Pillars of Eternity 3.03 sans expansion: Final Judgment from the 1st Disciple of Sawyerity

[Bumvelcrow]

I see. That is a pretty big bunch of hurdles to get over. Regardless, for whatever it's worth, here are some thoughts. (TL;DR: play at Hard or Path of the Damned.)

Thanks for the wall o' text - I can feel the urge rising once more. One thing about porous party that occurred to me is that I remember in IWD it was easier to keep casters out of harm's way simply due to distance from combat. Maybe it's improved AI with PoE or the way the maps are designed it's harder to do that and I just need to use better tactics.

I've played enough of it to get the feeling there's something to enjoy if I can find the right way of playing it. I'm going to have to complete it before I D1P PoE2. :D

 

[Hyperion]

Certain parts of PoE, particularly in The White March, you've got big encounters in relatively open areas. It's not so much tactics, but finding a spot where you can position your team well enough to block off your back line. Off the top of my head, I can recall 2 bounties where I used stealth to sneak past them and snuggle into a tight corner, and kite them back to my party, while they waste their initial fusillade of AoE on Usain Bolt with his Nikes on Eder with Boots of Speed.

Oh, and Level 9 Wizards and Druids to a lesser extent break the game.

Edit: Certain enemies just flat out suck, and will utterly destroy your formation and squishies unless you utilize a lot of pausing, and jam your characters on top of each other before starting the fight.

 

[Yuri Gagarin]

In other news, somebody made several PoE and Tyranny threads visible both in the Obsidian forum and in the General RPG forum. I wonder why .

 

[Roguey]

In other news, somebody made several PoE and Tyranny threads visible both in the Obsidian forum and in the General RPG forum. I wonder why .

Have you not noticed that all the the subforum threads now show up in grpgd, likely as a result of a forum upgrade? I approve of this change, saves me a bunch of clicks.

 

[Yuri Gagarin]

In other news, somebody made several PoE and Tyranny threads visible both in the Obsidian forum and in the General RPG forum. I wonder why .

Have you not noticed that all the the subforum threads now show up in grpgd, likely as a result of a forum upgrade? I approve of this change, saves me a bunch of clicks.

That, or maybe some configuration change.

 

[Roguey]

Addendum:

I've completed it a second time, attempting to do the content I didn't get around to (megadungeon and bounties).

It didn't take. Too much copy-paste in the megadungeon. The bounties started out fun, but midway into tier-two bounties I grew bored with the formula and gave up on those too. Funnily enough, the most memorable combat moment happened with the big ogre fight outside the ogre bounty cave: it was literally down to a near death ogre matron and a cowardly-kiting Grieving Mother. As fortune would have it, an elder stag happened upon the battle field, the ogre matron did something to piss it off, and it delivered the killing blow. That was some amazing, unexpected emergent gameplay right there.

I do recommend foregoing sidequests (excepting Raedric's Hold and possibly anything else that eventually gets cut off) and sticking with the critical path up until the point of no return. As I believe I've mentioned before, this is the ideal way to play if you're going to complete the White March, since you'll be just shy of level 7 by the end. However, I don't recommend going into Sun in Shadow at level 7 or even 8 (which is what I did). I managed well enough with the encounters leading up to it, but Thaos and his statues were a brick wall. With his practically-permanent Shields of the Faithful, my team had an accuracy of 0% against him and I lacked the hard counter against it (well I did have one per-rest use of arcane dampener through an item but that was it). I grew annoyed and turned the difficulty down to story time where it still took forever, even with the use of buffs and debuffs (which I eventually ran out of). If I were to do this again (I likely won't ever) I wouldn't go in there unless I was at or near level 11.

I suppose I made that a bit harder for myself by not even going near a store except to buy camping supplies. I still don't regret not engaging with one of my least-favorite activities in a RPG. Anyway, that's proof right there that you don't "need" to vacuum up loot if you don't want to.

My opinion about PoE's quality remains unchanged. It just turns out that I was correct to avoid what I skipped the first time.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

IIRC, you didn't really need to use stores (except to buy like consumables) because you could just make your own equipment that was the same if not better than whatever else was available.

 

[Roguey]

IIRC, you didn't really need to use stores (except to buy like consumables) because you could just make your own equipment that was the same if not better than whatever else was available.

This may have been true during the backer beta or whatever, but not presently.

 

[oldmanpaco]

The bounties started out fun, but midway into tier-two bounties I grew bored with the formula and gave up on those too. Funnily enough, the most memorable combat moment happened with the big ogre fight outside the ogre bounty cave:

That is one of the few combat encounters I remember from the game. It was pretty much the hardest one since I cheesed the Adra dragon and didn't do the high level bounties because of the XP cap.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

IIRC, you didn't really need to use stores (except to buy like consumables) because you could just make your own equipment that was the same if not better than whatever else was available.

This may have been true during the backer beta or whatever, but not presently.

It was like that when I played it on release. I think I might have played it after the first patch which fixed the bug where if you right clicked an object on your paper doll, your stats would get wiped. I beat the game on TCS.

 

[Hyperion]

The bounties were awesome, but were dragged down by being heavily time-gated. You can start them as early as level 3 or 4, which is not easy by any means. The same goes for the second group, until the Ogre Matron, which makes you wait until the start of Act III. Then you access the final group...and you have to wait even longer 'till you're allowed back in Defiance Bay's Catacombs. To restrict it that much by time, they needed to make the rewards greater - you're mostly xp capped by then, money is useless, and the item reward you get isn't better than anything you already have, or can buy. And they would have needed to compensate with higher difficulty, even if it followed the method they used in TWM by making enemies a higher level than you can achieve.

That being said, White March bounties were mostly awesome. Except Firedorn. He goes down even easier than he did the first time. Pussy.

 

[Rivmusique]

The same goes for the second group, until the Ogre Matron, which makes you wait until the start of Act III. Then you access the final group...and you have to wait even longer 'till you're allowed back in Defiance Bay's Catacombs.

The moment you arrive at Twin Elms, Defiance Bay re-opens. It's one map on from where you kill Ogre Matron.

 

[Haplo]

I've found the items from bounties pretty awesome. On par or better then my best stuff. Without WM, that is.
Also I've played 1.x version and the xp rewards from bounties completely trivialized the rest of the PotD content (except Adra dragon).

As for items in the shops... depends on your focus, I guess. There's an awesome Tall Grass pike, for example.

 

[Prime Junta]

I've found the items from bounties pretty awesome. On par or better then my best stuff. Without WM, that is.

Yep. WM throws the item totally out of whack though. Epic soulbound items for everyone.

 

[Roguey]

you're mostly xp capped by then

The idea is that you do bounties in lieu of sidequests.

If I did the math correctly, doing all of them in the base game will give you two levels with a full party.

 

[Invictus]

Roguey what main characters did you have for both of your runs?
My first char was a chanter and he felt sort of useless, not strong enough to be a frontline fighter nor good enough to be only for support
My second char was a bow using rouge and he was ok
Only my current Wizard char feels right, I always used to have a wizard for main for the Baldur's Gate games and even Dragon Age and this one is kicking so much ass now, he has the highest number of kills, damage and crits in the party
Also, the game kind of suffers the same syndrome as Tyranny where the starting equipment of some chars (like Eader's armor) ends up beign much better than most of what you can find (with upgrades of course) but did you try weird combos like giving the GM a sword and platemail?

 

[Haplo]

A Wizard sure is powerful. For real fun I'd recommend a Cipher though.
Second half of the game Wizard is clearly stronger. But a Cipher can carelessly turn/stun/blast enemies from the get go, without worry about rationing spells.

 

[Prime Junta]

A Wizard sure is powerful. For real fun I'd recommend a Cipher though.
Second half of the game Wizard is clearly stronger. But a Cipher can carelessly turn/stun/blast enemies from the get go, without worry about rationing spells.

I was really turned off by cipher gameplay though. Found it very rote and repetitive. Since 3.0 you can use the AI to let them play the game by themselves ofc.

 

[Haplo]

Eh, I've mostly played a dual Stilletto Cipher and keeping him alive on PotD was exciting enough.
Had to Blunderbuss some tougher encounters though.
And really struggled with the Adra dragon.

I'll admit that staying in the back and just shooting the BB/Arquebus/Pistols probably would have been far less interesting.

 

[Invictus]

Eh, I've mostly played a dual Stilletto Cipher and keeping him alive on PotD was exciting enough.
Had to Blunderbuss some tougher encounters though.
And really struggled with the Adra dragon.

I'll admit that staying in the back and just shooting the BB/Arquebus/Pistols probably would have been far less interesting.

I have the Mother with a good stiletto that steals some endurance and she isndoing pretty good, should I give her tougher armor and dual wield? I mostly like to keep her second row with my mages and in case a baddie sneaks up on them

 

[cannondwarf]

Eh, I've mostly played a dual Stilletto Cipher and keeping him alive on PotD was exciting enough.
Had to Blunderbuss some tougher encounters though.
And really struggled with the Adra dragon.

I'll admit that staying in the back and just shooting the BB/Arquebus/Pistols probably would have been far less interesting.

I have the Mother with a good stiletto that steals some endurance and she isndoing pretty good, should I give her tougher armor and dual wield? I mostly like to keep her second row with my mages and in case a baddie sneaks up on them

I don't think melee GM is a good idea on PotD, ciphers are just so much better when sitting in the backline with a blunderbuss or bow imo.

 

[Haplo]

Eh, I've mostly played a dual Stilletto Cipher and keeping him alive on PotD was exciting enough.
Had to Blunderbuss some tougher encounters though.
And really struggled with the Adra dragon.

I'll admit that staying in the back and just shooting the BB/Arquebus/Pistols probably would have been far less interesting.

I have the Mother with a good stiletto that steals some endurance and she isndoing pretty good, should I give her tougher armor and dual wield? I mostly like to keep her second row with my mages and in case a baddie sneaks up on them

I think you should absolutely make her dual wield, even at the cost of heavier armor, if you insist to melee with her. Her Might isn't that good, but dual-wielding will make her attack real fast.
As an NPC, I would probably leave her with a ranged solution if you don't want to micro her much.

 

[Roguey]

Roguey what main characters did you have for both of your runs?

First, a bow rogue. Second, a two-hander barbarian. My favorite weapons for each were a bow that caused stun on crits and a morning star that gave back 20% of damage dealt as endurance.

did you try weird combos like giving the GM a sword and platemail?

Nah, both times I more or less let companions run with their default equipment. I leveled them slightly different though.

 

[Rivmusique]

Play TWM.