Pachfinder Bugmaker: The Rekkoning

[aksrasjel]

Just started playing. At what point can you pick her up as a companion?

You first meet her in the prologue as a quick cameo.

You can recruit her properly at the beginning of chapter 2. She shows up in your throne room and offers you a sidequest upon which she's unlocked as a companion.

[Epaminondas]

I didn't read the spoilers (thanks, bud), but I read the rest of your post. I'm thinking about buying the DLC. I'm in Chapter 6 and there's not much map I don't see at this point, so it's probably better to wait until I'm done with the first run?

[aksrasjel]

I don't think you can recruit her after Chapter 5, although don't quote me on that.

 

And you'll be missing on a lot of her content this late in the game. She actually has quite a lot of interjections and reactions sprinkled throughout the game. As well as a really pleasant romance arc - if you're into that.

 

I would suggest starting a new game, just to see what she has in store.

But it's up to you.

Edited December 20, 2018 by aksrasjel

[Epaminondas]

Holy ****, I've run into the hardest battle since the Thundervine thing. I got bum rushed by about a million ghostly guards and a whole slew of some winged ****ers. It took me... five tries? More? I had to reload several times. It might actually be the hardest normal battle in the whole game. Even the early game didn't require as much actual planning.

 

Thanks for the heads up, aksrasjel. I think I will wait but only because I get the impression it can't be *that* long before I end my current run.

 

EDIT: I will say this, I'd gone through the whole area without resting and so my spells were depleted and I didn't rest to get the spells that would have made a big difference. Hell, even something as simple as preventing fear effects would have been good. My mage still had that hope thing that removes fear, which helped, but it's hard to remove fear from folks who're running away from you. while you cast.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Epaminondas

[Manveru123]

Holy ****, I've run into the hardest battle since the Thundervine thing. I got bum rushed by about a million ghostly guards and a whole slew of some winged ****ers. It took me... five tries? More? I had to reload several times. It might actually be the hardest normal battle in the whole game. Even the early game didn't require as much actual planning.

 

Thanks for the heads up, aksrasjel. I think I will wait but only because I get the impression it can't be *that* long before I end my current run.

 

EDIT: I will say this, I'd gone through the whole area without resting and so my spells were depleted and I didn't rest to get the spells that would have made a big difference. Hell, even something as simple as preventing fear effects would have been good. My mage still had that hope thing that removes fear, which helped, but it's hard to remove fear from folks who're running away from you. while you cast.

I don't remember this fight but battles with multiple mobs can generally be solved by casting Poison immunity spell on your whole team and spamming Cloudkill/Stinking Cloud.

[Epaminondas]

I've been shamed into using spoilers like I should have the whole time. It's just that it seemed everyone else had already played the game before me.

 

I ran into that fight after

I found the last piece of the First Crown. There's more area to the east that you can loot/explore, but you can also just take the assembled crown to finish the quest. I'm trying to remember the location. It's way off on the western edge of the map.

 

 

That immunity to poison and cloudkill is pretty clever. It wouldn't have worked on the undead horde, but it would have knocked out the flock of winged demon things. I wish I'd screenshotted it. Maybe I'll see if I can get a save around there.

[Hawke64]

I've been shamed into using spoilers like I should have the whole time. It's just that it seemed everyone else had already played the game before me.

 

I ran into that fight after

I found the last piece of the First Crown. There's more area to the east that you can loot/explore, but you can also just take the assembled crown to finish the quest. I'm trying to remember the location. It's way off on the western edge of the map.

 

 

That immunity to poison and cloudkill is pretty clever. It wouldn't have worked on the undead horde, but it would have knocked out the flock of winged demon things. I wish I'd screenshotted it. Maybe I'll see if I can get a save around there.

I'd suggest to get Blind Fight and Freedom of Movement as soon as possible, if the section of the game you're approaching hasn't been rebalanced in the last patch.

[Epaminondas]

Thanks for the tip, Hawke. I suspect I've gotten to the end game. At least there are no other road branching that I've found and I've scoured the whole map. I have to head back to

the castle of knives for the end of that monk order quest I started there.

It's kind of cool to have an entirely pacifistic quest line.

 

EDIT: I don't know what happens in the endgame, but you've pretty much sold me. Quick question: blind fighting on gear/feat or will echolocation as a spell work?

 

EDIT2: Yeah, you weren't kidding. I went into that battle thinking I should shake up my spell selection but figuring I'd just try it fresh with my standard list. It was tough. I got to the last group, but I was pretty much down mostly from will save crap. I changed up my spell selection and the battle was trivial. Still dished out a lot of damage, though. Fun times. I can imagine these battles would be 12 shades of ugly on hard or unfair or whatever they call it.

 

EDIT3: Hmm, speaking of Pitax

I just took out Ivoretti. His fight was considerably easier than the gnome fight. In fact, I did the gnome fight first and then took on Ivoretti with a lot of my spells gone.

Great fun, though. Mind fog comes in hand in some of these fights with bad guys and ridiculously high saves.

 

EDIT4: This thread is the Flying Dutchman of the Obsidian forum. :glancing around to find out he's alone: Anyway, I laughed out loud at this dialogue option:

3. (Chaotic Evil) [Attack] "Pigs! I'll burn you!"

I mean, not the line I'm going to choose, and I don't want to burn down what are now my own buildings either, but it's pretty funny.

Edited December 22, 2018 by Epaminondas

[Hawke64]

I haven't tried to use Echolocation, so not sure, if it works.

 

On an unrelated note. It's possible to use Baleful Polymorph on bosses (though, DCs are high). I couldn't loot the body, but the dialogue was rather amusing in the context.

[the_dog_days]

I have a confused, love/hate relationship with this game. For 10 hours its awesome but then a bug or weird difficulty spike or lack of communication to the player ruins the experience. A lot of the game design lapses are when Owlcat forgets they're making a video game and not a tabletop session and there's no DM.

[Epaminondas]

I really love the game and I couldn't complain if I put it aside and never played it again at this point. However, I've taken over a second kingdom and it seems like I have this fog event that came out of nowhere and I don't have any quests that apply to it. I have no events for it. I'm studying an item I got that might help, I've got an event for some miners that might lead somewhere, but that's about it. I've pathed to every location I can see and recently did a tour of every area with higher perception to see if I can find anything new. That helped me finish some artefact, but that's about it. I guess I can just get my general up high enough to deal with this fog problem to see if that helps. Right now it's a 40 DC and my best guy for the job only has +18. If it were my regent or treasurer, I would have had a chance already. I feel like I should be at the endgame, but there are some regions I haven't annexed and it seems like I should be eventually, so maybe I've got a lot longer to go. I dunno.

[the_dog_days]

My kingdom was collapsing (no idea how), every enemy I face can somehow beat an AC of 33, and my character died for about the 20th time to some status effect that the game does a horrible job of indicating. Yeah, think I've got my fix for now. Definitely deleting that character regardless.

[Hawke64]

I really love the game and I couldn't complain if I put it aside and never played it again at this point. However, I've taken over a second kingdom and it seems like I have this fog event that came out of nowhere and I don't have any quests that apply to it. I have no events for it. I'm studying an item I got that might help, I've got an event for some miners that might lead somewhere, but that's about it. I've pathed to every location I can see and recently did a tour of every area with higher perception to see if I can find anything new. That helped me finish some artefact, but that's about it. I guess I can just get my general up high enough to deal with this fog problem to see if that helps. Right now it's a 40 DC and my best guy for the job only has +18. If it were my regent or treasurer, I would have had a chance already. I feel like I should be at the endgame, but there are some regions I haven't annexed and it seems like I should be eventually, so maybe I've got a lot longer to go. I dunno.

There should a portal at the Castle of Knives (at the middle of the map). Though, I don't remember any Fog events, only the First World/Fey, so it might be a different thing.

 

Edit. I've cleared "The Twice-Born Warlord" and tried to assassinate Jamandi Aldori and Natala Surtova (for RP reasons and because I didn't do it on the first PT). They happened to be immune to the Cloudkill spell and the aura of the Heart of Ira (which seems to be nerfed in the last patch).

"Deal with the Devil" progressed, unlike the previous time, though I've chosen the supposedly not-bugged option in one of the dialogues, so the "good" route might be still bugged.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Hawke64

[InsaneCommander]

My kingdom was collapsing (no idea how), every enemy I face can somehow beat an AC of 33, and my character died for about the 20th time to some status effect that the game does a horrible job of indicating. Yeah, think I've got my fix for now. Definitely deleting that character regardless.

 

Ihaven't played much yet, but just out of curiosity, was it always like that? Did you try different difficulty levels?

Edited December 26, 2018 by InsaneCommander

[the_dog_days]

 

My kingdom was collapsing (no idea how), every enemy I face can somehow beat an AC of 33, and my character died for about the 20th time to some status effect that the game does a horrible job of indicating. Yeah, think I've got my fix for now. Definitely deleting that character regardless.

 

Ihaven't played much yet, but just out of curiosity, was it always like that? Did you try different difficulty levels?

 

 

In combat I had it on Hard but since I don't like the kingdom management aspects of the game I switched that difficulty down to Auto which, although being a listed and unchangeable option, apparently isn't actually a feature yet. Nothing was 'autoing' my kingdom management. I was only halfway through Chapter 2 and was already about to lose the barony.

[Manveru123]

Your kingdom will never cause a game over on Auto. And if you're not on Auto, you can turn on "invincible kingdom" setting and it will be the same.

 

I personally am somewhat fond of Effortless.

 

Sounds like you got stat drained, these are the coloured dots next to your portrait. They go away after rest if you activate the option in menus.

[ShadySands]

How do you get Tristian to

destroy the occulus of Abbadon instead of stealing it?

 

 

In three games I haven't managed it so I get the fake version of a certain item later.

[Epaminondas]

In my game, I followed his advice about

the room with the three demons.

I caved it in instead (after I savsd and foind out what was inside, of course). Plus, I solved everything with him good style.

[ShadySands]

Thanks! I went ahead and went in anyways. I'll try that

[Saito Hikari]

I went in and still managed to get Tristian to comply at the end. I think I just said that I just wanted to take a look around.

 

I think the main requirement is that you had to have done his companion quests beforehand, agree with him in most of the dialogue prompts in the dungeon, and don't try any demonic rituals in the dungeon as well.

[Epaminondas]

I did the one ritual to access some sort of demon. The advantage in doing the three demon run isn't all that great. I managed to get a 'good' ending with all my companions except the undead chick. I don't know what I did wrong with her, but I'm going to try something different next time.

[Saito Hikari]

Yeah, it's really ambiguous if you got the good ending with Jaethal.

 

 

I apparently got a 'good' ending with Jaethal, but she still died in the end dungeon for reasons unknown. Reading into the matter, I suspect that I did everything mostly correctly with Jaethal (though she left my party until showing up again during chapter 6, I talked to people beforehand and they said that convincing her to spare her daughter only to get smited by her god was supposed to happen for her good ending - and this means going against her wishes and not letting her keep the reanimated girl early in the game, and then agreeing with her later in terms of not reviving the priestess).

 

However, in my playthrough, she still died in Chapter 6 right when she was supposed to rejoin the party. Looking into the matter further, it seems that I failed because I might not have gotten a -good enough- ending with Tristian, which resulted in Tristian still killing Jaethal despite later recognizing that she had been reincarnated into a follower of Pharmasa instead of being a servant of Urgathoa. Apparently, in order to resolve Tristian's quest in a way that both he and Jaethal survive the events of chapter 6, you have to convince Jaethal to spare her daughter AND from what I remember reading about a month and a half ago, Tristian had to resolve his quest in a super specific way that results in him directly intervening with the sacrifice, not the player.

 

 

The relationship between Jaethal and Tristian as it pertains to endgame is really, really obtuse. One of the frustrating things about Pathfinder is that you don't know if the consequences are a result of your decisions or it's because something bugged out along the way.

 

I still tried to get as much of a completionist run as I could, but I failed to get the secret ending and I failed with Jaethal, and the latter had no obvious reason why.

 

Coincidentally, the latest beta patch also changes the chapter 4 split decision. To explain the history of this decision and why it was hugely problematic (beyond being 'I hope you knew about this beforehand or else your party might get -really- screwed over at endgame' levels of bad design), it's basically gone into three phases.

 

 

Original phase: This phase was hugely lopsided against female player characters trying to romance Tristian. Before, female characters had to choose between continuing Tristian's romance and getting Amiri's good ending, while those not pursuing the romance were pretty much railroaded into addressing Amiri's half of the chapter first (as beyond the romance, there was no penalty for not pursuing Tristian's half of the chapter first, besides missing a minor conversation with the main antagonist).

 

Adjusted phase as of about a month ago: The developers then changed it so that not going after Tristian first locked you out of his later companion quests (despite the cultists and the Defaced Sisters being largely unrelated, not to mention said companion quests triggering a whole in-game year later), which meant that everyone had to choose between Amiri and Tristian at endgame. Woe to those who used BOTH characters (which is A LOT of people). Of course, this sucked for EVERYONE, and it caused everyone to think that it was now impossible to get the good endings for both characters in a single playthrough. Even though there's an achievement for having everyone survive endgame, minus Linzi apparently.

 

Now, the 1.2 beta phase: Going after Tristian first no longer auto-fails Amiri's companion quest afterwards, which now implies that you can get the good endings for both characters again. Or at the very least, Amiri gets a good enough ending to survive the events of chapter 6. Although this apparently doesn't reverse the earlier decision of Tristian's quests no longer being available if you didn't pursue him first, even though there is nothing about the decision that should logically lock you out of said quests in the first place.

 

Edited December 29, 2018 by Saito Hikari

[Epaminondas]

Yeah, that's just non-sense. However, Jaethal has a visceris reaction if she's in the party when Tristan does his end quest. Also, even though there's a 'good' option for Tristan. The neutral option when push comes to shove

which means making him convince the guy himself rather than you

is so much better written. I was genuinely touched at what they wrote for Tristan at that point. People want romances in games. Tristan's response is so nakedly sincere. If I'm looking at something personal and meaningful in a game, that's the direction I would go. In fact, most of the companion quests endings were quite well done. I hope to get the optimal ending for Jaethal next game, but I'm also willing to take what I have with the idea that not everyone can be saved every time. Anyhow, bud, thanks for sharing.

[Saito Hikari]

Yeah, the companions in Pathfinder are amazingly well-written, despite coming off as generic and tropey when you first meet them. Then you tackle the companion quests one step at a time when the game progresses in its timeline, and you start to realize that they all have actual depth to them. The companions' development throughout the entire game is one of the things this game did extremely well.

 

It also reminded me how disappointed I was in PoE2's companion quests.

[ShadySands]

It worked this time and he destroyed the item

 

Thanks