Kingmaker Pathfinder: Kingmaker Question/Tips & Tricks Thread

So my run in this game is about over, thanks to rampaging trolls and my continued failure to stop them. Takes 45 days to deal with one event, halfway through that time, a second 'Rampaging Trolls' comes up. My general, who actually has bonuses for success, fails to stop it, so I send him out again, but by this time I actually have 2 more troll problems waiting. It's kind of ridiculous.

Game ends. I'm able to reload a save with "indestructible kingdom" feature, but within a few more weeks, my kingdom is rioting because I can't deal with all the trolls so the timers runs out, I lose 3 points from 2 or 3 stats, etc. Snowball.

I have options to send another advisor out for like 2-3 weeks to quell the riots, another to spend 1000 build points (no where close to that kind of cash), but I'm not sure I can recover as the timer on the 2nd curse ends in just a few days.

Are these 'problems' randomly generated? Am I also now supposed to save-scum when I fail problem events? I was pretty careful with my missions, always kept an eye on my kingdom, but how do you deal with 3 troll problems in a row when each takes 45 days to solve?

Which kingdom difficulty did you start off with? (I recommend easy or lower) If you can, reload the earliest save as possible within chapter 2. I'd recommend you save-scum for the first kingdom troll events - if you successfully deal with this, it won't pop up anymore (I think?), you just need to find the troll fort in the world map and deal with it the usual adventurer way.

EDIT: actually, it could be that no more troll kingdom event popped up because after the 1st one is dealt with, I found the troll lair and cleared it out before the next kingdom event pops up........

What I usually do is, make a quick save a day before the event ends - if your advisor failed to deal with the event successfully, reload and the result will change.

Kingdom management annoyed me quite a bit in the beginning but you start to sort of learn to deal with it without getting too annoyed and start to discover some fun features too (from my experience anyway….)

Wait, my memory is slowly coming back (sorry, it's been a while since I played 2nd chapter). From what I know:

The best way to deal with troll invasion is, assign the advisor for the kingdom event then off to adventure to find the troll lair. If you deal with the root of the problem (clearing out the troll lair) then kingdom troll event won't pop up anymore. Even if you are successful in dealing with troll kingdom event, if you don't do anything in real world, the kingdom event will continuously pop up - after 3 failed kingdom event, the game will be over.

purpleblob said:

Wait, my memory is slowly coming back (sorry, it's been a while since I played 2nd chapter). From what I know:

The best way to deal with troll invasion is, assign the advisor for the kingdom event then off to adventure to find the troll lair. If you deal with the root of the problem (clearing out the troll lair) then kingdom troll event won't pop up anymore. Even if you are successful in dealing with troll kingdom event, if you don't do anything in real world, the kingdom event will continuously pop up - after 3 failed kingdom event, the game will be over.

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I guess I didn't realize the trolls would destroy my kingdom above the bandit events, the curse events, the upset adjacent kingdom events, the companion events, building my economy/military/etc events…

I've been handling it all at once. I've been doing a lot of the curse storylines as you continue to get warnings and messengers telling you "it's coming, you better be ready.." Not one to say "this troll thing will destroy your kingdom" other than the problem event.

Figured at some point I'd get the other half of my council that I could use to send out on some of this stuff, but I never did.

I'll see if there's an earlier save I can use, but I'm not going to replay a huge segment of the game to redo this nonsense.

Ignoring any major events will result in game over. That includes troll invasion and ancient curses. Ancient curse timer is very lenient and your journal tells you how many days are left till it hits your land (+ kingdom management system warns you about 2 weeks prior to when your kingdom stats will take a hit).

What bandit event are you referring to? Stag Lord's stuff is all over by the end of chapter 1. For me, the troll invasion kingdom event keep popping up gave me enough warning sign to deal with it asap in my first playthroughs.

Sorry to hear you didn't have a good experience - maybe take a break and come back later if you wish.

Edit: a tip on Kingdom management - you don't have to deal with all of the problems and opportunities. Ignoring problems tend to result in your kingdom taking stat hit so deal with it as much as you can, but always make main story event a priority (trolls and ancient curses etc). You can safely ignore opportunities most of the time without any negative result - these are simply there to help you build up stat points.

Some general tips I picked up while playing:

As Purple said focus on problem events - they should always be the #1 focus. If they don't get resolved you start to take negative hits and can spiral downwards. Opportunity are for positive things - you don't get hurt if you miss them.

Visit the kingdom at the start of each month, when new events come in. Focus on problems - can't stress that enough.

Put advisors on problems and be careful which ones you put on long-term research or long term events (outside of problem ones of course). There is often overlap on events and advisors so try to keep one free for a problem.

You can cancel an assignment. A few times I cancelled a long term event as a serious problem had to be addressed. Sometimes you have to pull an advisor off something.

I usually upgraded advisors after the start of the month and knew I had initial problems assigned to advisors. Then if I had some left over I would upgrade them as a second priority to problems as it increases the chances of success to have higher ranked advisors. Opportunities I always left to last or picked off when I could.

There is plenty of time on big events to explore but do keep an eye on the timers. I never ran out of time on the big events as long as I kept them in the back of my mind and focused on problems. That, and making sure I did not get into negative BP, kept the kingdom stable and fairly happy.

Be careful about those random chats with an advisor - they can sometimes hit you for BP that can put you in the negative.

I also set aside a budget of money to always purchase some BP while in the Kingdom so I had bit of a stockpile in reserve for emergencies or special opportunities.

I also suggest trying on easier Kingdom difficulty. My first time I put it on the easiest. Second, after picking up how it worked, I put it on normal.

I was able to load a save from a month prior, I dealt with the troll fort, and the troll rampaging went away. That allowed me to continue, but the kingdom is still not happy. I'm at zero stability lol. Trying to decide if it's salvageable, but I received a mission/task to send an adviser away to set the discontent back 1 level, so that will help. I also have an option to spend 1000 bp to have some feast, but that's kind of crazy expensive. I'll have to decide whether or not to do that next time I log in, but it would clean me out and would force me to sell some of my party gear to buy enough points to make up the difference.

I'm still getting more problems than I have advisers, so it would be nice to get the 2nd half of the team opened up. I'm told that's a mission at some point.

If I had to peg a single mistake I made early in the game, it was restoring the Elk Temple as one of my first missions. Not only was the religious adviser unavailable for months, allowing problems to pile up, but I visited the Elk Temple after it was restored and it looked the exact same. Not sure what the point of that was, other than a few religion points, but it was kind of disappointing and set me back. Figured it would have at least cleaned up the place.

Also need to re-spec Tristian, as I gave him a subclass to allow medium armor and flesh out his crossbow skills. I found a +2 medium armor 8 with only 15% spell failure and was excited to make him less squishy …but didn't realize he is not allowed to cast in armor, AT ALL. Found that out during a hard battle.

Going from memory so could be wrong, maybe Purple can correct me if so, but I think new advisors open up once you get existing ones to a new rank. Like certain advisors have specialized positions which open up after they get to a higher rank. Then they come to you and say they need help ... and you get another advisor position. Not sure if that is also tied to number of claimed territories or not - think its just based on rank.

wolfgrimdark said:

Going from memory so could be wrong, maybe Purple can correct me if so, but I think new advisors open up once you get existing ones to a new rank. Like certain advisors have specialized positions which open up after they get to a higher rank. Then they come to you and say they need help … and you get another advisor position. Not sure if that is also tied to number of claimed territories or not - think its just based on rank.

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Pretty sure it's based on Rank.

You just have to deal with kingdom major problems first, wolfgrim's post is perfect about the tips and tricks to deal with it. Chapter 3 is even worse. I made the extremely silly mistake the first run of not knowing all events had timers, so my kingdom crumbled shortly after. Once I figured out to deal with the major events first, I was able to run a happy kingdom for a long time.

I think Owlcat could do with more tutorials for the kingdom section, it's a tough nut to crack at first and it plays a major role in the game so knowing how to handle it from the start would be a lot better. But like anything it requires trial and error and some time to get a handle on.

You require rank 3 + 60 points in each stat to unlock new advisor - must meet both requirement. 60 is enough points to rank up to 4 but if you have just 60 points and still rank 1, then you can't unlock the new advisor position.

Regent --> Grand Diplomat --> Minister
Councilor --> Curator
General --> Warden
High Priest --> Magister
Treasurer --> None

In terms of restoring Temple of Elks, you will see this will give you some benefit later in the game:

Just got my Barony, immediately paralyzed with indecision again: what's the best call on Ioseph Sellemius's 500 BP loan?

Hexprone said:

Just got my Barony, immediately paralyzed with indecision again: what's the best call on Ioseph Sellemius's 500 BP loan?

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Well there's obviously a price to be paid, and the offer never goes away until/unless you use it, so no rush. But I did need it eventually and didn't think the price was that bad-- plus you later get a chance to reverse the 'drawback', though it ties up an adviser for 3 months…

So bottom line: don't do it if you don't need it, but you will probably need it eventually.

I took the deal in first playthrough and regretted it a lot, so rejected the offer second time.

I also say - don't take that deal.
Sure, at first it will seem a good idea to take it, but soon you'll notice a certain trader sells BP for $ and you'll have tons of $ by selling loot you'll never use.

Thanks guys but -- too late! Unable to decide on the merits I RP'ed it -- my baron took the deal because he wanted to start out with close institutional ties to Restov so that his new barony would be harder for the Aldori to turn their back on should it become expedient.

I know it's expensive but it was nice to be able to get a few projects going right away.

Now I just have a lore question: how is the law on Bartholomew's side in regard to purchasing Dimwit the Troll when slavery is against the River Freedoms?

Is there a specific legal standard for which humanoids count as people and which can be "purchased legally"? Can you buy an orc to experiment on? What about a half-orc?

Sorry, not sure on that

Is there anyone who's into Pathfinder lore to answer that?

Hexprone said:

Now I just have a lore question: how is the law on Bartholomew's side in regard to purchasing Dimwit the Troll when slavery is against the River Freedoms?

Is there a specific legal standard for which humanoids count as people and which can be "purchased legally"? Can you buy an orc to experiment on? What about a half-orc?

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The more I play this game, the more cringe-worthy quests I'm finding. In fact, I've found very few quests that were intriguing, and most are just silly.

Bartholomew's pet project was one of them, as are all the situations where it's a lawful or neutral "good" choice to slaughter non-aggressive subspecies that aren't attacking. It seems the 'chaotic evil' tag allows good, lawful characters free reign to commit, in essence, ethnic cleansing in this game. Makes me wonder why a guy like Retrongar isn't hunted down and executed, as he's far more dangerous than a few goblins.

Also getting tired of POIs that obviously were put there as space-fillers. You know, the ones where you uncover a whole area map only to find a pack of low-level wolves and maybe a +1 ring of protection. Plus, the maps are constantly re-used, enemies spawn behind you-- all things that drove people batshit crazy with DA2, yet here they are.

There's just enough to keep me coming back, but the main quest needs to, at some point, show me why I'm building walls and longhouses and windmills. My economy is at level 5 but I can't see any way to harness that for a few more troops to stop these constant waves of creatures. There's a limit to my patience.

Some people have been complaining about the re-used maps but considering the size of the meaningful content it wasn't a big flaw.

I have mentioned in my review that kingdom management doesn't have much impact to the world and feels largely disconnected. You are just building up your kingdom mainly for a flavour (and to prevent a game over). You build up the kingdom to invite artisans who creates the best items per slot, to live in a nicer looking city, to be told you are a good ruler, and most importantly creating *buffer* for enevitable hit to your kindgom stat with ancient curse.

I can understand that some people will find kingdom management too fiddly and the game too tough/much, so maybe its not for you. I'm finding ship combat and management in PoE2 absolutely tedious and meaningless too and yet some people don't seem to mind.

In terms of the quests in Kingmaker, I've found plenty of interesting ones with meaningful c&c. It just takes time to open up.

I gotta say I'm a little irritated with the alignment system. I just had to seek out and install a respec mod -- not because I want to min-max, but just in order to change my alignment so I wouldn't be arbitrarily locked out of the story choice I wanted.

Also irritated by the skill checks. Die rolls outside of combat don't make a lot of sense to me -- opening chests is just a tedious business of reloading til I make it, with no real uncertainty, just lots of bother. In a videogame, I'd much rather have a system more like PoE where you either have the skill level for a given test or you just don't.

Otherwise it's a good time.