grumbold99

GoG Galaxy (and I believe Steam) allow you to revert to a previous build, that I know of. How? I'd like to complete my current Steam run on the previous settings before doing any new runs withe the updated rules. I hate things that pull the rug from under you right in the middle of a game.

I don't know how the steam achievements work, but my link broke before I even completed Act 1 without any attempt to cheat on my part, so I wouldn't rely on them as being indicative of anything. It may just be that a lot more people had their achievements break before they reached Act 2.

I'm delighted the stronghold is there, because it's the sort of feature that would just be too huge an undertaking for mods to produce. Now the bones are done, Obsidian and others can build on it more and more. It has a lot of unfulfilled potential. Hopefully some of it will be unlocked in DLC

Always read the spell info when choosing your powers, some of them have pitifully small range. It took me a while to find out that you can hover your mouse over the combat result in your text window to get an exact breakdown of what is happening. If your accuracy is greater than their defence then on average you'll hit more often than you graze and even crit sometimes. If it's lower then you'll graze more than hit and even miss sometimes. Then there's the DR - if the monster has high DR to your attack type then even a hit may only do pitiful damage. I've learned to be wary of mass 'charm' and 'confusion' style spells that turn the enemy green for a few seconds. It can lead your front line to engage other targets and the temporary friends can get behind the front line. A few seconds later they flip back and your line is now flanked and your weak characters exposed. I now stick to spells that inhibit the enemy without making them green.

I doubt it. i'm playing the steam version and it hasn't updated my achievements, ever. I got the backer achievement for downloading the game then nothing else. To my knowledge I've never triggered any cheats.

Yeah it's hard to comment on this without making it even more spoilerific, and it's the wrong forum for that. File bug report(s) when you encounter this stuff so the developers can fix it faster.

The fixes look great. Unfortunately, breaking the ability for AH adventurers to pick locks means I can't load it or I'll wreck my game. I hope you can patch that very quickly! Edit: Done already? Great

There was a vote between the digital edition being released early, or everything waiting until the physical copies were all ready for shipping. The decision was made to release the digital stuff early. There is no delay with the physical shipment, there is an early release of the digital copy. For everyone able to access their digital copy while they wait for all the physical goods to be produced this is a good thing. My sympathies to those few having difficulties redeeming their keys. That the first batch of physical copies have been released to stores rather than used to fulfil backer tiers is down to the publisher, but understandable given the vote. We'd all still be waiting anyway, since they would not have released and shipped everything out with insufficient copies to send to stores even if there were no bonus content that has to be produced and added to backer tier copies.

All my casters pump int to get larger effect zones on their spells and larger safe zones. Why debuff half the enemy group when you can debuff all of them? Like in D&D, if you're using your wizard as a nuker he's generally less effective than if you use him to scramble the enemy and give the rest of the party an easier time dispatching them. If you really want a nuker then feat choice has a lot more impact than a few extra points of might. Obsidian have definitely streamlined some of the old systems to make gameplay easier. That is what a lot of people wanted. I'm delighted there's no need to prebuff your team while standing just outside the door to the next fight (that you know is there because you blundered into it and had to reload) or micromanage your inventory or all of that tedious stuff. Refining what the stats mean is a part of that. I'm sure mods will be along to tweak the gameplay for those who don't like some of the compromises, but this feels like a pretty good balance to strike to make the game accessible to as many people as possible. I'll be looking forward to a mod that allows you to wait until daytime or rest until morning, but it's minor stuff. Once you're buying 6000cp armour from the stores and scheduling many expensive upgrades to your stronghold you'll reailse that looting 5cp weapons and 40cp armour is pretty trivial. Selling those 200/400 cp items and quest/bounty rewards will provide the bulk of your income. Do it or not, it's up to you.

Stopped resting, using slicken or sensible tactics. Nice way to challenge yourself if PotD is too easy for you

Yes, the combat gets a lot easier once you know what you are doing. If you don't want to bother learning the combat system then you're going to continue to have trouble, although certain setups make it much more hands free than others. At least Obsidian rcognise that some players want a lot more challenge than others - that's why there's 5 difficulty levels, ironman and solo challenges. If someone comes back and says solo, ironman PotD is too easy for them I'll be impressed!

I was having problems with the combat in the early stages because the game stops holding your hand pretty fast, without explaining a few key points and before dropping you at the nearest inn to recruit more companions. If you are finding it hard on 'easy' I'm guessing you've been exploring dark corners (bear cave, temple of eothas, wandering away from the road on wilderness maps) before recruiting a full team. Once you have a party, it becomes very easy to get past most fights on just the encounter powers alone. You will probably have to pause and issue a couple of instructions but it's that kind of game. If you don't want to do that then the squad-of-tanks idea above is perhaps the best option for almost completely hands-free combat. My two tanks are very resilient on normal mode, but I have to manage combat to prevent the others getting squished.

Black Meadow and Magran's Fork feel smaller than the BG1 maps - but they are GREAT still. I agree BG2 was lacking in that department too, but so huge you soon were glad of that! As I noted earlier it's not the writing that's slightly lacking. In my opinion it's the voice acting doesn't add much to the writing or bring it to life particularly well. No problem with it - it's fine, just not awesome. [edit] I accept it's probably just nostalgia. Probably. You should consider replaying. I've replayed most of the IE games in the recent past, thanks to dedicated people making them compatible for modern machines. PoE is not perfect but I think they've struck pretty much the right note. There was way too much random map exploration for no better reason than acquiring enough xp and loot in BG1 for many people. There's many hours of random exploration in PoE while giving you a decent reason to at least walk down the road through the middle of each one. The characters are not as ample in quantity as BG2 but they're far more developed and layered than those in BG1. There's plenty of scripted interactions but they seem to kick in a lot more after you've done some in-game stuff on their side plots. I've really enjoyed Aloth and Kana questioning each other and already have plans ot ensure my next playthrough has a different mix to get more combinations to see what they say. I'm very relieved they don't 'bark' some rubbish when I click on them, that got very irritating in BG. I've spent more time playing one game of PoE than it would take me to do two playthroughs of BG1 + TotSC and there's still more to come. Thematically I don't see this as anything like IWD, which was characterised by a very linear story progression and far greater combat focus. This has far more storyline, like the more celebrated IE games, and requires you to negotiate and make hard choices, not just kill one set of bad guys after another. The side quest content can be approached in whatever order you like. The sheer number of stat checks I cannot pass on this playthrough has me excited to play alternative characters to discover the options I haven't been able to explore on this run. There are also plenty of encounters you can pass relying only on your encounter powers if you have a solidly built team. In IWD your casters were practically unloading in every battle (with the tedious need to prebuff in many cases) and having to rest afterwards.

I've enjoyed reading the majority of the soul stories I've bothered to look at. The world is a busier environment for having them in it. Should a few less be godlike race and should a few names have been tweaked? Probably. I for one am very glad that enough of these people paid good money to ensure we got PoE with so many extra stretch goals met. Think of all the content that would be missing without them. The limerick controversy seems pretty overblown. The poem is not explicitly about transgender and is just a stupid joke, like pretty much all limericks, ever. Is it only me who has visions of the people incensed by this limerick spending their weekends writing angry letters to any radio station daring to play 'Lola' by the Kinks accusing them of airing a song that attacks transvestism? No doubt Obsidian will edit it out in a patch to avoid any controversy, and within 30 minutes there will be a "humour" mod released to put it back again.

I like games with mature themes but I don't think it's necessary to drop the f-bomb in any game dialogue. It's just down to individual taste, I suppose.