Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[The Bishop]

Some of the PotD combat feels real swingy, and a lot of time it feels like I'm doing well or not based on luck

There's a huge discrepancy between power level of classes and abilities. Your experience with PotD will vary depending on what you have in your party. For example you can overcome dragon defenses pretty reliably by just using Inspiring Radiance and Painful Interdiction. I had 2 priests and Inspiring radiance stacks and is cast instantly on whole party, then at least one of Interdictions lands a graze, then wizard with an Eldritch Aim has a very good chance of landing Miasma. That gives you +20+20+15+24 on Will attacks. Then you do whatever you want. I's been quite a few years so details are fuzzy, but I remember double Shining Pillar + Cleansing flame is about enough to kill a dragon outright.

 

[Butter]

Inspiring radiance stacks

I never would've assumed that to be the case, what with how that gay Suppression mechanic works. Almost sounds like a bug.

 

[The Bishop]

Inspiring radiance stacks

I never would've assumed that to be the case, what with how that gay Suppression mechanic works. Almost sounds like a bug.

Well, my policy is to wait until devs stop patching, then treat everything as intended functionality. Unless it's a blatant game-breaking exploit, like generating infinite gold, which this isn't. Otherwise you'll be stuck second guessing everything.

 

[almondblight]

There's a huge discrepancy between power level of classes and abilities. Your experience with PotD will vary depending on what you have in your party. For example you can overcome dragon defenses pretty reliably by just using Inspiring Radiance and Painful Interdiction. I had 2 priests and Inspiring radiance stacks and is cast instantly on whole party, then at least one of Interdictions lands a graze, then wizard with an Eldritch Aim has a very good chance of landing Miasma. That gives you +20+20+15+24 on Will attacks. Then you do whatever you want. I's been quite a few years so details are fuzzy, but I remember double Shining Pillar + Cleansing flame is about enough to kill a dragon outright.

Neither of those are Will attacks, though. One of the issues I ran into was that Will attacks were mostly from my Cipher, but my Cipher usually only had enough focus to fire off a few, then she couldn't recover the focus because of the dragons defenses. I would try to farm focus at the beginning of the battle against the blights, though that usually put the Cipher, who was an off-tank, in harms way close to the dragon in order to pull it off, and it relied on some good die rolls. I think once I got to about 90 focus when the blights went down, but that's only 4 attempts at paralyze. Usually I only had enough focus for 2-3 attempts.

I was casting Interdiction at the beginning of battle on everyone, maybe I should have saved it until the dragon at the end as well. The strategy that worked was just saving every single thing I had during the rain blights, trying not to get wiped out, then dumping it all on the dragon at the end hoping that some would stick.

Keep in mind that this is probably with the upscaled PotD dragon. Maybe choosing the upscaling option was a mistake, I got to the dragon in my initial aborted playthrough (also PotD) before White March came out, and don't remember it being this weird.

Actually, I'm looking at the dragon stats now, and it's showing the upscaled Sky Dragon to have higher defenses than both the Adra Dragon and Alpine Dragon.

 

[Lacrymas]

The only problematic dragon fight on PotD is the Adra Dragon because it doesn't play by the game's rules.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The only problematic dragon fight on PotD is the Adra Dragon because it doesn't play by the game's rules.

Pretty bigoted of you to expect a dragon to read the game manual tbh

 

[The Bishop]

There's a huge discrepancy between power level of classes and abilities. Your experience with PotD will vary depending on what you have in your party. For example you can overcome dragon defenses pretty reliably by just using Inspiring Radiance and Painful Interdiction. I had 2 priests and Inspiring radiance stacks and is cast instantly on whole party, then at least one of Interdictions lands a graze, then wizard with an Eldritch Aim has a very good chance of landing Miasma. That gives you +20+20+15+24 on Will attacks. Then you do whatever you want. I's been quite a few years so details are fuzzy, but I remember double Shining Pillar + Cleansing flame is about enough to kill a dragon outright.

Neither of those are Will attacks, though. One of the issues I ran into was that Will attacks were mostly from my Cipher, but my Cipher usually only had enough focus to fire off a few, then she couldn't recover the focus because of the dragons defenses. I would try to farm focus at the beginning of the battle against the blights, though that usually put the Cipher, who was an off-tank, in harms way close to the dragon in order to pull it off, and it relied on some good die rolls. I think once I got to about 90 focus when the blights went down, but that's only 4 attempts at paralyze. Usually I only had enough focus for 2-3 attempts.

I was casting Interdiction at the beginning of battle on everyone, maybe I should have saved it until the dragon at the end as well. The strategy that worked was just saving every single thing I had during the rain blights, trying not to get wiped out, then dumping it all on the dragon at the end hoping that some would stick.

Keep in mind that this is probably with the upscaled PotD dragon. Maybe choosing the upscaling option was a mistake, I got to the dragon in my initial aborted playthrough (also PotD) before White March came out, and don't remember it being this weird.

Actually, I'm looking at the dragon stats now, and it's showing the upscaled Sky Dragon to have higher defenses than both the Adra Dragon and Alpine Dragon.

Shining Beacon is a will attack, though it doesn't really matter since the point was: once you have dragon's will defense open you can pile up more debuffs of your choosing which should almost definitely hit/crit. Once the dragon is neutered you can kill it in any way you like, including the priest nuke. Plenty debuffs that target will to chose from. What exactly I did in my own case - can't say cause I don't remember.

Also, I think Ciphers aren't that strong in boss fights. Their main advantage is the resource generation, but this becomes more of a burden against bosses. You don't need to conserve resources in boss fights anyway, but wizards/priests can fire their strongest stuff immediately, and then keep firing all the way until it's over.

 

[Yosharian]

Also, I think Ciphers aren't that strong in boss fights

 

[almondblight]

Also, I think Ciphers aren't that strong in boss fights.

Mental Binding was the only debuff that was somewhat consistently landing which let my other characters get some damage in. The big problem was charging the Cipher up on the Blights/Wurms enough without killing them, which could be difficult depending on how the enemy spread out (and depending on things like the dragon breath/returning storms).

Though ironically, when I beat the dragon my mental bindings miss and I had a couple of good rolls on Gaze of the Adragan (which had always missed before).

Shining Beacon sounds like it would have been useful. I wish there was some way to look at a list of will attacks without going through the descriptions of each spell one by one.

 

[Axel_am]

The only problematic dragon fight on PotD is the Adra Dragon because it doesn't play by the game's rules.

Adra dragon is easy if you get the start of the fight right. Which is difficult given how he enters the screen in a cutscene sort of way. Turisfulfust and Gafonecros on the other hand pushed my micro to the max. That was the hardest fight in the game by a mile.

With the Adra dragon I could tell part of my gear was lacking and there were things I could pimp out a little bit more - how I engage the fight, which group of mobs to kill first, which part of the pit to kite the dragon. It was always something different that went wrong. I wouldn't kill the trash mobs fast enough, somebody would get one shotted by the boss, not enough DPS. And I ended up killed the dragon in a run where I thought my party was about to wipe out in the first 10 seconds of the fight. Good memories.

The area where you fight Turisfulfust and Gafonecros is much simpler to navigate and you always engage them the same way. I also got the idea of how I wanted to kill them fairly early after I first fought them and I saw that my strategy could work if my micro was on point. So the challenge there was more of a skill issue and not trying out different things until I find what fits best.

 

[Axel_am]

Also, I think Ciphers aren't that strong in boss fights. Their main advantage is the resource generation, but this becomes more of a burden against bosses. You don't need to conserve resources in boss fights anyway, but wizards/priests can fire their strongest stuff immediately, and then keep firing all the way until it's over.

I just gave Grieving Mother some badass bow to fire with and I had no issue with the resource generation. I didn't bother to go through the combat log to see how much damage she did but I could easily see she was sufficient enough in boss fights to keep in the party. I guess I had an issue with her in boss fights only when I was primarily using her with melee attacks.

 

[almondblight]

I just gave Grieving Mother some badass bow to fire with and I had no issue with the resource generation. I didn't bother to go through the combat log to see how much damage she did but I could easily see she was sufficient enough in boss fights to keep in the party. I guess I had an issue with her in boss fights only when I was primarily using her with melee attacks.

What difficulty are you playing on? In upscaled PotD, she wasn't even able to generate enough energy for a single mental binding when fighting the Sky Dragon (after the blights/wurms had gone down).

 

[Axel_am]

Path of the Damned. Maybe you are having a hard time with that fight because of fear debuffs?

 

[Lacrymas]

You shouldn't really be having any problems with the content when your characters get to lvl 10ish. The party is severely overpowered and they can stack so many defenses as to be virtually unkillable (the easiest way is to have a Paladin and Cipher to exploit Defensive Mindweb with). Add a Priest on top for ridiculous accuracy buffs and you are golden.

 

[Axel_am]

Well, not with the Sky Dragon at least. Upscaled White March was difficult for me in the beginning.

 

[almondblight]

Path of the Damned. Maybe you are having a hard time with that fight because of fear debuffs?

I kept casting the fear debuff (and whatever blessings I could). Still, most attacks were useless unless I got a lucky roll on a paralyze or petrify.

Did you do the upscaling at Elmshore? My first aborted run was PotD but without level scaling, and the dragon wasn't that difficult. I wish the game let you mess around with the difficulty more, it seems like the only way to compare things is with an entirely new run.

 

[Axel_am]

The only upscaling I did was with the White March content. My idea with that was that if I want to replay the game I can do so with going to White March at lvl 7 as intended by the developers. Still tho you can just skip the dragon and get back to it when you have better gear or levels.

I remember I left the Sky Dragon to Nearly Dead without using any fear removers. It happened once in like 20+ runs tho.

You should still be able to kill it without using the Cipher too. If anything the Cipher is useful for the first part of the fight where you separate the big lizard from the Blights.

 

[almondblight]

The only upscaling I did was with the White March content.

At least according to this, the upscaled Sky Dragon has defenses (other than DR) higher than both the Adra Dragon and the Alpine Dragon.

Yeah, I initially was using the Cipher for the blights, and it worked out pretty well for the first half of the fight. The problem was that when it came time to actually take down the dragon, everything kept missing, and I realized that I needed to be throwing every paralyze/petrify I had at it. When I ended up killing it my Cipher actually didn't help at all, missing all of their mental bindings, while Aloth got lucky with a couple of the Gaze of the Adragans. The thing is that you don't really know ahead of time what will hit and what will miss.

I'm sure there are other ways of taking it down I could have figured out (I actually experimented with some better methods after taking it out the first time). But the initial point was that the first half of the combat was so annoying, requiring a lot of careful maneuvering to lock down the breath attack while taking out blights attacking with returning storm, that it was a hassle to just get to the point where you could experiment with attacking the dragon. I probably could also do more with min-maxing equipment, though again, I find that kind of a hassle in this game.

That's generally how I feel about this game in general - there's good stuff, but it often gets buried under excess (too many trash mobs, too many status effects, too many items that suppress other items, etc.).

 

[Axel_am]

Annoyingly difficult is a good way to name the dragon fights in Pillars. You sorta go through the same dance with everyone of them. Kite them with the tank while the rest of the party takes care of the trash mobs and then you try to kill them. I liked this as it did give me the sense that I was actually more experienced with fighting dragons compared to when I started playing.

Out of curiosity - how did you fare with the other dragons? The Sky Dragon was the easiest for me but I remember I didn't engage on my first opportunity as I felt my gear was lacking. My party comp for my full playthrough was Eder, Boromir (Monk), Pallegina, Grieving Mother, Hiravias, Durance. Good times with this group. Good memories too.

 

[almondblight]

Annoyingly difficult is a good way to name the dragon fights in Pillars. You sorta go through the same dance with everyone of them. Kite them with the tank while the rest of the party takes care of the trash mobs and then you try to kill them.

Yeah, I think that's a big part of what I find annoying. The positioning is very important so that you don't get your party wiped out with a breath attack, or one of the dragons other almost instakill abilities (it seems to also have a mass stun ability?). From what I can tell you have to have some melee folks attacking from different directions ties it down to it's normal attacks. On one try I thought I had done that, but my tank was a little too far and the dragon's breath wiped out my party (or took everyone down to ~5% health). On another try Itumaak was at full health and I sent him towards the dragon, and he was dead before he reached it. Positioning is really matters, but positioning is annoying to do in the game. You also have to be stopping every half second to babysit everyone, or it's easy for somebody to really quickly die.

I haven't reached the other dragons yet. My first game (also PotD, but before The White March came out) I stopped just before after finishing Twin Elms (which is where I'm at now, and I'm going to finish off The White March). I probably won't get to the Adra Dragon, because every time I attempt Cuad Nua I get really bored of the game and stop playing it for a while. Maybe it would be more fun at lower difficulties, but the conveyor belt of trash mobs feels tiring after a while.

The other god quests in Twin Elms were laughably easy by comparison. I finished Into the White Void and The Old Queen and the New King together without stopping to rest, and did so by killing everyone in those quests (including both the bear and the lion). In general the difficulty in the game seems to swing about really wildly (at least on PotD, I've never tried the game on other difficulties).

 

[Axel_am]

Adra Dragon is worth the trash mobs in my opinion. It's more of a thing to do after you've finished the game tho. It really is a long descent and the Adra Dragon is no joke. Can't say any of the same for Twin Elms tho. The time you spend there is really short and other than getting introduced to the gods and some tribe drama there isn't anything that interesting. It's more of a place where you get the final touches before fighting Thaos - like stocking up on War Paint.

It's a shame they completely erase the dynamic between you, the gods and what destiny is about in the very beginning of Deadfire. Asking the gods for a favour and them asking one of you in return is one thing. But being bound to them in servitude since the very beginning is a whole different thing.

 

[almondblight]

I thought the concepts for the Twin Elms god quests were fun. Two people from two different groups are unnaturally prolonging your life, so the god of death and rebirth wants you to kill them. Followers of Rymgrand seek final death, so they're trying to open a portal to his domain in an abandoned temple to him. A temple to Hylea has been taken over by a dragon, and you need to get rid of it. There's a stalemate between two of the champions at the animal fighting arena, and you need to break it. A lot more fun than the social worker stuff you have to do in the first part of the game ("my husband beat me and now my child is hollowborn and I can't pay the rent, can you please help me put my life together?").

Unfortunately, the quest design is mostly just go to a dungeon, kill the trash mobs, kill the boss, then call it a day (with a few options for subpar diplomatic resolutions).

 

[ColonelMace]

The game probably suffered from the "second big city" stretch goal from the kickstarter campaign.
It's one of those mistakes they didn't commit again when time came to crowdfund Deadfire.

 

[GloomFrost]

The game probably suffered from the "second big city" stretch goal from the kickstarter campaign.
It's one of those mistakes they didn't commit again when time came to crowdfund Deadfire.

Yeah instead we got countless amount of empty small islands with trash mobs and absolutely pointless and boring ship management.

 

[ColonelMace]

Doesn't feel weird or out of place, unlike Twin Elms which has no business being that big.