Triple Crown Solo: Achivement for PoD, Expert Mode, IronMan + Solo

[aeonsim]

So from something awful JS mentioned there are two rather impressive achievements in the game for the crazy ones.

 

The first is "Triple Crown" finish the game with Trial of Iron, Path of the Damned and Expert mode on, the second is "Triple Crown Solo" the same thing but doing so with out recruiting any companions!

 

So who thinks they'll be up for the challenge? I'm certainly planning to play through on PoD, but the two triple crowns maybe beyond me...

 

Inspector Gesicht posted:

There'll probably be achievements for finishing the game in Expert Mode, Trial by Iron, and Path of the Damned, but I wonder if there's a sadistic achievement for finishing the game in all three modes at once.

Rope Kid: There's one for "Triple Crown" (Expert, Trial of Iron, PotD), and one for "Triple Crown Solo" (all of that without recruiting any companions or creating any adventurers after the intro).

 

[BrainMuncher]

I don't think I would have the patience for that, especially the solo one.

The solo one would almost certainly require large helpings of cheese. Probably moldy cheese that leaves a bad taste in your mouth and makes your breath smell.

 

I mean I saw a guy on youtube doing one of the IWD games solo on the hardest difficulty. There were a bunch of rats in a cellar that didn't fight back, and he would go to them, cast his 2-3 spells, then go back to the inn and rest. He only had to repeat that a million times to finally kill all the rats. I stopped watching before he'd killed them all, not my idea of fun.

[Rostere]

Hell yes.

[Labadal]

I will probbly try and fail miserably. But I won't do that until I can abuse everything I know about the game by playing it at least twice.

[ManifestedISO]

Pillars will have Achievements? Or is it literally achievements ...

[Labadal]

Pillars will have Achievements? Or is it literally achievements ...

It will have STEAM achievements.

[ManifestedISO]

Oh, okay, carry on. If they were Trophies, I would be interested. 

[Gromnir]

game achievements leave Gromnir flaccid.

 

in any event, if past experience is any guide, beginning with difficulty set to hard, we will play about 1/3 o' poe content 8 or 9 times before we get a character and party with which we feels comfortable completing the game. "crap. playing a character with an intelligence less than 14 is gimping the experience?" will be be numerous such revelations along the way. once we finally finish the game, we will likely replay again, but with a different main character and a different party composition. we will then be exhausted by the game.

 

*six months to a year will pass*

 

eventually an expansion will be released or we will get bored with all current games and we will replay poe.  all o' which assumes that we like poe. no likey means we get 10-20 hours o' gameply invested on poe 'cause we is stubborn, and then we give-up and read a book or re-grout bathroom tile or some other such activity.

 

am never gonna bother playing solo, and chances are we don't utilize some o' the Beyond Hard Mode features neither. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Flow]

am never gonna bother playing solo, and chances are we don't utilize some o' the Beyond Hard Mode features neither. 

 

I tend to agree, but there's no shortage of obsessives in the RPG community.

[Stun]

game achievements leave Gromnir flaccid.

...And they leave Stun shaking his head and spitting on the floor.

 

If I'm going to solo a game, it's going to be because its gameplay and mechanics were so good that they inspired me to obsessively experiment with them....throttle them as far as they'll go... and to hopefully come out of it with a brand new experience in a game that I've already beaten a bunch of times.

 

It will never *ever* be because there's a stupid Steam achievement to be had, or some other silly E-peen measuring stick that no one but the Xbox Live crowd gives a crap about.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Stun

[archangel979]

I am already solo ironmaning Bg1ee so I might try this but only if the game will turn out to be as fun which I doubt.

Also no combat xp kind of kills these triple crown chances of success.

Edited January 22, 2015 by archangel979

[prodigydancer]

I am already solo ironmaning Bg1ee

BG was relatively easy to solo as a wizard. Get the Ring of Wizardry and MM everything to death at lower levels. Rely on summons at higher levels. Ironman still sounds like a challenge though. Which class are you playing?

[Luckmann]

 

I am already solo ironmaning Bg1ee

BG was relatively easy to solo as a wizard. Get the Ring of Wizardry and MM everything to death at lower levels. Rely on summons at higher levels. Ironman still sounds like a challenge though. Which class are you playing?

 

 

I think that BG:EE uses BG2:s version of the Ring of Wizardry, though, which is all kinds of less spectacular than the BG1 kind.

 

I'm not sure, because I still haven't played any of the "Enhanced Editions" on account of them appear to be mostly bad mods that have been glued to the side of a great game, marring it like plastic surgery ravaged Amanda Bynes.

[PrimeJunta]

I am already solo ironmaning Bg1ee so I might try this but only if the game will turn out to be as fun which I doubt.

Also no combat xp kind of kills these triple crown chances of success.

 

What does the way XP is awarded have to do with solo/challenge difficulty? The only way combat XP could affect that if there were respawning monsters so you could grind to level cap, which sounds like a pretty cheesy way of going about it.

[archangel979]

 

I am already solo ironmaning Bg1ee

BG was relatively easy to solo as a wizard. Get the Ring of Wizardry and MM everything to death at lower levels. Rely on summons at higher levels. Ironman still sounds like a challenge though. Which class are you playing?

 

Tried Werewolf Druid but died at lvl 8 from the super ogre challenge in Firewine ruins :D

Then soloed with Swashbuckler. Becomes easy once you get your traps and stealth skills high.

Then with Berserker. This is even easier. Becomes boring as soon as you get good weapons (in my case 2 +2 daggers).

Edited January 22, 2015 by archangel979

[archangel979]

 

I am already solo ironmaning Bg1ee so I might try this but only if the game will turn out to be as fun which I doubt.

Also no combat xp kind of kills these triple crown chances of success.

 

What does the way XP is awarded have to do with solo/challenge difficulty? The only way combat XP could affect that if there were respawning monsters so you could grind to level cap, which sounds like a pretty cheesy way of going about it.

 

Everything. Like all hardcore game runs you don't face challenges at their full party intended levels but once you are overleveled and "safe". In BG games you get more levels through killing stuff than doing quests and it lets you level up so you can survive quests and move the main story along. Part of Hardcore/Ironman runs is knowing how to get most XP for least danger and when to go do which area. And when you lack a bit of XP for that needed level you don't go do another quest but go kill a few more easy enemies.

 

In the end it is not important how you got to the goal, only that you did.

Edited January 22, 2015 by archangel979

[MReed]

The lack of combat XP probably isn't a big issue in and of itself (but it doesn't help), but I suspect that the real problem is the fact that all (perhaps on quest) XP rewards scale with the size of the party.  In the IE games, a solo player would get 6 times the XP / character vs. a party of 6 -- in PoE, the solo player will get more XP / character vs a party of 6, but far, far less than 6x.

 

In the end game, this doesn't matter (assuming that there is enough XP for a party of 6 to hit the level cap) and it doesn't matter in the very early game (where there is simply little XP available), but there is a vast chunk of the game in the middle where the IE solo character would be playing at a much higher level than expected at that point in the game and is therefore able to collect loot / quests / whatever to enable victory in the end game.  If nothing else, the risk of the player dying is much reduced during this period of time, an important consideration for ironman games.

 

On the other hand, someone playing this way is supposedly looking for the ultimate challenge, and out-leveling the bulk of games content results in an easier game, so maybe this change makes sense.

[Starwars]

Another thing to consider is that we also know that there is at least one "early ending" in the game, though I'm not sure whether that will count towards these achievements.

[PrimeJunta]

Everything. Like all hardcore game runs you don't face challenges at their full party intended levels but once you are overleveled and "safe". In BG games you get more levels through killing stuff than doing quests and it lets you level up so you can survive quests and move the main story along. Part of Hardcore/Ironman runs is knowing how to get most XP for least danger and when to go do which area. And when you lack a bit of XP for that needed level you don't go do another quest but go kill a few more easy enemies.

In the end it is not important how you got to the goal, only that you did.

 

But either way you're limited by the XP that's in the game (discounting respawning/grinding). In P:E I'd expect you'd be looking for sidequests with non-violent solutions or solutions that avoid the toughest combat early on. Still the same thing -- you want max XP for min danger. I honestly can't see what difference it makes how the XP is awarded, as long as you know what you need to do to get it.

 

I suspect a bigger hurdle will be the XP equation -- you'll only get, what, 30% more XP soloing than playing with a full party, rather than six times as much. You won't be all that much ahead, level-wise. (Although of course the AD&D geometric level progression canceled out a good deal of that big pile of extra XP, especially later on.)

[archangel979]

 

Everything. Like all hardcore game runs you don't face challenges at their full party intended levels but once you are overleveled and "safe". In BG games you get more levels through killing stuff than doing quests and it lets you level up so you can survive quests and move the main story along. Part of Hardcore/Ironman runs is knowing how to get most XP for least danger and when to go do which area. And when you lack a bit of XP for that needed level you don't go do another quest but go kill a few more easy enemies.

 

In the end it is not important how you got to the goal, only that you did.

 

But either way you're limited by the XP that's in the game (discounting respawning/grinding). In P:E I'd expect you'd be looking for sidequests with non-violent solutions or solutions that avoid the toughest combat early on. Still the same thing -- you want max XP for min danger. I honestly can't see what difference it makes how the XP is awarded, as long as you know what you need to do to get it.

 

I suspect a bigger hurdle will be the XP equation -- you'll only get, what, 30% more XP soloing than playing with a full party, rather than six times as much. You won't be all that much ahead, level-wise. (Although of course the AD&D geometric level progression canceled out a good deal of that big pile of extra XP, especially later on.)

 

Yes, in PoE Ironman players will be looking for easy to do quests with little danger. The problem is if those don't exist in sufficient numbers. Dedicated players could level to max level in BG1 doing easy fights and then go do all quests at max level.

BG1 also has its share of powerful items and one use potions and scrolls that make it all easier.

 

Successful solo Ironman run will depend on both things (easy XP and powerful tools for right situations).

[PrimeJunta]

Yup. But, again, I don't see how it makes a difference how you get that XP.

 

 

Going quests-first isn't any different from BG2, for that matter. I'm sure that doing them in the right order is crucial to ironmanning it. There aren't even that many wandering monsters in BG2 if you don't grind with the rest system.

 

It's obviously too early to tell if soloing will be easier, harder, or as hard as in the IE games, but I don't think it's going to be easy. That's kind of the point though, don't you think?

[Stun]

Why do you keep bringing up grinding? And what do wandering/random monsters have to do with anything?

 

Solo play in the IE games sees your character advancing in levels 6 times faster than a full party. And this will happen regardless of grinding, or farming, or whatever your point of contention is. In every IE game except for BG2, quest xp *alone* is enough to produce overleveled soloers.

 

The real question is whether PoE will be using a shared XP system, where a smaller party will gain levels faster than a full one. If it does, then soloing won't be much harder than it was in the IE games. If it doesn't then that's a completely different story.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

I keep bringing up grinding because it's the only case I can think of where combat XP matters for solo runs.

 

Smaller parties in P:E will gain XP faster, but not that much faster. It's not a pot of XP that gets divided by party size. More like a 5% bonus per "missing" party member. I do not remember the exact number, and I'm not even sure if it's been finalized. So soloing you'd get XP maybe 20-30% faster than with a full party.

[Stun]

I keep bringing up grinding because it's the only case I can think of where combat XP matters for solo runs.

It doesn't. Or at least it doesn't matter any more for a soloer than it does for a full party. Simply killing only what you need to kill to advance a quest or to get the loot you need is more than enough to see your soloer level 6 times faster than a full party already. In fact, the easiest way to Solo BG1 is to avoid the hordes.

 

 

You know, I didn't want to bring this up, because I'm kinda getting tired of the endless combat XP debates, but here we are, having another one, so I guess I must. I'd argue that a game that does not reward XP for combat will be the easiest game to solo. After all, you'll have real choice now. A level 1 n00b can choose, instead of fighting, to talk, walk, and do fetch quests for XP. It's *COMBAT* that makes soloing difficult. So the obvious gameplay question remains: why in the world would a soloer bother to engage in combat if 1) he doesn't have to; and 2)doing so is not going to help him level and become more powerful?

Edited January 22, 2015 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

If all the combat is avoidable, soloing would be easy, for sure, at least once you know how to build your character so you can get all the nonviolent solutions.

 

I'm assuming P:E will have a bunch of combat that's not avoidable though.

 

Edit: Triple Crown would be really tough though. If you go for a maximum-nonviolent solution, you'll be relying on stealth a lot. All it takes is one slip-up to trigger combat, and since you can't run from a battle, you are so hosed if you're not ready for it. No mistakes allowed at all.

Edited January 22, 2015 by PrimeJunta