Sonntam

Yes, please see yourself out. Yes, she will be romanceable, but only by folks with high enough Mechanics.

OP is asking a really specific question. I'm not sure how one would answer it without at least mild spoilers. And in this forum people often mention names of companions all the along with various locations and monster types, no?

It's important ro remember the difference between drakes (can barely talk, agressive, not very clever) and dragons (mature drakes, intelligent, talkative). You get to see both types, although there are only two grown dragons in game. I liked both of the dragons we saw, though.

Grieving Mother seems to be the one with the strongest moral compass. She will also leave, if you allow the Skaenites in Gilded Vale to proceed as planned.

You seem to be thoroughly confused about how games are funded/made. Traditionally, a publisher would have given them the money to produce the game. That ~4 million from Kickstarter took the place of the funding that would have been provided by a publisher. Games aren't made for free out of thin air and then paid for afterwards... Many AAA RPGs cost many tens of millions of dollars to produce, and expecting this game (made on a budget of around 4 million) to be considerably longer or more complex than other modern RPGs doesn't make much sense. Thoroughly confused... lol. Big words there mate. Yes, games are funded. They need to. When they're funded by an external source, that external source wants a cut of the game revenues when it's out... But the kickstarter guys aren't getting a cut, are they? No, I'm not "thoroughly confused" lol. What does it matter for this game, though? The profits of the game will go to fund the expansion and/or Pillars of Eternity 2. However Pillars of Eternity itself had to be made with the Kickstarter money, no more and no less.

I mean the resolve checks, in the first part of the game up to the first village i only found threatening resolve check, i break your leg was actually a resolve one...i mean the situation improve? there are some charismatic quote from resolve in the game that involve brain and not menacing everyone? For involving your brain one would use Intellect. Resolve is really a lot about deception and convincingly lying to people. I haven't threatened many people with Resolve... I think that one in village may be one of the few that do that.

Resolve helps a lot when you need to lie to someone. Intimidation is more Might's territory. As for pure charisma... Resolve fits the most, but it's not perfect, yeah. You may want to build your disposition to be Honest, that can be more "charismatic" and persuade people rather well.

Sanitarium will be demolished, so all the quests in there won't be acessible (this means the artifact quest in Ondra's Gift won't be available; for example). Otherwise everything is back to normal.

so.. the part where everyone is telling you that you MUST go to the palace and present your case, because it will change everything! that kinda implies that yes, you are supposed to indeed magically fix things by being protagonist mcSquarepants. You must have forgotten that part. You went there to get Defiance Bay on your side to pursue Thaos. Animancy was more of an afterthought. The people in the hearing may care about it more, but it's implied that your character is here purely for Thaos. Also, I personally found it a nice touch to persuade the rules of Defiance Bay in favor of animancy... only to have Thaos come in and ruin everything. That was a real punch in the guts, I loved it.

I don't think so.

Than it is a badly written quest that is dependant on information that is not given to most players. And even with that information that one representative didn't show any reason to let him go and why that would be a benevolent thing to do. Come on, this is not rocket science. You let someone go, you are benevolent to them. Doesn't matter who they are, murderers or monsters.

Oh, absolutely. They have to be taken on an individual basis. And this one, as an individual, doesn't even bother to warn visitors that it has no hospitality. It just tries to murder anyone who stumbles into its territory with a wave of spidery death. That seems problematic. Well, Americans got this law which allows them to shoot anyone who enters their home and looks threatening... so I don't see why a Vithrack can't be allowed to do that too. And if one considers the Engwithan ruins not Vithracks territory, then you both are breaking the law. Seriously, I don't see why everyone is so upset with the Vithrack alone. You run often into people who are willing to attack you/are about to attack you, because they are scared of who you are/who they think you are. Slaughtering them all is barely benevolent, even if understandable.

"He is useful in combat" sounds like a good roleplaying justification. Equally, Durance has a mysterious past. Is your character not in the least curious?

Don't overthink it. You can do it anyway you want. I personally did first Sanitarium, then ruins, then Heritage Hill. I think I should have done Heritage Hill first or second, because by that time I was immensely overlevelled. HOWEVER, now I think that picking up companions should have been my priority. I am rather curious about Grieving Mother in Sanitarium and Hiravias in Heritage Hill. So maybe pick them up and then go back to town? Doing Heritage Hill first, Sanitarium second and ruins third? (Because I feel that the ruins from storytelling standpoint make the most sense when done last. )

You both are damn looters. There is no justice in here, unless Glanfathans come in and slaughter everyone.

It's still a sentient being. The Vithrack have an advanced civilization and are pretty okay with going out of the way of other races. You can't fault them for attacking when you encroach on their territory. Considering the little birth races of the Vithrack and how other kith races just love going to war with each other... can't really blame them for not even trying to build communications. And this Vithrack in particular was fighting for survival of their children. No "redeemable qualities" indeed. Where do you get this info about their civilization and being that sentient? The way they were presented was that one creature being able to have simple communication and asking you to let him go after 30+ spiders tried to murder you before. I have absolutely no clue if they are going to really be dangerous or not but since all spiders I ever ran into just tried to murder me, I got no reason to believe they are also not going to murder other humans down the line. I got a Guidebook with lore on all the races, so I use that. Also one can read up on Vithrack in backer updates. AND I also talked to the Vithrack in Caed Nua and they were rather dope. Like with all races, some are ****, some are reasonable, others are just downright sweet and nice. So I don't feel one can just label them "monsters" and leave it at it.

It' hilarious when people forget that proper grammar in Old English was not much of a thing. It wasn't uncommon to write things down how people thought it should be spelt. And if people disagreed... well, the important part is that it's understood what the author meant.

You only really get 1 chance to roleplay, thats your 1st run through the game, after that you're meta gaming What, knowledge obsessed ciphers that care about Engwithan constructs more than about people are not a thing anymore? I know that my cipher wouldn't destroy the machine unless her very life depended on it. Plus one has to consider that the souls would get destroyed with the machine, if you chose to blow it up. That is why I didn't blow it up on my goodie-goodie rogue. How on earth would you even roleplay that scenario? There is no good-neutral-evil sort of options on the table. There is no "you can siphon energy from the machine to your benefit," there is no "you can activate it again to wipe out another part of the city," what you're doing is undeniably good. You gain positive karma regardless of what you choose to do there, and you do a good thing regardless of what you do. Deactivating the machine is half-assing it, blowing it up is doing the full job. What would you like to have? Sunshines and bunnies solution to this problem? Or a solution that makes you benefit from this situation somehow? This is exactly why we always get good/evil decisions in RPGs. Because as soon as there both options are more ambivalent, people start complaining.

Pale elves are migratory within the polar region, but seldom venture far north. That is pretty much all we know about them. So I expect their culture to have similarities with Inuit tribes.

I'm so totally not trusting Engwithans and their constructs in questions of moral judgement. Engwithans have done plenty of terrible things, after all. And considering you are here to retrieve the artifact and kill the monster that stole it... well, the "hero"'s intent sounds pretty murderous to me.

What kind of people do you think enter the ruins? Normally, looters. Are looters going to talk things through and let someone go with the artifact? That is rather unlikely. So why would the Vithrack risk themself to talk to you, if they could overpower you and/or make you leave?

Googled it, the name is actually Iovara. Oops. Also, you were her former lover. You were not that close for quite a while (actually several years). It's no surprise she is a bit distant, especially since you are the person that she loved and then you are some bloke that happened to become a Watcher. That can make a meeting a bit awkward.

I have Deception 2, but also Honest 2. I think it cancelled each other out, so the Vithrack believed me.

I'm not sure what you are asking for. Iorvath's soul is the only thing that remained from her. She wouldn't be walking out of there alive this way or the other. You can make her go over into the Berath's Wheel and make her forget it all. And I'm not sure things would have been happier if you put her soul into an amulet and then carried her out of there. Iorvath chose this act of defiance, to stay here and be a monument to the failure of Engwithans and their gods. And if you couldn't offer to carry on her crusade and make people understand that the gods are a lie... then there is not anything else she would really care about.

And what would you accomplish by that? People all around the world consider the gods to be a very important part of their lives. Simply turning the gods off, with all their divine power, with all the blessings they grant their followers, might not be a wise idea. There's no divine power. They're just sharing their soul-power. They're not gods; they're Engwithan constructs designed to incarnate Engwithan prinicples and ideals. Destroy them, free everybody from the chains of Engwithan control. You forget that people believed in gods long before the Engwithans came up with this brilliant idea. People would make up new gods and worship them. Or maybe just keep worshipping the old ones (even if they die like Eothas). After all, one does not have to believe everything some bloke from the street says. And if gods fall silent, it's not like people will stop praying to them. Some will, but in the end faith is it's own reward for many. Especially since we are talking about a setting where your own conviction can make you stronger and change the world around you (paladins, priests).