when engaged by 2-3 beetles or humanoid opponents. Tried equipping him with the Priest's Large Shield, now he can't hit anything and isn't contributing any damage and only survives a few seconds longer in comparison. Depends on the fight though, when I get good rolls (hits, crits) I do fine, but if I graze or miss critical spells/attacks then yeah, it's a big deal. Even in the previous patches I didn't think characters had enough Health or Stamina, now it's plain that they don't.

Stone Beetles now have 40 something Deflection, previously they had 13 Looks like I'll be building everyone with max Perception this build then.

According to Brandon Adler's patch notes this bug was fixed in the latest build Looks like it wasn't.

It's probably alright on your character that tanks if you built them specifically to sit there and take it, but the BB Fighter has 22 Strength. Using a shield on him would be a waste of that damage potential IMO.

Do any of you guys actually use shields? I find the reduced attack speed AND accuracy (and thus, damage) just isn't worth the Deflection bonus, ever.

This bug was present in v301 as well, since the changes to the health system. Only affects BB characters AFAIK

Well combat is still too fast. A level 5 Fighter cannot die in 6 seconds in Icewind Dale, no matter what enemy you are up against.

Yes it's harder than before. What you have witnessed is some "doubling and halving". The difficulty took a nose dive in the last patch and you could basically walk around killing mobs with auto attack. Now the difficulty has been ramped up quite significantly in this version and coming from how easy the last version was, it seems like a large difference. I actually had to cast spells against beetles ... haven't had to do that since v278. Managed to only beat Medreth's group once with a starting character & starting party off the bat now too (Fighter, I think?). Various tries with other classes have all resulted in failure, BB Fighter dies in about 6 seconds from focus fire, Priest can keep him alive with a heal as the first action, but he still dies shortly afterwards. Can't dish out enough damage to take them down (on Hard). I'll bet a Druid does it easily though. Yeapppp lol

This happened in the last build v301 as well.

This. I am very surprised by this choice, almost seems like a curve ball from Josh Sawyer that seems a bit at odds with his design style / ethos IMO. I thought this was the exact type of stuff he wanted to avoid. I also noticed that Obsidian has added in recommended attributes ... this seems strange to me because sometimes the Recommended attributes are IMO not great/not quite accurate, and kind of seems like an admittance of failure to achieve the design goals of "All attributes are useful for every class" and "No dump stats". At least they got the Paladin one right - INTELLECT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ... yeah no shizer, and along with Chanters and maybe Fighters, it's about the only class worth taking it on.

In v257, v278 and v301, this tile looked like this (shot taken from v257) In v333 it looks like this - looks like a botched cut and paste job or something Don't know what's going on there ... looks like a bug in the area render or something ? Has this map been painted over ?

Same issue as this: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69059-333-talent-scrolling-character-screen/

Was doing some test fighting vs Medreth's group on Hard (and it didn't go well) and the party has died screen persisted into the main menu, both options in the party has died menu faded the screen out, and then back to the same. Had to crash the game to exit.