Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Ninjerk]

Not sure what it's like beyond Act 2, but it's almost necessary: I have nightmares when I think about the stray xaurip at the north entrance of the bridge map that applied a paralysis debuff and stunlocked me to death (got around it on a later playthrough by going to map west of it and then back to the map north and touching the zone boundary then going farther NW so it would bring me into the map from the west boundary).

 

[LESS T_T]

http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/154111281556/why-did-poe-need-3-different-factions-in-defiance

ilitarist asked: Why did PoE need 3 different factions in Defiance Bay? As I understand it's the only fork in the main quest. What did it achieve?

While I like the factions we developed for Defiance Bay, I don’t think we used them to their potential. Defiance Bay has a few structural problems, the first of which is the three-way main quest split that sends you to Heritage Hill, Clîaban Rilag, and Brackenbury Sanitarium. I’ve never seen the player benefit of “go do these N things in any order” main quest branches (e.g. Neverwinter Nights OC, KotOR 2) if there’s not a compelling motivation for the player to make an informed decision about that order. They’re also inherently difficult to balance around because you can usually expect at least a 2 level difference from beginning to end. In the middle of the level range, that’s hard to compensate for.

Faction quest splits at least have the benefit of introducing you to an organization where you can have an ideological (or simply preferential) basis for picking one over the others. I liked the Dozens, Crucible Knights, and Doemenels, but due to the afore-mentioned split, your involvement with them generally comes later in act II, is compressed, and then abandoned when you head to Twin Elms. Also, I think people rightly complained that you don’t get enough warning that you’re cutting off other faction paths when you start doing quests for one in particular.

I’m sensitive to the order in which factions are introduced to players, how the player is motivated to work with/against them, and how to best “lock” players into a committed choice. It’s something I’m paying a lot of attention to for the future.

 

[Prime Junta]

I’m sensitive to the order in which factions are introduced to players, how the player is motivated to work with/against them, and how to best “lock” players into a committed choice. It’s something I’m paying a lot of attention to for the future.

This excites me.

 

[Infinitron]

Sawyer is wanting people to get "The Ultimate' achievement. Supposedly there's <.01% of players who have the thing. I was thinking of doing it but I'd need to buy the x-packs. I've done TCS though.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/90486-sweeet-jeebus-finally-got-the-ultimate-achievement/

Sweeet jeebus: finally got "The Ultimate" achievement

I don't know how many other people have done this (global Steam achievement rate is at 0%, and googling around I see one other mention as a reddit thread), but I felt like I had to share this accomplishment, because it was so brutal and is probably my proudest gaming accomplishment ever (beating out the time back in vanilla World of Warcraft when I PVP-ed to #7 on my server).

Pic proof:



Rest are too big to upload on the forums, so here's a dropbox link showing the ends of the big fights: https://www.dropbox....PUxrumTKxa?dl=0 (as well as a gif of the last bounty, which involved desperately running around a lake for an hour). I also recorded the Llengrath fight because AFAICT there's like only one other video of someone pulling it off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk4ODyBB88E (The first part of the fight is missing because I've never recorded something before so I forgot to turn it on; the only thing missing is me summoning Concelhaut to do Concelhaut's Crushing Doom on the Gaf the flyign dragon, only to do like 10 damage due to lots of misses.)

Obsidian: NEVER EVER EVER create an achievement like this ever again. I see Tyranny has a few similar ones, but frankly I don't see myself being as invested in Tyranny as I was in Pillars. Don't get me wrong, I am soooo super stoked that I got the achievement, but man was it absolutely brutal (and I feel sorry for all the other people who like to be 100% achievement completionists but don't want to devote so much of their time to getting The Ultimate).

Build strategy: I think being a paladin might the only viable choice for something like this, thanks to four reasons: faith and conviction (up to +5 deflection over a fighter, +20 other defenses), righteous soul (basically gives you immunity to lagufeths, and really helps out in fear aura fights e.g. dragons), zealous charge (though monks also have long stride, so maybe they can pull it off, but they don't have the crazy good defenses), and sacred immolation (more a sanity convenience than anything else). I got the idea for using a paladin from one of the soloing videos from the other Ultimate attempt, and basically once you build out a paladin there's a pretty clear optimal path for much of the game (so even though I didn't consult the other guy's build, I'm pretty sure we look pretty similar). For the harder fights, I re-specced aggressively just to focus on the biggest threats (for example, in Master Below fight I picked up Primal Bane, Savage Attack, Bloody Slaughter, just so I could aggressively take out the Adragans I knew would be there before they petrify me to death or perpetualy heal everyone with their infinite moonwells). Also, Drawn in Spring and Persistence are hands-down the best weapons in the game for soloing (possibly in general), because their wounding effect is raw damage and the 25% number is based off of your pre-DR damage. This means against tough, high-DR enemies most of your damage will come from the wounding effect.

On save-scumming: yes, I actually did this as bug insurance. Back before White March expansions when I was trying to get Triple Crown Solo, i finally succeeded on the 7th try, and two of those earlier failures were due *exclusively* to bugs. I didn't end up having to restore a save that much this time around, but it was almost exclusively because of two bugs that kept cropping up (the first has been around ever since they stopped making potions instant-use like they are in Tyranny):

1. whenever you use a potion, there is a non-trivial chance that your character will bug out their actions and a) do a drinking animation but no effect happens, b) do a drinking animation, consume a potion, but nothing happens, c) your character will just have the idle "..." in their action indicator and not do anything. this can really screw you over when you're desperately trying to drink a potion of endurance, for example. At least this is better than in the 1.x days where sometimes your character would get permanently stuck (to the point where even after all enemies are defeated--by other party members--combat would never end).

2. more severe: there's a buggy interaction with effects that reduce stun duration. if you get stunned (*cough* relentless storm *cough*) and for whatever reason you have a 0 or close to 0 stun duration from the effect, your character may get *locked* into a stun animation, even though they have no stun debuff. Sometimes you can get your character to snap out of it by hitting "x" to cancel any action, sometimes you're just screwed. This screwed me over in several fights involving adragans, actually (who love to use relentless storm).

Apart from that, I actually did get *really* close to death several times (this was my third attempt; I've been working on this since june). I barely ended Master Below with ~100 health (not endurance!) left, because of those damned adragans and their petrify. The final bounty I also barely ended up ~150 or so health, because fighting 3 ancient memory chanters solo means everyone basically has infinite endurance, so you basically have to whittle away their actual health (which is several times their endurance). Llengrath I got very close to death (and I actually thought I would fail after coming all this way), and you can see this in the video (me assessing my health periodically, bracing myself for major disappointment), because Gaf just did so much damage to me early on that he blew through most of my health (but fortunately everyone else had either easily dodgable attacks or were easy to kite, like the bigger dragon). Alpine Dragon I also got close to death, but I wasn't worried because once the dragon was taken out the rest of the foes were easily wiped out with a sacred immolation.

I really wish Steam provided more detailed specifics on global achievement rate. I'm really curious how many people have gotten The Ultimate. I actually expect that you could fit the total number of people who have done it into one room and feed them all with just a few pizzas.

This is kind of a self-congratulatory thread, but if anyone wants more detailed strategies for the dragon/archmage/bounty fights for their own attempts at The Ultimate or is just curious, let me know and I can post more.

 

[Roguey]

Defiance Bay has a few structural problems, the first of which is the three-way main quest split that sends you to Heritage Hill, Clîaban Rilag, and Brackenbury Sanitarium. I’ve never seen the player benefit of “go do these N things in any order” main quest branches (e.g. Neverwinter Nights OC, KotOR 2) if there’s not a compelling motivation for the player to make an informed decision about that order.

Sanitarium->Heritage Hill->Cliaban Rilag made the most sense to me from a narrative perspective and it also worked out level-wise more or less.

According to the wiki, Heritage Hill is actually the highest level quest and could hypothetically be done last. However the Dyrford sidequests are both higher level, so this would result in more backtracking.

 

[Prime Junta]

According to the wiki, Heritage Hill is actually the highest level quest and could hypothetically be done last. However the Dyrford sidequests are both higher level, so this would result in more backtracking.

Heritage Hill difficulty varies a quite a bit depending on your build/party. It's drastically easier if you have a priest onboard, and even easier if you have abilities that specifically target vessels. The others not so much.

 

[Infinitron]

There's actually an advantage in doing Heritage Hill first since you get to learn Engwithan sooner (though I don't recall if there's any to read in Cliaban Rilag)

 

[Sizzle]

There's actually an advantage in doing Heritage Hill first since you get to learn Engwithan sooner (though I don't recall if there's any to read in Cliaban Rilag)

From what I remember - there is. Fluff text on the walls, but it's a nice addition.

 

[2house2fly]

One thing I thought was really cool was when, in my second playthrough, I went down the endless paths before learning Engwithan and the vampyr king just yelled gibberish at me and attacked. First time I played I knew Engwithan and had a long conversation with him, and I still killed him but the flavour was different. The game definitely doesn't have enough moments where things go differently depending on previous choices but it has its moments.

 

[Sentinel]

I’m sensitive to the order in which factions are introduced to players, how the player is motivated to work with/against them, and how to best “lock” players into a committed choice. It’s something I’m paying a lot of attention to for the future.

This excites me.

Why would it? Sawyer talking about it doesn't mean it will be implemented. If it is implemented, it doesn't mean it will be implemented well.
It's nice that he acknowledges the issue and talks about it but I don't think it should serve as any indication of what's to come.

 

[Prime Junta]

Why would it? Sawyer talking about it doesn't mean it will be implemented. If it is implemented, it doesn't mean it will be implemented well.
It's nice that he acknowledges the issue and talks about it but I don't think it should serve as any indication of what's to come.

I like to maintain a positive outlook on life, whenever possible.

 

[Infinitron]

Anything Obsidian talk about now has a significantly higher chance of being implemented because they already have an engine

 

[Fry]

I like to maintain a positive outlook on life, whenever possible.

I think you might be in the wrong place.

 

[Sentinel]

Why would it? Sawyer talking about it doesn't mean it will be implemented. If it is implemented, it doesn't mean it will be implemented well.
It's nice that he acknowledges the issue and talks about it but I don't think it should serve as any indication of what's to come.

I like to maintain a positive outlook on life, whenever possible.

What a fag.

There is no point being positive about anything. You're only setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

[Sentinel]

Anything Obsidian talk about now has a significantly higher chance of being implemented because they already have an engine

Having an engine doesn't matter (especially when your engine is as shit as Unity) if you don't have the money and the time to implement your ideas.

 

[Sizzle]

Anything Obsidian talk about now has a significantly higher chance of being implemented because they already have an engine

Having an engine doesn't matter (especially when your engine is as shit as Unity) if you don't have the money and the time to implement your ideas.

Money, sure, but as for time - now they have to spend a lot less of it on purely technical matters, and more on improving and adding content.

Look at it like this - BG2 was a better game than BG1 in practically every aspect (though some would argue that BG1 has a better story), and that was in large part thanks to them having the engine, rules, graphical assets, etc. already developed, so they could focus on adding a massive amount of quests and other content.

 

[Sentinel]

Anything Obsidian talk about now has a significantly higher chance of being implemented because they already have an engine

Having an engine doesn't matter (especially when your engine is as shit as Unity) if you don't have the money and the time to implement your ideas.

Money, sure, but as for time - now they have to spend a lot less of it on purely technical matters, and more on improving and adding content.

Look at it like this - BG2 was a better game than BG1 in practically every aspect (though some would argue that BG1 has a better story), and that was in large part thanks to them having the engine, rules, graphical assets, etc. already developed, so they could focus on adding a massive amount of quests and other content.

Fair enough. I'll choose to remain skeptic though. Maybe Sawyer can positively surprise me with the final game.

 

[Delterius]

I like to maintain a positive outlook on life, whenever possible.

I think you might be in the wrong place.

On the contrary. Without optmism there's no butthurt. Without butthurt there is no Codex.

 

[Popiel]

On the contrary. Without optmism there's no butthurt. Without butthurt there is no Codex.

No. 'Dexers are contrarian just because they feel smart thanks to that. Nothing deeper here. Only Codex.

 

[Fry]

I like to maintain a positive outlook on life, whenever possible.

I think you might be in the wrong place.

On the contrary. Without optmism there's no butthurt. Without butthurt there is no Codex.

 

[Anthedon]

I think you meant

 

[Delterius]

No. 'Dexers are contrarian just because they feel smart thanks to that.

I disagree.

 

[Ivan]

doing my 2nd playthrough.

Q: do visitors come back to Caed Nua if not met? I lost track of time and my first visitor (some drunk) left. How much content am I missing out on?

also, i don't know if this was tweaked at all, but whenever you read souls there's this awful staticky crackling sound I don't remember AT ALL during my first playthrough. it's unpleasant and jarring. could it just be my audio?
sounds like:

Spoiler

 

[eXalted]

caStarted playing.

Screenshot:

Spoiler

Don't talk to golden NPCs and now this. Gotta be careful not to break my immershun.

 

[Turjan]

Are there any quests known to break savegames? I noticed too late that some quest I did yesterday must have made all outdoors and dungeon areas respawn. I didn't notice because I did lots of quests in Defiance Bay, and I started wondering when the catacombs were populated with the same boring stuff again. When I returned to Caed Nua, the ghosts were back outside of the Keep, the spiders, Maerwald... My last save that looks alright is 8 hours back, ugh. I have to do the Sanitarium, faction quests and lots of other quests again. I'm thrilled .