Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Shadenuat]

Drezen is very well designed, it's a pick your approach, different goals, a lot of hidden supplies for free rests Gauntlet, as a siege is supposed to be. It is extremely difficult by PKM and even unmodded IE standarts but is also extremely reasonable with every perception check removing some of the difficulty away. You will be kicking and screaming first time but you will learn to love it.

 

[Saravan]

imagine sleeping in the middle of a siege

If you consider that most real-life sieges went on for weeks or even months, imagine not being prepared to.

Back to the point of content.

The point is that you can't fucking read when the guy explicitly states that he's not talking about difficulty but you insist on making almost a full page of posts on your own talking solely about difficulty.

My point was basically "Jesus Christ, give the players a breather every now and then". There's no need to turn every single fight in something that should require the full extent of your buffing capabilities.
Especially because you can have your "full range of buffs" only for so many fights before running out of them and requiring a rest. "Oh, it's easy, you can protect from that with that buff", "you can be more effective against that doing that other thing", "To deal with X you can simply used Y".
Yeah, none of these resources is infinite. At some point, especially when you are in the habit of resting as little as possible, you start running out of shit.
I DID beat every single encounter so far but there have been many I didn't exactly enjoy and I felt like I was basically expected to cross my fingers and pray things would work.

That aside, there's also the detail hat almost everyone here is just handwaving dismissively as "Nah, you're imagining things" but it is a FACT that a lot of encounters here are extremely over-tuned. Tons of monsters and most of them with inflated stats and bloated HP.
And it's almost a comedic recurring gag how hopelessly doomed most NPC "helping you" are since they are usually blasted into pieces as soon as they take one single attack from one random enemy, since someone at Owlcat forgot to offer them the same benefits they conceded to the monsters.

Yes this is called encounter design. It is not the same as talking about difficulty but Autismius here can't comprehend the difference. He's just looking for an entry point to remind everyone that he enjoys masturbating to his skillzzz.

 

[jf8350143]

I thought we already knew Owlcat's encounter design is completely shit from Kingmaker?

 

[Desiderius]

The Boar is a -4 leveled Triceratops pet you find from an item in the Drezen Temple. Only buff here is always-on Extended Good Hope and the incomparable Crusader's Edge. He's one of only two dedicated meleers in this group so he gets it. You have three Lesser Extend Rods by this point in the game. Daeran fires off an Arrow of Law doing the DOSII thing of disabling the next mob up in the queue while also doing some decent damage and getting into position. He has some better options but saving those for later fights or when we can see more bad guys in this one.



Pic isn't great (he's at the arrow) but Sosiel Charged into position to get Archon's Aura on these guys and I promptly realized that I'd forgotten to Enlarge him so I go a little closer than I wanted. Decided to burn one of my 8 activations of Inspiring Command. It's usually a Full-Round Action but with Domain Zealot it becomes Swift. Good thing since he takes a Fireball and some Arrows to the face.



So about Fireballs. This is a fortress full of Demons. There will probably be a lot. Your Resist, Communal ticks up to 20 at level 7. Keep that shit up. Archaeologist is so good. All the random abilities. Forgot about Evasion.



The Fireball assholes also like to drain levels. Archaeologist has a Sound Burst for that. Casters don't have much Fortitude. Lucky bastard has enough I guess. Vestment also stacks as it did in P:K. Not really broken since it's only +1 per four levels tho doesn't cap while Magiic Weapon caps at five total.



This is the first release where Cleaving Shot works. Its, um, pretty good. You know what else is pretty good?



For the first time you can breakdown damage by mousing over the damage value of the equipped weapon in the character screen. This is big.



Here the Archaeologist is tanking perfectly with no splashes or fighting defensively or anything. Even has Mirror Image for the Nat 20s. Pet Charges the Caster but no Concentration Check. In RT he'd never get another spell off, here in TB not so much.



Daeran with Waves Mystery picks up the guaranteed Stagger from Frigid Touch on the next foe up in line. Forgot he didn't have Ascendant Element Cold yet. But Stagger is good, Then Sosiel Firghtens them all with Marching Terror anyway. Not much of a challenge at this level.



Aru also has Cleaving Shot (Holy Weapons are good) and Lann gets an unlucky roll on his Reflex Save, definitely not keeping Lightning Resist up. No biggie, plenty of potions. Casting Defensively checks as Yosharian said end up being pretty straightforward.



Now this is cool. This Babau trying to get to Nenio gets mowed down by Lann's Improved Shap Shot. That extra five feet is bigger than you think. Greater gets another five and big bonuses. Since he starts with Combat REflexes Ever Ready is probably overkill.



Archeologist not doing a ton of damage yet against non-Demons (so no Crusader's Edge) with no Trickster Sneaks and no Vitals and no DEX-to-Damage. Focused on caster feats but will get there on damage eventually. Lann finally in position to take down Evoker.



And cleaning things up.

Bottom line if you prepare for fire and have each of your characters prepared to do something to neutralize threats this difficulty is entirely manageable and a little on the easy side if you look at those AB and AC windows. Not a Competence bonus to be seen in any of them.

 

[Desiderius]

The Encounter design is great. I've got two demons in a hallway that I've detected before they can see me, but I can't see the real danger behind and it takes some planning and tactics to deal well with it. Tuco Benedicto Pacifico complained specifically about some mob with +22 and another throwing fireballs out of nowhere. If there's a specific fight he's talking about we can walk through that too.

There's no skilzzz here. These are all single-classed out of the box companions using their regular abilities. Or are you saying that Sound Burst, Arrow of Lawl, and Frigid Touch are just too broken?

 

[Grunker]

I like all this complaining about difficulty. Sounds like a clear improvement on the first game

 

[Saravan]

The point is that you can't fucking read when the guy explicitly states that he's not talking about difficulty but you insist on making almost a full page of posts on your own talking solely about difficulty.

OK now you're going on permanent no exception ignore. This is unprecedented levels of retardation.

The Encounter design is great. I've got two demons in a hallway that I've detected before they can see me, but I can't see the real danger behind and it takes some planning and tactics to deal well with it. Tuco Benedicto Pacifico complained specifically about some mob with +22 and another throwing fireballs out of nowhere. If there's a specific fight he's talking about we can walk through that too.

There's no skilzzz here. These are all single-classed out of the box companions using their regular abilities.

So I take it you are full of shit as well?

 

[The_Mask]

Yeah, none of these resources is infinite. At some point, especially when you are in the habit of resting as little as possible, you start running out of shit.

Technically, if you perform a deep anal-sys on the resting system (hur hur), you'll find that you're allowed to rest at least once, if not twice. I would say that in the tutorial "maze" this is pointed out and encouraged. And so I wouldn't be surprised if every single large map was designed with the idea that you *are* going to rest once.

Maybe we need our habits challenged sometimes. Maybe some of us play RPGs for that exact reason.

 

[Desiderius]

imagine sleeping in the middle of a siege

If you consider that most real-life sieges went on for weeks or even months, imagine not being prepared to.

Back to the point of content.

The point is that you can't fucking read when the guy explicitly states that he's not talking about difficulty but you insist on making almost a full page of posts on your own talking solely about difficulty.

My point was basically "Jesus Christ, give the players a breather every now and then". There's no need to turn every single fight in something that should require the full extent of your buffing capabilities.
Especially because you can have your "full range of buffs" only for so many fights before running out of them and requiring a rest. "Oh, it's easy, you can protect from that with that buff", "you can be more effective against that doing that other thing", "To deal with X you can simply used Y".
Yeah, none of these resources is infinite. At some point, especially when you are in the habit of resting as little as possible, you start running out of shit.
I DID beat every single encounter so far but there have been many I didn't exactly enjoy and I felt like I was basically expected to cross my fingers and pray things would work.

That aside, there's also the detail that almost everyone here is just handwaving dismissively as "Nah, you're imagining things" but it is a FACT that a lot of encounters here are extremely over-tuned. Tons of monsters and most of them with inflated stats and bloated HP.
And it's almost a comedic recurring gag how hopelessly doomed most NPC "helping you" are since they are usually blasted into pieces as soon as they take one single attack from one random enemy, since someone at Owlcat forgot to offer them the same benefits they conceded to the monsters.

NPCs in fact do scale with the monsters. You can keep them alive if you’re careful but it often isn’t worth it since they can get in the way in tight spots.

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah, none of these resources is infinite. At some point, especially when you are in the habit of resting as little as possible, you start running out of shit.

Technically, if you perform a deep anal-sys on the resting system (hur hur), you'll find that you're allowed to rest at least once, if not twice. I would say that in the tutorial "maze" this is pointed out and encouraged. And so I wouldn't be surprised if every single large map was designed with the idea that you *are* going to rest once.

Maybe we need our habits challenged sometimes. Maybe some of us play RPGs for that exact reason.

Drezen is designed for you to rest more than that. There are at least three stations that turn down corruption and if you have decent Religion Loreyou can get three or four before that even becomes an issue.

 

[Desiderius]

Tuco Benedicto Pacifico all the things you’re saying would in fact be a concern if they were true. Do you care if they are or not?

You’re playing a class that is very reliant on its buffs with a splash whose value if any lasts ten minutes max. Could that have something to do with your take? Did you expect to roll through on your first try without any challenge after what happened with Deadfire? Isn’t making people use some of that inventory full of consumables a good thing?

If your NPCs are dying in one shot that means one thing - Fireballs and there are two places where that happens. One you can easily scout, one where you’re ambushed, but biggest problem is game doesn’t recognize them as allies so can’t get them in your group Resist. Doesn’t matter you’ll find more NPCs, just no need to walk them into the areas where the Fireball demons are.

 

[Desiderius]

I like all this complaining about difficulty. Sounds like a clear improvement on the first game

DOSII sold big with that nasty three level SourceBug ambush fight into the Alexander and Dallis on the Ship bloodbaths while Deadfyre Faceroll flopped only to recover once they put some challenge back in.

 

[Delterius]

I like all this complaining about difficulty.

water elemental on shield maze

only beta kids will understand

 

[Desiderius]

For some reason they took away the potion of Resist Cold lol. If only everyone could go to Haplo school.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Speaking of important shit, Desiderius. Where the hell do you even hire the succubus before doing the final boss fight in Drezen? So far I just freed her from prison and she went "Ok, thanks, bye". Did I miss something then or I'll have another chance to bring her to the party hidden somehwere?

 

[Yosharian]

I don't think Owlcat can't design encounters but they just don't seem to grasp the idea of an adventuring day having X amount of encounters, the number of encounters the game throws at you in some areas is absurd.

 

[Shadenuat]

Where the hell do you even hire the succubus before doing the final boss fight in Drezen? Did I miss something

C&C fren.

You must listen to the music of your heart to free the tormented Princess

 

[Desiderius]

I don't think Owlcat can't design encounters but they just don't seem to grasp the idea of an adventuring day having X amount of encounters, the number of encounters the game throws at you in some areas is absurd.

You’re not supposed to complete Drezen in one or two rests. And regular mobs aren't supposed to be much of a threat (and thus don’t eat many resources). If you’ve got either one of these wrong you’ve got some improvement to look forward to which is fun in and of itself.

Getting Aru early is easy to miss due to the one all-time awful encounter design that’s required to unlock the Azata questline. If you read the quest dialogue carefully you MAY be able to figure it out but it involves talking to an unnamed NPC which is something you would never otherwise do.

Then you have to clear the other side of the Mountain at Lost Chapel. Yosharian hasn't figured out that you can leave the map after getting your Mythic level then come back later.

Wrath has fewer high encounter count areas than P:K, at least so far.

 

[Sharpedge]

Desiderius there is a wall in Drezen (on the outside) during the siege which you can inspect that has "holes for 3 keys." Is there a way to interact with this further?

 

[Humbaba]

I like all this complaining about difficulty. Sounds like a clear improvement on the first game

Kingmaker was pretty alright on difficulty imo. The endgame though was a bit of a drastic spike especially if you didn't invest into blindfight.

 

[Desiderius]

BTW the second lvl Resist Energy is 10 min/lvl so lasts the whole area or with Enduring goes 24 hr at lvl 6.

 

[Desiderius]

I like all this complaining about difficulty. Sounds like a clear improvement on the first game

Kingmaker was pretty alright on difficulty imo. The endgame though was a bit of a drastic spike especially if you didn't invest into blindfight.

Once you got the hang off it the scaling was off. Too hard early too easy late on any difficulty. If you weren’t too exhausted to figure out enemy vulnerabilities by the that even includes House.

 

[Grunker]

I like all this complaining about difficulty. Sounds like a clear improvement on the first game

Kingmaker was pretty alright on difficulty imo. The endgame though was a bit of a drastic spike especially if you didn't invest into blindfight.

Kingmaker is ridicoulously easy between levels 7-8-9-ish all the way to the very endgame where it spikes again, even on Unfair. It's my main issue with the game. It would be on my top 10 if not for the difficulty issues.

Kingmaker early game on Unfair is the perfect difficulty for me, except for places like the Mite cave where I feel like they should have either cut the trash a bit or lowered the length of some of the encounters (either would be fine). If the game had made at least some encounters as difficult throughout (not saying everything needs to be hard), it would have been an infinitely better experience for me.

 

[Ciellyn]

Desiderius there is a wall in Drezen (on the outside) during the siege which you can inspect that has "holes for 3 keys." Is there a way to interact with this further?

When you encountered the holes there should be a short cutscenes in which a cultist and a demon talked about the whereabout of thee key keepers. They are pretty easy to find.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Desiderius there is a wall in Drezen (on the outside) during the siege which you can inspect that has "holes for 3 keys." Is there a way to interact with this further?

Keys are on some imps in the city. On of them is in the tavern I'm sure but not about others.

Edit: Game is gonna kick ass AND chew bubblegum in core difficulty. Steam reviews will be full of delicious tears.