Search the Community

Clover Armor While wearing the full clover set, harvester ants will be passive until provoked, but you also need incense, which is a trinket that calms down nearby ants, and makes you deal double damage to ants, while using any weapon with ant parts if you’re hydrated. Though it also makes you slower when you’re not hungry to the point of reduced stamina. There’s a 2% chance to get it from a red ant(that’s not the soldier version). Also you can freely go through the queen’s room without starting the fight, though you have to be quiet to not arouse suspicion, and you can only go through during night while they sleep. Golden Harvester Ant A very fast ant that’s the size of a red soldier ant, and goes in groups of 7-8 that are escorted by a couple Red Harvester Ants so they can climb grass flowers for grass seeds(their favorite food irl too), and not get hurt. When killed they release a pheromone cloud that makes all other harvester ants go berserk, though agitated golden ants don’t release pheromones. Red Harvester Ant They protect the colony, going on escorts, and staying inside the colony deep within. Dealing the damage of a northern scorpion, though they’re a little faster, and just like in irl they can inflict venom with their stings. They’ll bite, and sting while at low health. Black Harvester Ant Mostly found at the entrance of the nest, they are defense heavy, and you can’t deal stun to them normally. To stun them you have to break their armor with a bratburst or the other throwables in it’s category(this means you can only stun them once). Also, while at lower than 20% health they’ll try exploding next to you, if you kill them while they’re trying to explode, you’ll get black powder (~10-12). Striped Harvester Ant They have a crimson colored body with fading black stripes/patterns, and deal the most damage of all the previous ants. They’re unable to be stunned normally like the Black Harvester Ant, and are slightly slower than the fast Golden Harvester Ant. They also sting you while lower than 25% health just like the red harvester ant, and are the largest too, found super deep within the nest. They can also have wings. Harvester Ant Queen(Boss) To get to the room all you have to do is win a game of Nine Men’s Morris, using ant based pieces. This Boss would throw lobs of venom, order ants to attack different players or allies, and attack viciously. They can leap onto the player to bite then dash backwards, swing their head, rally the ants to defend or attack, lob balls of "ant bread", that has a burning venom in order to splash it everywhere, and they can order more ants to come out of tunnels in the arena. And to prevent cheesing, the player would have building locked, with zones across the arena they have to go to in order to flick levers for disabling some tunnels for a short time, and making the queen take damage. Resources • Golden Mandibles • Razor Mandibles • Striped Mandibles • Golden Abdomen • Plated Abdomen • Striped Abdomen • Red Harvester Stinger • Striped Harvester Stinger • Striped Wings • Striped Head • Golden Chunk • Black Powder Items/Equipment • Razor Arrow, attacks inflict sizzle, and venom, deals high stun, and is stab/smash. Costs 1 red harvester stinger, 3 crow feathers, and 2 sap for 20. • Red Razor Recurve, enemies inflicted with sizzle and/or venom take double damage for 20 seconds after getting hit with this bow. Costs 1 Razor Mandibles, 8 sap, 3 and 4 bug rubber for 1. • Crescent Arrows, these arrows shoot very straight/far, and will make enemies aggressive to everything around them. They cost 5 Golden Chunks, 2 Striped Wings, 1 Golden Mandibles, and 2 weevil meat for 5. The reason for the name is the tip is a pair of mandibles. • Plated Maul, this is in the Club category, and deals 8 stun, but it attacks fast, and charging it will make you spin. It’s dual wield, does 26 damage, and on a 3 hit combo, critical hits are increased to a 50% chance for the next 3 seconds, with an explosion on the final hit as well. Costs 4 Plated Abdomens, 6 Sap, 4 Bombardier Parts, and 20 Black Powder. • Plated Round Helmet, this helmet gives the most toughness out of all other helmets, and when attacked you reflect 25% of all damage. Made with 1 Plated Abdomen, 3 sap, 2 bug rubber, and 10 red harvester ant stingers. • Plated Paldrons, this arm/chest piece gives the most toughness out of all other arm/chest pieces, when attacked you reflect 25% of all damage, and while using your shield, you regenerate health. The set bonus makes you only take 3/4 damage for 10 seconds after getting hit. Made with 8 Plated Abdomens, 5 sap, 8 bug rubber, and 18 red harvester ant stingers. • Plated Greaves, this leg piece gives the most toughness out of all other leg pieces, when attacked you reflect 25% of all damage, and while using your shield you don’t use as much stamina taking hits. Made with 4 Plated Abdomens, 4 sap, 4 bug rubber, and 8 red harvester ant stingers. • Flechette Round, for the auto stinger 2.0, these are made with 10 black powder, 10 striped harvester ant stingers, 4 bug rubber, and 1 crow feather to make 20. Crafted in the Gun Station. • Chemical round, slug for the auto stinger 2.0, these are made big 15 black powder, 4 sap, 10 striped harvester ant stingers, 4 stinkbug parts, and 10 bombardier parts for 20. These rounds inflict sizzle/venom over time, and deal double damage to stunned enemies. Crafted in the Gun Station. • Striped Sickles, these sickles increase nearby ally damage every time you land a crit, by 25% stacking up to 4 times resetting a 20 second timer; though they only have a 10% critical hit chance. They cost 1 Striped Mandibles, 2 striped harvester stingers, 4 sap, and 2 lingonberry leather. • Striped Maul, this fits in the club category, and deals 12 stun, it deals double damage to stunned targets, and this weapon also does sizzle damage. It costs 3 striped mandibles, 1 Striped Head, 4 Striped Abdomens, 8 sap, and 3 Lingonberry leather. • Striped Emblem(Trinket), summons a slightly stronger Striped Harvester Ant to fight for you, but it can also hold things like weed stems; or instead of relocating something normally, you can just put something like a chest on the ant, and you can still use it while on the move. 0.2% chance to get from a Striped Harvester Ant. Food • Roasted Grass Seeds, they fill some hunger, and make you take less damage from ants. Requires 1 grass seed and a spit. • Golden Buffet, this fills all hunger, makes you move faster, and fully heals, but it also makes you take more damage. It Costs 8 Golden Chunks and 2 Roasted Grass Seeds. Requires a Cookery. • Golden Deluxe, this meal fully fills hunger, and prevents all incoming damage for 3 seconds. It costs 5 Golden Chunks, 2 BillyHog bites, and 3 Plated Abdomens. Requires a Cookery. Unique weapon, and unique shield • Auto Stinger 2.0, this is a quad barrel shotgun that deals 128 damage per shot, but takes a long time to reload(6 seconds, with an inspection too), and it causes stab/smash damage. It has a 5% critical hit chance, and the critical hit multiplier is 210%. If you have any bad status effect, you deal 50% more damage(stacks). There are no charged attacks, but shots will always go straight and far. Uses a recipe said below. • Plated Heather Shield, it returns 25% of all damage even while you aren’t blocking, it’s a heavy shield, and it lets you regain all stamina you lost while blocking; though it also makes all damage to nearby allies get transferred to you (reduced by 50%). How to get the unique gear The unique shield and gun recipe are found in the queen’s room, you have to burn down a pile of ant bread to go through a trapdoor. After going through it you’ll find the exit in a maze, and grab the unique shield from skeletons, with the recipe and an optical disk as well(not mission related). The optical disk gives many things like proximity mines, and a Gun Station to build. The Gun Station is used to build the auto stinger 2.0 using 10 striped harvester stingers, 12 crude rope, 2 razor mandibles, 1 striped head, 20 sap, 5 Harvester Queen eggs, 5 silk rope, and 4 plated abdomens. To build the Gun Station you need 5 black powder, 10 sap, 5 silk rope, 2 bombardier parts, 2 stinkbug parts, 8 grass planks, and 10 web fiber. To get the Harvester Queen eggs, you need to get them around the queen’s arena after attacking them with a smash attack to shatter their shells, and they stack to conserve space. Sorry for any improper grammar, and/or confusions! Also, Please tell me anything that feels unbalanced, Thank You!

GLASS MANTIS This boss is a very colorful Mantis and it has wings, those are the main differences. It will fly around then land on the ground acting as a hybrid, and even freeze you with its attacks. It’s also bigger and when you "k1ll it", the head will pop off and it’ll go into a berserk mode, by the way, mantises can survive a long time without a head because of how they breath(like a c0ckroach). When you k1ll the boss, it’ll drop Glass Chunks for making glass and weapons. They’ll also drop Glass Wings used for a hang glider, or Glass Arrows (1 Glass Chunk, and 3 Glass Wings for 20 Glass arrows). Glass arrows deal 38 smash/stab damage. The Glass Mantis will also drop a Glass Mantis Head for a Glass Mantis Statue, or for a Kaleidoscope trinket that makes you stun ORC enemies, and deal 50 fresh damage with normal attacks, 500 with charged attacks. The boss will spawn underground in a little "cavern" with geodes. The geodes glow and when you break them they’ll drop crystal shards for things like flash bangs. Also glass versions of other bugs live here.

Boss/Unique Weapon The aquarium would have a Mantis Shrimp boss, they can whack you with their "fists" to create a cavitation bubble of hot air that sizzles you then collapses into a shockwave. They can burrow to launch itself at the player, or create a blinding colorful flash that blinds the player causing reduced speed and vulnerability to attacks. Near the Mantis Shrimp is a piece of coral that when broken will let you pick up the Hydraulic Spear. A unique two-handed spear, that can’t block but instead will charge up an attack that spontaneously stabs when you attack, it can’t charge normal attacks though. The spear is very slow, and deals 38 damage(less than the mantis shrimp). It has a 0.1% chance for critical hits and the damage multiplier would be 1700%. And it has a trait called Pressurization, where the more you’re hit the greater your critical hit chance is but once you land one then it resets. Other Creatures Cone Snail: they shoot a harpoon like tooth that inflict venom and create a poisonous cloud in the water, though they can also negate damage sometimes. Pufferfish: puffs up when attacked and will inflict venom on anything that attacks it, though they drop Pufferfish Spines that can be used to make weapons inflict venom by making Venom Extract. Or make the Venomous Arrows cheaper for 85 total. Stonefish: a fish that dwells at the bottom waiting for something to get close then it sucks in and snaps, they’re capable of swallowing you then spitting you out dealing massive damage. They drop stone leather used for making many things like stone skin potions. Resources Majano Anemones: they take over entire areas and when chopped can give random treasures like pearls used for armor or weapons, usually magic related. Seaweed: when attacked will drop seaweed for foods like Sushi or Fish Kabobs. And can be turned into chips that allows for absorbing more water just like the clover set. Coral: when attacked will drop Coral Chunks and can be turned into armor. Pumice: you can get Pumice Shards from these boulders by smashing them, and they can be used to upgrade weapons and armor after upgrading fully with the brittle materials. Sorry for any improper grammar, or confusions!

[IMPROVEMENT] -Glider improvement: we could create gliders that would make us hover further with bee wings for a level 1 glider and with butterfly wings for level 2, for example. We could put this equipment as a back accessory, for example. - Improvement of the backpack with a "cooler" section: we could improve our bag in the cooler, which would add an inventory line only for food and keep it longer, for example, or if a water bottle is in this location, would fill us more greatly the water gauge. It would save us space in the inventory, besides that, since the food would have its dedicated location. - Improvement of the roasting spit: better design, barbecue or brazier for example, allows to put more meat at once, and to make better quality meat [GAME MECHANICS] - Flying mount: you may have already thought about it, but bees mounts, butterflies or why not add dragonflies in the game could be interesting. - Integration of fishing and fishing rod: For this improvement, I don’t have too much idea what it could be used for haha, but a fishing mechanic could be cool, maybe to fish resources or food? [NEW ITEMS/RESOURCES] - Integration of the electrical element and the steel material: We could pick up metal and rust debris to make stronger weapons and armor, and for the electrical element, we could recover ORC elements or copper wires that might be in cables or electronic elements like the calculator that are already present in the game’s decor. - Integration of the glass material: This time it would be for the decorative side of the game, to create windows, greenhouses for example for our base, it could be created from heated sand in the ovens. And why not use that for some weapons (arrows in glass point for example) [CONSTRUCTION BASES] - Decorations: >Swimming pool, football cage, volleyball net, sofa, trophy/statuette with the image of each insect (when unlocking a gold card for example), panels on which one can write what one wants (variable size), mannequin able to carry the weapon in hand, Fountains of youth or equivalent (to be put in our base and treated over time when we are nearby. Creation limited to 1-2 copies), Safe with password, to have a personal safe in coop - Structure: >Predefined building construction: Models of houses, rooms, bases already predefined directly to place and build. >Creating our own predefined and shareable buildings/base online? >Creation of activatable dynamic elements with switch or something equivalent (drawbridge, secret door) >Creation of traps, doors/passageways while crouching >Wall and structure with picks (for protection) >Roof windows >Descent bar >Vertical Zipline (abseil up and down) >Elevator system for bases - Customization of furniture and objects: >One could customize, for example, the color of chests, beds, walls, etc. Customization could be done through color pigments that one could unlock against raw science. Or a machine that transforms the game’s resources into color pigments (example: berry for purple, pieces of red ant for red... etc) [WEAPONS / ARMOR] - Ideas of elementary sticks: >Stick usable in water, with sound attacks or water current. (when water will be available obviously) > Healing stick (Send a healing substance to the allies - Weapon and bone armor: Several skeletons are scattered across the map, if we could collect them, it could be used to create weapons and armor and various crafts. - Idea of arrows for the bow: >Sound arrow (to attract insects to a place and create a diversion). >Spider web arrow (create a spider web around the insect to immobilize it). >Friendly arrow (to make an insect an enemy, as an allied insect for a given time depending on the power of the insect, and some would be immune). >Explosive arrow (arrow + bombs) in limited number, they could do big damage. >Healing arrow (creates a cloud of healing for allies and oneself over a small area) > Fireworks arrow (just for fun and available for holiday days, New Year’s Eve for example) All these arrows greatly improve the archer class and its role as a distant player and support - Armor skin: armor designs could improve and change depending on the level of improvement given to them, the more the armor is improved, the bigger and badass it becomes (same for weapons?) or maybe just for boss armor/weapons [ENVIRONMENT] - Addition of carnivorous plants, which could attack us when we are nearby. Once killed, they would give resources to make insect traps, to farm gnats for example. Every X time, a dead gnat appears in the traps - Vegetable/fruit seeds: Seeds could be scattered all over the map, with the addition of a "vegetable garden" production craft, we could plant them, grow them and serve them to make dishes. - Some ideas of insects and their armor/weapons/ kraft: >Grasshopper: Armor that allows jumping higher and greatly reduces fall damage. Full set bonus: shock wave with each jump during a fight. >Dragonflies: flying mounts? Or high level gliders. >Urticant caterpillar: armor that slightly poisons enemies when they hit us >Phyllium: armor very weak, but allows to be undetectable for almost all enemies as long as one does not attack them. >Rhinoceros beetle: a shield with the beetle’s horn on it that would allow charges forward, doing big damage and knocking out enemies. - Weather system: Depending on the weather, some insects or resources could appear more often and others, on the contrary, more rarely. (Rain, for example, could cause more snails and fungi to appear) Here is a part of the ideas I had for additions in the game, I have been playing grounded since 1 and I really like your game, I would be delighted to propose other ideas in the future!

This is a post that others may add extra ideas to or build upon posted ideas. First request is for the quarter walls, the vertical half walls and many other walls to be able to sit at a 45 angle on the floor tiles lie regular walls can. Second is for some sort of resource elevator to be able to move large quantities of stems and grass planks up to high place, for example up a zip line tower Third some very basic automation of some production stations like the sap collector or the spinning wheel, strictly limited to auto input and output, so I can throw in a few stacks of web fibre and leave it for a couple in game hours while collecting other things. Final for me is some sort of flood lights for lighting large open areas made with some glow goo from fireflies or possibly a firefly Boss which could be cool. Thanks to anyone who adds more ideas of amends and improves other ideas posted xxx

I dont seem to have the schematic for the Glue Masher. it was to my understanding that you unlocked for purchase after you do the Hedge Lab but that does not seem to be the case. Do we know where that is or is my game bugged?

I am preparing tons of smoothies for entering a certain biome. While I can get the other two ingredients reliably, aphid honeydew is something I'm not entirely sure where to look for. The most consistent place I found so far was on the south bank of the pond in the clover forests early in the morning, before the ants ate them all. I tried trapping aphids inside enclosures, but they were too stressed and would not produce honeydews. In real life, if you remove an aphid when it's sucking on a plant, its mouthpart would detach from its body and got stuck on the plant, causing the plant to constantly flow "aphid honeydew" out of the small needle. (http://bio1152.nicerweb.com/Locked/media/ch36/pressure_flow.html , much like the sap collector in game) Scientists used to study the content of plant fluid using this technique. In grounded, I once shot an aphid on the back side of a grass and it did not fall onto the ground even though it was dead, and I thought that, if not a bug, was the developer's work of building in this mechanism. I wonder if the team can further build upon this phenomenon and give us easier access to "aphid honeydew" that did not pass through the animals gut. The grass/clover would keep pumping out the honeydew for a day or so and die because of malnutrition.

Hello community! I was curious if anyone else has been having trouble with the Mint Chunks or certain weeds not repawning? My group had something unfortunate happen to one of our The player had their game client crash and wasn't able to get immediately back on. Thus we continued playing without them. To our dismay about an hour or so later when they returned they informed us that their inventory was empty and there was no bag on the ground. This is very disappointing and entirely that player's fault for not immediately returning so that we could have caught the mishap and rolled back a few minutes to an auto-save. Anyways it has gotten a discussion going among our group of friends that play this game and we have all been wondering if the Mint Chunks will ever respawn again or not. We noted the fact that the certain weeds (the red stem ones) are not respawning either and that both of these not respawning could just be a game bug. I completely understand that this game is barely 2 days old now and I am sure it will get a nice little update in the coming days. In the mean-time I thought I would put this information out there to warn other players be careful and see if anyone else has either found more Mint Chunks or seen them respawn after a certain point in the game. Thank You to anyone at Obsidian (if you read this) for this very exciting, fresh take, and quite frankly addicting Survival experience. I had no idea how much I would fall in love with this game. Stoked to see what is coming in the future!

I've been thinking that part of the problem with specialist wizards is a lack of role definition, so I created a spreadsheet breaking down wizard spells by school for reference purposes. Maybe it'll be of use to someone.

Last weekend I've made a quick and dirty Developer tracker for my own use. It looks like it's working okayish, so I'm releasing it to you guys: http://poedevtracker.net I was using this one before, but was not satisfied with it. Mine automatically tracks past, current and future developers, so for example I won't miss posts from BMac any more. There's also better quote display and you can configure your timezone. May be useful to some of you.

I'm reading from the loading screen tip that events at strongholds, namely tax collection and generation of ingredients occur after completion of quests. Well, if this is the case, won't that mean there is a finite number of resources to be harvested? And are the completion of quests tied to adventures which can bring in some gold and items? Or is it such that after completing x amount of quests, certain events are triggered, and hence forth they are triggered infinitely after x days have passed? To my understanding, tax collection is also bugged that we don't get money but if bandits come and conduct a raid, we have to pay for damages (One way tax! That's how you run a kingdom!). Was this fixed in 1.03? Cause last I checked, mobs don't respawn - short of the ones that raid the stronghold. The devs want us to concentrate on the stories and dialog, but from a resource point of view how do I break PoE's economy in a legit manner so I can finish all my upgrades and get some enchanting going?

Hi guys, I thought everyone could benefit from sharing their secret list of resources to keep in touch with PoE community and official news. The more informed, the better. Here's mine: Obsidian forum Obsidian forum Dev Tracker Something Awful PoE thread. Josh Sawyer is "rope kid". I do not know if any other Obsidian devs are posting on it. Something Awful "Josh Tracker" Youtube search ordered by most recent Rpg Codex forum Josh Sawyer's Tumblr Google alert with the term "pillars of eternity". Triggers a lot during events such as Gamescom or after official announcements. My current "process" is as follows: all the relevant links are bookmarked in a folder in my browser and whenever I feel like it, I just middle-click on it to open them all at once. I was considering adding Twitter searches to the mix but there is a lot of noise. If you guys have other interesting resources or different ways to keep informed, don't hesitate to share.

Hi again guys! So, after the cooldown thread(s), I thought I should breach the subject of what bothers me about them more broadly, instead of focusing in a simple mechanic or implementation. You see, one of the reason I dislike seeing PE move away from the importance of resting isn't that resting was well used in BG. Or IWD, or PS:T, or any of those titles. It is because I think it is a bit of a missed opportunity. By the way, I know we are getting resting after all, and that is great news, but I think resting can be made more interesting, by seizing an opportunity lost by these previous titles. Mr. Gygax used to say that tracking time in the dungeon was critically important. Things didn't stay static when you retreated or moved away. The reason resting is important is because few dungeons were supposed to be cleaned by the characters, much less so in a single go. I think I made myself clear how I think time could be an important resource in other threads. How I think quests and encounters can respond t the party taking too long by changing and complicating. But time is not the only long term resource that can be used. There are many resources you guys can use to keep track of the party in the longer game, and give us players though choices to decide on. Here is a small enumeration: Money. Gold is a joke in many RPGs, and the infinity engine isn't much of an exception. People will usually complain the reason for this is that there is little control of how much money you can make in the game, but I think the real problem is that there is little options of where to use it. Give the players interesting possibilities during the game. Give him opportunities during quests that will make people try to actually build up money. Make sure a player has enough things to do with his gold he is very unlikely to be able to do everything he wants to. Fame. Reputation is something Obsidian did well in the past. But still, your reputation is something that is hardly "at stake", and very rarely something you can use to do things. Fame has mostly opened doors in other games, like New Vegas. But it could be built upon. Make certain options easier or harder to achieve depending on how well known you are. Having a reputation of being a merciless killer can make threatening others easier, but it can also mean people won't trust a more pacific deal you might propose sometime, or that people who you have helped fear you just as much as the people you delivered them from. Power. XP doesn't need to be a straight jacked formula. Give people incentives to both accumulate a lot of it and to try to avoid getting more of it than they need. Also, I always loved the level draining idea of undeads. Maybe they shouldn't be able to rain it directly like in D&D... Maybe they could drain a set XP amount instead (though this makes them less scary). But still, it was interesting that they made undeads scary in D&D by allowing them to hit where it hurts most for the players. Also, you can have not so long term resource, but ones that still last more than one battle like: Spell memorizations. This one seems to be, thankfully, in! Selecting what spells to bring in to a dungeon and how to use them. I would, of course, like it more if this aspect was more emphasized, but at least it is there, right now. The thing about spell memorization is that you want to make it a hard choice, to know what to bring to a dungeon and the how and when of its use. Stamina. Fighting all day in heavy armor, trudging through group after group of hostiles isn't easy. Everyone needs to rest eventually, and having trouble doing this can be a great source of conflict and tension. Also, knowing when to use your reserves of energy and when to take a more calm, if slower, approach can be fun. This really would work best if time is an actual resource too. Logistics. I think there is little hope of seeing this kind of concern here, but I thought I should bring it up anyway. Part of the fun in old D&D was planning an expedition to somewhere barren and dangerous. You brought in people to help you, vehicles to bring back all that loot with you, materials to renovate safe areas of the dungeon, people to put there so it would remain safe, food for everyone, climbing gear, and a lot more. I think it would be nice to at least have some use for old favorites, like door spikes, chalk, torches and food. Specially if, rather than simply being limitations, these things can actually be used intelligently. Like burning a jelly type of monster with lantern oil, but them not having enough to go around in the dark for much longer. Have the orcs in the dungeon be willing to trade the PCs for their rations, possibly paying a good price for anything that isn't yet more mushrooms. We also have long and medium term resources that, rather than being universal, are situational. there is a whole lot of stuff here that frequently isn't ever used in CRPGs. Time. I've talked enough about it, but make it matter! Make it matter in timed quests, in encounters that change, in combats that have consequences according to how early or late they end, etc. How time will affect each part of the game depends on that specific part. For some things, time matters little. To others, it is of essence. Reactions. Most CRPGs have character reactions to your PCs scripted in. So and so is a villain, and will try to rob you bling. So and so will be a stalwart helper, no matter who you are. It would be more interesting if reactions were more up to the situation at hand. I think Obsidian has done some nice work here, Raul and Dog come to mind here as examples of companions who will change a lot depending to how you treat them. But at the same time, I think this could be nice if it was done to smaller NPCs in some simpler ways. For example, any dragon might attack you on sight if you use dragon scale armor, while goblins who would otherwise attack you might welcome you if you have the head of a bugbear visible anywhere in your person. Likewise, allow this to be used as a resource. If the goblins like you, use their good will to get a favor that will solve a quest in a different way than if you had just slaughtered everyone. Many, many more. In a certain quest, the number of votes you have in a council might be crucial to the next quest. Manage to get enough votes and you will get to coordinate an attack. Don't and they will put a bumbling fool in charge, who will cause the death of several NPCs. In another quest, a cemetery may be haunted by troubled souls. Problem is that, in the coming equinox, they will be able to wreck chaos into the living world. So maybe you want to calm them down, so when the equinox arrives, nothing bad will happen. But then again, maybe you want them to suffer. It is the perfect opportunity to get a new necromancy spell! Maybe putting the souls to rest may cause problems to people you like in the city, or take away one of your contacts to jail. So, I exposed all kinds of different resources here. What is the point of it all? My point is that you can make a game really interesting if you take these various resources and tie in them to the resolution of conflicts in the game. Don't have conflicts be binary! Or worse, unary (as failure in most RPGs mean you need to reload). Instead, make conflicts where you can use these resources to solve, or at least work on. Make it so that doing things differently lead to different outcomes. Bribing the orcs to leave instead of exterminating them doesn't mean you just lost money. Your reputation may be changed in a lasting way by choosing such path. Likewise, the orcs are still live out there. Maybe they would even look forward working with you! On the other hand, maybe the city up north, the direction they fled to, won't like that you didn't end them when you had the chance. All things I am talking about here I have seen in some manner in Obsidian's games. Mask of the Betrayer had a lot of this stuff. So did New Vegas. But frequently, it is done as part of a larger, more static, story line. I really would like to see as more part of the little things going on. Because, being so tied to the storyline, those things don't seem to be using resources. It feels more like I am just advancing the quest. Like they are the absolute exception and not the rule. I think it would maybe pay out to have more of these interesting choices to small things, like side quests and little encounters. The repercussions, of course, would need to be less drastic. But it would, I think, go a long way making the game feel more like the result of your actions rather than an arbitrary story written by someone else.

Clearly not every one wants the same game. Some want the game to be painfully hard. Others would like something more equivalent to the old IE games. Some want healing, money, and magical gear to be super rare, and recovery from injuries to be a protracted and dangerous challenge. Others don't. I wonder how it would work if the relative availability of healing, money, and powerful gear were tied to difficulty level. I hate using improved AI to define difficulty because I don't want to fight idiots, and folks who want a hard game seem not to like the traditional increase/decrease health, increase/decrease damage model. Having more options for healing and having money and magical equipment more plentiful on Normal would make the game less difficult than it would be on settings where resources were tighter. Players on every setting would retain control of how they allocate resources, with those decisions obviously being more difficult the scarcer things are. If such a system were implemented, I'd like Normal to be roughly equivalent to BG I. I'd be fine if an achievement or a printable card were used to recognize the accomplishments of those who overcame greater adversity.

Hi all, First of all, sorry for my bad English. I'm big fan of your games for a long long time. And I'm playing cRPG since I can remember. You are company I like the most in this industry since your name is next to all my favorite games. Your games are great and sometimes full of bugs but you can't make good and complex cRPG without few of them. My second favorite company, CD Projekt RED also make lot of them and yet they don't stop fixing what they can. Anyway, I'm programmer. But for some reasons I ended up as webdeveloper. Mostly I work with SQL, PHP, Javascript, HTML, CSS and stuff. Nothing fancy. Some time ago I decided to learn something new. I did some work in C++, Java etc but I decide to learn something different, something new. So I ended up learning semi-new technology - Node.js (started 2010 if I remember). In short, it's V8 Javascript engine that work on server side. It's also event based (like Javascript) and I wanted to do something cool with it. Since I learn about it I decide to get to know it better and make some project with it. So I started playing around and I decide to make small RPG game. What I wanted to create is game that: ~ load fast ~ not require installation of a client ~ or any other "plugin" (like Quake Live that is advert as Quake in browser but you still need download few hundreds megabytes of "browser plugin") ~ not require extra plugins like Java, Flash or Silverlight So I created proof of concept. I dig some 2d sprites and created sprite animation test. I put it here: http://nodegame.dariuszp.pl/ (look using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox only right now) Since I started with Node.js, after 12 hours of learning and work I made proof of concept, small online "game" in browser that right now work only under Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox but with socket.io library it will work under new versions of Internet Explorer as soon as I convert some part of code to be compatible with it. http://alphang.dariuszp.pl/ All you can do is to sign in (just open URL and type your name, accept only letters and "_" ), move around and talk with other people that joined (hit enter, type, hit enter again to confirm, pain in the a** because I didn't include chat history). Right now I'm working on proper game (or engine to be more precise) when I have some free time and I want to make it open source so I will post source on github at some point under LGPLv3 license. But I did hit a wall with something. I'm a programmer. I have no talent for graphic. Sprite I used to animate players I dig from http://vxresource.wordpress.com/ . I tried to ask around about graphic and animated sprites but it's hard to find anyone that do something like that. So I came here to ask few questions. QUESTIONS ~ how much graphic designers (or 2d animators) take for this kind of graphic ? I'm talking about sprites with animations and static elements. As example for that alphang project I used this sprite: This one have 8 characters. Each have 4 animations, 3 frames per animation. I'm thinking that for my project I will need around 50 frames, 5 frames per animation. And those will be ~ move north ~ move south ~ move east ~ move west ~ attack north ~ attack south ~ attack east ~ attack west ~ die ~ wave Style more realistic but size like here, so 32px width and 48px height. Fire format - PNG, optimal for this kind of job and for websites as whole. ~ where I can find people that do this kind of thing ? So I could order stuff like that. I need to but it since I want to include it and distribute with the engine for free and if someone use it, I don't want them to have problems with copyrights or something. That's why I don't want to use something I dig on the internet. On that websites they say you only need to post author of the graphic you use but you can never be sure. ~ are there any sites with already made resources that are under proper categories and stuff ? Something like stock photos but with 2d resources for games. I'm talking about places when you can but this kind of graphic and do whatever you want with it, adding it to engine and giving away for free included (so full license except reselling of course) Any graphic designer, animator or someone like that who could point me somewhere ? So I could see how much money I will need to spend to create my project ? We are talking about around 20 human characters + 10 animals and around 100 static elements (walls, chairs, ground, env inside and outside). It's not much but it's just to create engine and working demo that contain few maps etc.