Bestiary Suggestion

[bsci]

One thing I loved about the Witcher 3 was when you encountered a new monster that was giving you trouble you could look in your bestiary and figure out its weaknesses. I greatly disliked the pillars of eternity system where you had to kill the monster a certain amount of times to figure out what it was weak and strong against. That seems kind of counter intuitive because once you've killed it a few times you probably aren't going to look up its info. Why not have the info purchasable in a shop in book form so you can diligently spend gold on these assisting things about the local monsters and what people have figured out works against them. Makes sense to me and seems like a good money sink.

[Rolandur]

• Yes, lore books that we can find (rare) or maybe buy (very rare).
• Through narrative an NPC can tell us some about a certain monster or specie (uncommon).
• Beast Lore as a skill that as your character levels it up it opens up more about monsters (so Beast Lore 6 would open 40% of all common and uncommon monsters and 10 would open 100% of uncommon and common and 40% of rare and very rare monsters).
• And, still incorporate number of monsters defeated towards entries (small percentage like 2-3%)

 

Anyways, yes it makes sense the way it is now BUT it doesn't exactly help because by the time it's helpful we are already aware most of the time [of what needs to be done, or not done].

[rjshae]

To me what the monster lore books provided was nuanced information. Yes, you may have killed it a few times, but the resulting lore allowed you to fine tune your attack thereafter. Typically I used them that way for the more difficult monsters.

[Mygaffer]

One thing I loved about the Witcher 3 was when you encountered a new monster that was giving you trouble you could look in your bestiary and figure out its weaknesses. I greatly disliked the pillars of eternity system where you had to kill the monster a certain amount of times to figure out what it was weak and strong against. That seems kind of counter intuitive because once you've killed it a few times you probably aren't going to look up its info. Why not have the info purchasable in a shop in book form so you can diligently spend gold on these assisting things about the local monsters and what people have figured out works against them. Makes sense to me and seems like a good money sink.

I disliked how you only learned the defenses of an enemy as you killed more of them. It wouldn't be the end of the world if the same system stayed in Deadfire but there's got to be a better way. You can't really make tactical decisions without knowing the DR or defenses of an enemy.

[blotter]

With the expanded range of skills that are going to be available, perhaps the amount of starting information you have about monsters could be tied to your ranks in various corresponding types of Lore.

 

Edit: Though bestiary progress through different lore types would likely have to be staggered based on how rare/powerful the monsters are (harder for their weaknesses to become common knowledge when fewer people survive encounters with them, after all).

Edited February 13, 2017 by blotter

[Heijoushin]

I agree. As it stands, I don't think anyone really makes use of the bestiary except for idle browsing (correct me if I'm wrong there). Useful information available from the start (at least for the more common monsters) might increase its usefulness.