I won't surrender!

[Ben No.3]

Well... I feel with Slacker... When I bought the game, it took me two months to get past act I, because I was unsatisfied with how the character developed. And not just build wise.. A lot of the time I was restarting because I was unhappy with the dialouge option I had choosen with calisca about my backstory or I was unhappy with the background in general 

And to be completely honest with you, I still do that way to much.... WAY to much. I'm actually forcing myself to stop playing for now so I can dive into it when I get back and stop worrying about the characters backstory (cause that is exactly what I am developing right now) 

 

THAT is how bad my restarteritis has become  

[Ben No.3]

If you are going to regret not having played it, then stick with it - that's ultimately what it comes down to. For my Gunslinger build, if I'd actually bothered to really get a ton of advice beforehand I wouldn't have ever of played it ("guns suck, noob!" or "your defences are crap, no way you're doing this solo," or whatever) because it was a different kind of build that doesn't sound necessarily like it works on paper and because it's not the kind of thing people had tried before. The fun was trying that, and discovering what worked myself - without external input.

I would have loved to see what would have happened to the person calling you a noob , especially on these forums

Edited November 2, 2016 by Ben No.3

[Jojobobo]

Well... I feel with Slacker... When I bought the game, it took me two months to get past act I, because I was unsatisfied with how the character developed. And not just build wise.. A lot of the time I was restarting because I was unhappy with the dialouge option I had choosen with calisca about my backstory or I was unhappy with the background in general  

And to be completely honest with you, I still do that way to much.... WAY to much. I'm actually forcing myself to stop playing for now so I can dive into it when I get back and stop worrying about the characters backstory (cause that is exactly what I am developing right now)  

 

THAT is how bad my restarteritis has become 

No I have bad restarteritis myself, I like to get a good grasp of mechanics early and then restart. With Pillars, this was unfortunately exacerbated by how buggy it was on release - giving me additional restarts on top of my regular lot (particularly with the bug that made your defences stack when you saved in an area, or on my subsequent playthrough where I played a Fire Godlike only to find the DR stacked and was permanent on Battle Forged) that made me burnt out faster than normal.

 

I feel like RPGs, or at least RPG players, have different stages: (1) Restarteritis - where you restart loads, then the game feels unrewarding, and it becomes hard to push through. (2) That middle phase - where you do push through, but maybe you do that once too often, so you get restarteritis even on the middle stages. (3) The zen mode, where you finally push through and complete the game - and develop a real appreciation for it. You now know the game and want to play it through again, so you're much more likely to stick at it, and also your restarteritis comes in handy - because you're now so familiar with the early game stages that you can get them done extremely efficiently (for example, I completed 13 Defiance Bay quests/tasks in under a couple of hours the other night, due to my gross familiarity with the early stages of the game and how to optimise quest completion to save time and avoid load screens).

 

I would have loved to see what would have happened to the person calling you a noob , especially on these forums

I was a bit of a noob at the start, I had all sorts of badgering mechanical questions and thought to activate cheats you needed to type the "iroll20s" thing in blind - and not into the text bar (like an old school console cheat code... I know, I was such a noob). I guess only one build I've written all by myself and two builds where I had only a slight input and really Boeroer put in loads of work really refining, developing and making them truly good still doesn't make me much of a master!

 

But I guess that's a little of the point, I was just asking mechanical questions - to an extent people in Slacker's situation need to try and make a character their own, even if they are imperfect, and then persevere.

[Slack83er]

Hehe thank you for the amount of effort you're still making in keeping me here, and to be honest I'll stay on the forum, because I enjoy your company

 

Matter is, Jojo, that my "restarteritis" is not a disease per se, but a consequence of the fact that I just can't have "pleasure" in playing if things aren't how I EXACTLY want them to be. I may be not a grand connoisseur of the game's mechanics, but I'm a superb RPGer on tabletop (no false modesty, it's been 20years of playing now) and I assure you that the game master hates me because I know all rules and commas, and I don't even start writing on the character sheet if I'm not convinced of how the character will be, from 1st to 20th level, every single aspect. I'm perfectionist, but since I know that a complete playthrough will take me dozens of hours, I don't want to spend them in something which is meh for me. Even more so on the tabletop games

[Jojobobo]

I'm the same way, but as the game allows for respec-ing at inns then if something isn't working as intended you can just change it later. Money in game is ridiculously easy to come by, so it's easy enough to perfect your build in game even when you do have a detailed plan going into it.

[JerekKruger]

I'm the same way, but as the game allows for respec-ing at inns then if something isn't working as intended you can just change it later. Money in game is ridiculously easy to come by, so it's easy enough to perfect your build in game even when you do have a detailed plan going into it.

 

This is particularly true in a first play through, where it's nigh impossible to really understand the ins and outs of the mechanics, and various abilities and items the game has to offer. Once you've finished that (particularly if you try out all the NPC companions) you'll have a much better idea of these things and can try your hand at designing a build from the ground up.

 

Think of it like learning to speak a foreign language. If you refuse to practice until you understand the language perfectly, you'll never speak it; you have to go out and speak the language badly, make mistakes and be corrected, if you ever want to improve.

[Ben No.3]

Well said! And indeed, I've had dragons swiping the floor with my party cause my first few attempts were simply "nuke the hell out of that".... Yeah, not very efficient. But then I found strategies.... I decided to create an fighter custom companion with eders armour and tons of different missile scrolls. I send him in first, drawin all the aggro until he died.In the mean time, I buffed up my party, and when the attention turned to the party, it was prepared. At some point, the fighter was revived by the armour and spammed the scrolls from behind... In retrospective, it was a strange, inefficient and kind of cheesy approach, but I felt like the god of strategic thinking at the time

 

And just to clarify, we are talking about the "dragon" the xauripps of the endless paths on level 2 were praising...

 

Ah... the memories 

Edited November 3, 2016 by Ben No.3

[Boeroer]

For me, Cail the Silent will always be the most difficult of all the dragons. Also because my frame rate drops to 5 fps in that stupid cave...

[JerekKruger]

Cail is often one of the hardest encounters I face in my play-throughs, but that's because I usually pay him a visit early on for lovely lovely Tidefall.

[Ben No.3]

For me, Cail the Silent will always be the most difficult of all the dragons. Also because my frame rate drops to 5 fps in that stupid cave...

Oh yeah, the only dragon fight I always used sagani for... Poor Itumaak.

 

I luckly don't have the fps problem... I build a PC with a nice graphics card... Aaaaand rarely ever played anything but Pillars on it. A complete waste of power? Yes definitley. Would I rather play something else? Hell no (Tyranny and PoE2 aren't out yet, so)

[AndreaColombo]

^ same here XD

[Boeroer]

I'm on a 5 year old laptop with a GeForce 555M, so...
But hey! It used to be top notch back then.

 

It's true: Cail is so difficult only because I want to get Tidefall as early as possible.

[Ben No.3]

Oh, when I'm travelling, I need to use my laptop with intel graphics.... Yeah, I go down to 720p and lowest graphics but I can't even batlle any sort of spellcaster properly. Heck, even some blights are suddendly though

Edited November 3, 2016 by Ben No.3

[Slack83er]

Maybe should try stag with spear/shield.... just wanted to try one last resource...

[Ben No.3]

Here we go again

[K Galen B]

Weapon+shield would definitely help prevent the 'die as soon as spiritshift ends' thing. You'd also probably be better off casting a buff, debuff, or DoT before shifting so you can spend less time exposed in melee and kill faster while you are exposed.

[Slack83er]

I like spear for that matter... are there any shields that can help a druid/caster? Maybe even bucklers...

[K Galen B]

Small shields are the best for casters since the accuracy penalty from medium or large shields applies to spells and such, not just melee attacks. Aila Braccia is the only small shield that's all that good for casters until you start tackling dragons, and even it can't be had until you get to act 3. Until then just use a fine/exceptional small shield, whatever is the best you can find, buy, or make. Once you're able to wrestle dragons for shields, Black Sanctuary and Little Savior are pretty fantastic.

[JerekKruger]

Oh, when I'm travelling, I need to use my laptop with intel graphics.... Yeah, I go down to 720p and lowest graphics but I can't even batlle any sort of spellcaster properly. Heck, even some blights are suddendly though

 

Yeah? Well I play PoE on the huge 286 my dad brought back from a business trip to America in the late 80s. In the snow. Up hill both ways.

 

What do I win?

[Slack83er]

Little question: is it only the shield's penalty to acc that applies to spells, or also the bonus from spear for example?

[Boeroer]

Only the ACC malus of the shield (if any). Some abilites work with the single handed +12 ACC bonus though - like The Dragon Thrashed and White Worms. Maybe there are other spells/abilities that have this "feature", too.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Boeroer

[Slack83er]

Mmm those are chanter abilities, maybe he's the only one that can benefit of such bonus...

For my last pg I liked stag, maybe the defenses would help me little more... also, since equipment doesn't matter so much for Druid, I thought a godlike would be in order.