Pathfinder Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition - now with turn-based combat

[Simple Simon]

So it's not accessible through the main campaign, correct? I may just play it then since I already did 2x playthrough.

That's right, you can't start it through the main campaign. However, if you just play the Varnhold campaign you will be missing some of the content. You get a chance to revisit the dungeon you play through in the Varnhold campaign during your main campaign.

 

[ArchAngel]

I'm leaving it for my second playthrough. Which will be a no-magic-users playthrough on the hardest difficulty. Probably.

Take a Sensei. They can mass cure negative levels, and mass heal HP.
It’s not a really impressive amount of HP.
But better than natural healing speeds.

No need. He just takes 6 rangers with powerful melee pets. Rangers do Pew Pew and pets tank and take damage. When pets die they return at full health after next rest.
Or are rangers also considered casters?
If yes then he can do the same thing with that barbarian subclass.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[ArchAngel]

takes 6 rangers

rangers dab in magic. Better question is: are alchemists allowed?

They can cast spells so obviously not.
And as I said above, one can do pet tactic with barbarians.

 

[Jenkem]

When you start Varnhold campaign you can choose the main campaign save. I have seen Troll Chapter decision from my imported save mentioned there. I think that end of ch2 (maybe after bloom?) would be the best place to import save to DLC, play it and use completed DLC save when you are prompted for it in your main campaign.

This is how I understand it will work in case of new game. I am still playing DLC and had not tried back-to-main-campaign import.

I thought that import option was just to import your character

 

[anvi]

Just as I'm getting bored by all the trash battles where I one shot everything, I finally get a good fight. The battle saving a lost boy, my whole party gets surrounded, twice. It gave me a chance to use a new spell that teleports my party somewhere. So I am surrounded, I teleport to the edge of the battle, and now they all come for me from the front and my tanks can hold them off as usual. Good times. The big spells are fun but they seem pretty over powered. I have a wiz and a sorc so I double up some spells. All the trash fights die before I can even cast a spell because my ranger and tanks splat everything. On tougher fights, 2 fireballs end the fight in 2 seconds. On boss battles, 2 fireballs and then the big frost storm thing, and also the big falling rocks spell, that ends most battles. The troll menace bosses were a decent fight though, they couldn't be splatted with a few spells, so my cleric had to spam heal and my casters had to go all out. Hope there are more fights like that soon.

 

[Jarpie]

Just as I'm getting bored by all the trash battles where I one shot everything, I finally get a good fight. The battle saving a lost boy, my whole party gets surrounded, twice. It gave me a chance to use a new spell that teleports my party somewhere. So I am surrounded, I teleport to the edge of the battle, and now they all come for me from the front and my tanks can hold them off as usual. Good times. The big spells are fun but they seem pretty over powered. I have a wiz and a sorc so I double up some spells. All the trash fights die before I can even cast a spell because my ranger and tanks splat everything. On tougher fights, 2 fireballs end the fight in 2 seconds. On boss battles, 2 fireballs and then the big frost storm thing, and also the big falling rocks spell, that ends most battles. The troll menace bosses were a decent fight though, they couldn't be splatted with a few spells, so my cleric had to spam heal and my casters had to go all out. Hope there are more fights like that soon.

Are you playing on the journalist-difficulty setting?

 

[Grunker]

Just as I'm getting bored by all the trash battles where I one shot everything, I finally get a good fight. The battle saving a lost boy, my whole party gets surrounded, twice. It gave me a chance to use a new spell that teleports my party somewhere. So I am surrounded, I teleport to the edge of the battle, and now they all come for me from the front and my tanks can hold them off as usual. Good times. The big spells are fun but they seem pretty over powered. I have a wiz and a sorc so I double up some spells. All the trash fights die before I can even cast a spell because my ranger and tanks splat everything. On tougher fights, 2 fireballs end the fight in 2 seconds. On boss battles, 2 fireballs and then the big frost storm thing, and also the big falling rocks spell, that ends most battles. The troll menace bosses were a decent fight though, they couldn't be splatted with a few spells, so my cleric had to spam heal and my casters had to go all out. Hope there are more fights like that soon.

Are you playing on the journalist-difficulty setting?

He doesn't have to. Anything from challenging and below gets obscenely easy from ~level 10 forward.

 

[Haplo]

It sounds like maybe it's time to raise the difficulty...

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Grunker]

It sounds like maybe it's time to raise the difficulty...

I did. It's not perfect though. Difficulty, tactical balance and encounter design is the game's biggest problems IMO.

 

[purpleblob]

What level were you when you finished the combat portions? Do you recall what enemies/terrains were most used? I am thinking about building a ranger as Varn's waifu I think that would be a good fit for a general from an RP perspective.

I finished the DLC with level 8 party, very close to 9.

There are new type of mobs you haven't seen in the main game:

Spoiler

Centaurs, mimics and oozes

For the majority of the game you are in Dunsward (not sure what terrain it will be classified as) but later on you spend a few hours in:

Spoiler

a castle/dungeon that is apparently underground - there are bit of first world portion too as usual.

 

[anvi]

Playing on whatever the middle setting is. I might try bumping it up. The troll/kobald quest was pretty dull because I just stormed through the place like a swat team 1 shotting everything until the bosses.

 

[111111111]

Reinstalled the game

Everything seems way easier than release

Game still runs like trash

 

[Yosharian]

takes 6 rangers

rangers dab in magic. Better question is: are alchemists allowed?

They can cast spells so obviously not.
And as I said above, one can do pet tactic with barbarians.

No spells whatsoever. No paladins, no rangers

 

[Lagole Gon]

So... how's the Owlcat doing?

I hope they've made bags of rubles and now they can produce a reasonably menaged and maybe even finished product.

 

[Yosharian]

I'm leaving it for my second playthrough. Which will be a no-magic-users playthrough on the hardest difficulty. Probably.

Take a Sensei. They can mass cure negative levels, and mass heal HP.
It’s not a really impressive amount of HP.
But better than natural healing speeds.

Cool. Thanks

 

[Thonius]

Launched the game just to see DLC content. Well, they got some UI updates, new Icons, game loads very fast. Game looks neat. It's seems that best time to start for DLC - is coronation to baron event, so that's gonna be chapter two, right before bloom? Also bleak druids (or whatever they are) any good?

 

[LESS T_T]

Lead audio designer of Owlcat details audio design and implementation of PF:K: https://habr.com/en/company/mailru/blog/440894/

Conclusion part:

Numbers and Charts

Finally, here are some general stats:

Music:

• Six composers worked on the game: two in-house studio employees and four professionals were contracted for the project.
• A total of 60 compositions were written, amounting to 105 minutes of music.
• A large part of the music was written with the help of virtual instruments with some elements using “live” vocals and brass instruments.
• Tavern compositions were mostly recorded live.

Sound:

• Eight sound designers took part the game’s audio design, with six of them under contract for the project. Their help was needed for creating sound effects from a very long list of monsters and magical effects.
• The project uses more than 23,000 sound files in the following categories:
  ○ Locations (ambience)
  ○ VFX, magical effects
  ○ Monsters, NPCs
  ○ Dialog events
  ○ Weapons
  ○ Interface
  ○ Interactive actions
  ○ Character reactions
  ○ Dialogs

Voice acting:

• More than 15 hours of dialog was recorded. It took about 150 studio hours to do this.
• The voice acting was done with the help of 45 actors. Most of the actors worked with us through two studios in New York while others we chose to contact directly.

Conclusion

A lot of work went into the audio for PF:K over the span of two years. So, what have we achieved? A lot, I believe, as most reviews cite sound, music and voice acting in the game as some of its greatest features. Many players share small details of their audio discoveries in online discussions. I believe we achieved all of this mostly thanks to the following:

• We started planning the game’s audio during pre-production when we could still discuss and approve all key ideas with other members of the team. This is when we established what the game’s sound would be like and what role it would have, as well as its main aesthetic principles. We knew what we wanted to see from the start, so we started building the whole process from the start and continued it all the way to the game’s release. None of this would have been possible as an afterthought midway or near the end of production.
• We licensed a third-party high-functionality audio engine for the game (Audiokinetic Wwise). This allowed us to integrate and fully support sound in the project without the constant need to bother programmers. For instance, integrating the weather system into the game’s audio only needed a few lines of code to toggle the needed processes – the rest was done within the audio engine, under the control of the audio team.
• The sound designers had the opportunity to work with the game first-hand and study it ‘from within,’ which provided them the opportunity to suggest their own ideas on improving the game’s sound and fuse it with various game mechanics. Using Wwise helped, as the sound team could test their work on their own without needing a lot of help from programmers and long delays from audio creation to implementation and tweaking fixes. It is also hard to outsource this kind of a task, as it requires a profound knowledge of the project and quick access to the team.

Well, that’s it. I hope that you managed to learn something new and useful from this article, or found it entertaining at the very least. I am eager to hear your thoughts and feedback as well as any advice!

And heh, I didn't know this. Prototyped with NWN2?:

Our goal for PF:K was to become a project that would stand out from other new generation RPGs and prove itself to be the spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate series. We started with a role-playing system that has withstood the test of time (tabletop Pathfinder is based on a modified version of D&D 3.5e), and its first chapter was essentially a mod for Neverwinter Nights 2 constructed by the game’s designers. Meanwhile, Victor Surkov, our art director, created a beautiful concept showing how the upcoming game would look and feel.

 

[Yosharian]

Voice acting was a complete waste of time. The voices are pretty much universally annoying as fuck.

Meanwhile, there isn't enough music in the game. The music that is there is quite good, but some tracks play so often that they get fucking annoying.

SFX I will admit I haven't analysed much, but seems pretty good.

 

[Jarpie]

Voice acting is imo fine, most fits the characters quite well, from companions only Amiri is pretty much shit but I don't use her.

 

[Miner 2049er]

A friend of mine always thinks, he's acting accordingly to some imaginary honorable paladin codex. In and out of RPGs.
I keep telling him, clerics are more powerful. Paladins can't fight and they can certainly not heal. They have to follow their
orders and do insane unspeakable things to keep their puny privileges. Lose them and a paladin is the worst class.
Outperformed by every street tug who has access to sneak attacks and many other useful abilities. Lay on hands, an
neglectable aura and smite evil. A level 4 cleric is more valuable than a level 8 paladin.

Finally, it's about time someone speaks the truth and I say it now for all you paladin fags: No party wants to have paladins.
"No. We can't open the chest with the gold to save their own damn world."
"No. We can't take the reward for the super hard and long quest chain, we spent thousands of gold for information and rations on, because you and your hookers need the money so much more." They're bloody NPC. They don't even do a single thing with the money. They just keep it. It's the paladin who's stealing. From the party.

I'm no wimpy, self-righteous, bigoted paladin. I would rather be a crusader.
Bad thing is, from reading some posts, I get the impression, the crusader might be even wimpier than the accursed paladin. I mean, you get weapon specialization without requirements. How's that for a fighter exclusive feat ?
You can take heavy armor and weapon bonus feats, so you don't have to do any 1 fighter / x X multiclassing and fall behind spell progression.
You lose one domain and one spell per level. Bearable. What really hurts, is the crusaders attack progression (BAB?).

I'm not ready to let the idea to main a crusader die. He has persuasion as a class skill, gets weapon specialization and he can cast like crazy in heavy amour without any spell failure penalties. Sounds pretty good in my ears.

I'm undecided. Should I take animal domain for another flanking tool or do animal companions tend to be too much of a hassle and die too fast in the later stages of the game or should I go for the healing domain to make all cure spells heal 50% more ?

Is it feasible or just a bad idea to put some points into Int ? Because, if I'd take animal domain: arcana, world, nature, religion and persuasion are all class skills. Should the main character put points in perception too ? How much Int do I need if I want to invest at least in Religion, Persuasion and Perception. I can't have it all I guess. What skills should I cover with my main and what skills can I delegate to party members ?

 

[Yosharian]

A friend of mine always thinks, he's acting accordingly to some imaginary honorable paladin codex. In and out of RPGs.
I keep telling him, clerics are more powerful. Paladins can't fight and they can certainly not heal. They have to follow their
orders and do insane unspeakable things to keep their puny privileges. Lose them and a paladin is the worst class.
Outperformed by every street tug who has access to sneak attacks and many other useful abilities. Lay on hands, an
neglectable aura and smite evil. A level 4 cleric is more valuable than a level 8 paladin.

Finally, it's about time someone speaks the truth and I say it now for all you paladin fags: No party wants to have paladins.
"No. We can't open the chest with the gold to save their own damn world."
"No. We can't take the reward for the super hard and long quest chain, we spent thousands of gold for information and rations on, because you and your hookers need the money so much more." They're bloody NPC. They don't even do a single thing with the money. They just keep it. It's the paladin who's stealing. From the party.

I'm no wimpy, self-righteous, bigoted paladin. I would rather be a crusader.
Bad thing is, from reading some posts, I get the impression, the crusader might be even wimpier than the accursed paladin. I mean, you get weapon specialization without requirements. How's that for a fighter exclusive feat ?
You can take heavy armor and weapon bonus feats, so you don't have to do any 1 fighter / x X multiclassing and fall behind spell progression.
You lose one domain and one spell per level. Bearable. What really hurts, is the crusaders attack progression (BAB?).

I'm not ready to let the idea to main a crusader die. He has persuasion as a class skill, gets weapon specialization and he can cast like crazy in heavy amour without any spell failure penalties. Sounds pretty good in my ears.

I'm undecided. Should I take animal domain for another flanking tool or do animal companions tend to be too much of a hassle and die too fast in the later stages of the game or should I go for the healing domain to make all cure spells heal 50% more ?

Is it feasible or just a bad idea to put some points into Int ? Because, if I'd take animal domain: arcana, world, nature, religion and persuasion are all class skills. Should the main character put points in perception too ? How much Int do I need if I want to invest at least in Religion, Persuasion and Perception. I can't have it all I guess. What skills should I cover with my main and what skills can I delegate to party members ?

Pretty much everything you said is wrong.

There's nothing in the Paladin rules that says you can't accept payment for a reward, or that you can't loot chests. What you're describing is just a shitty Paladin.

And the Crusader is fucking awful.

 

[Miner 2049er]

What I'm describing is not just a shitty Paladin. Paladins were shit since Baldurs Gate 1. Be a fighter or a cleric. Or a cleric and a fighter, but not a wimpy pussy. I had nothing but trouble with those guys.

 

[Incendax]

Casters are always going to stomp Melee in any 3.X based or derived system.
Especially when one of the items is "Ignore immunity and spell resistances."
But on the positive side, Paladins do have that lovely Mark of Justice.