Pathfinder: Kingmaker Question/Tips & Tricks Thread

Come argue more when you have finished a play, it's a very long game, I never finished a RPG as long. But I have doubts that its replay value is very good. And it's unfortunate that the last two chapters are so weird.

Originally Posted by wolfgrimdark
Aye that just really annoys me.

Spoiler

I already have a love interest in the game. Even if I wasn't romancing someone in the game I most certainly would not want to romance Nyrissa. They should have at least made it either love or a true friendship. Without knowing the background (i.e. first time playing) who is going to love someone who lies to you and wants to destroy you? Almost impossible to always pick positive dialogue choices with her from the start of the game unless you know about it. Then the love is a lie in some ways. Course not sure you have to do that - just that I read you have to always be nice to her and pick the nice options, even when she is screwing you over, to get her to love you. It may not be that absolute though and maybe there is some point where you find out what happened and try to help her anyhow.

Anyhow I do like the idea of defeating the Lantern King (you said letting go … I don't know if you can kill him ever or just defeat him … I read he was immortal). But since I don't feel any love for Nyrissa it isn't possible (unless I meta-game) for me to truly love her and hence get that ending. I Also can't see spending eternity with her

Thanks for your reply and thoughts.

Oh, I agree with that.

Originally Posted by Dasale
Come argue more when you have finished a play, it's a very long game, I never finished a RPG as long. But I have doubts that its replay value is very good. And it's unfortunate that the last two chapters are so weird.

Oh not arguing. How can one argue that they should love someone? That is like arguing I should like the color blue or eating shellfish. I don't need to finish the game to know I won't fall in love with her The only female love interests I would have would be Octavia or Valerie and for males Reg and Kesten (who isn't romancable anyhow).

Trying to tell me who I should fall in love with in a game … is just … well unreasonable considering how subjective it is.

Now saying you should pick X as your love interest because doing so, meta-game wise, will give you the best of XYZ in all things - sure that is open to debate and more objective.

But I don't play games that way. I have already done a few things that were detrimental to my meta-gaming because it didn't fit me or my character.

Any mod or a way to always see highlightable things? not just when i press tab

Originally Posted by porcozaur
Any mod or a way to always see highlightable things? not just when i press tab

Not sure but you can probably download a free keyboard editor and set TAB to toggle.

Originally Posted by Dasale
Come argue more when you have finished a play, it's a very long game, I never finished a RPG as long. But I have doubts that its replay value is very good. And it's unfortunate that the last two chapters are so weird.

I think BG2 was just as long as Kingmaker. And I found Kingmaker more enjoyable the second time around, so yes, it does have replay value

In saying that though, I really hope Owlcats will fix the last two chapters sometime.

Originally Posted by Charna
Oh, I agree with that.

Spoiler

Your character simply doesn't spend enough time with her; the romance felt more like a Las Vegas spur of the moment wedding, lol. If they made it something like e.g.: the briar can be gifted by someone who feels compassion towards her, this would have let any character lift the curse, romance or not, and would have been more believable.

The reasoning behind Nyrissa trying for a kingdom isn't well explained, imo. I got a bit lost on the 'who did what and why' towards the end. But yes, you can actually destroy the floating skull in her romance ending. Without spoiling too much, it has to do with the nature of the curses.

In all honesty, I think chapter 7 is almost unnecessary and found the ending in chapter 6 a lot more satisfying unless you manage to unlock the secret ending. It really depends on how you feel about:



BTW @wolfgrimdark curse 5 =/= chapter 5.

Originally Posted by wolfgrimdark
Oh not arguing. How can one argue that they should love someone? That is like arguing I should like the color blue or eating shellfish. I don't need to finish the game to know I won't fall in love with her The only female love interests I would have would be Octavia or Valerie and for males Reg and Kesten (who isn't romancable anyhow).

Trying to tell me who I should fall in love with in a game … is just … well unreasonable considering how subjective it is.

Now saying you should pick X as your love interest because doing so, meta-game wise, will give you the best of XYZ in all things - sure that is open to debate and more objective.

But I don't play games that way. I have already done a few things that were detrimental to my meta-gaming because it didn't fit me or my character.

Common it's a game. It could be arguing without any argument, but you did argue about never do any romance with her, despite you don't know the full story. When you'll knew it, I wonder, that was the point of my post.

@purpleblob: Ah thanks. I had read the various curse stages related to chapters. Then I am done with chapter 4 but so far have not had anything start chapter 5 yet based on the thing you wrote in the spoiler tag (although my quest log says I am on the next curse). Maybe it starts after this thing ends in 90 days.

@wolfgrimdark unfortunately, romance is required for that as far as I know

Originally Posted by purpleblob
In all honesty, I think chapter 7 is…

Do you quoted that the game has chapters and anybody can count them? Continue use the books count is bizarre. I don't understand why players do that, I felt it very confusing.

Now I suppose it's not changing much and I don't care searching help, but clearly the game has a prologue and 8 chapters, not just 7.

Originally Posted by purpleblob
I think BG2 was just as long as Kingmaker. And I found Kingmaker more enjoyable the second time around, so yes, it does have replay value

In saying that though, I really hope Owlcats will fix the last two chapters sometime.

I don't remind that BG2 was that long.

Ok for the replay value that you feel or experienced. But where is it in a concrete way?

For me some reasons why it is low, those not requiring a spoiler tag:
- There's clearly good/evil branches at many points but play evil is special, I won't bother with that.
- The game push use all along all companions so there's no point to play with a set and replay with another set.
- I don't think there's any alternate areas.
- For all variations coming from skills checks rolls, a replay could as well repeat many results, and scamload around that will just be tedious.
- There's certainly a few stuff I haven't done but it's really few or it was hidden quests, but replay with a guide is a low value.
- Combats are good mainly though the meta not their play, but it means builds will not change much the combats and then lost part of their replay value.
- This let party building, that's short, particularly with the lack of companions variations, and the lower effects on combats variations.

You can answer with spoil to justify the replay value, it's fine for me. Now I admit that a very good reason of the low replay value are also,

@Dasale you and I have different play style - for me, it has plenty of replayability.

-trying out different class and party composition
-trying to explore the game more (I always seem to miss out on some secrets and other contents in 1st playthrough)
-trying out new challenge e.g. higher difficulty, reach rank 10 in all kingdom stats, not getting anyone killed etc.
-trying out different alignments
-I care for different endings

So much possibilities

Originally Posted by purpleblob
@Dasale you and I have different play style - for me, it has plenty of replayability.

-trying out different class and party composition
-trying to explore the game more (I always seem to miss out on some secrets and other contents in 1st playthrough)
-trying out new challenge e.g. higher difficulty, reach rank 10 in all kingdom stats, not getting anyone killed etc.
-trying out different alignments
-I care for different endings

So much possibilities

Ok if it's just that, then I confirm that for me the replay value is rather low because play evil is a no go. Let say it's all subjective then.

EDIT: But the design could have work a bit more on that.
- Particularly for companions, thankfully I got spoiled by the necessity to make their quests and to level them up to not lost them, no spoiler tag by choice. But it removes good replay value to change a play with different companions.
- Still for companions there's no real relationships variation but succeed/fail. Replay for a fail alternate path makes no sense.
- Most work on variations is around good/evil, I'm quite sure it's quite a problem for many players to play evil.
- The kingdom management is too fake to justify fairly any replay value. If they have done a real little strategy game that would have been different, as it is it's just achievements hunts.

For combats more managed at a meta level and then lowering the replay value, I think it's a huge problem to target them and make them more tactical because of the RTwP.

There's also not much to do to target variations coming from random rolls and making replay value from changes quite random

While I agree Kingmaker has some design issues (like all games) I think you are overly focusing on negatives only. Your choice though. And I can't think on many games that handled companions better than Kingmaker. Again though, happy to disagree. I can't type effectively on the phone either so going to leave this discussion here.

I found the Codex egg:

Is that from library in the capital? Nice find!

There's another Codex Egg:

Yeah saw that one myself

I'm not sure if any mods have been recommended yet. Here's the ones I'm using so far:

• Respecialization: Build your NPCs like you want, fix wrong choices. IMHO every party based RPG with recruitable NPCs should have BG-like "Level 1 NPCs" built in.
• Exit to Map: lets you go directly to the world map from any area. You just need to make sure to at least sometimes got the long way from the throne room to the city exit since there can be scripted scenes tied into some quests.
• Cleaner: helps keep savegames a bit smaller
• Bag of Tricks: cheat tool I'm using for minor conveniences (I overlooked an artifact piece on some map and instead of traveling to three different branching maps looking in every corner again I just gave it to me).
• Vendor Progression: makes vendors get better stuff based on your kingdom stats, which in turn makes kingdom management more rewarding and should fix some class builds. I'm playing a wizard who has very limited access to spells otherwise, defeating the purpose of the class.
• Scale XP. Supposedly lets your 6-man party finish the game with level 20 as opposed to the usual ~17. Set to exponential with factor 1.4. Early level progression stays more or less the same, which is just fine since they seem to be properly balanced.
• Faster Menu Book Zoom Speeds up the fade in and zoom on the book containing the main menu when the game first starts up.

More mods at NexusMods.

Anything else?

I use Unity Mod Manager to install the mods (simply start up, point it to the kingmaker directory, then drag&drop the mod zip files to install them. Use Ctrl-F10 in-game to access the mod settings.

There's also Kingmaker Mod Loader, which might be better though I haven't tried it.