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

[Yosharian]

RPG btw

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Fuck that, play a proper Barbarian, 20 Might, 20 Con, 3 Int, axe wielding, uses drugs, and fucks enemies in the ass after he kills them.

 

[Yosharian]

Fuck that, play a proper Barbarian, 20 Might, 20 Con, 3 Int, axe wielding, uses drugs, and fucks enemies in the ass after he kills them.

...I feel like you added that last part in as a personal fetish but ok

 

[Haplo]

Throw me a good turn-based build for a solid melee character, plis.

Just roll a barbarian.

Not an entirely awful idea for a turn based martial, but you'd have to wait terribly long to get Retaliation ability (and thus fight passively off turn).

 

[Ontopoly]

I promised myself I would come back to this game when it's been patched and had all of it's dlc when I first beat it near release date. I'm going to give it another go but try to do the dlc asap and then decide if I want to finish the rest of the game. I like the idea of the arena dlc. Always thought it was a good idea in the beamdog IE games but they didn't pull off the encounters as well as I felt they could. Hoping it's done better here. I wish more games would do it, especially when the game has a strong focus on combat.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Have been playing this the last few days, in turn based mode as I anticipated when I posted in this thread.

Have to say the turn-based mode was dangerously close to be actually good. It's a bit of a wasted chance that despise all the obvious work they put into implementing this mode, they didn't go the extra mile to address a couple of its most glaring flaws (i.e. "attack speed becoming completely and utterly pointless" and similar balance problems).

Here's one way they could have easily solved the whole thing: moving away from having "separate turns" (turn 1 for everyone, then turn 2 for everyone, etc) and instead having an unique, continuous and seamless "initiative queue" where the frequency of your actions compared to the enemies were decided by 1) your stats 2) what action you did and how much you moved in the previous turn before passing.

 

[Haplo]

That's what I've been saying all along...

 

[Ontopoly]

Things I miss from poe1:
Camping supplies for resting
6 party members
Health/endurance system.
Per rest spells
Not all your spells being chosen on level up.

I like most of the other things added though. Multi classing is always nice and it's cool to collect other mages spell books. Would have been interested in seeing what they would have done new in a sequel and what they would have reverted.

Pacing as soon as you reach the main big town seems to take a big hit but I remember it gets better after you power through a bit and I have the dlc to look forward to which sounds like it's paced better.

 

[Arthandas]

I just started PotD with some Fires (Galawain, Berath, Abydon, Skaen, Ondra and Woedica) and holy shit this is hard.
I'm getting my ass stomped left and right. After a lot of pain I managed to clear the exterior of Engwithan digsite and get Aloth. Most fights are carried by my Cipher's spammable charm, I can't imagine doing it without it.
The mobs inside are fucking impossible, I had to sneak past everything and I'm currently at the Adra blob with ghosts and wisps I have to somehow defeat. I almost gave up at this point but it occurred to me I can hire a 5th character.
Give me your best min-maxed broken motherfucker, I'm not taking any hostages I'm thinking of paladin/chanter to help Eder with tanking and to summon some shit for distraction.

 

[Yosharian]

I just started PotD with some Fires (Galawain, Berath, Abydon, Skaen, Ondra and Woedica) and holy shit this is hard.
I'm getting my ass stomped left and right. After a lot of pain I managed to clear the exterior of Engwithan digsite and get Aloth. Most fights are carried by my Cipher's spammable charm, I can't imagine doing it without it.
The mobs inside are fucking impossible, I had to sneak past everything and I'm currently at the Adra blob with ghosts and wisps I have to somehow defeat. I almost gave up at this point but it occurred to me I can hire a 5th character.
Give me your best min-maxed broken motherfucker, I'm not taking any hostages I'm thinking of paladin/chanter to help Eder with tanking and to summon some shit for distraction.

Some custom builds in my sig

 

[Lacrymas]

If you are doing it "legit", i.e. only with Xoti and Eder, you just have to know how to get past the starting island. The toughest battle is the drake, with Gorecci Street being an honorable mention. I honestly think Gorecci is harder, though, and impossible with certain classes as the PC, but I digress. The mobs inside are definitely not as hard as the drake fight, pull them around corners and some of them will eventually leash.

 

[Grunker]

Like Lacry is saying, the starting island is a sort of test: if you can do that, you can do anything in the game. Unfortunately, the game will actually lose any sense of difficulty even on PotD past a certain point - with the exception of megabosses.

 

[Arthandas]

The mobs inside are definitely not as hard as the drake fight

Strongly disagree, drake was much easier and he can be almost perma-charmed (unlike those fucking boars). There's also a gunpowder barrel which is a great way to start the fight.

pull them around corners and some of them will eventually leash

That's just cheesing and defeats the whole purpose of playing on the hardest difficulty.

the game will actually lose any sense of difficulty even on PotD past a certain point

Even with the Fires and level scaling? That's hard to believe considering how hardcore it is now.

I know Maje is doable without cheesing, I just need to hire the 5th char and I don't know who should I make. I definitely need some melee because Eder is doing 100% of tanking alone. Pala/chanter seems like a great idea, he'll tank, do some healing and spam skeletons.

 

[Grunker]

Even with the Fires and level scaling? That's hard to believe considering how hardcore it is now.

Yes. Post level 10-11-12-ish, only Megabosses will pose any real difficulty. You will reload very little past that point.

 

[Kruno]

You will reload very little past that point.

I beg to disagree!

 

[Lacrymas]

Strongly disagree, drake was much easier and he can be almost perma-charmed (unlike those fucking boars).

Like I said, it depends heavily on your MC's class. Druids and Chanters have it much easier due to the charms. As for cheesing, the only fight which I use the leashing with inside the ruins is the imp one after getting the sword from the fire puzzle. There's really no better way to handle this if playing only with Xoti and Eder because they (and more than likely you too) lack tools to deal with so many ranged mobs. Playing with custom mercenaries is muuuuuch easier even if you don't have a full party of them.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Gorecci is harder, though, and impossible with certain classes as the PC

Wat.

1. Exit the city.
2. Reenter the city and go straight to Gorecci
3. You will enter Gorecci from the south instead of north and from there you can sneak past all of the combat.

 

[gurugeorge]

If you are doing it "legit", i.e. only with Xoti and Eder, you just have to know how to get past the starting island. The toughest battle is the drake, with Gorecci Street being an honorable mention. I honestly think Gorecci is harder, though, and impossible with certain classes as the PC, but I digress. The mobs inside are definitely not as hard as the drake fight, pull them around corners and some of them will eventually leash.

Don't know if this is old news but you can cheese both encounters. For Goreci St. by sneaking fast down the left hand side past the mobs who are looting the corpses (avoiding the wizard on the right, who seems to be the one who "activates" them all if he spots you) and talking directly to the hoodlum round the corner there on the left who the gaoler asked you to talk to (if you convince him, all the mobs shuffle off home). Mind you, that might require 1 in stealth from everyone, which I always put in early on everyone, as it just gives a little bit of a comfort zone for the team sneaking around, especially with the early storybook bits - also because thematically I can't see any of the characters being total noobs at sneaking, or any of the other important things like some basic folk alchemy or some minimal athletic ability. That's my story and I'm sticking to it guv

You can cheese all the overland animals and Drake at the Engwithan ruins by beelining for the Adra pillar underground (still fairly tough as you have to get through the spirits in the big room just before the pillar, but much shorter). Once you do the Adra thing the animals and Drake are gone in the arena upstairs, and the animancers+Aloth are waiting to talk to you.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, I know you can skip the actually hard fight at Gorecci (and the drake too), but that's not what I'm talking about.

 

[Grunker]

I've never understood people who cheese stuff in single-player RPGs. It's like... why? Why not just use cheat codes then? Or set the difficulty to easy? It's an SP game, no one is there to stop you

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Unless something changed you can't actually move the slider down from POTD, so yes there is someone there to stop you and his name is Josh.

Besides in this case it's literally fighting cheese with cheese since these are the same as PoE1 bear, ie Sawyer thinks that by putting artificially difficult encounter right at the start of the game he sends you some kinds of message about how brutally hardcore the entire game is.

Of course what actually happens is the first hard fight is also the last because everything else is smooth sailing.

 

[Grunker]

The island fights are great. Rest of the game should have their difficulty, not the other way around. Why play on PotD if you don't like that kind of thing?

I didn't cheese the drake fight at all and it was perfectly doable. Many reloads but very gratifying.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I chose to play on Veteran despise
1) liking a decent challenge
2) Knowing by reputation that POTD is more than manageable enough

...because I'm simply not interested in the means it uses to "increase the difficulty". I don't think buffing enemies' damage and giving them a massive HP bloat is a compelling way to increase challenge, I so I made the conscious choice to not bother with it.
If anything, being more or less half way through the game (I think) is validating my choice, because in turn-based mode the "time to kill" for a lot of enemies feel already fairly slow as it is.
Which has nothing to with the difficulty of the fights so far (hardly any unless "multiple skull" enemies are involved and not much even then).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I've beat the island without tricks 3 times on the first 3 runs, beyond that I don't even bother cheesing it, I have a savefile after island and just use the console to make a new MC. But for sure, let's all stroke our beards and and talk about how monocled it is to spend an hour in literal tutorial.

 

[gurugeorge]

I've never understood people who cheese stuff in single-player RPGs. It's like... why? Why not just use cheat codes then? Or set the difficulty to easy? It's an SP game, no one is there to stop you

Those two things aren't cheese really, they're legitimately part of the gameplay. Odysseus would have approved.

I've done those fights "legit" a few times anyway, the cheesy versions just save a bit of time in the early game on your umpteenth character.