I thought - from DDO - that only Cold Iron was able to bypass demon's DR ?

DDO is mmo.
Pathfinder is not mmo and thank god for that.

If you are still that scared, you have a trinket that adds cold iron effect to all party weapons when placed on your belt.
It doesn't happen automatically or is bugged, upon entering an area make sure you unequip then equip on the belt.

Unless you returned it to the queen for OMG such rewarding amount of 600 XP while you need 457638464837369 XP for level up!
Btw, you may return it to her at the beginning of chapter 4 if you kept it for a while.

Yeah, that's why I'm going to return to that battle once I get the spell. (via Nenio at level 11). I won't have the communal version before a while so I guess I will have to do with casting it on my heaviest hitters. Unless I buy / make a few more scrolls.

If anyone has a great tip for building a crossblood sorcerer, feel free to dump it here. I've got one at level 2 that took fire elemental and one of the 3 fire dragon builds and has so far focused on skill focus fire magic twice and I think spell penetration.

My goal (if I play long enough), is to take the ascendant fire magic that will make enemies no longer have protection from my fire magic and then burn evil to the ground :) I did take the warrior/soldier background so I can use a short sword/light armor/lt. Xbow with some skill. I really won't wear the armor much as I have magic to boost my AC to respectable levels and it's not like I'll stay on the front line. I'll sneak in a few attacks once everyone has a companion engaged.

I do like that I get 8 or so shots of a flame arrow type spell for free with elemental fire magic. That elemental ray is great for saving on other spells for the bigger battles.

What are your stats like? Are you going to melee a fair bit or not?

Also, what's the alignment and intended mythic path?

I'd say that unless you play on the harder difficulty modes (Core and above), you can basically build what you like without having too much trouble.

The only encounters that should give you any trouble then would be optional boss encounters (like the large water elemental in the Shield Maze) and there aren't too many of those.

So have fun with the build and experiment. That's how I have decided to play as I tried Core and it wasn't for me. The main issue I had in Core was in the Market when 4 Shadows killed my characters by doing Stat damage rather than HP damage :D

Here is a tip for that encounter in particular. It's also one of the things I love about DnD, but it can deter others. Often, these situations are trivial if you have the knowledge about the game, but more often than not this information is very hard to learn by newer/inexperienced players, and the game does not do much to inform you about it.

In this particular instance, you can buy a scroll/potion of "Death Ward" at the base, for a mere 1250 gold. That spell makes the one using it completely impervious to level draining, which in turn makes the encounters around the Market graveyard into free XP pinatas, since those creatures don't even harm you, they just drain you until you die. You can just send someone with the spell ahead to draw their attention while the rest of the party peels the minor ghouls off and eventually kills the shadows at very low risk and investment.

This is one of some gimmicky encounters you will face where knowledge trumps minmaxed builds, even at the highest difficulties. Other similar examples are bodaks, swarms, deskari demons and others, that just knowing the one spell that completely counters all they can do to you wins the battle before it even begins.

My character seems to be losing their melee attack action in turn-based mode. Started recently, no idea if it is connected to patch, or some gear I am wearing. I just seem to have a move action, but can cast spells or do anything else….it is incredibly frustrating. I have lost some close fights because my character ran up to deliver a final blow, and did nothing. I have this little "!" underneath the portait, which I think means you can't act, but I have no negative status effects etc. And as I said, worked perfectly until now. I know TB mode is supposed to be a little dodgy, but it's mostly been fine and I can't go back to RTwP - it' just too chaotic, especially when so many abilties are move equivalent…and you can *precisely* target AOE effects and spells in TB-mode which you simply can't in RTwP. Any ideas on how to fix this?
EDIT: I tried turning TB off/on quickly, after combat starts, but that does nothing. Some have suggested skipping a turn…but that's not a solution. I usually get one melee attack, and then it starts misbehaving. I'm playing a magus, but this happens even if I don't use touch spells.

It happens sometimes that the game miscalculates the attack range of a character and if you click on an enemy that requires prior movement to get to, the character will walk just not close enough for the attack to be possible, but because the attack action was queued, it will glitch, and you will lose it.

It happened to me often until what I did was just split my movement and attack in those situtations. Instead of clicking on the enemy to move+attack it, I first moved the character using her movement range to make sure she was placed well within attack range, and then, once the movement had been completed, clicked on the enemy to perform the attack action. This still gets glitched sometimes, but it's vastly more reliable than the alternative.

In general, the game glitches a lot in TB with any order you give to your characters that require movement+action in one same click. Another notorious example of this is touch spells (like healing ones). I can't count how many turns I've lost when I critically needed to heal someone and the game just glitches, lose the turn, the person in need dies as a consequence of it, rage ensues. The only "fix" we can work with for now that I know, separate your movements and actions into two different things, and the game will generally glitch less around it.

Besides, the default pathing that the game chooses for your movement is very unintelligent, it will ignore control zones and have you eat up any amount of AoO you walk through in straight lines, without paying any mind to it. Often it will also position you in awkward spots that you might not want to be caught in, like moving in front of your tank that you just wanted to buff/heal from behind, thus turning your squishy mage into the new frontline. In narow passages, it will clutter your melee characters around the same spot in front of an enemy, blocking other melee/pets from passage or even being able to reach melee range, while an intelligent player would spread them out so everyone can get through. Generally, fine-tuning your movement manually will make your life easier, even if it takes a little more micromanaging tedium.

Thanks Nereida - I have also tried splitting into move+action before, when I noticed that sometimes a character couldn't attack, until you moved them right up to the target. Also had that issue with heals - ouch…now Ember has a 'reach' heal, which is great (avoids that issue mostly). The interface basically shows that I only have a move and then has this "!" underneath - this is what is worrying me. It's something new since the last patch (I think…well, certainly last 2 days). Prior to that I would occassionally have the issues you described, but this seems to be something more serious? I had an encounter in the Abyss where I was robbed while I slept, and all my equipment was auto-removed…I think it started after that. Usually eveything is fine for the 1st round, and then I lose my actions (besides 1 move). Maybe it's a curse ;-)

Sometimes you may be affected by a "Slow" spell or similar, which, while under its effects, you can only do either a move or an action. Your movement line will show as yellow to reflect that (also happens at the beginning of combat if your party is "surprised", and during the first round you can only take partial actions). Some systems are tricky and not that intuitive if you're not familiar with them, so it's hard to tell when it's actually a bug.

I think that would be fine, but it requires not only dnd knowledge. It actually requires complete meta knowledge of the encounter.

There's no way for me to know this encounter is going to happen when leaving the base.

If this were a game with 30 hours of gameplay then I wouldn't mind doing those things and understanding the meta fully, which is why I enjoyed age of decadence a lot.

In a game lasting 100 hours this is not for me. I am not going to go to a location to find out what all the encounters are for an hour, solve quests, get companions, to then reload at base and do it all again.

Obviously, good if you enjoy it. Like i said, I would too if the game were shorter. I enjoy those puzzles, but not for this :D

Can screenshot upload a screenshot with that exclamation mark?

Yeah, the UI is not always that intuitive unfortunately. In my case, there is no negative effect on my character, and this is regular combat after the surprise round. I am fairly sure now it is some kind of weird bug - I just hope it doesn't end up killing me in some important encounter (!) Or I wil have to revert to RTwP - which I used for PF:K…bit that seems too busy now.

Finding the right scroll / potion can be pretty challenging. Sure, the most common ones such as healing potions are pretty easy to recognize, but for those you don't need that often such as Death Ward, it's much more difficult. I wish the interface was different and/or that we could have a search bar.

Here's one where it was my turn next - Merialla. You can see the "!" under her portait. When I saw that on other characters, they were unbale to act/stunned/confused. In one case due to Aivu's fear effect…I wonder if that is somehow affecting my character, even though it is nots hown? hm.

This thread is so bloated - if possible someone filter the random stuff and rewrite only actual musts in a thread.
I remember restoration (normal, lesser and greater) was discussed in this thread, but not Death Ward that is more desirable if you know who you're dealing with next.
Having Death Ward is a must on normal difficulty, not talking about other difficulties. As such it should have made an entry here.
Similar to Dimension Door, that one not only it makes your life easier, it allows you entering areas not accessible otherwise (not a bug although can be used as bug workaround). But it was mentioned. And burried with (dis)liking companions and other not really tips/hints.

Speaking of DD use to sort out bugs, I didn't know but seems that Blackwater was fixed in the last patch.
Not the whole of it, but two critical bugs I wrote before that make the area impossible to beat on normal difficulty (trashmobs were supposed to be electricity vulnerable yet were basically immune to it!):
https://store.steampowered.com/news/…45483238535978
-----

What wasn't disclosed is that the last patch completely broke the crusade!

I didn't notice this, and I am replaying the game only because of picproof that Hellknights suck, everyone else rocks.
But then I saw this on Steam now:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/11843…2673974260997/
[EDIT]And now these:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/11843…2673972294354/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/11843…2673971230469/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/11843…2673974855494/[/EDIT]

After reading it I went to check my stats.
And there you go, ZERO on military and ZERO on diplomacy although I've killed numerous demon armies and picked a few diplomacy related options in events.
https://i.postimg.cc/HkkFCnyx/pic.jpg

I mean this is my army #1, do you think the general got to that level without demons destruction:
https://i.postimg.cc/2jgshrM9/pic.jpg

If I find out how to fix this I'll post, but it seems there is no workaround currently.

In other words, unless you've set the crusade on automatic mode (which locks you out of numerous goodies), do me a favor and check your crusade stats.
If stats are stuck except development (which improves by building in forts and capital, it's not combat related) like mine, you have my condolences.

When something affects your character, it should be noted on the character's page. I have no idea what this "!" is supposed to mean. o_o

If you have doubts, report it from the game, it does look like another TBM issue.

They should put some explanation somewhere (in the Encyclopedia for ex), there's still a lot of things we have to guess. You can also get skulls under the avatars, then there are all the indications in the crusade system (and the crusade system itself).

Hopefully they'll have the time to do that later.

I don't remember seeing this. Does it do anything if you hover over ?

Yeah, I have so much stuff! Usually I order by type and just kind of scan down the list… I never use most of them but I am a compulsive hoarder. Or order by value - often the scrolls/potions I want are the pricier ones (like heal etc). But there should be some way of ordeirng them that reflects utility e.g. healing, armour bonus etc. I'd love to know at a glance which bonuses to stats/armour a usable gives, because so many do not stack and are worse than my item bonuses (so can be sold). I don't have the energy to scroll throuh everything to check…unless I am desperate and come up against a super bad enemy.

I will try next tme it happens…I don't think hovering showed anything, but I can hope. It realy does seem like certain actions are barred if this "!" is there.

I am thinking I may know the reason.

Is this happening usually at the start of combat?

It happens sometime that in combat you may only start with one action and not both move and action. So if you use that to just move you may not be able to attack.

DDO is based on the Dungeons & Dragons rules set, this is what I tried to express.

You can base anything on any rules.
If it's mmo, it not singleplayer. Regardless of rules, mmos simply cannot have designs singleplayer games do.

That aside, this last patch seemingly broke a shitton of stuff in the game, not just the crusade, a new critical gamebreak issue discovered:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/11843…2673975595351/
As a hint, I guess the best option if you don't want to put the game on hold now, is to refuse every romance offer, not just ones mentioned. Better safe than sorry.

Sorry Queen, then again I'm not sorry, you stole my whole army. You stole maylander's army too, yet he didn't kill you because I guess some illegal stuff is less illegal than another. ;)
I promise to open a Greybor appreciation thread.
Btw, is he romanceable by any means? Asking for a friend. :evilgrin:

One reason I worry less about difficulty is what Pladio said in that you need meta-game knowledge.

I like to try and solve things the first time through. Obviously if I die I reload but I prefer a level of difficulty that doesn't require me to first experience a battle to then reload and repeat it X more times to master it.

That being said I know people love that kind of thing - mastering combat encounters (my best friend is a master at figuring out ways to game the system and its his greatest joy in playing games).

I am not a fan of combat enough to want to keep doing it, especially in a long game. I do have some advantage of being very familiar with these games and rules, so that does help me to at least form a battle plan when first engaging. If I die I then may change strategies but overall I prefer to not die and win the first time.

Um, I don't think I'll melee unless I run out of scrolls/pots/wands/whatnot. I just have a background choice that makes me not totally useless if I end up running out of everything. So far, the game seems to give you a lot of stuff to buff everybody else, if my main runs out of spells. I use the crossbow a ton when I do run out.

I'm lawful good and I have no idea on path. Reading suggests Azata and Gold Dragon later, so maybe that. My current idea is to buff melee if I run out of spell stuff that interests me. My stats are low str/int/wis/ high dex/ch and a bit of con. I'm an aasimar, so I got bonus to ch/dx iirc. Pretty sure I lowballed Str to 7.

Man I hear you and support this 100%.
I lost my mind in some cases on what's supposed to be a normal difficulty, only to find out it's in fact bugged. Dreaded Blackwater is an example, but it was at least fixed.

Then there is an unkillable demon in a certain cave, dunno if they fixed it, I've already posted - you kill it and then it regains all of it's HP. Solution? Set the game to story mode before entering the cave and suddenly it's not reviving itself till doomsday. WTF.

Oh and I don't know if you managed to kill Playful Darkness in chapter 4. I have no idea what I haven't tried on normal, it ate my party for breakfast. After wasting an hour I set it to story mode. And Jesus Christ it still managed to kill half of my party.
So I thought it has to have some ubercrazy loot, and all I got from it was trash.

But okay devs tend to troll you with loot, you kill a Balor and you get what from it? A longsword+1. Isn't that a joke? :)

In short, when you feel you want a challenge, you go JDR route of picking the nightmare mode. When you want to enjoy the story, I see no reason to bother with minmaxing for the combat.
Difficulty options exist so you can choose at any time what you want from the game.
The only thing that bothers me is the annoying Enigma part. I wish there was a sort of newgame+ where in the replay you wouldn't have to solve all those annoying and repetitive puzzles in the pyramid. There are just too many of them and I, the idiot, didn't write down the solutions on paper.
You need to finish Drezen definetly. There are several absolutely amazing crossbows you find after that!
I tol you already, once you conquer Drezen and start playing chapter 3, you will not want to push to chapter 4 but will replay ch3 over and over, it's so enormous on the stuff variety.
…
Azata is hardly lawful, unless those heavy drugs azata hippies most definetly use are not illegal stuff in the setting. ;)
But don't let that stop you, there are no consequences of stepping out of norm per se, only story consequences your actions will produce later.
Dunno about GD, refused to go that path because it strips my pet dragon away. I mean, I become a dragon and lose a dragon. WTF.

Well, at least I finally picked the class I'll continue with. I enjoyed this flame fanatic the most out of my dozens of builds. At level 1 and 2 he can hit stuff even in melee, but that won't last long if I don't add any melee feats. I'll only do that if there isn't any magic feats to purchase. This guy is like the fire guy from the fantastic four ;)

I don't remember who was a firecreep in F4… Alba perhaps? :p

That works for me ;) Any tips for the order of things in the market square? The place where you get Ember and make a bridge? Can you clear that whole map w/o triggering the Defender's Rest attack?

Yes, you can, so just do it all. The attack is time based, not based on what you do, so do as much as possible.

Yes, just don't rest forever as you may trigger the attack after you leave the market.
Try relying on scrolls and stuff if you need them.

Interesting. Thematically, that's basically the Angel path then, with Gold Dragon as a later option. Only issue is, Gold Dragon doesn't have set stats, so it'll base its strength on yours (it's +10 I believe), meaning you'll be a somewhat weak dragon if your strength is fairly low. Maybe go Dragon Disciple from 16 to 20 to boost it a bit? Do you have a Dragon bloodline?

Azata certainly works, but they're chaotic, not lawful. There's also Aeon, but they're lawful neutral.

If you go Aeon, you need to make sure to pick summoning spells, as they buff their summons a fair bit. Otherwise, focus on a mix crowd control, buffs and damage.

Here's a good build:
https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder…acter#Saucerer

However, this is based on the Lich path, so I would probably replace Necromancy with Evocation, skip the Wail of the Banshee speciality, and replace some of the Necromancy spells with Evocation spells. And, if you're going Dragon, I would go Dragon Disciple towards the end instead of Loremaster. Four levels of DD is needed to get +4 Strength.

Erm, Azata might sound chaotic on paper and in most of dialogues it does pull the chaotic response, but my Azata ended up neutral.
Many dialogue chaotic options offered were absolutely wrong, totally and horribly - fit only for a prankster/trickster, for a low IQ person or for a professional troll. On the other hand many lawful picks, especially in crusade decrees, fit Azata. Not sure if it's bugs bugs everywhere, but I don't think so.
When you put both in the mix, a lil' bit here, a lil' bit there, you end up neutral as the game recalculates your alignment based on responses and actions.

Here's one example.
You will find out a certain person is a spy partially responsible for many dead people.
As Azata, loving everyone and everything, understanding why the stuff happened, feeling for everyone, the proper decision is to put the spy in the brig which is a lawful thing per the game.
As Trickster, what brig we're talking about? No, how about I turn the spy against the other side, and I do that, which is chaotic.

I'm quite unsure if you can stretch stuff enough to end as lawful Azata, but I'm not the right person to ask something like that, right?
There is a lawful robot and there is a lawful "doesn't put lawfulness above the major plot point - winning a war". ;)

Yes, I agree. Chaotic is too often the silly response, not the casual, make-it-up-as-you-go-along style that Azata have. To me, they're basically hakuna matata, which doesn't mean they're pranksters.
Lawful is generally pretty strict, as you can see from the responses labelled lawful. Most of them are very harsh, often leading to executions and similar, so roleplaying a lawful character is actually hard. Most people start out as lawful good are likely to end up neutral good, as picking the "good" response instead of the "lawful" response means you end up neutral pretty fast. I personally find that a bit odd, as I don't find the two mutually exclusive, but it is what it is. Kingmaker was also a bit too strict on what lawful means.

I played lawful good this time around, but I think my next run will be a neutral good Azata. Likely a Bloodrager (12), Mutation Warrior (4), Dragon Disciple (4) or some such thing, and then a Gold Dragon at mythic rank 8. Or something along those lines. Maybe 11, 5, 4. We'll see.

Not interested in Angel, which is the main LG path? Azata is my favorite and Gold Dragon seems cool although perhaps a little too good for my taste.

The discussion on lawful and chaotic and so on I find very interesting so please keep them up … even if not the best thread for it, sorry Joxer :(

People really have different concepts of these I find - the proof being I have already heard different ideas on them from Maylander, Joxer, and Neredia that are different from my own and that is just 4 people.

One thing I try to consider is what is Lawful in the context of this world? This isn't a civilized modern society. It is a more brutal, somewhat feudal (well in some places) like setting. The Crusade run cities seems like a more strict European Christian setting maybe (not an expert on history or religion … so going on vague things I have in memory). Some cultures are far more lax and some are probably even more strict (like Chelexian .. sp? The Devil run city based on Law).

What I am getting at maybe lawful in these places is more brutal because of the time period and the situation with demons and a lot of difficulty knowing who your enemies are because of demons and cultists. Also this is military. Isn't military more strict about things like desertion, not following orders, etc? I think of Regil and the Hellknights.

Now LG needs to have some mercy but these are still mostly crusaders fighting a centuries long war against demons. To me some of the LG seems very harsh but mostly feels like it fits … even though I don't always agree.

Azanta seem fairly carefree, swashbucklers, Errol Flynn, Robin Hoods, Harrison Ford aka Han Solo and Raiders of the lost Ark), as well as bards, creative people, free spirits, many whimsical but others not. Very, very diverse. So I have been okay with most of the dialogue although some choices seem too flippant for a Knight Commander.

The Crusade choices do show there is some consideration taken to try and get the Crusaders to work with the Free Crusaders, like when you have the followers of the drunk god do recruiting versus combat.

Anyhow I still feel, for myself, that in general the choices line up well enough in my head for the way they are. Sometimes it is hard because sometimes being lawful feels like it trumps good … but usually in cases where it is the individual. Meaning lawful puts the larger good first - so harsh on an individual to hopefully benefit the greater good - as in discipline and keeping order.

On that topic, one problem I had in my playthrough is that I wanted to remain CG, but because the Chaotic choices were always far too random and nonsensical, I kept opting for Good choices, which often were way too charitative for my character's way of thinking, but at least pointed in the general right direction.

Because of that, my alignment kept shifting to Neutral Good, which I found a little silly. I feel a good choice should nudge you just towards good, not also towards neutral. I'd be fine with it if there were Neutral Good or Lawful Good choice, and I take the neutral good one, but because the game only lets you make generic alignment choices I couldn't counter it in any way but using a number of scrolls of atonement during the campaign just to be reset to CG.

In my case, it was purely roleplay/background reasons but I can imagine people playing paladins wanting to remain LG without resorting to "lawful" choices like executing their soldiers or calling people incompetent scrubs in their faces finding a difficulty levelling in their class while roleplaying in a very valid way. I can't imagine how Seelah herself manages to keep getting Paladin levels under the game's own system, for example. Only due to the fact that companions aren't subject to alignment shifts, really.

I feel you aren't allowed the same lenience as the NPCs who inhabit the world to nuance your character choices without being pushed out of the alingments that you feel your character belongs to.

Well let me ask you all something.
At certain point of the game a bunch of unexpected guests make a pompous entry asking you for permission to join your side of the crusade.


While trickster answer would be "yay, yes of course!", I'm kinda not sure what answer would feel proper for certain other paths.
Aeon for example would reply with what? :D

Hint? Tip? Spoiler? Okay…
No, sadly, you can't have them in your army on the map regardless of your answer. :(

@joxer, should we wait for patch to fix crusades then ?

I'm at Chapter 2 now and played a bunch within it, so if I have to wait a few weeks, so be it.