Congrats to Obsidian on Pillars of Eternity release!

[Twani]

IEmods has managed to mod a bit so far (including getting rid of the engagement system- I didn't mind it, but some people hated it and getting rid of the tombstones with too out there names). The engine isn't mod friendly, but the files are as open as possible. I've been poking around at them. Between, um, doing Sims modding. >.> (I REGRET NOTHING.)

 

And yes, the stat item bug is fixed! (This is actually bad news for people who were playing Path of the Damned and crowing about how easy it was, heh- it was very likely you'd end up with Eder having SUPER DEFLECTION OF DOOM that could shut down everything if you goofed off a bit in Gilded Vale, which was funny but bad.) But now there's the mechanics bug. Reading about it, it seems to be hitting player-made rogues mostly, in which they simply can't open any locked container- with lockpicks or without them. There's a lot of screaming on the steam forum about it.

 

 

As for priests... basically, they heal, raise, and buff (and have some minor damage abilities). However, they only heal and raise endurance damage. (You don't heal health in this game save for resting, for the most part.) For endurance, say someone hits you for 12 'damage'. You'll take 12 Endurance DMG, and 12 health damage. Your endurance, however, regens as soon as the battle is over (your health doesn't till you sleep). Fighter's have an ability that allows them to regen endurance constantly, and basically every level of priest spells has an endurance 'heal' (and at high levels, there's a spell that allows you to put a regen endurance on everyone). The cheap 'get back 50 endurance' potions are easily found (I think they're level 2 in making?), and then later potions either regen endurance or give you 150 automatically. There are probably a few other ways to regen endurance- I think the player character has a way, and chanters might have a chant that does something. Oh, and there's a bunch of food that has endurance regen on them. So basically, endurance is short term injuries. Near the end of the game, a character might have 200 endurance and around 800 health. So assuming they took 200 DMG each fight, they could take four fights before they died/were wounded (depending on your difficulty level). Of a note, though, your endurance cannot be higher then your health- so if that person gets down to 140 health, they'll only have 140 endurance (which, if they take it all, will mean they fall over dead (or wounded)).

 

A priest comes to their own once you get to know enemies. The biggest example might be in their preventative buffs. Looking at an early game enemy, the wil-o-wisp- it charms. At higher levels, you won't notice it (but then you're dealing with vessel's who charm and it's much worse). So when your fight against one starts, slap the buff that makes you highly resistant to charm on everyone. It works much better then the 'talent/feat' you can take. Same with putting prone resistant buffs on you when fighting ogres/kith fighters who love knockdown, and so on. Someone running low on endurance and going to fall unconscious? Heal them. Someone fall unconscious due to endurance damage? Raise them. I never used many of the 'damage' priest spells (instead having the priest melee)... Durace comes with high lore, though, and if you want to let him level that up, I let him use damaging scrolls when he being in melee wouldn't work well.

 

Different priests can do different things, though. The Skein priest, for instance, can pick up a sort of rogue multiclass deal, and mine sneak attacks with clubs. Because why not. Durance, I think, just gets buffs to his 'condemn' talent, that can lower the stats/resistances of all the enemies he condemns.

[theacefes]

Twani, thanks for that awesome write up.

As for myself, I played for several hours last night and I am starting to see a lot of Obsidian storytelling elements coming in. Don't worry - it's still fun and great and people who played their other games will recognize them.

[zwacko]

Thanks for the info everyone. A question: I've been a big SCS fan and not such a fan of IWD2 combat, would PoE combat be to my liking, do you think?

 

I've read a bunch of conflicting things about the combat but ppl often compare it to IWD2/NWN, so I'm worried/doubtful.

[lynx]

i doubt they added so many broken highlevel spells as in bg2, so i also doubt it could get near scs.

[Twani]

Hm...

 

Okay, I'm not really the best at tactical combat of awesome. I managed to play SCS with basically all options enabled once, and simply couldn't complete some of them (the drow city, for instance, I could never beat no matter what I did, even when I just started CTRL-Ring everyone at random; I probably suck). These days, I just play BG on Hardcore and only use certain SCS and other tactical mod options.

 

My playthrough on Path of the Damned for Pillars is going okay so far, though.

 

 

So, putting that together... there are some elements that are like SCS, some that are like IWDEE, and some things that are completely different.

 

Looking at the hardest difficulty, I think there are two big differences: the perma death and the resting limitation. On the highest difficulty modes, if someone loses all their health, they are dead for good (on lower difficulty, they fall down for the battle, then get up and become 'wounded' and stuck at one hit point- if they get hit again, they're dead for good as in a higher difficulty). Health cannot be regenerated, as I babbled about before, save for by resting. Now, characters have a lot more health in Pillars then they do in the IE games, but there are still risks. I mean, in IE games, you could be chunked, sure (and something about my modset allows Silver Dragon breath to chunk me even if I'm playing on a setting that doesn't allow chunking (Casual/Normal)), but unless you were over your head, it didn't usually happen. Here, there's a bigger risk of losing a party member for good. Yes, you can also recruit a new one at the Inn... but they will always be one level lower, and they don't have cool comments and the like.

 

(I don't want to get too in to spoilers, but on the Path of the Damned, I honestly don't know if there is anything you could do to stop the hardest mob in the game (who is admittedly completely optional, including being able to talk your way out of fighting) from one-shotting both the Obsidian-made cipher and wizard (with them at max level and well equipped even with some CON items) if she tries to focus on them (well, besides putting a bubble on them and pulling them out of the fight). (She also could take my own cipher and the chanter even on normal, but they probably could have been buffed more.) Her one attack is just that powerful and they're that squishy. Positioning and aggro control are slightly bigger in this game then they are in the IE ones.)

 

Then you have resting. You can rest anytime at Inns, and one Inn has a free room (the rest usually have a cheap one that's like, 25 in price- not going to break you). But out in the wild, you have very limited resting. You can only rest if you have a camping set. They're not too hard to find and buy, but you can only hold so many at a time: on easy mode, you have six, then there's steadily less (2 or 1 on path of the damned, can't remember at the moment). So if you're running low on health and are in one of the (admittedly few- most of the time this restriction is more annoying (gotta go back to a town then come back to this dungeon) then difficult) places that you can't turn back from, you can end up screwed by the limited resting.

 

Path of the Damned basically spawns the hardest encounter at all times, along with often what would spawn there in other modes, too (so bigger spawns) and increases the difficulty of the spawns (not just by upping hitpoints- resists and damage will also be upped). This can make things difficult.

 

All that said... it's still not near SCS. First, the game is only level 1 to 12: there's no high level spells, and for the most part people aren't broken. (Save for perhaps ciphers, who are probably a bit overbalanced compared to everyone else.) For the most part, anything you can use, an enemy can use, and enemies have their own abilities (the shadows, shades, and the going up the line can get really annoying with their teleporting to back ranks disengage), which is good, but you still probably are more powerful then most things you meet (especially with the cipher deal). The hardest enemy, as mentioned above, feels in a way like she cheats (don't want to get in to details) more then she's difficult, which is disappointing. (On the other hand, I think the last boss was relatively satisfying even on normal with my ridiculous INT, and hopefully will be more so on upped difficulty.) So... in the end, it probably does have more in common with regular IE combat (of IWD or BG) then BG2SCSed.

 

I do think it's harder then 'regular IE combat', though. The AI isn't brilliant, certainly, but they're not stupid- and to be blunt, there's no 'awesome script' you can put on a companion to make them cast everything perfectly. You have to do the cast on pause yourself, and choose: there's more micromanaging then I usually use in BGII (where most of my characters save casters can do everything without me bothering with them... I do miss automatic sneak attacking). Whether micromanaging is good or bad is up to you.

 

 

I caught your post before you edited, theacefes. I hope you won't mind me saying, but I actually do disagree about Eder- I found him to be a lancer (which, admittedly, bro-like Garrus and Varric were- but so was Jaheria in her own way) to the group, but definitely not a bro. (The druid (who like the paladin, I will probably never remember how to spell his name) felt more like the 'bro' guy to me.) Eder I think is too bitter to really buddy up with you. I mean, he's the ironic, hiding it in smiles and jokes bitter, but he never felt like he was trying to reach to my character in friendship.

 

A lot of the characters, it feels basically like 'I follow you because I have no where else to go'. I guess that makes sense in someways- they couldn't make anyone to plot critical because of the optional make your own party (and the achievements for beating everything solo)... but is definiately different from the PST/KOTOR2/Mask of the Betrayal approach. Then again, I guess it was sort of like that with the FONV group.

[theacefes]

Stupid forums canceled my session.

 

Anyway, I totally see where you are coming from Twani. For those wondering, I had mentioned that I didn't really feel the NPCs were growing on me with the exception of a couple of them but I wanted to edit/revise it and didn't have time so I removed that part of the post for now.

 

As I thought about it some more, I recall that the NPCs in BG1 were pretty boring and it wasn't until BG2 that there was a lot more content for the NPCs, so maybe that is what will happen here too.

 

I beat the game last night and I have to say, I LOVED IT. As someone who really appreciates a good story over mechanics, combat, and micromanagement, I thought the story was very well written, captivating, cohesive, and if I had to be critical of anything, it would be that the pacing seemed a little fast and doesn't really stop you from marching on when you have side quests pending.

 

I'm definitely going to do another playthrough but I am very happy with how things were/were not resolved.

[zwacko]

Twani, thank you so much for that in-depth reply! I'm sorry to hear about that one boss being a bit of a bummer, but I'm not averse to regular BG1, so. And lynx, SCS is also on BG1 =) (I knew PoE was a low-level game - though yes, I do love those bg2 lich battles.)

[InKal]

hahah

 

game tactics and mechanics lol

 

my dwarven barbarian chick was mowed down by three fooking wolves so quick I could not even notice wtf!? has happen. RAGEfookinquited and returned to playing Bloodborne which I earlier ragequited and started PoE.

 

edit/

 

I played some more and now I understand...I think. She wasn't actually killed by wolves, more like by something called "engagement". Engagement is something like anti-kite mechanic. It works in such a way that when you try to kite an enemy by moving him around - engagement strikes! and you are being hit by some invisible weapon or somethning and thats an "engagement" for you. It's like GLOBAL game mechanics not an ability.

It's kinda funny - you cant even perform a famous "step by step tactical retreat" without being punished by the hand of invisible game master Sawyer.

[Saber83]

I really enjoyed this game. Still have to finish it though because I got sidetracked by some of my fav mods becoming BG2EE compliant.

[cmorgan]

Still working on it too - but I really enjoy it.

[Daulmakan]

Pillars is 50% off in Steam right now.