Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 5

[Gromnir]

7 minutes ago, Gorth said:

 

Edit: Hardest encounter so far (just landed on island 7):

 

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The first island, a place where you walk from a hallway into a larger room and have missile equipped enemies attacking you from the flanks when you try to enter the room from the doorway. No, didn't bring any protection from missile spells

 

 

the disappointing part for us were how few interesting (not necessarily difficult) encounters we had during the first nine isles... which 'cause o' the failure o' a boss to spawn is as far as we got. yeah, a few o' the undertows made us adjust our playstyle, and those will only be surprising on our first playthrough, but the dlc so far felt like little more than a mechanical and repetitive slog... albeit with a couple noteworthy items o' loot and a whole lotta sellable stuff. got a swell chapeaux and a pair o' gloves which is both improving our dual-wielding and high crit main character. there is also a nice heavy crossbow. haven't tested the longsword to see if the extra damage is added separate or not. all too often the additional damage is calculated in a new category and is frequent resisted by enemies. regardless, we will have a whole lotta extra coin when we finally make it to the abyss, and while xp growth in the isles is not particular quick, we nevertheless might just make level 15 as we enter the midnight fane. 

am s'posing the dlc serves its purpose if you are using it to test builds, but so far there were few encounters which impressed us insofar as level design. 

the game is especial buggy at the moment in many small and easily overlooked ways, but am expecting numerous such bugs will be addressed sooner as 'posed to later. the downside is, based on past owlcat experience, a few o' the new bugs will never be fixed. that said, am suspecting our dlc killing bug gets fixed soonish. am genuine impressed by owlcat speed in responding to wotr game stoppage obstacles.

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

Made it to the ninth island. Killed everything living, dead, undead and otherwise until the end. Clicking on the little hand icon says I need to kill the guardian and loot the place before I can leave the island. Guess what? No guardian. Just to confirm it's not a one off bug. Some reddit thread came closest with a non-official solution (not going to fiddle around with toybox):

>If you have Toybox you need to spawn Ywrag the Defiant if he doesnt appear on floor 9.

>His ID is something like DLC3_CR15_DemodandStringy_level8_Minibosss

 

Luckily I considered myself warned and save a game in a separate slot, where I had gone on shore to sell stuff to the chaplain in the harbour. I do lose a bit of progress (island nine), but at least it doesn't block my one and only game.

 

[Gromnir]

4 hours ago, Gorth said:

 

 

Luckily I considered myself warned and save a game in a separate slot, where I had gone on shore to sell stuff to the chaplain in the harbour. I do lose a bit of progress (island nine), but at least it doesn't block my one and only game.

 

experienced same problem at the same point, but we had no difficulty exiting the island at the start point and returning to the ship. as such we could, if we wished to, finish act iii. 

we got multiple saves, jic. got saves pre island 9 and saves after finishing sans the boss. am not certain how the fix will work. 

edit: depending on how long it takes to correct the problem, we may revisit your toybox solution, but that would involve installing toybox. regardless, is good to know we could possible fix the issue manually.

finished gray garrison with our bard and will play up to drezen in hope owlcat address (again) the dlc non-spawning boss problem.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited October 10, 2022 by Gromnir

[InsaneCommander]

I'm also playing the isles DLC. Made it to the third one so far. The Court Poet song helps a lot against people going mad when casting spells. I even forgot about it and got surprised by Ember attacking the party with her crossbow. Seelah's mercy was good too.

[InsaneCommander]

The survey, for those who haven't seen it in the other thread.

Don't forget to pick the options for puzzles and romancing Lady Konomi.

[MrBrown]

Pretty unusual for a company to mention the products of other companies. Or maybe they let the intern do the survey.

[bugarup]

It's pretty on brand I think, given how derivative those game are. 

[InsaneCommander]

Nine isles done. Made almost half a million gold selling the spoils. And I didn’t sell everything.

I went back to Drezen to check on the Crusade and there were all kinds of troubles. A Fort under siege, Arue under arrest and Hulrun wanting to be my best friend. Holy ****, the guy won’t change. He accepted he was wrong, but… wrong in not torturing the Desnans. Imagine if he announced himself before Anevia talked about Arue in prison. I’d probably have blamed him. He did ask about her later, when I found him near the obelisk.

[Gorth]

Got to meet Nocticula. I guess I'm not going to finish the last few treasure islands for now. Ah well... I don't know if I can continue my journey there later. It was accessible from chapter iii and iv. If not, I'll just play the DLC separately when it gets fixed (if ever). While robbing her place, I found second half of an important book. Decided to cooperate with Nocticula up the point of not sharing either half the book with her. She agreed to offer protection for my camp while I go somewhere to do some dirty work for her, because doing so is supposedly beneficial for both of us. The voyeur guy always hovering over my shoulder threw a hissy fit and went back to home to Iomedae or whatever. I suppose his role as my guardian angel in the city has come to an end

No missions marked as "chapter critical" left (besides jumping headfirst into a portal out of town). So, that's what's up for tonight.

Looks like if I had been a different mythic path, I could have flirted a bit with her. As is, she turned down all my attempts at getting to know her better

 

[Zoraptor]

I've just got to the Abyss proper. Beat Playful Doohickey on the way- probably less annoying than those augmented demons if only because I got ~60k xp instead of 240 a pop. I don't really like that style of battle though since you tend to end up using tactics cheesier than a Swiss dinner menu (in that case apart from the obvious buffs and death ward, summons, more summons when the first lot get oblierated, and spamming hellfire ray and boneshatter over the course of ten minutes while the melee/ ranged people missed 95% of the time). Quite an amusing experience though the first attempt when I didn't have any death wards left watching 100+ hp and 8 levels go with each hit.

Only thing I've done in the Abyss so far is pay a house call to Minagho then let her go after she blubbed about me being a big meany. Which was probably fair enough since most of the game has been incidentally chasing her around after she ran away. Also helps that I had zero sympathy for that inveterate whiner Vhane and her chosen assassin flipped on her after trivial pressure.

[bugarup]

Loaded up that Trickster with Persuasion 3 that I parked before the last location. He's not even that heavily invested in intimidation, but the game still 90% played itself. I think I'm glad that Persuasion 3 did not work before.

Still, mass suicide was better than when on Legend run everybody and their dog showed up to help, got en masse frightened by Balor's buddy Vavakia and ended up running all over the map like a horde of headless chicken stretching that fight into eternity. 

[xzar_monty]

5 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Quite an amusing experience though the first attempt when I didn't have any death wards left watching 100+ hp and 8 levels go with each hit.

It's an encounter that is very very likely to destroy anyone who doesn't metagame, on the first try. Granted, there are fairly obvious signs in the dungeon saying that something nasty is close, but still. On what difficulty did you ultimately do it? I confess I came down from Core quite a bit.

[Zoraptor]

I'm playing on the default difficulty now and haven't changed it for any particular encounters. Core was just too annoying for a first play through.

If i do a replay it will be on core, with a lot more metagaming since I'll know what to expect.

[InsaneCommander]

Isles 11 and 12 were buggy. Their magical effect would randomly stop and prevent Seelah from riding. And the exit didn't appear once, but I left using the icon in the entrance.

Last boss:

Spoiler

My first try was a failure, one of the enemies cast confusion and Ember was losing hp really fast. I reloaded and abused Dazzling Display...

 

[Gorth]

I am legend!

 

Not quite. I made it all the way through a terribly long dialogue, ended up being presented with a choice of either continue Trickster or become Legend. Then I got cold feet and hit Alt F4. I know, have to do that part all over again, but I wonder if it would be more fun to continue the Trickster line or the Legend line (as I had originally aimed for)

 

Edit: I decided to have a bit of a fun night out with The Fulsome Queen and lingering odor seems to have permanently damaged my charisma, so even with stat boosting trinkets, it limits my use of Trickster spells

[bugarup]

I read Trickster transitions well to Legend because you get to keep nearly all accumulated cheese. Also if you're melee you can pile up even MOAR cheese into Legend and end with walking cheat monstrosity like I did. 

Legend was my favorite path roleplay-wise. While giving Vorlesh the wasn't as satisfying as same gesture in Bloodlines on account of her being much worse written character, it was satisfying enough since I grew really tired of that vapid idiot hag by then. 

Edited October 13, 2022 by bugarup
I have no idea why the bird is this large but I'm leaving it :D

[xzar_monty]

Nice: there was a small new update today or yesterday, and it messed up my savegame: I'm still in Kenabres doing the early quests like Blackwing Library and so on, and immediately upon loading my save the game tells me that I've just completed the quest Banner Over the Citadel, having killed the giants. I even went back to my first surviving savegame where I'm still in the Shield Maze, and the same thing pops up there, too. I get the XP and everything (I know this because I gain a level upon loading my save), but clearly something is broken.

I suppose there's nothing to do but wait for Owlcat to fix it; I suppose there's no easy practical way to revert to the previous patch.

[InsaneCommander]

Midnight Fane

I'm trying to save the minotaur, but there is an invisible barrier preventing my party from approaching the enemies and the door to the passage around won't open. Is this normal?

Edit: with Haste I managed to defeat them from the other side of the barrier. This doesn't make sense. It must be a bug.

Edited October 14, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[Gorth]

I found out you need at least one stat to be 25 (any stat) before choosing between Legend or your current Mythic path. Had to reload and move a bit of stat boosting gear around (sorry mount, I need that STR more than you do!). The downside to having my stats split between STR, DEX and CON I suppose. It was funny observing the difference though. When I failed the test (and stayed Trickster), Drezen was one big drunken party. When succeeding and changing to Legend, they were all sober and serious

On the crusade management screen, it looks like my generals are currently unavailable for the next 3 days. Also, the old harpy Galfrey left only a weird mix of left over troops to defend Drezen and surroundings. Recruitment is definitely back on the agenda. Did next part of Arueshalaes personal quest (which was kind of adorable) and said my goodbyes to the woefully inept council (a Trickster thing). I'll use some sticky tape on the Codex and put it on bookshelf somewhere to be forgotten by now

 

[Gromnir]

13 hours ago, Gorth said:

On the crusade management screen, it looks like my generals are currently unavailable for the next 3 days. Also, the old harpy Galfrey left only a weird mix of left over troops to defend Drezen and surroundings. Recruitment is definitely back on the agenda. Did next part of Arueshalaes personal quest (which was kind of adorable) and said my goodbyes to the woefully inept council (a Trickster thing). I'll use some sticky tape on the Codex and put it on bookshelf somewhere to be forgotten by now

didn't wanna overt spoil, but the start-from-scratch situation in act v with your army is precise why we suggested that focus on upgrades and buildings should be your act iii crusade priority. build a sooper army in act iii only to need start with a handful o' scrubs in act v is disheartening if you ain't prepared. 

got a number o' bugs which has us temporarily holding off further gameplay. the isle nine spawn bug is disappointing 'cause from what am able to see from boardie feedback, this has been a problem since the dlc release. 

in part 'cause we weren't advancing our dirge bard or our act iii aeon, we built a few test mercs and companion builds; discovered new and annoying bugs in the process. built a couple judge characters which is effective save for their most important and useful ability: judgement aura is not swift. 'course neither is sentence. this serious undermines the usefulness o' judge. zen archer shortbow damage is not calculated correct as it should be = to monk unarmed damage 'stead o' 1d6.

based on past owlcat releases, we figured it would take a month post ee release to see wotr in decent condition, so we ain't surprised. the thing is, we were assuming far more changes to the base game as 'posed to quality o' life enhancements such as inventory search. 

regardless, am gonna wait a bit on an isle 9 solution before resorting to a mod fix. 

HA! Good Fun!

ps am gonna observe how in act v we typical end up with two main armies as the frequency with which we got three simultaneous enemy forces attacking increases. camp of the camp of the mammoth lords is a frequent target. so too is tower of yath.

[Gorth]

23 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

didn't wanna overt spoil, but the start-from-scratch situation in act v with your army is precise why we suggested that focus on upgrades and buildings should be your act iii crusade priority. build a sooper army in act iii only to need start with a handful o' scrubs in act v is disheartening if you ain't prepared. 

got a number o' bugs which has us temporarily holding off further gameplay. the isle nine spawn bug is disappointing 'cause from what am able to see from boardie feedback, this has been a problem since the dlc release. 

in part 'cause we weren't advancing our dirge bard or our act iii aeon, we built a few test mercs and companion builds; discovered new and annoying bugs in the process. built a couple judge characters which is effective save for their most important and useful ability: judgement aura is not swift. 'course neither is sentence. this serious undermines the usefulness o' judge. zen archer shortbow damage is not calculated correct as it should be = to monk unarmed damage 'stead o' 1d6.

based on past owlcat releases, we figured it would take a month post ee release to see wotr in decent condition, so we ain't surprised. the thing is, we were assuming far more changes to the base game as 'posed to quality o' life enhancements such as inventory search. 

regardless, am gonna wait a bit on an isle 9 solution before resorting to a mod fix. 

HA! Good Fun!

ps am gonna observe how in act v we typical end up with two main armies as the frequency with which we got three simultaneous enemy forces attacking increases. camp of the camp of the mammoth lords is a frequent target. so too is tower of yath.

I think I upgraded towers as much as I could. Some got upgraded to the next level and one a level further than that (bastion?). The weekly recruitment is... I had 3 useful generals (and one I parted because I can't dismiss him). Currently commanding one and a half army. Consolidating the best of the leftovers with new shield bearers, marksmen and various mercenary troops. Beaten a few sizeable demon armies and approaching my next tower to conquer on the western border. Just doing small stuff party wise, doing the companion missions. Got Regill's sorted out too...

I'm going to miss his velociraptor

It was the first thing he attacked and killed. I managed to get off one of those fun spells, whose name eludes me at the moment, which turned half the hell knights against each other

I guess next up is either Daeran's or Embers next personal quest

 

[Gromnir]

am not particular creative with the naming choices for our raptors-- clever girl or vince carter.

edit: additional vid o' vince going beast mode, albeit in an all-star game.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited October 14, 2022 by Gromnir

[Zoraptor]

Oh wow Wenduag betrayed me, again. I am stunned by this turn of events.

[InsaneCommander]

Not sure if Playful Darkness is supposed to be a challenge on normal, but seeing an enemy with 32 levels I used every single buff I had and summoned even level 1 dogs. The creature rushed in my direction, apparently ignoring the summons so I went for the good and old Dazzling Display and that was the end of the battle. I had to keep using it until it was dead. For whatever reason my Persuasion was considered 8 points smaller for the check, but it was still higher than the DC.

Edit: raised the difficulty to unfair and tried sneaking and using Dazzling Display before being noticed. It worked and my skill value was still above the DC. Killing it with the new AC and HP values is another matter.

Edit 2: Bad timing with the Dazzling Display resulted in my character now having -455 hp. No more unfair for me.

Edited October 14, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

Not sure if Playful Darkness is supposed to be a challenge on normal, but seeing an enemy with 32 levels I used every single buff I had and summoned even level 1 dogs. The creature rushed in my direction, apparently ignoring the summons so I went for the good and old Dazzling Display and that was the end of the battle. I had to keep using it until it was dead. For whatever reason my Persuasion was considered 8 points smaller for the check, but it was still higher than the DC.

Edit: raised the difficulty to unfair and tried sneaking and using Dazzling Display before being noticed. It worked and my skill value was still above the DC. Killing it with the new AC and HP values is another matter.

Edit 2: Bad timing with the Dazzling Display resulted in my character now having -455 hp. No more unfair for me.

Given all the buffs PD has on I think you're going to struggle with it regardless of difficulty unless you come prepared or use system mastery to achieve bonkers stats.