Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 6

[kanisatha]

So here's a question about the so-called 'secret ending': it is my understanding that you have to enter Threshold on specifc dates that are in the fourth month. In Act 5 I am now in the ninth month. If I were to keep skipping days to get to the fourth month there is no way I can stretch out capturing forts and killing demon armies for that long. So am I screwed on crusade morale once I have no more enemies to defeat?

[Sarex]

57 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

So here's a question about the so-called 'secret ending': it is my understanding that you have to enter Threshold on specifc dates that are in the fourth month. In Act 5 I am now in the ninth month. If I were to keep skipping days to get to the fourth month there is no way I can stretch out capturing forts and killing demon armies for that long. So am I screwed on crusade morale once I have no more enemies to defeat?

Yep. You will get spawning enemies, but you need to capture forts too. I just locked the crusade morale.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Sarex

[kanisatha]

8 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Yep. You will get spawning enemies, but you need to capture forts too. I just locked the crusade morale.

How do you "lock" the crusade morale?

[Sarex]

2 hours ago, kanisatha said:

How do you "lock" the crusade morale?

With mods. I used toybox.

[Gromnir]

6 hours ago, kanisatha said:

So here's a question about the so-called 'secret ending': it is my understanding that you have to enter Threshold on specifc dates that are in the fourth month. In Act 5 I am now in the ninth month. If I were to keep skipping days to get to the fourth month there is no way I can stretch out capturing forts and killing demon armies for that long. So am I screwed on crusade morale once I have no more enemies to defeat?

solution from +6 months previous to today:

it is possible to rest at threshold. so, rest for the needed months at threshold. your crusade morale will drop for failure to take new forts, but w/o reentering the world map you won't suffer additional army attacks. functionally there is no penalty for low morale if you never leave threshold while advancing the calendar.

HA! Good Fun!

[InsaneCommander]

Found out that the storm that took the airship cost me much more than 2 weeks. This possibility was mentioned before and I didn’t see it coming. Anyway, a lot of people missed me, including Hepzamirah, the Hand and, who would have guessed, Galfrey. Or at least that is what you can assume based on the current news from Golarion.

Having to fight Baphomet was unexpected, and I had already used most of my high level spells, but he is vulnerable to Dazzling Display, so I literally forced him to run away.

When Nocticula offered her gift, I googled it to see what it was about and ended up learning that the only problems for a good character would be irritating Iomedae and making the secret ending more difficult to achieve. I wouldn’t mind either* so I was tempted to accept Nocticula’s gift, but I refused because of Arue’s romance (more specifically because of roleplaying, not sure if it affects the romance).

*I already know what that ending is, though I don’t know how to get it, and I’m not going for it anyway.

Btw, Baphomet reminded me of that meme in the Ukraine thread. He was once the second strongest being in the Abyss. Now he is the second in the Midnight Isles. And when Nocticula makes her move, I suppose he will be the second most powerful being in his own realm.

[Gorth]

Your strength of will is commendable… no way I could turn down a gift from such a hot girl

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

..but I refused because of Arue’s romance (more specifically because of roleplaying, not sure if it affects the romance).

It doesn't, since I accepted the gift and romanced her.

(Annoying Iomedae was an absolute bonus)

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, Gorth said:

Your strength of will is commendable… no way I could turn down a gift from such a hot girl

Gromnir's three unbreakables:

thou shalt not engage in time travel other than mundane, linear and unidirectional.

thou shalt not make bargains with your soul as consideration.

thou shalt not accept boons granted by magical entities or items.

admitted, have only had the opportunity to apply one o' the aforementioned, but our resolve is firm insofar as all three. ordinarily we try and hold to the unbreakables even in games.

HA! Good Fun!

[uuuhhii]

baphomet could be the peak of wotr

owlcat wasted so much potential of labyrinth

[213374U]

Really struggling to find a reason to play this game on anything above story, or without ToyBox murderhobo mode on. Random spiders with 45 AC and 20-50% undispellable concealment? Incorporeal minotaurs whose only weak spot is a +15 fort save but it doesn't really matter because they are undead so immune to 99% of effects that call a fort save anyway? 300hp "outsiders" that you can't dismiss and heal back to full after going down (effectively doubling their HP)? None of this is really hard -- I can spam hellfire rays with Ember or heightened disintegrate with KC to deal with the minotaurs for example, but I'd have to rest frequently, which is penalized by the corruption nonsense, which in turn forces me to go back to Drezen or buy sanctuaries in nearby forts... etc. It's a slog and much like the whole HoMM-lite mode, feels like it's fundamentally intended to waste my time. It's funny because boss fights are generally fun. It's some of the regular dungeon trash that I'm finding almost unsurmountably boring to get through.

But in spite of the excessive timesink design, the game is fantastic and I'm loving it. Top notch soundtrack too. Just wish they didn't balance it for the solo unfair youtuber crowd or something. 

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

Really struggling to find a reason to play this game on anything above story, or without ToyBox murderhobo mode on. Random spiders with 45 AC and 20-50% undispellable concealment? Incorporeal minotaurs whose only weak spot is a +15 fort save but it doesn't really matter because they are undead so immune to 99% of effects that call a fort save anyway? 300hp "outsiders" that you can't dismiss and heal back to full after going down (effectively doubling their HP)? None of this is really hard -- I can spam hellfire rays with Ember or heightened disintegrate with KC to deal with the minotaurs for example, but I'd have to rest frequently, which is penalized by the corruption nonsense, which in turn forces me to go back to Drezen or buy sanctuaries in nearby forts... etc. It's a slog and much like the whole HoMM-lite mode, feels like it's fundamentally intended to waste my time. It's funny because boss fights are generally fun. It's some of the regular dungeon trash that I'm finding almost unsurmountably boring to get through.

But in spite of the excessive timesink design, the game is fantastic and I'm loving it. Top notch soundtrack too. Just wish they didn't balance it for the solo unfair youtuber crowd or something. 

I personally liked the difficulty curve, early on every fight needed thinking and later in the game you just steamroll the trashmobs. My complaint is that the boss fights are not hard enough, or to be more precise certain boss fights along the main quest line (the optional bosses are great). I do understand why they did it, as they want people to finish the game and these type of games already have low percentage of people who do that anyways.

I will not say anything bad about the mini game on the world map because for all it's faults it's still in another dimension compared to what you were forced to go through in Kingmaker...

My "complaint" is that the game is too long, which is not to say that I didn't like the amount of content, but I feel like they could have improved a lot of things by spending less time on quantity and more on quality.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Sarex

[213374U]

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

I personally liked the difficulty curve, early on every fight needed thinking and later in the game you just steamroll the trashmobs. My complaint is that the boss fights are not hard enough, or to be more precise certain boss fights along the main quest line (the optional bosses are great). I do understand why they did it, as they want people to finish the game and these type of games already have low percentage of people who do that anyways.

I will not say anything bad about the mini game on the world map because for all it's faults it's still in another dimension compared to what you were forced to go through in Kingmaker...

My "complaint" is that the game is too long, which is not to say that I didn't like the amount of content, but I feel like they could have improved a lot of things by spending less time on quantity and more on quality.

Fair enough. I guess I should just accept that I enjoy the idea of playing D&D-based computer games more than I enjoy actually playing them, given the focus on logistics rather than tactics, and the utter paranoia-inducing dice dynamics. I get your point about boss fights, I've had the same experience when going in with a full stack of short duration buffs and the understanding that I don't need to save anything for later. I've self imposed the restriction to only cast short duration buffs after combat starts. I play turn-based and more often than not start with a charge -affording a surprise round- so I'm not handicapping myself too much, I think.

As for the crusade mode, I haven't played Kingmaker so I can't speak to how much better it is than whatever that one had. Not being "as bad as" is hardly glowing praise, though.

Edited July 1, 2023 by 213374U

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 hours ago, 213374U said:

Just wish they didn't balance it for the solo unfair youtuber crowd or something. 

If you compare the stats of WotR monsters to the Pathfinder pnp source, a mid-late game demon from a random encounter on Core would probably be able to wipe out pnp Cthullu. 

But despite wonky balance and weird writing it's still one of the best games I've played in a long time. Somehow it beats games that I should objectively like better and I have no idea why.

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

My "complaint" is that the game is too long, which is not to say that I didn't like the amount of content, but I feel like they could have improved a lot of things by spending less time on quantity and more on quality.

It is and it isn't, there's some stuff I wish there would have been a lot more of and could have used more stuff. Like mythic paths that aren't Angel or Demon.

But generally I agree, it's a very long game which takes commitment to finishing. Not at all helped by rerollitis.

Anyways I'm finished with a lot of the rush from work and with the heat dome making being outside miserable it's time to finally embrace being an undead monster and do a Lich run. For real this time. I hope.

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

Fair enough.

the terrible reality is it isn't fair for a significant number o' players. wotr is not genuine balanced in any meaningful way as everything busted and broken from pnp were simple ported into owlcat's version o' the pathfinder rules (garbage no living gm would ever allow) plus the even more busted owlcat original mythic content were glomped on to make the situation more complex, creating even more outrageous avenues for exploitation.

the game is not balanced, but it does seem to be designed with unfair as the starting point. unfair battles, not surprising, require a player to utilize numerous exploits to survive boss battles, and the most challenging encounters on unfair is either at the lowest levels (where the player has the fewest character development options) or ambushes which preclude prebuffing. have seen time and again when boardies complain 'bout the stat bloat of bosses and use unfair as the measure, but the players who know owlcat's version of pathfinder, and all the item and spell exploits, is maybe a bit challenged by unfair boss battles. check out the innumerable unfair boss fight battle videos available online if you are criminally bored. baphomet, deskari, inevitable darkness and near any boss you care to name may be dispatched within a couple rounds on unfair by players who do not even bother with min-maxing, just so long as they understand what stacks and what exploits exist.

example: the spectral minotaur guardian you mention is a declawed **** cat for a party which includes a skald capable o' providing massive partywide ab bonuses as well as the bane of spirit ring.

'course why would a casual player know how op is bane of spirit or how to use skalds to roll stomp through melee? 

the game were designed for the people who wanna beat unfair, and the game is only a smidge o' a challenge for those people 'cause the game suffers from ridiculous effective exploits. additionally, wotr and kingmaker enjoy some kinda "hardcore" reputation and the fanbase actual defends the bassackwards scaling implemented in the pathfinder titles. if battles are too tough, then you just didn't bother to learn the nuances of the system and that is on you... says teh rehul fans. the problem is the challenges is scaled down from unfair. playful darkness and demon lords present the exact same challenges and have the same powers on unfair as core, but core reduces hp, saves and attribute scores. a player facing core playful darkness is therefore needing embrace many o' the same exploits as the player facing an unfair playful darkness. wotr unnecessarily punishes casual players. wotr difficulty scaling is not necessary, but the approach is undeniably simple to implement and as wotr fans actual defend the curious approach as a feature rather than a flaw, owlcat has zero motivation to change their approach.

am not saying the game is devoid o' fun. given the number o' hours we have invested in the title, such a position would be bordering on the insane. nevertheless, the title has multiple serious narrative and mechanics flaws in addition to the fact the difficulty scaling is the result o' lazy design which unnecessarily punishes many owlcat customers.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited July 1, 2023 by Gromnir

[InsaneCommander]

I play on normal but I avoid resting as much as possible and try to save the stronger spells for bosses, which means I don't use them that often. Also, I'm not a fan of buffing dozens* of spells even with the extended 24 hour duration, so that kind of balance things well enough for me. In future playthroughs I'll increase the difficulty, though.

*After 6 months away from the game (ironically the same time lost in game), I completely forgot about the order to cast spells, so I actually made a list and here is the result: 40 spells for Sosiel (not counting the ones that last less than 24 h) and 3-8 spells for the other characters. That is almost twice what is seen in that Overlord video that has been posted at least three times here, in one thread or another.

21 hours ago, Gorth said:

Your strength of will is commendable… no way I could turn down a gift from such a hot girl

I wonder how many of the people would have switched sides on the spot if Nocticula had showed up in Kenabres instead of Deskari.

2 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

If you compare the stats of WotR monsters to the Pathfinder pnp source, a mid-late game demon from a random encounter on Core would probably be able to wipe out pnp Cthullu.

Seelah's horse has better AC. Also, no immunity to fear? He would fall for my Dazzling Display.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

11 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

That is almost twice what is seen in that Overlord video that has been posted at least three times here, in one thread or another.

 

14 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Seelah's horse has better AC. Also, no immunity to fear? He would fall for my Dazzling Display.

To be fair Iomeneigh can have good AC, maybe not monk dip + crane style good but better than Seelah at least. And I think fear is supposed to be mind affecting but eh, Owlbrew is weird.

Regardless, I think that Owlbrew Pathfinder expects substantial optimization and cheese to make it on higher difficulties (I'm including Core here, despite that being the "normal" difficulty by the text), too much in my opinion. It's not very intuitive and user friendly (of note, last I looked Outflank and Spell Penetration aren't recommended feats, despite most advice putting them as premium for melee and casters respectively), so I feel for people unfamiliar with Owlbrew coming in and getting rocked by the game because they weren't expecting it to play the way it does.

[InsaneCommander]

3 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

And I think fear is supposed to be mind affecting but eh, Owlbrew is weird.

That is correct. No Dazzling Display. We can still scare him with Nenio's quest though.

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

To be fair Iomeneigh can have good AC, maybe not monk dip + crane style good but better than Seelah at least. 

Regardless, I think that Owlbrew Pathfinder expects substantial optimization

been down this road more than once. 

optimization is not needed, which is why @majestic and Gromnir disagree on arue builds and likely have very different end game parties. in fact, am not sure we ever genuine optimize. however, there are a handful o' exploits, items, abilities and whatnot which is so disproportionate effective you are likely to see builds which include such at higher difficulties. how many people doing unfair skip having a character with high wisdom and the community domain? you don't need a character in the party capable of casting mark of justice, but am suspecting most do. you don't need camellia or ember to do hexes, but...

similar, Gromnir almost always has sosiel in our party and he is either taking one level o' thug ('cause as far back as we can recall, in pathfinder there were a running joke 'bout being able to fear lock asmodeus and similar entities with intimidation, y'know, 'cause da rulez,) or crossblood sorc to cast ice spells... neither o' which is gonna be considered optimal builds by most folks, but we breeze through the game on hard difficulties and am able to do all boss battles on unfair. 

an optimized enchanter capable o' taking advantage of the best joke exploit is not gonna be starting with a skald, but we had great success going that route.

we like hand axes for dual wielding... 'cause. 

we never drop intelligence to seven with a human character. 

etc.

optimization is so not necessary even on unfair, but there are exploits, items, schemes and abilities which is so effective in wotr, you is far more likely to see 'em in an unfair party than not.

is also nothing which prevents a player from having seelah take oracle and scaled fist to end up with comical ac far surpassing a horse mount, but most people ain't gonna do that... and is probable a waste to try and focus on maximizing seelah ac 'cause a tank becomes less important as the game progresses and seelah's best potential party contributions ain't her tankiness anyway.  also while it is true that with items, spells, and abilities from multiclassing and proper feat choices you may increase seelah's tankiness to impressive levels, she is nowhere near as effective as a leopard animal companion at low levels, and low level wotr on high difficulties is where wotr is the most challenging.

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

4 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

I wonder how many of the people would have switched sides on the spot if Nocticula had showed up in Kenabres instead of Deskari.

She does have a certain charm

 

I doubt I'll do the same in my current Lich play through. I'll refrain from various bad "boner" jokes, even if my characters avatar is looking less and less lively (I'll probably end up looking like a skeleton)

[xzar_monty]

13 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

It is and it isn't, there's some stuff I wish there would have been a lot more of and could have used more stuff. Like mythic paths that aren't Angel or Demon.

But generally I agree, it's a very long game which takes commitment to finishing. Not at all helped by rerollitis.

It was never going to and will not happen, of course, but I think the game would be twice as good as it now is if half the battles were removed. Having a city absolutely full of fighting is fair enough if it's Drezen and you have to take it back from the demons, but to then make most areas Drezen-like in the amount of fighting you have to do is simply a bad idea, in my opinion. PoE suffered from the same disease with most outdoor areas being full of enemies (that gave you essentially no XP and rarely any loot, either!) but this problem was marvelously well fixed for Deadfire.

So, WotR with all the boss fights and other major fights intact but with all other battling cut by half... now that would be great.

As for the difficulty: I was on Core up until the Abyss (except for Playful Darkness, which I did on Story mode after a number of miserably failed attempts), but I found myself turning the difficulty down quite a bit after a few battles in the Abyss. They were too annoying (in an annoying way), and I was also getting annoyed by the fighting in general (see above).

It's an interesting game in the sense that it has more flaws than you can point at but it's still pretty damn good, which is rare indeed.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

8 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

That is correct. No Dazzling Display. We can still scare him with Nenio's quest though.

Eh, I'm pretty sure the great dreamer would just look up a guide.

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

I think the game would be twice as good as it now is if half the battles were removed.

I'd go as high as 2/3rds of the encounters getting axed, or at least get compressed together. For the most part a lot of individual battles are just bland and could benefit from some variety to make it more interesting.

[xzar_monty]

31 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I'd go as high as 2/3rds of the encounters getting axed, or at least get compressed together. For the most part a lot of individual battles are just bland and could benefit from some variety to make it more interesting.

Yeah, I'd have nothing against that, either.

Some of the random encounters are asinine to the max: it's simply unfathomable that an experienced group of highly perceptive adventurers could suddenly find themselves surrounded by a group of ash giants who are all less than 30ft away, for instance. I mean, it just wouldn't happen no matter what. But most of the random encounters are a variation on that kind of theme.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I'd go as high as 2/3rds of the encounters getting axed, or at least get compressed together. For the most part a lot of individual battles are just bland and could benefit from some variety to make it more interesting.

I'm not sure if you are including questlines in encounters, but I would. Than again it's a big question mark if having more time would equal more quality.

I'm pretty sure that there is nothing much that could be done around the art style/environment graphics, as they probably don't have the people capable of it. I still wish they would go for true isometric like PoE.

Combat encounters would become better by the simple fact that there would be less of them and thus less repetition. Not even counting the extra time for polish and new ideas.

What they could change, and I think this would make a huge difference to the player experience, is make the environment more reactive to player actions and the story. A simple example is having different versions of Drezen throughout the story, or if you rebuild or destroy some location it's actually presented as such. This was a big let down in Kingmaker for me too, especially considering how building was a big part of it.

Apart from the above, the dialogue could also use some work, or to be more precise, the alignment dialogues are horrific (literally in some cases).

Edited July 2, 2023 by Sarex

[Gromnir]

10 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Yeah, I'd have nothing against that, either.

Some of the random encounters are asinine to the max: it's simply unfathomable that an experienced group of highly perceptive adventurers could suddenly find themselves surrounded by a group of ash giants who are all less than 30ft away, for instance. I mean, it just wouldn't happen no matter what. But most of the random encounters are a variation on that kind of theme.

good ideas frequent run up against player expectations. for example, the poe wilderness encounters you mention were original intended to provide 0 xp 'cause the whole point were the implementation o' quest/objective xp as 'posed to per kill or per action xp avoiding predictable degenerative gameplay. 'course people complained so obsidian provided small xp for kills up to X number o' lions, xaurip priests or whatever. no xp meant there were no point in killing and you could simple avoid most such filler combats. 'course people also demanded xp for exploration, so players nevertheless reflexive scoured every inch o' every map and years o' learned crpg behaviour taught players to kill all monsters 'cause you never knew when that pack o' wolves might be right next to a rando rock with a hidden magical doohickey. instead o' avoiding the pointless filler combat in poe, people went ahead and engaged mass slaughter mode regardless o' the absence o' a meaningful payoff for such an approach and then complained at being insufficient rewarded. sure, not all poe filler combat were avoidable, particular in the expansions and the hastily cobbled together endless paths, but the game provides a great example o' how player expectations derail a good developer idea.

remove 2/3 o' wotr combat and more than a few maps become barren wastelands, which means you likely make maps smaller further reducing gameplay hours 'cause less o' the exploration is needed. anybody doubt a pathfinder game where you reach level 20 and mythic rank 9 or 10  after a couple dozen hours would enrage the hardcore fans? that's not how it were done in baldur's gate.

HA! Good Fun!