Doppelschwert

In the character builds forum, there is a guy beating the game solo on potd with a lvl 1 character (not the optional content, though). I guess that pretty much settles the questions whether this is doable.

Phew, I went through 9 levels of the paths to get those robes since I posted last... Last and only time I went through the bluffs was after the release of WM1 and that was a nightmare. Now that I'm playing potd and totally gimped myself, the paths were much easier to run through, in particular because of the available supplies and resting after a trip upstairs. Now that I bought the single available one of these robes, how much time does need to pass for vendors to restock their items? Or does it depend on stronghold turns / area transitions?

Thanks for the information, but I guess I'm too weak for the bluffs right now. I accedently saw your spoiler in the quote of this message, but rest assured, I already played through WM1. I'm waiting for the 3.02 patch before I delve into WM2 since a couple of my talents are bugged. Concerning your question about my motivation, I already mentioned that above: I'd like to pretend my PC hired all the ingame companions for his personal monk order and is teaching them to punch people in the face. I'm currently torn between using custom robes or just settling for one generic robe model that looks particular nice and then dressing up everyone uniformly. Custom robes would be stronger, but the party aesthetic is all over the place with them. It's especially bad with the devil who's not able to wear robes to match... maybe I'll exchange her for Kana for that reason (then again, no one will be able to mechanics then.. *sigh*). So I gotta decide which robes look the best for all. I actually like the leaden key robes quite much, but I only found 2 so far. Thanks, that is very helpful! Maybe I'll just quickly load an older save to look at the ingame model there then. In the old saves I already routinely sold all the loot and killed everyone, so vendors are the fastest way. Was keeping the Caed Nua for the end of the current runthrough, but that might change up everything. EDIT: Checked them out in an earlier save, you were right about the endless paths vendor! And, yes, I think they look very nice, even if they fit better to spellcasters. Thanks a bunch again!

I can't remember where I read it but there was a post by josh about this game (maybe on the SA forums?). He basically explained the difference about the two options to aim for, but I can't remember if he talked about the influence of attributes (if any) as well. I don't have the link for his post history on SA right now and if I try to find it via the PoE thread, I get locked out because I'm not a member. Maybe someone might want to look it up?

This bug explains a lot of why Maneha seemed to perform really bad in my current run... Carnage does not work with unarmed, in contrast to its description saying it works with any melee attack. Carnage also does not work with bash (which is understandable, but that working together would be cooler as well). That explains why my unarmed + shield bash maneha performs so bad in all of those group battles.

That is kind of hypocritical since this argument applies to everyone except the devs, you included. Who are you to judge that implementing companion respec is a better way to spend dev time? Besides, he has an actual objective point why dev time can be spent better somewhere else: Companion respec was never and is not officially support at the moment. A lot of officially supported things have bugs at the same time. The priorities are pretty clear. And the argument that it is an easy fix in your opinion is a slippery slope as well - if it is so easy to fix that several people have already done it, use a mod from those people and let the devs fix the complex bugs no one else can fix.

Thanks a bunch (also to everyone else that answered)! I'm equipping my whole party exclusively with robes this run (they are martial artists, not spellcasters, so monk robes are perfect), so I tried to get to all the unique robes first. I'm only missing gwisk glass and the exceptional skaen robe from dyrwood temple in base game / WM1, but I don't like the looks of the latter, so I'll skip it. My question is mostly motivated by my curiousity of how the model changes, as the upgrade from normal to fine robes felt were really nice in terms of the improved aesthetic. I could already enchant everything up to exceptional without problem but would actually sacrifice unique enchantments for aesthetics this run, so I'd like to gather all the different models first and decide which ones I want to use before I apply all the costly enchantments like durgan steel and so on. If people could use spoiler tags or send him a pm, that would be great.

When I use pallegina and my main char paladin and both cast sworn enemy on the same target, the first use will be surpressed by the second one according to the enemies information tab. I didn't check whether it is just a problem in displaying or if it actually denies the boni to the first character using the talent, but to my understanding, it should stack either way.

Haven't played WM2 yet, please no spoilers. I'd like to know the following: 1) Is there a way to buy generic exceptional robes? I'm in act 3 and couldn't find any so far. If there is a way in the maingame / WM1, please tell me the location. I looked at most vendors I could think of and found none. If there is a way in WM2, please just confirm this without location. 2) Are there any new unique robes in WM2? If yes, just confirm it without stating where and how they look like. I'm mostly interested in knowing if there is an updated robe model as for the other armors. Of course, it is easy to enhance any robe to exceptional, but that won't change the model of the robe. I have all but one unique robes of base game / WM1 and they seem to use the model of the normal and fine robes respectivelly. Thank you very much!

Don't get me wrong, if it was an easy fix I wouldn't care if the devs went ahead to fix it, but as Aarik D. already more or less implied in my quote, they tried to fix it and couldn't do it in a reasonable time, so they dropped it in favour of more urgent things. My conjecture is that the reason WM2 introduced this bug in the first place is that they worked on the save system and introduced this bug unintentionally. In such a scenario, it surely would make sense to ignore this bug until all the urgent things are patched out, since then they needed to take their time to properly test everything (imagine they introduce a bug with saving while fixing the cheats and the resulting outcry of people losing their saves).

It is not true that implementing this won't affect me. If you go to the bug forum, you see that it is a bug that you can not set the companions attributes to different values persistently via cheats. Lets see what the devs have to say about that in the corresponding thread : What can we take away from this: - If it is not easy to implement the cheats, it's obviously not easy to make a option for retraining. - If they were to implement it, it would cost them a lot of ressources. Also, additional information includes: - As people have already commented in this thread, there are workarounds to adjust the companions attributes. - The companions have never been able to retrain their attributes before without cheat codes if I'm not mistaken. - There are still many bugs in the bug forum to be taken care of. If you get your 'best of both worlds', that will cost ressources. But the game will only get a couple of more patches until they will drop support, since WM2 was the last content provided and ressources are finite. It is very likely that not all bugs will be fixed.* *EDIT: That's not because I would think Obsidian can't cope with bugs, but rather because I expect every major game to have some small bugs which were either noticed after patching or stopped or just weren't common enough. Feel free to draw your own conclusion, but mine is that as long as there are still bugs around that break items, talents, spells or general game mechanics, companion respec has a very very low priority on this list. I can't make a fix for the bug of losing several damage multipliers I have at the moment, you can fix your issues. Giving your stuff priority has the potential to be detriment to my future playthroughs through lack of patching of other stuff I actually might encounter, so you can bet I will openly disagree with your wish, even though I understand it. It's not even like people tried to be impolite.

Equipment and talent choice is much more important in this game, and it is expected that your accuracy is bad at the beginning of the game on PotD. Even if you change the attributes around, your combat performance will stay more or less the same if you use the same tactics - a boost of 5-10% hit chance won't turn your game around if you start at 40-50% to hit in the first place. The following is not meant to brag or imply you are a noob, just to get you some perspective on the necessity of optimal stats: I'm being very lazy at the moment and run through the game with a group of melee companions from the story, no casters, and I let the AI handle most parts of the fights from act 2 onward. I'm not using consumables or unique weapons and all my characters wear robes and the game is still very manageable, apart from a few reloads where I let the AI handle too much instead of acting myself. Other people have soloed *all* optional content on PotD. It is just the first act that is hard, the more items you get, the less of a difference it will make if your attribute spread is suboptimal (as long as you choose proper talents). Custom companions will give you an edge in the first act, especially for the end of act 1, but they are not worlds apart from the story companions in terms of combat power.

Fair enough. I think that presentation is the most important of it all, so changing that would fix the perceived problem for me mostly. Regarding the priest stuff, I'm probably in a bad position to talk about these things because I actually never take priests with me in the later half of the game, but my arguments are based around the impression I got from the more potent players. Still, the food buffs are rather effective - a few bonus damage percentage alone can make a difference. Regarding the white march part 2 - I still haven't played it since I'll wait for the 3.02 patch, but it is nice to hear there will be more ressources. However, I think the devil should be balanced around the ressources you get in white march 1, since the white march 2 is completely optional. I still think that having two ingredients for the best armor in the base game makes for a though choice. If you run without the devil and want everyone to wear superb armor, you can find something already superb for everyone and freely choose two types of gear you like very much and get it up to superb via enchtantment. If you want to use the devil, you have no choice but to upgrade her armor and can only upgrade one other piece of unique equipment. My stance on this is simply: In a game all about choice, the loss of choice should be compensated with a very attractive standard option. Devils armor denies you both the choice of uniques as well as the choice of the payoff between DR and attack speed. In return, you have to use limited ressources on her just to make her comparable to random gear you find and can mix and match with everyone else. Regarding her function, I hope i did not come across the wrong way. I'm in no way a powergamer, and I don't care about her stat allocation or stuff like that. However, in my experience, the trade off between DR and attack speed on her doesn't shift her role, it just makes her worse all around, because the rogue is designed around damage. Everything you do to remedy that problem would just help her even more with lighter armor. And it is really noticeable. I used a custom npc version of her until I could recruit her. I gave the npc the same stats and the same equipment except a robe instead of her armor. Not surprisingly, she got much less effective after I replaced the npc with her and she would still die at roughly the same speed/in the same situations. If she was a fighter or another martial class, I would believe you in shifting her role because you can built them around it with certain talents, but the rogue really does not have a lot of defense oriented talents. I'm not against changing the function of characters, to the contrary I really enjoy that, but I just don't see how you turn a rogue into something different from a glasscanon without getting very diminishing returns.

If you categorize bash shields as a class of weapons (which they more or less are in PoE), then I don't see how the development time should be out of proportions. The animation is already there, it is just a matter of making the game more modular compared to the workaround we have with bash now. You can keep shields as they are (without bash available), because this new weapon class can be equipped in both hands now since it is a weapon. You can still have a bash shield in your off hand, you can play left handed people, you can dual wield shields. Everyone is happy, no? And seriously, if a class like wizard can get the most of development time for spells a single player won't use for the majority of a playthrough, I think it's more than fair to set some time aside for some exotic martial options and equipment, especially if it means to make the rules more intuitive in this case. Every expansion introduced new spells, but new weapon classes were never added (whips, scythes anyone?). Yeah, the pavise doesn't really fit with PoE's adventure-y aesthetic, being mostly for large-scale formation combat, not the light skirmishing that dominates the game. The pasive does not need to be the ultimate shield for all situations, but it certainly could have some uses. Give all cone AoE attacks a new typing called 'Cone' and give the pasive a massive boost against cone damage, but make it also slow your movement speed. Straightforward example: Use against dragons. Have your support unit hide behind the pasive, don't get burned, cast a lot of buffs. You're too busy to attack with your weapon anyway, so whats the matter with having both hands occupied? In a game where I can slap an enemy away with my magic book, what is so wrong about using an actual item from reality?

Bump: Has the code for pathing been changed in 3.0 and if yes, is this a bug?

I couldn't get anyone else to comment but I'm curious, what does the team think about these points?

Sorry, no.

So since it is not magic, you are suggesting that being able to bash with a door but not with a buckler in PoE is inspired by real life...? But categorizing shields actually isn't a bad idea. Have a class of shields dedicated for bashing and just treat them as weapons with a bonus to deflection, like hatchets. Other shields are purely for defense. All problems solved, you can now dual wield shields if you take at least one bashing one or you can also dual bash. For the two handed towershield, just disable the weapon slot on equip to the offhand and forgo the attack animation. I'd be happy. 100 points to the person that hacks PoE and replaces the hatchet animations by shields with the bash animation (and changes the damage to crush).

I would guess they changed the way the game saves somehow and fixing this 'bug' would mean to overhaul the save system. If my assumption is correct, I think they made a good call by not fixing this bug, since a working save system is much more important than working cheat codes (when fixing those includes the risk of some saves breaking in the process). After all, if they wanted you to change those values, companions attributes would've been included in the respec a long time ago already. I hate to be that guy, but as long as there are gameplay related bugs I see no point in pushing the fixing of cheat codes if that takes a lot of time.

At first, I was thinking like you, but then I thought of the situation were your mainhand weapon is much stronger than the shield bash. Instead of having a strong and a weak attack alternate, you'd probably want to disable the shield bash to use your main weapon all the time while keeping the shield equipped for its defensive bonus. On a side note, on my fist-only run, I often disable vulnerable attack against enemies with too high DR (like those damn constructs) since it sometimes turns out that even with the DR reduction, I still can't break through DR and only do minimal damage either way, making vulnerable attack strictly inferior to normal attacks. Personally, I wouldn't like bash as a per encounter ability, since the concept of bashing continously seems more fun. If given the choice, I would treat shields as weapons with defensive buffs whose attacks have to be enabled by a talent. Two handed shields would be icing of the cake.

there is still that one bugged clock that gives you permanent invisibility when you are critically hit, although I can't remember the name. that could let you play through the game, assuming you can somehow survive a single critical hit in the difficult encounters and hurry before the next patch

Since you are right and there is no need to discuss, I think you made this topic just to feel good about yourself. But seriously, even though its true that bash being a magical property is silly, I think they set up the programming early in a way that made it difficult to implement bash different from what we have now. One problem is to be able to decide whether to use bash or not depending on the situation. I think the only proper way to do it in a sequel is to introduce item modals as boffmoffet suggested, where shield bash can be turned on/off depending on situation, and the availability of the modal should be a general talent for everyone to pick. If it is enabled, it should be treated as a weapon for two weapon fighting. With the same thinking, it would be nice if there were bastard swords with a one-hand / two-handed modal, although I see a lot more technical issues with equipment slots for this kind of thing. Furthermore, I think in a sequel we should be able to wear two shields simultaneously. A defender using his shieldbash as main weapon is a cool concept. Also, two-handed tower shields should be a thing. I'm not even kidding, I think there is a lot of cool conceptual unexplored stuff with shields in RPGs.

Why don't you try in the mod section of the forum? It's not so much frequented since it was brought up so late, but maybe someone there can fix you up with the mod you want. EDIT: If you check it out http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/81063-iemod-fork-new-modding-framework/?p=1780471 you see that there is a new IE mod on the nexus which apparently enables your desired walk toggle. If you can't get it to work, ask around in that thread.

I just tried to do the fisherman's penance quest. I entered the hut at 5 am and while I was investigating the memory after taking the bracelet, the following suggests that the clock changed around to 6am while I was reading. At the end of the memory, there suddenly was a message of some fisherman npc accusing me of stealing stuff. I think the message didn't even have its own text window but instead was appended to the text of the last text window of the memory. I remember this because strangely, the name of the NPC was in the middle of the text window while the memory was displayed as being a text window of my main character (his name was still on the left). This resulted in not having Lurgolder spawn. In fact, no one spawned and I couldn't get the quest to advance by waiting for night again. When I went back at night, there was a single hostile fisherman attacking me - killing him did not do anything. I solved the issue by reloading, resting two times to 22 pm and then investigating the bracelet. Sadly, I overwrote the save, but I guess it's repeatable by letting the clock advance from night to day while checking out the bracelet.

Yep, you can read the details in this other thread about marshal forwyn where I already mentioned the problem: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84620-bug-a-return-to-courtbleakhollow-bandits-attack/?p=1779108 I'm not sure if it was exactly the bleakhollow bandits or some other group, but it was a stronghold attack I resolved manually.