Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[AwesomeButton]

So, while your damage stays the same (meaning it interacts poorly with armor damage reduction, which is additive) outside of percentage based enchantments, your accuracy and corresponding defense increases every level.

As your accuracy improves, your damage output improves with level, and for improving damage range of weapons or spells, you have to increase strength.

 

[Delterius]

In Deadfire I chose Scale Only Upwards + Critical Path Only. It felt comfortable. The important story beats remained interesting but there'd be the occasional island where I'm over-levelled and just stomping dudes, which is good for the power fantasy. Eventually you'll stomp everything outside of Forgotten Sanctum I guess but it's fine.

 

[Nano]

Be warned, there are two decisions that literally give you a bonus to stats (that carries into PoE2) in exchange for cruel reputation. This really rubbed me the wrong way.

Why's that?

 

[TedNugent]

Be warned, there are two decisions that literally give you a bonus to stats (that carries into PoE2) in exchange for cruel reputation. This really rubbed me the wrong way.

Why's that?

I haven't gotten there yet in PoE2 when you re-acquire the stat bonus, but upon starting the game, the cruel reputation does not carry over. If nothing else, that is metagamer catnip, and I felt extremely obligated to take both stat tokens, as, well, it's free stats and I decided when I started PoE that I would be playing it primarily to experience the game and see if I could create a viable character build.

The thing is, if it hadn't been an all-or-nothing free stat bonus, I would not have chosen a cruel option in either of those instances. It's an almost cartoony villain choice - cruelty for power, like something out of Star Wars, and cheapens your roleplaying experience if you are unable to resist a free stat point. The fact the bonus carries over to the second game while your reputation doesn't, just makes it more pointless to resist. Those were my only two cruel reputation gains in the entire playthrough, and what's more, they didn't even meaningfully affect my playthrough of PoE as I had deliberately timed the only meaningful 2 cruelty check before I made the trade.

It encourages some metagaming and Wiki crawling, and I took the bait. If you're anything like me, you might be Wiki shopping for rewards from the C&C. Wikis take you out of the game.

Of course, I recommend you resist, but with the number of people playing PotD, I think you have to at least take optimization somewhat seriously. Let's say you have a weapon mastery that corresponds with a particular weapon type - it would behoove your playthrough to ensure that you don't miss that superb unique flail. If that's a unique quest reward based on a particular outcome/choice, well...

That said, if you don't care much about RPing in your playthrough, it's not really that consequential. No one really notices, in effect; which is also a failure in terms of C&C, IMHO. There should at least be some meaningful consequence to being an asshole.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Be warned, there are two decisions that literally give you a bonus to stats (that carries into PoE2) in exchange for cruel reputation. This really rubbed me the wrong way.

Why's that?

I haven't gotten there yet in PoE2 when you re-acquire the stat bonus, but upon starting the game, the cruel reputation does not carry over. If nothing else, that is metagamer catnip, and I felt extremely obligated to take both stat tokens, as, well, it's free stats and I decided when I started PoE that I would be playing it primarily to experience the game and see if I could create a viable character build.

The thing is, if it hadn't been an all-or-nothing free stat bonus, I would not have chosen a cruel option in either of those instances. It's an almost cartoony villain choice - cruelty for power, like something out of Star Wars, and cheapens your roleplaying experience if you are unable to resist a free stat point. The fact the bonus carries over to the second game while your reputation doesn't, just makes it more pointless to resist. Those were my only two cruel reputation gains in the entire playthrough, and what's more, they didn't even meaningfully affect my playthrough of PoE as I had deliberately timed the only meaningful 2 cruelty check before I made the trade.

It encourages some metagaming and Wiki crawling, and I took the bait. If you're anything like me, you might be Wiki shopping for rewards from the C&C. Wikis take you out of the game.

Of course, I recommend you resist, but with the number of people playing PotD, I think you have to at least take optimization somewhat seriously. Let's say you have a weapon mastery that corresponds with a particular weapon type - it would behoove your playthrough to ensure that you don't miss that superb unique flail. If that's a unique quest reward based on a particular outcome/choice, well...

That said, if you don't care much about RPing in your playthrough, it's not really that consequential.

pretty sure both of those things end up having consequences at some point in deadfiya

 

[TedNugent]

I sure hope so. We'll see.

Endgame slides by themselves aren't really that meaningful.

 

[Nano]

The thing is, if it hadn't been an all-or-nothing free stat bonus, I would not have chosen a cruel option in either of those instances. It's an almost cartoony villain choice - cruelty for power, like something out of Star Wars, and cheapens your roleplaying experience if you are unable to resist a free stat point.

I disagree. I delighted in the opportunity to finally stop Aloth's whining.

Anyway, so you don't like it because you're a metagamer, huh? There are many things metagamers ruin for themselves.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Hey TedNugent , I hope you are playing with the Deadfire community patch mod enabled: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/335 Lots of vanilla bugfixes, and some slight balance changes. It's very moderate in the changes department, and very unintrusive in every way. I've been playing about 100 hours with it and can recommend it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

is there any explanation as to what a Bîaŵac even is btw?

 

[Lacrymas]

is there any explanation as to what a Bîaŵac even is btw?

It's the storm caused by the machines Thaos uses to capture souls.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The thing is, if it hadn't been an all-or-nothing free stat bonus, I would not have chosen a cruel option in either of those instances. It's an almost cartoony villain choice - cruelty for power, like something out of Star Wars, and cheapens your roleplaying experience if you are unable to resist a free stat point. The fact the bonus carries over to the second game while your reputation doesn't, just makes it more pointless to resist. Those were my only two cruel reputation gains in the entire playthrough, and what's more, they didn't even meaningfully affect my playthrough of PoE as I had deliberately timed the only meaningful 2 cruelty check before I made the trade.

I think you're going to like the companion relationships in Deadfire. It's a good opportunity to RP a little, and it comes with a slight bonus if you are in good relations with a party member, but nothing that your party will live or die by. You likely won't have instances of a companion leaving, but there are enough interjections and dialogue options to add RP flavor. There are also town reputations and in Neketaka - district-level reputations which can give you up to 15% discount in shops. So if you plan on buying some of the expensive unique items, wait until you've finished local quests which improve your reputation in that place.

 

[Grunker]

In Deadfire I chose Scale Only Upwards + Critical Path Only. It felt comfortable. The important story beats remained interesting but there'd be the occasional island where I'm over-levelled and just stomping dudes, which is good for the power fantasy. Eventually you'll stomp everything outside of Forgotten Sanctum I guess but it's fine.

"The occasional island"? Crit path is 1% of the game, if that. If you don't scale optional content you'll definitely be overlevelled for most for most of it.

 

[Grunker]

The thing is, if it hadn't been an all-or-nothing free stat bonus, I would not have chosen a cruel option in either of those instances. It's an almost cartoony villain choice - cruelty for power, like something out of Star Wars, and cheapens your roleplaying experience if you are unable to resist a free stat point. The fact the bonus carries over to the second game while your reputation doesn't, just makes it more pointless to resist. Those were my only two cruel reputation gains in the entire playthrough, and what's more, they didn't even meaningfully affect my playthrough of PoE as I had deliberately timed the only meaningful 2 cruelty check before I made the trade.

I think you're going to like the companion relationships in Deadfire

you mean when they interject for the 14th time to drop a cringe-worthy bit of sexual innuendo?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The thing is, if it hadn't been an all-or-nothing free stat bonus, I would not have chosen a cruel option in either of those instances. It's an almost cartoony villain choice - cruelty for power, like something out of Star Wars, and cheapens your roleplaying experience if you are unable to resist a free stat point. The fact the bonus carries over to the second game while your reputation doesn't, just makes it more pointless to resist. Those were my only two cruel reputation gains in the entire playthrough, and what's more, they didn't even meaningfully affect my playthrough of PoE as I had deliberately timed the only meaningful 2 cruelty check before I made the trade.

I think you're going to like the companion relationships in Deadfire

you mean when they interject for the 14th time to drop a cringe-worthy bit of sexual innuendo?

Gellarde, well done.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I never thought I'd say this, but it's been reasonably good to go back and tool around in POE. When I had played it a lot and so knew all the narrative ins and outs so all that was left was combat and character building which aren't the game's strong points, imo, I couldn't be bothered to play it long enough to check out any updates or the White March expansions.

All of that's far enough removed now that I'm able to play it relatively fresh again, since although I remember how things go and the general nuances of side quests, etc., I usually don't remember they exist until after I've encountered them or their area. I'd forgotten that there are some pretty good quests in the game and I'd actually credit that as one of the game's legitimate strengths: quests with a decent amount of interactivity and nuance. Actually, if they focused on that and some better mechanics rather than Sawyer's hipster bullshit system, I'd probably like the game more.

 

[vazha]

Awright, you guys sold me on it. As soon as I finish solasta, I'll give WM I & II (but not base game - will play until lvl 6 to go to WM and then never come back). How viable is a all gunner (Pike & Muscet tactics) party on POTD?

 

[AwesomeButton]

The thing is, if it hadn't been an all-or-nothing free stat bonus, I would not have chosen a cruel option in either of those instances. It's an almost cartoony villain choice - cruelty for power, like something out of Star Wars, and cheapens your roleplaying experience if you are unable to resist a free stat point. The fact the bonus carries over to the second game while your reputation doesn't, just makes it more pointless to resist. Those were my only two cruel reputation gains in the entire playthrough, and what's more, they didn't even meaningfully affect my playthrough of PoE as I had deliberately timed the only meaningful 2 cruelty check before I made the trade.

I think you're going to like the companion relationships in Deadfire

you mean when they interject for the 14th time to drop a cringe-worthy bit of sexual innuendo?

I obviously didn't mean that. BTW, the annoying frequency of interjections which you recall is in the main quest. In the side content they don't get all that annoying

 

[Haplo]

So, while your damage stays the same (meaning it interacts poorly with armor damage reduction, which is additive) outside of percentage based enchantments, your accuracy and corresponding defense increases every level.

As your accuracy improves, your damage output improves with level, and for improving damage range of weapons or spells, you have to increase strength.

Yes. In addition the accuracy of abilities, including such passive abilities like barbarian Carnage, gets a level Accuracy bonus. So in practice Accuracy raises considerably quicker then defenses. So with proper builds and use of Priest buffs, you end up critting all the time Vs most regular enemies -which also raises the damage a lot (and is great for proccing on crit effects).

 

[Grunker]

Awright, you guys sold me on it. As soon as I finish solasta, I'll give WM I & II (but not base game - will play until lvl 6 to go to WM and then never come back). How viable is a all gunner (Pike & Muscet tactics) party on POTD?

Honestly almost everything is viable.

 

[Haplo]

Awright, you guys sold me on it. As soon as I finish solasta, I'll give WM I & II (but not base game - will play until lvl 6 to go to WM and then never come back). How viable is a all gunner (Pike & Muscet tactics) party on POTD?

I think it should be good. Be sure to bring a Chanter along. Sure Handed Ila is an awesome buff for reloading weapons and Mith Fyr is great as well.

Hell, you could probably make an effective all Chanter party like that.

 

[vazha]

Awright, you guys sold me on it. As soon as I finish solasta, I'll give WM I & II (but not base game - will play until lvl 6 to go to WM and then never come back). How viable is a all gunner (Pike & Muscet tactics) party on POTD?

I think it should be good. Be sure to bring a Chanter along. Sure Handed Ila is an awesome buff for reloading weapons and Mith Fyr is great as well.

Hell, you could probably make an effective all Chanter party like that.

I am thinking of doing something along those lines: All conquistadors (one with a buckler (tank), others with guns all chanting them battle ballads + a lone chaplain (priest) for healing). No wizards & schmizards. Although tempted to get one fanatical monk for teh maximum inquisishun zeal.

 

[Haplo]

Sounds like a fun plan.

 

[Delterius]

In Deadfire I chose Scale Only Upwards + Critical Path Only. It felt comfortable. The important story beats remained interesting but there'd be the occasional island where I'm over-levelled and just stomping dudes, which is good for the power fantasy. Eventually you'll stomp everything outside of Forgotten Sanctum I guess but it's fine.

"The occasional island"? Crit path is 1% of the game, if that. If you don't scale optional content you'll definitely be overlevelled for most for most of it.

I dunno if it's because of the order I did things but I think that I ended up going to certain places while underleveled and it helped with the pacing. Nemnok Island, Hasongo, Sayuka, Witch Island, Lich Island etc remained interesting even as the more generic islands fell behind. Mind you I term interesting as somewhat below Forgotten Sanctum and Port Maje. Beast of Winter and SSS were both relatively easy when I did them.

 

[Haplo]

Well, I found SSS decently challenging - but on upscaled PotD.

 

[vazha]

Well, I reinstalled the game, started character creation, got to attributes, remembered how absurd the system is and rage-quitted. Might give it another try once I calm down a bit.