Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 6

[Sarex]

1 minute ago, Humanoid said:

That's encouraging. I remember trying to get through IWD2 some two decades ago with a party of two, but having to yield and add two more characters midway through.

Uf, that is a challenge. Although in IWD2 you would get more xp per character with less of them, so the power curve would be faster.

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, Humanoid said:

It would, up until the point I found out the party AI doesn't work in turn-based mode. Massively disappointing for me since I really can't be bothered controlling a party of six manually, but nor would I ever put up with RTwP again, so I'm at an impasse now. Even four is a stretch for me, so I'm wondering how playing a small party of two, three at a push would work at lower difficulties.

warning: axiomatic observation ahead

Spoiler

the game is a squad-based tactical combat game and it is poor balanced, but not shocking it is balanced for full party play. even if you are able to deal with 90% o' encounters with a smallish party, self handicapping by decreasing your party combat potential will make the game more difficult. those remaining 10% encounters is already functioning as difficulty thresholds for full parties. obvious you are choosing an approach which makes the game more difficult. axiomatic.

truth is it is possible to solo wotr, but doing so requires exploitive nonsense and you already stated you were going for an rp experience, yes?

there is an xp setting which benefits solo and smaller party players-- it is possible to set so only active party members gain xp, which works different than you might expect. you will indeed level a bit faster with a three-person party.

small parties is viable even on more challenging difficulties but such a observation is perhaps misleading as the most common way to deal with difficulty is to add animal companions, which particular at lower levels is not gonna represent a real solution to your problem. a three player party with three animal companions is functional requiring you to control six different combatants at least until you are able to use the critters as mounts. 

wotr is a squad-based tactical combat game and it is notable heavy on the combat. 

so...

edit: am suspecting toybox and similar mods has functional god-mode settings.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 25, 2023 by Gromnir

[Humanoid]

Looking into the XP sharing thing and yeah, seems the XP sharing may be adequate for my needs, and if not then it probably isn't too difficult to manually adjust things. However, the big sacrifice from an RP perspective is probably that I will need to go full spoiler mode on prospective party members - their classes, their personalities, and when I even get them - so I can pre-plan the party I'll take for the rest of the game.

[kanisatha]

5 hours ago, Humanoid said:

That's encouraging. I remember trying to get through IWD2 some two decades ago with a party of two, but having to yield and add two more characters midway through.

It's interesting how we all have so very different takes on these issues. For me, in any party-based RPG, I can't wait to expand my party, and am really unhappy in the early stages of the game when I don't (yet) have my full party.

[Humanoid]

1 minute ago, kanisatha said:

It's interesting how we all have so very different takes on these issues. For me, in any party-based RPG, I can't wait to expand my party, and am really unhappy in the early stages of the game when I don't (yet) have my full party.

That was true for me, 20-25 years ago. I liked the big parties and optimising them, and in general I was a completionist, a min-maxer, I consulted the most thorough walkthroughs on GameFAQs, etc. To be honest, the IWD2 thing was probably the anomaly back then, it was more an experimental thing since obviously there were no NPCs with actual personalities to bring along.

It was probably during my DA:O run (which I never finished) where I had an epiphany that I no longer enjoyed this style of gameplay in RPGs, even if the next generation of solo character RPGs hadn't quite arrived for me yet (unless you count WoW which I was playing a lot of at the time). Yeah, games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 were out, but I didn't like them either. It took Obsidian and CDPR making games in that style to convince me that it was now my preferred way to play RPGs.

Don't get me wrong, I still can enjoy a good tactical game like XCOM - I've put 1000 hours or so into Long War - but as its own thing and not as the basis for an RPG.

[Gorth]

One of my all time favourite games is Jagged Alliance 2... where I can control up to 18 party members (3x6 man/woman squads) in turn based combat (and that is part of its beauty for me)

[Humanoid]

Yeah, I did a JA2 run a year or so ago. I did sort of burn out towards the end where you were encouraged to do those truly monster battles, but at least it's right at the end.

Feel the same with Long War Alien Base Assaults which have a cap of ten soldiers, but then maybe it's because those missions are so long and repetitive anyway. But I have no issue controlling eight soldiers for standard missions, especially once you get MECs and flight which reduces the demands on specific positioning.

[Sarex]

Is 4.5 million gold enough for me to bribe the demons and win the game. Because I do not know what to do with the money. Still have to do the third leg of the DLC and I imagine I will get a million more at least there...

[xzar_monty]

9 hours ago, Sarex said:

Is 4.5 million gold enough for me to bribe the demons and win the game. Because I do not know what to do with the money.

As far as I know, there's really nothing you can do with it. I mean, nothing worthwhile. After a certain point, no shop will have anything worth buying, and expanding your army etc. won't have any meaning.

I was annoyed by the same problem in Deadfire, too, but it's worse in WotR.

[uuuhhii]

4 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

As far as I know, there's really nothing you can do with it. I mean, nothing worthwhile. After a certain point, no shop will have anything worth buying, and expanding your army etc. won't have any meaning.

I was annoyed by the same problem in Deadfire, too, but it's worse in WotR.

couldn't upgrade all the weapon and armor to legendary in deadfire

never feel there are too much money

[kanisatha]

On 2/25/2023 at 9:37 AM, Humanoid said:

That was true for me, 20-25 years ago. I liked the big parties and optimising them, and in general I was a completionist, a min-maxer, I consulted the most thorough walkthroughs on GameFAQs, etc. To be honest, the IWD2 thing was probably the anomaly back then, it was more an experimental thing since obviously there were no NPCs with actual personalities to bring along.

It was probably during my DA:O run (which I never finished) where I had an epiphany that I no longer enjoyed this style of gameplay in RPGs, even if the next generation of solo character RPGs hadn't quite arrived for me yet (unless you count WoW which I was playing a lot of at the time). Yeah, games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 were out, but I didn't like them either. It took Obsidian and CDPR making games in that style to convince me that it was now my preferred way to play RPGs.

Don't get me wrong, I still can enjoy a good tactical game like XCOM - I've put 1000 hours or so into Long War - but as its own thing and not as the basis for an RPG.

Very interesting.

A few days ago I did the Wintersun area. The quests and battles and stuff in the area were all enjoyable. But afterwards, what really was the most fun of all for me, and on which I spent glorious hours and hours, was leveling up my twelve characters and five animal companions through two level-gains, redoing the spells for the characters who memorize, and (re)distributing all the nice new equipment I had gained from the area. This is what really makes playing RPGs the most fun for me. I guess that makes me a wierd outlier, which seems to be the case in so many areas of life for me these days.

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, uuuhhii said:

couldn't upgrade all the weapon and armor to legendary in deadfire

never feel there are too much money

That kind of upgrading wouldn't have had any meaning. There are no difficult fights towards the end of the game. They are in the beginning.

[Sarex]

Finished the game. Took me 220 hours on the dot. I was going for the true ending and was sure I got everything right, but in the end I forgot to

Spoiler

join the lexicon of power... I even did the storytellers quest, but at no point did I use/open the lexicon so it didn't trigger the storytellers dialog... It's late and I didn't want to go through the last dungeon again, so I cheated and increased my skill stats to join the 2 parts just before the last fight...

Had a little difficulty with the last area, but only because I wanted to save my buffs for later (there was no need because you could rest at the camp after). Once I buffed the party it was smooth sailing.

Spoiler

Areelu was being difficult until I figured out I just need to force her to heal herself instead of spam spells. So I had to actually use Nenio and spam her with Hellfire Ray. The last 2 bosses were a joke I was afraid I would kill them before my archers used the bolts.

Overall I liked it more than Kingmaker, in pretty much all aspects. The Crusade mini game was miles ahead of kingdom management, but in the end it really went donwhill when I had to

Spoiler

wait half a year for a specific date to launch the final mission.

I do not know why they didn't figure out something better there.

I liked the final boss more in the kingmaker DLC instead of the one in the Midnight Islands. Probably because I could do him earlier in the game and so it was actually a challenge.

The things I very much dislike about WotR are the camera, I do not understand why they made it like this... Well I do understand, they added much more verticality and fancy spinning cities, but my god was the camera bad. The other thing is the lack of hard/challenging fights in the second half of the game.

In the end I think I may actually replay the other mythic paths at some point. I'll see if the mood takes me.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Sarex

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 hours ago, Sarex said:

Finished the game. Took me 220 hours on the dot. I was going for the true ending and was sure I got everything right, but in the end I forgot to

  Reveal hidden contents

join the lexicon of power... I even did the storytellers quest, but at no point did I use/open the lexicon so it didn't trigger the storytellers dialog... It's late and I didn't want to go through the last dungeon again, so I cheated and increased my skill stats to join the 2 parts just before the last fight...

Had a little difficulty with the last area, but only because I wanted to save my buffs for later (there was no need because you could rest at the camp after). Once I buffed the party it was smooth sailing.

  Reveal hidden contents

Areelu was being difficult until I figured out I just need to force her to heal herself instead of spam spells. So I had to actually use Nenio and spam her with Hellfire Ray. The last 2 bosses were a joke I was afraid I would kill them before my archers used the bolts.

Overall I liked it more than Kingmaker, in pretty much all aspects. The Crusade mini game was miles ahead of kingdom management, but in the end it really went donwhill when I had to

  Reveal hidden contents

wait half a year for a specific date to launch the final mission.

I do not know why they didn't figure out something better there.

I liked the final boss more in the kingmaker DLC instead of the one in the Midnight Islands. Probably because I could do him earlier in the game and so it was actually a challenge.

The things I very much dislike about WotR are the camera, I do not understand why they made it like this... Well I do understand, they added much more verticality and fancy spinning cities, but my god was the camera bad. The other thing is the lack of hard/challenging fights in the second half of the game.

In the end I think I may actually replay the other mythic paths at some point. I'll see if the mood takes me.

With two mythic paths down I have to say so far I prefer the regular endings to the sekrit one. The sekrit ending tends to rewrite a lot of the ending slides and makes it less reactive.

[ShadySands]

At this point I think Trickster and Swarm are the only mythic paths I haven't finished the game with. The dragon specific ending has been growing on me lately for some reason because I don't think I liked it that much when I first played it.

[xzar_monty]

8 hours ago, Sarex said:

The other thing is the lack of hard/challenging fights in the second half of the game.

Would you say that that means after the Abyss, or what?

The most difficult fights I had were in the Abyss -- indeed, I sometimes turned the difficulty way down. But after that... not so much. (Well, Playful Darkness is before the Abyss, and that was also really difficult.)

[bugarup]

I finished Legend, Lich, Trickster and Demon and realized just now that I can't remember nary a thing of endings. I recall Arue overtaking the arena, expanding the business and being happy running it, it was kind of awwwww  and probably from Demon ending, Regill wrote a book and Lich was a special consultant, and that's about it. My guess is that my brain partially shut down for that dreadfully dull last part of the game and was a bit late in waking up to read ending slides. 

Same as in KM I ain't be jumping through bullsh†t loops for ~special~ ending, but I plan to finish with Aeon, because that's the one and only ending Areelu deserves and therefore is true one. 

[Gromnir]

42 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Would you say that that means after the Abyss, or what?

The most difficult fights I had were in the Abyss -- indeed, I sometimes turned the difficulty way down. But after that... not so much. (Well, Playful Darkness is before the Abyss, and that was also really difficult.)

is good to recognize how when the game were first released, we had more than a few people on this board bemoaning the difficulty o' demon lord battles. just look at deskari's stats! am also gonna concede if you have no idea what is coming with baphomet, then the battle is a bit o' a shock and may require a couple reloads. etc. the owlcat boards, which is useless nowadays, were ugly with people complaining 'bout game difficulty, while other folks tried to convince the critics that wotr were so ez. groundhog day.

particular with the dlcs, you now have access to better gear and likely an additional level compared to a september 2021 player facing baphomet or melazmera. is also a far better understanding o' builds and exploits which will trivialize later battles but not earlier ones simple 'cause there is so few exploits available to lower level players. the thing is, the exploits were not so well understood by most players back in 2021.

just saying, is easy to forget late 2021 wotr and early 2023 is much different from a player pov. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Sarex]

@Gromnir I don't think I used any exploits (that I am aware of), but I do agree that you hit lvl 20 a bit too early. In Kingmaker I didn't hit level 20 at all (had to add xp in the last area (I did miss two whole companions)), but you didn't have mythic levels either so... The DLC gave way to much loot and money, but most of the loot by that point was useless and the money didn't matter that much.

I would have to say that I remember the water elemental and the playful darkness fights the most (the summoned demon in drezen was hard too, but it wasn't that fun), from my playthrough. @xzar_montyI would put the abyss in the second half of the game.

Never did find a good +5 shortbow for Lann and looking at it now it does not seem to exist.

Will maybe try that unfair difficulty.

[xzar_monty]

24 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I would have to say that I remember the water elemental and the playful darkness fights the most

Yeah, the water elemental was memorable. This is kind of funny: in Deadfire, the fights at the Digsite and Gorecci Street are among the most memorable, too. And they are right at the start. After that there is... well, almost nothing.

[Gromnir]

56 minutes ago, Sarex said:

@Gromnir I don't think I used any exploits (that I am aware of), but I do agree that you hit lvl 20 a bit too early. In Kingmaker I didn't hit level 20 at all (had to add xp in the last area (I did miss two whole companions)), but you didn't have mythic levels either so... The DLC gave way to much loot and money, but most of the loot by that point was useless and the money didn't matter that much.

 

you did respec/change your main character almost immediate based on feedback from this board, yes? call it exploits or not, you were knowing what did and didn't work in ways folks complete new to the game might be unaware. at the very least am recalling from your playful darkness fight image you got sosiel an animal companion and the animal domain is hardly obvious for a cleric o' shelyn. 

is nothing wrong with taking advice from boardies, but board advice mighta' looked a fair bit different in 2021 in spite o' fact is more than a few persons hereabouts who had played the beta for considerable hours. is 2023 people offering advice, some suggesting combats ain't so difficult, and they were the folks complaining in 2021 'bout how busted were boss battles.

*shrug*

quibble over what constitutes exploits maybe misses the point. 

and you did play the act 3 treasure isle dlc, which already provided more than necessary money for a completionist. the game isn't necessarily designed for people who complete every quest. needs to be enough money and things to buy for a critical path player, which necessarily breaks the game for the point o' money for a player who completes everything. again, as a point o' reference, mid act iv is where money became a non-factor for us our firstest time. for a game in which numerous people is complaining that is already too ez from mid-too late, how much sense would it make to provide purchasable stuff which functional would make the game easier? wotr needs more money sinks which don't impact combat efficacy, but doing so would still result in complaints based on our experience with many crpgs. wotr has considerable non-critical path content, a fact resulting in the completionist acquiring more money than a critical path player. is not a new problem and has no great solution.

aside, using pathfinder makes the money problem worse as there needs be useful 1007 for every build. a living gm ain't gonna put sooper kamas or dwarven urgosh in a game in which no player has proficiency in such weapons. with all the possible builds and l00t required to make such builds viable, there obvious is gonna be a whole lotta gear which gets sold. 

but again, none o' this should be new or surprising.

our first playthrough we hit level twenty in iz, after having done the ineluctable prison and a whole lotta act v content. sure, we spent more time at level twenty than any other level, but reaching level twenty as some kinda issue were nowhere near as extreme in 2021 as our more recent runs. have not done a real analysis, but am thinking azata current hits level twenty potential fastest 'cause the possible mythic adversary confronted so early almost guarantees a level-up,  but all the mythics is a bit different. regardless, we assumed we did everything our first run and is not as if we hit level twenty early in act v.

reminder: unlike those who inhabit crpg boards regular, many/most players are not hardcore completion junkies. am having no idea what level would be a player reaching who did only the wotr critical path. add in a few o' the companion quests and what level does such result? how much more difficult is the game if you need finish at level eighteen or maybe only hit level nineteen at threshold? less good gear. less levels. etc. 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by Gromnir

[Sarex]

Fair enough, although I don't know how much or to what degree it affected the difficulty I had in the game, as it was much the same in Kingmaker and I didn't have help there, but that was on normal difficulty (minus the two arguably strongest companions).

I don't know if there were any balance changes between 2021 and 2023 to encounters, as I have not been reading the patch notes, so again I cannot comment on that either.

I do agree with you that you cannot balance the game around the minority of players, but I still wished to have a couple of more optional bosses in the latter half of the game that were more memorable to play against.

Saying all of that I enjoyed the time I had in the game immensely.

[HoonDing]

Is this playable for someone not interested in munchkin-ing?

[Gromnir]

10 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

Is this playable for someone not interested in munchkin-ing?

gonna pretend this is a serious question.

admission: am never having played wotr on a difficulty lower than core, so am only able to speak to core and above. the thing is, even on core you may enjoy +90% o' the game w/o any kinda munchkinism or effort to craft character and party builds which focus on efficacy. the remaining less than 10% o' encounters is the problem. many/most boss battles, and a few other encounters, represent dramatic difficulty spikes and if you didn't choose the right character and party builds with the correct feats, spells and weapon choices, is more than likely you will face considerable frustration. play wotr and if you do not already have intimate pathfinder and owlcat version o' pathfinder experience, as well as meta knowledge 'bout specific wotr encounters, then chances are you will at some point need come to a board like this for advice or seek out guides to help get past __________ or __________. also keep in mind there is a whole lotta combat in wotr.

we would be shocked if normal difficulty didn't suffer similar difficulty spikes as core.

am realizing people don't like the munchkin label as it has a negative connotation, but am gonna suggest it is difficult to enjoy wotr w/o embracing your inner lollipop guildmaster. 

if you wanna take down the evil wotr witch, you need do more than wait for a house to fall on her. you are gonna need choose the right weapons and right multi-class choices and right feats if you wanna avoid frustration in those less than 10% o' threshold encounters, and many o' those encounters is not optional.

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

So far, so good for my Lich wannabe. Getting a bit more used to focusing on the necromantic school of magic. Some spells are nice, some are useless (depending on the encounter) because they only affect living things. I wonder if demons counts as "living" for those spells???

Had a few fun encounters in Wintersun, but finished it up for now (except the mad elf, where i'm sure I need to do something else to unlock more dialogue options). The big angry tree and his spectre companion encounter took an interesting turn, as I could more than once dominate the spectre with Command Undead and it did a truck load of damage to the tree. Having the Spectre alone to deal with was considerably less challenging. Didn't see that one coming, did you, you silly tree?

Also nice to see the dead reinforcement when you prepare the area with a spell I can't remember the name of now, that lets dead enemies stand up and fight on your side as undead. Brought a tear to my old Necromancer eyes. Nagash would be proud!

My party still rely a lot on Sosiel though, for bless and prayer to boost the to hit rolls. Not helped by atrocious die rolling

Four days away from finishing my ziggurat. Not sure what to do with all the skeletons and zombies I get after battles on the campaign map.

 

I managed to kill Woljef after a fight was over. Enemies hate him. He gets balefully polymorphed, level drained etc. so at some point in a fight I cast a spell on him that gave him undead resistances... and vulnerabilities. Being almost dead, I had him use a potion of critical healing (after the fight). He might as well have consumed a bottle of cyanide for all the good it did him