Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Game of the Year Edition

[Daidre]

Interesting but I want a much harder version of crusade mode where Infirmary is not ultimate return all units to you no matter how bad you play mode and instead it would turn it into a limited resource that takes days to recovery its healing ability instead of per battle like it is now. Crusade mode is way too easy atm and that is why it is pointless. Also all the timed shit that game has is pointless when Crusade mode is so easy.

Yeah, lets waste resources to remake something that was not good to begin with into something utterly horrendous, to waste even more player's time on the game-within-game they've never wanted to play and provoke them into abandoning it completely at the start of Chapter 2, in hordes.

PS I also agree that Crusade is weirdly balanced, playing it on default difficulty half dozen of times, I've never been in the situation were I'd need to skip days and wait for weekly unit growth to amass army big enough to clean the whole map. And I was always completing chapter's 2, 3 and 5 strategic map clean-ups in 2-3 weeks of in-game time with army's movement points being my only limiting factor.

Still, all places, from Reddit to Codex, are filled with the people who... probably just hadn't played ungodly amount of HoMM and King's Bounty in their childhood.

 

[ArchAngel]

Interesting but I want a much harder version of crusade mode where Infirmary is not ultimate return all units to you no matter how bad you play mode and instead it would turn it into a limited resource that takes days to recovery its healing ability instead of per battle like it is now. Crusade mode is way too easy atm and that is why it is pointless. Also all the timed shit that game has is pointless when Crusade mode is so easy.

Yeah, lets waste resources to remake something that was not good to begin with into something utterly horrendous, to waste even more player's time on the game-within-game they've never wanted to play and provoke them into abandoning it completely at the start of Chapter 2, in hordes.

PS I also agree that Crusade is weirdly balanced, playing it on default difficulty half dozen of times, I've never been in the situation were I'd need to skip days and wait for weekly unit growth to amass army big enough to clean the whole map. And I was always completing chapter's 2, 3 and 5 strategic map clean-ups in 2-3 weeks of in-game time with army's movement points being my only limiting factor.

Still, all places, from Reddit to Codex, are filled with the people who... probably just hadn't played ungodly amount of HoMM and King's Bounty in their childhood.

I am not saying that should be default setting but I already turned it on to Hardest it allows and it is utterly boring because of how easy it is.

 

[Grunker]

Interesting but I want a much harder version of crusade mode where Infirmary is not ultimate return all units to you no matter how bad you play mode and instead it would turn it into a limited resource that takes days to recovery its healing ability instead of per battle like it is now. Crusade mode is way too easy atm and that is why it is pointless. Also all the timed shit that game has is pointless when Crusade mode is so easy.

Yeah, lets waste resources to remake something that was not good to begin with into something utterly horrendous, to waste even more player's time on the game-within-game they've never wanted to play and provoke them into abandoning it completely at the start of Chapter 2, in hordes.

PS I also agree that Crusade is weirdly balanced, playing it on default difficulty half dozen of times, I've never been in the situation were I'd need to skip days and wait for weekly unit growth to amass army big enough to clean the whole map. And I was always completing chapter's 2, 3 and 5 strategic map clean-ups in 2-3 weeks of in-game time with army's movement points being my only limiting factor.

Still, all places, from Reddit to Codex, are filled with the people who... probably just hadn't played ungodly amount of HoMM and King's Bounty in their childhood.

I am not saying that should be default setting but I already turned it on to Hardest it allows and it is utterly boring because of how easy it is.

Does Crusade even have a Hard mode like Kingdom management did? I'm playing on Unfair and I seem to recall the Crusade setting being 'Standard' or somesuch.

 

[Parabalus]

Crusade mode would have been tough were mage generals not overpowered, did they fix that?

 

[Haplo]

There's a small bonus for completing it all quickly and ending the chapter before that battle can start, similar to the small bonus for completing the first open section of Kingmaker quickly. And by similar I mean "so small and irrelevant you shouldn't even begin to care about it".

It does punish you if you thought you could rest a ton and are underleveled somehow. Which is an odd expectation to set for players considering the rest of the game doesn't really do this. I guess you could theoretically be level 2 still.

Well, the main bonus is not having to do the lenghty tavern defense.

Spoiler

After you report success and readiness to assault Grey Garrison to Irabeth, you can still withdraw from party selection screen and complete everything in Act 1 at your leisure.

Skipping the tavern defence isn't great IMO since it gives less xp and means you miss out on the fights in the updated market square, notably the nabasu - when I tried it, the maps don't update after clicking out of the party selection screen.

Eh, its damn tedious.

I think you get a similar amount of xp. Plus some extra minor items, I think.
Although you are loosing out on some added encounters, like the plagued undead animals and notably, the Nabasu you mentioned (who is also a pain and I don't think you'll keep using his amulet). So xp-wise its probably the worse solution - but not by much, I think. And it makes running trough Act 1 much smoother and less painful.

 

[zapotec]

Looks like that every system they design by themselves from scratch (crusade, kingdom managament) is utterly shit.

 

[Parabalus]

There's a small bonus for completing it all quickly and ending the chapter before that battle can start, similar to the small bonus for completing the first open section of Kingmaker quickly. And by similar I mean "so small and irrelevant you shouldn't even begin to care about it".

It does punish you if you thought you could rest a ton and are underleveled somehow. Which is an odd expectation to set for players considering the rest of the game doesn't really do this. I guess you could theoretically be level 2 still.

Well, the main bonus is not having to do the lenghty tavern defense.

Spoiler

After you report success and readiness to assault Grey Garrison to Irabeth, you can still withdraw from party selection screen and complete everything in Act 1 at your leisure.

Skipping the tavern defence isn't great IMO since it gives less xp and means you miss out on the fights in the updated market square, notably the nabasu - when I tried it, the maps don't update after clicking out of the party selection screen.

Eh, its damn tedious.

I think you get a similar amount of xp. Plus some extra minor items, I think.
Although you are loosing out on some added encounters, like the plagued undead animals and notably, the Nabasu you mentioned (who is also a pain and I don't think you'll keep using his amulet). So xp-wise its probably the worse solution - but not by much, I think. And it makes running trough Act 1 much smoother and less painful.

If you decide to do that tavern defense, you can just rest spam as much as you want?

I've always skipped it so far, but given that you miss the nabasu it might have been the wrong call.

 

[Daidre]

Does Crusade even have a Hard mode like Kingdom management did? I'm playing on Unfair and I seem to recall the Crusade setting being 'Standard' or somesuch.

No, 'Standard' is highest and two others are lower. Afaik, only things affected by Crusade Difficulty are your weekly unit growth, free mercenary pool rerolls and money/resource income and from my experience, it is something banal like a flat +100% multiplier.
There is no in-combat effect from difficulty change, and all enemy groups on the global map are set-in-stone pregens to the last shitty cultist, with an only exception of some "wandering" groups that spawn once per 1-2 week to annoy you (from the fixed pool of pregens too).

 

[Dhaze]

I am still in chapter 2, but from what I saw - Owlcat added auto-win against much smaller armies and recalibrated losses for auto-combat results for closer-to-you in power enemies, greatly reducing losses to the point they are almost always recoverable by Infirmary now. With Crusade difficulty down to Effortless, that boosts number of your recruits, I've only needed to do manually like one fight from 12.

So Crusade had not become "better" per se, but it is much more skippable that it was pre-EE, just drop its difficulty - it only affects one achievement anyway and have no effect on game's "generic" difficulty level.

Thanks for letting me know; I haven't played in a few months so I'm not exactly up to date on the state of the game.

And after a quick check I see that ToyBox has an option to quicken movement on the worldmap, which apparently applies not only to the main party but also to armies.

Well... looks like I'll be re-installing Wrath after all.

Interesting but I want a much harder version of crusade mode [...]

Personally I wish Owlcat had either scrapped the whole thing at some point during development. Or had entrusted the whole crusade management affair to 1C, thus bringing all the good modern King's Bounty stuff.

PS I also agree that Crusade is weirdly balanced, playing it on default difficulty half dozen of times, I've never been in the situation were I'd need to skip days and wait for weekly unit growth to amass army big enough to clean the whole map. And I was always completing chapter's 2, 3 and 5 strategic map clean-ups in 2-3 weeks of in-game time with army's movement points being my only limiting factor.

During my first playthrough at launch I went Lich, and at that point in the game's life the entire Lich army thing was unbalanced and bugged beyond belief, resulting in a very rough Chapter 3. Weekly unit growth was minuscule, unit replenishment after battles was almost non-existent, and if I recall right the price of mercenaries was double that payed by a non-Lich character.

The sole reason I managed to forge on was my mage general, and a stack of Hellknights.

Still, all places, from Reddit to Codex, filled with the people who... probably just hadn't played ungodly amount of HoMM and King's Bounty in their childhood.

For a quick anecdote, in the nineties our family computer was next to the inoperative chimney from which constantly wafted a faint smell of soot; and I spent so much time playing that to this day, whenever I smell soot, I immediately think of HoMM (also Cæsar, Conquest Of The New World, and Imperialism).

 

[Haplo]

There's a small bonus for completing it all quickly and ending the chapter before that battle can start, similar to the small bonus for completing the first open section of Kingmaker quickly. And by similar I mean "so small and irrelevant you shouldn't even begin to care about it".

It does punish you if you thought you could rest a ton and are underleveled somehow. Which is an odd expectation to set for players considering the rest of the game doesn't really do this. I guess you could theoretically be level 2 still.

Well, the main bonus is not having to do the lenghty tavern defense.

Spoiler

After you report success and readiness to assault Grey Garrison to Irabeth, you can still withdraw from party selection screen and complete everything in Act 1 at your leisure.

Skipping the tavern defence isn't great IMO since it gives less xp and means you miss out on the fights in the updated market square, notably the nabasu - when I tried it, the maps don't update after clicking out of the party selection screen.

Eh, its damn tedious.

I think you get a similar amount of xp. Plus some extra minor items, I think.
Although you are loosing out on some added encounters, like the plagued undead animals and notably, the Nabasu you mentioned (who is also a pain and I don't think you'll keep using his amulet). So xp-wise its probably the worse solution - but not by much, I think. And it makes running trough Act 1 much smoother and less painful.

If you decide to do that tavern defense, you can just rest spam as much as you want?

I've always skipped it so far, but given that you miss the nabasu it might have been the wrong call.

You can freely rest AFTER the defense, yeah.

IMO you've not been loosing much.

 

[ArchAngel]

Crusade mode would have been tough were mage generals not overpowered, did they fix that?

Nah, I played it first time with Archer hero which is worst and it was still too easy.

 

[Daidre]

Nah, I played it first time with Archer hero which is worst and it was still too easy.

Rangers are not worst, I've played one - they get Heal Wounds at the same time as Mage general and barely different from them in early game. It is fighters I had the hardest time with in chapter 2 because they need to be around lvl 7-8 to get Heal and that creates issues with recovering from losses in a couple of harder fights in ch 2, like Scorching Ray spamming incubus.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

in Chapter 3 the crusade stuff can grind the game to a screeching halt with how much time it takes to do anything: battles that can drag for dozens of turns while units on both sides whittle each other to slivers; moving armies slooooowly across the map; building uninteresting settlements like in Kingmaker's kingdom management; waiting for more troops otherwise you can't properly assault enemy forts and actually progress further into the map with your character and party.

So far I never had to wait to build up troops, if anything I cleaned up the map a bit too quickly and now sometimes don't have a way to grow morale. Like someone pointed out, people who have a hard time must have not played HOMM and KB.

Anyway, if after this run I make an Unfair attempt, I think I'm gonna play some beefier MC. I've made a bowman and he gets dunked on a lot, can't be arsed dealing with that shit with 2x damage.

 

[Dhaze]

So far I never had to wait to build up troops, if anything I cleaned up the map a bit too quickly and now sometimes don't have a way to grow morale. Like someone pointed out, people who have a hard time must have not played HOMM and KB.

I spent an inordinate amount of time on HoMM 2 & 3 when I was a kid, and completed every King's Bounty developed by 1C multiple times; but playing those games shouldn't even be considered a factor at all since the general approach to crusade battles in Wrath involved approximately zero tactic. Build a doomstack of marksmen or hellknights or any worthwile unit, and unless they get deleted by an enemy general's spells, you're good for the entire chapter, nothing else is required.

No, I've since clarified that, for the part about waiting for troops I was talking about my first playthrough as a Lich, right after launch, when most everything about the Lich army was bugged. Playthrough that soured me on the experience.
For example the army replenishment from Necromancy wasn't working properly, meaning that if you had skeletons or zombies in your army, you wouldn't raise a single unit after the fight, leading to ever-dwindling numbers for you. And if you used the respec. option, the malus to the recruitment growth of your army and to the recruitment price of mercenaries would stack.

So if your undead army numbers ineluctably dwindled fight after fight, and you could recruit 20 skeletons per week, and the price asked by mercenaries had tripled or more... well, you could have previously clocked thousands of hours in HoMM and KB, but that wouldn't have helped you.

 

[ArchAngel]

So far I never had to wait to build up troops, if anything I cleaned up the map a bit too quickly and now sometimes don't have a way to grow morale. Like someone pointed out, people who have a hard time must have not played HOMM and KB.

I spent an inordinate amount of time on HoMM 2 & 3 when I was a kid, and completed every King's Bounty developed by 1C multiple times; but playing those games shouldn't even be considered a factor at all since the general approach to crusade battles in Wrath involved approximately zero tactic. Build a doomstack of marksmen or hellknights or any worthwile unit, and unless they get deleted by an enemy general's spells, you're good for the entire chapter, nothing else is required.

No, I've since clarified that, for the part about waiting for troops I was talking about my first playthrough as a Lich, right after launch, when most everything about the Lich army was bugged. Playthrough that soured me on the experience.
For example the army replenishment from Necromancy wasn't working properly, meaning that if you had skeletons or zombies in your army, you wouldn't raise a single unit after the fight, leading to ever-dwindling numbers for you. And if you used the respec. option, the malus to the recruitment growth of your army and to the recruitment price of mercenaries would stack.

So if your undead army numbers ineluctably dwindled fight after fight, and you could recruit 20 skeletons per week, and the price asked by mercenaries had tripled or more... well, you could have previously clocked thousands of hours in HoMM and KB, but that wouldn't have helped you.

I also played Lich as my first run when game first released and was buggy. I just hired a lot of Mercenaries and did stuff with no problems.

 

[Dhaze]

Good for you (I know it must seem terribly sarcastic, but it's a genuine "I'm glad it went well for you"). Unfortunately my experience wasn't as fun, though my second playthrough as a demon was much better.

Anyway, the game is currently installing and I'm tempted to put the crusade mode on auto just to see how it goes.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I think I mentioned this a couple hundred of pages ago, but the biggest problem with the "homm" layer is that they sold it as such, but in practice it's really hard to tell what their design goals were and what they were aiming at. They could actually make it an enjoyable faux-homm by adding some simple stuff from the ready template like town screens with clear building/unit upgrade trees, some proper commander char sheet, add option for commander to use some of the artifacts found after battles etc. Instead they made HommV battles, only broken and unfun and some clusterfuck "strategic" layer that represents fuck knows what. I actually though that kingdom management in KM was ok-ish, but this is another point where Wrath seems like a decline compared to its predecessor.

 

[IllusiveBrian]

At this point I'd prefer that they just focus on making good dlc campaigns and fixing bugs than try to rework the Crusade mode. There are good ideas to make it more interesting but ultimately I'm buying Pathfinder to play Pathfinder.

 

[Haplo]

Yeah, the choices are really tough in teh strategic layer:
Hmm, I can construct a building to improve the AB by 1, or AC by 1, or damage by 10%, or HP by 10%.... or I can increase the weekly growth of a dwelling by (stacking) +25%

 

[ArchAngel]

I am still hoping someone creates a mod that overhauls the crusade parts

 

[Stoned Ape]

So, I found Page 1 of the Dezna book in the Gargoyle cave. Previously, you could find Page 2 there, so maybe they've fixed it so you can collect the whole book now?

 

[Stoned Ape]

I've found a lot of the in-combat events seem to take much longer.

I've just cleared the main city section in Drezen, and the battering ram parts took a really, really long time to smash down the doors. Additionally, the fight with the Balor continued for about 9 or 10 rounds with him on zero hit points before Greybor arrived. I don't remember it taking quite so long last time I did it.

 

[Desiderius]

I think I mentioned this a couple hundred of pages ago, but the biggest problem with the "homm" layer is that they sold it as such, but in practice it's really hard to tell what their design goals were and what they were aiming at. They could actually make it an enjoyable faux-homm by adding some simple stuff from the ready template like town screens with clear building/unit upgrade trees, some proper commander char sheet, add option for commander to use some of the artifacts found after battles etc. Instead they made HommV battles, only broken and unfun and some clusterfuck "strategic" layer that represents fuck knows what. I actually though that kingdom management in KM was ok-ish, but this is another point where Wrath seems like a decline compared to its predecessor.

The bare bones are already there for a good HOMM layer, and if you actually needed three armies (and needed to match armies to different types of foes) there would even be some decent play to it as is (to get three strong armies you need to build up your Merc supply and match to strength of different general types). As for the point as with P:K artisans most of the most interesting equipment is gated behind it for starters.

The problem is as with P:K KM a social contagion started that it sucked (the thing that sucked about KM was fixed with Crusade since it has a good tutorial to walk you through how it works and there's no hidden Curse mechanic to zing you) and was a waste of time so people didn't want to figure it out so there was no incentive for Owlcat to develop it.

I've found a lot of the in-combat events seem to take much longer.

I've just cleared the main city section in Drezen, and the battering ram parts took a really, really long time to smash down the doors. Additionally, the fight with the Balor continued for about 9 or 10 rounds with him on zero hit points before Greybor arrived. I don't remember it taking quite so long last time I did it.

Battering Rams can be bypassed.

I am still hoping someone creates a mod that overhauls the crusade parts

Owlcat themselves might be willing to develop it if the entire playerbase weren't telling them they'd just rather bypass the whole thing.

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah, the choices are really tough in teh strategic layer:
Hmm, I can construct a building to improve the AB by 1, or AC by 1, or damage by 10%, or HP by 10%.... or I can increase the weekly growth of a dwelling by (stacking) +25%

The Boost buildings are higher level than Growth bldgs, and you've got to have the Finances to buy the troops as well. It's a question of tall or wide to some extent IIRC. Plus if you needed three armies with different strengths increasing the growth of just one wouldn't necessarily buy you as much. For that you need the extra Merc option bldg first. In any case I made sure to get both up since the infra is what carries you in Ch 5. That requires taking your time with the conquest.

There's a small bonus for completing it all quickly and ending the chapter before that battle can start, similar to the small bonus for completing the first open section of Kingmaker quickly. And by similar I mean "so small and irrelevant you shouldn't even begin to care about it".

For a build that uses dueling swords the reward for establishing the barony in less than 30 days is not bad.

CotW turns on the downside of the Necklace of Double Crosses which takes it from "not bad" to nearly obligatory if you've got somebody on Dueling Sword/Trickery (which I like on MC).

 

[Desiderius]

battles that can drag for dozens of turns while units on both sides whittle each other to slivers

I've never encountered this. Battles take five turns tops. Git gud.

; moving armies slooooowly across the map; building uninteresting settlements like in Kingmaker's kingdom management; waiting for more troops otherwise you can't properly assault enemy forts and actually progress further into the map with your character and party.

Do one fight per day. Your troop growth should match the challenge at that pace. Use the extra time to get sufficient rest to make rnd/lvl abilities good. There are a lot of them and neglecting them makes the combat piece needlessly more difficult than necessary. Some classes rely on them to be viable at all but once they're turned on can be very effective. Also turns on Scroll Scribing + UMD to fill holes in characters/teams.

Then there's the fact your general(s) somehow do not exist outside of crusade mode, which is arguably the strangest fucking decision Owlcat has taken in both Pathfinder games.

Agreed. Should be able to use Companions as Generals as P:K did with advisors. Everything else you wrote would improve following from that change. I just think they figured - correctly - that people were going to bitch about it and want to skip it no matter what they did, so they put resources into other (mostly shitty) things.