Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Sentinel]

what's going to be the next revealed fearsome sea fantasy creature, you think?
will we get the mighty sardine? the imposing carp? the sad blobfish?

 

[FreeKaner]

Why do people assume it's a sea monster? It just looks like they hit the seabed and thus there are deep sea fish around them. There is no indication it's a monster or anything as such, just the illumination of angler fish was used for lighting purposes and fitting to be on seabed.

 

[Rando Thoughtful]

all is well lads & lasses. the sea is weird - thank fuck. at least we have one unusual environment left to deal with before we fail at space.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Makes me wonder how much of the sea monsters stretch goal will be implemented, given that iirc they didn't hit it. Will they implement it as they would had them hit that stretch goal, or are they doing a simplified version of it?

 

[Rando Thoughtful]

for me personally I couldn't give two fucks about balance. I'd like an over-the-top story, a boring combat system (until you level up & then boom, you get so good you're weird) and a memorable cast.

 

[Infinitron]

This can be fun. When I played IWD2 back in the day, I was too lazy to conceive of my own party from scratch, so I created replicas of the NWN1 OC companions.

 

[Lacrymas]

Why would anyone recreate Tranny's limp dick companions? Lol.

 

[Quillon]

I might create a Witcher party down the line: barb Geralt, chanter dandi, druid/cipher regis etc

 

[Frusciante]

Some updated impressions of the beta after the patch:

- I like the feel of combat now, for me I could play this without a slow mode. it could perhaps be tweaked a tad more to make it even slower but not much more is needed in my opinion
- I like priests as they are now (although I never thought they were super weak to begin with). Wizards remain problematic and I think ranger could use some love as well.
- the ai scripts system is very nice and also helps to improve the feel of combat. There are some basic abilities I use every battle at the beginning (disciplined barrage, bless, dome of protection), it's nice to have these automatically cast. Have not played with it a lot but I think it will be very useful to decrease micromanagement. This imrpoves the flow of combat so you only have to intervene to make tactical choices.
- don't know if it's me but environments seem to look better and sharper. Also some areas seemed to have received a paint over pass. The scene in the adra pillar remains the coolest and best looking.
- found a book that describes various sea monsters (leviathan, sea serpents which apparently attack in group of 4-6, can't remember the rest) so seems we will encounter those in the full game
- they seem to have done something to the world map, i.e. there's now an effect that's supposed to depict waves. Or was this always there? Anyway, it's pretty terrible and can make you a bit nausious if you stare at it.

Am getting very excited for the full game.

 

[Starwars]

I think the book you mention is already in PoE1.

 

[Infinitron]

Yep: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Monsters_of_the_Deadfire_Archipelago

 

[Trashos]

- the ai scripts system is very nice and also helps to improve the feel of combat. There are some basic abilities I use every battle at the beginning (disciplined barrage, bless, dome of protection), it's nice to have these automatically cast. Have not played with it a lot but I think it will be very useful to decrease micromanagement. This imrpoves the flow of combat so you only have to intervene to make tactical choices.

I like micromanagement myself (it's the very thing I enjoy in such games), but I am excited about the behavior editor, because I expect that it will be used for enemy AI.

Are there any interesting battles against single opponents in the beta? I am talking about 5vs1 scenarios.

 

[TT1]

I really dont like the world map, with those locations in land where you receive generic items and ingredients. Doesnt make sense to me.

And I still think that crossbows receiving bonus from strenght is just dumb.

 

[CptMace]

Yeah it's like there's a new school of design which is so meta, they don't explain what's happening anymore.
A simple prompt with a bit of flavour to explain why/how you get shit would be a minimum.

Makes me think of Ubi's Heroes of M&M, where you'd find a treasure of gold and the prompt would just say "Ay' mate, want some money or some xp ?" - like, ok...

 

[Grotesque]

I really dont like the world map, with those locations in land where you receive generic items and ingredients. Doesnt make sense to me.

finally, someone with some sense.


and the world map looks like it's sanitized

points of interest are marked by that glowing shit instead of truly exploring and stumbling on it

 

[Quillon]

I thought they were gonna make it a realistic map with figures on it etc. then they turned to game-y map. Its still getting polished so reserving judgment on it but its really a bummer that "uncharted islands" stretch goal turned out to be those patch of lands with nothing but some loot on them, serves nothing but extending gameplay/"exploration" time Also they shouldn't have ditched that Civ6 style out of range areas' stylish retexturing when they added FoW.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't even remember the uncharted islands stretch goal. They might add something more to them, who knows. We don't know how far along development they are, on what phase of it they are, the release date, etc.

 

[Mexi]

Speaking of stretch goals. Did we get seamonsters and the 8th companion?

 

[Sentinel]

thankfully nein

 

[Lacrymas]

Eh, Ydwin sounds interesting on paper, her waifu-bait status notwithstanding. She could've been an inside glance at how science and the academies work in PoE's world, along with her own character. Unless they go the lore dispenser route again, which is really likely. I also think the sea monsters stretch goal was going to turn into them into too frequent an encounter (maybe random encounters at sea) and will become routine, spoiling their coolness, so I'm glad we didn't get them if that's the case. I still hope we have some sea monsters. Fishing would've been a nice distraction, especially since they said it wouldn't be manual labor like in every game ever, but dialogue prompts.

 

[Ruzen]

Anyone else thinks pillars could use a fun -arcade- mode other than campaign? Just like in Divinity: OS2's dungeon master mode. Maybe It would be an open ended mini game where you have to survive the sea monsters, maintain crew morale and supplies, doing a little fetching quest,etc. It would create a sense of "I'm getting more stuff off the value" and making more casual sales in a result of me getting better expansions.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I'd rather they spend all their time on developing a hopefully expansive, rich, satisfying single player campaign.

 

[Quillon]

Anyone else thinks pillars could use a fun -arcade- mode other than campaign? Just like in Divinity: OS2's dungeon master mode. Maybe It would be an open ended mini game where you have to survive the sea monsters, maintain crew morale and supplies, doing a little fetching quest,etc. It would create a sense of "I'm getting more stuff off the value" and making more casual sales in a result of me getting better expansions.

According to Sawyer ship crew and dueling is a whole other crazy new system, do a "how long can I last at sea" self challenge when you have the game

 

[Frusciante]

I always play a ranged/bow type of character, so I tried some different class combinations.

Pure ranger: don't bother, multiclassing is much better option for rangers. I personally prefer to play with a ghost companion so you don't have to bother with taking the bear companion and taking defensive talents for it. Rangers have good but not great ranged accuracy and damage capabilities but do have a lot of utility with the companion providing an extra tank and some abilities to hobble, stun, or interrupt enemies. Also abilities to escape (evasive roll), make arrows bounce between enemies and a spell to immobilize enemies (tangled roots or somethings its called).

Ranger/Rogue: rogue provides sneak attack to add to damage and many abilities to debuff (blind, hobbled) or to provide utility (escape abilities)
Ranger/Monk: fun to play combination with some monk abilities to buff action speed, accuracy and damage (this dance ability in combination with helwalker), can also be built to be good in unarmed melee combat for when enemies come close
Fighter/Barbarian: very good ranged accuracy with some added damage from frenzy, but limited utility and very boring
Barbarian/Rogue: great ranged damage (with frenzy and sneak) and accuracy and some utility and debuffs from the rogue talent tree. I felt this was the most powerful combination I tried.
Ranger/chanter: if built as a summoner (ghost companion plus chanter summons) this is pretty interesting and fun to play, but as a bow specialist this is not a good combo.
Ranger/druid: nice thematically but most druid spells have too long cast times to combine with ranged combat, didn't like this combo.

All in all I like ranger/rogue and ranger/monk the most, mostly because it's fun to play and I like it thematically.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

• Updated Priests so that they no longer lose access to spells based on type. IE: Eothas Priests no longer lose access to Protection spells.

If I understand this correctly, it sounds like decline.