Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Lacrymas]

I think the combat is too fast, all the attack speed buffs don't help. It feels like a hack and slash, but with 6 characters. The druid lacking in speed, and it being a bad thing, is a testament to how speed-heavy the combat is.

 

[Grunker]

Combat is way, waaaaaaaaaaaaay slower in PoE than in the IE-games where haste is the default mode of combat.

EDIT: The reason it can ~***FEEEL***~ otherwise is that each toon in PoE is more management-intensive depending on your setup.

 

[Parabalus]

Eh, true enough, I suppose. But with Reaping Knives and Time Parasite that's an end game build. Hardly representative of Focus-reaping capability trough the game. Which isn't bad, mind (provided that your're not targeting an extreme Deflection enemy, like a dragon). But insufficient to spam high-cost spells.

Before you get to "end-game" you also don't really chain cast with your wizard, since you lack sufficient spell slots. My personal take is that the cipher (relative) power drops a lot mid-game - early game you have the advantage of spamming level 1-2-3 powers far above what other casters can (they are rest gated), late game you are evenish with both chain casting. Mid-game you don't have reaping knives and wizards/priests/druids start having enough spell slots to spam.

Quartic (Cipher) vs Quadratic (Wiz) power curves, if you will. The bump/lull part.

So potent, but not really versatile. And lacking in speed without consumables (which I personally use very sparsely).

Druid CC spells mostly target reflex/fortitude, Cipher CC spells target will/fortitude, while Wizards target all 3, they got the coolest new goodies from White March. Like you said, wizards are def. the most versatile, but thankfully most of the time only 1 defense is significantly different from the other two in value, higher or lower, so it's rarely a functional advantage.

I also don't like crafting or consumables, or resting for that matter, which is probably why I value Ciphers comparably to Vancians. Rest spammer likely consider them thrash.

I think the combat is too fast, all the attack speed buffs don't help. It feels like a hack and slash, but with 6 characters. The druid lacking in speed, and it being a bad thing, is a testament to how speed-heavy the combat is.

It's not overall combat speed, but Wizards and Ciphers have a native +50% attack speed spell/power, while druid has a 25% (I think) on a super clunky Nature's Bounty, which is a huge advantage with how recovery works (invalidates individual spell benefits), and why it makes sense when comparing chain-casting to assume Druids use DAoM pots.

I like PoE overall speed, but don't mind them making it slower in Deadfire as long as they enable Speed Mode to be activated in combat.

 

[AwesomeButton]

What's wrong with you people, the Rogue is extremely good, provided you have someone else to tank.

Those bog dragons are still undefeated on POTD.

No, they are not undefeated. They have been defeated on PotD by many people. Here is my thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/mowrghek-Îen-bog-dragons-llengrath-battle.108682/

 

[Haplo]

Eh, personally I was pretty disappointed with the famous Bog Dragon fight. Of course, I was max level before reaching them.
Struggled much more on Concelhaut, the various single dragon fights... oh and the multi-monk bounty.

 

[Grunker]

Huh. I thought Concelhaut was weirdly easy but I was unable to beat the bog dragons.

 

[Popiel]

Bog Dragons fight was one of the hardest for me, Concelhaut was ridiculously easy. Yet still after many tries I managed that on PotD, so that's doable.

 

[ilitarist]

No, they are not undefeated. They have been defeated on PotD by many people. Here is my thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/mowrghek-Îen-bog-dragons-llengrath-battle.108682/

I thought I was clear in that I personally had not yet defeated them in PotD and this is one of the excuses for me to play this game again.

 

[CptMace]

The bog dragons are a pretty cool fight as i recall. I remember that the woman died very quickly (is this a regular situation ? I only played through twm once)

 

[Parabalus]

Worst fight for me (statistically - number of reloads) would be the first group of Low Tide monks in the Abbey. They always catch me off guard and I get promptly wiped.

Dragons are one of the few monsters whose difficulty varies wildly with your preparation - fear immunity, Scale Breaker, Aura of the Hunt, Survival resting bonus, Chanter anti-beast song (...they slew the beast something), etc. - all those can add up to over 50 accuracy, thus making the difficulty very variable for different parties.

Real hardest fight for me would probably be Brynlod, last TWM2 bounty. Those mages with Blackbows man.

 

[Grunker]

^ second toughest for me was the fanatics of magran while the third toughest was the final monk fight in the Abbey.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Radiant spore's the baddest dude out there. He's the only enemy I skipped on my frozen crown run. I knew there was a chance that even if I used every trick I knew I might still catch a bad string of rolls and die.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Worst fight for me (statistically - number of reloads) would be the first group of Low Tide monks in the Abbey. They always catch me off guard and I get promptly wiped.

Those guys are a test of if you're in the habit of having your toughest guy way, way out in front to do everything. It's a habit I developed playing PS:T 15 years ago, always manually put morte at the front.

If you have that habit the monks are just another trash fight. If you move your party as a clump of 6 you're surrounded and have guys hitting all your casters within 0.5 seconds of the fight starting and it's an unmanageable clusterfuck.

Always have a morte and always keep him in front.

^^^ What proper in-dungeon-but-out-of-combat spacing in all these RTWP RPGs looks like.

 

[Grunker]

^ a lot of fights in PoE where that isn't possible, including the final fight at the abbey

 

[Seaking4]

Anything but the standard 2 columns and 3 rows is an abomination. This is going to be POE2 biggest flaw by the way.

Final fight at the Abbey is one of the harder fights in the game but if you can convince some of the people to fight for you it becomes very easy.

 

[Lacrymas]

Wondering whether I should kill or transfer the soul of the Adra dragon. It seems like transfering the soul will lead to more drama in PoE2.

 

[Sizzle]

Wondering whether I should kill or transfer the soul of the Adra dragon. It seems like transfering the soul will lead to more drama in PoE2.

And not doing the quest just means the poor thing gets smooshed by Eothas at the start of PoE2 :D

My vote also goes to soul transferring.

 

[Iznaliu]

Radiant spore's the baddest dude out there. He's the only enemy I skipped on my frozen crown run. I knew there was a chance that even if I used every trick I knew I might still catch a bad string of rolls and die.

Really? This was ridiculously easy for me. Maybe the difficulty really goes up on POTD?

 

[Parabalus]

Wondering whether I should kill or transfer the soul of the Adra dragon. It seems like transfering the soul will lead to more drama in PoE2.

It def. should, she's "seen boarding a ship". Interestingly enough, you can leave all of the dragons you meet alive, I wonder if any others will show up, though I doubt it.

Looking at the earned talents and ending slides, there are around 35ish easy variables to be imported. I wonder how much is Obsidian going to carry over, and what minor events could make it.

 

[Quillon]

Interestingly enough, you can leave all of the dragons you meet alive

Included the one in searing falls cave? Or was it a drake? Regardless I don't know if there is any other way but to kill it.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Interestingly enough, you can leave all of the dragons you meet alive

Included the one in searing falls cave? Or was it a drake? Regardless I don't know if there is any other way but to kill it.

think that was a drake. Iirc the only dragons are adra dragon, sky, the 2 pairs llengrath's pets, and alpine in twm

 

[Lacrymas]

Decided to transfer the soul, don't let me down, Absurdian. At what level is recommended to tackle the Alpine dragon? All my guys are 11 and it feels a bit low for him, the only fight where I don't want the mobs to attack my paladin they all bunch up on her, so she gets flanked and the dragon crits her for 450+.

 

[Ziggy]

13-14, 12 works if you got a bunch of soulbound weapons from white march pt 2

 

[Galdred]

I really like the combat system, even though I am still not a great fan of the way engagement works (especially when your retarded companion pathfinding AI decides to maximize the number of engagement attacks in their face to reach a given location).
However, everything else feels like a letdown. The game is too verbose indeed, and the stronghold feels like a separate minigame. I am terribly disappointed as I liked Crossroad Keep despite its shortcomings (mostly that upgrading it did not change much gameplay wise).
Caed Nua really feels lifeless, with only vendors and a few hirelings idling around. We never get to visit the demesne itself (is there even one, or are we only controlling the stronghold and getting money from tolls? I find it hard to tell).
And having stronghold turns be tied to quest advancement feels really gamey, especially combined with henchmen wages being tied to time.
btw, what are these walls for, given that every raiding party seems to have no trouble getting into the main hall or the courtyard?
Is it worth having hirelings then? Should I just recruit them before attacks? Or look for the best ratio of (prestige+security) /upkeep? Should I wait for all the stronghold to be fully upgraded before ( I should have enough with the early levels of endless paths + sacking Raedric Stronghold)?

 

[Lacrymas]

The magical formula to enjoy PoE - skip ALL descriptive text in dialogue, skim through the dialogues just so you can get the gist of what is being said (nobody is saying anything important you can't check in the journal), don't click on golden NPCs, don't click on the tombstone symbols, take only the companion (singular) you like (if any), treat it as one massive dungeon crawl you play for the combat, you can safely skip the stronghold stuff (some adventures give good loot though, but that's a fire and forget thing), turn on disposition markings in dialogue, don't pay too much attention to the setting. Some optional things - put auto-pause on enemy sighting, put slow mode to activate automatically when entering combat, check the box to stop your characters from moving when you engage combat, auto-pause on discovering hidden things with mechanics.