Is there a database of abilities, talents, etc.?

[Asanarama]

How can I efficiently look up, for example, every passive that increases Will? How about every per-encounter ability that provides Deflection as an AoE? Can't even do this sort of thing using the primitive (even when this game came out) find-on-page on the wiki, because sometimes, it uses the symbol and not the word. Besides, you'd have to check each class's page, each class's ability page, and the non-class-specific talents.

If that sort of thing isn’t possible, here's the problem I'm trying to solve: Normal mode is too easy for me, but in hard mode, if you don’t already know what kind of attacks each opponent does (I’d rather not play than have to continually look them up), then during combat, each character must:

1. Have good Will and Fortitude.
2. Be good at avoiding damage (Deflection and Reflex), able to take damage without dying more quickly than they can be healed (Endurance and Health), or maybe a combination of both.

Some of this can be addressed via equipment, but I’m not interested in an overall approach that requires specific equipment, at least not yet. Maybe on a subsequent play-through. Basic concepts are fine, like deciding that a character will be using medium shields and the style, and then adjusting their starting attributes in accordance with the corresponding Accuracy penalty and Reflex and Deflection bonuses.

Without reasonable access (as specified by example in the first paragraph) to the necessary information, I’d need to know what party composition to use and how to build each character, level by level.

Thanks.

[baldurs_gate_2]

Just take the character guides in this subforum and build it that way?

[Asanarama]

Which builds would work for me, based on what I wrote above? Or is there another way to address what I'm running into? I'd really like to enjoy the game, not do more research, so recommendations would be appreciated.

To be clear, a proper relational database of abilities, talents, etc., (one that Obsidian most likely created and updated as part of making and updating the game), would enable efficient research. Instead, whether it's looking through sometimes-poor descriptions of abilities on an apparently user-created wiki (Where is the official, complete documentation for this product?) or reading through character builds, I'm finding that I have to do way too much work to be able to enjoy the game. If anyone can help me skip that part, that would be great.

[Boeroer]

The gamepedia wiki is the official wiki for PoE. It's also pretty complete. You can't do queries on a wiki, sure, but which game besides maybe highly competitive ones with a league system etc. do have such data sources for "research"? With the full-text search you can do a lot of rel. quick research though. And if you find something new you can even contribute.

You can find nearly anything important in that wiki. Stuff which isn't there you can ask here and we'll be happy to help. There's little the old geezers here don't know about the game. 

Part of the fun of RPGs - at least for me - is finding out stuff by myself and don't put too much energy into theorycrafting THE perfect character before diving in. If that's not your thing and you expect that you must be able plan out everything without too much effort - and if you can't it kills the enjoyment of the game for you: then I'm afraid you'll have to move on. I don't know about any comprehensive PoE database that provides the kind of interface you need to do what you're asking for. 

Edited November 12, 2020 by Boeroer

[Asanarama]

Putting aside everything else, what do you (anyone reading this) recommend regarding the following; it’s similar to what I posted above, but I’ve added to it:

Normal mode is too easy for me, but it seems that in hard mode, *if*:

• You don’t already know what kind of attacks each opponent does and would much rather not look up such information.
• You don’t want to rely too heavily on reloading saved games. (After the first couple hours or so, getting to know the UI.)
• You don’t want to rely on specific pieces of equipment. (Specific as in stuff that has its own special name, like the Tall Grass Pike I read about in a build. I’d also include stuff that depends too much on luck to obtain.)

*Then* during combat, each character must:

• Have good Will and Fortitude (and Deflection?) to reduce the overall impact, on the party, of status ailments.
• Be good at avoiding damage (Deflection and Reflex), able to take damage without dying more quickly than they can be healed (Endurance (and Health to make this approach sustainable)), or maybe some of each.

Is that accurate overall? Maybe there’s some wiggle room. Maybe each character can have one low save, as long as one or more characters who don’t have the same low save would be able to, well, I don’t know exactly what, so I don’t know how to build for it.

Or is a different overall approach possible? Is there some way to keep opponents, even the ranged attackers hanging back, almost completely focused on one or more ~tanks? Except perhaps for occasional fights in which you have to pull out the big guns: per-rest abilities.

Is there an effective approach to this that includes at least some of the campaign characters?

[Asanarama]

“Part of the fun of RPGs - at least for me - is finding out stuff by myself and don't put too much energy into theorycrafting….”

Which stuff? To play without knowing the stuff that I don’t want to know, then you have to use a lower difficulty setting, rely more on reloading, and/or build your party based on the kind of stuff that I want to be able to look up efficiently. To me, knowing things like class abilities ahead of time doesn’t feel at all like a spoiler; it’s just stuff you have to know to be able to build reasonably effective characters and parties, especially if you don’t know the stuff that I don’t want to know.

“With the full-text search you can do a lot of rel. quick research though.”

It seems that the wiki at least sometimes uses, for example, the symbol for deflection while omitting the word “deflection”. It’s difficult to know how much of a problem this use of symbols is because—off the top of my head, I’ll say that it’s more like an unknown unknown than a known unknown. As such, it’s the kind of problem that even “the old geezers” might not be reasonably fully aware of. They might know the complete answer to a question, but they might not have a good sense of whether a search of the wiki would provide reasonably complete results.

‘…which game besides maybe highly competitive ones with a league system etc. do have such data sources for "research"?’

None that I’m aware of, but they should. Games have gotten too complex for this sort of thing to continue to be absent. Being able to quickly look up the kind of stuff I’ve specified would be extremely helpful, and my best guess is that while creating a game, designers and/or developers create and maintain exactly what I’m looking for, so it’s especially frustrating to not have it. How else do they keep track of all that information for themselves?

Maybe they even inject database information into their code as a sort of pre-compile step. I’ve done something similar, but a cheesy version. I created a query that created a line of code for each record in a table, each line including, as part of a string, information from the corresponding record. Then I pasted that into my project. It was sort of a work-around, but a great solution for something I knew I’d be doing only once per year. Heck, for a non-MMO, the database could simply be part of the game, used in real time as we play. MMO’s most likely have to be more performance-efficient.

[Boeroer]

K

[Asanarama]

LOLing at my own posts. I'm on a medication that sometimes, well, Boeroer's "K" says it perfectly, makes me think of when someone abruptly ends a conversation with "Okay. Bye."

In case anyone is interested, I found a work-around for searching the wiki. Although you can't search on the page for the icons for deflection, fortitude, etc., the web addresses of those icons contain the words. Well, at least the one for Reflex does, but they probably all do. For each ability page, I did "view page source" (ctrl-U in Chrome), pasted into Notepad (anything with word wrap works, although an autoformatting html editor would be best), and searched for the word "reflex". It's messy to look at, but it's better than having to go to the page for each ability.

[Asanarama]

Oh. Disclaimer though: I know of at least one instance in which the table of abilities is missing information. The wizard spells page doesn't mention that Slicken's prone effect is mitigated by Reflex, but Slicken's individual page does. I'm looking into fixing it. Can mostly copy from another spell. If anyone is already signed up though, feel free to beat me to it.