What are you Playing Now? Whatever happens, at least we're out of that mudhole, Gilded Vale.

[uuuhhii]

7 minutes ago, Hawke64 said:

 

Edited September 24, 2022 by uuuhhii
spider are far too jank to ever fix most of the bug or improve performance much

[majestic]

5 hours ago, ShadySands said:

I'm going to have to replay BG2 because I don't recognize the names of a few of the characters you guys are talking about.

Don't worry, some of the names we're talking about are just Beamdog's fanfic content, or mods.

5 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Viconia ( with Champions strength she is very effective )

You really do have a very odd idea of effective. You know what effective is? A Fighter/Cleric multiclass* dual wielding the Flail of the Ages and Defender of Easthaven with Draw Upon Holy Might, Improved Haste and Armor of Faith. You're still down two main hand attacks per round compared to a similar Fighter/Mage or Fighter/Druid** setup, but you're slowing the enemy, barely take any damage and can hit like a truck without bricking your spellcasting ability in the process.

*One of the few cases where the multiclass setup edges out over a respective dual class in my opinion. While a Fighter(9)/Mage DC setup makes arguably the strongest possible character you could play (particularily since the EE's revised Grand Mastery removes the need to dual at 13), the fact that being a Fighter/Cleric multiclass allows you to pick Hardiness, which stacks with both Armor of Faith and Defender of Easthaven, is a big deal. Enough to make the MC edge out over the DC varieties. Having access to Fighter HLAs makes this build win out, and Cleric HLAs don't have the spell slot issue that Mage MC HLAs have.

**Druids have Armor of the Faith too, but obviously can't use FoA or DoE. They have access to Belm as an off-hand piece and Iron Skin, making access to Fighter HLA not necessary, so any DC setup wins out, especially in light of their ridiculous experience table. The biggest downside is a Fighter/Druid DC's ludicrous stat spread - 17 WIS and 17 CHA required. Can dump a whole lot of INT as long as you stay away from Mind Flayers, but getting like 18/18/18/3/18/17 is kinda 'hard' (try impossible ). It's probably best to start this character in BG1 and fix stats up with the manuals (19 DEX makes no difference anyway, so starting with 17 DEX can get you 18 by the end of BG1). Weapon choices are somewhat limited, but if you don't mind waiting a whole lot and play with reduced party sizes, going for ** setups and a Fighter(13) DC will ease that problem - but there's not a whole lot of great weapons anyway, and in such a case you might as well use a multiclass. The Druid spells make up for it though.

edit: Holy crap this thread is good at eating posts. I had to post this four times before it actually went through. GG forum software, that's a new low, even for you.

Edited September 24, 2022 by majestic

[Humanoid]

Whatever happened to that 3E conversion mod for BG2 anyway?

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Don't worry, some of the names we're talking about are just Beamdog's fanfic content, or mods.

You really do have a very odd idea of effective. You know what effective is? A Fighter/Cleric multiclass* dual wielding the Flail of the Ages and Defender of Easthaven with Draw Upon Holy Might, Improved Haste and Armor of Faith. You're still down two main hand attacks per round compared to a similar Fighter/Mage or Fighter/Druid** setup, but you're slowing the enemy, barely take any damage and can hit like a truck without bricking your spellcasting ability in the process.

*One of the few cases where the multiclass setup edges out over a respective dual class in my opinion. While a Fighter(9)/Mage DC setup makes arguably the strongest possible character you could play (particularily since the EE's revised Grand Mastery removes the need to dual at 13), the fact that being a Fighter/Cleric multiclass allows you to pick Hardiness, which stacks with both Armor of Faith and Defender of Easthaven, is a big deal. Enough to make the MC edge out over the DC varieties. Having access to Fighter HLAs makes this build win out, and Cleric HLAs don't have the spell slot issue that Mage MC HLAs have.

**Druids have Armor of the Faith too, but obviously can't use FoA or DoE. They have access to Belm as an off-hand piece and Iron Skin, making access to Fighter HLA not necessary, so any DC setup wins out, especially in light of their ridiculous experience table. The biggest downside is a Fighter/Druid DC's ludicrous stat spread - 17 WIS and 17 CHA required. Can dump a whole lot of INT as long as you stay away from Mind Flayers, but getting like 18/18/18/3/18/17 is kinda 'hard' (try impossible ). It's probably best to start this character in BG1 and fix stats up with the manuals (19 DEX makes no difference anyway, so starting with 17 DEX can get you 18 by the end of BG1). Weapon choices are somewhat limited, but if you don't mind waiting a whole lot and play with reduced party sizes, going for ** setups and a Fighter(13) DC will ease that problem - but there's not a whole lot of great weapons anyway, and in such a case you might as well use a multiclass. The Druid spells make up for it though.

edit: Holy crap this thread is good at eating posts. I had to post this four times before it actually went through. GG forum software, that's a new low, even for you.

I dont replay games generally, I played BG2 only once before 12 years ago or so, or become deeply engrossed in rulesets. So your advice is prudent and makes sense but I am happy with my party choices and class choices

I also dont like dual class, I prefer one class and I focus on that even though dual class has its clear advantages

And then I must clarify, my 3 rule list of party choice is  significance but they all part of my decision around who I select

So for example I selected Viconia not just for her healing abilities but because of the Romance and overall RP contribution she provides. There are better healers Im sure but she would always be my first choice 

The narrative and how it unfolds based on my choices is a huge part  of the  significance and importance of why I play RPG and in party based RPG the selection of party members influences this overall journey and fun factor 

 

 

[MrBrown]

2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Whatever happened to that 3E conversion mod for BG2 anyway?

Dead. The main guy disappeared, too. It was quite a lot of work and not that much people interested, so I'm not surprised.

[Gorth]

21 minutes ago, MrBrown said:

Dead. The main guy disappeared, too. It was quite a lot of work and not that much people interested, so I'm not surprised.

I think a remake of BG1+2 in the Unity Engine that OwlCat uses could be "viable" (from a gaming point, not necessarily from selling/commercial point).

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 hours ago, majestic said:

Don't worry, some of the names we're talking about are just Beamdog's fanfic content, or mods.

Let's be real, even the original bg2 companions were cheesy as hell in a way that puts a lot of fanfic to shame.

4 hours ago, majestic said:

You know what effective is?

Cheating. Turn Viccy into a Mage/Cleric or whatever you want. It beats the hell out of dragging Anomen along.

1 hour ago, Gorth said:

I think a remake of BG1+2 in the Unity Engine that OwlCat uses could be "viable" (from a gaming point, not necessarily from selling/commercial point).

If you mean thay BG1+2 could work as something like Owlfinder Pathcat, then yeah it could. But the effort of doing it would be immense and with BG3 dropping soon those coastal wizards would probably not want to do that.

[InsaneCommander]

4 hours ago, KP From Another World said:

Cheating. Turn Viccy into a Mage/Cleric or whatever you want. It beats the hell out of dragging Anomen along.

When I played the EE, I cheated Minsc's stats and turned him into a Ranger/Cleric who had access to all Divine spells.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

12 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

When I played the EE, I cheated Minsc's stats and turned him into a Ranger/Cleric who had access to all Divine spells.

[Sarex]

The only cheat I always did was to max out the ability score on the PC, why roll a 100 times when you can just edit it the first time.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

18 minutes ago, Sarex said:

The only cheat I always did was to max out the ability score on the PC, why roll a 100 times when you can just edit it the first time.

You naughty Sarex ! Surly you must roll 10000000s of times to get the stats you want ?

But for real, the game is ancient at this point and you've probably done several playthroughs so why stick with vanilla? Want to explore some of the unused class combos or kits? Go ahead, Swashbuckler/Mage multiclass Imoen or whatever you want to do. Mod the **** out of the game to boot. That you're having fun is what matters most.

[InsaneCommander]

29 minutes ago, Sarex said:

The only cheat I always did was to max out the ability score on the PC, why roll a 100 times when you can just edit it the first time.

I remember seeing once an "auto roll" program that would keep rerolling and automatically store the best results. Isn't it easier to go ahead and cheat?

 

[Sarex]

28 minutes ago, KP From Another World said:

You naughty Sarex ! Surly you must roll 10000000s of times to get the stats you want ?

But for real, the game is ancient at this point and you've probably done several playthroughs so why stick with vanilla? Want to explore some of the unused class combos or kits? Go ahead, Swashbuckler/Mage multiclass Imoen or whatever you want to do. Mod the **** out of the game to boot. That you're having fun is what matters most.

At one point I will have another playthrough for sure. It's just that I am not one for replays and even when I do so I usually just go for the same thing, a Paladin. This is not exclusive to (c)RPGs, even with builder games I usually take a long break before coming back for another run. Nowadays, sadly, I am taking long breaks playing games at all and I don't know why because I still love playing them. Same with books. It's not like I don't have time either, but I guess one needs energy even for those things.

@InsaneCommander Exactly.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Sarex

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

15 minutes ago, Sarex said:

At one point I will have another playthrough for sure. It's just that I am not one for replays and even when I do so I usually just go for the same thing, a Paladin. This is not exclusive to (c)RPGs, even with builder games I usually take a long break before come back for another run. Nowadays, sadly, I am taking long breaks playing games at all and I don't know why because I still love playing them. Same with books. It's not like I don't have time either, but I guess one needs energy even for those things.

@InsaneCommander Exactly.

I generally tend to plan out several playthroughs at once but have trouble going through with it. Like with WotR I've got a whopping six planned out (after the EE and DLC wave 2 drops) but will likely get derailed and do something else. My go to class is usually whatever kind of gish is avaliable (so Fighter/Mage for BG and Magus for Pathfinder), but I'll try to play differently for subsequent playthroughs. Generally I have the hardest time playing as Clerics for whatever reason, despite their mechanical strengths they just don't do it for me like mages, warriors, or rogues.

I haven't managed to read a novel in years and have been occupied more with cinema and TV than games lately lmao. It's just harder to pull an all-nighter into a game than it was before, but give me some weird cinema like soviet era sci-fi or K-horror and I will be up all night.

[InsaneCommander]

5 minutes ago, KP From Another World said:

I generally tend to plan out several playthroughs at once but have trouble going through with it. Like with WotR I've got a whopping six planned out (after the EE and DLC wave 2 drops) but will likely get derailed and do something else. My go to class is usually whatever kind of gish is avaliable (so Fighter/Mage for BG and Magus for Pathfinder), but I'll try to play differently for subsequent playthroughs. Generally I have the hardest time playing as Clerics for whatever reason, despite their mechanical strengths they just don't do it for me like mages, warriors, or rogues.

I haven't managed to read a novel in years and have been occupied more with cinema and TV than games lately lmao. It's just harder to pull an all-nighter into a game than it was before, but give me some weird cinema like soviet era sci-fi or K-horror and I will be up all night.

A whopping 6?

I have 10 playthroughs planned for WotR. One for each alignment. And my character from Kingmaker, that would greatly benefit from the Mythical feats and abilities. Realistically though, I think I'll play only the first 3.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 minute ago, InsaneCommander said:

A whopping 6?

I have 10 playthroughs planned for WotR. One for each alignment. And my character from Kingmaker, that would greatly benefit from the Mythical feats and abilities. Realistically though, I think I'll play only the first 3.

I wanted to hit the 6 mythics paths with all the Good and Evil alignments, though Aeon turned into the secret path. Not really interested in becoming a Dragon or Swarm and if anything I'd bootstrap fork the Legend from one of the other playthroughs.

[InsaneCommander]

Just now, KP From Another World said:

I wanted to hit the 6 mythics paths with all the Good and Evil alignments, though Aeon turned into the secret path. Not really interested in becoming a Dragon or Swarm and if anything I'd bootstrap fork the Legend from one of the other playthroughs.

I'm not planning a Swarm playthrough. And my True Neutral character might actually be LN and be one of those cheating high AC characters.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

I'm not planning a Swarm playthrough. And my True Neutral character might actually be LN and be one of those cheating high AC characters.

With Instinctual Warrior Barbarian or (if data mining turns put to be right) Shifter, you can do the Wisdom to AC thing on non-lawfuls. Of course the Scaled Fist + Paladin + (Nature) Oracle to get CHA to saves and 2x CHA to AC is bonkers broken and you gotta be LG to pull that off.

[Keyrock]

I finished Steelrising. As I've written before, this game is a soulslike and most closely resembles Bloodborne. The game looks good, sounds great, and plays really well. The controls, at least on a Xbox controller, feel intuitive and everything is responsive. Hitboxes seem reasonable and feedback is on point. The story is decent, it takes a while to get going, but once it does it's entertaining enough. Spiders' wont win any awards for writing, the narrative isn't compelling enough to keep you going were the gameplay crappy, but luckily the gameplay is quite good and the narrative solid enough to not detract from it. My biggest criticism is that the game is quite easy for a soulslike. It could just be my build and/or the fact that I did all the side quests and was fairly OP near the end, but this was a breeze on default difficulty compared to other soulslikes. I could count all my deaths on two hands, for a soulslike that's not a lot. The most important thing, though, is that the game is really really fun to play. It never once felt like a chore and I was constantly eager to get back to playing it.

I will almost certainly run through the game again at some point. The NG+ update is supposedly arriving in less than a week, but I'll likely wait until November for the DLC story to arrive.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Keyrock

[Malcador]

Return to Monkey Island's ending is crap, but to be expected.  Game was very easy, I'd thought the keys puzzles would be harder, one part is just carrying a document over and then getting one just like that.  The last puzzles are a bit tricky but are decent enough. 

 

Should have refunded this and got it on a sale, $30 was too much to pay (yes, yes, the SoMI quote..)

[ShadySands]

My helf burg is level 11 and almost done with Ered Luin. I'm rocking the new XP disabling pocket item because I'm doing all the starter areas somewhat on level. At least before the quests turn grey.

[Hurlshort]

I am running errands for people in Minas Tirith. I mean, sure there is a massive army camped outside, but these guys have a bet as to whether a chicken thrown from the top of the pier will get an updraft. I had to oblige. Plus Peregrin Took wanted to have a picnic. It's been delightful, although it also has some lag issues. 

I'm level 104 now. I also started a loremaster halfling, but I've been focused mostly on my Captain of Man.

[Malcador]

Back to Farthest Frontier, food spoilage is a hassle, for now just brute forcing past it.  Game really hates me being a farmer, endless disease and pestilence even when I leave it fallow for 2 seasons. 

Still is fun though, even if it's just Banished but a bit deeper.

[Sarex]

6 hours ago, Malcador said:

Still is fun though, even if it's just Banished but a bit deeper.

But that was the biggest flaw of Banished, that it lacked depth.

[Malcador]

14 minutes ago, Sarex said:

But that was the biggest flaw of Banished, that it lacked depth.

Maybe, I'm very charitable to Banished as it's done by one guy who hit what he aimed at.  Doesn't really seem like FF is that much deeper, the things I recall are : getting raided (also what's with my lazy ass guards, village's being raided I need to manually scramble them ? ), food spoiling and crop disease. 

For the crops, I was expecting to need seeds to start off as well, maybe that's coming in later releases.