Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Sensuki]

It's probably a combination of ignorance (not recognizing the factors that make areas fun to play) and designers simply not caring as long as they meet the checklist requirements for their tasks. If people cared more about the work they were doing or the game they were making, it would be better.

 

[Rivmusique]

I'm just now playing through White March Part 2. Did Sawyer forget that Icewind Dale rewarded the player in some way or another for fighting all the monsters?
This entire Abbey Moon area is some of the shittiest content in PoE. Fighting hordes of 10 enemies every 5 seconds, fights that can last 5~10 minutes each time, and the areas have nothing interesting at all to reward the player. You don't get exp since the enemies don't have bestiary entries, there's no interesting items, there's no world building of any kind or any books/notes to provide new information on existing characters (such as expanding on Ondra). I'd really like to know who the fuck designed this area. What the hell were they thinking.
So far a story that seemed pretty interesting is completely ruined by the pointless pseudo-dungeon crawling.

Should have gone through it peacefully.

 

[Sentinel]

I'm just now playing through White March Part 2. Did Sawyer forget that Icewind Dale rewarded the player in some way or another for fighting all the monsters?
This entire Abbey Moon area is some of the shittiest content in PoE. Fighting hordes of 10 enemies every 5 seconds, fights that can last 5~10 minutes each time, and the areas have nothing interesting at all to reward the player. You don't get exp since the enemies don't have bestiary entries, there's no interesting items, there's no world building of any kind or any books/notes to provide new information on existing characters (such as expanding on Ondra). I'd really like to know who the fuck designed this area. What the hell were they thinking.
So far a story that seemed pretty interesting is completely ruined by the pointless pseudo-dungeon crawling.

Should have gone through it peacefully.

I just googled it and it seems there is a dialogue check to go in peacefully. However, the NPCs that were supposed to talk to me and give me, among others, a Lore check, just straight up attacked me saying that I was trespassing. Hadn't attacked any of them prior to that so I have no idea what's up with that.

 

[Sentinel]

Upon further testing, it turns out you actually have to pick the "lie" option as the first thing you say. Can't bullshit the guard if you say "just passing by" first, for whatever reason.
Still shitty that aggressive players get punished that hard. From what I've seen online it also left a very bad taste on a lot of people. Seen a fair number of them complaining about thw dungeon crawl at the end. Oh well. What can you do.

 

[CptMace]

Skaen 2.0
Lied my way through, was very disappoited at the end when the game forces a fight on you for a very shitty reason but hey, pillars gotta pillars.

 

[Sannom]

Upon further testing, it turns out you actually have to pick the "lie" option as the first thing you say. Can't bullshit the guard if you say "just passing by" first, for whatever reason.

The mercenary at the entrance tells you that the lady he escorted here forbid him from going anywhere near the entrance and that she was going to wipe his memory clean of the place.
What in the world made you think you could use the old "just passing by" bullshit excuse?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yup. You done fucked up.

 

[Jimmious]

I'm gonna start my new playthrough soon, to finally play the expansions.
I'm thinking going for a rogue with POTD&Expert Mode. Is Expert worth it or will it only annoy me?

 

[Mazisky]

I'm gonna start my new playthrough soon, to finally play the expansions.
I'm thinking going for a rogue with POTD&Expert Mode. Is Expert worth it or will it only annoy me?

Better going POTD without expert but with instant death at 0 health

 

[mitochondritom]

I'm just now playing through White March Part 2. Did Sawyer forget that Icewind Dale rewarded the player in some way or another for fighting all the monsters?

I understand what you mean, but all of these guys drop insane amounts of loot to the tune of hundreds of thousands worth if you hoover it all up. That doesn't excuse that it was a bit of a slog inside. There were also bits of lore and unique loot to find. I personally, didn't find it anymore tedious than say the endless skeletons in the Vale of Shadows or the hordes of Lizard men in Dragons Eye. If your character needs 12,000 xp to level up and a skeleton kill gives 20 xp split between six people, does that make the difference between an encounter being worth it or not?

For reals though I did find that area to be frustrating as the monks were so tanky and they abuse the encounter mechanic a lot. It wasn't hard and I didn't feel like my team was in danger, but it was very tedious at times. I ended up using lots of different strategies to experiment as each of the ~ 10 or so groups of priests / monks / paladins were pretty similar.

 

[Jimmious]

I'm gonna start my new playthrough soon, to finally play the expansions.
I'm thinking going for a rogue with POTD&Expert Mode. Is Expert worth it or will it only annoy me?

Better going POTD without expert but with instant death at 0 health

But muh achievements! Haha yeah I think I'll go with sth like that. I want the AoE indicators :p

 

[Rev]

Upon further testing, it turns out you actually have to pick the "lie" option as the first thing you say. Can't bullshit the guard if you say "just passing by" first, for whatever reason.
Still shitty that aggressive players get punished that hard. From what I've seen online it also left a very bad taste on a lot of people. Seen a fair number of them complaining about thw dungeon crawl at the end. Oh well. What can you do.

You know, the game did suggest you multiple times (almost to the point of screaming in your face) that there were other routes beyond the full frontal attack way. The NPCs told you how to go in without fighting (pretending to be someone else) and that there are also other, more stealthy routes that would let you avoid a lot of battles.
If you didn't listen to any of it and fucked it up you can't protest that there are too many fighters when you are storming the hidden stronghold of a god, whose members value their secrets above anything else and have spent centuries protecting them from strangers.
In fact, the Abbey is the closest dungeon to Readric's Hold, which was rightfully praised by pretty much everyone because it allowed multiple pathways.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Can someone give me tips on alpine dragon? Level 15 level scaled to high level, currently soing part 2 of TWM.

I can hold on decently, cleared the weak mobs, then when it is showdown on him and my party alone, i cannot do significant damage on him. My physical attacker do scratch damage, my spellcasters spells are useless. I used the scale break stuff, and did decent damage, but in the end i always got wiped out

I just used Durance to buff Accuracy then spammed Petrify on him and he died relatively quickly. I was Lv13, no upscaling.
Hiravas/Druid's Relentless Storm is also extremely useful to keep all the ice mobs stunned through the entire fight. Remember to have one tank divert his attention and then have your entire party move to the opposite side of the area. It is vital that the alpine dragon is distracted so that he doesn't use the frost breath on your entire party. However be careful to not stand too close to him because he has a tail sweep that can still fuck you up.

If the fight drags on for too long focus on removing those frightened debuffs with your priest or rings of suppress affliction. They make hitting the dragon almost impossible.

ah well, did it. used devil of caroc to flank it and she has deep wounds which give overtime damage, hiravias and durance keep spamming buffs and heal, while my wizard wipe the moobs with AoE spells. once it was alone all i do is keep healing, spamming potions and it eventually goes down. i use scale breaker alot later after all other enemies are killed and my party mostly recovered from the previous barrages.

my error before was using scale breaker too early. as soon as the last of the small enemies died, i used it without trying to gain buff and heal, resulted in innefective attack where half of my party trying to recover and half trying to gain its attention

 

[Sentinel]

Upon further testing, it turns out you actually have to pick the "lie" option as the first thing you say. Can't bullshit the guard if you say "just passing by" first, for whatever reason.
Still shitty that aggressive players get punished that hard. From what I've seen online it also left a very bad taste on a lot of people. Seen a fair number of them complaining about thw dungeon crawl at the end. Oh well. What can you do.

You know, the game did suggest you multiple times (almost to the point of screaming in your face) that there were other routes beyond the full frontal attack way. The NPCs told you how to go in without fighting (pretending to be someone else) and that there are also other, more stealthy routes that would let you avoid a lot of battles.
If you didn't listen to any of it and fucked it up you can't protest that there are too many fighters when you are storming the hidden stronghold of a god, whose members value their secrets above anything else and have spent centuries protecting them from strangers.
In fact, the Abbey is the closest dungeon to Readric's Hold, which was rightfully praised by pretty much everyone because it allowed multiple pathways.

I didn't go to the front door. I went to the right path, because the dwarf suggested there were other routes in, but there were two guards. I find it odd that the guards would just go "ATTACK THIS INTRUDER" if you say "just passing by", instead of just saying, for example "Just passing by? You'd better explain yourself! This area is restricted to outsiders!". Then you could have a speech check to say "I'm actually the Tidebringer" or some shit. Instead they just go "well, better attack this guy, even though he could very well be the tidebringer, but hey, he said "just passing by", that means that there's no way in hell he's the one, right?"

Whole shit could be solved by going the Witcher way and implementing something that signals a dialogue option is going to advance dialogue. There were numerous times where I wanted to ask multiple questions, but one of them advances the dialogue and I have to reload to ask the other questions.

 

[Rev]

I didn't go to the front door. I went to the right path, because the dwarf suggested there were other routes in, but there were two guards. I find it odd that the guards would just go "ATTACK THIS INTRUDER" if you say "just passing by", instead of just saying, for example "Just passing by? You'd better explain yourself! This area is restricted to outsiders!". Then you could have a speech check to say "I'm actually the Tidebringer" or some shit. Instead they just go "well, better attack this guy, even though he could very well be the tidebringer, but hey, he said "just passing by", that means that there's no way in hell he's the one, right?"

Why? "Just passing by" doesn't seem something that anyone involved with the Abbey or the cult would say, especially not the tidebringer. They're there to protect the secrets of their god and to keep the Abbey's location hidden from everyone else, so it's only natural that they attack intruders who don't even try to present themselves as fellow cultists.

 

[Sentinel]

I didn't go to the front door. I went to the right path, because the dwarf suggested there were other routes in, but there were two guards. I find it odd that the guards would just go "ATTACK THIS INTRUDER" if you say "just passing by", instead of just saying, for example "Just passing by? You'd better explain yourself! This area is restricted to outsiders!". Then you could have a speech check to say "I'm actually the Tidebringer" or some shit. Instead they just go "well, better attack this guy, even though he could very well be the tidebringer, but hey, he said "just passing by", that means that there's no way in hell he's the one, right?"

Why? "Just passing by" doesn't seem something that anyone involved with the Abbey or the cult would say, especially not the tidebringer. They're there to protect the secrets of their god and to keep the Abbey's location hidden from everyone else, so it's only natural that they attack intruders who don't even try to present themselves as fellow cultists.

Make use of the clever disposition and have an option that says "I was just messing with you, I'm actually the Tidebringer" or whatever. Then they get suspicious, and the dialogue proceeds to the part where they ask you those questions that require a Resolve/Perception (dont remember which one) or a Lore 6 check to let you into the temple. Not exactly rocket science. No one actually straight up attacks someone for saying "just passing by."

Upon further testing, it turns out you actually have to pick the "lie" option as the first thing you say. Can't bullshit the guard if you say "just passing by" first, for whatever reason.
Still shitty that aggressive players get punished that hard. From what I've seen online it also left a very bad taste on a lot of people. Seen a fair number of them complaining about thw dungeon crawl at the end. Oh well. What can you do.

If you didn't listen to any of it and fucked it up you can't protest that there are too many fighters when you are storming the hidden stronghold of a god, whose members value their secrets above anything else and have spent centuries protecting them from strangers.
In fact, the Abbey is the closest dungeon to Readric's Hold, which was rightfully praised by pretty much everyone because it allowed multiple pathways.

My complaint wasn't that there were too many fighters, it was that all the fighting was pointless. There is basically no point in storming into the place. You're almost punished for doing it in fact. It's a complete waste of resources with no reward whatsoever. That's not really a choice, in my opinion.

 

[Rev]

Make use of the clever disposition and have an option that says "I was just messing with you, I'm actually the Tidebringer" or whatever. Then they get suspicious, and the dialogue proceeds to the part where they ask you those questions that require a Resolve/Perception (dont remember which one) or a Lore 6 check to let you into the temple. Not exactly rocket science. No one actually straight up attacks someone for saying "just passing by."

You are forgetting that the guards there are very susceptible since they want to keep their place hidden and secret from outsiders. How can they do that, if not by be sure that anyone who looks suspicious will not walk away from the Abbey to tell others of its existence?
The game also advice you to be careful when speaking with the monks if you want to go in with "diplomacy", so it's not rocket science to figure out that you should try to convince them of being the tidebringer instead of appearing as someone who stumbled upon the temple and is just looking around.

My complaint wasn't that there were too many fighters, it was that all the fighting was pointless. There is basically no point in storming into the place. You're almost punished for doing it in fact. It's a complete waste of resources with no reward whatsoever. That's not really a choice, in my opinion.

Yeah well, that's because they're optional fights who are there only for people who really enjoy the combat system, since there are ways to make progress and avoid them completely. And most them are "trash mobs" so it's not that weird that they don't carry special items ar anything really valuable on them.

 

[AwesomeButton]

If you don't go on a killing spree immediately, the temple in TWM2 is a pretty interesting quest. Yes, the mandatory battle is silly, but you can reduce the number of enemies through a speech check and, I'm not sure but maybe you can avoid combat altogether?

 

[Sentinel]

You are forgetting that the guards there are very susceptible since they want to keep their place hidden and secret from outsiders. How can they do that, if not by be sure that anyone who looks suspicious will not walk away from the Abbey to tell others of its existence?
The game also advice you to be careful when speaking with the monks if you want to go in with "diplomacy", so it's not rocket science to figure out that you should try to convince them of being the tidebringer instead of appearing as someone who stumbled upon the temple and is just looking around.

But asking the guards asking "Explain yourself" after me saying "just passing by" doesn't detract in any way from their wish to keep the place hidden. If I don't pass the hypothetical dialogue check that follows, they'd attack me. I guess I'm just disappointed that two of the options lead to the exact same outcome, even though one of them doesn't make any sense in terms of human behaviour.

Yeah well, that's because they're optional fights who are there only for people who really enjoy the combat system, since there are ways to make progress and avoid them completely. And most them are "trash mobs" so it's not that weird that they don't carry special items ar anything really valuable on them.

I don't think optional content gets a pass for being shit because it's optional. They could very well have sprinkled the area with something interesting. Be it good loot, have some of the priests/monks drop books (or have those books placed in the rooms they were in). Even the sort of side cave inside the Halls of Silence with the 4 spiders and two corpses has nothing on them. It's a pointless fight.

If you don't go on a killing spree immediately, the temple in TWM2 is a pretty interesting quest. Yes, the mandatory battle is silly, but you can reduce the number of enemies through a speech check and, I'm not sure but maybe you can avoid combat altogether?

Yeah you can skip all the fighting. I'm not sure you can skip the one with the High Abbot. For me it lead to conflict.

 

[Rev]

If you don't go on a killing spree immediately, the temple in TWM2 is a pretty interesting quest. Yes, the mandatory battle is silly, but you can reduce the number of enemies through a speech check and, I'm not sure but maybe you can avoid combat altogether?

You can only reduce the number of enemies, not avoid the fight altogether, sadly. At least when I tried I was only able to get some monks to shift on my side for the battle.
Other than that, I agree, the quest was quite interesting: it featured multiple paths to reach your goals, some secrets about the temple to find out and also you had to collect knoledge of their religion to pass the leader's questions unless you had high Lore, which was a nice touch imho.

I don't think optional content gets a pass for being shit because it's optional. They could very well have sprinkled the area with something interesting. Be it good loot, have some of the priests/monks drop books (or have those books placed in the rooms they were in). Even the sort of side cave inside the Halls of Silence with the 4 spiders and two corpses has nothing on them. It's a pointless fight.

There are books about the temple's history, their religion and lore and various stuff in the rooms, actually. You can't expect monks to drop a +6 sword, though.

 

[Sentinel]

There are books about the temple's history, their religion and lore and various stuff in the rooms, actually. You can't expect monks to drop a +6 sword, though.

Not in the Halls of Silence, there aren't.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You can only reduce the number of enemies, not avoid the fight altogether, sadly. At least when I tried I was only able to get some monks to shift on my side for the battle.
Other than that, I agree, the quest was quite interesting: it featured multiple paths to reach your goals, some secrets about the temple to find out and also you had to collect knoledge of their religion to pass the leader's questions unless you had high Lore, which was a nice touch imho.

A design decision that developers nowadays are too fearful to take and which is frowned upon by the "all content available to every player" guiding principle, is to gate bits of content based on player attributes. This preserves the feeling of mystery and motivates the player to explore and to replay the game. Take the original Fallouts for example.

The IE games and PoE suffer from allowing the player to make sure he has seen all that he can interact with in a given area (the tab highlight key). I think it would have been cool if some of the more indepth information about Ondra and the temple was only accessible to characters with enough Lore or to priests, etc.

 

[Sentinel]

I just came upon a Bounty to kill someone called "Firedorn". Did they really get so butthurt about trans-misogyny (??) that they made him the target of a bounty? Also he has a female model even though he's referred to as a guy . Isn't that kind of disrespectful to the trannies?

 

[Sannom]

I just came upon a Bounty to kill someone called "Firedorn". Did they really get so butthurt about trans-misogyny (??) that they made him the target of a bounty?

It's obviously compensation for changing his original content, not a slight toward him. Just like some of the backer NPCs ended up as enemy encounters.
I can't remember Firedorn's model, but I did always wonder if the fact that he venerates dragons is a nod to the controversy.

 

[Sentinel]

I just came upon a Bounty to kill someone called "Firedorn". Did they really get so butthurt about trans-misogyny (??) that they made him the target of a bounty?

It's obviously compensation for changing his original content, not a slight toward him. Just like some of the backer NPCs ended up as enemy encounters.
I can't remember Firedorn's model, but I did always wonder if the fact that he venerates dragons is a nod to the controversy.

Yeah, most certainly it is.
Also just found the crossbow that levels up by killing backer NPCs. Got a chuckle out of me.