Just started playing this again. Fired it up a few days ago. One thing immediately noticeable for me: the performance is greatly improved. I used to have to play it on medium quality graphics with stuff tuned down and it was sluggish. I have everything turned up now and it runs well.
Really enjoying it so far. My multiple restarts over the last few months have taught me a lot about the game without spoiling too much of it. I'm still in Chapter one.
Playing as a STR based 2-handed Inquisitor. So far, so good!
Yep three hot-fixes in a week already.1.1.5B on GOG now.
Having a blast. I originally tried to use my regular LMK+P party with reversed genders, consisting of a sword & board fighter (Valerie), ranger (Ekundayo), wizard (me) and healing priest (Tristian) but eventually decided to branch out and use a full-fledged 6-man party. In effect I added an offensive warrior (Amiri) and bard (Linzi). Since I like my party members to specialize they each got their very own niche tied to a main attribute.
1. Valerie. CON. Tower Shield Specialist / Stalwart Defender. Bastard sword + tower shield. Pure defense plus BAB bonus feats so she can actually hit stuff.
2. Amiri. STR. Barbarian (Reckless). Greataxe. Melee carnage against many targets and some related debuffs. Also takes care of distant enemy archers and spell casters.
3. Ekundayo. DEX. Ranger (Archery). Composite longbows. Stealthy single target sniper for priority targets.
4. Linzi. CHA. Bard (Enchantress). Rapier & small shield. Mind-related spells, i.e. Enchantment & Illusion. Buffs friends, debuffs foes, defends casters. Mistress of skills.
5. Riann. INT. Wizardress (Evocation). Dagger or Quarterstaff. Elemental-related spells, i.e. Evocation & Conjuration. Magic AoE damage. Can summon elementals.
6. Tristian. WIS. Ecclesitheurge (Healing/Good). Light crossbow. Healing & physical defense related spells, i.e. Conjuration & Abjuration. Can summon monsters.
By giving everyone a relatively narrow focus they have a more defined identity.
I use team-based feats sparingly. Outflank for Valerie/Amiri and allied caster for Linzi/Riann. Linzi stays at range via the autocast of cantrips. Tristian is making do with a crossbow for now since I won't let him use purely offensive spells, with the exception of banishing demons or healing undead. Riann on the other hand won't cast defensive spells except if Linzi or Tristian don't have them in their spell repertoire, like Stone Skin.
Character planning is half of the game for me in CRPGs and so far Kingmaker delivered.
The Saga of the Stolen Lands begins with a team of adventurers being led by a chaos tiefling named Wulver Blackfur and his worg companion Amarok.
Chaos Tieflings are outsiders able to traverse the many planes of existence although it is an ability fraught with risk as they have little control over their destinations, often arriving in another plane seemingly at random. Consequently most Chaos Tieflings avoid using the ability unless in an extremely dire situation or extremely bored (or in the case of an untimely death). Not that they always have a choice in the matter as this rather chaotic ability sometimes seems to have a mind of its own and has been known to randomly activate - transporting the Tiefling across time and space. Luckily this type of situation is an extremely rare event.
Wulver and Amarok arrived in the Stolen Lands a few months before the call out for adventurers was initiated by Jamandi Aldori. A year or so before that he had taken the risk of plane walking and had ended up in the cold and wintry Lands of the Linnorm Kings (the Lands of the Linnorm Kings sit in the north-westernmost corner of Avistan, where the land meets the Steaming Sea and the Stormspear Mountains, which separate it from the eternal ice of the Crown of the World).
While there he learned that the most interesting geographical feature of the Land of the Linnorm Kings is its extra-planar nature, for it sits atop an invisible planar rift leading to the First World of the fey. This rift is the reason for the large amount of fey that inhabit the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. Wulver also suspected this weak spot between the planes is also why his capricious talent dumped him here in the first place. It wasn't until much later that he would learn that it was also tied to events related to the First World.
Wulver spent a year there learning the ways of the Great Northern Rangers. At his side is his ever faithful companion, Amarok. This great beast can take many shapes (sometimes dependent on the world he is in) but his favorite is that of a giant black and gray worg wolf. Eventually the two of them felt a tug, a calling of sorts, to head south. There they learned of the offer to tame the Stolen Lands and become a baron. While the last thing Wulver wanted to do was tie himself down to ruling a barony (he preferred living in the woods and lacked a lot of the social graces needed to run a barony) his instincts told him this was part of the reason he had arrived in this world.
Thus he accepted the offer, formed a band of fellow adventurers, and set off to conquer the Stolen Lands.
Really enjoying this game. I had some misgivings with initial bugs but have quickly grown to love this game. Even though I had not planned on it I changed my mind and voted for it as GOTY.
Started my second play through, this time on a mix of challenging and normal difficulty settings. Mostly challenging but with some quality of life adjustments in regards to encumbrance and resting to remove ability debuffs.
No spoilers here as it is just the start of his adventure. This character is a planes walker and shows up in a variety of worlds I visit. My little story on his background below.
I'm still on my third playthrough - trying to max out kingdom stats and finish off all quests I missed last time (including the "secret ending" although I think I may have missed something already, sigh).
If you simply missed one of the required conversations, it can be edited in without too much hassle.
Ooh how do you do the edit? Just in case I actually do miss requirements.