demeisen

I guess I don't understand Minor Arcane Reflection. ​ ​I'm casting it in fights with skeletal wizards, in an attempt to not get hit by so many of their spells. (I realize it won't protect against AOEs). Even though it's in effect, and shows in my status with 50+ seconds remaining, every1st to 3rd level spell they cast still hits me and does damage. For example: bounding missiles (3rd), necrotic lance (2nd), etc. I had expected the M.A.R. to protect me against those (until it exhausts its total level count, but I get hit even by their first cast). Solo char, so I'm the only thing around for them to aim at. ​ ​Or is it that I still get hit, but the casting creature does as well? I haven't seen any signs of that, but maybe I missed it in the combat log... ​ ​

​​ Well, the way I see it: ​ ​Paladins do not suck. I used one as my main melee recently, and it was extremely effective. Probably the best melee class I've used in PoE. ​Chanters do not suck. Also, you can play them lots of ways, including hitting things with swords and ignoring the damage songs entirely. In fact, my first play, I didn't use the damage songs at all. It worked out fine. Fighters do not suck either. ​Can't speak for barbs and monks as I've never tried them. But in general, every class in PoE is drastically overpowered compared to the content, even on PotD, if you are in a 6-man party. The game simply does not offer enough difficulty to make you sweat the minutia, unless you are playing under self-imposed rules to make it harder for yourself. So, the point is to have fun.​ Play whatever you find fun.​​ You can build any class at all into an effective melee class in PoE. ​ ​

How do you all handle paralyze/stun type effects? I'm L8 now and got pretty well torn up in Lle a Rhemen. I don't have any scrolls to protect against those effects yet, and don't have enough lore yet to use them anyway. I try to get as much defense up as quickly as I can, but once the first paralyze gets through, that's it. It's chain-lock after that... I can come back to those groups later, but I expect I'll encounter quite a bit of this sort of thing before I have enough lore to cast the counter-scroll.

In most situations I consider pre-ordering a bit silly, but meh... Pillars hit enough marks that I was willing to for Tyranny. If they can manage to keep doing a good job with this kind of game, and resist the urge to consolify it too much or dumb down the writing, I'll trust them to deliver something good. Of course, it doesn't take many misses to ruin that kind of trust, but Pillars earned it, so at the moment, I'm willing. ​ ​Also, I, for one, am going to be disappointed if the evil overlord subjugating the world and turning everything to **** in Tyranny does not, in fact, turn out to be Mark Zuckerberg. ​

​ ​IMHO, ciphers rock. Lotsa different play styles, so what works for one person may not for the next, but even if you ignore mindweb (which is essentially an "i win" button, once you get it in the later game), I found ciphers to be enormously useful and powerful. ​ ​I won't say a wizard is the best thing for the other slot, but I'd take one anyway, because wizards are just fun to play, and they can do pretty much anything in a pinch. Plus, you've got a monk and a paladin, and some secondary melee classes, so there's plenty of that to go around. ​ ​

Do any of you solo wiz people use Deep Pockets? ​ ​It seems less important for "pick any spell" classes like druids or priests, but given the pre-selected repertoire of the wizard, I'm thinking the flexibility of more quick-slots might be nice to have. I haven't selected it yet though. Anybody liking it for solo wiz? ​

In my current run (solo wizard + potd) I thought I might find leading creatures into trap ambushes to be a valuable tactic. ​ ​I've done it a few times, and have always been underwhelmed. It seems I can only have one trap outstanding: if I deploy another, the first pops back into my inventory. So, I deploy the one, lead the creatures I'm fighting over it, and it's usually like, "trap does 3 points of damage to two creatures out of the 38 that are trying to kill you", and that is that. It seems lost in the noise. ​ ​Do I miss something about how to use them effectively? I haven't found them worth the effort, so far, even playing some different kinds. ​

​ ​ ​This is a great observation. I also felt that the Pillars story telling was at its best when it was dealing with small, intimate human level details. The Ondra's Gift boy ("Brave Derrin") was particularly poignant and well realized in the game. A lesser game might have gone for the happily-ever-after Hollywood conclusion, but Pillars had the courage to let this play out as it might in real life between a young boy and several murderous thugs. It has a deeper impact in the way they wrote it, and is more believable for the player. It made you appreciate what the boy did, even in the face of insurmountable odds.

​ ​Act 1 Raedric. I didn't manage it after a number of tries with L5 wiz, but I had not been to Defiance Bay yet and maybe did not have as good equipment as I could, and also no summons. At L5 I kept getting close, but never could quite finish the fight. I returned at L6 and it was quite manageable then. L6 gave me a few extra spell casts (Edit: and I guess a little more accuracy & deflection) and that made all the difference. ​

I like the operation and feel of the Cyclopedia (tab in the inventory/journal/etc GUI). I think it's a good design choice that you learn about creatures progressively as you fight them, and those details get filled in the cyclopedia as you go. Being able to refer to that page before certain encounters is a nice in-game feature. While a web search could turn up the same info, it's handy this way, and integrates believably with the progression of your game: you don't get to know things before you "should". ​ ​Would like to see this preserved in POE{2..n}. ​

Also I'd note that depending on what you consider "Europe" (west + east + maybe Russia), that may include somewhere around 800 million people. North America has 320m in the US, 125m in Mexico... maybe a few dozen folks up in Canada . Maybe some 500 million. So if the player base had the same per-capita ratios, you'd expect Europe to have quite a few more players compared to NA. ​ ​Doesn't seem to be a big Asian contingent though... ​ ​

In my last game (potd+toi) I ran chanter and paladin tanks (the paladin after recommendations from this forum), and it worked out great. Both have useful abilities to augment the whole team. Neither seemed to take much damage, so I didn't feel I lacked anything by not having a fighter. Both got to quite high deflections, though I don't recall the exact numbers now. The paladin was also my main party healer, with Lay On Hands. ​ The rest of your lineup (​cipher/wizard/druid/priest) seems good too. That's exactly the combo I went with, and it was supremely effective. The cipher in particular trivializes most fights. ​

​ Lots of super good info, thanks Grausch! In my prior plays I've never used re-spec, but I might do so for this play, to change things out to talents more useful in the later game. Might swap veil out then. ​ ​I've noticed exactly what you describe in the quote above about potions: sometimes the effect doesn't trigger right even though the animation plays and the "gulp" sound is made. Then I click it again and it works, but the whole thing takes a long time. It doesn't seem like it's caused by normal combat interrupts - feels different from that. However, if I drink the potion right at the start of combat while enemies are still running over to me, then it usually works right. ​ ​On L5 now (still haven't found any summons to use), I got my butt kicked in the Raedric fight. I came close a few times, but never survived it. Might have to come back to that one in a level or two. I sort of like not being able to breeze through everything. ​

I do try to use chokepoints, but was still getting hammered pretty hard without a veil up. Since then I've hit L5 though, and Llengrath's Displaced Image seems to help a ton. I only get two casts of it, but it lasts a whole fight, or at least most of the fight for longer ones. That plus the veils gets me 2-3 "average" fights, or 1-2 tougher ones. One sure uses a different set of spells than when playing a wizard as part of a group.

Whoever has done solo wizard, do you also find that Arcane Veil is completely essential to survive most fights? It's a short duration, but I end up getting mobbed (even if I'm in a corner or against a wall), and the only way I live through most fights is using both veils. Which of course means a rest before the next fight, which means a lot of rests. It's not so bad now (L4), but as I get further afield, it might become tedious. ​ ​I'm trying not to do much meta-gaming: e.g, no kiting tactics or running around to do quests before they'd naturally happen. I just fight my way through an area when I get to it naturally. I'm still making progress... but man, without veil, I'd be screwed. Even Wizard's Double doesn't do much for me, since even with the +deflection, I seem to get hit right away, so it's like "gulp the potion, get hit, it's gone", and I might as well have used those moments for something more productive. ​ ​ ​Edit - I'm also, to some extent, surviving on potions. Which isn't a bad thing, IMHO: in the 6-member game, there's not much reason to have to use them. It's nice to be forced to use items, sometimes. ​

My first WM play was with a 6-member group, PotD, with high-level scaling. It was certainly harder than the base game, although not always for reasons I enjoyed (e.g, the monks ignoring engagement and immediately teleporting next to casters). I started it at L7, went straight through, and found some challenging fights. My second WM play was much easier (too easy to be fun), but that was using a custom group, I already knew what to expect, and I was better at using character abilities. ​ ​I don't know if I'll actually be able to manage WM with a solo wizard. I guess I'll find out when I get there . I'm also thinking I may have to avoid a few of the more stun or paralyze heavy fights, like the feral druids. ​ ​

Thanks. I'm liking the harder play of solo, but miss the party tactics. I wish something comparable in difficulty to a solo run was available without losing the team based play . I'm maybe an intermediate level player, nowhere near as knowledgeable as many of you, so I can only imagine how frustrating the lack of difficulty in a 6-man team must be for some of you more expert level folks. ​ ​

​ ​Yeah - this is my first solo attempt, so I admit I don't really know what I'm doing. It might well be that a cipher is harder. I suspect I'd find a tank-type class easier than either, like a paladin or chanter. ​ ​About fighting: for better or worse, I'm basically fighting anything that's willing to fight me . I cleaned out the temple. (Non-ToI, so I can reload if I die, and I'm playing this run for the combat. Solo+TOI would be too much for me). ​ ​

​ ​Yeah, I imagine that's true. I don't really know how to do it that well: I don't know the system and the ideal orders and locations of good items like a lot of you do. ​ ​A figurine would really have made the temple much easier, that's for sure. I didn't find one yet at that point in my game, although I'm sure if I knew how, I could have gotten one. ​

Solo wizard on PotD. I've barely started (L4), and it's been... challenging. I've read of people hinting you can do some talk-only quests early to gain exp, but I'm not sure how to, so I'm basically going through the game in the normal order, and I've probably died 2 dozen times so far. Some of the combats are really rough to survive, e.g, in Temple of Eothas at L4. It's good . The wizard is frail enough that he can't get beat on for long, especially at low levels before gaining some key defensive abilities. It's been absolutely brutal... but I like it. I'm worried about later game with dominate/paralyze/etc afflictions. I thought some of the protection scrolls needed a very high lore, and I've already put some points into other skills like mechanics and stealth, so I might not have enough to get those. Slightly worried I've already backed myself into a corner.

I finished this game, and I have to say, all of you who were recommending a paladin instead of a fighter were right! I used paladin and chanter tanks, and a bunch of castery sorts. The paladin felt like it had more group synergy than a fighter would have, with all the various exhortations and whatnot. I don't remember pallys being as good during my first play (v1.0 days), but maybe I didn't give them a fair shake. So, post-finish thanks for the tips.

I also bought through GOG, so this is general feedback, not about 3.04 particulars. 1. How have we been at communicating with you guys? Good! Even from the early kickstarter days. The KS format led to a nice stream of progress mails through the development process, and post-release the responsiveness from Obsidian staff seems quite fine. No complaints. 2. What did you like about us? The number one thing that attracted me to PoE from the KS days was the promise of a no-DRM release on GOG, and a Linux-native version. Most studios wouldn't have done either, so that's worth major karma points. I stopped buying DRM-ed games a long time ago, so that would have been a non-starter for me. Major bonus points for the Linux support, too, which I realize isn't a huge market. I also appreciated the use of KS which, for both better and worse I suppose, lets fans feel more connected to the game as it's developed. Also you own the IP rather than being beholden to another party. You can take it where you want now, and that benefits me as a player indirectly. You can worry about pleasing your market niche, rather than the entire mass market. Obsidian is large enough to bring top-tier talent to a project like PoE, but small enough that it can do things the huge $100M-game-budget studios cannot, like pursue slightly niche markets. This is the sweet spot, IMHO. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the game has amazingly nice artwork, and not a little bit of it either. It's a pleasure to explore. Top job by the artists and sound people. The writing was (mostly) great too. I won't say a few dialogs couldn't be tightened up a little, but generally, I appreciated that it bucked the modern trend away from text and reading. 3. What kind of things would you like to see us improve on? Applying this question to the game, not the communication: the only thing stopping it from reaching 10/10 territory for me was the (lack of) difficulty. Playing on PotD, there is some risk early on, but after act 1, I felt there was too much experience, and I was too over-leveled or over-powered to find much combat challenge. The sense of danger went away. There was some here and there, but in general terms, I feel a PoE2 would benefit from harder difficulty. (Just at the upper options, I mean. Of course there's still good reasons for story and easy modes). Also, you haven't yet announced POE3 through 7. This is a major area that could use improvement . 4. What would you like to hear from us in the future? I would like PoE to turn into a series of games based on the same engine and combat/skill system, so clearly I would like to hear the franchise has a future, and if the market is there, you'll make more. People who want well written, tactical, party based RPGs... we aren't exactly swimming in choices. It's a small pond, but Ob is perfectly equipped to be the big fish in that pond, rather than a little goldfish in the massive FPS or RTS oceans. I haven't been closely following Tyranny, but I hope to hear it would be available on similar terms to PoE: no-DRM, Linux support, GOG availability. If so, it's a no-brainer buy for me purely on the strength of PoE. What is the hardest fight you had in the game? What were your favorite and least favorite fights? Do you feel that there were any boss fights that were to overwhelming or underwhelming? Early game feral druids were probably the hardest for me, measured by "chance of a party wipe". My least favorite fights were probably ones that ignored the engagement mechanic. It does add some difficulty, which is good, but not in a particularly satisfying way. There aren't many positional tactics to be found in such fights, and it seems like it's a mask for lack of smart AI. Underwhelming bosses: agreed with other folks here: the Kraken was severely underpowered. I feel it should be on par with a mid-tier dragon in difficulty. It was easier than many non-boss monsters. Considering ToI mode, the game's risk is heavily front-loaded. The further into the game you get, the less there is that can really hurt you. It's too easy to build a nearly invulnerable group.

It was certainly underwhelming both times I encountered it (2.something and 3.03, both PotD). Bit of a let down really. I'm liking AndreaColombo's suggestions, and feel it should be on par with, say, the adra dragon in general difficulty. I also felt that it didn't really hurt my party at all, but then, defense generally seems overpowered in the game, so it's hard to tease apart how much is due to that, and how much is Kraken-specific. ​ ​But come on! Kraken! It should be a damn cephalopod wrecking crew. ​ ​

NWN seems an interesting comparison. It was designed from the beginning to be user-extended, which has its benefits and its drawbacks. For NWN, I didn't actually enjoy the out-of-the-box (OOTB) game very much, but the community later delivered some outstandingly good modules for it, and that's what made the game work, for me. The top community stuff made the OOTB NWN module look amateurish. I believe there's still a highly active community around that engine, 14 years on. ​ ​In contrast (this is just my opinion, of course), PoE was a far superior OOTB game in almost every way. Better story, more sophisticated and beautiful art and an (apparently) more complex and presumably less novice-friendly art pipeline driving it. But it's not mod-friendly, so I find myself torn. On one hand, I appreciate PoE for what it is. First time through felt like exploring a painting! I'm glad they put effort into making a fantastic and relatively polished OOTB game. On the other, I'm on my third play now, and I find myself wishing I could be playing a top-tier community module based on the PoE engine. Of course there are tradeoffs: every developer hour spent on NWN-style expandability doesn't get spent on something else. ​ ​I certainly would not mind seeing PoE move in that direction, and I'd be more than willing to pay for new "module" style games on the engine from the same team that made PoE. From Obsidian's perspective, they also have to consider commercial tradeoffs. You might sell more units if there's a vibrant community for user-made content, but on the other, your own games have to compete with the same community content. Not sure how that one plays out, in the balance. ​ ​

"Slow" means something different to everybody, so it's hard to talk about without concrete numbers. ​ ​For what it's worth: I'm pretty far into my current game: lvl 16, in WM2, with most of the base game plot finished as well. My save file is around 8.5MB. I timed a load from clicking the "Continue" button to being in the game at 14 seconds (from the Stalwart Mines). That's on a slightly older (2012) PC without an SSD, under Ubuntu 16.04, so I imagine it would be a little faster on a modern machine or with an SSD, and slower on an older machine. ​ I imagine that seems very slow for some folks. It depends a great deal on what you're accustomed to. I'm not too bothered, since I grew up with games that would require many minutes to load and fail to do so entirely one time in three due to unreliable D/A from acoustically based storage. 10 or 20 seconds that works every time seems luxurious . ​ ​I'm guessing the save files grow larger because the amount of state that has to be serialized to disk is larger the further into the game you progress. Also the first time you do it, a bunch of art assets have to get loaded from disk and may not be in buffercache. ​