Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[mediocrepoet]

There are definitely parts of POTD that are a pain in the ass to get through, but for the most part it's a mixture of decent challenge and somewhat steam roll that at least requires you to consider how you're approaching things and sometimes leave areas until later. It's a step up from other difficulties where you can just steamroll right out of the gate.

If you said this comment about Kingmaker on unfair, I might be more inclined to agree with you.

This video btw demonstrates what I said about the combat system - that a combat's outcome is evident from the start, or if not from the start, is evident long before it's over. Notice how the player here spends half a minute exchanging blows that hit with a xaurip that can't do anything better than graze.In the more RNG IE games, this combat would have been over sooner and there would have been higher stakes and a chance of someone in the party getting hit seriously. In PoE you just go through the motions in 90% of the combats.

Lukewarm take: PoE on PotD is the only enjoyable PoE.

You can see how enjoyable it is right there.

I get the point and I've experienced it without watching the video. The main thing I'll say is that POE's system disproportionately favours accuracy over pretty much anything else.

 

[Lacrymas]

Accuracy is the culprit in the overly deterministic system. Mmm, it's more accurate (ha!) to say having a high enough accuracy makes the system deterministic. Although it's supposed to be an analogy to +to hit in D&D, the way you can stack it to absurd levels is the problem.

 

[Grunker]

Lukewarm take: PoE on PotD is the only enjoyable PoE.

I thought that was pretty much accepted wisdom at this point

 

[AwesomeButton]

I get the point and I've experienced it without watching the video. The main thing I'll say is that POE's system disproportionately favours accuracy over pretty much anything else.

Accuracy is the culprit in the overly deterministic system. Mmm, it's more accurate (ha!) to say having a high enough accuracy makes the system deterministic. Although it's supposed to be an analogy to +to hit in D&D, the way you can stack it to absurd levels is the problem.

If we're right about the problem, let's see what we can do to fix it. Deadfire allows us to mod the miss/graze/hit/crit ranges. I could play around with these - make the hit range eat up the graze range and remove graze altogether.

 

[NJClaw]

The problem with that definition is that wizards and other spellcasters also have power over nature in fantasy settings. Hell, even machines have power over nature. That's what I mean by a dick measuring contest. How do you meaningfully differentiate between spellcasters and gods?

Wizards and other spellcasters have powers over nature that mortals identify as achievable by other mortals, gods don't. You've seen some of Eora's best archmages, how can you even begin to think they are even remotely comparable to gods. It's like saying that it's impossible to meaningfully differentiate between me and the Christian god because I can drown a paralytic baby, burn down a tree, or forgive a guy who hit my car. It's not a dick measuring contest because there's no contest at all. The best wizard among mortals can, after decades of studying, make a guy 60ft from him cough for twenty seconds, Berath can cause a civilization-ending plague anywhere in the world at any time at will. How can anyone confuse the two sources of power?

Lukewarm take: PoE on PotD is the only enjoyable PoE.

I know at least two people who enjoyed it on Easy. But, to be fair, they are two of the most dedicated day-drinkers I know.

 

[Lacrymas]

So, it's just a matter of time before mortals start rivaling gods in terms of raw power then. Not to mention that they've already achieved that - the creation of the gods. So it's not only possible for mortals to match the gods, they have already done that. This type of negative listing (i.e. describing what mortals can't do) is also contingent on the current status quo. What would happen when mortals build the machines or learn the spells capable of affecting the world as much as the current gods can? There has to be something fundamentally different that sets gods apart and not only degree of power.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is alright. Flog me now faggots.

I also think its alright. Except for the game-play.


On an related note, I'd like to publicly apologize to Endless Paths and Pillar's encounters.
Compared to Tomb of Vordakai and Defaced Sisters, Endless Paths isn't really that bad.

I've also learned to appreciate the fast mode in Pillars and decent movement speeds.

Don't get me wrong, I did like KM, it's just that are some really poor design choices and the pacing was a little screwy. Pillars is just the better game, imo.
Although KM's character creator is more interesting and complex; there is a pretty nice variety of builds and classes.

 

[pomenitul]

I have a hard time understanding the divinity of Eora's gods tbh, I can't place them in a coherent mythological matrix.

Eora's gods are a manufactured cure for existential angst and nihilism, like going through a fervent Nietzschean phase and ultimately concluding that the Grand Inquisitor was right all along. They literally embody a posteriori human projections upon an a priori inexistent divine.

 

[NJClaw]

So, it's just a matter of time before mortals start rivaling gods in terms of raw power then. Not to mention that they've already achieved that - the creation of the gods. So it's not only possible for mortals to match the gods, they have already done that. This type of negative listing (i.e. describing what mortals can't do) is also contingent on the current status quo. What would happen when mortals build the machines or learn the spells capable of affecting the world as much as the current gods can? There has to be something fundamentally different that sets gods apart and not only degree of power.

Why are you acting like mortals achieving godhood and replacing gods is anything new in D&D-inspired fantasy?

I get why you might not like the whole thing from a cosmological perspective, but not liking how the game handles the concept of gods doesn't make them any less godly in the context of that setting. In the Forgotten Realms you just need to gather enough followers and convince an old bearded guy to say "bippidy boppity you're now a goddity", in Golarion you need to escape a maze and touch a rock, in Eora you need to fuse enough souls to create an entity with powers incomprehensible to mortals. In all three settings, anyone could theoretically gather enough power to subvert the current order of things, but this rarely happens because reasons (?).

For all we know, the current pantheon might have achieved a big enough power to actually win an eventual confrontation with the "real" previous gods. We can only pray to see Wael tentacle-raping some kind of weird Zeus-looking guy in Avowed 7.

 

[Nikanuur]

Are there any modding-keen Codexers here? I've tried to mod Paladin's Faith and Conviction, these were the tools to work with:

Tools (the link from tutorial doesn't work, use this one)
Tutorial

No matter what I do, I'm getting broken Palladin stats for Faith and Conviction passive. It should be actually pretty easy - for example changing the deflection bonus from 4 to 12 in the appropriate MonoBehavior (8).
When I rewrite and introduce the new faithandconviction.unity3d file to \Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle\.. the Palladin gets broken. The passive Faith and Conviction dissapears altogether, replaced by some weird +2 attack bonus to deflection (?), there is some +4 Deflection stating "Supressed" at the Personal stats. The same happened when I've tried to change the entries for "per-level-bonus".

My guess is, Palladin's Faith and Conviction has got multiple MonoBehavior entries troughout the different files of objectbundle game's directory. Couldn't get the hang of it, spent the whole day trying to troubleshoot If anyone wants to try too, see what's going on, I'd be obliged.

Edit: Some clues lead me to believe, that the UABE is no longer properly hashing or tying some entry ids to the whole asset-bundles ids or whatnot. This is just despair.

 

[Bester]

If this used to work, but now doesn't, try to get older version of UABE.

Back when I was into modding of this piece of crap, I was going to write my own utility, inject it into POE and the utility would intercept any ability that's being loaded from assets, and swap it out with my own stuff. And my own stuff would be in simple json.
You could write this hack if you're seriously going to mod the game.

I loved modding it. It's too bad I can't do it commercially (because nobody would pay for this). Otherwise I'd take out all the flaws introduced by Sawyer, such as abstractionism in stats and skills (bring it closer to D&D), and also cut out megabytes of superfluous text. Too bad I don't like the game enough to do it on my own time, and nobody would finance this.

 

[Nikanuur]

If this used to work, but now doesn't, try to get older version of UABE.

Back when I was into modding of this piece of crap, I was going to write my own utility, inject it into POE and the utility would intercept any ability that's being loaded from assets, and swap it out with my own stuff. And my own stuff would be in simple json.
You could write this hack if you're seriously going to mod the game.

I loved modding it. It's too bad I can't do it commercially (because nobody would pay for this). Otherwise I'd take out all the flaws introduced by Sawyer, such as abstractionism in stats and skills (bring it closer to D&D), and also cut out megabytes of superfluous text. Too bad I don't like the game enough to do it on my own time, and nobody would finance this.

Creating mods still wouldn't be a full-fledged coverage for living, however Nexusmods is suprisingly generous. An example: A trivial mod I've made for Elex yielded an equivalent of 15 bucks (300 or so downloads and around 20 endorsements). True, I've spent several hours to create it, but that was only because I needed to understand what I am doing first. Having the knowledge already, I'd spent like 20 minutes doing it.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, appreciated. I've tried two UABE versions so far. The process is fairly simple now, so I'll give it a go with all the four versions.

 

[Nikanuur]

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I pressed TAB in every location, on every occasion and will always press. Fight me.

 

[Nikanuur]

...

Damn, it doesn't show votes. Dunno what to do

 

[Ulfhednar]

Never much cared for pixel hunter the game, but finding hidden objects from stealth mode (PoE) or just automatic perception checks (PoE 2) always felt a little too easy... Dunno what to suggest to make it better... Limited radius inspection with different skill-based filters could be interesting, but also potentially tedious. PoE 2 had a good list of skills (history, alchemy, metaphysics, religion, survival, etc) that could have been used to uncover hidden Easter eggs in the environment.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Dunno what to suggest to make it better... Limited radius inspection

make the radius based on skill required for the object being highlighted, objects below certain threshold aren't highlighted at all

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Most skills are terribly underutilized anyways.

 

[Nikanuur]

Never much cared for pixel hunter the game, but finding hidden objects from stealth mode (PoE) or just automatic perception checks (PoE 2) always felt a little too easy... Dunno what to suggest to make it better... Limited radius inspection with different skill-based filters could be interesting, but also potentially tedious. PoE 2 had a good list of skills (history, alchemy, metaphysics, religion, survival, etc) that could have been used to uncover hidden Easter eggs in the environment.

Not saying you have to do it like that, but all in all in PoE, same as in Baldur's Gate, one has got a very good chance to find most of the treasures / interactibles by looking at the screen and deducing where those might be. That's a well-made feature design right there. It allows for adventuring.

 

[Nikanuur]

I get the point and I've experienced it without watching the video. The main thing I'll say is that POE's system disproportionately favours accuracy over pretty much anything else.

Lo there do I see my father, the fabled Interrupt.
Lo there do I see my mother, the weapon with 4 effects.
Lo there do I see my brothers and sisters, casting spells and using abilities.
They bid me (accuracy) to take my place among them, in the halls many venues of Valhal Hel, where the brave may live forever.

 

[razvedchiki]

is it advisible to use the increased xp to lvl of the IE mod? can it be turned on later on the game?

 

[Nikanuur]

is it advisible to use the increased xp to lvl of the IE mod? can it be turned on later on the game?

I have not tried it, so I can't say for sure. Although I'd like to state that the EXPs are gained quite appropriately to the game's challenges (Normal and Hard). Probably the fact how gaining the EXPs differs from the mainstream RPG systems is what bothered some people in the first place, and hence this mod came to be. But in generall, I'd reckon, you may destroy the game for yourself soon, and I'd advise against using this mod. I mean, if you don't intend to use it for repeated playthroughs, experiments, getting strong fast or automagicalling the combat etc. - yeah, then it is a good choice.

Btw care, mods on Nexus are sadly largely outdated; many of those won't work, some even damage the installation.

 

[FreeKaner]

is it advisible to use the increased xp to lvl of the IE mod? can it be turned on later on the game?

XP problem mostly happens when you do the DLCs, where you outlevel act 3. I'd honestly just say scale the enemies up in ACT3. If you outlevel it coming from white march you get the option to scale up the act 3 as you go into that zone, say yes when asked.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

When you get the option to scale up act 3 it means you've finished all the content worth playing and it's time to uninstall.

 

[Nikanuur]

is it advisible to use the increased xp to lvl of the IE mod? can it be turned on later on the game?

XP problem mostly happens when you do the DLCs, where you outlevel act 3. I'd honestly just say scale the enemies up in ACT3. If you outlevel it coming from white march you get the option to scale up the act 3 as you go into that zone, say yes when asked.

That's mod for the level cap though, not for the XP increase. And yeah, that mod is highly recommended, you are right.