thelee

This was really interesting, thanks. That's exactly why I'd never completed a melee cipher run in PoE -- I could never figure out a way to build them where they weren't crazy squishy. I've done plenty of melee casters: quarterstaffs and pikes let you have reach, which means with how strong engagement generally is in PoE, I can stand behind a good tank and whack safely away for modest damage. Works really well with a cipher because 2h weapons plus clothes/naked = lots of focus generation. (Engagement in PoE is strong versus Tyranny and even Deadfire because in PoE engagement completely stopped most enemies, whereas in Tyranny enemies feel free to disengage all the time, and in Deadfire enemies are still more willing to disengage vs PoE if not Tyranny-level and more importantly it seems like you can actually move around without triggering an automatic disengagement attack so long as you stay within range.) Anyway this is to say that having a separate health system was an absolutely necessary balancing component to these builds. They rarely ever got into much danger despite how powerful they could be (e.g. wizard with Citzal's Spirit Lance and Deleterious Alacrity of Motion), but their low health multipliers meant that they were still rest-constrained over several fights from incidental damage and the like; they were still glass cannons. I agree with much of the sentiment in this thread that the health/endurance split in PoE1 helped create a more strategic/resource-balancing element to the game and is an element I sorely miss in PoE2. Plus, when I was doing my The Ultimate achievement run, the health aspect was the only way I actually managed to win some fights against enemies with natural endurance regeneration . But I also understand that health/endurance was an extremely confusing gameplay element - I remember the first time I loaded up the PoE backer beta and being utterly confused (UI changes later on significantly helped that out). I guess I would be happier if there were more ways for characters to accumulate injuries, to sort of emulate the steady drip on your time/resources that health loss represented in PoE. Maybe on Path of the Damned simply getting to low health (near death) would also trigger an injury (sort of like Tyranny), and/or maybe in general if you got critically hit or took enough damage to exceed some % of your max health you automatically got an injury (this would have the side effect that squishy low-health characters would still need to be careful over multiple fights from incidental damage). Maybe some extremely powerful abilities/spells can add an injury as a component.

I only kind of half pay attention to news about the backer beta (no watching twitch streams, just the email updates), so sorry if I'm missing some context. But several abilities in the game reference "power levels" in a way that doesn't make sense to me. I thought "power levels" were just an abstraction for the purposes of multi-classing, but some of the cipher kit descriptions, for example, imply that you can get buffs/debuffs that modify your power level. I'm not sure what this means in terms of game mechanics, and there's no in-game tooltip for it, nor can I see any obvious effect in other tooltips (like an ability that says it gets stronger based on your power level). So please, help a backer beta noob out: what on earth is a power level in this context?

I honestly don't remember if they were always this way, as I don't think I used any on my initial playthrough at release, but summoned weapons in PoE1 are currently typed Universal (like soulbound weapons) so you get the benefit of any proficiency you have. Summoned weapons in POE1 used to be of their specific type, but with 2.0 (and the introduction of soulbound weapons) universal type weapons were introduced.

I don't think the case was being made that you rely on criticals to penetrate or overpenetrate, rather that because of the bonus penetrate on crits, you can get much better than +25% returns on your damage (if you were just on the cusp of penetration, e.g. 8 vs 9 (so far in my experience more likely than penetrate to overpenetrate), then going from .3 to 1.0 plus a crit damage multiplier is a huge boost in damage). currently the lack of ubiquitous grazes still gives perception a significant relevance, because the difference between a 0% effect and a 100% effect is huge (way huger than 100% to 125%). Of course, this will change depending on how grazes get reimplemented.

I haven't thoroughly played the backer beta, so it's possible I'm missing something. But I just want to chime in a) poe2 summon weapons are underwhelming and b) that I think the people defending or generally supportive of the poe2 summoned weapons are massively undervaluing or ignoring the opportunity cost of a poe2 summoned weapons, which others have have tried to raise. It's not enough for a summoned weapon to be slightly better or distinct, it has to be _significantly_ better, because of all the things people have mentioned, i.e. ability slot, cast time, interrupt risk, etc. I feel like some people are just comparing the stats between a summoned weapon and a real weapon, seeing a lean towards the former (or a niche case for the former) and wiping their hands of it, ignoring all the costs it takes to get (or leave open the option of) the summoned weapon versus the relative "free lunch" you get from a real weapon. EDIT to add: in POE1, the opportunity costs of summoned weapons were much lower, and they were still designed to be pretty strong, because in my mind that's what it takes to make summoned weapons a viable, strong option, even if at the margins it could be arguably too strong (a spell sword wizard with tons of buffs and specialized gear maybe, or firebrand and some tricks maybe). Compare to (A)D&D of the infinity engine games, where there was just so much garbage. Yeah, Shillelagh was strictly better than the club you could get at that spell level, but it was almost never a good choice to save a spell slot for a weapon whose only advantage over a normal club was that you got +1 THAC0 (and one memorized spell slot is still a much lower opportunity cost than in POE2). Don't get me started on Magic Stone.

This is a small mechanic issue, but I'm just offering that Repulsing Seal needs a tweak in light of how prone has been changed to just be a souped up interrupt. I just have trouble imagining a situation where you wouldn't pick Pillar of Faith (larger aoe, actually does damage, unlike PoE1 actually prones your direct target as well in addition to being the same spell level). I mean, sure Repulsing Seal can be cast out of combat, without a target, but given that unlike PoE1 there's no such thing as a prone duration, catching an enemy with a Repulsing Seal like a trap seems significantly less useful.

By the way, if the devs are going to spend any time patching the new DLC, it would be really great if someone addressed the major trap accuracy bug: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/90670-3045-please-please-fix-traps-have-been-getting-2x-their-penalties-for-god-knows-how-long/

Installed Deadfire Pack on Steam. Re-installed it (by unchecking it in my DLC list, waiting for the update to finish, and then re-checking). I definitely have the new portraits. But I go all over Anslog's Compass and have no new merchant. What gives? Dropbox link to output_log and a save: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ay4qg0aka88xv3z/AADcfGqnmS0IAxB4pnJhKwoSa?dl=0 EDIT: never mind, I didn't look hard enough after I reinstalled the DLC. I don't know why the reinstall was necessary, but oh well.

Addendum: I ran some more tests because a new game I started gave me some funny numbers. Long story short: normal traps still get twice their penalties, BUT for whatever reason (and I must have missed this in my earlier tests), Poison Dart Traps, despite being listed as having a -15 penalty, actually get a +11 bonus. I have no idea why this is the case. But it tested consistently across different characters, completely different games, and in different areas. Frankly, I'm honestly confused about how these traps penalties/bonuses end up this way, and diverge so heavily from their tooltip value, which I thought was procedurally generated. Suggests to me that there's some additional bonus/penalty as part of the effect that isn't included in whatever effects are being used to produce the tooltip description.

Put another way, it's like all the polling numbers in the run up to recent elections. Not to drag politics into this, but Fivethirtyeight (i think) had 70% Ossoff winning a Georgia election. Or, the way they put it more humorously, it was a 70% chance of Ossoff winning, and a 30% chance of DATA IS A LIE, PROBABILITY HAS FAILED US, POLLING IS POINTLESS. (Spoiler: Ossoff lost.) Or in Pathfinder terms: my check against this Warden of Runes has a 91% chance of success, and a 9% chance of THIS FRICKING GAME IS BROKEN AND THE DEVELOPERS SUCK AT SEEDING THEIR RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR.

In my experience, people overweight probability of success, even when the numbers are right there. I.E. you show someone 50% chance, and even though they intuitively know what a coin flip is, they may still end up disappointed with the results (especially given how prone to apparent "runs" of failures something like that would be). 80% chance of success on a die roll sometimes feels like a near-sure thing, but 1/5 failures is still pretty common and it won't be that uncommon to have runs of failures. Even 95% chance of success... if you ever played Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale those 1/20 chance of critical hits or critical failures come up a lot more than you might intuitively think from such a huge, seemingly-near-100% number. Anyway, don't be like those people on Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft forums who are constantly alleging that the RNG is broken It's a natural tendency to try to find meaning in random patterns, but they're just coincidences

FWIW, I got this bug and continued on with no problems (other than having an extra card in everyone's decks).

With Pillars of Eternity coming to consoles and that small patch we had recently, this gives me hope that there's still some dev time going into pillars. If that's the case, I'm bumping this thread for visibility. It's not a critical stability issue, but it seems to me that it is important mechanically.

Original thread here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92963-game-got-into-a-broken-state-after-encountering-a-harpy-monk-using-nethys-blessing/ Basically game got into hella broken state when using Nethys, selecting a Harpy Monk to be on top, and then encountering it automatically. I had a similar brokenness occur again just now using Nethys in a Shrine to Lamashtu (take 2 mental damage upon encountering a blessing); used Nethys and ordered a Blessing of Norgorber on top. Encountered it. Then things got really screwy. First of all, I got a damage animation, but didn't have to discard anything. I then got prompted for "Check/Bury?" (since this is a Blessing of Norgorber). I opted to do a check, with my druid, and I got prompted to do a Divine roll. I set it up, and rolled a 17. I then got dealt 17 damage! I had to discard my entire hand (obviously), and then I gained the Blessing of Norgorber. Between the Monk Harpy and the Blessing of Norgorber, I'm going to say that it's probably not a good idea to use the Blessing of Nethys to put anything on top that would trigger an "on encounter" effect.

Deck 4 scenario, the one with the Black Monk and the Harpy Monks, on heroic difficulty. Had druid at Temple. I used the Blessing of Nethys (the one that lets you re-order the top two of location before exploring), I saw a Harpy Monk, and put the Harpy Monk on top. Finished the re-order, and I encountered the Harpy Monk. Boy.... did things get weird after that. The Harpy Monk appeared, and I got the sound effect prompting me for the Wisdom die roll, but no die and no "Wisdom" prompt. I couldn't do anything, so I exited to main menu and did continue (sometimes when things get a little screwy this fixes things). Boy this made it worse. When I continue-ed, I started off on the map view, the Harpy Monk was still being encountered, but I had no idea what I was suppossed to do on this map view. So I exited back to main menu, and then continued. Still map menu. This time I clicked on a location, and my druid suddenly moved there, as if I was in a movement mode.Then the rest of the characters went through their wisdom check, as normal. So I thought things were OK. Up until the game returned to my druid for the actual combat check. My spells/weapons were blocked as if I had failed a wisdom check, but there was no Harpy Monk and there was no way for me to use an item, and there were no dice or checks being prompted. I think the game got really confused because my druid was no longer in the location that the Harpy Monk was. Tried some main menu > continue visits again, but was just stick in this permanently broken state. Ended up having to forfeit the scenario. I don't know how bug reports work for Pathfinder Adventures, but I'd be happy to provide any logs if they exist.

Personally, I like the idea that a legendary item is essentially "unique." Once you get it, you can't get another copy for your current party (that is, if I understand adventure deck construction correctly). (Though you can still get more copies in your "unclaimed" by judiciously buying chests.) If I were to spit-ball a suggestion, it would be to select all treasure cards independent of how many copies you have in your collection. They don't have to be equal weight, but you could be more flexible (fractional) with your weights. Like maybe an uncommon is only twice as likely as a legendary to be picked, instead of potentially 4x, regardless of how many copies of the uncommon you have (even if you have a 1-1 ratio). You still leave the caps in place (4/3/2/1) to limit the number of potential copies that can float in a given party+adventure, which basically acts as a second level to dictate card rarity. This leaves open the possibility that someone with an incomplete collection but good RNG luck at chests may have a better overall treasure card power level than someone with a complete 4/3/2/1 collection. The only way around that I think would be to make it possible to "select" non-existent cards - e.g. if an uncommon is chosen that you don't have a copy of, then the game replaces it with a common of the same type instead (or doesn't include a treasure card at all). But honestly I think this is an edge case that doesn't deserve any attention to fix. If people are worried about their inability to spend lots of treasure chests to get lots of legendaries, that might be an orthogonal problem. Maybe the drop rates of legendaries should be increased, and people can just rely on farming them into their unclaimed?

I also changed my vote to a no. Less RNG-exploitation, and the hard cap prevents flooding your collection with junk.

Whew! Thanks for that response. Guess I can go back to buying lots of treasure chests! (Maybe I'll actually get a Paralyze for once for my mental-based Charlatan) (edit: hey whaddya know, after using up all my gold to buy 8 treasure chests, the last one had a paralyze in it. the rng gods are kind today)

I mean, I guess Obsidian probably doesn't want any extreme RNG-gaming, but surely there's a compromise are of some sort? Just a suggestion off the top of my head: when selecting treasure cards for an adventure, card counts are normalized? So a card you have 1 copy of in collection counts as 1 copy, where as a card you have 5 copies of might only count for 2.5 or 3 (depending on granularity), possibly capping out at 3 or using some sort of log-scale normalization such that you asymptotically slow down how much a card copy is worth. (But the "real" count is still used when determining how many copies of a card you're allowed to have in your party.)

I really appreciate the direct response but... I'm honestly astounded. I got the Obsidian Edition, which I understand already unlocks a lot (all?) of loot. I was opening lots of chests to try and get more of the rarer/better ones, but you're telling me instead I'm diluting the chance I'll ever pick up those rarer/better ones in the first place? I guess now I'm juggling between wanting a "complimentary" copy in my unclaimed tab versus the risk of diluting my location decks with lots and lots of Smiths. EDIT: and yep I sent a small note to BAdler

Recently got this on steam. Is there no more an option to salvage cards now that we have the collection? Looking at older threads, it looked like it was an important thing to be able to do for people who wanted to placate the RNG gods for farming for specific cards. Is there any way to do this now? Deliberate change?

Good to know, thanks! Luckily I looked ahead after picking my roles so I didn't "waste" any power/card feats. It is a bummer I won't get to pick up many more power feats, though (though I guess that leads to more replayability if there are more variations I can do on a character).

Picked up the steam version (after playing the android version for a few days after hearing about the PC announcement) and I'm having a blast. Only question: anyone know if there are further adventures going to be added? I briefly saw a 'quest' mode on my tablet, but that appears to have gone away with the new patch. Basically itchin' to pick up more power feats and have more opportunities to grind for Deck 6 cards (instead of just repeatedly doing adventure #6 over and over again).

+100. I ended up loving the guidebook, and reading up on all the lore of the game. I wish I had volume 1 as a hardcover printout.

Huh, you are right: technically it was Black Isle Hey, don't forget about Fallout: New Vegas.