Agiel

It's from a long line of TV series based on the Wuxia novel <<Return of Condor Heroes>> but the one consistent thing from all of them is copious amounts of wire-fu (in fact the 1995 series and the movie <<Iron Monkey>> was my introduction to flying people in kung-fu movies before <<Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon>> came out).

Seems like the kind of game where folks aren't content with violating the laws of physics, but pouring lighter fluid and dropping a match on the text books, in the best possible way:

There are fairly predictable entry points for the Arsonists so it pays to fill Nenio/Woljif's level 1 slots with Grease to drop them there. This works well with bringing Lann/Wenduag or a ranged-focus MC. I have heard that Selective Spell Grease trivialises the fight, but in my experience it perfectly suffices simply dropping a normal Grease on the entry points and keeping your melee frontline on Guard mode to mop up anyone who makes their Reflex save and survived the withering hail of arrows.

That's my first playthrough done. Thoughts are still percolating but can contribute a few points. I rather like the narrative directions Owlcat takes with its main villains (Nyrissa for Kingmaker, Areelu Vorlesh for WotR) and I admire them for expanding them well beyond the one-dimensional baddies they were in the original Adventure Paths (a friend of mine will be participating in a Kingmaker campaign once its 2nd Edition iteration finally comes, and as he was already aware of the secret ending for the Owlcat cRPG I asked him if there was a certain Seduction check he will attempt). I'm enticed by an Azata playthrough as it seems to be the most well received narratively speaking, and it helps that my Pathfinder PC and the characters I played in Kingmaker and WotR are followers of Desna, though I've decided for a few more patches before I come back to WoTR (or probably when the first major story DLC comes out) as from what forum members here have said many mechanics for the Azata path remain borked. Hot tips for those wanting to do a Trickster playthrough in the future. Max out your Persuasion on every level-up and take Persuasion Trick 2, which Paralyzes creatures that fail a Will check DC your ranks of Persuasion +10 and Shakens those that succeed. Next, pick up the Ring of Boreal Might and slap it on your go-to spontaneous caster. As the Paralyze status reduces a creature's Dexterity to 1 (one) the stat drain from Polar Ray will guarantee one-shot a Paralyzed enemy (incredibly the Vavakia Vanguard rolled a 1 for the Will check, and Ember was able to one-shot his first stage with this method, and even Balors failing this check aren't wholly uncommon). Be advised that this ability is slightly bugged in that in some saves the Paralyze status can be inflicted on some of your own party members at the start of combat. Mobility Tricks for a melee-based Rogue are also hilarious, as you can simply micro your MC around crowds of dudes to blender them with AoOs (get Mythic Vital Strike to finish off your turn). Postcript: I got a chuckle out of this image floating around:

Played a little bit more with the new patch and have encountered a bug in which mounted party members travel far quicker than the rest of the party members while exploring the map, which can be quite annoying when traversing long distances in areas that you've already cleared and can potentially be deadly as on my save mounted Seelah isn't the highest AC member of the party. I vaguely recall there being a tick box that forces all party members to move in formation regardless of movement speed but for the life of me I cannot find it now. There is also a survey by Owlcat floating around gathering feedback and there seems to be a particular focus on the Enigma and Nenio's quest puzzles in the questions. Normally whenever I take part in these when asked to write in my own words what works and what doesn't I leave the box blank due to me being lazy and it not being a requirement for submission, but this time I made sure that Owlcat gets an earful about how tedious, repetitive, and unnecessary the puzzles were on top of the probable damage to my eyesight trying to discern the symbols on the slabs.

The impression I got from community feedback was that while WotR was very strong until the end of Act 3 (unremarkable HoMM-style minigame notwithstanding) it had its own <<House at the End of Time>> segment, except that it was expanded to roughly the final 3rd of the game. Slowly making my way through Act 4 solely because I need more and more breaks away from WotR due to how soul-sucking the world navigation mechanics of the Midnight Isles are (a similar mechanic for the House at the End of Time was my most loathed aspect of that segment in Kingmaker) and it drives home my attitude that either Owlcat should have stuck with the fixed perspective of Kingmaker and all the artistic limitations that entails or commit to a NWN/Dragon Age-like camera and movement system. While I could attribute what many perceive to be over-tuned encounters to early-access players consisting almost entirely of folks who knew the Pathfinder system inside and out, the Midnight Isles must have had several passes among developers and internal QA testers before it was pushed out into the backer beta. A big shame because there are quite a few interesting and challenging encounters to be found thus far and plenty of interesting story beats. With the above I'd like to emphasize that my criticisms thus far of WotR (wonky pacing of difficulty, tedious puzzles, and Act 4's world traversal gimmick) come from a place of wanting the game to be all it could be. <<Kingmaker>> in its final form was in my eyes 90% of the way to joining the ranks of BG2, IWD2, NWN2: MotB, and DA: O for my top 5 cRPGs and I backed WotR on the assumption that with experience, taking critical feedback to heart, and a bigger budget Owlcat could make a game that was truly sublime. I started <<Kingmaker>> close to launch and as WotR stands now I consider righting that ship a taller order for Owlcat. Postscript: Realised that with how it ended for me Sosiel's questline was an almost one-to-one retelling of <<the Deer Hunter>>:

Hence, "almost" First round I was able to take Playful Darkness down to about half before Nenio and Ember bought it. On the penultimate try I attempted to stack some Siroccos on him, which did kill him but left my entire frontline on Death's Door. Then tried the recommended strategy of filling all of Camellia's level 7 slots with Creeping Doom and was able to get by virtually unscathed.

Act 3 is done. I'm actually big fan of the Midnight Fane dungeon given how reasonably prepared players can easily overcome (almost, more on that later) all of its challenges at level 14 (side effects of bringing Seelah on a mount _and_ Bismuth may include Tourette's). However, given how Dimensional Doors are disabled in this dungeon I have to admit this is a bit... sadistic on the part of the developers: Spent one of fifteen-thousand summon creature scrolls I had in my inventory to trigger it, then waited for the heat death of the universe before the acid cleared. And Playful Darkness down for the count (granted, _only_ on Normal difficulty): Dropped two Creeping Dooms on him and had Ember spam Hellfire Rays like they were going out of style and finally finishing him off with a Lay On Hands from Seelah. Unfortunately come time for me to head to the Abyss I neglected to have the Lexicon in my inventory and Galfrey wouldn't let me go back to my chambers to retrieve if from the chest. I was able to add one to my inventory with Toy Box prior to the final fight, so hopefully nothing too f**ky happens as a result of that.

Ember preaching peace and understanding whilst dispensing literal flames of perdition ("Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum") makes one distinctly recall a certain scene from <<Mars Attacks!>>

In fairness 0:53-1:03 is an accurate layman's description of the tactical doctrine of the Apache and other ATGM-equipped helicopters. My personal favourite showing of the Apache (albeit brief) was the otherwise forgettable Sean Astin film Toy Soldiers (only video with the clip of said scene):

Bringing back warm and fuzzy memories of Jane's Longbow 2 and Enemy Engaged.

As Cackle is a Move action with proper positioning it's relatively trivial to keep active Hexes going while tossing in a Scorching Ray/Hellfire Ray within the same round (also note that Hexes cast prior to combat can have time added with Cackle, so for good measure I add a couple of Cackles on top of the initial cast of Protective Luck before a fight). I play with RTwP on so I have Ember's Cackle on autocast and I've learned to accept that I'm pressing the spacebar about about every 3 seconds on average to micromanage things.

Also note that Protective Luck is absolutely baller and with Cackle it can be extended for effectively the entirety of a fight so it's definitely worth investing into the Witch class for as long as you pick those up. Once you start running into enemies with 15 attacks a round Natural 20s become statistically significant and can potentially doom even the most metagame-y Scaled Fist or Instinctual Warrior decoys. With Protective Luck you reduce the probability of Natural 20s to 1/400 on top of its normal benefit of substantially reducing the number of hits scored against your decoys if their AC is still within the range of a roll of 2-19.

It is now clear to me that when Ember cheerfully informed us that "Our suffering has only begun!" she was all too aware of how aneurysm-inducing the Enigma puzzles were going to be. Seriously, may there be a pox on the house of the developer who thought that what the agonisingly tedious puzzles needed was a terrible interface that makes trying to follow online guides a trial in frustration in and of itself.

The presence of "Kaessi" does make "the Room" encounter in the House at the Edge of Time far less akin to trying to destroy a fire ant hill with your bare hands while covered in honey. @GromnirA real damn shame. <<Reign of Winter>> and <<Iron Gods>> were so highly regarded by myself and much of the Pathfinder player base due to introducing the idea that there's a much wider universe beyond Golarion that's decidedly far more grounded, and their interaction with the fantasy-based civilisation of Golarion was a great breath of fresh air in contrast to your typical Tolkien-esque affair of other settings.

From what I've heard on the Discord about the only AP that's not under consideration is <<Reign of Winter>> since Owlcat may run afoul of laws in Russia regarding "unpatriotic sentiments".

As soon as I'm done with this fort blocking the path I'm on my way into the Heart of Mystery, but about now my patience has already been tested by all the crappy Myst puzzles up to this point and from what I've read the worst is still yet to come. Even trying to replicate the solutions from guides online is a chore since even on my 1440p monitor it takes a bit of squinting to make out the correct tiles. These kinds of puzzles have always been my least favourite parts of cRPGs and it's maddening that Owlcat has decided to quadruple down on this aspect from Kingmaker (Is it any wonder that the second most popular guide for Kingmaker on the Steam Community Hub is <<Statue puzzle solution during prologue>>?). Unfortunate, really, since there really are flashes of brilliant encounter design to be found in their games once you get past the uneven difficulty curves. In WotR the "Sword of Valor" ambush was a highlight, and in Kingmaker I can honestly say Vordakai's Tomb is up there with the best dungeons of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale with varied and challenging encounters that are eminently beatable with the right tools even with a mediocrely-built party.

As my PC is a Knife Master Rogue and on my deepest playthrough Woljif has (presumably) taken a temporary leave of absence just as he was about to be able to cast 3rd level spells Nenio has been my sole source of Fireballs and Haste so she's been my party slot tax whether I liked it or not, though it helps that she's been extraordinarily useful slinging Phantasmal Killers around. I presume some of you have instead opted to hire a mercenary Arcane caster from Hilor in her stead.

"Now if there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that nothing is more powerful than a young boy's wish. Except an Apache helicopter. An Apache helicopter has machine guns AND missiles. It is an unbelievably impressive complement of weaponry, an absolute death machine." -Patrick Stewart

Well as PJ O'Rourke put it: "Biden is wrong about everything, but wrong within normal parameters."

Well obviously she's wearing something that obscures her alignment because she moonlights reading books to little leukemia patients.

I recall how in the Icewind Dale games the pre-made parties available at the start had the specific requirement that they were ones a developer or tester was able to beat the game with. I'm curious as to whether or not testers for WotR were able to beat not just the game but also all the optional encounters with the pre-made MC and companion auto-levelling builds on the Core difficulty (even if it does take getting the right equipment, spell selection, and maybe a spot of the RNGoddess being off her period).

If you ever need a reason to go back to New Vegas: Because let's face it, the only proper way to play that game is Cowboy Crit build with revolvers and the Medicine Stick.

I suppose if you've enjoyed the STALKER games or were able to see Fallout: New Vegas to the end near launch (or many BIS and early Obsidian games, for that matter) you develop a tolerance for bugs and instability.

The Prop 187 and Pito Wilson effect in overdrive, in essence.