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

[razvedchiki]

I tried to clear the final area without resting and...

it's hard. I'm sure it's very possible with the right party, but I went through every spell at every slot with a max INT sorcerer, plus all 61 of Amiri's rage, and I only just got past retrieving the second piece of the Apology. Probably killed 40+ high level Fey? Unfortunately, I didn't know I would access to the scroll vendor, and did not stock up beforehand. I imagine a scroll savant wizard would be extremely good if you plan to reach and defeat the Lantern King without resting. A kineticist would also really help with sustain. Once I finish, I might have to replay the last part with a different party, and see what's possible.

i respec octavia to a pure scroll savant.

 

[Desiderius]

Third run to incorporate all the things I'd forgotten and new things I've discovered, including CotW stuff:

Capital a town during Troll Trouble (never did that before):

pic of Town in Capital w/ date

Windmills (and Granary, Brewery) in Capital, Outskirts get Community up to unlock North Narl (and Diplo advisor at 60), Loan funds Region claim, 3 Villages unlock Town in Capital.

But this is more important:

Pic of Artisan Shops in North Narl

Getting Artisans down ASAP increases odds for good items, gives significant income boost. Bow Artisan is important because early Bows are a little sparse. Can snipe Owlbears at range for his item.

First time I've taken Amiri straight Barb (Invulnerable not much different from basic Barb) I guess and with Reckless/Inspire Ferocity by 4 she's pretty good. Will pick up Animal Totem by 8 for some better AC but will always be leaning on that DR/- + Rage HP cushion.

Pic of lvl6 Amiri

Can always turn off accept Rage on a tank or two if the AC malus from Inspire Ferocity is an issue. Nice boost for ranged, especially since Jae is immune to Moral bonuses.

Leaving Wererat Cave for CH2 helps Disarm the Alarm trap without save-scumming. Which leads to:

Amiri one-shotting Alchemist

Got that weapon first thing after getting Barony by:

using Vanish to rob Linnorm

Vanish works well for opening fight with Bard using Dazzling Display. Don't need duration on Invis anyway since you break it right away. First round spells go obsolete so nice to be able to spam for scouting and the like.

MC Court Bard skills queen

CotW has more CM support so she can do some Disarming:

Tough mob neutralized by Disarm and triggering AoOs with unarmed attack in Barrow

With help from her Satire song that debuffs enemy ABs no save. Undead are immune to that though she does get Inspire Greatness (but no Inspire Courage). She's mostly Intimidator/debuffer/clean-up melee so far. Touch of Gracelessness is also a thing.

Last but not least:

Harrim getting warmed up to tank Harg

We'll see. CotW has a lot of tools.

 

[Desiderius]

Been trying out the Chaotic options this time through. Anyone know what happens when you tell Harrim to break the gem (CN option)? Guess I'll find out.

So, uh, Harrim got there tanking Unfair Harg:

Sacred Fist Harrim tanking Hargulka

CotW OP. And Average Manatee was right - his Will was lower than his Reflex, at least with Improved Difficulty Scaling mod. Supposedly makes endgame Unfair harder.

MC hit lvl 10 just after Trobold and picked up this:

This Bard's not going to be useless in VTomb

Also got the (4th lvl) spell that lets you keep up two performances at once.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Still plugging along. Started back to school, which will slow me. Tristian & Amir just left. The game is much, much easier now, but as I said, it's so fucking finnicky and it takes so long just to get from screen to screen, that it's majorly annoying. Some recent annoyances:

-Non-obvious failing companion quests that I didn't do in time, so I needed to redo shit. I completed Ekun's giant quest, but forgot to fucking talk to him after. So I went and cleared out another area, and suddenly saw it failed. Realized I was too far from the Capitol to get back to talk to him, so had to do a whole section over.

-Same with Nok-Nok's quest, which unleashes a giant that decimates your kingdom with negative stat effects even as your advisor deals with him, to the point that it's much easier to just fucking reload and kill the giant than deal with it normally.

-Endless fucking permanent status effects. It seems like I discover a new one every time I play. Yes, they are all manageable, but it can be a pain to buy the scrolls/load the spells if you don't have them on hand when it happens.

-The endless fucking pre-battle buffing. I know I mention this everytime I post in this thread, but holy shit. It's half the game. I've read that WotR has 24 hour spells, which....fuck. That would be so awesome.

-The fucking fiddly Kingdom management. I'm probably power-gaming it way too much, in that I reload everytime I fail. I generally enjoy Kingdom Management as it's a welcome break from combat, but it's so time consuming.

I'm still enjoying the game overall. It's just the difficulty has switched from hyper-strategizing and using all available resources to barely eke out a win in a challenging fight, to having to deal with all the low-quality-of-life jank and bullshit.

 

[Nano]

So, uh, Harrim got there tanking Unfair Harg:

You needed to have someone tanking him? When I "fought" him he didn't even get any attacks in before my Bard hit him with Fascinate followed by an Overwhelming Grief.

Btw, aren't ya gonna pick up Symphony of the Elysian Heart? Freedom of movement in the form of song seems pretty worthwhile to me.

 

[Haplo]

I tried to clear the final area without resting and...

Spoiler

it's hard. I'm sure it's very possible with the right party, but I went through every spell at every slot with a max INT sorcerer, plus all 61 of Amiri's rage, and I only just got past retrieving the second piece of the Apology. Probably killed 40+ high level Fey? Unfortunately, I didn't know I would access to the scroll vendor, and did not stock up beforehand. I imagine a scroll savant wizard would be extremely good if you plan to reach and defeat the Lantern King without resting. A kineticist would also really help with sustain. Once I finish, I might have to replay the last part with a different party, and see what's possible.

Edit: Just finished the game, and wow, that last fight... feels like only very strong builds have any chance of winning.

Spoiler

If your main character can't reliably heal ~100 per turn while dealing significant damage, what can you even do? Maybe a character with evasion (can be provided from a unique ring) and a super high reflex save would be okay?

Edit2: Actually, I made the last fight WAY harder than it needed to be. I thought

Spoiler

That my companions resurrected because of a Time Stop bug, so I just skipped their turns to play the fight as if they were dead, and solo'd the Lantern King with my main. Reading through the wiki, turns out the companions reviving is meant to happen.

Resist Fire, Communal is your best friend in that last battle.

I think you meant Resist + Protection? Resist might help but won't save you (might give you an extra round, though). Will probably need to recast that Protection, though.

 

[Desiderius]

-Non-obvious failing companion quests that I didn't do in time, so I needed to redo shit. I completed Ekun's giant quest, but forgot to fucking talk to him after. So I went and cleared out another area, and suddenly saw it failed. Realized I was too far from the Capitol to get back to talk to him, so had to do a whole section over.

Uh, that's where you get the *pretty awesome* quest reward. Seems non-non-obvious that when you do a quest you go get the reward.

-Same with Nok-Nok's quest, which unleashes a giant that decimates your kingdom with negative stat effects even as your advisor deals with him, to the point that it's much easier to just fucking reload and kill the giant than deal with it normally.

KM really isn't designed to be OCDed or you'll end up hitting Skip Day 237 times like I did last time. Just roll with the punches and rebuild. You've got plenty of tools and time. Learning what not to do is part of design for replayability.

-Endless fucking permanent status effects. It seems like I discover a new one every time I play. Yes, they are all manageable, but it can be a pain to buy the scrolls/load the spells if you don't have them on hand when it happens.

Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

-The endless fucking pre-battle buffing. I know I mention this everytime I post in this thread, but holy shit. It's half the game. I've read that WotR has 24 hour spells, which....fuck. That would be so awesome.

BubbleBuff is a much better solution than blowing your Mythics on something that doesn't really kick in until after you need it.

In P:K you can either get organized and establish a routine (one for the one-shot areas, another for the big ones) including valuing long-lasting (and extend) effects over short duration, or you can use the less slick Buff Bot mod.

low-quality-of-life jank and bullshit.

High gameside QoL can't make up for low playerside QoP. Nothing you listed is bullshit but your excuses.

 

[Desiderius]

I'm convinced at this point that the player was never intended to get all the Artisans. I knew that Kamelands Artisans required LE and CE dialog (and more than dialog) choices but TIL that Dragn in South Narl requires a LN choice right off the bat or he's just not there. Is there a questline where he comes back or are you just screwed for the RP? Not really interested enough in finding out to miss out on a whole artisan. So he's LN, Varrask CE (questionable interpretation of CE on that one, inevitable result of the relativst Gygax turn from Tolkien on Orcs tho), Nazrielle over-the-top LE (there's a Devil quest hinted at that indicates that alternative questlines were originally planned for rejecting off-alignment artisans but never made it in-game), Wim NG I think, Bokken CN, Irlene NE, Tirviel LG, And the two in North Narl CG and TN I think.

 

[Desiderius]

So, uh, Harrim got there tanking Unfair Harg:

You needed to have someone tanking him? When I "fought" him he didn't even get any attacks in before my Bard hit him with Fascinate followed by an Overwhelming Grief.

Btw, aren't ya gonna pick up Symphony of the Elysian Heart? Freedom of movement in the form of song seems pretty worthwhile to me.

In Vanilla you would have had to nerf your build pretty badly to tank him (which of course drove a lot of MMOers apoplectic with rage) but in CotW Harrim gets what he needed naturally from his class, with help (that he didn't turn out to need) from the Difficulty Scaling Mod (I think). I do know that in Vanilla Unfair with Linzi Fascinate had about a 25% chance of landing and it's a choice of that or Dirge + Shatter or Courage. Grief likewise is low chance of getting there unless you've applied Touch of Chaos with Harrim and gotten him at least Shaken.

Tartuk is the main threat of that fight anyway (he roasted me with a Fireball first try) especially if you're trying to keep him alive until after Harg is dead to get the Chaotic Kobold kingdom unlock. I had Harrim and Okbo handling Harg while MC, Jae, and Jub were pelting Tart with Intimidate and control spells.

MC was set up for the big Disarm on Harg but ended up having to stop Tartuk instead.

Ear-piercing Scream finally got there

After Jae, who was set up for damage not casting:

Didn't get there on Swaying Word (eighth-level ability of her Subdomain)

or

Castigate

Second Castigate after the Scream did work and dodged a 108-point bullet. You can see how badly I'm missing Faerie Fire here (Tristian gets it - another great Druid spell) since most of those misses are from Tartuk's Displacement.

I might pick up Symphony at 14 but Bard Feats and abilities are very tight* and it's pretty situational. Already have great performances and can just get that effect if needed from the Spell on several characters.

* - she's a great home for the fixed Necklace of Double Crosses:

With Lord Protector to take care of the downside (CotW activates it)

since for some reason Court Bard gets Dueling Sword proficiency.

 

[Nano]

Grief likewise is low chance of getting there unless you've applied Touch of Chaos with Harrim and gotten him at least Shaken.

CotW added Persistent Spell. If you use that you'll might see your save-or-suck spells hit a lot more often.

P.S.: The saves in save-every-round spells are *all* affected by Persistent.

 

[Desiderius]

Persistent Grief would be:

(a) lvl five and not available until lvl 13 on Bard

(b) requiring Full Round Action, so after Harg gets somewhere around 10 attacks in even if he fails the save

(c) not applicable on Fascinate

No Favorite Metamagic in P:K. You guys shld be using it in Wrath instead of chasing Enduring memes. In CotW can get Feats that reduce Meta cost by one level *for one spell* and another to allow Standard Action *for one spell*.

 

[Nano]

Persistent Grief would be:

(a) lvl five and not available until lvl 13 on Bard

(b) requiring Full Round Action, so after Harg gets somewhere around 10 attacks in even if he fails the save

(c) not applicable on Fascinate

No Favorite Metamagic in P:K. You guys shld be using it in Wrath instead of chasing Enduring memes. In CotW can get Feats that reduce Meta cost by one level *for one spell*.

Bruh, I don't even bother with the feats. You can get a Lesser Persistent rod from the crazy magic lady at the capital for like 10k gold.

 

[Desiderius]

Not a bad idea.

Tho @Average_Manatee taught me to put my cash into BP instead. That and the Bag of Holding.

 

[Red Hexapus]

So, I've wanted to play this for quite a while now, and this month I've finally come around to do so. I've just finished the Season of Bloom and started Varnhold's Lot DLC.

For the moment I have mixed feelings about the game, for every thing it does right, if fails in a different aspect. I love the combat (turn-based), the itemization and character advancement (so many options there...)

On the other hand, the "kingdom management" thing seems to be half baked. I hate that you cannot pause when you improve the county, and have to wait till 14 day counter counts down. Also WTF is with the "trade with Pitax" decision? You pay 500BP for +4BP/week bonus, made me wonder if I would get back the investment in 125 weeks, before the game ends.

Also, a personal pet peeve of mine: non-unique PC portraits... I find it annoying, when I pick a portrait for the PC, which belongs to an NPC, so that NPC gets an alternative portrait in the game. I guess I should start using portrait packs from now on...

 

[Cael]

So, I've wanted to play this for quite a while now, and this month I've finally come around to do so. I've just finished the Season of Bloom and started Varnhold's Lot DLC.

For the moment I have mixed feelings about the game, for every thing it does right, if fails in a different aspect. I love the combat (turn-based), the itemization and character advancement (so many options there...)

On the other hand, the "kingdom management" thing seems to be half baked. I hate that you cannot pause when you improve the county, and have to wait till 14 day counter counts down. Also WTF is with the "trade with Pitax" decision? You pay 500BP for +4BP/week bonus, made me wonder if I would get back the investment in 125 weeks, before the game ends.

Also, a personal pet peeve of mine: non-unique PC portraits... I find it annoying, when I pick a portrait for the PC, which belongs to an NPC, so that NPC gets an alternative portrait in the game. I guess I should start using portrait packs from now on...

All trade agreements only work if you do it early. You have about 4-5 years before the endgame. Of course, the last year or so, BP is meaningless as you are likely to have upgraded everything, so it is really up to you if you want to be a completionist or not. I personally had all of the trade agreements up and running except the Galt one (the one where you get BP when you are in a state of unrest, since I don't let my kingdom go below the starting level, and it spent 90% of its time in Serene).

 

[Red Hexapus]

Thanks for the clarification on that.

I could use some help on a different subject. I have Kanerah in my team, but I've only use her basic attack, as I still don't understand how Kineticists work e.g. thinks like burns and charge. Anyone could enlighten me on this subject (or at least point me in the right direction)?

 

[gurugeorge]

So, I've wanted to play this for quite a while now, and this month I've finally come around to do so. I've just finished the Season of Bloom and started Varnhold's Lot DLC.

For the moment I have mixed feelings about the game, for every thing it does right, if fails in a different aspect. I love the combat (turn-based), the itemization and character advancement (so many options there...)

On the other hand, the "kingdom management" thing seems to be half baked. I hate that you cannot pause when you improve the county, and have to wait till 14 day counter counts down. Also WTF is with the "trade with Pitax" decision? You pay 500BP for +4BP/week bonus, made me wonder if I would get back the investment in 125 weeks, before the game ends.

Also, a personal pet peeve of mine: non-unique PC portraits... I find it annoying, when I pick a portrait for the PC, which belongs to an NPC, so that NPC gets an alternative portrait in the game. I guess I should start using portrait packs from now on...

Yeah I hate that last thing too. There's an absolute shit-ton of portraits on the Nexus for the game though, and you can change your portrait with one of the Nexus mods (it's an appearance mod, forget what it's called - you can also change lots of other things re. appearance with it).

[Later note: Visual Adjustments, there ya go.]

 

[Haplo]

AFAIR the paltry income from stuff like the trade agreements gets modified by Kingdom stats and/or improves multipliers for other stuff, so it's not as bad as it seems.

 

[Average Manatee]

Most trade agreements and a huge amount of other projects really aren't worth the time and investment price. The only ones that turn out to have important hidden benefits is that the regional projects will contribute to upgrading your artisans in that region.

When valuing projects remember that +1 point toward a kingdom stat is worth around 15-25 BP though if you had to build a building for it.

You'll probably eventually get them lategame anyway because you're sitting on 5k BP with nothing to do before the final chapter.

AFAIR the paltry income from stuff like the trade agreements gets modified by Kingdom stats and/or improves multipliers for other stuff, so it's not as bad as it seems.

I don't recall any multipliers for stuff like this. I'm also not sure whether trade agreement BP income gets cut in half by your taxation payments to brevoy early game, if so then they are even worse. I think they avoid it though.

 

[Haplo]

Regarding kineticists, there are 3 levels of Gather Power: low (Swift?), Medium (move?) And High (full round?). Each adds more to your "burn budget"for the next attack.
The basic vanilla blast quickly becomes "free" burn wise (or even is free from the start), but can be "infused" with form infusions (how its shaped and delivered) AND substance infusions (secondary effects, such as CC). Plus it can be metamagicked and, finally, two compatible elements can be combined to form a "composite" blast - basically doubling the damage. All of this increases the "burn cost" of firing a blast. How much burn you can spend on a blast increases with level, but it's always capped by the Con score (accepting burn means non-lethal, temporary damage - your current effective hp pool diminishes and you become a glass cannon). Gather Power greatly helps with the burn costs. Also you get metakinesis burn cost discounts with levels. But burn is not all bad. With burn you also accumulate Elemental Overflow bonuses (with caps increasing with levels), passively making your blasts more accurate and stronger.

Note that shape infusions, besides often changing the blast into aoe of some shape/size/range, will mostly change them from ranged attacks (touch attacks in case of energy blasts) to Reflex based attacks -which may often not be beneficial.
However some shapes offer no save at all (!), generally making them strictly superior (wall, deadly earth and finally cloud). It's good to choose elements compatible with composite blasts that will allow those (particularly Earth with Water and Fire).
Also double Fire is the only energy composite blast - targeting touch AC (can also be infused to pierce Spell Resistance)

 

[Average Manatee]

The truly broken part of kineticists is staying outside an enemy's sight range, doing High Gather Power, and summing one or two empowered/maximized AoEs that you then lead enemies into.

Also it's Low (move action), Medium (full round), High (full round + move action of next round), Since you then actually need to attack I don't think anything other than low gather power is suitable for combat. I'm not sure how it all converts into RT combat times though.

 

[Nano]

Seeing my kingdom state listed as Serene when there's a monster-birthing plague going around is pretty amusing.

 

[Desiderius]

Thanks for the clarification on that.

I could use some help on a different subject. I have Kanerah in my team, but I've only use her basic attack, as I still don't understand how Kineticists work e.g. thinks like burns and charge. Anyone could enlighten me on this subject (or at least point me in the right direction)?

I left Kineticists for subsequent playthroughs. You've got enough on your plate at first without learning a whole different kind of class that also doesn't benefit from most of the items and feats in the game.

Regrettably none of the "pay now, benefit later" projects are worth it. The mid to endgame KM is regrettably unfinished because it did start out very promising, and there is more to it than first appears but by ch IV you have so much money you don't have time to reap the benefits of the initial investment. Indeed this phenomenon makes the loan more than viable though it looks like a bad deal at first.

If:

(a) you pay attention to the alignment on the artisan dialogues

(b) play KM on Hard

(c) don't save scum Event outcomes

That would cut way down on your income (you'd lose several artisans) and make buildings more important to recover from losses.

This may have been the intended play pattern, but it's not one people would naturally follow because the downside of losing artisans is so steep.

I hate that you cannot pause when you improve the county

This is an accurate simulation of having too many plates spinning at once, which comes inevitably with managing a Kingdom. Once you understand the Curse timing it's at worst a minor inconvenience.

 

[Desiderius]

Seeing my kingdom state listed as Serene when there's a monster-birthing plague going around is pretty amusing.

Glibertarianism is a mental disorder. (You get to Serene via tax cuts)

 

[Desiderius]

The truly broken part of kineticists is staying outside an enemy's sight range, doing High Gather Power, and summing one or two empowered/maximized AoEs that you then lead enemies into.

Also it's Low (move action), Medium (full round), High (full round + move action of next round), Since you then actually need to attack I don't think anything other than low gather power is suitable for combat. I'm not sure how it all converts into RT combat times though.

Since Kinetic Blast doesn't get iteratives (Kinetic Blade does!) the typical play pattern is to leave Gather Low toggled on since it's a Move Action and Blast is a Standard. The cost of the Blast will automatically update depending on what Infusions you have toggled on (will go up if cost net of specialization > 0) and which Gather you're using (cost will go down). Can't do that if you're moving so you either use Extended Range or Move + cheaper Blast (or spend Burn), then Gather once in position. Easier to mix and match in TB.

Nothing stopping you on a tough fight from pulling a boss with rest of your team while Kinnie starts a High Gather then lets loose the following round with a big Composite Blast vs Touch. Did this on Bald Hilltop Unfair.