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Yeah I was really psyched to be about to beat it and finding it surprisingly easy compared to Belranga, then it hit 0hp and I remembered what the thing about oozes is in this game, and my heart sank
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Oct 22, 2018 05:19
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Sylphosaurus posted:Are there any spells that are compatible with Rogues sneak attack/backstab? Sneak attack and backstab don’t work with spells (though, I think the wizard has access to a spell that makes you invisible in one of the unique grimoires, which sets up backstab). But the assassin subclass’ special ability works with all offensive spells and can make a huge difference, not just in damage, but more importantly in the ability to land the spells in the first place and penetrate armor.
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Oct 22, 2018 07:23
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2house2fly posted:Yeah I was really psyched to be about to beat it and finding it surprisingly easy compared to Belranga, then it hit 0hp and I remembered what the thing about oozes is in this game, and my heart sank Hearing poo poo like this decisively killed any motivation I had to try these new mega-bosses. I've also come to realize that while Path of the Damned is awfully tedious and a straight up Chore (to the point I abandoned my last game on that difficulty), Veteran is still a mindless breezy walk in the park.
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Oct 22, 2018 08:05
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How are u posted:Hearing poo poo like this decisively killed any motivation I had to try these new mega-bosses. I've also come to realize that while Path of the Damned is awfully tedious and a straight up Chore (to the point I abandoned my last game on that difficulty), Veteran is still a mindless breezy walk in the park. This is my main concern about potd. In what way is it a chore?
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Oct 22, 2018 08:43
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As someone who fell off and stopped playing around launch and kind of wants to restart, maybe with a monk, is there any huge balance changes I should know about?
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Oct 22, 2018 13:14
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Miftan posted:This is my main concern about potd. In what way is it a chore? It's not that bad. Enemies have higher defenses, so you have to really pay attention to their weaknesses. If you don't, it's a slog. It's hardest early before you have access to gear, abilities, etc. Once you hit around level 10 or so POTD is not so bad apart from some fights here and there.
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Oct 22, 2018 15:19
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How are u posted:Hearing poo poo like this decisively killed any motivation I had to try these new mega-bosses. I've also come to realize that while Path of the Damned is awfully tedious and a straight up Chore (to the point I abandoned my last game on that difficulty), Veteran is still a mindless breezy walk in the park. I'm playing on veteran and found many of the fights in SSS to be the correct level of challenge for me. Belranga took me about 6 attempts. I've done about 8 attempts on Huani O Whe so far. This one may be a bit over-tuned and I'll need to create custom characters.
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Oct 22, 2018 17:12
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I love that I can upload my characters to steam workshop now *including their custom portraits* Everyone say hi to Myfanwy
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Oct 22, 2018 17:27
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Miftan posted:This is my main concern about potd. In what way is it a chore? It's only a chore if you want to brute force the encounters instead of trying to fully understand what's going on. If you're willing to learn the intricacies of the rules you'll love it.
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Oct 22, 2018 18:32
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PoTD was far from a slog for me and is probably the right level of challenge if you have level scaling on. Without it you easily outlevel a lot of content and most of the game ends up being pretty easy. SSS on the other hand is more of an extra challenge for those who didn’t have enough of it. Kind of like alpine dragon, radiant spore or llengrath in that respect, imo. Or the bear cave.
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Oct 22, 2018 18:45
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reading back it looks like I really missed all the good faction/lore conversations, for sake of not wanting to read spoilers, but there's one point people have been consistantly wrong on regarding the Wahaki. they don't eat people, they burn them alive which is a small, but subtle difference. plus the only documented account of them actually burning some alive was with Thaos... so... it's a positive? everything else is just freedom-fighting!
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Oct 23, 2018 01:24
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Furism posted:It's only a chore if you want to brute force the encounters instead of trying to fully understand what's going on. If you're willing to learn the intricacies of the rules you'll love it. How intricate are we talking? Food before every fight or just penetration number values? Mostly I can learn rules, but I don't want a game mode that makes me do a ton more in game stuff. Also kinda worried about boss fights but I'll manage that.
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Oct 23, 2018 01:39
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Miftan posted:How intricate are we talking? Food before every fight or just penetration number values? Mostly I can learn rules, but I don't want a game mode that makes me do a ton more in game stuff. Also kinda worried about boss fights but I'll manage that. Just play the first island and see how it goes? If you can cope with the drake fight that's as tough as the game gets pretty much.
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Oct 23, 2018 02:54
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Just play the first island and see how it goes? If you can cope with the drake fight that's as tough as the game gets pretty much. The drake fight on POTD relative to how strong you can potentially at that moment makes it the most difficult fight in the game. After that you can level, cheese, or build right for the rest of the game and the difficulty takes a steep nosedive (except temple of berath was very difficult too). But at level 2-3 or whatever? Man that drake is hard.
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Oct 23, 2018 03:06
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jokes posted:The drake fight on POTD relative to how strong you can potentially at that moment makes it the most difficult fight in the game. After that you can level, cheese, or build right for the rest of the game and the difficulty takes a steep nosedive (except temple of berath was very difficult too). I always walk up the ramp to the little nook where Eder gets to tank one cat while the rest of them plus the drake wait patiently. Xoti starts with crossbow proficiency and can interrupt the drake if he ever tries to pull something.
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Oct 23, 2018 03:24
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I straight up don't believe that anyone at Obsidian has beaten Hauani O Whe above normal difficulty without some cheesy Deltro's Cage + Greater Maelstrom scroll build or something. You can't kite, your buffs get removed immediately, you can't deal enough damage to prevent the fight from starting over, and just found out you can't interrupt the "Merge" casting that the oozes do. Removing concentration with Thick Grew Their Tongues and Thrust of Tattered Veils interrupt did nothing to prevent it. Why even have interrupt and concentration mechanics if they're just going to be ignored. Fights' got me on tilt goddamn.
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Oct 23, 2018 04:11
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Just play the first island and see how it goes? If you can cope with the drake fight that's as tough as the game gets pretty much. They supposedly changed mid and late game to be tuned so that they're more difficult with the latest beta patch.
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Oct 23, 2018 08:10
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Is alchemy and explosives worth investing into in this game? I was thinking about trying out a Witcher kind of character but I´m not sure how well explosives scale later in the game.
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Oct 23, 2018 14:58
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Sylphosaurus posted:Is alchemy and explosives worth investing into in this game? I was thinking about trying out a Witcher kind of character but I´m not sure how well explosives scale later in the game. I get a fair amount of mileage out of potions as reserve healing items (even weaker ones are good for this), and having a few spare points in alchemy on everyone boosts that. Never did much with bombs or buffs potions though, but that's mostly because it seems too fiddly to worry about those things to my taste
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Oct 23, 2018 17:53
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Sylphosaurus posted:Is alchemy and explosives worth investing into in this game? I was thinking about trying out a Witcher kind of character but I´m not sure how well explosives scale later in the game. This is from my experience with two characters each having 20+ in one of the skills. Alchemy: some potions can be really useful, assuming you actually remember to use them, others hardly serve any purpose. Poisons on the other hand are kind of terrible because for some reason they gain less accuracy and penetration than other consumables do from their respective skills. Explosives: end up disappointing when it comes to damage, so for the most part they are best used for their secondary effects. Unfortunately, most require you to hit twice in order to apply a status effect (once vs reflex and once vs fortitude), so they can feel unreliable. At any rate, both are vastly inferior to Arcana and scrolls in every way because CASTER SUPREMACY 
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Oct 23, 2018 21:31
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grenades are awesome, with zero cool-down and real cool effects, plus you can spam the poo poo out of them. grenades suck cuz they're made from various types of living metal, which is definitely served better by being used for other things. thankfully, living metal seems to be an infinite respawning resource, so by level 20 you might just have aquired enough to make an 'alchemist' type build totally viable, if you could somehow restart with all those resources. that being said, they're a nice to have even with the double rolls.
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Oct 24, 2018 00:08
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I found fire-based explosives to be hugely handy in Beast of Winter. But I often forget to use them, despite what I consider to be their effectiveness.
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Oct 24, 2018 00:20
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Both explosives and alchemy feel like total box checking afterthoughts, especially in a renaissance fantasy setting.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:33
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It seemed like a really good idea and I brought Eder/Xoti to ~17 in explosives/alchemy, respectively. I really did not use any of it. Maybe the value is more obvious in PotD?
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Oct 24, 2018 04:59
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Explosives and alchemy were both ridiculously overpowered at release, to the point that alchemy completely invalidated a large number of class exclusive skills and explosives could trivialize a lot of encounters. They were since nerfed repeatedly so that character builds could have more room to matter in comparison to skills every can access regardless. The real issue is that there’s no way to keep the skills balanced since there’s no way to limit the player’s total access to consumables in a game of this scope without making it really frustrating to the player. Consumables would work better as per encounter or per rest resources.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:13
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Is there a way to see how many engagements you can do? I have built a tank character but I don't actually know how many guys he can engage at once.
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Oct 24, 2018 05:33
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Heithinn Grasida posted:Explosives and alchemy were both ridiculously overpowered at release, to the point that alchemy completely invalidated a large number of class exclusive skills and explosives could trivialize a lot of encounters. They were since nerfed repeatedly so that character builds could have more room to matter in comparison to skills every can access regardless. You may know already, but they had actually planned to make (at least some) consumables per rest, but made the mistake of not going through with it. There are some per-rest unique consumables in the DLC, at least!
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Oct 24, 2018 05:58
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I mean, the summon items that work per rest are sorta consumables? I repeatedly forget to use consumables which quickly leads to me just ignoring that they exist. It's not like the game is hard enough to demand I use them (I'm not playing on potd or w/e) and it's so much less stressful to just never worry about them. Too many fidgety bits. I don't even use scrolls.
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Oct 24, 2018 06:04
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The Witcher's toxicity is one way of how to limit consumables. Mechanically it works pretty well and you can always come up with a different conceit for why you can only use so many. For example bombs might be notoriously unstable so you can't carry more than 3 mixed and ready without almost assuredly blowing yourself and your party up. Having worked with black powder, that would be a compelling narrative for me. I'm sure a better game designer than me could do a way better job, but fact is there doesn't appear to have been any game design at all with the non food consumables. On the other hand, I think they basically aced it with food.
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Oct 24, 2018 07:56
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2house2fly posted:You may know already, but they had actually planned to make (at least some) consumables per rest, but made the mistake of not going through with it. specifically, because they thought grognards would freak over the change to tradition. you get the game you ask for.
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Oct 24, 2018 12:48
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Lt. Danger posted:specifically, because they thought grognards would freak over the change to tradition. you get the game you ask for. With some things, but, for example, merging spell power and physical power into one stat should've set them off as well but holy hell is it a good change.
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Oct 24, 2018 13:54
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Miftan posted:With some things, but, for example, merging spell power and physical power into one stat should've set them off as well Oh it did, it so did People are still getting their knickers in a twist over that one But yeah, the two big things that Pillars should absolutely have stolen from the Witcher series are 1) re-useable, per-encounter "consumables" 2) reading books about monsters giving bestiary information / experience about said monster.
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Oct 24, 2018 14:40
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toxicity would have been a better idea to steal from the witcher series. it sits in a great spot between 'no pre-buffing, ever!' and either clicking on a bunch of different potion icons at the top of a fight... or just not giving a poo poo about them at all cuz the choice they went with is so loving tedious.
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Oct 24, 2018 14:46
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Toxicity is great in Witcher and would be great if they could make it work but I think across a party of five it would be too much trouble unless you were fully automating and even then would lead to a lot of frustration where you wanted certain buffs (spell reflect, an intellect inspiration to counter a Charm, etc) but they didn't trigger due to non-obvious toxicity issues. Simpler to just keep it all per-encounter like spell abilities and other item abilities.
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Oct 24, 2018 14:48
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Miftan posted:With some things, but, for example, merging spell power and physical power into one stat should've set them off as well but holy hell is it a good change. Honestly, Sawyer should have gone full bore and ripped the entire simulationist part of the attributes right out, and have disregarded the traditionalist requirement of having exactly 6 attributes. That way Might wouldn't have stood out as the odd one out. Of course, when you are crowdfunding an IE spiritual successor, and the people have already given you the money, I guess you have to pay the piper 
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Oct 24, 2018 14:49
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Parenthesis posted:Honestly, Sawyer should have gone full bore and ripped the entire simulationist part of the attributes right out, and have disregarded the traditionalist requirement of having exactly 6 attributes. That way Might wouldn't have stood out as the odd one out. What do you think could have worked instead? I'm pretty happy with how they work in deadfire. I disliked resolve in 1, for example, because it was so important for speech checks but they're much better about that in deadfire.
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Oct 24, 2018 14:58
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh it did, it so did It was so divisive that the developers were still mulling over whether Might should affect spell damage weeks before the release of the second game
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Oct 24, 2018 15:44
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Miftan posted:What do you think could have worked instead? I'm pretty happy with how they work in deadfire. I disliked resolve in 1, for example, because it was so important for speech checks but they're much better about that in deadfire. Make them completely abstract - say defense instead of resolve, utility instead of intelligence etc, so that a barbarian build for carnage aoe isn’t also automatically considered smart.
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Oct 24, 2018 15:55
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Avalerion posted:Make them completely abstract - say defense instead of resolve, utility instead of intelligence etc, so that a barbarian build for carnage aoe isn’t also automatically considered smart. Wouldn't have the same flavor. If it had been me I'd have waved a magic wand and gone back in time and removed Resolve from the first game Overall the Deadfire system is pretty drat good though, it kept all the best features of the first game. There are still some subtle structural imbalances that could use addressing (ciphers getting relatively nerfed by everyone else shifting to per-encounter, for example; wizards are gratuitously better than all other spellcasters due to grimoire versatility) and last I checked there were a few individual powers and abilities that need tweaking, but most of the big bumps and dents have gotten smoothed out by now.
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Oct 24, 2018 16:01
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a lot of problems could be avoided with some joined-up thinking - not on the part of the developers, who already know this stuff, but on the part of the (nerd) audiences that demand their specific and often contradictory CRPG fetishes. part of that includes recognising that they are just totemic fetishes, of course. like, was anyone's game experience seriously affected by the mechanics of consumables in Deadfire, or are we fussing because potions are a CRPG thing and having opinions about CRPG things is basically what CRPG fandom is all about?
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Oct 24, 2018 16:13
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