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Endrosz

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  1. In the pitch video, when the word "balance" is said by the narrator, Josh Sawyer's face is shown. Figures. https://youtu.be/e99cYA4rtxg?t=75
  2. Yeah, it works. This thread is for those who don't want to cheese it. Osrya, found in Raedric's Hold Dungeon Lvl 1: Minoletta's Minor Missiles, Jolting Touch, Fleet Feet Lvl 2: Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon, Binding Web Lvl 3: Fireball, Crackling Bolt
  3. Maerwald, found on Od Nua level 1 Lvl 1: Chill Fog, Fan of Flames, Spirit Shield, Thrust of Tattered Veils Lvl 2: Corrosive Siphon, Bulwark Against The Elements Lvl 3: Fireball
  4. Hey, let's share information about what spells are available from looted grimoires. Just half an hour after I selected Fetid Caress for Aloth lvl 4, I found it in Ludrana's grimoire, and I was mightily annoyed. Ludrana's, found in Magran' Fork.: Lvl 1 - Minoletta's Minor Missiles, Fan of Flames, Ghost Blades, Chill Fog Lvl 2 - Fetid Caress, Necrotic Lance
  5. I'm reported a number of bugs and put out a number of RFEs (Request For Enhancement, I learned it during my software tester days) in the Backer Beta Bug Reporting sub-forum. Then somebody wrote that the beta is over, that sub-forum is obsolete, which made me consider. I know that the beta is over, but putting bug reports in General Discussion is a not good idea. The same reason a separate sub-forum existed during the beta is why we should have a separate bug reporting forum now. So where do we report now? I would prefer that the sub-forum is renamed, but whatever the answer is, I'll accept it, I just want one I'm not an attention whore, but for this, I would like to have a dev team response. I'm a dutiful bug reporter and have a stream of improvement ideas while playing, I would like to do my job of making this game better.
  6. This is... wow. The joke in the text is clearly on the guy who ran off the cliff. Killing yourself over a bedding gone wrong? He was a moron and deserved to die, haha. Darwin Award winner. Suggestion to people offended by this joke: Improve reading and comprehension skills. Playing PoE with its huge amounts of complicated text is actually a good opportunity to help you polish those skills.
  7. Exactly, the BGs didn't have crafting as a system. What they had were essentially regular kill/fetch quests with a special reward. I think the system is decent.
  8. I assumed that the labels like "slow" and "average" are categories, i. e. two average weapons have the same attack speed. It turns out that's wrong, the weapons have individual attack speeds, and the labels can be quite misleading. Like, a slower-average weapon can be closer in attack speed to a faster-slow weapon than to a faster-average weapon. Two suggestions for what to show at least on the weapon cards, but if possible, also on the character sheet's left side box: - Attacks per minute (APM). Two values, just like with damage: base with 10 Dex and no bonuses or maluses applied, actual with everything taken into account (Talents, de/buffs, etc.). OR -- Attack time and recovery time shown in seconds. Four values, base and actual for both. This is crucial information, it must be displayed.
  9. You cannot, in any way, influence the default script of the characters. This is troublesome for melee, because after a target falls, they start move to a new target of their own choosing, which can get really messy. Positioning is very important in this game, even if you just consider Flanking. My temp solution is that I have "Target dies' as an auto-pause event and manually give orders. I'm aware that for the expansion Obsidian is planning adding scripts like in the IE games, and if they do, this feature might become obsolete and wasted work. But even with scripts added, I think a Hold Position toggle would still be useful.
  10. Aaaand I missed that pinky hand. Thanks! I should read the manual, I assumed I know everything because I watched a lot of gameplay streams during the beta. Thread is obsolete.
  11. If you dump both Mig and Con on a tank (like I did), your Fort save will be abysmal and you'll be owned by any mob that has a special ability targeting Fort. Like, wolf packs with Knockdown, to give an early example. And even if the difference isn't much in Endurance, in PotD, it still matters quite a bit. You need to survive the initial spike in dmg. Neither Knockdown nor Yell is worth a high Int (and I'm not familiar with monks). Having said that, I'll just add my vote to the piles: -- The armor penalty decrease idea is very good. Unique, fitting, strong enough that is matters, helps the weakest attrib. *applauds* -- Do not add back accuracy, it's far too important. There is more than enough spread with Talents and enchants and accurate/inaccurate weapons and weapon style.
  12. Some containers in Gilded Vale hold items which are considered owned and decrease your reputation with Gilded Vale. Others are free for the taking. I have not noticed anything that tells these owned items apart from non-owned ones. For example, Dyrwood's history lore book comes in 3 parts, you can take 2 without consequences, but taking the third one decreases reputation. Please add some visual cue like in Fallout: New Vegas to show which items are considered owned. Or possibly, on the container itself.
  13. I killed a skuldr king in the the Temple of Eothas, still no entry for it. Skuldr King shows in the "most powerful foes defeated" list on the character sheet.
  14. Check out diz: Do you see his face? *KNOW* that he is smirking. Teasing you, enticing you like a true frenemy, luring you into a trap of desperation under a facade of helpfulness Do you want to wipe that smirk off his face? I know I do... Not by means of physical violence, that's just not classy. By beating his challenge. (For the record, I own a GOG copy, I'll never have this achievement. But I can still play that way.)
  15. Every hidden thing was found by my 20 Perception, 0 Mechanics tank. Go figure. There are 2 on the upper floor, and more on the lower, but I haven't been able to clear out the entire lower level, I'm skipping the 2 skuldr king fight for now.
  16. How I killed the bear on PotD with lvl 3 party. My main is a barbarian tank, I have a custom ranged DPS rogue from the inn. I selected Blackened Sight and Dull Senses for Aloth lvl 3. 0. Tanks engages 3 bears, use the cave wall on the right to avoid being flanked. 1. Dazzling Lights, -10 Will save, -10 Accuracy from Dazed, helps tank stay alive for a few more seconds. Yes, the bear is deadly, no argument there. The bear has relatively low Will save, only 46 even on PotD, and you only need a graze for Step 1! 2. Blackened Sight attacks Will, gives Blindness for a long time, -25 Accuracy and qualifies for sneak attack bonus dmg for my rogue. With -35 Acc on the bears, the tank stops dying. Again, you only need a graze, which is still 12.5 seconds of Blindness. 3. Dull Senses attacks Will, -20 Deflection. 4. Eder flanks the bear, another -10 Deflection (total of -30), uses Knockdown now, another penalty to Deflection. I managed to get the bear's deflection down from 69 to 9, a single digit! 5. Bear drops dead with a few attacks, before the blindness runs out. Meanwhile, the small bears were debuffed to non-issues thanks to all of Aloth's debuffs being AoE and boosted by his Int both ways (duration, area) and their Will save is 10 lower. I think I used a Potion of Minor Regeneration on my tank before Aloth has finished debuffing, but I'm not sure.
  17. It's worse than that, the script is harmful in some cases. If a melee target dies, melee chars leave their position to chase down another target, which can be disastrous with chokepoint setups, and I can't turn this off (unlike in the IE games, where you could select "no script". I can't believe I'm saying this :D). I really would like a "Hold Position" toggle or something. In fact, I'm putting in an RFE for it, now that I think about it...
  18. I know what he talks about. Not about interrupting, no, proper stunlocking. Playing on PotD. Permastun from phantoms IS a bit too much IMO. It's a permanent -30 to deflection, and defensive items or abilities cannot be used by the tank, double trouble. They really need to add per encounter powers to mobs in cases like this, because some OP stuff as innate ability is pure terror on the harder difficulties, where you can't end the fight fast with blitz tactics. Knockdown from wolves is per encounter, based on what I've seen (the corresponding action icon appears when they use it, same as the fighters's ability), didn't have any problems with that. Permadaze from skuldrs (king!) and shades is manageable, although again, I would prefer it as a limited-use power, not an innate ability triggering on Every. Single. Attack. Could have long durations and/or multiple uses. It really sucks that eventually I run out of debuffs and whatnot, but they never do. I'm going to sleep now, but the 2 phantom, 3 shade fight in the Caed Nua courtyard, with no chokepoint nearby is my recent headache. I won a 2 phantom fight in the Eothas temple with doorway positioning, only 1 shade was able to attack the tank (my character) initially, and Aloth and a custom ranged DPS rogue managed to kill one phantom and damage the other before they got to the tank. It was a narrow victory, used up all my abilities in a single fight, plus consumed Ale +2 DR, Cheese +10 Endurance with the tank, and in the end, only Aloth and the rogue were standing. As for using scrolls... I found 2 scrolls so far, can craft 1 more, no shops sell them so far. Money isn't endless either (at this point), need it for camping supplies, crafting, enchanting, buying other consumables. I would LOVE to abuse scrolls, believe me, I already put the points into Lore.
  19. Currently stalled in PotD at the end of the intro, in the spider fight. Fatigue is a killer.
  20. I think that most backers and especially fresh buyers are unaware of how much has Obsidian accomplished with the funds and the time they had. Let me make a list. Chiseler of the World Just look at this map, crafted with love, care, and chocolate cookies: Here are two pages as free excerpt from the Guidebook Part One (courtesy of Dark Horse Comics), and there is a shorter, but still satisfying Almanac available. Elaborate histories, raging deities, conquests, myths, jokes, -- the lore of Eora, and within it, the Eastern Reaches is as rich as fantasy book sagas, and accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations. The attention to detail is sometimes astonishing. Just like in The Lord of the Rings, new languages (conlangs) were invented based on real languages, complete with naming conventions and pronunciation rules, and all the major powers in the "civilized" world have proper heraldic signs. Weapons and armor have significant differences and much more historical accuracy than most RPGs. (The above coat-of-arms were created by forum user KazikluBey, based on heraldic descriptions given by Josh Sawyer). Crafter of Choices Selecting a race and a class is typical fare in an RPG. Selecting a background is present in some. Obsidian went even further. Recognizing that races are too big as a cultural unit, they developed various cultures within the world, some single-race, some multiple-race, and added a separate background choice like "slave" or "aristocrat", dependent on culture. Culture even determines the starting equipment, so instead of all fighters starting with the same leather armor and short sword, the starting gear depends on where you came from. There is an auto-autobiography in the game which records all the important choices you've made for your character, starting with your origins. I always wanted to have a feature like this in an RPG, and I was quite surprised when they announced it recently because this wasn't a Kickstarter promise, just an extra they thought of and wasn't much work to develop. Thank you, Obsidian. Hoarder of Reactions But that's just the beginning, literally! By acting in the world you build up dispositions over time like "diplomatic" or "aggressive". You get to define your character via words and actions, instead of static labels. This is separate from the reputation system, which functions as expected. There are a major and minor factions within the game, similar how Fallout: New Vegas handled it, each one tracking a reputation. In the game, there is reactivity to class, gender, culture, background, skills, attributes, disposition, reputation. In the backer beta, a certain interesting quest resolution was only available to ciphers. That's the wager Obsidian is making, they're willing to write dialogue and quest parts that will only be seen by a small amount of people on their first (and possibly, last) playthrough, because they believe people will appreciate such nuances, even if they see a fraction of them initially. Think of the amount of work that went into the situational reactivity, it's a brave, brave approach. Breaker of Molds You might or might not like the PoE ruleset, but it is still a huge body of work. It's doesn't quite have the complexity of Baldur's Gate 2, but it gives you much more than today's big RPG titles. There are a lot of different monsters, conditions, abilities, special attacks, unique equipment, whatnot. I like most aspects of the new systems like the Endurance/Health duality, lessening the need for reloads, the bottomless inventory, the enchantment upgrading, and so on. I particularly like that killing in and itself doesn't give XP, it's especially welcome for Trial of Iron plays, it allows you to choose quest solutions you find the least risky. I'll mention that I'm in the camp that thinks engagement isn't a good mechanic for a real-time game, but I'll just leave it at that. On another note, special speech options have a different approach than previous RPGs, where a speech skill option was always a winner. The gated options are not necessarily the best, they are simply more expressive, more defined than the regular choices, and they can make the situation better or worse, depending on circumstances. The example given by lead narrative designer Eric Fenstermaker is that if you are [diplomatic] with an ogre, he'll just see you as a wuss, and proceed accordingly with his huge club. Shaper of Classes This is my favorite one. Eleven classes total, and they wanted them all to be different, but neither of them mandatory. This alone is a huge design task, but they delivered and nailed it in most cases. You can create your own (silent) companions in the game, you can make choices with traditionally non-choice classes like the fighters, and the grand total is that an astounding variety of party setups are possible. Six priests of Skaen called the Traveling Troublemakers? Go for it, it's playable! A mind-bending cipher with a renaissance shotgun called the blunderbuss? Of course you can! I always hated DnD paladins and monks because I dislike classes that are "overdefined", there's little room for my imagination and playstyle choices in them. Bards I favored as a concept, not so much in execution. The reimagined paladin as a zealot for various, not necessarily honorable ideals is awesome, this might be the first game where my main is a paladin for one of the playthroughs. Chanter is more like the original Welsh bard (not like the renaissance troubadour of DnD called bard) and other folklore-tellers like the Hungarian regős, and the new monk is cool, too. Sower of Art In my book art doesn't equal graphics. Computer graphics is a medium to deliver art. It takes a lot of work to transform graphics into art. I think most people would agree that the most defining characteristic of Pillars of Eternity at first glance is the visuals, which pay tribute to the Infinity Engine games. This is one area where even the most grumpy grognards say that Obsidian delivered exactly what they promised: painterly 2D backgrounds, isometric camera. I won't go into the details, but lighting and water animations and various other effects are actually using 3D technology. It looks like the glorious 2D art of yore, with some nifty enhancements. Old and tried design aesthetic, new tricks under the sleeve: that's how you modernize old-school favorites. And there are a lot of backgrounds! The number of "screens" is somewhere halfway between Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 according to the devs. Nurturer of Music No words. Listen. Amazer of Old-School Gamers In the past I've worked as a software developer, and I have friends who work in the computer games industry. I have a pretty good idea how much work it takes to produce something, and I stand speechless at the amount of work they've done on Pillars of Eternity with the amount of resources they had. It was discussed by Brandon Adler, Josh Sawyer and Adam Brennecke that Obsidian has a lot of expertise in crafting RPGs, and their work pipelines were set up to work as fast as possible before full production started, avoiding blunders of the past. It shows, man, it shows. Do you remember this? The pre-campaign? Although there were some mismanaged moments in these past two and a half years, I can honestly that this was the Kickstarter project that I pledged to where I enjoyed the ride the most. So many updates, so many details, so many meaningful discussions (and even more meaningless ones, as usual), so many changes for the good. Here's to more expansions and installments set inside the world of Pillars of Eternity! A few hours from now on: No sleep for ME!
  21. I'm sure there will be plenty of writing showcasing those emotional ranges within NPCs, some even coming from your companions. Just not in a dating sim minigame format, but as regular conversation. Chit-chat. Talkie.
  22. Interesting, I redeemed my key on GOG, it's in my library, but it doesn't show up as owned on sales lists.
  23. For reference: How to count syllables in English ; Syllables rules with past tense Brennecke, Sawyer Worked on a Kickstarter pitch It turned out all right *If Adam Brennecke uses German pronunciation respecting his heritage, then it's 3 syllables with an "e" at the end. If he uses Americanized pronunciation with a silent "e" at the end, then it's 2, so add an "and" in the middle instead of the comma. Soulstorm befalls you Oh, no sleep for the Watcher! But what does that mean? It must be balanced Even if it irks grognards Sawyer's principle Many sights to see From Gilded Vale to Twin Elms Explore all the way Kickstarted by us Waited two and a half years It's out tomorrow Haiku Hide-and-Seek A game I ran in Guild Wars GOG please, if I win
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