Ineth

She apparently only uses her breath attack though if several of your party members are standing too close together. If you manage to position your party members around her, she seems to use weaker attacks. As for me, I beat her with a fair amount of cheese (but not so much that is wasn't a battle anymore): Got the Scale Breaker ability. Came back, and went to the back of the room while everyone was green-circled Ate food items that gave +2 to most important stats. Attacked and killed the Adragan; the dragon went hostile but didn't move towards my party because it was too far away. Surrounded the dragon, with Eder moving in first and positioning himself between the dragon and the goblins so all would aggro him. Cipher also near the goblinsxaurip so she could shoot them with her blunderbuss to gain focus quickly. Scale Breaker, two Scrolls of Petrify, two or three Potions of Major Endurance, everyone using their best single-target damage abilities --> dead dragon In the "everyone using their best single-target damage abilities" step, I had my Cipher cast Disintegration once, Aloth repeatedly cast Minoletta's Concussive Missiles, and Hiravias some Electricity based spells. Though I think the bulk of the damage was actually done by my rogue (high-accuracy, high-crit build), who reliably got off hits (if not crits) like this using the Cladhalíath spear with max enchantments: I had "Second Chance" items on three characters and revive spells at the ready, but didn't end up needing any of that. I wonder how that battle would be like if Petrify gets nerfed in a future patch. PS: My main char was level 11, the companions level 10 or 11.

Well, they're staples of the Medieval European folklore that most Western fantasy settings are based on. Except that in this game, those monster types actually have an interesting "backstory/rationale" to their existence and characteristics. So basically Obsidian is both hitting the right notes here w.r.t. what fans expect from a fantasy RPG, and being innovative at the same time. Why bash them for that? This one does seem to be a Tolkienism, but other than the name the PoE version of them is totally different from the Tolkien version and the D&D version, so it's not just a lazy rip-off either. TL;DR: This is a Western high-fantasy cRPG, so what do you expect? If you want a setting where everything is new and different, wait for T:ToN to come out.

I wouldn't be so harsh with the rest of the story/setting, but I agree that it would have been great to have more Dunryd Row related content! Maybe in the expansion. Or mods.

Well within one battle it can't outtank Eder, but if you look at the whole day, it sort of can. Because no matter how often it is knocked out, it starts with full health again for the next battle... Itumaak is imo more useful than Sagani, because of this. When enemies run around Eder and try to get to my squishy Cipher and Aloth, Itumaak intercepts them and holds them off long enough for me to kill them. So what if it often ends up being knocked out before the end of the battle - nothing permanent is lost, unlike the Health loss in my Cipher and Aloth that would have ensued otherwise...

From a simulationist perspective that's true, but from a gameplay perspective the way it is currently handled is necessary to make skill choices interesting. If all party members could contribute, you could easily max each skill on a different party member and the skill system would effectively become meaningless.

Please, for the love of Eothas, teach party members not to auto-attack charmed/dominated companions though. Combat encounters should be about tactically beating an enemy AI, not about frantically pausing&clicking fast enough to beat your own idiotic auto-attack AI at issuing new orders.

Lol. How about we let them first worry about bugs that are game-breaking for people who try to play the game normally. And then non-game-breaking but still annoying bugs affecting people who try to play the game normally. And then balancing issues, performance improvements, and feature tweaks. And then worry about bug which will never bother anyone who plays the game normally, and will only be experienced by speedrunners who are specifically looking for them. Okay?

I'd use such a mod too, on subsequent playthroughs. (PS: "Caravan be Gone" might be more a descriptive name, although admittedly not as cute.)

Sure you don't mean 87? 97 would be an insane roll.

This. Stick to your main char; try out additional builds via hired companions.

Some of us played the beta under Wine before the native Linux version came out. Also, the current Linux release has some minor rendering issues (problems with anti-aliasing of characters, black spots on water, no rendering of robes/cloaks) that the Windows version doesn't suffer from, so it's not unimaginable that someone might run it in via Wine (though I personally don't). So Darren's question wasn't as far-fetched as you make it out to be.

lol

Not necessarily as an endgame item, but if you add a Fine (and later Exceptional) enchantment, it will probably be the best shield for your main tank for at least the first half of the game. It's not like those enchantments need super rare ingredients, so no need to be too stingy with them.

A buff from an active/modal ability should stack with a buff from a wearable item. From the in-game Cyclopedia:

No fix for hostile Sanitarium?

The fallacy of this line of argument, though, is the assumption that the only purpose of a game is for the player to successfully reach its end (i.e. to "beat the game"), and that everything which facilitates that in equal measure can be treated as zero-sum. When actually, the real purpose of a game is to provide fun/enjoyment/stimulation to the player while playing it. Most people complaining about the resting restrictions (myself included) tend to see it as a matter of "annoying vs fun", whereas those responding to defend the restrictions (like yourself) pretend it's a matter of "difficult vs easy".

Way to make a poll needlessly confusing by phrasing the thread title and poll title antithetically...

So because he can't tank at level 2 you concluded he's a weak character? Your loss man. I've already tried out all companions except Grieving, as well as a Cipher PC and a custom Rogue and Barbarian adventurer. So far, not a single one of them managed to beat Aloth in terms of total damage done per day (though the Cipher comes close). Yes he's no dedicated tank, but he's a powerful damage and CC nuker. And once the party reaches medium levels, he doesn't have to be afraid of Shades anymore, either - because between self-buffs, buffs from other party members, and Endurance-leeching spells, he can sort-of-tank if he needs to.

I gotta admit, I found that curious too. Though in my case it was "just" the first four, not five. Another gender imbalance in this game: The male voice-overs range from decent to perfect, while the female voice-overs are generally pretty lackluster/unfitting/unconvincing imo. Which is strange - isn't it usually the other way around in cRPGs? However, you're wrong about this: Come on now, Edér is not like that. He has this refreshing mix of optimism and stoicism that makes him great to have around, and is all too rare in game NPCs (so pretty much the opposite of "stereotypical"). Aloth's character does seem pretty flat though before his personal quest starts, I'll give you that.

Ok, thanks for the heads up. PS: Turns out I can't delete pages as a normal contributor, but I've added a template to request deletion by an admin.

The wiki has a page for a Fighter-only passive ability called "Melee Accuracy", with the description "Grants a small bonus to melee accuracy". However, I don't see it among the abilities I can choose in-game. Was this something that existed in an earlier build of the game but was removed for the official release? (In which case I'll delete that wiki page.)

Why do so many people put Wizard in a low to medium tier? Name one other class that can do this with a single casting of a 1st-level spell (which, I've heard, will even become per-encounter later on): And things like Rolling Flame make for good first strike weapons (whereas most other classes' offensive abilities are combat-only). And his CC spells are arguably even better than the damage spells. And with self-buffs and spells that leech Endurance from enemies, he can even "tank" a little if necessary. There have been fights where (through stupidity on my part) all my other party members were knocked out, and only Aloth left standing against multiple enemies - and he prevailed.

Yeah but the fact the he uses the word "toon" to refer to player characters invalidates all of those points... /pet peeve

For me it's not a matter difficulty, it's a matter of annoyingness and bad incentives making the game less fun. Whenever I find camping supplies that I can't pick up (because I already carry two), the game is pretty much forcing me (or at least giving me a strong incentive) to rest right then and there, even if I normally wouldn't rest yet. Even if it would be downright stupid to rest there by role-playing standards. Because I have no idea how much supplies I will need in the next part of the game, or where I will find the next one. At the beginning I tried to memorize places with camping supplies I didn't pick up yet, so I could come back for them later - but I tend to forget the locations, and in any case, such backtracking is not my idea of fun. Wanna make sure hard mode is sufficiently hard? Do it by making more (or tougher) enemies spawn. 'Cause the resting supply carrying limit is a ****ty way to do it.

My thoughts exactly when I think of the SJWs! I gotta admit, when reading "angry privileged few who believe the world owes them something" I immediately thought of college feminists (which is a subgroup of "SJWs" I supposed), because it perfectly describes the ones I had the displeasure of crossing paths with.