Thoughts/discussion/first impressions of Pillars of Eternity!

Hmm maybe i should just play better.

Originally Posted by Damian
They need to make the number of camping times possible to 4 on hard. Having only 2 on it is tedious and not fun.

I'm ok with only 2 as it makes you think about using your spells much more. I've rarely considered spells as valuable as in this game on hard, you really need to think about when and where to use them.

2 things I don't like about current rest system:

1 - I hate exploring maps at night, I wish there was a pass time mode so that if it is night when I get somewhere I can go to morning.

2 - fatigue. With limiting resting to 2, it make the player rest in town/hold before heading to a new location. However since fatigue increases during travel, it is annoying to get somewhere and right away some chars get fatigued and you can't rest because it is so limited (I do take at least 2 athletics for every char to help mitigate this).

Yeah, one in athletics is a pretty much a must for every party member. 2 is desirable.

Now that I'm at level 5 and going through Raderic's castle, I find I hardly need to use spells. Ranged combat with cypher and priest and chanter and druid abilities with 2 melee tanks is a piece of cake without spells. Too bad as Aloth has a fancy new fireball spell to show off.

Thrasher, break down how you leveled your characters if you have the time and inclination. I'm starting from scratch again, to avoid the Raedric bug, and am curious as to how different folks build up Eder, Aloth, Durance, and the chanter dude. I haven't found anyone else yet, but I did Raedric's at level 3 and 4, which is quite tough. I probably should do the town dungeon and/or visit Defiance Bay, but I play on normal and Raedric's is just possible for me though I generally lose most folks during the fight.

OK, admittedly I am just going through the dungeon now, and it's a total cakewalk with Aloth, Eder, Durance, Kana, and Hier-whatever-his-name. Did everyone else find it this easy? Also, I am playing on normal difficulty…

I haven't had much trouble with anything except Shades - and that ended when I got myself a priest. The lighthouse was brutal until then.

I'm playing on Hard - and I think it's the perfect setting for the game and my playstyle.

I have died plenty of times on Normal - Expert mode, but usually when I just thought I could roll through combat without pausing, only to get heavily mauled.

I think a second playthrough would be nice on Hard or Path of the Damned. Having that sort of constant challenge in the game that makes every move and tactic important - that's what I love about these games.

Yeah, the shades were a bit tough at low levels. Almost had a party wipe against 5 of them. But I did that dungeon pretty early after clearing the bear zone. If I need to restart because of a killer bug, I will play on hard.

Patch notes are up (no def release time, just "ASAP"):

https://forums.obsidian.net/blog/7/e…#commentsStart

*the two major bugs (double click armor and save/load add stats) will be fixed and fixed retroactively. Very nice.

* biggest change for my play style: "Slicken spell is now a single hit AoE" have to say I'm not loving that.

meaty patch though.

Originally Posted by xenocide
* biggest change for my play style: "Slicken spell is now a single hit AoE" have to say I'm not loving that.

Boo! It's hard enough just to get positioning and timing right.

Also, my cypher's secret weapon has been nerfed "Tuned down Mind Blades"

Aaaaanndddd. "Beloved Spirits adds 0.4 Endurance to Ancient Memory instead of 2."

as well as "Tuned damage on Brilliant Radiance down."

So apparently I got lucky (read: smart) and picked all the OP skills. May have to restart, on easy.

Thanks, Obsidian…

They nerfed reload speed on the Chanter song

So frustrating that they continue to tweak the balance of the game, creating even more errors in the manual and guidebooks in the process, as well as giving those of us who want to play when a game is actually released (you know, when the game is supposed to be finished?) no reason at all to do so.

I hate to be "that guy" but to me it's outrageous that games today aren't finished on release dates. Why even release the game when they did when it has a million bugs and still has balance issues? Incredibly frustrating.

Hilarious that daggers are getting even more damage…..I'd say right now they are great, if they boost them these weapons will be like ranged weapons, simply overpowered. The sabre boost is nice, though, it seems really underpowered compared to swords.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Hilarious that daggers are getting even more damage…..I'd say right now they are great, if they boost them these weapons will be like ranged weapons, simply overpowered. The sabre boost is nice, though, it seems really underpowered compared to swords.

Not sure about that. My rogue is using sabres and he is doing insane damage.

The thing is that all multipliers are additive. Not multiplicative. And they are multiplied with the base damage.

Like this: Basedamage * (1 + 0.2 (for fine) + 0.5 (for crit) + 0.25 ( for skill) and so on.

Now if you increase the base damage that one is also multiplied by all the multipliers. Which will make the boost to sabres quite impressive i guess.

Besides the bugfixes the one thing which will affect me most is:
Tuned ranges of many Wizard spells to be higher. That was really annoying sometimes

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
They nerfed reload speed on the Chanter song

I love that song. Kana has a chant that only does this song over and over and 3 of my character (sometimes 4 if Eder is blocking the door alone) are just using guns and crossbows

The wizard buff was really needed, hopefully Aloth doesn't have to stand right next to melee to fire off his spells now. He is always the first one down in every combat.

The short spell ranges was definitely a design choice I was scratching my head about, so I'm glad they saw the light there.

Has no-one around here finished it yet?(what's the word on the story quality?) Im waiting for the compulsory Maylander thread.

Originally Posted by Kostas
Has no-one around here finished it yet?(what's the word on the story quality?) Im waiting for the compulsory Maylander thread.

Maylander finished it and I think he liked the story well enough.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I think he liked the story well enough.

What about the general consensus? There's still too much white noise to get a quick understanding of where it ranks among either Obsidian's other titles or RPGs in general.