pi2repsion

End. Definitely end. I liked the White March and storywise it fit in the middle with two high level areas at the end, but it completely screwed up any semblance of balance the game already had for all the pre-expansion areas you visited after completing the White March. Even the high-level enemy scaling introduced only mildly ameliorated the bizarre issue that almost no loot you found or could buy after the White March when you progressed into chapter three of the main story were really worth it in comparison to what you'd picked up in the middle of the adventure, and that every enemy encounter was a complete pushover since enemy stats and abilities, boosted or not, came nowhere near in power to the power of higher level characters with better gear, durgan-steel enhanced equipment, and entire new tiers of abilities. Now, given that perhaps half the pre-expansion game can fall after your White March visit, that's a rather significant failure of design in my opinion. If an expansion is not to be at the very or after the end I think this was done much better with Tales of the Sword Coast. While you could access Ulgoth's Beard fairly early in your adventure, its content were scaled for high-level (by BG1 standards) characters and if you played methodically you were likely to have already played through a lot of the game when it would appear natural to go there due to its location on the map. Heck, you could even play it as bridge between BG1 and BG2. But my favourite for expansions are after the end, which is one of the reasons why, in Infinity Engine context, I considered the Throne of Bhaal expansion a much, much, better than TotSC that I also really liked. One optional highlevel area within the main story of what you expand, everything else extending the main story. (Given the main story of Pillars of Eternity it is clear that there are many story arguments against such an expansion, which is why I guess they went with the middle of the story White March in stead, but it certainly had its cost where game balance was concerned.)

Traditional IE game formula. I can think of CRPGs that have had 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 party members just off the top of my head, and I suspect given some more time I could find some other integers. It would be trivial to do so. 7 and 8 have also been popular. Very popular. At one time they were the norm for party based CRPGs, insofar as anything can be said to be a norm in a genre that has always seen a lot of experimentation. For the Gold Box games 6 PCs and 2 NPC hirelings/companions was the norm. They are the ones that set the gold standard for CRPG tactical combat in the late 80s and early 90s, and since they were based on AD&D rules a 6-8 party size was ideally suited to the task. (Well, fighter/cleric/mage/thief + a few extras, with at least half the party forming the front line.) Later Wizardry games? Varied in the series (hey, Wizardry 4, I am looking at you) but ended up with 6+2. Bard's Tale? 7 members. Ultima series varied more, but hit 8 near its end. Might and Magic started out at 6, hit 8 in Xeen, and then declined to 4 in the late 90s. Nothing surprising about that, really, because the 80s/90s CRPGS were designed to appeal to the wargamer/roleplayer crowd and put a high priority on tactical combat, which meant that running just a handful of specialized supermen was usually not the point - controlling the battlespace, being able to nasty respond to surprises or reverses without having them necessarily count as point failures resulting in reloading, and giving the players flexibility in choosing what sort of party they wanted to portray, were. They also didn't have the "traditional" tank/damagedealer/healer setup, because that tradition is a fairly recent invention, only being introduced with MMORPGs that needed simple roles for players to enact because the real challenge of MMORPGs was cooperating with other people you didn't know in real time rather than on the fly solving tactical challenges that attempted to portray (within the boundaries of their fantasy worlds) combat that would make some sort of rational sense. The pen and paper RPGs and CRPGs prior to these games might well have fighter types who were tougher than others at standing in the front line, taking the brunt of damage, but they were still expected to carry their weight in damaging others and participating in non-combat activities, just like everybody were supposed to be able to survive at least moderate threats on their own and nobody got to be a glass cannon damagedealer. Well, not for long.

The campaign is most definitely not moving faster than PoE1 did! Not surprising under the circumstances as what is pitched is rather less ambitious this time around, being essentially minor upgrades to a game that is already in development rather than a new game to break the year-long drought in the genre. I would warn you about comparing the value of pledges (PoE1's kickstarter campaign) with the aggregate value of pledges and funds that fig estimates it will invest displayed as the total (PoE2's fig campaign) as a measure of how fast the campaign is moving based on backer involvement. (You can get the breakdown of the total by clicking on the small graph icon to the right of it.) To date, roughly halfway through the month-long campaign, the PoE2 fig campaign has achieved 1.24m in pledges from 21.5k backers and we've had Fulvano's voyage announced. Compare that with halfway through PoE1's kickstarter campaign, when it had reached around 2.0m in pledges from 50k backers (PoE update #13) and they'd just announced the Endless Paths of Odd Nua, and it is seem that the Fig campaign is proceeding at roughly half speed. Which is hardly surprising given the more limited scope of this campaign. Sure, let's ignore half of what they've raised and you can make the claim that campaing #1 was faster around the midway of the campaign. Mmmm, perhaps I misunderstood the context. I thought we were discussion the pledging campaign, stretch goals, and things done to attract more pledges, not investment which is a separate source of funding the inclusion of which distorts the view of how the pledging campaign is progressing and how it attracts new people. Not so?

The campaign is most definitely not moving faster than PoE1 did! Not surprising under the circumstances as what is pitched is rather less ambitious this time around, being essentially minor upgrades to a game that is already in development rather than a new game to break the year-long drought in the genre. I would warn you about comparing the value of pledges (PoE1's kickstarter campaign) with the aggregate value of pledges and funds that fig estimates it will invest displayed as the total (PoE2's fig campaign) as a measure of how fast the campaign is moving based on backer involvement. (You can get the breakdown of the total by clicking on the small graph icon to the right of it.) To date, roughly halfway through the month-long campaign, the PoE2 fig campaign has achieved 1.24m in pledges from 21.5k backers and we've had Fulvano's voyage announced. Compare that with halfway through PoE1's kickstarter campaign, when it had reached around 2.0m in pledges from 50k backers (PoE update #13) and they'd just announced the Endless Paths of Odd Nua, and it is seem that the Fig campaign is proceeding at roughly half speed. Which is hardly surprising given the more limited scope of this campaign.

In CRPGs where I can select my own party members I prefer 6-8. That is enough to allow redundancy, it gives the player more leeway to experiment once necessary roles have been fulfilled, it allows for more interesting tactical encounters with more enemies without requiring the party members to be supermen to deal with it, and it reduces the number of party members that are point failures - while still being low enough in number that it is easy to consider each a person rather than just a combat role. That's what I got used to with the CRPGs of the 80s and it has all been downhill since then with regards to party size as far as I am concerned. In CRPGs where I cannot select my own party I'm fine with smaller parties, however, because in those cases the developers will have created party members that specifically work well together, the tactical challenge is to use them as well as possible, and the encounters are designed with their specific capabilities in mind. But Pillars of Eternity 2 is not such a game - it is a game of the former type. And in such games, when you limit the number of party members to 4 or 5, it usually does not result in interesting tactical combat because the developers, having to be sure that every party combination will mostly work, are hamstrung in any attempt at crafting interesting or challenging encounters; it is easy enough to create something that is ho-hum moderately challenging under such circumstances as you can pretty well expect players to use 3 or 4 slots on very specific roles, but the problem is always how to add things that aren't either trivial or too hard depending on the player's choice of the last slots. Not saying it can't be done, but as a general rule in the CRPGs I've played where the player gets to choose party members combat encounters have almost always been less interestingly designed the fewer party members, and I've played a lot of party-based CRPGs over the last 30 years. Hence my vote for 6, and only because it wasn't possible to answer 6+ in the poll. Now, that's looking at it from the tactical combat point of view where combat encounters are deemed more important than intensely meaningful chats with a bunch of broken people, most of whom should be locked up in an asylum for their own good or offered euthanasia, aka. companions, and as such it is not the only relevant point of view. There's a valid argument that the fewer party members/companions in total to choose from, and the fewer in the party at the same time, the more effort you can put into giving them deep and meaningful interactions, but.... With regards to Infinity Engine games and later, while I did enjoy the companion banter introduced in BG2 and really liked the conversations with companions in Torment, I can't help feeling that it has gone way too far in BioWare's later games and, to a lesser degree, in Obsidian's as well. Having to periodically chat with every party member to unravel their Very Interesting Story step by step has gone from being something that was interesting when interactions were limited and seemed meaningful in their sparsity, to being a chore, usually done in batches of conversations to get through as quickly as possible because they just go on and on. Not that they are necessarily uninteresting conversations, mind you, I quite liked some of the companions story from Pillars of Eternity, but the formulaic "now I am ready to have step n+1 of my meaningful conversation; please talk to me, but rest assured that I'll put you off with a comment about continuing this later at step n+2 after having fed you a tidbit" has gotten out of hand. At least Pillars of Eternity left out the obligatory "the main character is made out of liquid testosterone; this is what is called romance" and "yet another party member whose tragic background has resulted in mental problems; heal him with the power of friendship! or LOVE!! (alt. LUST!!! for the Dark and Edgy " plots that plague BioWare games, but even so... I'd rather see LESS interactions with the player selecting conversation options with the companions in Deep and Meaningful conversations, and MORE interactions with either companions talking together or having player-companion interaction occur more frequently with interjections and conversation during conversation with NPCs, and something like that is not strengthened by a smaller party size, so... 6+ again when thinking of the roleplaying angle.

Developer update #9 told us about Berath's Blessing, providing options for people when they start new games based on completed content in prior games, and I quite like a lot of the things they talk about. But not all. These are my DO's. Enabling people to start with favourite companions in new games after they've already reached some milestones in game Ditto with favourite items Enabling more powerful starting character, help with reputations, or other ways to make the game easier without changing the core game experience beyond recognition (unless the option specifically warns that it changes the experience beyond recognition ) All of these are fine as far as I am concerned, so I have little to say about them. I can certainly see many positive aspects to this, not the least of which is that those players who play part of the game, put it aside for whatever reason, and then start over may be able to more quickly reach the parts that are new to them. Or say somebody finds difficulty level X fine, X+1 a bit too difficult, and would like something intermediate? Or somebody who just happens to love a specific companion or piece of equipment? Great for them. And if somebody makes some super-awesome powerful character when restarting that laughs at danger using any number of bonuses to speed him along? Well, so what. The more power to him! It is no skin off my nose how other people find their entertainment playing the game so long as it doesn't affect my playing, and since these things will only be available after having completed some or all of the game, the game itself is going to be balanced around the base state that people will encounter on the first playthrough. So those are all DO's. Which brings me to my DON'Ts. Enabling new content Enabling difficulty increasing options The short version is this: If you want to reward me with challenges or content in the game based on the actions of a group I am roleplaying, reward the group that achieved it - not some other group of characters I roleplay some other time. I understand that there are players who like to hunt achievements officially noted by games rather than relying on their own sense of achievement as well as people who'll go out of their way in order to tick off achievements from a list if it is available, and I have nothing bad to say about their sport, but I am not one of them and having their sport turned into something that is necessary for experiencing challenges or content is abhorrent to me. So DON'T gate content or difficulty increasing options when starting a new game of PoE2 behind achieving something while playing PoE2. Just don't. The long version (and you've been warned, so don't complain about its length) is this: The first one - new content - is not even hinted at in update #9 and I assume that the devteam is too wise to go there, but I want my opposition preemptively on the record in case anybody wants it. :D I want to register my utter opposition to introducing things to a roleplaying game that you'll only see after you have already completed part of the story and play it again - any such resources would as far as I am concerned be better spent on content that everybody playing through the story once would have an opportunity to see within their roleplaying visit to that game world. Fundamentally: Every roleplaying game tells a story depending on player actions, and while any given playthrough will never experience all of the possible paths through the story, it is important to me that it could have experienced any of them depending solely on the player's actions in that playthrough. The second one - difficulty increases - may sound weird to some, but hear my out. At a guess the thinking behind it is that "once players have completed some content, they know it, so it'll be easier for them. By giving them options to make it harder they'll still be able to be/feel challenged and still have fun". But if that's what's behind it, it ignores two groups of people for whom difficulty of combat encounters are of the highest import: Those who get their jollies from completing the hardest content and those who aren't challenged much in the first place; these are two distinct groups, and I belong to the second. The first group is likely to view any such difficulty gating by completing content as a case of having to complete the game before playing what they consider the REAL game, which has got to suck. As for the second.... Obsidian has the unenviable task of balancing a game that is marketed as being somewhat oldschool. That means different things to different people, but one of the things it means is that a certain market segment, of which I am one, expect its tactical combat encounters to be at least somewhat challenging. Require us to think tactically. Run a risk of failure, not because of unfortunate dice rolls, but because of poor planning or an inability to adjust to changing tactical circumstances during combat. It doesn't mean it has to be challenging to those who aren't interested - and story time and easy deals with that market segment. Obsidian's task is ideally to balance their game such that both newcomers to the genre appreciate its difficulty, such that players of the Infinity Engine games appreciate the difficulty, and even such that the people who were veterans of CRPGs when the Infinity Engine games were produced will find something to appeal to them - and if we stay within the AD&D universe of the Infinity Engine games for reference, we are talking about Gold Box veterans here. Players of the Infinity Engine games may remember the Twisted Rune. Kangaxx. BG2's mage battles. David Gaider's mod that buffed/reinstated Demogorgon and ToB bosses power to something more interesting than their default state - a default state that already featured encounters significantly more deadly than anything in Pillars of Eternity. Players of the Gold Box games might wax nostalgic about fighting trolls while level 1 in Pool of Radiance, some of the more interesting encounters in the Krynn series, Dave's Challenge in Pools of Darkness, or the Mulmaster Beholder Corps in Curse of the Azure Bonds without using the Dust of Disappearance (which remains to date the nastiest battle in a CRPG that I know of). Tactical minded players have played CRPGs since the beginning, and they adore challenge that isn't simply based "we buffed the hitpoint/defenses of the existing creatures". For such players achievement isn't getting shiny loot, xp, a badge saying "you're a winner" to treasure, or beaten the hardest difficulty in the game - it is achieving something that is difficult for them to do at whatever level of tactical expertise they are. However, Pillars of Eternity, while otherwise a great game, failed big time in that respect with respect to the two latter categories. For experienced CRPG players the basic game simply wasn't challenging on Path of the Damned, the supposedly hard difficulty level. Sure, you could play ironman or try to solo the game for additional challenge, or enable expert mode to get rid of helpful tooltips or indicators, and I appreciate what Obsidian did by providing these as an option, but these are a poor substitute for a party based game that, when played with a party, has tactically challenging combat encounters. There are a number of reasons for falling short - encounters typically had only a few opponents, constricted space, engagement, and bodyblocking made tactical control of the battlefield trivial, the lack of any requirement for hard counters (until the introduction of White March resistances) meant that any problem could be addressed by the simple solution of applying more force, and opponents typically had only a few abilities each that, once known, were easy to plan against. Whether that'll be the case in Pillars of Eternity 2 is anybody's guess, of course. Who knows? But it might well be the case as Obsidian has a track record of being much better at providing stories than challenge. (Which is not a bad thing for a roleplaying game, mind you, as it is certainly better than the reverse.) Certainly neither White March, Tyranny, or anything they have revealed until now about PoE 2 suggests that more interesting or difficult tactical encounters are a priority, which suggests that all else being equal, while they'd of course like to do things better (developers always want to do things better) they are pretty much satisfied with what they have been delivering in that respect. Whether it is the case or not, those who for whatever reason want challenging encounters will be much better pleased with the game if they have the option of enabling any or all combination of the difficulty increases chosen to suit their desired level of difficulty when they start a game rather than the game requiring them to complete parts of the game with less challenge first and then start over. Since it is hard to see how giving players the option of enabling difficulty increases without having to unlock it through playing will detract from the game experience of those who are satisfied with the basic difficulty levels, this really should be a no-brainer. ----- Are there other do's or don'ts? Chime in with your ideas if so.

Just played through as a priest of Eothas, and was pleased to see that a peaceful solution was possible through appealing to our common faith. When I met him I tried pretty much all conversation options to get more information, and when that succeeded I tried again to find a shortest conversation path. This is it. Shortest path: You must be the Commander (probably anything but attacking him will work here) Reach out You're a Watcher? What did these people do to make you throw them into a pit? What do you want with Stalwart anyway? Wait. You had a vision of an army? I had a vision too. In mine, I saw Defiance Bay and Caed Nua reduced to rubble by an army that shook the earth. I remember thunder, and a hundred eyes gazing back at me. Any of that sound familiar? [EOTHAS] Have some faith, Commander. This is not what Eothas wants for us. If the gods sent us both a warning, it's because they believe we can stop this. I must say he took my blowing up his front gate with cannons and slaughtering everybody in the fort (and patrols) remarkably graciously under the circumstances.

No taunt, for the love of all no taunt please! Why? And yes, I agree about the dungeon crawling. It's an important part of any RPG like this! Taunt mechanics takes a lot away from tactics, rendering positioning and blocking less relevant and, in the worst cases, making it completely safe for some people to have few or no defenses, because regardless of use of the battlespace enemies will mindlessly be glued to "tanks" that are buffed to the gills with defenses. They are suited for MMOs where the real challenge is coordinating different people according to a common plan and classifying people's avatars by simple roles such as tank, damagedealer, and healer, makes it easier to make them work together as tiny cogs in a machine. In such MMOs you generally don't want the AI enemy to act as if it was intelligent; You want it to be predictable such that people can follow a plan. However, taunt mechanics of the MMO type are ill suited for any game that tries to present the illusion of a tactical experience fighting intelligent opponents, and that's an illusion that most roleplaying games are reluctant to shatter for reasons of immersion. If "taunting" enemies forces them to follow a specific action that is not in their own interest, then logically it has nothing to do with the dictionary definition of taunt and everything to do with mind control. And if you are into mind control, why have your enemies attack one of your own friends rather than their friends? Or why not just confuse them as to who are friends and who are enemies, if you are capable of directing them? So, if you will, Pillars of Eternity already has the taunting that makes sense for the setting: magical domination of the mind; Something that is restricted to a few magic specialists and not guaranteed to succeed.

I loved the inclusion of a good dungeon crawl as well, and the way they provided an overview and shortcut when navigating it via a gradually unfolding image of the layers of the dungeon and a master staircase was brilliant.

Thank you for the summary. In particular the Chanter issue is most vexing. I returned recently to try out White March part 2 a year after I played part 1 and found that the Chanter's signature class talents, which Obsidian broke in 2.0 when they changed how the fighter and chanter constant effect abilities were applied* remained in their miserable state of worthlessness. Queue disappointment. Assuming that a sequel draws on the PoE codebase, this is something that must be fixed sooner or later. * from constant effect to timed buff applied at start of combat, which meant that the original Chanter functionality of "works whenever you are chanting" became "works from start of combat until you stop chanting (for whatever reason)".

Good points, Boeroer. As somebody who has not tried a melee cipher yet, I can't help wondering if given the ease of stacking damage modifiers for a Cipher's weapon attacks, a sturdy 2H melee Cipher concentrating on debuffing and controlling rather than damage powers might not be able to do fairly well on the front line with durganized Blade of the Endless Paths or Tidefall, say, trading off some of the might typically taken by damagedealers for other stats to be more sturdy, and not dumping resolve. Say Deadfire Pale Elf for 20 dexterity, 10 strength for a nice baseline, and 8 points left over to increase constitution, perception, intelligence, or resolve from their 10 base as needed, with durganized Sanguine Plate and/or Outlander's Frenzy thrown in for good measure. (Come to think of it, if it works even half decently, it would work for the Grieving Mother.)

6 character parties, definitely. I've been partial to 6-8 character parties since 1985 for their tactical flexibility and really dislike the move to 3-4 character parties seen in many recent CRPGs; The larger party sizes grants much more leeway for the player to experiment, to determine his own tactical approach, and makes combat feel more like a team effort.

I definitely agree on the lack of silly characters; Silliness can be hit and miss, which is why including mandatory silly characters can be troublesome, but optional ones to lighten the tone of the game if the player is interested in that - definitely a good idea, so long as it is something that fits into the setting. Looking back at the Infinity Engine games, some of the silly NPCs come up as amongst the best beloved whenever polls are made - others, not as much. As an example, the talking sword Lilarcor or Noober might come across as a one-trick ponies (and nothing wrong with that; if optional content amuses you in just one playthrough, it has already done its job), but ask yourself this, what would the Baldur's Gate series have been without Minsc and Boo? Or Planescape: Torment without Morte? Still great games, in all likelihood, but they'd have lost some of the charm: The innate silliness of these characters combined with their reasonable combat effectiveness appealed to many players, and they combined very well in party interactions with both straight-laced, silly, and playful NPC companions. Another that is frequently named from Baldur's Gate is Edwin and for much the same reason. There were many other silly companions around; Xzar and Montaron from BG1 come to mind as a less popular straight/silly pairing, and for pure silly insanity in voice lines BG1's Tiax is hard is hard to beat. Though arguably the fabulous Jan Jansen from Baldur's Gate II does make a credible effort in that direction - he also has some of the most absurd dialogue interactions with other companions. (E.g. some of Jan Jansen's interactions). And, of course, Imoen the eternal child, who in Baldur's Gate II played foil to both straight-laced and silly characters in companion dialogues - making some players hate her and others love her. Contrast Pillars of Eternity - it suffers from a bad case of BioWare disease which afflicted so many BioWare NPCs 2004-2016 by making them emotionally damaged gloomy buggers with a troubled past. Having too many of those around is every bit as bad as having too many silly characters around. When the top of silliness in companions is Kana Rua, a serious scholar whose inherent silliness has more to do with his playful approach to the world, there's a lot of room for improvement in that regard. To make it even worse, the companion-to-companion interactions (as opposed to player to companion) were played as sound snippets in the background, which ensured they had to be brief, typically AB or ABA structured. That severely restricted the possibilities for both serious and silly inter-party debates. So, yes. There's a lot of room for improvement in that regard.

What Gfted1 had heard seems to be a combination of abilities of some of the new enemies. Specifically, the leaping part has got to refer to the enemy-only ability that is logged as "Dragon Leap", where the enemy leaps into the air a quite considerable distance and lands, dealing minor AOE damage and dazing. ...mmm. We probably shouldn't go into more detail about the abilities of enemies or specific enemies here in the General Discussion forum, as it would be hard to do so without violating the no spoiler rules (if we haven't already done so, come to think of it), but it has got to be that leap.

There are only a few specific enemies with leap attacks; They aren't spirits, but you can think of them as upgraded Shadows and other teleporting spirits, because that's really all there is to it. The main difference between them and teleporting spirits being that they are a) fairly tough, and b) few and far between. They are a truly minor tactical challenge; Nobody who's come that far should have problems dealing with them after the initial shock of seeing them in action has worn off. I don't recall if the type of Spirit that abducts you to it rather than teleports itself to you is new with the expansion or was in 1.0, but I consider it considerably nastier than the new leapers. Fortunately, those spirits are very rare. As a general rule, when you read people telling how all enemies bypass their front lines or hit their casters in 2.0, the most likely explanations are: They use a small front line or one ill suited to taking advantage of the engagement mechanic/enemy AI of 2.0; Most enemies - even on POTD with much higher enemy density - are perfectly happy getting entangled with your front line if you've got 3-4 frontliners with 2 engagement limit each, even when you are not defending a bottleneck. They do use a decent front line, but don't use magic to crowd control the few enemies that manage to bypass it. (Which capability admittedly can be difficult to attain in the early game.) They don't use summons to provide more obstacles as well as targets for the enemies. They use poor tactics. There are a few encounters that - at least on POTD - feature so many enemies that even a front line of 3 summons and 3-4 characters with 2 engagement slots will get overwhelmed with enemies flanking if the player doesn't take advantage of a bottleneck and do shoulder to shoulder bottlenecking rather than the normal loose line, but not that many. We are definitely not talking POE1.0 "1 tank in plate + 5 ranged in cloth is an optimal party" any longer, but if you use a balanced party and think about party tactics rather than having the party act like a mob your members in the rear will only rarely be attacked.

I'm talking about looking at the effectiveness of the roles of 2H, DW, 1H+nothing, and 1H+S rather than making the mistake of only looking at the damagedealing, when, from a game balance perspective, what matters is how much better things are at their roles. Now, how can I put it in different terms than I've done before. Let me try. If you are using a 2-hander, say "ABRACADABRA" and then do twice the damage over any given interval of time, then it is twice as good at its role, because damage is its role.. (Actually, given DR, it is more than twice as good, but I'll ignore DR arguments in the following to keep this simple) If you are using a Dualwield, say "ABRACADABRA" and then do twice the damage over any given interval of time, then it is twice as good its role, because damage is its role. If you are using a 1H+Shield, say "ABRACADABRA" and it then does twice damage and has twice the protection over any given interval of time, then it is twice as good at its role, because damage and protection is its role. But if you are using 1H+Shield, say "ABRACA" and it then does twice damage and has normal protection over any given interval of time, it is NOT twice as good at its role. It is only twice as good at part of its role. Likewise, if you are using 1H+Shield, say "DABRA" and it then does normal damage and has twice the protection over any given interval of time, it is NOT twice as good at its role. It is only twice as good at part of its role. And the role is what we use to decide which combination we want to use. Your X vs 2X analogy is analogous to taking two blocks of wood of the same size, painting the first red, cutting the second in half, painting one half red and the other yellow, and then claiming that 5% of the first block is less wood than 5% of each of the second block's two halves, because 5% + 5% = 10%.

But the purpose of 1H+S is damagedealing with protection, not damagedealing with alternating weapons enjoying a huge inherent speed bonus over other combinations, which is DW's niche. Thus, spending 2 DSI on enchanting both weapons in a DW setup benefits 100% of the game mechanics of DW all the time and spending 2 DSI on enchanting 1H+S benefits 100% of the game mechanics of 1H+S all the time. If you only enchant the weapon in a 1H+S combo, that combo benefits considerably less as a percentage increase to its purpose/mechanics supporting it when compared to the increase when you enchant both for 2 DSI.

A number of good points, but there's one of your points I must take strong objection to: The recovery from previous actions affect everybody. Allowing wizards, or casters in general, to ignore recovery when they want to cast spells would not only violate a fundamental game mechanic, it would also render the recovery penalty of armour irrelevant for casters, meaning that casters would always be better off wearing the heaviest armour available. The current setup rewards the player for wearing less encumbering armour, having high dexterity, and high attack speed (e.g. Deleterious Alacrity of Motion since you were mentioning Wizards) to cut down recovery times after all actions. It also rewards the player for playing tactically - if you want to be ready to cast important spells on immediate notice, don't bloody autoattack!; If you don't, do. The first is a strategic choice with tactical implications, the second a tactical one. Such choices are good. --------------- Personally, I have one deep-felt wish for changes in POE2: Seeing an action queue when shift-queing up actions. E.g. if I queue up Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Merciless Gaze, and then two Fireballs with a character, then when that character is selected I should see a queue of four icons indication that that's what the character is doing next. --------------- With regards to the soul-read NPCs (in case Obsidian decides a kickstarter for POE2 and want to use this marketing gimmick again), I'd dearly love an option to either toggle them off entirely or to at least toggle their nameplates off, making them non-interactable if the player so desires and, more importantly, not having their usually entirely inappropriate names lighting up the game. Unlike the graveyards, these NPCs blur the line between which things have meaning in the game or not, by destroying the old CRPG convention - that is also followed everywhere else in the game - that characters with names are important. Have the options to see them and their names enabled at start, but.. give us the option to push the intrusive elements out of sight.

Consider the following. Spending 2 Durgan steel on: 2H gets +15% attack speed on 2H recovery, +0.3 to crit multiplier, and 20% hit>crit, all affecting the ability to deal damage using the weapon's base characteristics. DW gets +15% attack speed on each weapon's individual recovery, +0.3 to crit multiplier on each individual weapon, and 20% hit>crit on each individual weapon, all affecting the ability to deal damage using the weapons' individual base characteristics. The purpose of both 2H and DW is damagedealing, and as seen above the damage per second as well as damage per ability use of 2H and DW benefit the same from spending 2 Durgan Steel ingots. Thus the question of "which is better for a given situation" is unaffected by the existence of Durgan steel as you pay the same for the same effect. If it was cheaper to enchant 2H than DW, then the balance of 2H vs DW would be moved towards 2H. 1H+nothing has the purpose of damagedealing with high accuracy; It gains the same benefit for the hand using a weapon for 1 Durgan Steel as 2H does for both hands and DW does for one of its two hands (but doesn't benefit from the higher base damage of 2H or from the faster attacks when dualwielding), and is unable to spend a second ingot to improve the aspect it gives up using something in the second hand for (accuracy). (Which means that while it does have the same benefit/ingot ratio for the weapon, this does slightly move the balance of 1h+nothing vs 2H towards 2H and 1h+nothing vs DW towards DW.) Finally, 1H+S gets +15% attack speed on 1H recovery, +0.3 to crit multiplier on the weapon, 20% hit>crit on the weapon, all affecting the ability to deal damage using the weapon's base characteristics, as well as -15% to single-weapon speed penalty, 10% ranged reflection and 15% of incoming hits>grazes. Now, the first part is the established value of 1 Durgan Steel for 1H, matching the cost for 1h+nothing and DW, so the question is whether -15% to single-weapon speed penalty (i.e. affecting the attack speed of the weapon used with the shield, when the shield used does not have Bash), 10% ranged reflection and 15% of incoming hits>grazes is worth more or less than 1 Durgan Steel ingot. I consider that a fair price; The shield enchant certainly isn't worth 2 Durgan Steel ingots on its own. So, YES, unless you want to argue that the price of the shield enchant is too low, the benefit is the same.

This is nonsense. You can have several modals active at the same time, so long as they don't disobey the game's somewhat unpredictable ideas of what modals are mutually exclusive. The general rule as explained by developers in the bug forum, where this annoying issue has come up more than a few times, is that modals that affect any of the same stats are mutually exclusive, but... if only it were that simple. The most modals I have managed to have active at the same time that works and makes sense is 4, such as e.g. with a rogue (4) Reckless Assault + Savage Attack + Vulnerable Attack + Gallant's Focus The most modals I have managed to have active at the same time that work is something that would be an extremely silly thing to spend talent points on but was fun to test was 6, a rogue with: (6) Reckless Assault + Savage Attack + Vulnerable Attack + Gallant's Focus + Penetrating Shot + Dangerous Implement

My best guess is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with casters vs. non-casters, because the obvious first question when you look at enchanting weapons costs isn't the cost of armour vs weapon, but weapons vs weapons. Presumably it costs two because the designers wanted to be consistent and make the cost of enchanting items taking up both hand slots cost the same, regardless of whether you used two one handed melee weapon, a one handed melee weapon and a shield, a two handed melee weapon, or a ranged weapon. Which makes a lot of sense - want superb or durgan steel equipment in both your hands? The cost is constant, regardless of which equipment you use. ----- May I note in passing that I just love how you attempt to turn the current state of affairs: "There is a limited supply of Durgan Steel. Everybody benefits greatly from using Durgan steel on their armour, non-casters benefit greatly from Durgan steel on their weapons, casters don't use their weapons, they use spells, so don't benefit from Durgan steel on their weapons as it doesn't affect their spells. Thus, if a non-caster and a caster want to benefit the same, it costs them 1 Durgan steel for armour. However, if the non-caster wants to benefit even more in everything he does than is available to the caster, he can do that be spending an additional 1-2 Durgan steel on weapons/shield" into: "Again casters get better treatment!" That's some seriously flawed logic at work.

They didn't used to, which may or may not have been a bug. Pretty much positive that they actually do now. As of 2.0 they both increase size and linger, not just size as they used to, and it is quite handy. As for the state of chanters, I am conflicted. On the one hand, I consider chanters very powerful from level 9 and for the rest of the game. On the other hand, I consider them rather dull. The reason for this is that what makes them powerful are a few phrases providing unique high-powered party wide buffs (25% more damage for EVERYBODY (25% of damage inflicted before DR, then affected by target's fire DR), life drain for everybody (mostly useful in the few longer fights), faster reload and ranged attack speed) and some pretty strong party wide buffs that duplicate effects otherwise available from priests, but have the advantage of being active from the moment combat starts if you set them as the first phrase. A few of the invocations, primarily the summons, are great too. But most of the phrases and invocations are of little worth compared to the superstars. Frankly, in the late game I mostly use Chanters as autoattack bots that maintain one of the superstar phrases while interleaving some shorter and less useful phrases. EDIT: I like Elerond's idea of reducing phrase cost as higher level chants are learned, though I'd put the minimum cost at 1 phrase chanted rather than 0.

What AndreaColombo says is the right explanation. If you need information on what percentages different armours apply to different sources of damage, the wiki has the answers: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Armor

You can't. The only way you have of improving their casting speed is dexterity, which is why high dexterity is very important for any min-maxed caster. The recovery time is dealt with by wearing 0% or 5% recovery armour and - for wizards - casting Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. As for getting that paralysis TODAY rather than YESTERDAY, have your high dex wizard start combat by casting DAOM, (optional Eldritch Aim/Merciless Gaze), Ninagauth's Shadowflame.. and continue unloading fast cast spells till the situation is under control. When a high dex wizard with negligible recovery penalty acts under DAOM, the time it takes to cast fast-cast spells and recover from them is very, very, low. (Of course, it helps with the average and slow cast spells as well, but you don't get that joyous "spamming spells like there's no tomorrow" feeling.) And DO note that it is possible to craft DAOM potions, so if you really, dearly, and sincerely need another caster to act more like a wizard spamming spells, you can get this with a little bit of effort. The wizard is best at it due to the powerful fast-cast spells, but it is useful for everybody. Heck, it even lets Ciphers use their powers more often as minimizing their recovery means they hit and gain focus more frequently.

If you are used to turn based, the easiest approach would be to use the game options to set the game to autopause on all the different events for autopausing in combat and to set the speed to half speed when you enter combat. It won't autopause for people autoattacking, but damn near everything else. When you've got the hang of this, you can start turning off autopausing for some things selectively if you think it is pausing too often. Alternatively, you can set the game to autopause with fixed periods, but I cannot recommend this. Autopausing when something important changes (e.g. somebody used an ability and doesn't have another queued, what should he do now?) is much more practical.