thelee

actually, at release, traps were way overpowered. solo rogues killing adra dragons with nothing but traps? poe traps almost immediate got nerfed, which led to all kinds o' confusion as the already opaque trap math became more muddled. we were aware that traps in white march were having different accuracy, but we never looked close enough to see the cause. to the genesis poster: thanks. good find re: which traps is broken. HA! Good Fun! I would in fact go so far as to say that even now, at least White March traps are way overpowered. I frankly don't understand the gameplay/balancing decision here. Even in path of the damned, dropping some cash periodically to buy up Wilting Wind, Freezing Rake, Rain of Holy Fire, etc. traps means that you could completely win major fights without lifting much of a finger. Sure, it's expensive, but literally not any more so than vanilla traps. It's like devs literally learned nothing from the trap problems of early pillars, and have made no effort to harmonize the traps between vanilla and the expansions. Right now vanilla traps are underpowered, even if they fix the double-penalty bug: the effect magnitudes of the traps are just so small (just look at how much damage a freezing rake trap does compared to the equivalently-costed pillar of holy fire trap). Even if they fixed the double-penalty bug, while six pillar of holy fire traps would do something, it would probably not be worth the cost/difficulty. By contrast, six wilting wind or freezing rake traps (even if your party of six is of middling mechanics skill) can pretty much single-handedly win you the hardest bounty fights in the game (magran guys in searing winds or deadfire pirates in dyrford crossing). If somehow developers were still interested in spending more time on pillars, in addition to fixing this double-penalty bug (which would go a long way to fixing the vanilla traps), I would urge them to buff vanilla traps just a smidge (maybe 25% damage/duration) and nerf white march traps a smidge (maybe an equivalent 20% for part 2 traps [equivalent because you need a smaller percentage to go down than up], 10% for part 1 traps). White march traps would still be good, but they would be counterbalanced by being only available by advancing the DLC quests. And then the vanilla traps would be much more useable (they would be weaker than white march traps, but they would also be more readily accessible). EDIT - how does a solo rogue kill an adra dragon with traps? you'd only be able to ever set one, and you can't de-aggro the fight down there until everyone is dead (take it from someone who beat it solo while doing the ultimate achievement).

Here's my bug report: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/90670-3045-please-please-fix-traps-have-been-getting-2x-their-penalties-for-god-knows-how-long/ It also goes into detail about equations and such. I'm not too active on the forums (mostly to file bugs), so I don't know if this is old hat, but it certainly is news to me. I hope other people can comment on or give visibility to the bug, and maybe the equations I dug up are of use to somebody.

TL;DR: at least vanilla traps have their listed accuracy penalites being applied twice, which results in very buggy results where a low-level trap like the Dart Trap will likely outdamage the high-level Sunlance Trap. Dropbox link containing output_log and a quicksave are at the end of the post. Background: I've been trying to figure out why some spells have different accuracies than others, which got me to figure out that the game has a special formula for calculating "Hazard" spells (priest seals, druid wall of thorns, etc.). In the process of reverse engineering that formula, I started reverse engineering the traps formula, because that has been one of the biggest mysteries to me. In the process, I believe that traps (at least traps in vanilla) are heavily bugged and are getting their penalties applied *twice*. If vanilla traps have always been getting twice their bonus/penalty, then it would explain why early on Obsidian felt the need to nerf them, and why now (vanilla) traps seem utterly worthless. The nature of this bug would also suggest that a quick testing of a few traps (especially lower-level ones) would reveal no obvious issues and could pass quick QA amidst all the other bugs going out. Why I think this is a bug, not an intentional balance change: during my testing, the fact that penalties appear to be applying twice has led to obviously counterintuitive results. A sunlance trap has a -40 penalty in tooltip, but in reality gets a -80. Meanwhile, the low-level dart trap and fan of flames have just a -5 penalty, which results in -10 in the real world. This leads to counterintuitive results where against my test Town Crier, Dart Traps, Fan of Flames Traps, Hail of Darts (-10/-20 penalty) traps actually outdamage the Sunlance trap: with a Sunlance trap I have a net accuracy of just 26, whereas by comparison with a Dart trap I have a whopping 96 accuracy. Further explanation for why I think this is a bug: Based on testing, I believe the "General Hazard Accuracy" formula is as such: hazard_accuracy = base_spellcasting_accuracy + 15 where the +15 is what I call the "standard hazard accuracy bonus", and where base_spellcasting_accuracy is: base_spellcasting_accuracy = base_class_accuracy + 1 * level + 3 * (level - 1) + shield_penalty + perception_bonus where base_class_accuracy is e.g. 20, 25, 30, where the 3 * (level - 1) is the standard 3 accuracy per level gained, and the 1 * level is the standard spellcasting accuracy bonus of 1 per level and shield_penalty is 0, -4, or -8. I've tried this out and it repeats very well for Repulsing Seal, Searing Seal, Wall of Thorns, etc. I believe traps use the general hazard accuracy as a formula and add the following modifiers: trap_accuracy = hazard_accuracy + 3 * mechanics_skill + cord_of_resourcefulness + trap_modifier This means that for my level 16 Zahua, who has no shield, no mechanics skill, no cord of resourcefulness, and a neutral 10 perception, he should have the following equation when someone triggers his Sunlance Trap: 30/*base_class_accuracy*/ + 1 * 16 level + 3 * 15 + -40/*trap_modifier*/ + 15 = 66 66. Not great, but at least vaguely passable. In reality, I get 26 in-game. By no coincidence, this is *exactly* the result as if I was going to get the -40 trap modifier applied a second time. The results are *extremely* consistent across all the vanilla traps. I've even attached a picture of my notes as I was going through the tests (far left column I was tracking the "value" of a trap in case it influenced the accuracy, the number in parenthesis is the trap modifier, and the remaining number is what I computed to be the "base" accuracy of the trap after I took away mechanics, standard spellcasting accuracy bonus, and trap modifier effects (I accidentally forgot to remove the +1 spellcast accuracy point at level 1, so these are all 1 higher than they should be). Note that if you add the trap modifier back in again to the "base" accuracy (as well as take out the extra 1 from my mess-up with the level 1 spell accuracy bonus), they would all be exactly 15, which is the +15 hazard accuracy bonus that is remaining after taking away the spellcasting accuracy and mechanics influences. This means that the trap modifier is being applied a second time. Picture of notes: Last word: I can't account for how white march trap accuracy is determined. I haven't spent enough time on them to determine what's going on, but it's clear that they're not being held to the same effects as the vanilla traps (the Infestation of Spiders trap has a +10 listed bonus, but has a computed "base" accuracy of a whopping 66, so something is off). This would also mesh with player perception that white march traps are just worlds better than the vanilla traps. Here's a screenshot of my testing in action, note the very high accuracy for Hail of Darts. I don't have a screenshot of a e.g. Sunlance Trap but believe me when I say it is exactly 60 less than the Hail of Darts trap (twice the -30 trap modifier difference). And as promised, here is a dropbox link containing an output_log and a quicksave where I have bought every vanilla trap in the game. Feel free to experiment yourself. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4y8m08739xmhypu/AABtKivpssizjp9zuXQYrs7Xa?dl=0 I know that Pillars of Eternity is pretty much end of dev cycle and Obsidian is moving/has moved on to Tyranny and possibly Pillars of Eternity 2, but I'm making a desperate appeal because setting traps is such a broad mechanic to this game that has always felt a little off to me (too weak), and now that I have the numbers it appears to be so apparently broken that it feels like it really needs to be addressed. And I hope it's just a matter of some object attributes having been duplicated, so that it's an easy fix. In the meantime: if I were to offer advice to players on how to make use of traps, I would suggest just sticking with traps from White March or the low-level (-5 or -10 accuracy) vanilla traps. The latter will perform much better (and be cheaper to buy) than higher-level traps. EDIT to add two addenda: one, that if the root double-penalty issue proves too difficult to fix, I personally would just be fine if the penalties were halved, rounding to the closest multiple of 5 in the direction towards 0 (e.g. Dart Traps have 0 penalty (instead of -5), Arrow Trap has a -5 penalty (instead of -10), and Sunlance has a -20 penalty (instead of -40)). The end result would be very similar to a fix, even if it would amount to a hack/workaround. (Though I would desperately urge developers to consider why these traps even have penalties given how much better and useful white march traps are at equivalent price points.) two: looking at my notes, it appears that Cloud of Pestilence Trap (from White March II) appears to be affected by the same issue. I'll have to go through the White March I traps and see how they fare. So far the exceptions have been the traps that have accuracy *bonuses* instead of penalties. Infestation of Spiders is craaaaazy accurate (way more than the +10 suggests) while Freezing Rake is pretty accurate (still way more than the +10 suggests). On the other hand, Wilting Wind has *exactly* the accuracy I would expect if its +10 bonus was incorrectly being applied twice.

I started doing some experiments and have concluded that there is a critical bug with how traps are implemented. I'll post more after I file a (quixotic) bug report.

So i've been trying to figure out priest seals, and lots of googling/searching around links me to various forum posts where people mention that "hazards" use a special accuracy formula. This would make sense with some of the crazy priest seal accuracy numbers, and also why my traps have accuracies that don't seem connected to my characters (I recently set a trap in dyrford to fight Medreth and was stunned to see a 0 base accuracy). Anyway, a lot of posts mention hazard accuracy or "hazard math" but I can't find anything concrete. Does anyone know?

The Achievement Showcase in your profile will show the five rarest achievements you've gotten. Hover over the picture of The Ultimate, and you'll see that 0.04% of all players have obtained it. For comparison, 0.16% have gotten Triple Crown Solo and 0.05% have Frozen Crown. IIRC, Overmind did it with a Chanter, so Paladins aren't the only class that can pull it off, though I personally agree that they're the most reliable one. Turns out I'm not high enough steam level to have an achievement showcase? But thanks for those numbers: ballparking pillars steam sales numbers at 600k, .04% is a bit too much to feed with a few pizzas, but you could still fit us in a big room. Maybe we should have a party!

None of the main key enemies have endurance regeneration, and even if they did, they'll eventually run out of health That's actually what I meant about the ancient memory chanters; the final bounty (deadfire group) has three chanters with all the healing chant perks, and everyone has high defenses and DR, so I literally just had to work away the first two chanters' health before I could actually out-damage their collective regeneration to kill them the old fashioned way. I didn't scale up for WM/Endgame because it was hard enough as it was Thaos turned out to be *ridiculously* easy because of St. Ydwen's Redeemer (25% chance of killing vessels on crit/hit); plus after the Master Below fight and Llengrath, anything would have been easy by comparison. I could take out his two guardians really fast with the redeemer and then Thaos by himself goes down super fast to drawn in spring. For a similar reason, Concelhaut was trivial. You can kite away his adds, and then I got lucky and the first hit I landed on him triggered the insta-kill, so he didn't even get off more than a single spell (his Arcane Veil). Interestingly, the "Fragments of xxx" dwarves at the end of White March part 1 are listed as vessels and trigger the 25% chance, but are immune to the effect. They are the only vessels in the entire game this applies to, as far as I can tell. (Thankfully I had a backup weapon to cope with this rude surprise.) My Triple Crown Solo was a chanter attempt, but this was back in 1.x before summons got a huge nerf. I deliberately stayed away from chanter this time because I was worried this was too fatal a nerf (before you get access to dragon thrashed). Glad to hear they are still viable.

I don't know how many other people have done this (global Steam achievement rate is at 0%, and googling around I see one other mention as a reddit thread), but I felt like I had to share this accomplishment, because it was so brutal and is probably my proudest gaming accomplishment ever (beating out the time back in vanilla World of Warcraft when I PVP-ed to #7 on my server). Pic proof: Rest are too big to upload on the forums, so here's a dropbox link showing the ends of the big fights: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a6w697dnn7z8m3x/AABKWFRd2IZ9vtrPUxrumTKxa?dl=0 (as well as a gif of the last bounty, which involved desperately running around a lake for an hour). I also recorded the Llengrath fight because AFAICT there's like only one other video of someone pulling it off: (The first part of the fight is missing because I've never recorded something before so I forgot to turn it on; the only thing missing is me summoning Concelhaut to do Concelhaut's Crushing Doom on the Gaf the flyign dragon, only to do like 10 damage due to lots of misses.) Obsidian: NEVER EVER EVER create an achievement like this ever again. I see Tyranny has a few similar ones, but frankly I don't see myself being as invested in Tyranny as I was in Pillars. Don't get me wrong, I am soooo super stoked that I got the achievement, but man was it absolutely brutal (and I feel sorry for all the other people who like to be 100% achievement completionists but don't want to devote so much of their time to getting The Ultimate). Build strategy: I think being a paladin might the only viable choice for something like this, thanks to four reasons: faith and conviction (up to +5 deflection over a fighter, +20 other defenses), righteous soul (basically gives you immunity to lagufeths, and really helps out in fear aura fights e.g. dragons), zealous charge (though monks also have long stride, so maybe they can pull it off, but they don't have the crazy good defenses), and sacred immolation (more a sanity convenience than anything else). I got the idea for using a paladin from one of the soloing videos from the other Ultimate attempt, and basically once you build out a paladin there's a pretty clear optimal path for much of the game (so even though I didn't consult the other guy's build, I'm pretty sure we look pretty similar). For the harder fights, I re-specced aggressively just to focus on the biggest threats (for example, in Master Below fight I picked up Primal Bane, Savage Attack, Bloody Slaughter, just so I could aggressively take out the Adragans I knew would be there before they petrify me to death or perpetualy heal everyone with their infinite moonwells). Also, Drawn in Spring and Persistence are hands-down the best weapons in the game for soloing (possibly in general), because their wounding effect is raw damage and the 25% number is based off of your pre-DR damage. This means against tough, high-DR enemies most of your damage will come from the wounding effect. On save-scumming: yes, I actually did this as bug insurance. Back before White March expansions when I was trying to get Triple Crown Solo, i finally succeeded on the 7th try, and two of those earlier failures were due *exclusively* to bugs. I didn't end up having to restore a save that much this time around, but it was almost exclusively because of two bugs that kept cropping up (the first has been around ever since they stopped making potions instant-use like they are in Tyranny): 1. whenever you use a potion, there is a non-trivial chance that your character will bug out their actions and a) do a drinking animation but no effect happens, b) do a drinking animation, consume a potion, but nothing happens, c) your character will just have the idle "..." in their action indicator and not do anything. this can really screw you over when you're desperately trying to drink a potion of endurance, for example. At least this is better than in the 1.x days where sometimes your character would get permanently stuck (to the point where even after all enemies are defeated--by other party members--combat would never end). 2. more severe: there's a buggy interaction with effects that reduce stun duration. if you get stunned (*cough* relentless storm *cough*) and for whatever reason you have a 0 or close to 0 stun duration from the effect, your character may get *locked* into a stun animation, even though they have no stun debuff. Sometimes you can get your character to snap out of it by hitting "x" to cancel any action, sometimes you're just screwed. This screwed me over in several fights involving adragans, actually (who love to use relentless storm). Apart from that, I actually did get *really* close to death several times (this was my third attempt; I've been working on this since june). I barely ended Master Below with ~100 health (not endurance!) left, because of those damned adragans and their petrify. The final bounty I also barely ended up ~150 or so health, because fighting 3 ancient memory chanters solo means everyone basically has infinite endurance, so you basically have to whittle away their actual health (which is several times their endurance). Llengrath I got very close to death (and I actually thought I would fail after coming all this way), and you can see this in the video (me assessing my health periodically, bracing myself for major disappointment), because Gaf just did so much damage to me early on that he blew through most of my health (but fortunately everyone else had either easily dodgable attacks or were easy to kite, like the bigger dragon). Alpine Dragon I also got close to death, but I wasn't worried because once the dragon was taken out the rest of the foes were easily wiped out with a sacred immolation. I really wish Steam provided more detailed specifics on global achievement rate. I'm really curious how many people have gotten The Ultimate. I actually expect that you could fit the total number of people who have done it into one room and feed them all with just a few pizzas. This is kind of a self-congratulatory thread, but if anyone wants more detailed strategies for the dragon/archmage/bounty fights for their own attempts at The Ultimate or is just curious, let me know and I can post more.

For proof, here's a screenshot (it seems to be impossible to have both the enemy tooltip and the combat text tooltip open at the same time, so you'll have to trust me that this guy is only "Barely Injured" when this event happened):

Maybe this is just an erroneous combat text issue, and I don't know if this has been in previous versions, but this is the first time _ever_ I've picked up Bloody Slaughter, and I'm noticing that even on "Barely Injured" I get hits apparently upgraded to crits, attributed to Bloody Slaughter as the cause. The best I can do is this dropbox link with save and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cgna9bhuu564oep/AAAY6zNVUOlsIjuQhuIsQm6ka?dl=0 Just go up to Sabel's room (top right) and there are two Steelspike MAgus's. Lure one out. Fight it. Keep trying and eventually you'll get a Bloody Slaughter upgrade on a hit, even though the foe is at Barely Injured. Of course, if "low endurance" in the Bloody Slaughter description means "anything less than full health" then I guess this is working as intended and perhaps the text should be clarified. EDIT: subject says "3.04?" because my game says it's 3.05.whatever even though I haven't heard anything about a 3.05 patch (I'm on the beta steam channel).

Dropbox link with save game and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c981bqpz88e76ww/AABl4TUYopVEMD5dvfL3Zis1a?dl=0 To reproduce, go to the right and down a bit and lure one ancient death guard to a fight. Watch as the terrify aura grazes/hits the wild orlan, but NO defiant resolve kicks in. This appears to be death guard specific, since to my best recollection all author fear aura-type effects have triggered defiant resolve (drakes, barbarian sickening aura, and it's been clutch in defeating the adra, alpine, and sky dragons). I'm not sure why the ancient death guard aura wouldn't trigger it, since it is definitely targeting will. EDIT: my game says it's 3.05, but as far as I can tell there has been no 3.05 announcement, so maybe the version numbering is off a bit and it's 3.04? (I'm in the steam beta program.)

Thanks Sking!

Thanks for this. Is there any idea what the root cause is? I'm guessing it's some interaction with the autosave taking place right *before* the narration?

I've had this happen even when the game is not paused, turns out. I think the key crux is switching paladin aura while some other action is being prepared or in process (like, the cooldown that appears on the aura when you click on it completes while your character is doing something else). It's like by the time that action is done, my character sometimes forgets about activating the new paladin aura.

Yeah, I attempted Stalwart Village several times, and it appears that *some* Ogres get debuffed. I generally go like this: 1. First crag ogre 2. Sneak around the fence, up the stairs, towards the west part of the map, fight the crag ogre cannoneer. 3. Double-back and fight the winter wolf and crag ogre hiding in front of the normal ramp to exit to durgan's battery. 4. Go all the way to the left and down and start kiting everyone around Drazir. #1, #2, and #3 definitely get weaker upon a reload. Some of the ogres in #4 get weaker, but notably the cannoneer is still tough. This is all in one attempt though, so I don't know if saving/loading again refresh or change the stats around.

Kind of an obscure bug, but: my paladin has cautious attack and both zealous charge and zealous focus. Sometimes in combat I rapidly switch alot of stuff, i.e. I switch my paladin's weapon, I toggle cautious attack on, and then click zealous focus to switch away from zealous charge. Sometimes (more often than not), cautious attack will activate, I'll lose zealous charge, but my paladin will never activate zealous focus and will just continue to auto attack. The only fix is to quickly click/double-click on zealous focus, which will finally get the aura to activate. Here's a dropbox link that I used for a different bug but works for this, too: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lma6iju9g1cmj8s/AAD9S992cLJmnMwRm3OhrcJha?dl=0 To reproduce: 1. load the stalwart village save. at some point while fighitng the first crag ogre, quickly toggle cautious attack and switch auras. 2. cautious attack state will change. 3. current zealous aura will go away but new one won't activate (sometimes, at least more often than not)

Note that it's not just the first Crag Ogre. Other enemies in the fight also become weaker (notably the Crag Ogre Cannoneer post game reload has ~ -80 accuracy adjustment, which makes successive attempts much easier than the original load).

Also, while I can't *prove* it, it seems like the Crag Ogre also has less health after the reload.

I just noticed that the first time my character entered Stalwart Village, the first Crag Ogre would have a ~ -30 accuracy adjustment. If I fail and I reload the autosave upon entering Stalwart village, the first Crag Ogre instead has a ~ -70 accuracy adjustment. Nothing else changes; I'm on Path of the Damned (no high-level scaling, I'm going in at level 8 ), but it appears that consistently enemies appear to be weaker upon that reload. It's like some difficulty scaling adjustment is being lost. Don't know how long this issue has been around, might not be 3.04-specific. If it's been around for a while, I wonder if my earlier playthroughs have been a bit too easy? Drop box link containing output log and two saves: one before leaving for stalwart village and one that is the autosave upon entering stalwart village: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lma6iju9g1cmj8s/AAD9S992cLJmnMwRm3OhrcJha?dl=0 (yes, I save scum my trial of iron attempts; it's how I protect myself against being screwed over by bugs, which has happened more times than I would like) Steps to reproduce: 1. load the save game in Caed Nua 2. go to stalwart village 3. get attacked by the first Crag Ogre, observe their accuracy 4. exit to main menu and 'continue' (which will select the stalwart village autosave that got created) 5. get attacked by the first Crag Ogre, observe their significantly reduced accuracy Anyways, I hope you guys still have sufficient dev resources for further Pillars patching. Looking forward to Tyranny, though!

I'm personally a big fan of Wael. Yeah, Skaen gives you a baby sneak attack, but I think people may underestimate how good reach weapons can be; (Wael's incomprehensible revelation talent gives you +10 quarterstaff and rods). Skaenites might do more damage, but a priest of Wael can do that damage safely. Just stand behind someone with good engagement (fighter, or some other melee fighter with hold the line) with a good quarterstaff (hint: steal Durance's; Gromnir is right, it's pretty good, one of the better quarterstaffs in the game), maybe put up that Holy Power aura (+3 might, +7 resolve in a tiny area including your priest) and you can do alright early on (and buff your tank in the process). Sneak Attack applies to ranged attacks as well as melee ones, however. You won't have that +10 ACC, which will hurt early on, but the extra damage will outweigh the ACC in most cases later Hm, personally my priest spends most of their time buffing/debuffing, so most of the damage is not a huge concern for me vs safety (and it shows... they have the lowest total damage done on the personal stats table anytime I play).

I'm personally a big fan of Wael. Yeah, Skaen gives you a baby sneak attack, but I think people may underestimate how good reach weapons can be; (Wael's incomprehensible revelation talent gives you +10 quarterstaff and rods). Skaenites might do more damage, but a priest of Wael can do that damage safely. Just stand behind someone with good engagement (fighter, or some other melee fighter with hold the line) with a good quarterstaff (hint: steal Durance's; Gromnir is right, it's pretty good, one of the better quarterstaffs in the game), maybe put up that Holy Power aura (+3 might, +7 resolve in a tiny area including your priest) and you can do alright early on (and buff your tank in the process).

With your corrected numbers, it sounds like damage is more like +5, plus ~2.2 per 3 levels after 1? Sounds like I need to update my guide.

Appears to be slides related to the expansions. Wouldn't be a big deal, but it also causes the slide to advance very quickly, a little too fast for reading. Dropbox link to output_log and a relatively close saved game: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vui7sm6qg19i05o/AAAwKtOclxcHcb-j1DescCTOa?dl=0

Never mind, for some reason the lightning effect of the destroy vessels effect was delayed, it ended up working. Nothing to see here, move along.

Despite the update notes saying that on hit effects should work now, destroy vessels procced and nothing happened: Drop box link with output_log and saved game: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kshz15hmdfw8qzc/AADs-YN9s83hLpULU3UuUM2Ka?dl=0