I got enough gold (1000, I think) to hire 4 companions directly after the tutorial, rushing through the first area to get to Gilded Valley. They were 2500 xp behind my main character, I don't think it's possible to get them any earlier
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Pillars of Eternity |OT| You must gather your party before venturing forth.
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
I got enough gold (1000, I think) to hire 4 companions directly after the tutorial, rushing through the first area to get to Gilded Valley. They were 2500 xp behind my main character, I don't think it's possible to get them any earlier
Completed act II and I'm at level 11 of Od Nua. Od Nua has been great even if I have had moments of rage.
Act II was nice until the very end where I felt that my choices didn't mean anything.
I have swapped out Aloth for the druid and he is beasting. He has 12 free level 1 spells and they are per encounter. I have made him a tank. He, Eder and my monk walk up to enemies. Eder and my monk start tanking and a few inches behind them stands my druid and spams non-friendly fire AoE spells.
Act II was nice until the very end where I felt that my choices didn't mean anything.
I have swapped out Aloth for the druid and he is beasting. He has 12 free level 1 spells and they are per encounter. I have made him a tank. He, Eder and my monk walk up to enemies. Eder and my monk start tanking and a few inches behind them stands my druid and spams non-friendly fire AoE spells.
Atraveller
Banned
Eder was knocked down during battle, but now he no longer stands, he just slides around on his butt.
IAmRandom31
Banned
slowly but surely easing my way into this. can't get too into yet as I still got Bloodborne to finish but damnit, if that music doesn't sing to me anytime I turn it on.
Last night decided to turn it on and get through the intro portions. Think I have just about done all I can with the first town. So now getting ready to go out questing ( thank god I don't have 50 quests already in my Journal )
Last night decided to turn it on and get through the intro portions. Think I have just about done all I can with the first town. So now getting ready to go out questing ( thank god I don't have 50 quests already in my Journal )
Shake Appeal
Member
That
fight is kind of bullshit. Provided you survive the first five seconds and don't get one-shotted, it's fine. But those first five seconds...
Adra Dragon
O.DOGG
Member
I'm just now stuck on it. Been stuck for an hour or two trying different things. It's just bullshit. I'm about ready to just skip it.
Sir Garbageman
Member
Gaze of the Adradagan level 6 wizard spell or trap. Bit of an RNG whether it lands but once it does, pile on the damage and call it a day.
No idea what fight that is since I'm avoiding spoilers... have you tried summoning items though?
Shake Appeal
Member
It really is a question of not getting hit with
an opening breath or wing attack, as they will near-wipe your party most times
dropped summons on the adragan to keep them busy and more or less ignored the xaurips until the dragon went down
Anyway, I was ultimately really impressed with the Endless Paths. Could have used a few more puzzles/interactive scenes and fewer repetitive groups of enemies, but for a 15-level dungeon forced on the designers it actually felt very well-integrated into the game.
Tekomandor
Member
Moon Goodlike Paladin has been working out well for me. That passive is well worth a head slot, IMO.
Something similar happened to me, most of my companions were sinking into the ground to their waist when walking. It stuck through switching them out and in again in the party, through reloads, and through restarts of the game. I had it through most of act 2 and 3, but then it went away by itself.
I also had the butt slide thing happen, but never for more than a few seconds.
I hope you have better luck, because as funny as it was to begin with, it got annoying quickly.
lol,always happens a few times in these type of games...I have the same thing happening in Divinity right now,after a resurrect,he is standing but his arm are like a scarecrow and he slides on the ground,motionless...
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
M°°nblade;159898705 said:
I went with low resolve (7) and I regret it. I may even use cheatengine to fudge that a bit, get it back to at least 10 and just dump perception even further. Playing with a barb (or any non-tank melee) is a lot different than my first playthrough of essentially eder plus 5 guns. I actually have to do the old WoW-style "send tank in to get aggro for a few seconds before the DPS" or else whatever I'm attacking immediately turns around and starts going for the barb. I am loving those big carnage numbers, though.
I also went to Dyrfort ASAP on this playthrough to grab GM, I'm not even in act 2 yet. I imagine she will be nice to have this early for stuff like
raedric
O.DOGG
Member
Thanks, fellas. I actually managed to kill it by laying a trap, which made the fight too easy once it got triggered (which took a couple of tries). Funny thing, I almost got wiped out by the minions after killing it. I guess I was so elated, wasn't thinking straight. Thank you for the advice
PandaPedinte
Member
I just found my favorite pet
Tiny Animat
Yep, melee DPS characters are a bit tricky. Tank or not, you need to find the sweetspot between offense and defense. I usually switch between medium and heavy armor for higher damage reduction, depending on the attack power of the enemy. It's also very useful for your tank to use the modal ability Guardian Stance which adds +10 deflection to allies. And give your melee dps the 'Armored Grace' ability (-16% speed penalty) to compensate the heavier armor.
My fighter stats are:
MIG 19
CON 10
DEX 17
PER 11
INT 8
RES 15
When facing mobs (especially with fampires which seem to be clever since they ignore my tank and go for the wizards first) I equip my melee DPS with an arbalest.
I usually send in the tank, and then simply block the hoard of enemies in a doorway so they can't reach my other ranged characters and only 1 or 2 of them can engage my tank. I snipe the enemy wizards and priests first and then clean up the rest.
When things go wrong and my tank dies, I switch my melee DPS to two handed sword style.
When he dies as well, I send in Durance with full plate armor.
I made it to level 7 in the endless paths with these battle of Thermopylae- tactics
Moff
Member
finished with 55 hours and I loved every minute, I think it was a fantastic game
I do agree with pretty much all the faults people are pointing out, I agree that the game feels not fleshed out enough in many ways. but I still don't think theres anything in this game that is bad or not good enough. I never expected this to be as massive as BG2. remember that this is still a kickstarter game and it still offers 50+ hours of gameplay.
what bothered me the most was the encounter design. there was simply nothing memorable about it. you engage, enemies swarm the group, that's it, 100% of battles. the only memorable encounters are because of unique enemies, never because of encounter design. and that's a problem because the competition didnt sleep. even dragon age:inquisiton, a game I was severly disappointed by, had some good encounters with different phases that required adaptions and new positioning. there is literally nothing like that in pillars of eternity.
however, I liked the tank mechanics, the endurance mechanic and the skills of the various classes, but the biggest reason why I loved the combat was because of how incredibly smooth it played, I admit I never really got into the combat of the classic IE RPGs because of that, but pillars of eternity combat I loved since the first minute.
What excited me the most though was how you could solve quets and dialogues in many different ways, which either had direct consequences or simply influenced your character, making him more cruel or benevolent, which again would open up other dialogue choices in the future, I liked that a lot.
all in all POE feels like an RPG that was made for me, I think it will be mentioned with the big classics in one sentence in the future and I am very much looking forward to the expansions and obdisiands next game, I actually feel a bit proud to have backed it, although I do admit that it bothers me that my phyisical CE hasn't even been shipped, yet. so I probably wont back physical again.
I do agree with pretty much all the faults people are pointing out, I agree that the game feels not fleshed out enough in many ways. but I still don't think theres anything in this game that is bad or not good enough. I never expected this to be as massive as BG2. remember that this is still a kickstarter game and it still offers 50+ hours of gameplay.
what bothered me the most was the encounter design. there was simply nothing memorable about it. you engage, enemies swarm the group, that's it, 100% of battles. the only memorable encounters are because of unique enemies, never because of encounter design. and that's a problem because the competition didnt sleep. even dragon age:inquisiton, a game I was severly disappointed by, had some good encounters with different phases that required adaptions and new positioning. there is literally nothing like that in pillars of eternity.
however, I liked the tank mechanics, the endurance mechanic and the skills of the various classes, but the biggest reason why I loved the combat was because of how incredibly smooth it played, I admit I never really got into the combat of the classic IE RPGs because of that, but pillars of eternity combat I loved since the first minute.
What excited me the most though was how you could solve quets and dialogues in many different ways, which either had direct consequences or simply influenced your character, making him more cruel or benevolent, which again would open up other dialogue choices in the future, I liked that a lot.
all in all POE feels like an RPG that was made for me, I think it will be mentioned with the big classics in one sentence in the future and I am very much looking forward to the expansions and obdisiands next game, I actually feel a bit proud to have backed it, although I do admit that it bothers me that my phyisical CE hasn't even been shipped, yet. so I probably wont back physical again.
If you really try, you can scrape up 2500cp before doing any quests, allowing you to hire 5 level 2 adventurers right at level 3, which will put them only 2000xp behind your main character. It's not easy, but it's doable (took me about 30 minutes last night from start to 2500cp, without doing any non-main quests or going anywhere but Gilded Vale).
Really? I'll need to try that. It'll make things much easier.
Edit: There is a Theal Feylion (Gold Nameplate) that has Plate armor that sells for 200cp, which is very helpful.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Goddamn monks are powerful. I was able to easily solo that bear on hard. lol. GG barbarian, maybe next playthrough.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
I've actually heard they end up scaling fairly poorly, but I'm not certain. They do seem very strong early on, though.
they scale well into lategame
one bear or two bears? iwannaseethereceipts.gif
the big bear kills Eder with two attacks
one bear or two bears? iwannaseethereceipts.gif
the big bear kills Eder with two attacks
decoyplatypus
Member
I started a second playthrough in anticipation of writing a review of Eternity's story and its shortcomings.* Of course now I'm just going to end up playing Eternity instead of writing. And I'll probably never get to Bloodborne... Already my choices are revealing new consequences. I didn't realize that in the prologue
*And its successes! No sense in letting the weaknesses crowd out some very real strengths.
if you choose to rest and let Heoden recover, Calisca will abandon you and turn up dead on the trapped bridge.
*And its successes! No sense in letting the weaknesses crowd out some very real strengths.
so I take it you didn't kill the entire caravan as punishment for stopping on the road
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Berries? You want me to collect berries? i will collect YOUR BLOOD
CrichtonKicks
Member
I see this comment a lot. What games in the genre do people think had excellent encounter design and why? I've played pretty much everything (except Icewind Dale 2) and my memory may be fuzzy since it's been a decade plus for a lot of these games but I just can't remember many games with encounter design significantly different or better than PoE.
Baldur's Gate 2 is, of course, the exception. The encounters were amazing in that one but I consider BG2 pretty much the best game of all time so I can't really hold it against a game if it doesn't match up to that standard.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
My favorite encounter in BG2 was when I would kill Firkraag by abusing the dumb AI and doing that manual attack/pause thing that would cause him to stay in neutral/conversation mode for like a minute while the part is swinging away. I was very good at that game.
decoyplatypus
Member
Haha I might have to get five or six playthroughs deep before I can play a true monster.
Moff
Member
as I mentioned in my post, dragon age: inquisition (which I generally dislike) had the dragons with different phases. they would fly away and young dragons would spawn, they would bombard the party from the air and then back to the tank and spank.
but all three dragon age games had memorable boss fights that required constant repositioning and adaption to new phases, sometimes even the use of items.
but think about it, POE has no encounter design at all, 100% of the time the enemies just swarm your party and you do the exact same thing. not a single encounter was memorable because of encounter design. and dont get me wrong, dragon ages encounter are exactly the same 90% of the time, they even have a terrible wave based encounters, but it's the 10% memorable encounters that really made the difference. not every single fight in the game needs to require special mechanics, that would be tiring, too.
now what irks me a bit is that depending on the difficulty, the monster placement is different. like in every group you encounter. I am not someone who usually says "they should have used that resources elsewhere" but I feel they should have made a generally more interesting encounter design and give the enemies on higher difficulties simply more life, resistances and damage.
hemtae
Member
The (Endless Path)
Adra Dragon
Moff
Member
the endless path boss is memorable, yes, because it has a unique enemy. not because of encounter design. the encounter design is the same as usual. you engange and every enemy in the room surrounds your party. I do agree though that at least they tried to place the enemies in an interesting way. it's also the only fight in the whole game where I placed my party in a special way before I engaged, and had to try about 6 times (until I figured
out you wreck the adra dragon in 5 seconds with the petrify spell)
fampyrs and all other encounters with with mind controlling enemies played a bit special, I agree, but only because of this one ability and I don't feel that's really something that can be called encounter design.
and here I am, arguing AGAINST poe when I actually was sad that GAF doesnt really seem to like it. just for the record, I love the game and really enjoyed the combat, much more even than in classic IE games because I love the POE mechanics and the smoothness of the gameplay. I just think they could have added a few encounters that didnt simply consist of a handful enemies swarming your party.
Shake Appeal
Member
This really isn't my impression. I mean, the kind of people that like Pillars of Eternity tend to be more restrained with their praise than most, but everything I've read has been "here's what I didn't like about this otherwise great game" or "this game deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Baldur's Gate II, but doesn't surpass it." It's qualified praise, sure, but I think there are very few backers here, if any, that wouldn't immediately back a sequel for the same money or more.
And I think everyone recognizes that Obsidian now have a template of world, lore, combat and roleplaying mechanics, etc. that they can build on, with a little more time to breathe and think things through before launching into it. If PoE II is as big a leap forward from this game as BG II was from Baldur's Gate — including in encounter design — well...
hemtae
Member
I really like Pillars of Eternity and I think its the start of something special. Like one poster said in his impressions, its easier to criticize than praise.
Also I very much disagree that enemy type placement isn't a part of encounter design.
Moff
Member
no it certainly is, but as I said, the competition didn't sleep. and there is only so much you can do with simple placement, in the end the fights play the same regardeless in what corner the ranged enemies are placed.
edit: and I think the encounters would have been much better if the enemies had more abilities like mind control or immunities that had an actualy influence on the encounters. I think evilore pointed that out nicely. speaking of evilore, I actually honored him by creating a rogue with his likeness and name at the beginning of the game to help me out, I even tried to sacrifice our benevolent administrator
to skaen in dyrford, but sadly they wouldnt accept created hirelings
So, how much is there to do in this game outside of the main story quests?
I've made a point of taking my time, reading into the lore of the world and completing side quests whenever I find them, but I think I'm still very early in, so I haven't got a clear idea of the way things are going to be.
To put a number to it, I've racked up 9 hours so far and have only just found Maerwuld in Caed Nua,
I've made a point of taking my time, reading into the lore of the world and completing side quests whenever I find them, but I think I'm still very early in, so I haven't got a clear idea of the way things are going to be.
To put a number to it, I've racked up 9 hours so far and have only just found Maerwuld in Caed Nua,
There are a ton of side quests, especially once you make it to Defiance Bay. They're definitely all doable though and I think they struck a nice balance of side quests and tasks to complement the main story.
UncleSporky
Member
Does anyone know if when your main team gets to max level and you keep finishing quests, if the XP you're earning that's going nowhere still has a percentage going to the other party members?
Or do you just straight up get nothing?
Or do you just straight up get nothing?
EndcatOmega
Unconfirmed Member
Bounties seemed to get my out-of-party dudes to 12 even after I hit cap, so I believe they get something.
UncleSporky
Member
Thanks for the fast reply!
I guess I'll just pull the rest of the party out to complete their character quests.
I guess I'll just pull the rest of the party out to complete their character quests.
Shake Appeal
Member
I think for the average player, the core content is 25-40 hours depending on how aggressive you are. The side content is about as much again.
Not sure if this has been posted but I thought I would share. Someone managed a 39 minute speedrun of Pillars of Eternity.
Obviously SPOILERS:
Here you go
The glitch used is
A little more info found here. http://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/32hhh5/wr_pillars_of_eternity_in_3753_by_jiseed/
Obviously SPOILERS:
Here you go
The glitch used is
A little more info found here. http://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/32hhh5/wr_pillars_of_eternity_in_3753_by_jiseed/
In Baldur's gate the dragons were enough dangerous so you wouldn't go kill 11 of them like in Dragon age Inquisition. It's like they became kinda some sub boses with that many, imo.
Also, they weren't smart and have any personalities like Smaug.
You could just let them be and the game wouldn't care but let's face it with 11 romaing free dragons are enough to burn half of Thedas normally. Fortunally they're stuck on a map doing nothing important and the NPC didn't really care about them.
Just saying with that many dragons (11, dlc included) they should've more impact in the game.
Treechopper
Member
Just got to the Goose and the Fox.
Of course the bartender is "Bishop," has a hammer, and talks about how everybody loves to assemble to talk philosophy!
What's the story behind the name? Is there a write up around here about what all Gaf put in?
What's the story behind the name? Is there a write up around here about what all Gaf put in?
LurkerPrime
Member
Just got to the Goose and the Fox.Of course the bartender is "Bishop," has a hammer, and talks about how everybody loves to assemble to talk philosophy!
What's the story behind the name? Is there a write up around here about what all Gaf put in?
It's all in the name:
Goose
And
Fox
The founder that Bishop talks about is a clear reference to EviLore... it's something like Evi of Lore, but not quite so literal IIRC. Aside from Bish, I'm unclear about any further references; I never even realised the Bishop-hammer connection.
Goose
And
Fox
The founder that Bishop talks about is a clear reference to EviLore... it's something like Evi of Lore, but not quite so literal IIRC. Aside from Bish, I'm unclear about any further references; I never even realised the Bishop-hammer connection.
Also, the OP has a section about it.
Treechopper
Member
Ah, clever! There are a lot of golden names so I didn't know if Gaffers had said what they contributed to each person.
Gotta admit, I was giggling the whole time I was in there. Felt so weird seeing vague references to a message board I visit every day lol.
LurkerPrime
Member
The golden names are all from Kickstarter backers, but the stories are Obsidian's... yeah it's a confusing way to do things. Fortunately the GAF Inn has the best one; when you read it I'm sure you'll know.
Also, the gravestone epitaphs are 100% Kickstarter backers' work. They can be... jarring, so only dig into them if you're not going for immersion.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Monks are so incredibly fun to play. By far the best melee class. First time monks have been anything other than complete garbage in cRPGs compared to their other, weapon wielding counterparts.
Also, it seems some update gave Eder the guardian ability that he didn't have in my initial playthrough. Very odd.
Also, it seems some update gave Eder the guardian ability that he didn't have in my initial playthrough. Very odd.
actually I've read some in-depth class guide yesterday and apparently monks work better with weapons, for now. My PotD fist monk was the highest damage dealer in my party so unarmed combat is not exactly bad either, though
e: it seems fists are viable after all, the guide got it wrong