JerekKruger

Whilst it would almost certainly be a bit overpowered, I am tempted to mod a Citzal's Spirit Lance version of the Forgemaster's Gloves. Letting other classes have it would be great fun... okay it would probably be a LOT overpowered

Yeah, I doubt we'll see much more than little teases for a long time.

I mean, given their name, surely the only candidate is Grieving Mother

These snippets of information are cruel. I am hyped for a game I know nothing about, and more importantly is presumably at least a good year away, probably longer.

How important is difficulty to you? If it's not a major motivating factor I'd suggest going asap. If you want a challenge then it might be worth waiting till level 8 (or 9? I can't remember the exact level) and upscaling the content. Do note that whilst the more mundane encounters will be fairly easy at level 7, there are still plenty of challenging ones so it should still be fun. Hopefully you'll like the items in the White March then. They tend to be a bit more creative in what they do rather than the rather mundane examples in vanilla. Also Soulbound items are great fun (though sadly not usually as good as normal items, but the game is easy enough that you can use them if you like em). There aren't any more materials to make Superb items, but you get a similar one off material that allows you to make an item Legendary (the next tier up). Also it's worth noting that you'll find a fair few items in vanilla and WM which start off with Superb so you needn't worry too much about the limited nature of the materials in question. The upgrade given by the forge doesn't take any enchanting slots, it's an extra. Unfortunately Soulbound items can't get it, which is the biggest reason they tend to under perform compared to normal items. There is a limit to the materials needed to use the forge however. If you're not bothered by spoilers then it might be a good idea to look up the locations as there are a few you can miss. It's not necessary to get them all however so don't worry if you do miss them.

As far as I know you don't need to start a new game no. You can take an existing party through the White March and White March 2 content. That said, I've never done it myself so there may be minor bugs associated with doing so (pure speculation) but I am fairly certain there won't be anything major stopping you. As for how it works, basically after completing Act I (specifically after going through the Temple of Woedica in in Defiance Bay) you'll receive an alert that the Throne at Caed Nua has some messages for you. One of them is from Stalwart, the main town in the White March expansion, and after receiving it you unlock the ability to travel to the White March (the other is for the Siege of Crägholdt which is a high level area). The White March 2 unlocks immediately after resting outside of the White March after you complete the main quest of the White March 1. As for when you should do it, that's actually quite flexible as when you first travel to the White March you have the option of level scaling it (if you're above level 8 I think). A rough guideline is this: White March with a party at level 5 will be fairly tough, getting easier the closer you get to 8; if you level scale it it'll become difficult again past level 8 and get easier as you go higher. One thing to note however is that the White March has, in my opinion, much harder encounters than vanilla PoE, so even if you're a bit over levelled you might still find the tougher encounters challenging. The White March is more like Tales of the Sword Coast than Throne of Bhaal i.e. the content is included in the main game. My advice would be to treat White March 1 as challenging Act II equivalent or easier Act III equivalent, and White March 2 as challenging Act III equivalent. This is a rough guideline and you should be willing to leave and come back if you find parts of the expansions too difficult. You're not bound to the area when you enter it, so you can freely travel backwards and forwards between the White March and the Dyrwood. I hope my own convoluted reply wasn't confusing EDIT: oh, one more thing: I thoroughly recommend getting both expansions if you can afford them. I'd say, overall, they are better than the vanilla late game content and have some really cool lore stuff in them. Also, if you're an item junky like me, the items in them are far more interesting than in vanilla PoE.

It's the uncalled for part than annoys me, and "annoys" is the operative word as, like you say, it doesn't make any real difference to most play throughs. Also it turns out to be fairly easy to reverse using the UABE.

One of the very few devs that don't try to oversell their work. Yeah, I wish more devs would recognise the kind of good will this engenders.

I don't disagree that Nyhilla's statement was unnecessarily combative, but just to clarify the Battle of Caed Nua was added at the same time as White March 2.

If someone's up to modding DWS (Dyrwood Strategies) that would be awesome. Not sure how difficult it would be to do using UABE and other tools.

I've got to agree with the people who are against boss immunities. They just reduce boss fights to damage races which are utterly mindless. I don't mind the occasional immunity when it makes sense from a lore perspective (having animats being immune to poison for example) but using them as a crutch to make boss fights more challenging is boring.

Hmm... perhaps it's finally time for me to roll a Mountain Dwarf character. Indeed, thanks for putting in the work to find this out.

If it's true. I'm not certain it is, it's just one of these things that I vaguely remember.

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember raw damage isn't modified by +% damage in the same way as other types of damage (it's either not affected at all, or is affected significantly less). Hopefully someone can confirm or deny this.

Well it can be anyone really. Having absolutely maxed mechanics really isn't necessary. Resting bonuses and gloves of manipulation* will allow you to find everything with no problem. *These are a random drop, but I can't think of a run I haven't gotten them early. I think they appear frequently in the early random loot pools.

Well, to be fair Devil has +3 Mechanics which is the highest bonus possible (only rogues can get it that high). On the other hand yeah, you really don't need Mechanics that high and you can manage with, say, Kana as your Mechanics expert quite happily. That's what I remember. I've never been able to bypass the majority of Galvino's lab even with high Mechanics and gloves of manipulation.

A big change that occurred in patch 2.0 was a change to enemy AI. Previously the AI would basically never break engagement, which meant that ideal strategy was to build a super tough Fighter tank with lots of engagement, send them into an encounter ahead of the rest of your group, then once engagement had been started the rest of your party could start doing their thing. After 2.0 the AI would break engagement to attack weaker party members. I don't think the exact algorithm is known, but generally speaking the AI seems to weigh up a targets defences, proximity and damage output when deciding whether to break engagement. As such having a party of 5 glass cannons and 1 super tank no longer works that well, since the AI will ignore your low damage, high defence tank and go kill your glass cannons. Instead you want your tanks to do more than just soak damage (for Fighters this should be damage dealing, for Paladins it's buffing and for Chanters it's... well chanting) and you probably want at least one main tank and one off tank. You also probably no longer want to dump every defensive stat possible for non-tanking classes, in particular melee dps benefit from being built a bit more sturdily.

I think Twitch is mostly popular for live streams, not for it's VoD service (which has never been great). In fact, when I try to watch the VoD for this stream I get a completely different VoD.

To be fair, the alignments in BG2 were all over the place. There was a mod which fixed as many as possible.

Yeah no. I can pretty much guarantee that that $4 million pretty much did sit in Obsidian's bank and get used to pay salaries, rent and the other costs of making Pillars. Obsidian is too small to weather the short term risks than doing anything else with that money would entail. Things go even slightly bad with your investments and suddenly you can't pay your staff, so they start looking for other work and your projects start falling behind schedule and before you know it you're in a death spiral What you are describing in the behaviour or much larger companies. Now, I dare say Obsidian had other sources of money beyond the $4 million. They may have had non-Kickstarter backers, profits from previous games and, towards the end of development, it's possible Paradox's publishing deal included money. But I can pretty much guarantee that the $4 million from Kickstarter did basically live in the bank until spent.

I thought it was littorally unplayable.

That's a pretty huge question, I'd suggest narrowing it a little to get replies.

Yeah Bittercut is, even with the recent sabre nerf, a top tier weapon. It's a contender for best weapon in the game I think. One of the things that's not at all obvious is that Spirit of Decay adds 20% damage even when Bittercut uses its Slashing damage rather than its Corrode damage. This is because Corrode appears first in it's damage description i.e. it's "Corrode/Slashing" rather than "Slashing/Corrode". If it were the other way round, it wouldn't get the bonus damage even if it was using its Corrode damage (I believe that Durance's Staff is "Crush/Burn" so doesn't get +20% damage from Scion of Flame).

These things happen, don't worry

Suppose they have only 20 employees with an average salary of $50,000 (I can pretty much guarantee both those numbers are lower than reality): that's a million a year on salaries alone. Four million very quickly starts to look pretty small in comparison.