Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Lyric Suite]

Hahaha, Durance is a sexist pig on top of being a racist bastard.

I fucking love this guy. Avellone, what were you doing?

That said, the swearing and vulgarity is still cringe. Who decided this was the way to go for RPG writing? It's SO fucking juvenile and try hard. Muh grim dark setting amrite!

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, it does feel really forced sometimes.
The game's approach to difficulty feels amateurish too.
On hard the game throws copy pasted enemies at you. In Dyrford or whatever I found like 10 ogres standing around. Just standing around, doing nothing. What were they doing there? Having a picnic? A circle jerk? I don't know, but they were there.
It reminded me of that bit in Lost Izalith where there were just 15 or so Capra Demons standing on a platform. Looked artificial and weird as hell.

 

[Grunker]

In Dyrford or whatever I found like 10 ogres standing around. Just standing around, doing nothing. What were they doing there? Having a picnic? A circle jerk? I don't know, but they were there.

Yeah man. Random packs of ogres in the forests of the IE-games weren't really a thing. I hear ya.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Were there ten of them at a time? I don't remember there being 10 in a pack. It's not the pack in a forest bothering me, it's the size of the pack.

 

[Lyric Suite]

How is that different from Baldur's Gate?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Well shit, I guess I need to play Baldur's gate again because I don't remember that.

 

[TedNugent]

How do you split mobs? I'm trying to get past floor 13 and there's like 6 animats, 2 adragans and a banshee who just swarm my party and chain stun them no matter how many potions I take. If I can separate out the animats I can probably take them but Adragans are fucking horseshit.

Boots of speed kiting works sometimes.

The Adragons are the ones that are chaining paralyze.

 

[Lyric Suite]

You don't remember hordes upon hordes of enemies scattered everywhere? Entire armies of Xvarts or Gnolls?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

How do you split mobs? I'm trying to get past floor 13 and there's like 6 animats, 2 adragans and a banshee who just swarm my party and chain stun them no matter how many potions I take. If I can separate out the animats I can probably take them but Adragans are fucking horseshit.

Boots of speed kiting works sometimes.

The Adragons are the ones that are chaining paralyze.

Yeah and they are pretty nuts. They are not immune to dominate, which is hilarious and did prove useful. Pity ciphers have such terrible range though.

You don't remember hordes upon hordes of enemies scattered everywhere? Entire armies of Xvarts or Gnolls?

I remember those, just not ogres.

 

[TedNugent]

At several points in this game, especially on hard mode, they are pretty forward about reminding you of the importance of your will and fortitude defenses.

I'd recommend having them above 100 on each of your characters before diving into the deeper tiers of Od Nua.

Getting hit with a stun, paralyze, or confusion with the full duration on at least 2 party members is basically a death sentence. It doesn't just take them out of the fight, it gives them a huge debuff to deflection and makes them eat damage from auto attacks.

I look at it as the game telling you that fortitude and will are at least as important as your base deflection score.

If you can at least shift them to a graze it's probably fine but if you get a full hit with a 10 second or longer stun on a front line character they're in deep shit.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah I think I made a couple of scrolls that gives +20 to all defenses and used those? That probably helped. I think Durance cast some defense buffs too, but I already forgot.
What is an Adragan's accuracy anyway? I looked at its journal entry and I don't think I noticed an accuracy stat?

Is there a dispel in this game? Insect swarms are kind of annoying. The sickness effect can be countered, but the chain interrupt is a bother.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Were there ten of them at a time? I don't remember there being 10 in a pack. It's not the pack in a forest bothering me, it's the size of the pack.

If you can't take PotD, don't play on PotD. Simple.

I did warn you, it's a dumb kind of difficulty pumping, and gets tedious to click the same modals for every combat. Brings no new experience and no qualitative difference in challenge.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Were there ten of them at a time? I don't remember there being 10 in a pack. It's not the pack in a forest bothering me, it's the size of the pack.

If you can't take PotD, don't play on PotD. Simple.

It's on hard though. I'm already up to the Burial Pit, I just have to do some clean up because it's a point of no return.
So clearing the paths, finishing side quests, getting materials, working out which party members to take, etc.
I've not feeling Grieving Widow, might take Aloth instead.

I'm tempted to do another run on normal / expert / PoI just to see what it's like.
Don't want to do Path of the Damned though. Didn't like Hard at all and it seems Path of the Damn ups the ante.

 

[AwesomeButton]

If you get to playing Deadfire, my impression is that Veteran (the "Hard" equivalent) and the Deadly Deadfire mod for the XP reduction is the best way to go. Otherwise, if you want to fully explore the map, do companions' personal quests, and do the DLCs, you'll risk getting overleveled, or you'll have to turn on enemy scaling.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

How do you escape from combat? Because it feels like once combat starts you can't run away, especially with how fast the enemies are. Which sucks because if you run into a fight you can't win you die. I kind of had to grind my way through the game because of that and make heavy use of quick saves.
Also, if you do escape from combat, do unconscious party members die?

 

[AwesomeButton]

You can't quit combat voluntarily. It's the balance squad's work again. Josh believes things like this or disallowing use of potions out of combat, is the way to make an RPG better. :D

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

You can't quit combat voluntarily. It's the balance squad's work again.

But that's dumb and really counter intuitive though.
"Oh there's about 20 ogres, 3 dragons and 50 adragans circle jerking in this house. I have no way of winning and I should run. I guess I have to fight them"

 

[AwesomeButton]

You can't quit combat voluntarily. It's the balance squad's work again.

But that's dumb and really counter intuitive though.
"Oh there's about 20 ogres, 3 dragons and 50 adragans circle jerking in this house. I have no way of winning and I should run. I guess I have to fight them"

The only real consequence of Josh's overzealous "players shalt not abuse the videogame's AI" is the birth of the equally cheesy, ironically also abusive, style of playing where you scout the map ahead with your highest-stealth character, prepare an ambush at a choke point if available, and then initiate combat with some kind of a nuke spell. Maybe your playing style hasn't degraded to that level yet, and you are playing the game as you would play the IE games. Even if not using stealth, you can take advantage of your viewing radius being larger than the enemies'.

 

[Grunker]

every ie-hater: "is dumb shit cuz you can kite"

every poe-hater: "is dumb shit cuz you can't kite"

josh: :'(

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah I noticed that the player sight range is pretty long and I have resorted to using choke points and AoE attacks.
So much for flanking and tactics I guess.
How do you initiate combat with a nuke though? Whenever I try to use a scroll of confusion or something it says "must be in combat to use". Which again, is rather counter-intuitive.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Yeah I noticed that the player sight range is pretty long and I have resorted to using choke points and AoE attacks.
So much for flanking and tactics I guess.
How do you initiate combat with a nuke though? Whenever I try to use a scroll of confusion or something it says "must be in combat to use". Which again, is rather counter-intuitive.

Easiest thing to do is the stealth arbalest/arquebus alpha strike and then go from there. You can generally delete something from the equation before starting.

You don't need to play this way, but if you're having trouble and want a crutch, that's one.

 

[Grunker]

You don't need to play this way, but if you're having trouble and want a crutch, that's one.

perfectly put

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I have been doing something like that, actually. A party member would shoot an enemy, lure the pack over to the choke point, Eder would block them and everyone else unloads with arquebus and spells. Kana gets up to five charges and summons ogres behind the enemy.
As long as the enemy doesn't spam their own AoE or status effects it usually works. Hence why Bansheens and Adragan can go eat a dick.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I have been doing something like that, actually. A party member would shoot an enemy, lure the pack over to the choke point, Eder would block them and everyone else unloads with arquebus and spells. Kana gets up to five charges and summons ogres behind the enemy.
As long as the enemy doesn't spam their own AoE or status effects it usually works. Hence why Bansheens and Adragan can go eat a dick.

If you can't lure, you can just equip everyone with one and stealth into range and unload then weapon swap or whatever else you're going to do.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Stealth is pretty low on the party though. Safer to use Sagani or someone to pull them to where I want them to be.
Deleting one git doesn't really matter when the game spawns like 10 of them.