Sensuki

http://tools.garry.tv/steamchart/?show=291650&range=7

I just made a video about it if you're interested http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/71462-pillars-of-eternity-beginners-guide/

The combat is a little bit disjointed yeah (compared to the IE games). No denying that. You get used to it though.

If you have a specific build in mind, perhaps I can give you an anecdote?

Yes, but you can turn off most of them yourself in the options menu in a non-expert game, I will show those in the next video. Attribute selection doesn't really make your build 'sub-optimal'. What makes a build sub optimal is doing stuff like maxing Intellect but then picking no active abilities that benefit from it - that's stuffing up your build. Your abilities, talents and items will have the biggest impact on how you play the game. I will demonstrate this in my second and third videos. To get the most out of your attributes you should either pick them to support your role or play-style, as you can bend classes to play different ways, or play to the attributes you picked.

Yeah but if you really make a Tank character, you'll probably end up with over 100 points in Deflection (a Paladin at level 4 can get more than that in the beta) so in retrospect, 10 points may not make much of a difference in the end. I'm not saying they will do that, but I think they'll probably make some tweaks to it after everyone's played through it - there'll be a lot of feedback.

For the record I don't think there will be major changes, the change that I hope they will make won't reallly have any effect on your character's efficacy. Attributes aren't really as "impactful" as D&D. You can make a bad build if you really try, but it's a lot more difficult and even then if you're playing on easy or normal - you'll still probably be able to finish the game without issue.

Part 2 will take me a long time to make, I believe it will take me all day tomorrow and then some if I want to try and cover everything.

They are affected by it, it's just not shown in the Chant description (which is/was a bug).

The truth is, I will not know exactly how important they are until I finish the game, and I have not got very far yet because I'm making this guide. I do think that the non-combat skill and attribute check design may favor min-maxing.

I would personally advise maxing attributes and skills over middling scores because then it will take you less playthroughs to experience all of the available options. However if you do have several average scores, you'll simply be able to unlock more lower scores. I haven't played very far into the game yet (I'm focusing on these videos) so I don't know what later game checks are like.

The closest thing is lowering a defense with a debuff, and then attacking that defense. Often results in critical hits (on either damage or duration).

I haven't seen anything but positive stuff so far.

Spells and abilities don't scale with level. I'll get into that stuff in my next video. It took me a long time to write the transcript for this (I hope it was good), and I want the next two to be good as well. Edit: not entirely correct. Non-weapon based spells and abilities add your level to Accuracy roll.

Albino Drow.

That is my interpretation of the difficulty level, as Hard difficulty includes what I would call 'vanilla' encounters with unmodified creatures. Normal and Easy have less creatures and less or no elite creatures. This is my opinion on the difficulty settings based on the beta.

I PM'd you the transcript btw.

It's chaptered. If you ever need to reference something, you can just skip to the bit you want to listen to. I do not have a professional setup (Don't have two screens, or editing software) so I'm just doing the best I can with what I have. I realize I made one mistake when talking about Constitution, technically what I said is correct but it probably isn't 100% true because debuffs will reduce your defenses and thus make Constitution more valuable, sorry about that.

http://youtu.be/JVhbWTDAbR4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaCeUrG7Bc0 Here is my incredibly verbose guide to the Pillars of Eternity Character Creation. It contains pretty much everything you would want to know about making a character for Pillars of Eternity with an interest in mechanics (although I also touch on what exactly is reacted to in the game for RP purposes). The guide is fully chaptered on the youtube page, so if you don't want to watch it all you can just skip to the info you want to listen to. The guide is for everyone from completely new players to RPGs to Infinity Engine veterans who may not have the beta. There are many beta backers here that have already played the game, but there might be some information in there worth listening to. This will be part one of a three part guide. The second part will focus on basic controls, options menu, mechanics and combat. The third will showcase a few encounters with each of the classes and showcase how to play them. This guide will also be spoiler free if you have already seen the E3 Press Demo from 2014. I hope you like it, and I hope it helps ease you into the game.

For the record, what kind of UI are you after? Something like Grotesques?

By the way guys I just finished recording the first part of my guide - it's the Introduction and Character Creation part. I'm not sure if it will be any good or not, but at least it it's verbose and basically contains all the information you could ever want when creating a character with an interest in mechanics. I'm compressing it now, and I'll give it a bit of a watch to see if it's terrible, but if it's okay I'll put it up.

I think it would look better uncropped for the larger sized 210x330 version. It would only need to be cropped for the party bar version. YMMV though.

Can't say I'm looking forward to it either.

Cabinets aren't digital.

That was not the impression I got. I believe he was unimpressed by the fact that she posted her portraits, but did not provide a version without a watermark to use in game. My own thoughts were "hey maybe I might use one of those ... if they weren't watermarked".