I won't surrender!

[Slack83er]

Yeah I know, you're very gentle, and you especially BEN, who always come up with something good!

[AeonsLegend]

Ahhhh all this is far too complicated!! Shift in, give a beating, shift out. From that point on, it's ME the one that takes a beating. on easy mode, 1 sec and I was lying dead to 3 bandits.....and Eder was aside.

 

Also... I'd like to give him a slight feeling of "leader".... but since I also had this problem with a paladin, I'm afraid I'm stuck.

 

I don't have a lot of CON, I know..but damn... IT'S EASY MODE!!!

I think I'm hopeless. (and I'm wasting your time, which isn't fare at all)

Well you took the min max advice from a person who has played this game multiple times and knows how to work around low constitution. If you don't have a whole lot of experience I would advise against doing that. Low con hurts front liners unless they have some sort of other defenses like a fighter or a paladin.

[JerekKruger]

It's not surprising that your druid will be a bit fragile in the early game, but this should improve as you increase in level. I'm a bit surprised that you died so quickly after spiritshift ran out, was your endurance already low?

 

One thing to remember is that if you're in melee, and you move out of melee, the enemy gets a free disengagement attack which gets a bonus to accuracy and damage and, if it hits, will likely allow the enemy to re-engage, meaning they'll get another if you keep trying to move away from melee. This might be why you went down so quickly and is why I recommend not trying to move away from melee. In the early game even tough classes like Fighters can get punished pretty harshly by these attacks.

 

If you need to flee melee, and you don't have a Priest to Withdraw you, another option would be to have Eder use knockdown on the enemy which is currently engaging your Druid (you can see Engagement by little lines connecting your character to an enemy) which allows you to flee without worrying about disengagment.

 

What attributes did you take? What armour and weapons are you currently using.

 

EDIT: also don't beat yourself up if you're finding the game hard on easy. First, the early game is the hardest part of the game (barring certain boss fights). Two, easy is not actually much easier than normal or hard: the only significant difficultly steps are story mode and PotD; easy, normal and hard are all very similar. Third, there are a lot of intricacies to the combat in PoE which take quite some time to learn, it'll take a while before you have a good understanding of them all.

Edited November 1, 2016 by JerekKruger

[Slack83er]

I'm level 3 starting game. Plain armor, quarterstaff in hand.

Stats are:

 

MIG 16

CON 7 ( not so min maxed after all...)

DEX 10

PER 14

INT 16

RES 15

 

Cross class fighter reg. talent.

Also, while shifted, I miss a lot.. dunno why.

[JerekKruger]

Okay, your Con is a little low, but it shouldn't be having too much of an affect on your survivability. Are you moving around after you reach melee range?

[Slack83er]

Learning curve or not... I'm still not satisfied. Why is this happening? Why can't I be the party leader I'm trying to be? There's something I'm missing...

[Slack83er]

Okay, your Con is a little low, but it shouldn't be having too much of an affect on your survivability. Are you moving around after you reach melee range?

Not at all. But once shift expires I'm a ham in a corridor of blades.... 

[Slack83er]

I have second wind and athletics. used it. Died anyway. And I regen also! So you suggest going sword & board for a time and then change to 2handed weapon?

[Slack83er]

You're right ben, but if I don't find the game alluring from the very start, I can't get past the first few hours...

[Slack83er]

The game on easy has just so few enemies... going story would just remove even more of them... I need something that makes me FEEL the MC not, a change to difficulty. If I value my char, I'll adjust...

[Slack83er]

No, going story mode gives you the number of enemie you would have on normal, but with reduced stats

Is that so? Didn't know... anyway... the above concept still applies.. The MC is weak, not charismatic. The personal story doesn't enter into the plot.... he dies quickly... too many wrong things...

[JerekKruger]

Perhaps a Druid is not for you.

 

All classes are going to be fairly weak at the beginning of the game. Your character is an ordinary guy who has his quest thrust upon him: he has to work at becoming powerful. Act I, and possibly act II as well, are very much low level campaigns.

 

Compare to, say, Baldur's Gate 1: no class you pick will feel powerful for the first few levels. Even fighters could be killed by a couple of unlucky hits, and wizards couldn't afford to be hit at all. It took until around level 5 for characters to start feeling competent and they didn't start feeling powerful until perhaps 9+. In this respect PoE is doing the job of being a spiritual successor to  BG very well. If you enter combat expecting the game to play like an action RPG you're going to be disappointed.

 

Not sure quite what you mean about the personal story not entering the plot: for the first half or so of the game, the personal story drives the plot.

[Slack83er]

Yes explanation is needed: For personal story I don't mean the watcher thing, I mean the BG.

 

And yes, maybe I come from recent action rpgs that make it so that you level along with the foes. Strong at start, stronger in the end.

But the sensation that I am the leader of the group doesn't emerge, and I'm suffering this. How can I be leader if I'm weaker than Eder?

[AeonsLegend]

I'm level 3 starting game. Plain armor, quarterstaff in hand.

Stats are:

 

MIG 16

CON 7 ( not so min maxed after all...)

DEX 10

PER 14

INT 16

RES 15

 

Cross class fighter reg. talent.

Also, while shifted, I miss a lot.. dunno why.

Early game your stats are evened with the enemy, but you'll outlevel them so you won't miss much and become tougher. 7 con is lowish. I wouldn't go lower than 8.  And on easy mode you may as well put con at 10 and lower res. Every point in Constitution increases your endurance by 5%, which in my opinion is more useful than 1 point in Resolve ie. deflection.

[JerekKruger]

How can I be leader if I'm weaker than Eder?

 

Because you're smarter, or more charismatic, or are more driven? There could be many different reasons why you are the leader of the group. Or perhaps you're not the leader, perhaps your group doesn't really have a leader. When I meet up with my main group of friends we don't elect a leader: we decide things by consensus.

 

By the way, you won't think Eder is stronger than you when you hit level 9 and get relentless storm. In fact you'll be hard pressed to believe anything is stronger than you for a duration of that spell.

[Jojobobo]

You know you can just leave the difficult encounters until later (you are talking about the bears encounter right, it's hard to keep track)? I take on whatever tricky encounters I can Act I and leave those I can't until a later point, as I play solo my mileage varies a lot early game in terms of what I can and can't do as the different classes. This latest build I cleared out all of Caed Nua (even the library) before taking on Maerwald, but for some builds that will be extremely difficult so I just skip it - there's more than enough experience to go around in this game by the end.

 

Once you're in Act II, there's a lot you can do with minimal combat to gain experience - and with a party I imagine it's all the easier. You don't even have to start Act II when you've finished Caed Nua, you can recruit Sagani and then head towards Dyrford Village for Hiravias and Grieving Mother. Then, you can do all the Act I stuff you missed out on with a decent party. A lot of people say, "Oh I like to take on every encounter precisely when I get to it, otherwise it's weaksauce," but with the addition of the expansions I'd say this game has become increasingly non-linear in terms of how to tackle it and so you should just try it in whatever way you find enjoyable.

 

What I will say is, you post an awful lot in this thread, and whenever you're posting means you're likely not playing the game (unless you're accessing the forums with a phone or tablet at the same time) - so I'd stick at the game for longer and still post, it can be difficult to progress otherwise. I'm not trying to discourage you currently, but I think it might be limiting your progress. In the end, you do need to try things - there's only so much knowledge people can share.

[JerekKruger]

"certain somethig" (can you say that in english?)

 

You can, but in true English form you can also say "Je ne sais quoi" because if there's one thing the English language does best, it's steal from other languages.

 

It's like the old saying about English not having a word for schadenfreude. It's nonsense, of course we have a word for schadenfreude, it's schadenfreude. (I feel like I need an award because I spelled correctly schadenfreude first try)

[Slack83er]

Wow... that's a lot of text, but I went through all. So, yes, I don't play much, basicly because of my job (I'm at work now, can't do, and tomorrow mornign I'll sleep) so I try to conceive a character as best as I can, and then put it into practice. Today i tried the druid, and basicly, when I play, (I also wrote it somewhere in the thread) I lose the "drive" after few minutes. I just can't help it. My MC is just a weak peasant, misses a lot, it's tiny... there's nothing heroic about it, not even the fact that he's a watcher. Why am I, anyway? Who asked for it? I don't even lose my time watching the "golden square" npcs to know their story... I'm just not interested... I want to see my char evolve, in a linear manner, yes, but still evolve. I'm puny until level 9ish or so, and this isn't fair at all... 

[Slack83er]

I'm smarter, charismatic ecc...

Where do I notice this in game?

Edited November 1, 2016 by Slack83er

[JerekKruger]

Oh I gave up reading the golden square NPCs ages ago. A few of them are well written and worth the read, but far too many of them are not, and are just a waste of time in my opinion.

[JerekKruger]

I hate to tell you, but all nouns in german are spelled with capital letters... so it should be "Schadenfreude"

 

 

Maybe, but I was not using the German word, I was using the English word 

[JerekKruger]

 

As you progress further, there will be more and more dialouge options that will be available through int, res, per or through reputation. I think it is safe to say that the level of personality of your in game character enhanced with progression in the game

 

 

You also form it by choosing dialogue options with particular dispositions attached.

[Slack83er]

Can't say I like it Ben....personality should be set, not earned through experience... This is why this game lacks the CHARISMA stat after all I suspect... Damned d&d, I'm exigent...

 

EDIT. Personality can change ofc, during gameplay, accordingly to experiences made, but you can't be a maggot at the start..

Edited November 1, 2016 by Slack83er

[Slack83er]

I could choose a Stag... no great problem with it... its also huge  

But what I'm still lacking is that JE NE SAIS QUOI () that makes my mc interesting and specialized in his trade.

[JerekKruger]

I'm not sure you're going to find that in any character at the start of the game. Maybe a Cipher, but even there you'll start off fairly unremarkable. That's just the nature of low level role-playing, and for me at least it's a feature, not a bug.