PsychoBlonde

My main problem with party size in Pillars 1 was that some companions you pretty much have to drag with you EVERYWHERE if you want to get their companion quests to trigger (Durance and Grieving Mother) From a gameplay standpoint, I don't really have a party size preference, 5 is fine with me. But I REALLY want to be able to do people's companion quests without having what ended up being my TWO LEAST FAVORITE NPC's LOCKED IN THE PARTY WHILE YOU WAIT FOR THEM TO GET AROUND TO CHATTING WITH YOU. As a result of that in the first game, I got to spend almost no time running with and enjoying companions I greatly preferred. So, my suggestion would be more along the lines of "please make the companion quests consistently self-contained". By all means, give all the companions COMMENTARY on lots of stuff you can do--this adds replay value, for sure! But don't have companions with conditions like "must be in party for X amount of adventuring time" or however those two worked.

How do you manage to confront him at the beach? I've tried waiting and it doesn't seem to do any good, he never shows up.

You know, one thing that kind of struck me about this game is that if you just kind of follow along the main plot, as I did, you don't pick up a single female companion after the tutorial until pretty darn late in the game. I wound up feeling a bit like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz for a while. Anyone else find this odd?

And they all had exactly the same personality and lines, which was a great saving on the writing . . . Skyrim's "romances" were . . . weird.

Where you go wrong is in assuming that cheesy = bad. And how is pressing 'A' for smooches any sillier than pressing 'A' to defeat the bad guys? They both bear about as much similarity to their real-life counterparts. And yet people enjoy both of them. I would have liked to romance Eder on my female human rogue. I'm a little surprised at the people saying Durance. Doesn't the game kind of allude to the fact that he has an STD that has caused impotence and his face is covered with pox sores?

I had (some) trouble with this fight, but managed it. The main issue with the Fampyrs is that they charm your party members. I succeeded when I used that one prayer spell (prayer against bewilderment or something, it's high-level) to boost my characters' resistance to charming. Then I just spammed them with fire spells.

Yep, me too. Maybe massively improving the AI and add in hard counters may help but whatever the solution, the combat in PoE is no where near as interesting and challenging as BG2. One of my favorite type of battles in BG2 was fighting enemy mages. Your whole party would be wiped out if you just tried to damage with melee and magic. You had to strip the mage of their multiple layers of defenses. Then at various stages in the battle, you would get surprised by something (maybe a contingency spell would be triggered or the mage would summon something right next to your casters), forcing to you to change tactics ASAP to win the battle. I rather not have that kind of BS in PoE. You'd rather not have interesting battles which force you to change tactics often? Wow. Uh, having to lead off EVERY SINGLE FIGHT with Breach is not "changing tactics often". That crap bored me to tears in BG2. It is actually not possible for the game to *force* you to play tactically AND have a wide variety of possible character builds. There will always be possible builds that can brute force everything.

For many things, I'd agree with your comment. But when you can hit the level cap by the middle to two thirds of the way through the game (without even going out of your way to do so) and thus be overpowered to the extent that the rest of the game becomes trivial, that's an issue. I didn't hit the level cap until very close to the end of the game (had approximately half of Twin Elms left to do) and I actually "went out of my way" to DO all the side quests and extra content. It's not an "issue". You may not enjoy that the game didn't . . . somehow . . . magically read your mind and provide you with the magical perfect experience you imagined you wanted, but that doesn't make it an "issue" or a "design flaw" or a "balance problem". It means that you played in a way that you didn't like all the results of. I could equally complain that I didn't max out certain skills and thus, say, couldn't disarm every single trap in the game the instant I came across it. That doesn't make this a "problem" or mean it requires a "fix". It means if I want to be able to disarm all the traps I need to put more points in Mechanics. "I want to play the way I want" and "I want to never accidentally out-level foes" are mutually exclusive goals. Besides, it's so farkin' easy to tune the combat in this game to the difficulty you prefer to play at, it's not even funny. Run with a smaller party. Pull more mobs at a time. Don't bother upgrading your gear. Honestly, it's like the people in DDO who go out of their way to play the most broken, stupid, overpowered builds and then complain that the game is "too easy". Well, of course it is. You intentionally went straight for the easy button--and then when you hit it, you complained that it worked. Silly.

Currently the game "forcibly prevents" players that want to do side quests from enjoying combat because apparently "the optimal" way is to rush main quest, finish the game ASAP and buy the next game. I did all the side quests AND quite enjoyed combat. So it's not the GAME causing this "problem", it's your imagination.

That is a great approach for TTRPGs, but terribly constraining and uncomfortable for CRPGs. (So I'm surprised Sawyer hasn't done it already.) Personally, I find the entire "leveling" ethos to be kind of silly unless the game is intentionally meant to be a sort of "coming of age" variety of story. It's regularly attended by ridiculous nonsense like people heralding you as some kind of Hero of the Ages when you have a bent pin for a weapon and know 2 spells or, conversely, people laughing about how weaksauce you are when you just hacked your way through an entire mountain of Evil Dudes. The only excuse for it is that building your complete character before you know how any of the mechanics work would kind of suck. A lot.

It's a single-player game. Why does it need to be "balanced"? My only comment on this "problem" is "I don't care, and it doesn't matter". Yet another mindless "the game needs to forcibly prevent people from playing a certain way because I imagine that way as somehow being 'less fun' or 'suboptimal'" complaint.

Play Dungeons and Dragons Online. Boom. Anyway, I really enjoyed my Human Rogue. Seriously, who cares about "balance" in a single-player game? Play what you want to play. It can't possibly be as stupid as BG 1 and 2.

The bandits don't actually steal MORE money than you collect in taxes. The amount the bandits take + the second amount is your total taxes collected. If your defense is low, the proportion the bandits steal is usually higher than the leftover that you get, yes, but they don't magically dip into your treasury. Are you looting everything and using the stash? Because I bought EVERYTHING and rested constantly in expensive rooms and I still had something like 100k copper left over at the end of the game. I didn't find the keep upgrades expensive, I found them TRIVIAL. I wasn't really expecting the "stronghold building" to be anything much. Probably the most interesting bit is getting bounties.

You do realize that allegory is a synonym for symbol and literary allegory is a *type* of symbolism.

Those options usually don't change the overall outcome, just maybe give you an extra line or two. In fact, sometimes those are more jerkass than the non-stat-bound responses.

I didn't get any "received item" notification, but when I checked my inventory there it was. It's an estoc called "The Blade of the Endless Paths". Check your inventory.

15 levels. Last two are extremely small, though, so it's more like 13 and a bit.

It actually tells you the first, second, and last if you look around closely enough, so all you have to do is "guess" the third one, which isn't too hard.

I'm betting Pillars 2 might. :D Also, I don't mind lots of combat in this game, because the combat is actually fun, as opposed to BG2 when it was basically just The Endless Annoying Parade of Spellcasters With Too Many Buffs.

Oh, there's more to it? I have to admit I found it hard following his ramblings and reasoning at times and by the end I just wanted to finally resolve his quest before going after Thaos, but the only option I've had in the dialogue was "I think Magran was working with Woedica against Eothas". So... was there more to this? Are Magran's role and motives actually plainly revealed anywhere or left up for speculation just as Eothas? And while we're at it, why would Skaen suggest to the player to install Woedica as the ultimate big brother master? Theres more to what? Yes - there is more to Magran and the Godhammer. She was definitively not working with Woedica against Eothas. It's more that Eothas's avatar was overstepping his bounds by a great deal, and stepping into the territory of war (Magrans territory). Durance only got half a soul left, and there are two ways you can interpret this. <snip> As for Skaen. He is the Quiet Slave, the god of secret hatred, resentment, and violent rebellion. He stands to be second in power should Woedica get her souls as she wants. These gods all act according to their aspects. Where the other gods stand to loose should Woedica succeed he has many followers to gain. Meh, somehow somewhere my dialogues left only "Magran conspired with Woedica" option available, which left me scratching my head: "She's what now? Where did that come from? And I've just convinced Durance of this? [in Sagani's voice] What? What just happened!? " I should probably go back and re-read that conversation. And definitely should've given Skaen more thought, from this angle his peculiar behaviour makes perfect sense. Oh, the finer subtleties we might miss when rushing towards the end. It's a reflection of your watcher's own interpretation based on past dialogue. I think you have some different outcomes before it gets to that point if you act inquisitively enough. I guess it is important to note that whenever we finished a conversation Durance would often rebuff me with insults layered around talk of Wael. Yeah, pretty much anything your character says is just your own interpretation, which is quite interesting. Nobody ever comes along to tell you "This Is the Official Explanation". You have to decide what you think on your own, which is the recurring theme of the game--do you take other people's interpretations at face value and do what they say, or do you try and figure out your own path, knowing that the "answers" may never be clear? All the sub-plots basically revolve around the concept of coming to terms with uncertainty in some fashion. At the end, I basically took it as one thing: the motive of the gods in general is to maintain the status quo. Woedica and Eothas both upset this at various times and got squashed for it--now Woedica is out for revenge. She is basically like the Rogue Cop of the gods, breaking the rules and dishing out her own brand of "justice". You know, it just occurred to me that Waidwen's entire invasion of the Dyrwood may have been an attempt to put an end to Woedica's schemes in some way. Look at this: 1. Woedica gets uppity and the other gods squash her. 2. She sends Thaos to gather power for her using ancient Engwithan artifacts. He forms the Leaden Key toward this end. 3. Eothas, the god of forgiveness and redemption (and thus most directly opposed to Woedica) gets wind of this and can't figure out a way to counteract Thaos except by creating his own avatar. 4. Eothas selects Waidwen to be his avatar, possibly because conditions in Raedceras have driven enough people to the worship of Eothas that the god has sufficient power there to accomplish this. 5. Waidwen frees Raedceras and then, under direction from Eothas to stop Thaos at all costs, invades Dyrwood to try and accomplish this. 6. Eothas' actions piss off the other gods, particularly Magran, and she inspires her followers to create the Godhammer and blow Waidwen to Kingdom Come, thus leaving Thaos free to finish carrying out his schemes. So, in a sense the Hollowing really IS "Waidwen's Legacy", because this is what Eothas was attempting to prevent by invading the Dyrwood in the first place. That's speculation, but it does hang together nicely. The time line does not work out for your 6 steps there. 1) happens quite a while back (her temple in Defiance bay was burned during the rebellion against Aedyr, which was decades before), and background books point to her being squashed awhile back as well. 2) Thaos and the leaden key date back centuries, if not millennia. thus 3) falls apart 4) is questionable. There is nothing to suggest gods get anything from worship in this setting.. the forge god abydon (or whatever) seems to be pretty much abandoned. Souls give them power (and made them in the first place. Worship seems to serve just the basic function of social control. 5) there isn't any indication that thaos is in the dyrwood at this point. The 'legacy' (brought about by manipulating the machines) happens after the end of the war. 6) I'm not particularly convinced that Magran inspired the bomb. They may well have done it on their own, which explains several things, including the fires being out at the shrines in Defiance Bay, despite wider worship of Magran. Talking with Galawain, Magran and Abydon, its pretty clear what motivates Thaos (and therefor the Key), is animancy. The new science is explaining the world and moving people away from the gods. Those three accept that, due to their natures, but it makes everything Thaos has ever done pointless, and he can't accept that. He must keep the world the unchanging ball of misery he created, or every atrocity he ever committed was worth nothing. THAOS dates back a long ways, but the Leaden Key is specifically devoted to restoring Woedica to power. I didn't find any evidence in the game that the Leaden Key is an ancient organization. Thaos has created a number of organizations when and as he needed them, but his original group is only referred to as the "Inquisition" in game as far as I could tell. And the gods clearly DO get something out of worship--they apparently can't influence anyone EXCEPT their followers (or people who actively pray to them, at the very least). I'm somewhat assuming that Eothas couldn't just take over any random person in the world. It would have had to be someone who followed him (Waidwen), and for his plan to work it would have to be in a place where that person could conceivably raise an army instead of just getting whacked by the locals as a nutcase and a heretic. Conditions in Raedceras were ideal, so it's possible Eothas seized the opportunity. The machines that Thaos was planning to use to resurrect Woedica were in the Dyrwood, so he *necessarily* had to go to the Dyrwood. And Eothas, having been created by those same machines, would know this. There's nothing ELSE there that would inspire Eothas to invade (at least, nothing that was revealed in the game), so if there's a motivation to be found, that's the one. Whether he knew substantial details of Thaos's *exact* plan is unknown, but all through the game people keep wondering "why did Waidwen come HERE?!" . . . well, there IS a rather solid reason, as you discover. And animancy isn't a "new science" that could "move people away from the gods". Animancy CREATED the gods--it's ANCIENT. Thaos probably doesn't care one way or another about the study of animancy, it's merely a target of convenience to blame the Hollowborn on--possibly an excuse for a good old-fashioned crusade once he gets his goddess back up and running. His efforts are focused more specifically on getting people *angry* at animancy than on wiping it out--otherwise he would have stuck around in Defiance Bay post-assassination to continue rallying the mob. But he doesn't, he leaves IMMEDIATELY without even waiting to see what happens, only pausing to take out your biggest source of info on his movements.

I didn't say there was. I'm saying that "MOAR DAMAGEZ!!!!" is not the "ONLY" build option. Perception adds to your interrupt. More interrupt = enemies don't do so much. My rogue with stacked perception and interrupting blows TRASHES casters--they literally won't get off a single spell. It was really kind of weird to watch.

Oh, there's more to it? I have to admit I found it hard following his ramblings and reasoning at times and by the end I just wanted to finally resolve his quest before going after Thaos, but the only option I've had in the dialogue was "I think Magran was working with Woedica against Eothas". So... was there more to this? Are Magran's role and motives actually plainly revealed anywhere or left up for speculation just as Eothas? And while we're at it, why would Skaen suggest to the player to install Woedica as the ultimate big brother master? Theres more to what? Yes - there is more to Magran and the Godhammer. She was definitively not working with Woedica against Eothas. It's more that Eothas's avatar was overstepping his bounds by a great deal, and stepping into the territory of war (Magrans territory). Durance only got half a soul left, and there are two ways you can interpret this. <snip> As for Skaen. He is the Quiet Slave, the god of secret hatred, resentment, and violent rebellion. He stands to be second in power should Woedica get her souls as she wants. These gods all act according to their aspects. Where the other gods stand to loose should Woedica succeed he has many followers to gain. Meh, somehow somewhere my dialogues left only "Magran conspired with Woedica" option available, which left me scratching my head: "She's what now? Where did that come from? And I've just convinced Durance of this? [in Sagani's voice] What? What just happened!? " I should probably go back and re-read that conversation. And definitely should've given Skaen more thought, from this angle his peculiar behaviour makes perfect sense. Oh, the finer subtleties we might miss when rushing towards the end. It's a reflection of your watcher's own interpretation based on past dialogue. I think you have some different outcomes before it gets to that point if you act inquisitively enough. I guess it is important to note that whenever we finished a conversation Durance would often rebuff me with insults layered around talk of Wael. Yeah, pretty much anything your character says is just your own interpretation, which is quite interesting. Nobody ever comes along to tell you "This Is the Official Explanation". You have to decide what you think on your own, which is the recurring theme of the game--do you take other people's interpretations at face value and do what they say, or do you try and figure out your own path, knowing that the "answers" may never be clear? All the sub-plots basically revolve around the concept of coming to terms with uncertainty in some fashion. At the end, I basically took it as one thing: the motive of the gods in general is to maintain the status quo. Woedica and Eothas both upset this at various times and got squashed for it--now Woedica is out for revenge. She is basically like the Rogue Cop of the gods, breaking the rules and dishing out her own brand of "justice". You know, it just occurred to me that Waidwen's entire invasion of the Dyrwood may have been an attempt to put an end to Woedica's schemes in some way. Look at this: 1. Woedica gets uppity and the other gods squash her. 2. She sends Thaos to gather power for her using ancient Engwithan artifacts. He forms the Leaden Key toward this end. 3. Eothas, the god of forgiveness and redemption (and thus most directly opposed to Woedica) gets wind of this and can't figure out a way to counteract Thaos except by creating his own avatar. 4. Eothas selects Waidwen to be his avatar, possibly because conditions in Raedceras have driven enough people to the worship of Eothas that the god has sufficient power there to accomplish this. 5. Waidwen frees Raedceras and then, under direction from Eothas to stop Thaos at all costs, invades Dyrwood to try and accomplish this. 6. Eothas' actions piss off the other gods, particularly Magran, and she inspires her followers to create the Godhammer and blow Waidwen to Kingdom Come, thus leaving Thaos free to finish carrying out his schemes. So, in a sense the Hollowing really IS "Waidwen's Legacy", because this is what Eothas was attempting to prevent by invading the Dyrwood in the first place. That's speculation, but it does hang together nicely.

Aloth one-shot her with a Crackling Bolt when she was at 80% health. No, I'm not kidding. She's not resistant to electrical damage at all, if you can land a solid hit with an electrical spell, she's toast. Also, if you skirt around her to where all the Xaurips are guarding her treasure, you can get them in between you and her and she won't breathe right off the bat. The breath weapon is a cone, also, so it IS possible to get her turned toward your tank so that she's not breathing on the party. Make sure your tank (probably Eder) has a 2nd chance item so he'll get up if he eats a breath weapon and stack corrode resist on his gear with crafting and he can toe-to-toe her pretty well. Just watch his endurance and be fast with the heals because she WILL toast your party if he goes down and she turns around. Prayer against fear helps because her fear aura gives a massive (like -20) penalty to all defenses and means she will crit the crap out of you with her attacks. It's a tough fight, takes some careful work and some good luck, but it's by no means impossible.

I am also curious about this. Has anyone found a different outcome to the one mentioned above? No, and that's actually the point of Eder's quest--that he'll never know why his brother decided what he decided. You can have a later conversation with Eder where you say something like "your mistake was waiting for someone else to tell you what was right", and he agrees with you, and says "I guess I just miss my brother". His quest is, literally, about *coming to terms with uncertainty*, not about getting answers.

8. I would really have liked it if there were opportunities to gain permanent stat bonuses during the game, either through role playing or simply as a part of leveling up. It feels like your character "grows" more when your stats gradually improve in this way. This was one of the things I liked a lot about Planescape: Torment. 9. One of the stats should add to your Accuracy rating vs. Deflection (probably Perception) and one should add to your Accuracy vs. Fort/Ref/Will (probably Resolve). 10. Food items that give minor-to-medium elemental resistances would be VERY much appreciated. 11. Resting at Brighthallow should have given you ALL of your accumulated construction bonuses, not just "choice of one", particularly since you only got to USE those bonuses in the Paths, since they'd wear off before you could go anywhere else. 12. There were a lot of named items but most of them were pretty generic. IMO if it's going to have a unique name, it should have a unique bonus that you can't get anywhere else. And all unique items should be of Exceptional or better quality, I think, so they're not rapidly out-classed by the unnamed junk. 13. To much gear for the armor/weapon/neck/ring slots and not enough gloves/boots/belts. I had characters with empty gloves/boots/belt slots at the end of the game simply because I couldn't find anything to put on them. 14. Found myself annoyed that neck was both the cloak and the amulet slot, basically. I like cosmetic cloaks. Also, too many helms/hats were merely cosmetic instead of having any actual bonuses on them. 15. I actually kind of felt that there were too many companions to suit the story, but this may be a result of the fact that one of my major enjoyments is seeing the companions react to things that I do and thus they're basically dead weight to me unless I can take them EVERYWHERE. I realize that the number of companions was basically dictated by stretch goals, anyway. I think I might actually have enjoyed it more if some of them were mutually exclusive, though, like they'd refuse to travel with each other or doing the quest to get one prevents you from doing the quest to get another. More criticism from companions and a wider variety of ethical standpoints/challenges would also have been welcome. I did VERY much like how all of them became involved in your personal conflict, though, and thus had a vital reason to see it through to the end with you even though their personal struggle might be resolved long before then. Also, the reasons FOR all of them to JOIN your party were great, as they all *tied in* to the central conflict instead of being "I have a personal problem sidequest that doesn't relate to anything else in any way whatsoever".