Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Lacrymas]

Priest is definitely easy mode. If you play without one on PotD, you'll definitely have to simulate some of their spells with scrolls.

 

[Prime Junta]

Party composition matters too. PoTD with and without Priest for a blanket immunity to every form of CC, Crowns for the Faithful and lower level ACC buffs are 2 different difficulties. Well at least for a player who does look into spellbook and reads descriptions.

Oh for sure. You can crank up the difficulty tons by gimping yourself any number of ways. Usually there are solutions though, for example I did one playthrough with no priest but two paladins and two wizards: one a front-line muscle wizard focused on summoned weapons, and the other a glass cannon. That wasn't much harder than with a priest, thing was that I had to use scrolls and potions for the immunities in the harder fights sometimes. Ultimately not all that often though.

Spoiler

Post 10,000. My work here is done.

 

[Parabalus]

You can get by without priests without scrolls, but it's much harder to do content underleveled without them.

WM2 adds really ridic abilities for all classes.

 

[Lacrymas]

The 3 broodmothers fight would be hell without paralyze immunity for instance. The Priest also offers ridiculously overpowered buffs, so it's not only about the immunities.

 

[DalekFlay]

The trouble with Pillars is that if you don't play it at PotD, you can grind through it without all that much thought or understanding of the systems, which isn't all that much fun. If you do bump it to PotD, then you will either have to learn the systems, or reload, like, a lot.

If you really hate reloading -- which is a gameplay style I respect -- then going in blind on Hard would feel about right, you should get TPWs only pretty infrequently, and those will usually be telegraphed. Like, don't attack a giant fucking dragon unless you're feeling cocky.

I'm a "between normal and impossible" guy because I like a challenge but hate being super frustrated. I played PoE one notch above normal, whatever that was, and thought it was pretty easy. Maybe I'll try the next one up? I forget if there were 4 or 5 settings.

 

[Lacrymas]

PotD is the only way for this game's systems to make sense, so that should've been the baseline difficulty in general and everything else should've only gone up from there.

 

[Nas92]

The White March is a really excellent expansion but it is a bit unfortunate that it throws the campaign completely out of whack. Not just in terms of difficulty but just the pacing as well. Same thing happened with the New Vegas DLCs. Good experiences on their own but it just fucks up the level progression of the main game completely (which wasn't exactly great at its release either). But I guess that's the curse of of the type of expansion that gets dropped into the middle of an already existing game.

Yeah, this also bothers me to no end, especially the story aspect. What, Thaos is just gonna stay in one place and everything stops while you go north to dick around for months? The difficulty aspect I have already given up on, I'm resigned to the idea that the end of the main campaign will probably be a cakewalk.

 

[chuft]

I don’t recall having a choice in fighting the dragon. The locals did not warn me about it. There were no signs of it outside. Entering the cave triggered a dialog which resulted in a fight when I tried to talk to it regarding a relevant quest. The fight start spawns new bad guys behind your line, a Sawyerism I detest.

The most significant thing about Pillars to me is that it doesn’t allow retreats from combat nor does it allow resurrection of dead characters. This means if you find out through combat (really the only way to know - visuals alone will not tell you the level of the encounter) that you are over your head, the game forces you to die/quit and reload. You cannot have survivors flee and expend resources to raise their dead/heal the injured, and return later better prepared and eager for revenge.

To me this seriously disrupts the story flow. It also removes strategic asset use and means when you do eventually beat it, it will have cost you nothing to learn how.

 

[Lacrymas]

The dialogue doesn't trigger when you enter the cave.

 

[chuft]

Just watched a YouTube to verify. It does trigger automatically.

 

[Butter]

Just watched a YouTube to verify. It does trigger automatically.

No it doesn't.

The cave itself is also completely optional.

 

[chuft]

That video demonstrates perfectly that clicking on the ground to move triggers the dialog. He did not click on the dragon.

 

[chuft]

And why would I ignore a cave and not explore it? Because I had meta knowledge from dying and reloading ?

 

[Butter]

That video demonstrates perfectly that clicking on the ground to move triggers the dialog. He did not click on the dragon.

The point is that you have an auto-save from entering the cave and can leave before the fight triggers. You are not forced to fight the dragon.

I don’t recall having a choice in fighting the dragon. The locals did not warn me about it. There were no signs of it outside. Entering the cave triggered a dialog which resulted in a fight when I tried to talk to it regarding a relevant quest.

This is demonstrably untrue.

 

[chuft]

You are engaging in semantics bullshit. I did not say that “loading the cave screen” triggers the dialog. The character tries to actually enter the cave, not stand frozen at the entrance, and a dialog triggers.

The point remains that you have no way to tell how powerful the dragon is relative to you without starting combat, and thus no particular reason to skip the content for a later, equally arbitrary time, chosen with no more information than before.

 

[Butter]

The point remains that you have no way to tell how powerful the dragon is relative to you without starting combat, and thus no particular reason to skip the content for a later, equally arbitrary time, chosen with no more information than before.

This is true of almost every combat encounter in every RPG.

 

[chuft]

Other RPGs let you retreat - and raise dead, in magical worlds with dragons.

 

[Parabalus]

Other RPGs let you retreat - and raise dead, in magical worlds with dragons.

You can retreat in PoE, it's just harder to run away far enough because most enemies are faster than you. Knocked out party members will only wake up when enemies near them are dead and you come close.

 

[chuft]

You cannot exit a map while in combat mode.

 

[Tigranes]

lol this guy

i respect that he refuses to reload any of his thoughts either though just doubles doen

 

[JDR13]

For our friend chuft

 

[Nas92]

You cannot exit a map while in combat mode.

I can understand why they made the game like this, but this actually annoys me as well.

Another question: Is there any way to protect against the prone effect? I know about litany against minor afflictions but that's only for one ally.

 

[purupuru]

You cannot exit a map while in combat mode.

I can understand why they made the game like this, but this actually annoys me as well.

Another question: Is there any way to protect against the prone effect? I know about litany against minor afflictions but that's only for one ally.

There is a level 3 chant phrase that adds 15 defense against prone.

 

[purupuru]

Finished WM1 and ACT2 for my first playthrough.
The trash mob problem is real. It is as if the designer thinks that not filling every open spot on map with hordes of enemies would be a waste of precious real estate. I didn't even feel this bad with DAO or NWN2. This completely ruins the atmosphere for the game, which is a shame because up until the first village with hanging corpses the atmosphere felt pretty great.
WM1 obviously has better encounter design than the OC so far, the broodmothers and gleaming society bounty were fun fights. But still killing hordes of sirens in the battery for the 200th time did get exhausting towards the end. With the way all spells and abilities roll with accuracy against defense, I can see why adding more enemies is safer than just bump enemy stats some more, but when there are more than 20 actors on the field each doing stuff at their own pace it is a nightmare to keep track of what is going on. Is there some mods/advice/op builds that can make combat less chaotic and more enjoyable? So far I have found my self reliant on priest's immunity and cipher/chanter's CC(though against higher level enemies they tend to miss or last for pathetic duration).

 

[Tigranes]

I didn't even feel this bad with DAO or NWN2.

How? Those games were filled with trash mobs all over the place. More or less than POE, I don't know. Even Pathfinder, true to its BG roots, will often just say "oh here's 6 fights of 5 spiders". Anyway, it's a general design feature across this subgenre that isn't great.