Understanding the stronghold

[Crucis]

 

 

So I'm trying to understand how to best use the stronghold. There are some issues that have come up though:

 

1. Bandits take nearly as much as I earn through taxes even though I have much higher security than prestige. How are the bandits so effective if I have sky-high security? This means that I'll earn something like 50 copper. Camping just once is more expensive than this, and what's worse is that when I subtract the cost of hirelings, I'm losing quite a bit of money.

 

2. It seems that hirelings are paid per day, but taxes are earned per turn. This means that you can never generate infinite wealth, but you can LOSE infinite wealth. Is that really true?

 

I do like the stronghold, don't get me wrong, but so far all it does is cost me money. A lot of money. I understand that you can get resting bonuses, sure, but for the thousands I spend upgrading the stronghold, I'm sure I could have gotten a full game's worth of resting bonuses from inns.

 

What am I missing here?

 

PS: If it had generated taxes per day, it would have made sense. Sure some nutty people could have gained infinite wealth, but does that really matter?

the keep poses a ridiculous difficult balancing problem for the developers.  in a game with abundant copper/gold, making the keep produce copious amounts o' wealth for the player would be inimical to their overall design philosophies.  sure, the player wants something for their investment in the keep, but rewarding with gold is bad.  the keep could be an effective gold sink, but so far, players appear less than enthusiastic with the results.   a gold sink is not a popular feature in single-player crpgs.  get a largely cosmetic or illusory benefit from a huge currency investment works in an mmo 'cause conspicuous consumption is an exploitable social failing.  what is the point o' such stuff in a single-player game, eh?  

 

likewise, the keep should not be providing enormous amounts o' additional xp, but it does via the bounties.

 

am realizing that it sounds a bit silly, but the keep, ideally, should reward you with nothing, and make you happy with your nothingness.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head:

 

• Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect AFFECT in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature.
• Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds.
• Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new.
• Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things.
• Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies.

 

 

Some interesting ideas here. 

 

Not sure I like idea of changing the enchantment on an item beyond merely upgrading it.  OTOH, the idea of custom orders is interesting.

 

Don't particularly like the idea of being able to respec pre-made NPC's either.  They should be made reasonably well in the first place.  To me, this smacks of powergaming which I'm honestly not a fan of.  Hell, in a game like this, if I had my druthers, I'd set some hard caps below which a character's stats could not go.  Extreme min-maxing of stats in IWD2 always bothered me, because the idea of having a character running around with the intelligence of a ferret or a toad just seemed wrong to me, and still does.  But if the devs are going to provide a mega-hard game mode, then I suppose that role playing concerns sort of fly out the window and the idea of "realistic" stats with it.

 

Back to pre-made NPCs.  A different way to deal with them could go something like this.  As long as the # of pre-mades was small, what could be done is provide the character's scripted background, dialogs, and so forth.  And have their class and race and so forth be fixed, but let the player select the NPC's distribution of stat points, skill points, and other abilities and talents.  This would let the player customize the NPCs to be more to his liking.  Having said that, this could seem like a lot of work for people who are really new to this sort of game.  And I suppose that for that sort of person, you could also include traditional pre-mades as well.

 

 

A training room sounds pretty cool.  It'd be great to be able to test out strats for fighting mobs of ogres or vithracks, for example. OTOH, I'm not entirely sure how one would justify what amounts to a fantasy world "holodeck", except possibly through magics though I suppose that that's rather obvious.

 

 

The first item sounds good, but I could see some people complaining about it breaking the immersion of moving around your stronghold. (Heck there was some poster complaining about the upgraded loot picking up feature of PoE, for crying out loud.  Somebody actually wants to have to go pick up every single freakin' item that gets dropped after a battle?  Wow.)

 

 

Still, good stuff.

[Epsilon Rose]

 

 

 

So I'm trying to understand how to best use the stronghold. There are some issues that have come up though:

 

1. Bandits take nearly as much as I earn through taxes even though I have much higher security than prestige. How are the bandits so effective if I have sky-high security? This means that I'll earn something like 50 copper. Camping just once is more expensive than this, and what's worse is that when I subtract the cost of hirelings, I'm losing quite a bit of money.

 

2. It seems that hirelings are paid per day, but taxes are earned per turn. This means that you can never generate infinite wealth, but you can LOSE infinite wealth. Is that really true?

 

I do like the stronghold, don't get me wrong, but so far all it does is cost me money. A lot of money. I understand that you can get resting bonuses, sure, but for the thousands I spend upgrading the stronghold, I'm sure I could have gotten a full game's worth of resting bonuses from inns.

 

What am I missing here?

 

PS: If it had generated taxes per day, it would have made sense. Sure some nutty people could have gained infinite wealth, but does that really matter?

the keep poses a ridiculous difficult balancing problem for the developers.  in a game with abundant copper/gold, making the keep produce copious amounts o' wealth for the player would be inimical to their overall design philosophies.  sure, the player wants something for their investment in the keep, but rewarding with gold is bad.  the keep could be an effective gold sink, but so far, players appear less than enthusiastic with the results.   a gold sink is not a popular feature in single-player crpgs.  get a largely cosmetic or illusory benefit from a huge currency investment works in an mmo 'cause conspicuous consumption is an exploitable social failing.  what is the point o' such stuff in a single-player game, eh?  

 

likewise, the keep should not be providing enormous amounts o' additional xp, but it does via the bounties.

 

am realizing that it sounds a bit silly, but the keep, ideally, should reward you with nothing, and make you happy with your nothingness.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head:

 

• Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect AFFECT in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature.
• Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds.
• Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new.
• Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things.
• Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies.

 

 

Some interesting ideas here. 

 

Not sure I like idea of changing the enchantment on an item beyond merely upgrading it.  OTOH, the idea of custom orders is interesting.

 

Don't particularly like the idea of being able to respec pre-made NPC's either.  They should be made reasonably well in the first place.  To me, this smacks of powergaming which I'm honestly not a fan of.  Hell, in a game like this, if I had my druthers, I'd set some hard caps below which a character's stats could not go.  Extreme min-maxing of stats in IWD2 always bothered me, because the idea of having a character running around with the intelligence of a ferret or a toad just seemed wrong to me, and still does.  But if the devs are going to provide a mega-hard game mode, then I suppose that role playing concerns sort of fly out the window and the idea of "realistic" stats with it.

 

Back to pre-made NPCs.  A different way to deal with them could go something like this.  As long as the # of pre-mades was small, what could be done is provide the character's scripted background, dialogs, and so forth.  And have their class and race and so forth be fixed, but let the player select the NPC's distribution of stat points, skill points, and other abilities and talents.  This would let the player customize the NPCs to be more to his liking.  Having said that, this could seem like a lot of work for people who are really new to this sort of game.  And I suppose that for that sort of person, you could also include traditional pre-mades as well.

 

 

A training room sounds pretty cool.  It'd be great to be able to test out strats for fighting mobs of ogres or vithracks, for example. OTOH, I'm not entirely sure how one would justify what amounts to a fantasy world "holodeck", except possibly through magics though I suppose that that's rather obvious.

 

 

The first item sounds good, but I could see some people complaining about it breaking the immersion of moving around your stronghold. (Heck there was some poster complaining about the upgraded loot picking up feature of PoE, for crying out loud.  Somebody actually wants to have to go pick up every single freakin' item that gets dropped after a battle?  Wow.)

 

 

Still, good stuff.

 

Keep in mind that the respecs could be limited to talents only and even for the premade companions you'll be picking some talents that you might make mistakes on. Also keep in mind that there are completely custom NPCs available as well. I'm also not sure why replacing talents with ones you're more likely to use is automatically power gaming. I can understand why doing something like dropping stats to 3 would be power gaming, but how is "Kana, I hate that story. Stop telling it. Go spend a week in the library studying something else." power gaming or immersion breaking?

Edited April 13, 2015 by Epsilon Rose

[Daemonjax]

So I'm trying to understand how to best use the stronghold. There are some issues that have come up though:

 

While I agree the Stronghold could be better, and I really hope it can be improved with mods, I think it's meant to be upgraded only while you're committed to exploring the Endless Dungeon all the way to the bottom and have no other use for your money because you've basically beaten the game already.

 

When you look at it under that light, most of it starts making more sense.

 

I could be wrong, because we can't know the minds of the developers unless they speak them.  But I think that's why the stronghold is the way it is... it's not really something you're supposed to invest in until you're in the endgame -- the Endless Dungeon.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Daemonjax

[Epsilon Rose]

 

So I'm trying to understand how to best use the stronghold. There are some issues that have come up though:

 

While I agree the Stronghold could be better, and I really hope it can be improved with mods, I think it's meant to be upgraded only while you're committed to exploring the Endless Dungeon all the way to the bottom and have no other use for your money because you've basically beaten the game already.

 

When you look at it under that light, most of it starts making more sense.

 

I could be wrong, because we can't know the minds of the developers unless they speak them.  But I think that's why the stronghold is the way it is... it's not really something you're supposed to invest in until you're in the endgame -- the Endless Dungeon.

 

But don't a number of it's features (the taxes, and to free material upgrades) only function while you have new quests to do?

[Daemonjax]

 

 

So I'm trying to understand how to best use the stronghold. There are some issues that have come up though:

 

While I agree the Stronghold could be better, and I really hope it can be improved with mods, I think it's meant to be upgraded only while you're committed to exploring the Endless Dungeon all the way to the bottom and have no other use for your money because you've basically beaten the game already.

 

When you look at it under that light, most of it starts making more sense.

 

I could be wrong, because we can't know the minds of the developers unless they speak them.  But I think that's why the stronghold is the way it is... it's not really something you're supposed to invest in until you're in the endgame -- the Endless Dungeon.

 

But don't a number of it's features (the taxes, and to free material upgrades) only function while you have new quests to do?

 

 

There are quests in the Endless Dungeon, and I did say it wasn't perfect.

[Crucis]

 

 

 

 

So I'm trying to understand how to best use the stronghold. There are some issues that have come up though:

 

1. Bandits take nearly as much as I earn through taxes even though I have much higher security than prestige. How are the bandits so effective if I have sky-high security? This means that I'll earn something like 50 copper. Camping just once is more expensive than this, and what's worse is that when I subtract the cost of hirelings, I'm losing quite a bit of money.

 

2. It seems that hirelings are paid per day, but taxes are earned per turn. This means that you can never generate infinite wealth, but you can LOSE infinite wealth. Is that really true?

 

I do like the stronghold, don't get me wrong, but so far all it does is cost me money. A lot of money. I understand that you can get resting bonuses, sure, but for the thousands I spend upgrading the stronghold, I'm sure I could have gotten a full game's worth of resting bonuses from inns.

 

What am I missing here?

 

PS: If it had generated taxes per day, it would have made sense. Sure some nutty people could have gained infinite wealth, but does that really matter?

the keep poses a ridiculous difficult balancing problem for the developers.  in a game with abundant copper/gold, making the keep produce copious amounts o' wealth for the player would be inimical to their overall design philosophies.  sure, the player wants something for their investment in the keep, but rewarding with gold is bad.  the keep could be an effective gold sink, but so far, players appear less than enthusiastic with the results.   a gold sink is not a popular feature in single-player crpgs.  get a largely cosmetic or illusory benefit from a huge currency investment works in an mmo 'cause conspicuous consumption is an exploitable social failing.  what is the point o' such stuff in a single-player game, eh?  

 

likewise, the keep should not be providing enormous amounts o' additional xp, but it does via the bounties.

 

am realizing that it sounds a bit silly, but the keep, ideally, should reward you with nothing, and make you happy with your nothingness.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head:

 

• Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect AFFECT in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature.
• Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds.
• Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new.
• Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things.
• Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies.

 

 

Some interesting ideas here. 

 

Not sure I like idea of changing the enchantment on an item beyond merely upgrading it.  OTOH, the idea of custom orders is interesting.

 

Don't particularly like the idea of being able to respec pre-made NPC's either.  They should be made reasonably well in the first place.  To me, this smacks of powergaming which I'm honestly not a fan of.  Hell, in a game like this, if I had my druthers, I'd set some hard caps below which a character's stats could not go.  Extreme min-maxing of stats in IWD2 always bothered me, because the idea of having a character running around with the intelligence of a ferret or a toad just seemed wrong to me, and still does.  But if the devs are going to provide a mega-hard game mode, then I suppose that role playing concerns sort of fly out the window and the idea of "realistic" stats with it.

 

Back to pre-made NPCs.  A different way to deal with them could go something like this.  As long as the # of pre-mades was small, what could be done is provide the character's scripted background, dialogs, and so forth.  And have their class and race and so forth be fixed, but let the player select the NPC's distribution of stat points, skill points, and other abilities and talents.  This would let the player customize the NPCs to be more to his liking.  Having said that, this could seem like a lot of work for people who are really new to this sort of game.  And I suppose that for that sort of person, you could also include traditional pre-mades as well.

 

 

A training room sounds pretty cool.  It'd be great to be able to test out strats for fighting mobs of ogres or vithracks, for example. OTOH, I'm not entirely sure how one would justify what amounts to a fantasy world "holodeck", except possibly through magics though I suppose that that's rather obvious.

 

 

The first item sounds good, but I could see some people complaining about it breaking the immersion of moving around your stronghold. (Heck there was some poster complaining about the upgraded loot picking up feature of PoE, for crying out loud.  Somebody actually wants to have to go pick up every single freakin' item that gets dropped after a battle?  Wow.)

 

 

Still, good stuff.

 

Keep in mind that the respecs could be limited to talents only and even for the premade companions you'll be picking some talents that you might make mistakes on. Also keep in mind that there are completely custom NPCs available as well. I'm also not sure why replacing talents with ones you're more likely to use is automatically power gaming. I can understand why doing something like dropping stats to 3 would be power gaming, but how is "Kana, I hate that story. Stop telling it. Go spend a week in the library studying something else." power gaming or immersion breaking?

 

 

Rose, my powergaming comment was really about extremely min-maxed stats than anything else.  Respeccing skills, abilities, and talents isn't nearly that big a deal, at least to me.  Honestly, I probably wouldn't mind respeccing those things in the least because it seems to me that some of the pre-made choices are rather suspect and seem to have been intentionally chosen to make the pre-mades weaker.  It seems to me that the NPC's basic character isn't going to change much, if at all, based on the choices a player makes with those things.

 

I could even see a minimal degree of stat respeccing.  Perhaps by setting each pre-made to a certain set of values to which you have, let's say 6 more stat points to add amongst the 6 attributes.  This would all for a mild degree of adjustment without allowing for any extreme min-maxing.  You couldn't lower any of the base stats.  Only decide where to add the remaining 6 points.  Just an idea.

 

 

Back to skill/ability/talent respeccing.  Here's another idea. This is going to date me quite a bit but the first DnD computer games, the gold box games required you to go to some sort of a training hall and pay gold to level up.  What if there was some training hall where you could pay some gold (and not an insignificant amount, perhaps 1000 gold?) and get a one time chance to respec an NPC.  One time, one fee for each NPC, not one time/one fee for all of them.  So, let's say that you don't like Durance's skills/talents/abilities.  You go to the Acme Training Hall, pay 1000 gold and you're allowed to completely respec Durance's skills, talents, and abilities.  ONCE.    Now having said that, if you wanted to allow it more than once per character (something that could be really abused, but what the heck), first time you pay 1k gold.  Second time, 5k gold.  Third time, 10k gold.  Fourth time, 20k gold.  And so on.  Basically, the first time would be affordable. , but each succeeding time would get increasingly painful to the coin purse.  I suppose that you could even allow PC's to be respecced because we all know that we can make a choice we later regret along the way when it comes to our skill/talent/ability choices.

 

 

 

 

[Epsilon Rose]

I could even see a minimal degree of stat respeccing.  Perhaps by setting each pre-made to a certain set of values to which you have, let's say 6 more stat points to add amongst the 6 attributes.  This would all for a mild degree of adjustment without allowing for any extreme min-maxing.  You couldn't lower any of the base stats.  Only decide where to add the remaining 6 points.  Just an idea.

That's interesting. More generous than I'd normally be, but I can also see a lot of reasons to do it that way. 

 

Back to skill/ability/talent respeccing.  Here's another idea. This is going to date me quite a bit but the first DnD computer games, the gold box games required you to go to some sort of a training hall and pay gold to level up.  What if there was some training hall where you could pay some gold (and not an insignificant amount, perhaps 1000 gold?) and get a one time chance to respec an NPC.  One time, one fee for each NPC, not one time/one fee for all of them.  So, let's say that you don't like Durance's skills/talents/abilities.  You go to the Acme Training Hall, pay 1000 gold and you're allowed to completely respec Durance's skills, talents, and abilities.  ONCE.    Now having said that, if you wanted to allow it more than once per character (something that could be really abused, but what the heck), first time you pay 1k gold.  Second time, 5k gold.  Third time, 10k gold.  Fourth time, 20k gold.  And so on.  Basically, the first time would be affordable. , but each succeeding time would get increasingly painful to the coin purse.  I suppose that you could even allow PC's to be respecced because we all know that we can make a choice we later regret along the way when it comes to our skill/talent/ability choices.

I like that idea, it's basically what I suggested but I had the payment in quests while you have it in gold, but I'm not sure why the cost should increase with uses or why the uses should be limited to one time only. I suppose, theoretically, a player could respec their party so it's always tailor made for every major encounter, but that would cost a ton, even without increasing costs, for marginal benifits and I imagine it's a corner case. More likely, if a player respecs it's because they want to try something new, that might or might not work, or to correct a percived problem in their original build, which may or may not create new problems. I'd further argue that either of those two uses is liable to result in serial respecs, but those resecs aren't terribly different from the originall and should not be punished any more than the original.

[Ceranai]

Tbh I dont even care for its functionality the problem is even when fully updraded the place is dead as hell. Like give us some peasant NPCs or something. Its like a graveyard but when you ask the statue how its going she like omg ur so popular

[Psychevore]

I'm just giving my feedback, who said anything about Obsidian murdering my family?

 

If anyone's being dramatic its you...

 

www.dictionary.com

 

Look up the verb 'to act' 

[Kaigen42]

 

 

 

Back to skill/ability/talent respeccing.  Here's another idea. This is going to date me quite a bit but the first DnD computer games, the gold box games required you to go to some sort of a training hall and pay gold to level up.  What if there was some training hall where you could pay some gold (and not an insignificant amount, perhaps 1000 gold?) and get a one time chance to respec an NPC.  One time, one fee for each NPC, not one time/one fee for all of them.  So, let's say that you don't like Durance's skills/talents/abilities.  You go to the Acme Training Hall, pay 1000 gold and you're allowed to completely respec Durance's skills, talents, and abilities.  ONCE.    Now having said that, if you wanted to allow it more than once per character (something that could be really abused, but what the heck), first time you pay 1k gold.  Second time, 5k gold.  Third time, 10k gold.  Fourth time, 20k gold.  And so on.  Basically, the first time would be affordable. , but each succeeding time would get increasingly painful to the coin purse.  I suppose that you could even allow PC's to be respecced because we all know that we can make a choice we later regret along the way when it comes to our skill/talent/ability choices.

I like that idea, it's basically what I suggested but I had the payment in quests while you have it in gold, but I'm not sure why the cost should increase with uses or why the uses should be limited to one time only. I suppose, theoretically, a player could respec their party so it's always tailor made for every major encounter, but that would cost a ton, even without increasing costs, for marginal benifits and I imagine it's a corner case. More likely, if a player respecs it's because they want to try something new, that might or might not work, or to correct a percived problem in their original build, which may or may not create new problems. I'd further argue that either of those two uses is liable to result in serial respecs, but those resecs aren't terribly different from the originall and should not be punished any more than the original.

 

I like the idea of adding some type of retraining option to the game, not just for correcting mistakes or improving NPC's (Bear Fortitude? Really?), but because the game currently has several talents which are very useful in the difficult early stages of the game, but which rapidly lose utility once you have your feet under you. It'd be nice to be able to retrain those options rather than being stuck with them.

[Daemonjax]

You can respec characters using console commands and the IE mod.

 

If you don't want to do that because it's not "official", then you're just being your own worst enemy.  Why do you feel like you need the developer's permission to play a single-player game whichever way you feel like?  Rhetorical question.

Edited April 14, 2015 by Daemonjax

[Epsilon Rose]

You can respec characters using console commands and the IE mod.

 

If you don't want to do that because it's not "official", then you're just being your own worst enemy.  Why do you feel like you need the developer's permission to play a single-player game whichever way you feel like?  Rhetorical question.

I don't want to install a mod, or use console commands that probably lock achievements, to get basic functionality? Because it would be a fun thing to have in game and would provide a better use for the stronghold than some of it's current functions? Because I should have to go out of my way to correct basic flaws in a game I payed for? Should I go on?

[Gromnir]

the ie mod has/had more than a few quirks when attempting to respec.  personally, we don't care about achievements, but we have trust issues with mods and the ie mod has fed our distrust.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Daemonjax]

the ie mod has/had more than a few quirks when attempting to respec.  personally, we don't care about achievements, but we have trust issues with mods and the ie mod has fed our distrust.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

At first I was leery with using that feature as well, but since I started using it I encountered no problems (the remove/add abilities/talents commands, not the relevel command).

 

@Epsilon Rose: It was a rhetorical question. 

Edited April 14, 2015 by Daemonjax

[dekergus]

hi there,

 

stronghold to me is a good roleplay element , i love to have my own castle, rebuild it , defend it myself even if i must stop what im doing, have prisoners, ect....

it would be great if a complete stronghold could alow you to start a faction, with allies and enemies same as your personal reputation, and events going with it.

would able to create an heraldic , choose the name , and so on. being called " Lord of Caed Nua " in game ^^

 

regarding the taxes, it makes me good incomes , somewhere between 400-800 benefit each time.

 

one thing puzzling me , i still didnt find where are the visitors ... the only one i saw was a drunk man in the donjon , all the others i didnt managed to find em....

[Ceranai]

hi there,

 

stronghold to me is a good roleplay element , i love to have my own castle, rebuild it , defend it myself even if i must stop what im doing, have prisoners, ect....

it would be great if a complete stronghold could alow you to start a faction, with allies and enemies same as your personal reputation, and events going with it.

would able to create an heraldic , choose the name , and so on. being called " Lord of Caed Nua " in game ^^

 

regarding the taxes, it makes me good incomes , somewhere between 400-800 benefit each time.

 

one thing puzzling me , i still didnt find where are the visitors ... the only one i saw was a drunk man in the donjon , all the others i didnt managed to find em....

Its terrible from a RP perspective as well. My end screen said that it was the biggest most secure etc fortress in the land but it had exactly 8 people in it (the hirelings).

[dekergus]

i agree , we should have more life in the stronghold, more militia as anyway we end up filthy rich, and more peasants, servants, chanters, ect... , regarding on prestige and security.

 

 

 

about my visitors problem, anyone to kindly tell me where i can find them ?

[Ceranai]

i agree , we should have more life in the stronghold, more militia as anyway we end up filthy rich, and more peasants, servants, chanters, ect... , regarding on prestige and security.

 

 

 

about my visitors problem, anyone to kindly tell me where i can find them ?

Mine are always in the main hall

[C8H18]

 

It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head:

 

 

• Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature.
• Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds.
• Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new.
• Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things.
• Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies.

 

lets add some things up

 

I like the retraining idea to a point, playing hardcore i find it hard to keep the eight companions around when i can custom make my own.  so patching up their lore, mechanics and stealth to make them respective members would be nice so i could keep the unique dialogue around

 

Leaving members at the stronghold should grant incentive or perk.  the adventures are awesome but the rewards arent that great.  BUT its a reward with no risk.  add some risk... death and dismemberment, NOW weve got some RPG going

 

Some definition to the taxes  and day/turn cycle would be awesome.  that statue chair broad could be more helpful, or interesting.  

 

The keep has some awesome potential for RPG drama, like trade routes, discontent, famine, plague, WAAARRRRRR! mmm building an army....  that one a**hole hung half his town from a tree, ONE TREE!  the most i can do is butcher my people...

 

i agree it shouldnt be a source of income but definitely an investment for immersion.  id pay to have merchants with unique quests for their great gran dads war relic or whatever, their MY towns people, give them some personality!  or at least let me hang them... i can buy a tinkerer but wheres my gallows and giant scary executioner???

 

fixing the battles so they arent inside of my keep would make sense since i built giant walls and towers- could put those to use

 

thats off the top of my head,  feel free to add.  man i so want to buy a hanging tree for my town.  a burning post.  some of those torture racks would keep the public in line... 

[constantine]

 

 

I'm just giving my feedback, who said anything about Obsidian murdering my family?

 

If anyone's being dramatic its you...

 

Oh really? Let's look at this again, shall we.

 

 

 

I am really disappointed with the Stronghold.

 

1) The bonuses from resting can't be combined, despite the flavour text implying the opposite. So basically they are a complete waste of time because you might as well dump 200g into resting at an Inn to get a much better bonus.

 

2) Vast majority of the shopkeepers offer absolutely nothing of worth. Complete waste of money.

 

3) Brighthollow is just a pain in the ass to get to, I have to go through 2-3 loading screens just to rest there, then go through another 2-3 loading screens to get back to the World Map.. are you ****ting me? Did a blind, lobotomized monkey design this feature?

 

4) Hirelings seem like a waste of time; they die too easily in the special encounters and mostly cost too much to just have lying around for the purposes of increasing prestige/security. If they at least got rezzed after fights then it wouldn't be so bad.

 

5) Nobody interesting moves into your Stronghold. The game needs a Deckard Cain-type character (or three) who you actually want to visit and talk to, to make the place seem more alive. It's just a really uninspiring place to visit, and as I've already stated the gameplay benefits are very limited.

 

Still better than the BG2 Strongholds, but at least they had semi-interesting quests tied to them. Really I'm only dumping gold into this place for the sake of completing it. I really couldn't care less about the place aside from that.

I'd say that the above comments in red are overly dramatic, wiith the comment about a blind, lobotomized monkey being ridiculously so.

 

Regarding point #1, yes, I agree that it's lame that the bonuses aren't better compared to what you can get at some inns. Agree 100%. That said, earlier in the game, those meager bonuses aren't so bad when you may not want to spend any more than necessary to rest. Later on when you're rolling in money (mostly because you've completely upgraded the stronghold, or at least decided to not sink any more into it), 200cp for a room that gives you a number of +2 bonuses starts looking like chump change. And it does seem a little silly that once you've fully upgraded your stronghold that somehow an inn can provide better, more restful, more bonus worthy accomodations than your own home. But that still doesn't qualify as a "complete waste of time"!!!

 

 

As for point #2, there are only 4 merchants in the stronghold, so there can hardly be anything vast about them in the first place. And while their inventories ae hardly inspiring, that doesn't qualify as "offering nothing of worth". "Exceptional" grade weapons are hardly worthless. Bland and uninteresting? Yeah, I'd agree with that. But worthless? Not at all.

 

At least when you mentioned the hirelings in point #4 you said that they SEEM like a waste of time, which is a reasonably fair way of stating whether true or not.

 

Also in point #5, I'm not sure that I'd say that "nobody interesting" shows up at the stronghold. I think that some of the characters that do visit might be very interesting, if, as you later suggest, you could actually talk to them.

 

 

In short, you seem unable to criticize without resorting to excessive hyperbole, otherwise known as being a drama queen. If you toned down the hyperbole and stuck to the logic of your points, you'd make much more convincing arguments.

 

 

Stop derailing the conversation Crucis, a thing you tend to do in many threads you participate.

[Ceranai]

It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head:

 

 

 

 

 

• Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature.
• Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds.
• Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new.
• Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things.
• Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies.

lets add some things up

 

I like the retraining idea to a point, playing hardcore i find it hard to keep the eight companions around when i can custom make my own. so patching up their lore, mechanics and stealth to make them respective members would be nice so i could keep the unique dialogue around

 

Leaving members at the stronghold should grant incentive or perk. the adventures are awesome but the rewards arent that great. BUT its a reward with no risk. add some risk... death and dismemberment, NOW weve got some RPG going

 

Some definition to the taxes and day/turn cycle would be awesome. that statue chair broad could be more helpful, or interesting.

 

The keep has some awesome potential for RPG drama, like trade routes, discontent, famine, plague, WAAARRRRRR! mmm building an army.... that one a**hole hung half his town from a tree, ONE TREE! the most i can do is butcher my people...

 

i agree it shouldnt be a source of income but definitely an investment for immersion. id pay to have merchants with unique quests for their great gran dads war relic or whatever, their MY towns people, give them some personality! or at least let me hang them... i can buy a tinkerer but wheres my gallows and giant scary executioner???

 

fixing the battles so they arent inside of my keep would make sense since i built giant walls and towers- could put those to use

 

thats off the top of my head, feel free to add. man i so want to buy a hanging tree for my town. a burning post. some of those torture racks would keep the public in line...

A number of great points here and any number of these changes would have made the stronghold more useful.the loading screen rubbish being my fav by far. I think that whoever decided that to rest in your own ****ing castle you have to go through four loading screens was indeed.. How did that other guy put it? A blind labotimized monkey...

 

 

If the stronghold had any of these features I might actually use it,I still think all they really had to do was make it feel less like a graveyard. Like just add some NPCs ffs like add some scholars to the forum, an innkeeper to the inn, some militia to the training grounds etc etc.honestly I walk around my fully upgraded fortress and think what a graveyard

Edited April 15, 2015 by Ceranai

[mudd1]

 

Stop derailing the conversation Crucis, a thing you tend to do in many threads you participate.

 

 

This conversation left any kinds of rails long ago if you ask me

[voad1]

How do you get these rewards? I send party members out and it says I get these rewards but I've never once found anything in my inventory or stash.

[voad1]

I kind of like the stronghold. Just rebuilding it is nice because it gives it a sense of ownership. It feels good going back to a home base and it provides extra encounter and extra loot. Defending the base was pretty cool and one of the sellswords there was a good challenge. The bounties are great too.

[Epsilon Rose]

the adventures are awesome but the rewards arent that great.  BUT its a reward with no risk.  add some risk... death and dismemberment, NOW weve got some RPG going

I agree with most of your points, but I have a problem with this one. Death and dismemberment should never be the domain of the RNG. What you are describing is not an RPG, but a simple slot machine: Put adventure in and out comes riches... or you've wasted your buy-in. Either way, there's no strategy involved on your end.