JerekKruger

Only the wood beetle has multiple increased resists (slash and pierce) and it has the lowest DR of any of the three beetle varieties, the stone and ice beetles are highly resistant to slash and aren't weak vs any physical damage type, and the adra beetle is not stronger against any physical damage type, just weaker against pierce. You're right about animats though, they are stronger against slash and pierce whilst having normal DR against crush. I didn't pay much attention to them because, for whatever reason, I found them fairly easy when I first fought them. EDIT: it is worth pointing out that the base DR of beetles is very high, so the fact they aren't stronger against all physical damage types isn't that much of an advantage (since they're still strong against them all to some extent). In this respect Achilles is definitely correct in that elemental damage is needed.

So wait, are drugs good now?

Why should souls in PoE obey preconceptions from our world? Unlike in our world souls definitely exist in Eora, they're not some nebulous concept invented to explain things we don't understand or provide solace for those who fear death. How should I know what such an explanation would look like, I imagine we're many decades or even centuries from understanding it (if we ever do at all). As for the "mere capability to perceive", I think the capability to perceive is fascinating and poorly understood, not "mere". Sure we know fairly well how our eyes detect photons of light and generate and electrical signal which travels down the optical nerve to the brain causing certain areas of the brain to activate. We know far less about the specific details of what's going on inside the brain, that's already a fascinating question, but even if we understood that we wouldn't know what "perceiving" actually is. As for consciousness being subjective, only since we don't yet have a solid definition of what it is: there's no reason to assume we never will given our track record for turning subjective things into concrete scientifically testable things. And science might have limits, but so far I've seen no better method for understanding the world we live in. If the soul is genuinely not measurable in any meaningful sense then its existence is a moot point since it, by definition, has no effect on the world we live in. If that's the case then who cares whether it exists or not, and more importantly to the topic at hand, who cares how it's treated in a fictional fantasy universe?

Food has a long duration sure, but it can't be consumed during combat. You eat a few times a day and choosing the right food sets you up for the day. That's the abstraction food is simulating here.

Basic movement laws of bodies aren't fundamental at all... As for something as broad and abstract as the soul sure, but we don't even know that souls exist and I'm inclined to believe they probably don't. Not really sure how that's relevant, Eora isn't in our universe and in Eora the soul definitely exists and are susceptible to study through science (animancy). And sure, we're far from being able to explain every phenomenon in physics but the entire point of physics, or science in general, is to try to do exactly that. Just because I don't understand how, say, consciousness arises doesn't mean it doesn't arise as a result of physical processes (I tend to believe it probably does) and could eventually be explained in terms of fundamental principals of physics.

Actually in physics there are relatively few fundamental principals with which every physical phenomenon can be explained. The explanation and understanding of these physical phenomena can be very complex, but the starting point are a few fundamental principals. In this respect the whole spirit thing isn't that dissimilar: we know that all these various, for want of a better term, "magical" phenomena come from the the interactions of souls in this world; the details may be very complicated and not understood fully (or at all) but we're (fairly) certain that they are products of soul interactions. Meanwhile I have always found D&D to be a random mish mash of things all thrown into a box, and not very interesting for it.

To be fair, it's rare for an enemy to have increased defences against two physical damage types, so at the very least with dual damage types you'll be attacking their base DR rather than an increased version.

I thought the whole souls thing was pretty interesting myself, particularly how it relates to the gods. I agree that the items are lacking, though I don't think they're as bad as some people seem to think. The addition of drawn art for soulbound items was much appreciated and I wish that had been included for all weapons. Also let's be honest, the majority of magic items in BG2 were also fairly unexciting: if you wanted to wield battle axes then, before ToB, your only options were Stonefire (+3 with +2 fire damage) and Frostreaver (+3 with +1 ice and +1 acid damage). God help you if you liked bastard swords. Yes there were some really awesome ones too, but it's not like they were the norm. I also find Eora a much more interesting setting than the Forgotten Realms, but that probably makes me the outlier here. All that said, if pressed I'd probably still label BG2 as my favourite of the two, but like you it is one of my favourite games of all time (probably my favourite). That said I am aware that there's some nostalgia involved: BG2 was an amazing experience when I first played it, it had nothing really to compare to (other than BG1 where it definitely compared very favourably) and I was still young. Now I'm old and PoE necessarily gets compared to BG2 in my head. I do think that BG2 is the better of the two as a whole, but there are lots of aspects where PoE is better.

Well I think PoE does well in those categories but presumably you don't.

Without mods like Ascension and Tactics BG2 was very easy. Most fights could be beaten by simply auto-attacking, with a few requiring spell defence removal. The first act of PoE is, in my opinion, definitely harder than BG2, though I agree it becomes pretty easy after that. The first few levels of BG1 are probably harder, but only because low level AD&D is super wonky.

I recently beat this fight by running in circles with Sagani and occasionally shooting the dragon. I only did this for the last 20% of its health and it took a while, but in theory I can't see a reason this tactic wouldn't work for the whole fight. You'd need to carefully kill off the adds separately but I found a way to do this that doesn't properly aggro the dragon.

I think this is, at least in part, due to them coming out before digital distribution. I have owned at least three copies of BG2 (possibly four, I can't quite remember). Each time I bought a new one it was because I'd lost or damaged an old one (or in one case it was just too far away and I couldn't be bothered to wait to have it mailed to me). This doesn't happen with games on Steam.

I might be weird in this, but I'd prefer it if a potential PoE2 didn't allow us to import our character from PoE and didn't continue the story a la Baldur's Gate 2. It seems to me PoE had a pretty natural conclusion and I'd prefer to explore something completely new with a new character. Having some companions return might be okay however.

Well, only two relatively common candidates. You're a player character and that already makes you out of the ordinary. The question then remains why are you out of the ordinary.

What enemies are you fighting that cause this to happen? It's worth checking the bestiary to see what they are strong/weak against. As Raven Darkholme says, beetles have particularly high DR and, if I recall correctly, are even more resistant to slashing damage, so this might be the issue. Most enemies will have at least one damage type that they are weak(er) against that you should try to exploit.

I thought this was going to be something different. In my latest playthrough I beat the Adra dragon in a Benny Hill esque style when all my party apart from Sagani were knocked out and I discovered that Sagani could run circles around the dragon and occasionally fire a single arrow that would usually graze the dragon for between 3 and 5 damage. After about ten minutes of this the dragon finally died.

Barring unforeseen circumstances I think PoE2 is very likely given the success of PoE. The bigger question is when rather than if.

The one stoic option you're usually safe with is "[say nothing]" but yeah, apart from that it's quite difficult.

I've been trying to come up with something similar myself so I'll be interested in seeing what comes of this thread. The Deadfire Archipelago would be the the obvious one, since it is where Naasitaq is located and we're told Pale Elves are occasionally found here. The Living Lands is far in the north, whereas I think the White that Wends is in the south, so given their natural disinclination to travel I don't think we'd see many Pale Elves here. Old Vailia is in the south I think, or at least it was "once the crown jewel of the southern seas", so I guess there might be more Pale Elves there. What I want is to a good in character reason for my Pale Elf to have been from somewhere other than the White that Wends. Part of the problem is we know very little about what Pale Elf culture is like. What are Pale Elf settlements like? What do most Pale Elves do? That sort of thing. We've got good insight into Boreal Dwarfs thanks to Sagani, but nothing about Pale Elves.

Just to balance out the OP I feel obliged to say that PoE is the best game ever made, though I won't explain why I think this, and I intend to bequeath my entire estate to Obsidian upon my death...

Depending on your patience you can still guarantee drops with date manipulation through resting. I did so to get a Mantle of Wreathing Flames for my Backlash Bedlam Cipher. It's a painful process however since some of the tables that track what loot drops on what day are no longer correct, but I am fairly certain date still determines loot. Depending on your willingness to go without Weapon Focus on one or both of the weapons, or buy two Wepon Focus talents, the flail Starcaller and the war hammer Godansthunyr are both one handed and have the Stunning property so might work quite well.

That's actually a pretty good question. My first thought was "well the character is just dabbling so won't be as skilled" and that's probably the reasoning, but the thing that makes a non-Paladin who takes Gallant's Focus less skilled is the fact they can't Lay on Hands, or benefit from Faith and Conviction, or use any other Paladin ability. It doesn't seem unreasonable to let the one ability they do have access to be full power. One thing I'd quite like to see change is the Chanter multiclass ability. To me the actual chant is at least as defining, if not more so, than the invocations of a Chanter and it would be nice if the multiclass talent gave access to some form of chant.

I'll mimic the advice of others and suggest turning off Expert mode. You can go into the gameplay options and manually re-enable some of the options if you want (some of the dialogue prompts can be fairly safely turned off if you want to increase immersion for example). Also, whilst Caed Nua is probably doable at your level, I'd tend to agree that it's probably better to do some of the side quests in Gilded Vale first. At level 4 it's going to be a lot easier. I think it's Shades and Shadows, with Shades being the tougher ones that summon the weaker Shadows. Shadows are a minor nuisance whilst shades, at this level, are pretty tough.

Yeah I'd love to see this. I'm also like to see my recruited guards appear in around the place, especially The other change I'd like to see is a replacement of random attacks with a few, interesting, stronghold related quests.