Gorbag

The internet is werid today. There's this thread where people complain about backers getting backer achievements on steam, and there's this other thread where this guy tries to prove that Bioware are working on some hidden Illuminati agenda to turn straight men into gay men by allowing them to romance a female character, who arguably looks like a man. Geomagnetic storms or something?

@OP: For any romancing purposes, just stick to The Salty Mast.

Uh, sorry for the lingo. By "disables" I mean spells and abilities which disable one or more enemies for a period of time and therefore breaks engagement. For example a Fighter's Knockdown or a mage's Slicken could cause the enemy to fall down and if that happens, your character could just walk away without suffering any disengagement attack.

So basically all they need to do is not count the backer achievement towards 100%? Seems simple enough.

If they are working as they should, then yes. Talents aren't supposed to suppress each other afaik. Haven't tried it though - I use disables to disengage instead of building up disengagement defence.

Do you mean having to go to a specific place to craft is a relic? This is how it is in DO:S And I think it works out really well although at the same time the loading screens were much faster. I mean the idea probably came around by inertia from NWN2, not so much as a feature that was considered for the game specifically. They made several revisions of the crafting system, mostly aiming to make it simpler. They also removed the dedicated crafting skills they had at the beginning (also returning from D&D/NWN2)

Those ideas were a kind of NWN2 relict. I don't mind their removal, crafting is something I rarely find interesting in games anyway (with Arcanum being a notable exception), so if there's some additional chore attached to it, it's 99% certain I'll skip it altogether. There was also an idea to have resting only available at specific places (camps) outside of inns, but Obs. ultimately went with the resting supply mechanic. It would have been interesting to see how the initial idea would have affected the game.

Yeah. Traps are deadly. I found this the hard way when a floor trap in the early levels of the Endless Paths managed to take out my entire lvl. 4 party. They were walking around, minding their business and then FLASH! BAM! ALAKAZAM and Goodbye!

Clearly some are.

Self references and lulz. Goody!

All sound options sliders are at 100%. Spending some time at Copperlane, at first I thought there was no "walla" at all. Then I turned off the music and cranked up the volume on my surround system as high as possible and found out there is, but at max volume those effects are barely loud enough. I guess I can leave my surround at max and get the music and voice sliders to like 10% (dunno what to do about spell effects though) so they don't blow my head off, but it's still incredibly awkward to have to set my system to "bring down the house" mode just to get these effects at an audible level. Can you guys normalize the ambient "walla" sounds for the next patch? Is there any way I can do it myself?

For better damage dealing (well, better accuracy to be precise, but you can't have one without the other), you might want to follow a weapon progression path (focus, specialization, etc.) and get Confident aim (transforming some grazes into hits) and Armoured grace (alleviates armour penalties to speed) and for durability there are some nice defensive abilities like defender (imagine D&D Expertise), critical defence (what it says), etc. EDIT: Yeah, good. Might want to give one of the bunnies some INT at all. Knockdown is pretty rad and INT increases its duration

Hmm, since I don't min/max myself, I won't go for anything extreme, but how about: M:16 C:14 D:10 P:13 I:10 R:15 There's some equipment and resting bonuses to boost PER, and you may still get more depending on your background. EDIT: Note, however, that equipment suppresses eachother, so if you have a helm and an amulet both giving you +1 per, you only get +1, so you might as well give one of the items to your companions.

^ Tank, damage dealer, a bit of both? If tank, you can do away with some MIG and DEX in favour of CON, PER and RES to boost your defences even further. If damage, then RES and PER aren't all that necessary and you can use them to pump more might, som CON and (depending on you armour outfit) DEX. As for the att. spread itself - it looks fine to me (a bit of both). I'd give it more CON though - the fighter's thing is getting engaged by many enemies at the same time and regenerating during combat, so a little more heath/endurance could go a long way.

Yeah, no. PERIOD. Better how? Romances? lol Non-one-gimmick-cardboard-cutout characters and companions? Nope. Choices and consequences? More like ads and PR. More/better dialogue options? Big wheel keep on turnin'. The gameworld reacting to anything you do? Yes, largely by ignoring it. The ability to roleplay any character you like and personalize the story around that character? Sure, as long as you don't expect it to matter. The bottomline is that newer BIO games are just as inert to your "roleplaying" as ever.

Because you don't have a car. The Codex is right, this game's got nothing on Fallout 2.

Wait. There are highways in Pillars of Eternity? And Luckmann's character is manning them? Then why am I trudging for two whole days from Gilded Vale to Caed Nua?

That one's probably on Magran though She's a bitch like that.

That is unless you

What if I told you Cue Candlekeep chanters: The Looooord of Renewal shall peeeeeriiiiish...

There has to be a reason for things like that to exist, other than them being realistic and therefore arguably cool to have. Guns jam and stuff breaks irl. People are also clumsy irl, so a mechanic where one of your characters could suddenly drop and destroy some potions or food would also be realistic. People forget stuff, so a mechanic where your fighter has forgotten his sword in the tavern or that place you looted earlier, so you have to go get it, would be realistic as well. It would be pretty close to real life if your character could suddenly catch a fever and you have to stop adventuring and take camp for several days as he/she can't move or walks at 1/10 speed. Stuff like that reinforces realism and it might be cool to have (in a "look, they have that!" sort of way), but is ultimately useless (not to mention very bothersome once the initial "wow" reaction calms) unless it serves some purpose. Durability was supposed to be a money sink before they cut it, but it ultimately boils down to either a ton of backtracking or another resource management system (e.g. you have to buy and carry around 10 (ton) hammers so you don't have to backtrack every time you go out adventuring). The game already has the resting mechanic doing the same thing and at least that has much better reasons to exist from a mechanical point of view.

@Xharlie: "Traditional" does not always translate to trite. I think that's what Obs. wanted to show with PoE and I think they succeeded. It may not be as weird and thought-provoking as the D&D Multiverse, but it's not the umptieth swords+sorcery story and setting either. It's a sound introduction and set up for future events if nothing else. @Cantousent: Get headphones. (Although it might trigger the "you don't listen to me" scripted event).

They are camping supplies, not camp sites. Stuff like food, wood and the like. Obsidian limited the number of camping supplies you can carry to avoid rest-spamming and as a substitute for resting encounters (which were tedious *and* reload-inducing). I'm sure the limit will be modded out pretty soon for those who don't like the mechanic and just want to rest away. Yes, there are health potions in the game. In fact you can get one in the very first area of the game (the clearing near the caravan camp). EDIT: Actually these are potions that restore endurance. I haven't seen any potions that restore health (long term damage) so far.

I think so, yes. Although whenever you get XP, the log says "You got X xp for doing Y", not how much each character gets.

OP, check out if your character is fatigued (little icon next to your portrait). Fatigue hits accuracy pretty badly, it makes a lot of your hits into grazes or misses, which allows the bandits to recover health while you are swinging uselessly. As always, a rest would remove fatigue. Since I'm rolling a druid, I opened up with that cone of cold like spell, which took a good portion of their health and then switched to cat mode. Cat attacks are extremely fast, especially with the special ability enabled.