anameforobsidian

I always read it as all the Gods were created in Sun in Shadow. But I think the Woedica only idea has some merits. It would have been possible for the Engwithans to make more gods as they went on a global crusade. It is implied that Thaos traveled far and wide on his (and your) crusade to see the gods spread. It's not uncommon for aggressive polytheistic cultures to engage in syncretism as a way to legitimize their rule over the conquered. That doesn't sound very Engwithan, but who knows?

Doesn't Rymrgand use a lot of grinding and crushing imagery? I would think a blunt weapon would be more his speed. Also, there's not appropriate weapon, but it'd be cool to see a priest of Woedica take on the aspect of the strangler.

The druid near Elmshore says something to the effect that grass is making souls, or that they can feed on the souls of plants without doing damage to them and they regrow. Also the longevity of the dryad-types seems to imply that plants are creating souls. I imagine that it will work out that there's a big wheel, and the passage through time fractures souls inevitably, but animals also become stronger souls through their life.

It may stop you from doing this, but can you go beat Maerwald and then out through the Endless Paths? BTW Maerwald will fight the spiders and beetles below him if you pull both.

The first dungeon lets you light torches with your head if you're a fire Godlike, and the Death Godlike bandit notices it. I think theres a few more references here or there, certainly nothing like what's in the lore for Death godlikes. Also, I'm playing an Orlan monk on PotD and he kicks butt. The one problem is enemies immune to crush / high dr enemies, because hatchets only work so well. I didn't build him right, so he was knocked out a lot early on. Now he's turning into a little steamroller.

It's a one-time check, but you can enable it in console without disabling achievements.

Keep in mind Godlike lose access to helmets, so their abilities should be strong enough to make up for the loss. When the game was released there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth that godlike abilities were too weak. I would like to see death godlike changed to a second chance and no injuries when they die.

Each character has their own ending slide, their own dialogue with Thaos, and their own quest. Aloth's quest is early on, in Defiance Bay (and then another right at the end of chapter 2). So you need Aloth no more or less than other characters plot-wise.

The closest class to necessary is a priest, and athletics goes a long way on non PotD runs. Two wizards work well together, one can focus on damage, and one on crowd control. Or you can skip wizards altogether and go for druids. But seriously, lots of forum members have experience going with all melee parties.

I tried and it looks compatible.

I think I judge characters by their characterization, their plot, transformation, and their theme. Each NPC should have a consistent character, their plot should be interesting and result in their transformation, and they should stick to a theme. I wish some of Obsidian's writers would think about theme before writing the character. By these metrics, Durance is one of the strongest characters in the game, but Grieving Mother is one of the weakest. - Eder is awesome. His characterization is consistent but shows growth, and the dialogue with the pets shows that whoever wrote him really loved him. His plot is interesting and fits nicely with the main plot. His theme is a pretty classic Judeo-Christian redemption after doubt, and even his ending sticks to it. - Aloth has problems. He's strongly characterized as aloof and self-doubting, but doesn't strongly change from that. He needs better writing in the second chapter for this. He has two completely separate plots and neither gets adequately explored. They make more references to his first one in WM1. I can see Aloth's themes as struggles with authority, but the writer consistently fails to make it even. - Durance is interesting, but once you've discovered his mysteries the first time there's not a strong incentive to explore his character again. So it's a great plot with a heavy focus on transformation, but not a very durable one. His characterization is great, but not very attractive. I take him because even with athletics you'd have to be crazy not to take a cleric on PotD (with the base party members). Thematically he could be a bit stronger. He was supposed to transform people by putting them through trials (that's his reason joining the watcher), but he never actually does in the game. However, he himself is certainly transformed. - Kana is characterized well. He's consistently adventurous, inquisitive, and clever. His plot needs much better pacing. "Hey, I'm looking for this thing. Oh wait we found it." Thematically he represents the search for knowledge, which is good in the setting, but I wish he had more knowledge to search for. His possible transformation goes against the themes of the setting. - Sagani maintains a stoic characterization, but there's not much else there. I found her enjoyable, but there needs to be more driving her journey. Her plot is pretty interesting, and shows good pacing throughout the game. Thematically, I don't get her. It could be loyalty to traditions, but it needs more development. - Pallegina. She's characterized as hot-tempered, strong-willed, clever, and loyal. I think there's a bit much and some aspects get lost, but overall she's characterized quite well. She's very Valian, and helps you understand what Valian is. Her plot is weak and really exists only to further her characterization; it's implausible that she would show no urgency whatsoever with a mission given by the ducs. She needs more quests to fill the time before Twin Elms. Thematically she's quite strong, her individualism in the face of authority, matches one of the themes of the setting, and she is transformed by the end. - Grieving Mother is characterized as regretful, traumatized, caring, and evasive, and she doesn't break that. Her plot is very interesting, but it needs actual representation in the game. It makes no sense whatsoever that you find her after you've seen all the Wichts in the game or that you don't you know see her village. Her transformation is interesting and plausible, but only reflected in the ending slides. Thematically I can't quite place her. Maybe misguided authority, or the harm of ignorance. The only time she impacts the game (Dyrford) she does so flawlessly.

Skyrim also had the severe problem that it devoted a lot of time to lower level content that you outgrew very quickly. Then you're left fighting Draugr for the rest of the game (when the skeletons actually looked much cooler). Pillars of Eternity does this to a lesser extent. You hit level 3 lightning fast, on PotD I try to make it to 5 before doing Caed Nua.

After playing White March in patch 3.00 I have to agree. Compare Russet Woods to Black Marsh Meadows and the Twin Elms temple district to Brackenbury and you see how far they came along in the course of development. The system is significantly better (and I liked it a great deal originally), enemy design is better, and level design is much, much better.

That's what they tried to do with difficulty modes, and I appreciated it. However, when applied to level systematically, it recreates the verisimilitude problems of Oblivion. Why should every cave I step into have a thousand champions and no low level minions? Maybe I want to see wolves with some frequency late in the game because they're setting appropriate animals. I think out-leveling non-critical content is fine if there is plenty of other content and the level curve is slow enough to not overpower most of it.

What's the point of leveling then? I especially hate that pernicious form of auto-scaling. It leads to every bandit having world-shattering, epic armor.

One thing they did a good job exploring but I'd like to see more of past Gilded Vale was the crisis of faith killing an actual living God caused.

Someone was saying summon duration is fixed, if so, a summon heavy chanter has little reason to put stats into intellect it would seem. Trying to salvage the idea of a summoning chanter when I play the game, but it's really not sounding like a summoning class at all, unless the vast majority of fights actually are over within half a minute. They really are. One of the criticisms of the game for good or ill is that combat is very quick in game time. Also, the reduced durations mean that low level summons will be ready to pop or almost ready to pop when the first set goes down. There's a reason chanters have a summoner AI setting.

Each of the party members had experienced extreme trauma partially linked to the gods and was undergoing a crisis of faith. - Pallegina's whole life has been ****ty because she's a godlike, and then Hylea gives her a bull**** answer. Really she's at a place in her life where she is questioning all authority (like her superiors). This matches the Renaissance theme. - Eder accidentally helped kill his God. Oops. - Aloth realized he had been lied too, just like your character, and that he was complicit in the murder of thousands of children. - Kana is an empiricist and doesn't seem too religious or pro-authority to begin with. - Ditto Sagani in her own way. - Durance was cut loose from his Goddess and was already trying to be better than her by connecting with her primal nature. - Hirviras already ditched his God, and his new god would be supportive of such a big revelation. - Grieving Mother never seemed to care either way about the Gods.

Here's my solo PotD experience: You need a good build. I picked a moonlike retribution barb before 2.0. She stacked bodies like cordwood. You need to be extremely careful with skills. You absolutely need fan of flames scrolls for shades, mechanics helps a lot since traps can mega kill you, and stealth makes many more things possible. Try putting that in one build. You need summoning tokens. They make the game much more viable, especially since you can pop a token and run away if you're losing a fight. The ability to run away from fights helps a lot. One thing solo PotD really made me appreciate was how well you could pull and dismantle enemies. Xaurip skirmishers will kill you. Easily. They're ****ty little stun-lock monkeys.

PJ had a great post on reading the game, but I'd like to add some general strategy. - First, it would help if you explain a little bit more how you're dying. If it's an instant wipe (10 seconds and you're dead) go away from that area and try somewhere else for a while. You're probably under-leveled and under-geared. If you send a tank in and he's getting killed and then they wipe up your casters, that calls for more armor and some crowd control spells like slicken, blind (wizard), or confuse and dominate. If they're ignoring your tank that means you could start using stealth to do positioning better ( send the tank in ahead of the rest of the party). It also probably means you need an off-tank. Give Kana some heavy armor and a melee weapon. He'll help mop up the people that get around Eder. If one or two enemies slip around the fighter and kill your squishies, off-tanks still help but you may want to enchant party gear or put them in heavier armor. If fights are really drawn out and they grind your party down, that means you probably need better gear. Or to lower the armor of the people at the back of your party. When I'm not paying attention I find that I can collect a lot of gear and forget to equip it. Also, by level 8 you most likely have the stuff to enchant your weapon and armor. Quality enchantments are the most important. On your characters who use weapons most (probably Sagani and then Eder), kick up the quality of the weapon to the highest possible. Armor quality enchants are important too. - Pausing is your friend. You should play with one hand on the spacebar, so you can stop if it looks like things are going bad. - Slowmode is your friend. On PotD I find slowmode as useful as the pause button since fights are brutal, but it still helps a lot on lower difficulty levels. - Status effects are your friend. Knockdown is especially powerful. - Use Grieving Mother to charm or confuse every battle. On easy mode I would say try every single time. That's her major class feature. - Not every mission should be done as soon as you find it, you may want to level by doing some other quests / bounties / or the deep paths. It is extremely possible to outlevel the game, which may be your speed. - Kana slowly builds up summons. These make a big difference. Kana can also speed up reloading, which helps if he and Grieving Mother are using guns. - Give all party members weapon specializations in the weapon they use. Accuracy helps a lot. - Check out the attributes your enchanted items give. Resolve helps armor, Perception how much you hit, and Intelligence makes abilities better. Clothing attribute bonuses don't overlap. If two piece of clothing give +1 resolve, your character only gets +1 resolve. If you look at your character sheet and the bonuses next to an item say "surpressed", that means that that item isn't doing anything and would be better on another party member. I hope this was helpful. Good luck!

There are two big challenges with solo runs. One is the end. The other is the fight in the main hall of Caed Nua. Ghosts are still ridiculously dangerous, and you have to fight a buttload right there. It requires strategy to save up for the summoning figurines and to keep enough scrolls for the ghosts. Maerwald is a piece of cake by comparison.

Backstabbing is way more useful than classic DnD play, because you can backstab on status ailments. Backstab is pretty easy, you just rotate a character around the mob. I don't have a problem pulling it off on my monk with apprentice backstab. Hard has always been not that hard. The game really comes to life in PotD. Second wind comes from 4E, and I love the change. It makes it much easier to explore the other spells of priests instead of just having a healbot. It provides a nice counter to survival, and makes melee parties far more viable. However, even with maxed athletics, I still drain Durance's available healing pretty frequently.

That's fair reasoning, however, the survival bonuses do come at the fairly significant cost of not stacking with inn bonuses by their nature, so while they're good they do come at a hidden cost.

Stealth was already quite useful, even more so since they changed it to per person stealth. The game depends heavily on positioning, so stealth lets your rogue, barbarian, or dps monk to wait and choose optimal positioning.

They seem to describe the breaking of souls as a natural process rather than a directed one. Souls break because of entropy. They gave this force to Rymrgand.