My 1st PotD group: A new Middle Earth Fellowship

[Lampros]

Sigh, I am getting hit so hard. I nearly got 1 shot killed by a level 2 Black Ooze while trying to dual wield. I think it's going to be 1H/Outworn Buckler set-up until I get geared up.

Edited September 20, 2017 by Lampros

[Lampros]

I have 19 percent chance to hit Xaurips. WTF? I am really becoming alarmed.

[JerekKruger]

What level are you and which Xaurips? If I recall correctly there are some Xaurip Champions around Madhar Bridge, and there are plenty of them down on the Xaurip level of the Endless Paths, and those are going to be tough early on.

[Lampros]

What level are you and which Xaurips? If I recall correctly there are some Xaurip Champions around Madhar Bridge, and there are plenty of them down on the Xaurip level of the Endless Paths, and those are going to be tough early on.

 

I am level 2, and the Xaurips are level 1 from Valewood. I am thinking my Perception is way too low. It's 12, and I was trying to dual wield two battle axes.

 

Edit: Well, I should get Zealous Focus the next level, and I may have to use rapier or something. I am going to try "courier" type of quests as much as possible until I gear and level up, it looks like!

Edited September 20, 2017 by Lampros

[JerekKruger]

I am level 2, and the Xaurips are level 1 from Valewood. I am thinking my Perception is way too low. It's 12, and I was trying to dual wield two battle axes.

 

What class?

[Lampros]

 

I am level 2, and the Xaurips are level 1 from Valewood. I am thinking my Perception is way too low. It's 12, and I was trying to dual wield two battle axes.

 

What class?

 

 

Paladin.

[JerekKruger]

Well your Accuracy should be 30 and Xaurips have 38 Deflection so you should have a 42% chance to Hit, a 35% chance to Graze and a 23% chance to Miss. Where are you getting the 19% from?

[Boeroer]

The tooltip when hovering over them. I always completely ignore that nonsense.

[Lampros]

Well your Accuracy should be 30 and Xaurips have 38 Deflection so you should have a 42% chance to Hit, a 35% chance to Graze and a 23% chance to Miss. Where are you getting the 19% from?

 

Hmm, that's what the red number above the Xaurip says when I click on it?

 

The tooltip when hovering over them. I always completely ignore that nonsense.

 

Hmm, so the red numbers are bugged?

[Lampros]

My Paladin has 77 hits and a big fat ZERO crits. This is proving to be a most interesting journey

[mosspit]

The start is always rough. 12 Perception is fine, every 1 Per is 1 Acc so more Per doesn't make game changing difference. To help, you can pick up the Weapon Focus early for your martial classes.

 

Make a beeline to the Glided Vale to grab your custom/npc companions. For custom companions, the earlier you get them the smaller the experience gap will result. So those key levels like lvl9 for chanters can arrive faster.

Edited September 21, 2017 by mosspit

[Lampros]

The start is always rough. 12 Perception is fine, every 1 Per is 1 Acc so more Per doesn't make game changing difference. To help, you can pick up the Weapon Focus early for your martial classes.

 

Make a beeline to the Glided Vale to grab your custom/npc companions. For custom companions, the earlier you get them the smaller the experience gap will result. So those key levels like lvl9 for chanters can arrive faster.

 

Yup. I got to Gilded Vale very fast. Unfortunately, I was almost level 3, so I decided to pick my custom companions after I turned level 3 to save XP. I lost 1250 extra gold in the process though. I think it was a worthwhile exchange, but I am not sure on the math.

 

I killed both Aloth and Eder for their gear; Eder took forever to kill even with a full 6-man group. Jesus. Another issue I am having is that with 4 melee, I am having a lot of indoor fights where one or two guy isn't doing anything at all. But for now I will likely keep the 4 melee set-up, since most of the difficult boss fights don't involve door fights.

[Lampros]

So done for the day, and my main Paladin just hit level 4, and the other guys just hit level 3. I avoided Temple of Eothas, and I am killing mobs in wilderness areas (I was a bit surprised I could kill 3 trolls with ease at Black Meadow at level 3 main and level 2 the rest) and doing easy quests. Some observations:

 

1. As expected, the crowding problem with 4 melees is awful. The problem is made worse by the fact that PoE has just about the worst AI pathing I've seen in an RPG game of this quality, so I have to walk melees to their targets. But on the flip-side, my 2 ranged guys - the Priest and the Wizard - only get hit by ranged attacks. I think I will leave things as is, but I may give the Fighter a pike later as a back-up.

 

2. Enemy burst damage is rather huge. While I have yet to die, I have lost over half a health in one hit on a number of times on all of my front-liners, so healing has to be super-quick. It is definitely possible to get killed by two crits, and it may eventually happen as things are going. In fact, the level 2 Ooze in Cliant Lis nearly killed my main in one hit! So I am wondering if I made a mistake in leaving only 10 Constitution on all my front-liners.

 

3. I know it's early, but the Wayfarer Paladin, my main, is easily the MVP so far. His dual wield build - while risky - is killing stuff so fast that Strange Mercy seems to activate non-stop. And he's saved so many guys from near death with his Lay on Hands. In contrast, the dual wield Fighter is frankly doing jack sheet. At this point, I think I would have been better off running 2 Paladins rather than 1 Paladin and 1 Fighter. But it's early going, so we shall see.

[mosspit]

Why kill the npc companions?

[Boeroer]

Yes, why not take them into the party, take their gear and then park them in the stronghold?

[Lampros]

Why kill the npc companions?

 

Yes, why not take them into the party, take their gear and then park them in the stronghold?

 

I did recruit them the last playthrough, and the problem then was that they filled up my quest log and confused the heck out of me in terms of what I needed to do. It's way too much to have done every quest and have 9-10 companion quests flashing.

[Boeroer]

Ah, ok. For a second I thought that you thought that you have to kill them in order to get their gear.

 

Can't say how many times I smacked Durance to death because he was offending me with his gargling "Come to pray at the statue!"-nonsense.

Edited September 21, 2017 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

Ah, ok. For a second I thought that you thought that you have to kill them in order to get their gear.

 

Can't say how many times I smacked Durance to death because he was offending me with his gargling "Come to pray at the statue!"-nonsense.

 

I never had them in party, but that would have been another issue if I had!

 

By the way, does the game save differently if you play "offline" v. "online"? I've had online instability so I've played offline a lot recently. But it seems like I cannot access my offline progress when I get online - and vice versa.

 

So I started online today and realized my offline progress was not saved at all. So in panic, I deleted all saves to see if I could access my offline save that way and re-started the game. And then there was nothing there. Unfortunately, there was nothing there when I went offline, too.

 

So it looks like I have to start yet again.

[Lampros]

Fug. I verified game cache, and it seems to have uninstalled IE mod and MaxQuest's mod. WTF.

[Lampros]

Okay, so reinstalled the game, IE mod, Max Quest's mod, etc. - and disabled the Steam Cloud synch. I hope I won't have any more disappearing save issues when I transition from online to offline game-play.

 

And re-started the same set-up.

 

P.S. How do folks do the initial Heodan fight so that he is ensured to live? I have been hit-or-miss here. Sometimes I am able to kite him to relative safety - and other times he has too many engagements to reliably escape, so I have to rush and just keep healing him with Lay on Hands. I cannot imagine I can do this fight without a Paladin or Priest main, because Heodan takes way too much damage initially.

[mosspit]

Next to his caravan, the is a small space between the caravan and some trees. Try to position him there. Usually only 1 enemy can reach him and doing so, he wont get flanked. With only 1 enemy engagement, he stands a much better chance at surviving.

[JFutral]

Other than for the having to reinstall the game part, I love this thread!

 

Joe

[Boeroer]

The dialogue line with 15 INT leads to a Heodan who is not injured. This makes things easier for him. Also, send Calisca towards him while he's running towards her. She wants to intercept the followers with a one-handed Knockdown.

Edited September 21, 2017 by Boeroer

[Lampros]

Next to his caravan, the is a small space between the caravan and some trees. Try to position him there. Usually only 1 enemy can reach him and doing so, he wont get flanked. With only 1 enemy engagement, he stands a much better chance at surviving.

 

Thanks; I will try to note that the next run.

 

Other than for the having to reinstall the game part, I love this thread!

 

Joe

 

Yes, the game is definitely losing saves or not showing them at times. I am not accidentally deleting them; it's the game. I am not sure what the cause is. It may have to do with the fact that I have both IE Mod and MaxQuest's mod installed, and there might be some weird glitch when they all interact. I also disabled vanilla auto-save, and that may also be a contributing factor.

 

Either way, I am going to back-up saves every 30-60 minutes of play now. This also likely means I can't do "ironman" runs until this thing stabilizes.

 

Do you or anyone have experience with this while using IE Mod and/or MaxQuest's mod? With vanilla auto-saves disabled? I have not done anything else with the game.

 

 

The dialogue line with 15 INT leads to a Heodan who is not injured. This makes things easier for him. Also, send Calisca towards him while he's running towards her. She wants to intercept the followers with a one-handed Knockdown.

 

Yup; my Paladin started with 18 Intelligence.

[Lampros]

Holy fug. Kinda stuck after having the main Paladin leveled to 4 and the rest leveled to 3. I was taking way too much damage in every fight, so I decided to temporarily make the Paladin a 1H/shield tank, and he got the Outworn Buckler. This made the fights a bit more stable - albeit even slower. I am also even thinking about giving my Fighter the Guardian Stance if this is not enough in the future fights.

 

But now where to go? I am afraid to go to the Temple of Eothas; and even more so to go to Caed Nua. And I am stuck in the Mother's Plea Task, because I am terrified to go to the Spores cave.

 

Ideas?

 

Edit: I was premature in my dismissal of the Fighter. He's already pulled way ahead in DPS, and he was the top guy even before my Paladin switched to 1H/shield. I think what I was doing wrong in the previous lost save was not walking the guy to the enemy and instead just clicking on the enemy and hoping the pathfinding will take care of the rest. And yeah, the AI pathfinding is just God-awful - something I didn't notice as starkly until I ran 4 melees...

Edited September 21, 2017 by Lampros