JerekKruger

If you fight Raedric with a full group, after doing all the quests in Act I, you can absolutely beat him without abusing doors, even on PotD. I know this because I too hate abusing doors. I would recommend not immediately attacking him though, instead agreeing to help him to that you can rearrange your party, then talking to him again and attacking.

I dunno. When you first meet Zahua, he asks you if you're real and your options are "Yes", "No", "Yes", "No" and a few others. Not lying in this case is somewhat tricky, at least if you want to answer "No" (I think the first yes is not a lie). EDIT: I think I am wrong actually. I believe [Lie] and [Deceptive] are two tags, and that [Lie] should remain even with disposition tags turned off. I might be wrong though.

If you pause your way through the first minute or so of his Thaos fight you can work most of it out. A few specific items might not be obvious but you can probably work them out from the start of the Llengrath fight.

The ingredients for lower tier enchantments are plentiful and, I believe, semi-renewable via the stronghold, so throwing those enchantments on gear you will eventually replace is no bad thing. Obviously with any of the super rare enchanting materials you'll want to be careful on what you use them on. Also for a few builds (like quick switching gun builds) it makes a lot of sense to enchant mundane items since there simply aren't enough unique ones of the appropriate type in the game.

Jnpc? But yeah, once you realise just how powerful Wrath of the Five Suns is, it does make other Paladins feel a bit weak. Later into the game its power wanes a little (enemies tend to have higher DR and iirc each ball has to overcome DR so it's affected disproportionately by DR0, and the joy that is Sacred Immolation appears, bringing other Paladins back up to parity (yes Pallegina has it too, but her lower Might and Intellect mean that she won't be quite as good with it as most player build Paladins). That said, I quite like Pallegina. Her character is woefully underdeveloped in the game, but the little that does appear makes me hope we'll see her return in PoE2 if, for no other reason, to give her a proper chance to be developed.

You're welcome, glad it was useful. My actually work is somewhat related to cryptography actually, but in this case I simply went to "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles" (where exactly Pillars of Eternity is installed will vary depending on whether you use Steam or GOG or other services, and I guess this will be different in Linux) then searched various key words from the items you asked about, specifically "Blighted", "Iverra", "Amaia" and "grammon" (nautilus didn't work due to the typo). Usually only one file will appear, but occasionally several will and you'll have to take an educated guess as to which one is the item (or try them all in game to find out). Pillars is a game that rewards experience I think. My first ever play through was on normal, and it was also probably my toughest. I then ran a few on hard and found that since I had learnt the sorts of things various enemies were weak against they were a lot easier (also hard isn't all that much of a step up from normal). Finally I started playing on PotD and, whilst the early game is definitely tougher, the knowledge you gain from having played on easier difficulties serves you well in dealing with the higher difficulty. As for NPC control, that definitely is something that is trickier in "real time with pause" than turn based. I solve it by going a little bonkers with the pause button but I know a lot of people don't have my patience for that sort of micro. I think that's fairly normal. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that, unlike in Baldur's Gate, a Fighter could run with a Might of 16 and not be crippled compared to one with a Might of 18. Once I realised this though it made me very happy, as I've always hated builds with dumped stats (e.g. a Rogue with Intellect 3 say) so knowing that I wasn't crippling my builds by being less extreme was nice. As a general rule of thumb, all bonuses from increasing Attributes scale linearly. For example, each point of Might above 10 increases your damage caused by 3% and gives you +1 to your Fortitude Defence. I am fairly certain that, if you open up your character sheet it will tell you exactly what bonuses each Attribute gives your characters, and a bit of simple division will allow you to work out what each point above 10 gives. As a general rule of thumb, the first enchantments you should get for a weapon are the "quality" ones (fine, exceptional, superb etc.). Then, if your weapon still has sufficient enchantment slots free (most will) get an elemental lash (which element is up: my advice would be to either go Corrode or, if your character has one of the elemental damage talents like "Secrets of Rime" then go with the same element as that). After that, go with whatever you want that will fit. I wouldn't worry about not being able to finish the game. The difficulty curve of PoE is such that the hardest part is the early game, and it gets easier as you go. On Normal, any full party should be able to defeat the final boss. It might take a few attempts but it certainly shouldn't be impossible. Yeah, in my second play through I decided not to sell anything until I got maximum reputation with Gilded Vale with the hope of getting the best prices possible. Turns out it was a waste of time. The only way to lower shop prices are the quests like you mention. That said, by the mid to late game you'll likely be swimming in cash if, like me, you're a compulsive looter. By the end of some of my play throughs the innkeeper in Gilded Vale has hundreds of Xaurip Spears That might be the case actually yeah. I always pick a junk shop to sell all my junk to (usually the Gilded Vale innkeeper) to reduce clutter in shops I actually care about. Actually, in PoE2 I'd prefer it if normal quality gear was not dropped by enemies since, after the very early game, it just serves as inventory clutter. I never issue more than one command per character at a time. Combat starts and I issue initial commands. After a second or two I'll pause to override some of those commands if they're no longer appropriate. I then pause combat periodically to issue new commands when necessary. Do you mean "before that battle starts"? If I understand correctly, Obsidian wanted to avoid the somewhat ridiculous prebuffing that occurred in Infinity Engine games, where you'd spend upwards of a minute before important fights casting a whole range of buffs in a precise order to ensure maximum duration for them all. Whilst perhaps more realistic, it was incredibly tedious.

Not as far as Achievements are concerned, which is the nearest we get to an official ruling on what is, and isn't cheating. Whether you personally view it as cheating is, I guess, down to you. I usually avoid it, but more because it's tedious and breaks my immersion than that it's cheating. Based on the game files I'd guess: figurine_blighted_coals, helm_iverras_diving_bell, pet_amaias_codex (or possibly item_pet_amaias_codex) and figurine_the_nautlius_of_or-grammon I believe reputation is almost exclusively used for gating certain conversations. There may also be one or two quests that are unlocked through reputation (the only one I can think of just like that is the Kolsc will approach you in Gilded Vale to ask you to kill Raedric if your reputation is high enough, otherwise you need to travel towards Raedric's Hold and meet him on the way there). It doesn't seem to have any affect on shop prices though. Arguably this is not a bad thing. On lower difficulties the differences are fairly minor (unless you come across an enemy who's immune to piercing say) and Paths of the Damned is primarily targeted at those players who enjoy immersing themselves in the mechanics and will pay attention to the specific damage reductions of an enemy and adjust their weapon based on them. I'd say the most natural role for the Paladin is as a tank/support hybrid: their job is to take hits for the party whilst also providing various buffs at the same time. One thing that takes some getting used to in PoE (compared to, say, Baldur's Gate) is that attributes are really not that important. They all scale linearly so a few points here and there really don't matter. In particularly, none of the NPC companions are crippled by their attributes.

This was the case, but definitely isn't any more. The Rogue may do better single target damage, but the Ranger has Driving Flight and Twinned Arrows which allow them to hit multiple targets per shot. Combine this with Stormcaller* and you are potentially also stunning multiple targets and also reducing their resistance to Shock damage. Then consider the fact that, when given appropriate talents, pets are actually pretty tanky and decent damage dealers (they're not going to win any competitions, by they are a free addition) and you quickly realise that Rogue's are left way behind. Go back to patch 1.X and yeah, Rangers were pretty bad, but Obsidian have buffed them several times in their patches and DLCs and they are now in a very good place. *Stormcaller is one of the easiest soulbound weapons to get. If you beelined it you could perhaps get it by level 5 or 6.

Just noticed something about this build: you've got three additional points of Attributes unspent. Your current total is 75 but a starting character can have up to 78. Given that, I assume you'd go with something like Mig: ​18 Con: 08/05 Dex: 18 Per: 16/13 ​Int: 18 Res: 03 before level 9 (I'm guessing 5 Con and 16 Per since presumably 5 Con was enough?) and Mig: ​18 Con: 03 Dex: 18 Per: 18 ​Int: 19 <- Old Vailia required here Res: 03 afterwards? Anyway, I'm planning on taking this build for a spin, although I'll be going with a group and since I don't like dumping stats below 8 I'll probably go with something like 16/8/18/10/18/8. My thinking is that since I'll have a group I'll probably be buffing a bit more than doing damage, so Might and Perception become slightly less important than they are in solo play. By the way MimeTactics: I just noticed your sig. Your English reads very well to me, there are a few minor mistakes but most of those are probably typos, and you certainly write better that the majority of natives in the United Kingdom.

I'll be interested in seeing the result, and if you do provide convincing evidence that the Rogue can do better single target damage than the Druid I will accept it of course. Good luck.

Yeah, I can see that sort of thing being a good reason for a character to leave your party (or even try to kill you). It's unlikely it would ever affect me anyway since I tend to play CRPGs as a fairly good/nice person. I guess probably what I'd like is a set of companions whose personalities and beliefs are all such that they will at least tolerate each other. By all means have banter between them where they argue, but I'd prefer they not actually leave the party or start fighting each other. But that's just my preference and I'll find a way to cope if PoE2 does have Baldur's Gate style party conflict.

Fair point, although I think that the vast majority of what Durance says is said to the Watcher alone and he makes it clear when you meet him that he has little to no interest in your companions, so it's quite possible that the other companions only interaction with Durance is his occasional lewd outbursts and insults (which most companions happily brush off). Of course you're correct that in real life people do fail to get on, and there's no reason for this not to be present in a CRPG. My main objection is simply that it's frustrating to play a game with such restrictions, particularly a game with eleven classes and precisely one NPC for each class. Given the existence of mods that removed these restrictions from BG2 (as well as reputation restrictions) and the number of tricks to split the various companion pairs in BG1, I suspect a lot of people feel the same way, which is likely why Obsidian decided to do this in PoE. Now of course this breaks the immersion a little, but I've always found I role-play CRPGs quite differently to tabletop RPGs, since I already lack proper control of my character, I tend to design my "headstory" to fit the game story rather than getting frustrated when the game story doesn't fit my "headstory". In the case of Durance for example, I might assume that the other companions see him is a bit of a crazy old man, and tolerate him out of pity*, or they hate him but tolerate him because the Watcher does. *If you follow his personal story to the end, pity isn't an unreasonable response to it, though it's one he'd hate.

I could get behind this idea if it's done well. It's very similar to the idea of making games shorter but making sure the content is all top notch, rather than including lots of filler. I assume this is in reference to the Endless Paths. If so, I think Obsidian kinda shot themselves in their collective feet with their stretch goals and I'd like to imagine they would have done a better job if they had capped it at, say, five floors. By the end of the Endless Paths you can see it: I think it's floor 11 or 12 which is literally just a room with a single encounter, no lore, no dialogue, no interesting puzzles, just a single room with a fight. Luckily Josh has acknowledged this so fingers crossed for the sequel. Also worth noting is that Durgan's Battery is, I'd say, pretty damn good. So hopefully Obsidian will take their cue on any larger dungeons in the sequel from that. But yeah, I agree. Durlag's Tower is a severly underrated dungeon that I actually think is better than Watcher's Keep, but both were excellent. I agree in general, though I'd rather not see Baldur's Gate style character leaving your party or fighting each other because they don't get on, and I believe Obsidian have also stated that they wanted to avoid that. That said, more actually interaction bith with each other and in conversations would be very welcome, and I'd love to see a return of banters that occur in proper dialogue windows and pause the game as I miss almost all the current banters due to looking at some other point on the map.

Another, rather specific, change I'd like to see is to change the Druid's Spiritshift from a limited duration spell, to a modal ability, but remove (or at least restrict) their access to spell casting whilst spiritshifted. On top of this, include talents/abilities that allow a Druid to improve their spellcasting or their spiritshifting so that, a bit like the Ranger is currently, Druids have two obvious paths available to them.

Huh, I wasn't aware of that item. It's a shame I can't put it on Ituumak for the "free" activation.

Same, although because I am a slightly anal mathematician type I usually try to do level 5 as well Level 3 is, in my opinion, harder than 4 or 5 anyway so it's not too hard (plus I usually do all the pre Caed Nua side quests before actually offing Maerwald, so I'm about as high level as is possible at this point).

Me too, although I am also a pause fiend which is a style of play I know some people can't stand.

Huh, the spell description makes it sound like this isn't the case: "The beacon disappears if the ally is revived." Is this wrong? If so the ability suddenly became a lot more appealing.

Unfortunately Obsidian are a business that needs to make a profit in order to carry on existing, so they're always going to have to pander (at least somewhat) to what the bulk of their customers want. Also, as Shadenaut says, quality content is more desirable than having lots of it. Sure, if we can have quality and quantity that's great, but sadly we live in a world of budgets and deadlines.

If I remember correctly the vampires are on, what, floor 8? Usually I'll do this around the time I'm finishing up Defiance Bay and Act II, so I guess I'm getting pretty powerful and well geared.

I really like the idea of the main character being the next incarnation of the Watcher, but I can imagine it annoying a lot of players since, if companions like Edér are going to make a return, it will pretty much require that the current Watcher is killed off "before their time". Personally what I'd love to see is this: we start a new character whose soul contains a shard of Eothas's, which was shattered after his "accident" at Halgot Citadel. What we choose to do with this shard will, of course, be up to us, but options might include trying to reconstruct Eothas or perhaps trying to become a God ourselves. Having just written that, I realise it reads a little like the plot of Baldur's Gate, but I still kinda like it. It also gives the perfect reason to bring back everyone's favourite Edér! As for a conquest introduction, if PoE2 does have save importing then I think it really should also have a conquest style introduction as well, for precisely the reason Elric says.

Well the Ogres are only difficult if you go at an early level. Later on they're pretty easy (well, okay, Ogre Druids are never that easy, but they get a lot easier). Strangely I never found the vampires difficult.

Yeah, I tend to split do the Endless Paths in three or four chunks. I'd say that when you first unlock them, the first two floors can be done (relatively) easily, but floor three is pretty challenging. If you manage floor three though, you can probably do floor four and perhaps five as well.

Not sure how. The question is sufficiently vague that it could be interpreted in more than one way ("will the Watcher be returning?" "will the story of the Watcher impact on the sequel?" "will the sequel involve a watcher or watchers?" etc.) and even if you assume it means "will the Watcher be returning?", Josh's answer tells us nothing.

Most enemies have more than 100 endurance yes, but you're not going to be getting huge Finishing Blows hits against them until their endurance is low and, unless I misunderstood, your 1700 perfect crit relied on Finishing Blows/ Certainly the only 1700ish number I see in the thread you linked is Kaylon's calculation, which relies on an enemy being below 1% endurance. Under these circumstances, 100 endurance is incredibly generous, since the highest endurance I can find on the Gamebanshee guide is about 750 for one of the two bog dragons, so under 1% would be 7 endurance (assuming PoE doesn't track decimal endurance). So to clarify: If you hit an enemy with a 1700 crit when it has 7 endurance remaining then you have only really done 7 damage and therefore that huge crit is not reflected in your real damage output.