JerekKruger

The Disappointer of course!

At the moment Rekke is the sidekick I am most interested in. Of course we know very little about any of them, so we'll have to wait and see. Same. Her background is fine but I don't like her art at all.

No, they make you do an additional 25% damage as fire. So if you would usually hit an enemy for 20 slashing damage, say, would you instead hit them for 20 slashing damage and 5 burning damage. The burning damage has to go past 25% of the enemy's burn DR. What's really good about this (and other lashes) is that this isn't 25% of your weapon's base damage, it's 25% of the damage you do after all other modifiers are added. To illustrate this suppose you have a character wielding a two-handed sword who has the Two-Handed Style and Savage Attacks talents and is under the effect of Aefyllath. For simplicity we'll assume they roll a 17 for their base damage (the average value): With two-handed style this increases to 17*1.15 = 19.55 damage. With Savage Attack you might think it increases further to 19.55*1.2 = 23.46, but it doesn't. Instead it increases to 17*(1+0.15+0.2) = 22.95 However with Aefyllath (and all other lashes) the 25% extra damage is applied after all other modifiers, doing an additional 22.95*0.25 = 5.74 damage. If that's not clear it's because I haven't explained it very well, however long story short: lashes are better than other damage increases.

Unfortunately you can't track the individual disposition points themselves, only your rank. You should have absolutely no problem getting both Benevolent and Passionate to rank 3 even if you don't always go for every dialogue option for them. It'll take a little longer than if you optimised it but it should still be doable by the end of Act II or during the White March part I. By the way, I think there's a Passionate option during the prologue fight, but like I said I wouldn't worry too much about farming favoured dispositions. Yeah, if you can avoid needing Untroubled Faith that's better, since it allows you to take another, more useful talent. As for the lawful approach, as I understand it Paladins in Pillars are a little different to Paladins in, say, D&D. They aren't necessarily lawful good types, instead they follow a particular ideology which they try to be exemplars of. In the case of the Kind Wayfarers they act as guides and protectors of travellers. From an RP perspective I'd say the only requirement is that you help those in need out in the wilderness and try to make the wilderness a safer place for travellers in general. Beyond that there are no specific requirements for your paladin's behaviour. If you want them to be a generally lawful individual then I think that can fit perfectly well, but it's not a requirement.

Well to sacrifice someone at the Blood Altar you need to already have (at least) Cruel 1, otherwise you won't have the option. I don't know how many "Cruel points" doing either of these things will give you, you'd need to check your character sheet before and after to find out whether it's enough to increase your Cruel rank. As for how much it'll affect you, each rank you have in a disfavoured disposition will result in -1 Deflection and -2 to each of Fortitude, Reflex and Will from Faith and Conviction, so at Cruel 2 you'll get -2 Deflection and -4 Fortitude, Reflex and Will. It's up to you to decide how much that affects you efficiency. If you're really worried about this you can always take the talent Untroubled Faith, which removes the penalty for disfavoured dispositions, although of course that means losing a talent point that could be spent on something else. To give you some idea whether or not it's worth it, Deep Faith gives +2 Deflection and +5 to Fortitude, Reflex and Will, so if you have 2 ranks in Cruel and no ranks in Deceptive you'll get more from taking Deep Faith than you would from taking Untroubled Faith. Of course, if you have 3 ranks in both Cruel and Deceptive that is -6 Deflection and -12 Fortitude, Reflex and Will, at which point Untroubled Faith is much better than Deep Faith (though you've got to question why your Paladin is a Kind Wayfarer if he is so cruel and deceptive). Sadly not. You'd think that, for example, a character couldn't be both Honest and Deceptive, and that being Honest in dialogues would reduce your Deceptive rank, but that's not how it works. Once you gain ranks in a disposition you can never lose them.

No, it means three ranks in your two favoured dispositions. Basically each time you choose a dialogue option that is labelled with a given disposition you gain some points in that disposition (think of them like disposition XP). Once you gain enough of these points you advance to the next disposition rank. See this page for details: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Disposition#Disposition_gain Very roughly speaking you can reach rank 1 and maybe rank 2 by the end of Act I, and rank 2/3 throughout Act II. It's worth noting that this also means you can get away with a very few dialogue options in your disfavoured dispositions without picking up a rank in them, though be careful as it takes very little to achieve rank 1 in a disposition. No, Deep Faith is a flat bonus to Faith and Conviction. As soon as you pick it you get the bonus.

I am not certain, but I think that charm effects end if there are no other enemies. I think the game notices that there are no enemies, so it ends combat and, hence, also ends most effects, this causes the charmed enemy to go aggressive again and combat immediately restarts. This is just observation from my own games, I haven't tested it carefully or anything, so I might be completely wrong.

I can understand that. Glad I could help (if only a little).

Yup. Achievements are only disabled if you enter "iroll20s" into the console. The command "HelmetVisibility false" doesn't require that command to be entered to work. Note that this command will only remove the graphics for helmets worn by those characters you currently have selected when you enter it, so you can mix and match which headgear you remove. It also might be the case that you have to reenter this command each time you load a game (I'm not actually sure as I've never used it).

You can use the console to turn off helms without removing the ability to get achievements.

You're right, we know basically nothing about why Obsidian decided not to fully VO Pillars. I can't comment on the quality of NV voice actors as I've never been able to get into it*. I have no problem with famous actors voice acting in games if they do a good job, it's when they're used as a selling point for the game and don't actually add anything that I think it's dumb. Patrick Stewart in Oblivion springs to mind: it was talked about in press releases, he was quoted as saying he'd never had a role with so much backstory, then his actual appearance in game was incredibly short and his performance was alright, though a little wooden. But it's not a big deal. If the voice acting is good then I too prefer a fully voiced game (preferably with an option to turn it off for later playthroughs), but I probably prefer partial voicing a la Baldur's Gate 2 to fully, but badly, voiced. *I should add this is nothing against NV. I haven't been able to get into Fallout 3 or 4 or any of the Elder Scrolls games.

No reason why not, for whatever reason I just didn't think that was you. I have to admit I always feel a little bad that my characters almost exclusively have low (usually Resolve. There's always this feeling that they'd all be really easy to tempt, or they'd all have addictive personalities. Resolve just seems so unimportant though. EDIT: I hope they improve Resolve in Deadfire.

I never thought I'd see you advocate attribute choices based on dialogue options Boeroer

Of course. Well for non-Deflection saves he'll have +10 from the very start of the game, the equivalent of 5 points of Might or Constitution, and he'll gain +4 quite quickly from getting the first rank in each of his favoured dispositions (you can get Diplomatic and Honest 1 by doing a few easy side quests in Gilded Vale). This gives him comparable or better saves most non-Paladin classes would have and they're just going to get better as you level up. This is true. I'm not entirely sure why the build has such (relatively) high Resolve. I'd probably go with a Resolve of 10 and pump his Might to 18 and use the other two points on Intellect and Perception, or perhaps Constitution.

Does anyone know whether Larian were using professional voice actors? I ask because there's a huge difference between a good voice actor and an untrained person doing multiple characters (and of course the former is more expensive). EDIT: I should add that throwing more money at voice acting doesn't necessarily make it better. The tendency amongst big budget games to use famous screen actors has, in my opinion, made the quality of the voice acting worse in those games worse. Dedicated voice actors do a much better job of delivering their lines in a way that fits the in game situation: a product of more practice at delivering lines without immediate visual queues and, probably, more time spent in the recording booth for the same money.

Well as a main character Paladin with Deep Faith he's not going to have bad Fortitude. I think he'll have 98 unbuffed and without gear at level 16.

With enough levels of Brisk Recitation shouldn't you be able to run both without any down time on either? I have to admit I am always lazy with Chanters so I don't actually know how the linger compares with the chant times for each.

Well it makes killing their adds a lot easier certainly, but once those are gone you've still got to kill the dragon which is no easy task.

There are five categories that all creatures fall into: Wilder, Primordial, Spirit, Vessel and Beast. For example Xaurips and Trolls are Wilders, the various Oozes are Primordials, undead and Animats are Vessels and most animals (and Dragons) are Beasts. When you use this Survival bonus you pick one of the five types and get a bonus to your Accuracy against it. Note that Kith (human, elves, aumaua etc.) are not in any of these categories, and you can't choose Kith when you use the bonus, so if you're preparing for a difficult fight against Kith enemies you should choose a different bonus. I believe you can find out which category an enemy falls into by checking the in game bestiary (once you've filled their entry) or on the Gamebanshee page.

This is a single target DPS druid build. It will, of course, simultaneously be doing AoE damage via things like Returning and Relentless Storm, but the main point was just how ridiculous its single target damage is.

Huh, I wouldn't have even guessed the belt works that way. I guess that's how it gets around the rule about not benefiting from gear.

Because I have nothing better to do: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84749-whats-wrong-with-druid-shapeshift/

A backer beta date announcement would be great, though I am less optimistic that that's what it's going to be. Still, fingers crossed.

The phrase 'projecting' springs to mind.

I'd recommend buying and installing the DLC earlier rather than later. It's possible some quests will be affected if they are activated after you get Caed Nua (nothing DLC related happens before Caed Nua).