Odd Hermit

Okay, um...game is great, nice job devs, etc. I backed it and got two copies even. I spent many hours on it. Two thumbs up. It's more fun being critical though than praising the obvious stuff, and hopefully they get something out of constructive criticism from players.

Unenchanted, same name/model weapons/armor should be stackable. I am very tired of spam clicking through xaurip spears and medium shields and then having them clutter the inventory of vendors. I ended up taking them only to trap vendors that I knew I wouldn't be buying anything from just to avoid that. - Confusion needs to be confusion not "make this target get mobbed by his whole group". It is way too reliable and easy right now, basically a cheap single target confusion often = crowd control for the entire group and they'll sometimes even kill an enemy for you. - LET ME BUILD! ...the companions how I want them. I've done it the boring/weak way already, I want to tinker but I don't want to be stuck without interesting companion dialogue as punishment for that. Hired Adventurers are nice if you want to go all out with specific race/class combos, but I just want to pick decent talents and attributes for the companions and have some real freedom to build them into roles rather than being stuck with a poor base. - Should be able to rest anywhere in stronghold free, if I don't want the bonuses. It's annoying having to go through two doors for such a simple thing, as nice as the buildings and interiors looks it gets pretty old. Really, the whole thing is too spread out for convenience. - Fists and Druid's spiritshift weapons need better scaling, particularly accuracy, if they're ever going to be a thing on harder difficulties. - +2 Move speed is too much/too easy kiting for permanent/long duration effects. My chanter giving it to the whole party trivialized many encounters, plus it was just the no-brainer thing to chant in most situations. - Retaliation needs some nerfs. I'm sorry people but it just does. It is far and away the strongest enchant in the game for any melee build other than a weak might tank maybe. Its damage output requires little effort and it activates in situations it really shouldn't. - A better balance of micro-management. Casters definitely need more substantial per encounter spells and/or abilities. It would definitely be too much to give them full nuking power but I think they're overpowered as is on boss stuff, and too boring on non-boss stuff if you're not free casting. I'd also say melee builds need some better active abilities. Many are very lackluster. Some are just too spammy(Torment's Reach). The best balance so far is Cipher but of course it's on the overpowered side for other reasons. I think all classes could use more space to build towards either side of the micro-management scale, or the middle. I could go on with minor stuff and all sorts of balance issues, but these were the biggest nuisances or balance issues for me personally, over the course of multiple playthroughs. They're what reduced my enjoyment of the game the most so far. Some will say "don't use it then!" for some of the things I call overpowered, of course, but while certain things remain crutches other things don't get balanced and player input is skewed by whether or not they used the cheesier things. And I've always been a "use what works" sort of player(aside from obvious bug abuse/cheats) that enjoys optimizing builds and strategies/tactics, if I feel I need to put arbitrary self-imposed limitations on myself, the game just gets boring for me. Edit: coarse -> course.

Because you can't put special enchants or +12 accuracy on fists. Sorry but weapons are the no brainer choice right now.

Yes absolutely. I only used one level 3 power anyway (Secret Horrors) and even that is passable.

They were each giving like 10k XP(shared between 6, but still) on turn ins for me. Plus some XP when you loot the item before you turn it in.

I was wondering why everyone was complaining about XP being too high. Then I did bounties and was like "whoah". I strongly agree. The other thing is lockpick/trap XP could definitely go. It's a lot of spare XP over time and encourages gaming situations where you can get a key but you'd rather pick the lock for XP. Or where I'd send summons into areas but I don't want them to rob me of trap XP.

Even pre level 9 I got no particularly interesting depth from spell conservation. I can still easily rest before all tough fights. Honestly the biggest thing preventing me from using more spells is that nagging desire to save that resource. Humans are naturally loss averse and all that. It's not a logical or strategic limitation honestly, you don't necessarily know what encounters are up ahead, how difficult they'll be, whether there's even a boss fight or if you're gonna end up resting without using most of your spells for no reason. Etc. etc. You just can't, and don't need to, wisely plan out how many spells you should use or conserve. All spell/rest does, in this context, is justify caster's extremely powerful spells and make players bored during less powerful fights while they conserve spells and do much less micro-management having their casters just shoot things with ranged weapons or whatever.

Sunbeam Winter Wind, Blizzard Returning/Relentless Storm Insect Swarm / Plague Wicked Brars / Wall of Thorns Firebug Stag's Horn Venombloom Depends on what you're up against really. Vs. big boss battles I like stacking their longer duration AoEs that have multiple chances to hit, spells that have debuffs, and/or raw damage from the insect spells and venombloom. For weaker groups blasting away with direct elemental damage seems better, depending on their DRs. Depends on difficulty as well, PotD favors debuffs and high damage over time a bit more.

Ogres are such great fodder. High endurance/health and big circles for blocking stuff. My other choice was +5 to 3 attributes. I chose the one that gives +Int so I can get longer duration buffs on occasion from my priest. Second level Invocations I went with wurms over wisps for PotD since they're better fodder or can be kept at range. I didn't bother with offensive Invocations much, occasionally paralyze but on PotD it's hard to justify spending multiple phrases that can take a decent while to build on something that will often miss or graze vs. more reliably useful summons.

Rolling Flame is a fun spell and the game could use more nonsensical and dangerous spells for those that enjoy them. I have to admit I killed my entire party except tanks with it once... As for Wizard's self-buffs, they are pretty "meh" except for Eldritch Aim which is great. It's not that they're self-only that bugs me, it's that the Wizard has a lot of "I will never cast this" spells right now since no pre-buffing + limited spells/rest + buffs don't last more than 1 encounter and fights are often short pretty much defeats their purpose. As for spells/encounter, it's something I want but I think not all spells are really balanced for it. I think casters need some carefully balanced spells/abilities for longevity without too much power. That said, it's hard to justify limiting them too much with how strong Cipher is currently, but I think Confusion/Charm/Dominate effects at least need to be toned down.

They get bonus stats if you click the dialogue options labeled as your order's favored behavior. Which can be RP, or it can simply be "I'll take this 'cause it'll give me stat bonuses", which discourages some players from selecting choices that might be their "RP choice" otherwise.

I've found it extremely useful against stat debuffs and damage over time spells. It doesn't work on domination 'cause they're not considered friendlies anymore - which is perhaps arguable whether it should be that way or not. It absolutely works on most debuffs though. It totally saved my party against ogre druid/matron fights where their insect plague is freaking scary on PotD but suppress affliction stopped it from doing anything to me so yay. I also find it really strong for creating windows of high accuracy against enemies that terrify. They'll reapply since it's an aura, but you get a period where you can nail them with paralyze or whatever if you can suppress affliction right before using something like mental binding. It should be noted that it doesn't prevent or completely remove anything. Essentially it counters the effects on a character with its own duration. While Suppress Affliction is on a character, the debuffs that were on them before it was applied will do nothing. Anything applied afterward works normally.

Co-op would be a terrible idea for this game. It works in D:OS only because it's turn based and they designed the dialogue for it. Let a good single player game be a good single player game.

Personally I liked my fair share of tracks and there's definitely some nice IWD feel in there. Also a few gave me Morrowind vibes...but that's same composer as IWD so. I think if anything though, the music could've been a little stranger, more exotic, and maybe a bit darker given the setting and the variety of cultures involved. My only criticism is that it does feel very standard for an RPG of this style - which is perhaps what many wanted. It's pleasant to listen to but doesn't give me a strong association with the game's unique setting excluding a few pieces. But then, my favorite soundtrack of the old IE games is PS:T's so maybe I just lean toward weirder.

Tenuous Grasp and let the enemies beat things up for you. What Cipher is all about.

Melee don't have enough interesting active abilities right now. You'll end up somewhat less powerful group that's less micro management intensive is all. There are also only so many items with retaliation to cheese with, which is what most "uber" melee builds abuse right now.

Defenses > Deflection. Debuffs will wreck your deflection anyway, and deflection gets high enough after a certain point that almost everything is a graze or miss anyway. So far I haven't found engagement limit an issue. I do run with an off-tank chanter though. On PotD if you're using a shield you're unlikely to hit anything anyway so I don't view knockdown / knockback as a plus really. Other characters bring better CC I don't need my tank to help them really. A non PC Paladin tank is still far better than a Barbarian as well, though I would give the edge to Fighter in that scenario. I have found their auras and liberating exhortation useful as well.

My Paladin PC has like 140+ deflection and 100+ reflex/will and ~70 fort. They're crazy good tanks if you play them as a main character and get the Faith and Conviction bonuses. Now, I'm sure Fighter and Monk can get up there as well, but Paladin doesn't sacrifice any of its support abilities really - lay on hands heals for less if you minimize might but other than that their dispels and revives and aura all work perfectly fine. OTOH Fighter/Monk have more offensive abilities to choose from that do a lot less for a purely defensive build. I would say that Paladin's problem is that it's one dimensional. It is great at Tank / Support and terrible at anything else, while Fighter/Monk can be built as a damage build, a tank, an off-tank hybrid or whatever. Paladin has nothing remarkable specific to the class for damage output. Flames of Devotion is just two harder hits each fight which is very lackluster.

There aren't many more than 4 good wizard spells per level honestly. And I probably don't use more than 4 druid spells per level very frequently either. I don't think the Grimoire limitation is a big deal at all. Overall, Wizards have much stronger crowd control and access to higher accuracy on it(Eldritch Aim), while Druids are a bit easier to use AoE, are a bit more durable, and have party support/healing. I think that's the key differences covered. I like having both in my parties but I think the Wizard is actually more of a staple for me than the Druid.

Actually, it's not. It was mentioned way, way, waaaaay back as an intended mechanic, but it was never tested during the beta because.. well.. it didn't exit. The beta was capped at 8, so no beta-tester really got a chance to try this out. I would prefer the mechanic being reworked somehow, because I want spellcasters to be more differntiated and have more class-specific stuff (like Domain Spells for Priests, a focus on spiritshifting/wildshape for Druids, and whatever makes sense for Wizards) but ultimately, if this entire mechanic was just completely cut, no ifs, buts or maybes, no compensation at all, I would still be fine with it, because spellcasters already become exponentially more powerful as they level. But they shouldn't. This is one thing I thought they were trying to prevent, which is partially, I believe, why level 1 spells are so powerful. Going from total weakling to basically a god was something that I don't think is a desirable thing to carry over from the IE games for casters. Being able to pick maybe 1 spell / encounter every 2 levels would be nice, just to give them something to do other than conserve spells. There's just no reason on many fights to use any, especially if you have a Cipher carrying most of the weight on easy encounters. Possibly a limit for which spells they can get. Right it goes: Do nothing but a few /encounter abilities and shoot ranged weapons @ things. Go all out on difficult fights. -> Hit level 9/11, spam level 1/2 spells every encounter. Go all out on difficult fights. Neither is good for balance or enjoyability. My cipher in both playthroughs was my most active class throughout the game, up until casters take over @ level 9+ ____ I'd add that if they want shifting to be Druid's per-encounter thing it needs to be at will in/out, and it needs to have scaling accuracy. It quickly becomes garbage right now against anything that's not fully CCed for you. Plus I think some players just want their Druid to be a caster. Priests, it'd be great if they had per-encounter deity abilities although I worry we'd end up with no-brainer deities a little bit. Wizards, well, I'm not really sure what to do there. It seems like they figured wanding stuff between arcane assault would be fun enough but uh...no?

Those spells don't have 60+ second durations. Plus there's fast mode for when encounters are close together. Could also be 30s(about the duration of most field spells), whatever.

I would love "encounter" to end up being a set time period(60s perhaps) instead of in/out of combat. This would prevent a lot of cheese, like stacking spells like chill fog, tanglefoot, etc. in front of a fight pre-encounter and instantly gaining those back.

I would love having a separate progression table for spell/encounter. It's boring spamming level 1 spells @ level 9+, and it's boring hanging back with a ranged weapon plinking up until then on most fights. Would much rather have a mix throughout the game, but lower total spells/encounter. I made a suggestion awhile back to having spell levels per encounter allowing more flexibility in how you use them - https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/75055-spell-levels-per-encounter/ Although it has some flaws and I don't like on second thought, haha. Problem being that level 1 spells are not half as powerful as level 2 and so cost : benefit ratios don't fit at all with spell level cost with this system. So uh... nvm. I still want more to do on non-boss fights for my casters though. Shifting, Arcane Assault, Radiance/Interdiction don't cut it for me. Especially since going into melee is often borderline suicide for druids on PotD.

I played with them off until I played a Paladin PC. There are so many where the difference between a favorable one for your order and a neutral response is negligible.

I can understand thinking Fire or Moon are overpowered right now but Pale Elf is really, really mild. It is nice against a few particular enemy types but nothing close to "cheating" and arguably on of the weaker choices since it's situational. Main thing is that Shades/Shadows/Phantoms are plentiful enough to make the Freeze resist decent.