A beginner's guide [guide edition 1.2]

[wojciech]

i registered just to give author GREAT THANKS for that! You really helped me a lot. I`m 33 years old, last time i played Baldurs Gate when i was about 15 and getting back without this great (because so simple) guide would be so much harder. Those basics where just what i needed. Thank you one more time, cheers from Kraków. 

[Boeroer]

Ahh the youngsters - so enthusiastic.

[Matroska]

Great rundown. I've played BG1&2, PS:T and the other IE games a lot, although admittedly mostly about 15-20 years ago, but I find it hard to get my head around some of the things in PoE. The mechanics don't seem to stick in my head that well for some reason. One thing I'm not sure about is how exactly do crits work? I know the higher the accuracy compared to deflection, the higher the crit chance is, right? But is there a base crit chance that goes up due to the excess accuracy, or is it that if you exceed their deflection (or whatever) by a large enough amount, it's automatically a crit? For example, with hypothetical values, everyone has a 1% chance to crit (if you hit) but every 2 points your accuracy goes above the required amount to hit adds another 1% crit chance? Or for the second one, if you exceed the hit value by 40, it's a crit?

[Boeroer]

This should explain things:

https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Attack_Resolution

In addition to that you can also convert hits to crits with some special enchantments or abilites. So you actually rolled oly a hit, but then the game does another roll to see if it can get "upgraded" to a crit. 

Crits do +50% duration (if the effect you apply has a duration in the first place) and/or +50% additive damage. So it's not so that all of your damage you rolled gets multiplied by 1.5 - but it merely adds another damage modifier to your weapon's base damge (which never changes) that adds up with the other modifiers (like Sneak Attack or Savage Attack and so on). So Sneak Attack + Crit doesn't mean [weapon_dmg_roll] * 1.5sneak * 1.5crit but instead it means [weapon_dmg_roll] * (1weapon_dmg_roll + 0.5sneak +0.5crit). It's still powerful, but not as powerful as if it would be a multiplier. Its impact is highest in the early game since you won't have much other damage modifiers. Once you start stacking more and more of them (e.g. with weapon enchantments and talents/abilites) it will lose a bit of impact on the overall damage. For durations it's always useful. 

[Boeroer]

oops - nevermind, wrong thread.

Edited November 26, 2019 by Boeroer

[Ben No.4]

On 11/19/2019 at 9:21 PM, wojciech said:

i registered just to give author GREAT THANKS for that! You really helped me a lot. I`m 33 years old, last time i played Baldurs Gate when i was about 15 and getting back without this great (because so simple) guide would be so much harder. Those basics where just what i needed. Thank you one more time, cheers from Kraków. 

Hi, I am the author of the guide. As you can tell, I lost my original account (to be precise, I forgot the password and no longer use that mail). It has also been quite some time since you and especially I have really been on these forums (obviously), so I don’t know wether you will ever read this. It is worth a shot, though.

 

Let me wholeheartedly thank you (and everyone else) for your kind feedback. I’ll be perfectly honest, I regret not finishing the guide. But I am very glad it is of some use. Of course, the forum provides very rich discourse and in-depth information on basically anything; still, I wish I had at least written something about everything basic. Hell, even the way I went about it was very naive, I’ll be honest. I wrote the entire thing in the forum’s editor and I am 99,9% sure I didn’t make any notes or drafts beforehand. Alas, life goes on. It’s not like the guide keeps me up at night either.

 

I’ve been getting back into PoE every now and then, and recently more intensely (which is why I’ve been browsing the forums more... I’ve been concocting a four-elements-monk, or at least trying). There is something very special about playing a game for so many years, especially during such a formative time in life. I believe (though I am not sure) I bought the game rather close to release. I was still in school then and would be for quite a few more years. These days, I’m studying law at university and living in my own apartment (which I am extremely privileged and grateful to be able to). I’m glad to report I got somewhat better at working on things. On the other hand, I am still extremely disorganised. Energy comes and goes in waves that I lack the capacity to control. The Lockdown made it worse as well, as this mode of living makes it rather easy to really indulge this schedule-less style of work. In this respect, I dread the day my university actually opens up (but mostly, I look forward to it). But enough of the rambling. 
Still, I’d like to think that if I were to write such a guide today, I’d go about it in a more organised way and produce a more complete product. Certainly, one with better language and less goddam spelling errors.

 

I owe an enormous thanks to the regulars of this forum. Looking back, can’t say I always provided content of the highest quality. But I most definitely had enormous fun, which I am very glad about. I cannot thank you all enough for providing me with the space to discuss a game near and dear to my heart. Special thanks go out to Boeroer, who still seems to be around. I also want to especially thank AndreaColombo, JerekKruger, Raven Darkholme, Jojobobo, Algroth and Slack83er, all of whom made the experience wonderful. Shoutout also to Harpagornis. I don’t think we ever interacted (or at least not often), but your stuff was great fun. Much thanks also to those who were there but that I have forgotten about. 
 

Lastly, I was lucky enough to visit Krakow two years ago, truly a wonderful city. 

Edited May 15, 2021 by Ben No.4

[Boeroer]

@Ben No.4 Servus!  

 

Edited May 15, 2021 by Boeroer

[draego]

@Ben No.4 i still direct new people here from other places when they have questions this guide can answer