CaptainMace

Well chances are, if you dismiss a companion with stuff equipped, it ***** up its permanent stats. My Sagani has a base DR of 10 naked :> It makes quite the difference actually, for any aoe and such, since with an armor, I easily reach a tank DR. But the game is definitely playable, which is the most important for a release. But as it's a whole new system that can only be judged from its context (encounters, bestiary, big fights and such), it's difficult to do so knowing that half my team is cheated-OP. Readric's hold is easily avoidable for the most part anyway. I'm concerned about this because I still can't figure if hard and potd and too easy because of the bugs or because of the whole design regarding xp rewards, world design with its encounters etc.

Not the buggest, sure, but i has its fair share of bugs. Did you change your party members often or not ? If you didn't, there is sure way less bugs during a playthrough. Yet I like to complete companion side-stuff to see what they're about, so I often changed my party composition, and it utterly resulted in a bugfest on their char sheet is all i'm saying.

What does the priest of Wael get from his god ? Priests of Magran (those who can chose the sword and arquebus (bonus fire damage) talent) seem to be pretty neat to build a damage dealing priest couple with scion of flame among other fight-oriented talents. Though that'd depend on your ability to keep 'em alive, since priests have a poor base HP (i'll join the people who want the % bonus from CON changed to raw bonus, and make base class hp less relevant than the actual attribute of the character). If you're not into the damage dealer priest, I don't think priest of magran is that good of a choice.

Dense and byzantine ? Wut ?

So basically, in your system, might is useless for rangers and perception is useless for melee. Might and Per are useless to the spellcasters and Perception is useless for the ranger (lol). Ninja edit, mea culpa, misread the stat names :') Though, that's still pretty ad&d-ish, the point was to avoid these carcans. The problem of the game doesn't reside in its core ruleset, it resides in the game design itself when it comes to random encounters in wilderness and xp gain out of crit path in the first half, making the rest way too easy on any difficulty. Having access to tier 3 (extraordinary ? forgot the name) equipment and fighting folks with 3 less levels and banal gear is kinda depressing. In a world of min-maxers yes, I guess AD&D would be an actually excellent system regarding attributes. But otherwise...

Minor spoiler ahead (!) Because the bugs of POE are way more discreet than what we're used to ? I thought it was a solid release until Raedric's Hold, where it's just impossible to wander around a bit too long or you might get stuck in an infinite loop of crash transition. I didn't mind it that much then, I just ignored the rest of the stronghold past the confrontation with the dude and I started to notice some unusual stuff. Leaving someone at the stronghold with stuff equipped almost always result in a bugged character sheet the next time you hire them. My Hiravias has a base fire DR of 17, my Sagani has a base DR of 8, my griving mother has a base intellect of 16 instead of 12 (or 14 ? can't remember) and Durance and Hiravias (who respectively got bonus third lvl spell and bonus first lvl spell) are now able to cast respectively 3rd and 1st lvl spells 6 damn times. Although got the bug of the overlong saving time. My quicksaves tale several seconds more and more every 5 hours of play. Game is great, but man, the fact you didn't see those bugs doesn't mean it's not there or that we're telling bullsh*t. It's full of em, and some are extremely infuriating.

Even then Wolken, POTD is not even really harder, only longer. The problem, I think, consist of a myriad of WAY too generous xp rewards in the first half of the game. I spent most of Act II at level 7 to 9 and I kept walking upon level 4-6 creatures that, obviously, were no problem anymore. I think in Hard and POTD, the game need to be less generous in XP than it is in Normal mode. Because right now, hard is hard in act 1 only, and whether you fight three lvl 4 creatures or two lvl 4 and two lvl 6 ones doesn't really make a difference, since they can't hit you, since you're overleveled.

I take that you haven't tried the extraordinary arbalests yet. Guns are so overrated

Also, correct me if i'm wrong, you can't really overlevel, as you dont get exp for enemies after a certain point. But I noticed, if you do a harder area first, and do the easier side quest later by accident, it gets pretty trivial Yes but then, the hard area is chapter 1 (everything before caed nua and caed nua first and second floor), after that, the difficulty didn't cease to decrease. But the other problem I noticed, though I doubt it has much impact on the difficulty being too low, is the misc bugs affecting stacking stats. Some of my companions now have base DR of 2-3, sometimes inexplicable specific high DR (my Hiravias, or whatever his name is, has like 17 base Fire DR naked... what the actual f...) and some stacking attributes, some stacking bonus spell/lvl talent etc. Seems it occurs while I let them a the stronghold with stuff equipped, because it seems the stuff they wear somehow glitches their character sheet and "print" bonuses as permanent stats, making 'em double as a result. But even without this, the middle of the game is too easy on hard. These bugged stats don't affect the main character, and my PC is actually the strongest of the party, even without some minor glitched bonuses.

There's a hacking thread on rpgcodex where i remember reading posts about it. I can't help you more since I didn't use 'em, it disables achievements and i'm an achievement-idiot.

That image is god-tier. Looks like

Yeah you're right about fan of flame, looks like they messed up and swapped its damage with fireball, that does way too little damage in comparison. Still, the rest is fine. I do think Web is a better version of Slicken though. And gives more crit chance on aoes like, well, fan of flames :> Your broken intellect comes from an item glitch that I still don't understand. You can even use the console command to fix it, or hope that the first patch retroactively does it, I have the same for mother, whose base intellect is now 16 :') though that's not as insane as yours

Sure but fan of flames requires to be close to the target and can affect your mates. Necrotic lance is way safier against single target (which was my point). Although Necrotic lance deals more damage over time after the initial burst. I don't use fan of flames anymore though, I never get close in combat with Aloth, the pathfinding is such that it's too risky :> But you're right that Fan of Flames is an op lvl1 spell. Base damage is insane. Actually they should swap fan of flames damage and fireball damage. Fireball is very disappointing

I don't know, Web into the ray of fire + rolling flame is the reason Aloth is far, far ahead of the damage count in my team. Although Miasma of mind-something divinely f**ks up enemy deflection. Fetid caress is the best lvl1-2 single target control while necrotic lance is the best lvl 1-2 single target damage burst. Although, yeah, the rest really looks like it could be lvl 1 without breaking anything balance-related. Concelhaut's siphon is barely usable unless you like to drain life out of your friends

I have the feeling i'm overleveled in most places I visit. I think xp rewards at the beginning should be toned down a bit.

Read about a fix for lost passives. Seems that dismissing companions and reinviting them in the party makes abilities reappear. I have no idea if it works for stacking stats but I know what cause those : My Sagani and Durance now have a base defense value equal to the armor they usually wear. Ie Sagani, without any equipment or ability, has now 9 base DR in my game. Durance has 5. Which means that, when they wear an armor and equipment (capes, belts etc) they reach insane DR. Sagani now has 20 DR with a medium armor and no shield lol. It occured after I swapped teammates many times while at stronghold for item management. Seems it "wrote" the items values in their character sheet as permanent one, stacking them as a result. Another problem I encountered occured after stacking two +intellect items. It concerns the horn that gives more focus per hit and +2 intellect (forgot its name). Basically, from my experiments, putting the horn on and off repeatedly while already profitting from a +intellect (that cancels the bonus from the horn) results in a massive permanent gain next time I rest. I witnessed 26 Intelligence on Grieving Mother, I fortunately had a previous save. Though she now has 16 base intellect instead of 12 I think (or 14, whatever) because this occured before i notice the bug. Another bug I have, I don't even know if it's a bug, is that Grieving mother doesn't build any focus on succesful attacks during combat.

Got the same problem, half spell granting items seem bugged.

I remember a tonne of people said otherwise when bg2 got released.

Scrolls are consumable-only. You can write new spells in your grimoire if you find somebody else's grimoire for 100cp x spell level. You can although, if you find somebody's grimoire with a lot of spells you don't know, decide to keep that grimoire instead of copying spells in your own.

How about a little topic about funny and memorable quotes from the game's characters ? I'd open with

Am pretty sure quest items don't leave the stash. They although are automatically stored in it when you get 'em.

Did someone find any fix of some sort ?

Modern guns yes. Not these.

Richer at the very least. Because I frankly don't know who's crazy enough to afford a ps4 just for Bloodborne, unless there's another actual game on that machine, but I didn't see any.

Damn dawg you brought the discussion to a new level by comparing PoE to Star Citizen. You're right on this, the latter doesn't need any media coverage already, the hype around this game is just massive. This is not the case of PoE. Now Obsidian and Paradox could decide not to send some review versions for the game to be covered and just hope for mainstream websites and magazines to review the game properly while they're used to posting reviews day 1. That'd be a pretty stupid gamble but hey, at least the backers aren't mad :> come on...