JerekKruger

It's not surprising, but I am glad that they didn't pull a Baldur's Gate II and completely change the look for returning companions. It's almost certainly too much to hope for, but it would be great if their new portrait actually reflected the outcomes of Pillars, so for example Pallegina's breastplate would be visible, and either have the symbol of the Five Suns or not depending on whether she is still a member. The lightning bolt probably represents Vielo Vidòrio, since lighting is often associated with speed.

Hiravias and Sagani work very well together once you've got Stormcaller for obvious reasons.

Given the floating corpses and (I seem to recall) wading through thick sand, I think knee high water might be something we do from time to time. I think we're very unlikely to actually swim though.

Yeah, Concelhaut's Tower was added with White March I and was intended as a high level dungeon. It's roughly meant for at least level 12 (max level pre-White March I), and the higher the better. Also even when you're appropriately levelled, it has some challenging fights specifically designed to test you. As Blades of Vanatar says, it's fun when you manage to beat it.

Well of course when you disarm the trap you leave behind the trap amplifying unit. Why would you take that useless piece of junk that merely multiplies the damage by a factor of 10?

In regularly playthroughs no, for very much the same reason as you: too much hassle. In a solo PotD playthrough I might make use of Gaze of the Adragan traps as a source of Petrify, but that's about it.

I've never used the command myself, but there's one called "AddExperienceToLevel X" where I assume you replace X with the level you want and the game will add precisely enough experience to reach that level. I assume that, like the "AddExperience X" it will apply to your whole party and not just the character you want to boost, but if you're levelling Pallegina to catch up hopefully it'll only affect her (since all other characters are already above level X. Needless to say make sure to save before trying that command to avoid messing things up, but I think this should work.

I think this pretty much settles my decision to role a Wizard for my first play through. The spell effects are just gorgeous.

Indeed. It's perhaps the case that lashes and durganization were too powerful and that it was those that needed to be tuned down, but since they weren't it left Soulbound weapons feeling weak. It was a strange one. I'd perhaps agree that 10% was too good on a Barbarian, but was probably about right for other classes. Yeah I'd totally agree that balance is important here. It doesn't require perfect balance, just a sufficiently narrow range between the most powerful classes and the weakest so the player doesn't feel punished for choosing their favourite class based on non-mechanical criteria. Yeah, I think this is a large part of the problem. It sounds like lashes are being changed a fair bit in Deadfire, and won't be something that can simply be slapped on any weapon, and I hope that if they introduce something like Durgan Steel they'll make it less important and/or allow it to be applied to Soulbound items.

I completely agree with his point and yet was one of the most vocal critics of the reduction of the Unlabored Blade's proc rate, so I feel I should quickly point out that in my case my objection wasn't to the general notion of balancing things, it was that the tune in that case took one of a very small number of decent soulbound weapons and made it so it was no longer competitive with non-soulbound weapons. It just seemed such a shame to see another soulbound weapon consigned to the third rate pile when the idea of soulbound items is so cool. I've been right on board with many down tunes Obsidian have made to, for example, Cipher's, and I think I was pretty vocal about how great the improvements to Barbarians have been (Rogues less so because I think they still need a bit more of a buff).

Short answer: no. Long answer: You could probably dump Resolve all the way of 3 and have both Perception and Intellect at 18, plus Might at 19+: Human, Dwarf or Aumaua for their racial bonus and whichever background gives bonus to Might (I think Living Lands). I have a self imposed restriction of not dumping any stat below 8 (I dislike the idea of characters with extremely dumped stats) so I stopped at 8. However, min-maxed Attributes are much less important in PoE than they were in, say, Baldur's Gate, so you won't be hurting your build too much by going for something more balanced. That'd work fine. Depending on how you feel about using the in game respec feature you could start with more Resolve for early game safety, then respec for less later on. I prefer to use the same spread throughout but if you don't mind changing that's an option. EDIT: just noticed my maths is off. You've actually got 78 points to spend on attributes, so if you wanted you could go with Mig 18 Con 8 Dex 10 Per 16 Int 16 Res 10 If you want. Personally I'd probably go with more points in Might and/or Intellect but, as I said before, attributes aren't anywhere near as important to min-max as in other RPGs so go with whatever you like. I'll also say that I might swap Constitution and Dexterity around. The reason: Wizards spells tend to be fairly fast casting and they get access to a spell that gives them a huge speed boost so Dexterity isn't so important, whereas Constitution gives Fortitude defence which is probably the most important of the three defences.

No need to apologise, most the folks around here are more than happy to help. I've never played a Wizard, so my answers won't be that specific, but hopefully I can help a bit. The first thing to say is you definitely can achieve what you're looking for. It's hard to build a Wizard that isn't flexible, and whilst you'll definitely want to have some of the defensive buffs in your grimoire if you're planning to be in melee (particularly if you aim to tank) you should definitely have room for plenty of other spells. Summoned weapons are excellent. More precisely Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff and Citzal's Spirit Lance are excellent, I'm not such a fan of Llengrath's Warding Staff myself, and the other summoned weapons are all ranged so probably don't fit your build so well. However don't let that deter you, the Spirit Lance is a truly brilliant weapon and will continue to serve you well throughout the game. You'll want to carry a normal weapon too, since limited casting slots will probably mean you won't want to summon one in every fight. One thing that's not at all obvious is that summoned weapons get the benefit of any Weapon Focus talent, so for example if you have Weapon Focus Adventurer (Pollaxe, Estoc, Flail, Wand and War Bow) you'd get +6 Accuracy when using Citzal's Spirit Lance, even though it's a Pike. This only applies once though, so don't take multiple Weapon Focus talents hoping for more Accuracy. The reason I mention this is that you shouldn't feel constrained by the fact that the two main summoned weapons are a Staff and a Pike when picking a Weapon Focus talent and non-summoned weapon for your Wizard. For attributes I might go with something like Mig 18 Con 8 Dex 10 Per 16 Int 16 Res 8 But other, more knowledgeable, people might disagree. In the early game a low Resolve might hurt a bit, but later game it won't matter much since you can buff both Deflection and Concentration with spells. You want a high Might to increase the high base damage of your summoned weapons, as well as any spells you might case. High Perception helps the accuracy of both your spells and physical attacks which is always nice (high accuracy is particularly nice for crowd control spells, since if they crit their duration is increased by 50%). High intellect increases the duration of your buffs, crowd control spells, any AoE you use and of course makes your summoned weapons last longer. Low Constitution doesn't matter all that much on a Wizard, since you're base health is low (so a percentage penalty is minor) and you're getting plenty of Fortitude defence from your high Might. I won't give you a full list of talents you should take, but will mention that Arcane Veil and Hardened Veil are great for defence (but the other Wizard specific talents probably aren't that great for your build), you'll probably want a Weapon Focus if you're going melee, and the various defensive talents (Snake's Fortitute et al) are good if you want to make yourself tankier and/or shore up a weakness in your defences. Hope that's somewhat helpful and no doubt someone more knowledgeable than me will be along soon.

Major kudos for this. Simply achieving The Ultimate is damn impressive, but doing it with a Rogue adds another layer.

There's a bug that occasionally fires on my PC where the first word or two of dialogue is skipped. It's extremely annoying when it happens, but thankfully seems to be rare.

Classless systems don't allow you to do everything, at least not the good ones. A level cap ensures that you have limited points to spend so you still have to make compromises. The point is that in a classless system you get to decide what those compromises are, rather than being restricted by a preexisting class. There are pros and cons to both class based and classless systems, but it's not at all accurate to claim people who prefer classless simply want have what they want without drawbacks.

Well of course, but there's nothing saying Barbarians have to be rude or uneducated. I think you're typecasting. You're assuming that every example of a given class has to be identical to the prototypical member of that class. I suspect that this is (one of) the reasons a lot of people dislike class based systems: they stifle role-playing in a lot of people, forcing them to adopt narrow tropes. For example take the Bard. How many excellent musicians have been utter arseholes? A lot. I think a musician is well represented as a Bard, yet this type would be pretty terrible as a face for the party.

Rogue, Cipher, Fighter or, perhaps*, Monk could all be built to do this I'd say. *I say perhaps not because they can't, but I realise some people dislike playing Monks in anything other than the Shaolin style unarmed Asian martial artist.

Well, as mentioned dialogue options are always handled by the main character: it doesn't matter if a dialogue is initiated by a companion who's scouting ahead, which options are available will be determined by the attributes, background and class of the main character. As for trap detection, that can be done by anyone since skills can be selected by any class. Sure Rogues can start with the highest mechanics but any character dedicated to the job of trap detection will be fine. Similarly for the stealth skill. What class you use for this (if you do this at all) is dependent on the game you're playing, because the rules of the game you're playing determine which character is best suited to this role. In Pillars there is very little difference between classes when it comes to fulfilling this role, so you can use whatever class you want. If you, for role-play reasons, want to use a class you think fits this role well (rogues, ranges etc.) that's fine, but that's completely a question of personal preference and other people can't really help you out. Personally I don't really have a character doing this. I move my whole party as a group, making sure the person with the highest mechanics is near the front, and occasionally use Sagani (the only character I ever invest points into stealth with) to scout an encounter more carefully before engaging.

Okay now I'm imagining a beholder, except rather than eyeballs it has hearts...

I'm almost certain this is the case, since I have detected traps that I can't disarm. However I am not quite sure whether it's easier to spot traps whilst in stealth mode or not (I think it is but haven't done any tests).

Bravo sir, bravo.

Closer to Viciona, which has an even stranger fan base that BruceVC is a part of. How so? They've both got white hair, but beyond that I don't see any real similarity. That said, I see even less similarity to Aerie.

@scythesong If you're responding to me, know that I'd rather there was no random loot. However Josh said there will be random loot in Deadfire and since that's the case I'd rather they made it actually random rather than the current pseudo-random system they have now. In the end it doesn't really matter all that much. Most important loot will, I assume, remain non-random and I can only think of one item in Pillars that I ever cheesed the loot tables for. I'm sure Deadfire will be fine.

People liked Aerie? Yes, there are players that liked Aerie, particularly since she can be romanced. Tastes vary. Heh, I know. She wasn't to my taste but my comment was only meant in jest. Each to their own.

Not aggression, mocking. Perhaps that's cruel of me but given that part of the OP's complaint was incorrect (the console not working) and the rest applies to basically all modern CRPGs (you have to make compromises over your attributes) I wasn't feeling as charitable as I might. Oh and I'm always suspicious of posts like this when they're the first post a user makes.