Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[FreeKaner]

Basic tactics eludes a lot of players, especially from the casual audience, yes.

 

[Lacrymas]

In other news, Chill Fog is still ridiculous. AoE continuous Blindness that lasts quite a while. I like how this level 1 Wizard spell is better than everything else that inflicts Blindness.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Basic tactics wont get you through SSS. Enemies have high defenses, numerous immunites, and there are gimmicks in every fight.

The hardest fights seem designed around trial & error and exploiting specific combos, which is why I think Riddler is full of shit.

 

[MajorMace]

The hardest fights in the game are in SSS and the megabosses. Those are challenging even with a full level 20 custom party and legendary equipment.

Consider me sceptical.

 

[Riddler]

Basic tactics wont get you through SSS. Enemies have high defenses, numerous immunites, and there are gimmicks in every fight.

Stop lying.

 

[AwesomeButton]

SSS is not difficult, I made it through without reloading once, using story companions, not using consumables, food or summons.

This means nothing unless you tell us the difficulty settings.

Path of the damned upscale everything, no god challenges.

I'm about to jump into SSS myself, at the same difficulty settings. My party is all multi-class, and level 14 currently, and I'm thinking to wait until level 15 so I get the bonus to power source before I go into SSS. At what level did you enter it?

 

[Riddler]

SSS is not difficult, I made it through without reloading once, using story companions, not using consumables, food or summons.

This means nothing unless you tell us the difficulty settings.

Path of the damned upscale everything, no god challenges.

I'm about to jump into SSS myself, at the same difficulty settings. My party is all multi-class, and level 14 currently, and I'm thinking to wait until level 15 so I get the bonus to power source before I go into SSS. At what level did you enter it?

17-18 (One character was 17 and my watcher almost 19).

 

[Parabalus]

Dunno how you'd kill sth like Belranga on PotD first try, don't even know her mechanics then.

Guess if your PC is a Beckoner/similar it might be easy, since you can spam summons to eat her poison.

 

[Safav Hamon]

If he's telling the truth, then he's probably the only person that has beaten it under these conditions. More likely he's lying for attention.

I made it through without reloading once, using story companions, not using consumables, food or summons.

 

[Riddler]

Dunno how you'd kill sth like Belranga on PotD first try, don't even know her mechanics then.

Guess if your PC is a Beckoner/similar it might be easy.

I have not beaten Belranga, I was talking about SSS. My character is an Evoker and I played with Aloth, Eder(Rogue/fighter), Seraphen(Barbarian/chipper) and Xoti.

 

[aweigh]

Megabosses don't count as part of the difficulty curve/encounters. Gorrecci street rogues and drake fight are still the two hardest fights in the entire game.

 

[FreeKaner]

Do you guys all play melee characters and make xoti a monk or something? Gorreci street is not that hard. Just shoot the mage.

 

[aweigh]

I'm not saying it is "that hard", I'm saying it's the hardest encounter in the game. Well, one of them. Drake fight is much harder and probably the toughest encounter.

Also I use Console mod to make Xoti any class I want, like a normal person.

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem is not only the mage, you can easily position yourself to kill her before they turn hostile even when playing all melee, but all the other ranged enemies and rogues. They can easily snipe your squishiest char in the first "round" even without the mage helping.

 

[TT1]

Do you guys all play melee characters and make xoti a monk or something? Gorreci street is not that hard. Just shoot the mage.

The secret on Gorreci street is get out of the water and go to the platforms as soon as possible (there is a delay before the combat start).

 

[Riddler]

Also I use Console mod to make Xoti any class I want, like a normal person.

Are priests particularly bad or something? Obviously they aren't bad enough to not comfortably get through the game with.

 

[Lacrymas]

Priests are worse in every possible way than those in PoE1. The loss of the deity specific passives also hurt them a lot. I dislike the inability to further your deity/order's bonuses. While in PoE1 you can base an entire character around Prey on the Weak or the Bleak Walker's corrode damage, I don't think this is possible in PoE2. This makes the different deities/orders mere fluff, rather than a pillar on which to build a character concept, pretty shitty. Those were some of the better, more interesting and more original ideas in PoE's system.

 

[Parabalus]

Yeah, they aren't weak, just uninspired.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Basic tactics eludes a lot of players, especially from the casual audience, yes.

The entire SSS is pure arena set piece arena encounters. Most of them are designed exactly to nullify the usual basic tactics. You can't choke point, you can rarely pull, enemies come from unpredictable angles so you can't just clump around your backline, priority targets can be protected by strategically placed obstacles, which vary with every map. And so on and so on.

 

[FreeKaner]

Basic tactics eludes a lot of players, especially from the casual audience, yes.

The entire SSS is pure arena set piece arena encounters. Most of them are designed exactly to nullify the usual basic tactics. You can't choke point, you can rarely pull, enemies come from unpredictable angles so you can't just clump around your backline, priority targets can be protected by strategically placed obstacles, which vary with every map. And so on and so on.

I was more talking about the drake fight, not the game as a whole. In fact what I was saying was more related to that drake fight not being hardest fight in the game, because it only requires basic tactics.

I don't know about SSS because I don't have money for the season pass.

 

[Lacrymas]

It doesn't only require basic tactics. I had to scramble every consumable, trap and tactic to beat the fight with only the PC (Paladin/Rogue), Eder (Fighter/Rogue) and Xoti (Priest/Monk). And it still required quite a big dose of RNG. If you can somehow pull individual mobs and kill them that way, then yeah, sure, it requires even less than basic tactics.

 

[FreeKaner]

It doesn't only require basic tactics. I had to scramble every consumable, trap and tactic to beat the fight with only the PC (Paladin/Rogue), Eder (Fighter/Rogue) and Xoti (Priest/Monk). And it still required quite a big dose of RNG. If you can somehow pull individual mobs and kill them that way, then yeah, sure, it requires even less than basic tactics.

I set up trap on the ramp, pulled them up the ramp, threw few grenades with eder then hold position with both eder and xoti. My PC was wizard and I had either the default grimoire or the one you bought from the town, Eder was fighter, Xoti was priest/monk. Now admittedly, first time around I just walked down the ramp and got killed pretty much with no chance as I tried to just kill individual panthers.

As I said, I think people here overwhelmingly played melee classes (like your paladin/rogue) and possibly also because multiclasses are I think weaker very early on as they get their abilities a level or so later.

What I am saying is, that fight didn't feel unfair and I don't think it is the hardest fight in the game either. I didn't even play the DLCs or latter half of the game even but I remember much more challenging stuff than that.

 

[Alpan]

Given the likelihood of actually reaching the encounter in a "natural" playthrough, I'd say the hardest fight in the game is the side-street battle you get in Dunnage while trying to assemble a theater troupe. When I played the game (this was after the first PotD difficulty buff, so before 2.0 or DLCs or whatever), that was the only battle where I actually had to give up and reload from an earlier save.

It wasn't a hard fight tactically, but the mobs were numerous and overleveled, and the game did nothing to prepare you for it. It was the kind of fight you'd easily stomp 3 or 4 levels later, just not at the early-game (where you would reasonably reach the encounter).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The bounty in Dunnage is also a nightmare.

 

[Orma]

Having one druid makes the drake fight trivial.