Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[ColonelMace]

This means that if you are autistic enough you can just save, turn it off, check out all you need, and reload to have it back on and still get the achievement at the end.

It doesn't really add difficulty to the exprience anyway. PotD does that more effectively.
Expert mode is like Hardcore mode in New Vegas : it adds more or less tedious factors to make the player think a little bit more about what he's doing.
But it's still not all that impactful. The only parameter that I found made an actual difference was hiding the AoEs when casting fireballs and such friendly fire sensitive abilities. (Without mentioning how it makes it all reminiscent of the IE games as well).

Another aspect that, this time, mattered little in my memories was the restriction to accessing the party's chest.
If i'm not mistaken, you could exploit the UI to transfer stuff from the chest to the characters' inventories. Although it's probably been fixed.

The single most excellent aspect of expert mode, though, is hiding all the dialog tags from the player (regarding skills, background, reputations etc).
It makes the whole game more organic on this front, which cruelly suffers from purple prose and lack of personality for most npcs.
This, however, turns into a severe flaw when playing either a Paladin or a Priest, who benefit or suffer from whatever reputations they earn during the journey. Simply because it's more often than not unclear whether a choice is benevolent, rational, stoic etc.

Overall I'd recommend playing on Expert anyway. Hiding numbers, aoes, dialog tags etc makes the experience much smoother imo.

PS. I guess I should have read your whole post before quoting because you're already aware of all of this. Apologies.

 

[Lyric Suite]

PS. I guess I should have read your whole post before quoting because you're already aware of all of this. Apologies.

On my first attempt to play the game i made it up to Redric's Hold. So i have some experience with the game up to that point at least. It's been two years though and much of the game has been scraped off my memory but i still remember some.

 

[General Disarray]

A arquebus ranger sounds like a fun thing to try but man, there's like two decent unique ones in the game. On the positive side, they're not that hard to get and surprisingly not locked behind late-game content.

But why ranger? I, with a recently new game, went with fighter who gets a lot of perks for faster reload and aim for firearms.

 

[mediocrepoet]

A arquebus ranger sounds like a fun thing to try but man, there's like two decent unique ones in the game. On the positive side, they're not that hard to get and surprisingly not locked behind late-game content.

But why ranger? I, with a recently new game, went with fighter who gets a lot of perks for faster reload and aim for firearms.

Was opening some stuff to try and answer this question and the fandom.com site was such a gross ad-ridden piece of shit, it actually made the chart unreadable through my adblocker. I had to actually manually configure it to remove all the shit just so I could read the table properly. I have no idea what their goal is if it's anything other than trying to ensure people never come back. Anyway...

Rangers have talents that open up a variety of debuffs and raw damage that fighters don't, as well as also having a lot of perks for faster reload and attack speed, and a pet for flanking / off-tanking. There are also some oddball passives like stunning shots (what it says on the tin) and driving flight (ranged attacks pierce to an additional target), and modals like twinned arrow and powder burns (does what it sounds like, pick the one for your preferred weapon). The class is more solid than people tend to give it credit for.

 

[Haplo]

And you get two bodies for the price of one...

 

[The Limper]

An MC plus 5 Rangers with Pets would be an overwhelmingly easy party to beat the game with. There are literally tons of great missle weapons….

 

[mediocrepoet]

An MC plus 5 Rangers with Pets would be an overwhelmingly easy party to beat the game with. There are literally tons of great missle weapons….

Except with bears.

 

[adegron]

I've been playing Pillars of Eternity I and II. The biggest problem I have with it are the numbers of quests you do in the city. You are constantly obliging to peoples whims in Defiance Bay and Neketaka, it isn't good for gameplay. I prefer games that throw you into the wilds. But the game has its charm, it just could be better.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Quest density is great in cities. The wilds, by contrast, should be a little empty, as well as feel expansive, which in Pillars did not, which is a pity. I guess after BG2 everybody has been following that model, i assume because it is considered an improvement over the original, but i liked roaming the woods in BG1.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Quest density is great in cities. The wilds, by contrast, should be a little empty, as well as feel expansive, which in Pillars did not, which is a pity. I guess after BG2 everybody has been following that model, i assume because it is considered an improvement over the original, but i liked roaming the woods in BG1.

I agree. There's a lot to be said for quiet and unstructured play and exploration, but it's being lost at least in the CRPG space. I think this is likely comparable to how EQ and UO style MMOs died off while WoW style theme park MMOs thrived.

Still though, the popularity of open world survival games makes me think that the appreciation of self directed exploration is coming back just displaced into a new genre. Still, it'd be nice to have a party based CRPG that had a nice mix of both like BG1, rather than either all story driven cinematic crap or totally exploration driven open world games.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Anyway, just to piss people off here, i decided to come up with a min/max stat distribution for a possible Bleak Walker build, which is the following (this is with a human):

19 8 18 18 10 4 (with Living Lands might would be 20).

At 13 you get Sacred Immolation which may compel me to respect some points out of dexterity and perception and bump int, or i can try to see if i can raise intelligence through items and buffs and see if the duration is enough.

One thing i find interesting about this build is the fact you don't have to bother with ranged strikes and switching weapons around, since according to the discussion in the thread dual wield attacks will actually always be better, even taking into account DR:

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/85885-class-build-bleak-walker-melee-dw-paladin-monster/

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW as far as anybody knows does this game have an history of patches fucking up your saves? Because i can start the game now, maybe by opting into the public beta, but i don't know if the patch is going to fuck up my progress once it's out.

Still don't get how a game this old is getting a patch now, but whatever i guess.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Anyway, just to piss people off here, i decided to come up with a min/max stat distribution for a possible Bleak Walker build, which is the following (this is with a human):

19 8 18 18 10 4 (with Living Lands might would be 20).

This is good for a support / damage dealer, but it really hurts me to see a paladin gouge Con and Res so hard.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Res should be high, as high as possible, I think the highest skill check on dialogue is a Res one and it helps you avoid some really unnecessary combat if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Anyway, just to piss people off here, i decided to come up with a min/max stat distribution for a possible Bleak Walker build, which is the following (this is with a human):

19 8 18 18 10 4 (with Living Lands might would be 20).

This is good for a support / damage dealer, but it really hurts me to see a paladin gouge Con and Res so hard.

Well, Eder is going to take hits and by exploiting choke points and using summons i can control the field enough that the paladin is never gonna engage more than one enemy. As far as i understand, the AI targets defences like deflection or DR, and a paladin will have those fairly high even with a low resolve, which means he is not gonna get pillored by enemies all at once since the AI will likely attempt to go after the squishier targets if they ever manage to slip past Eder. Plus, i can keep an hatchet + Outworn Shield on the second weapon slot if things go south, especially if i have already popped all my FoD. That's the advantage of having no need to use an arquebus (or two of them), since as i said the dual sabers are better for FoD and i have no need to ever use anything else for DPS, giving me the option of having a defensive alternative on my second weapon slot.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Res should be high, as high as possible, I think the highest skill check on dialogue is a Res one and it helps you avoid some really unnecessary combat if I'm not mistaken.

I'm a Bleak Walker i don't need to force my will on people with arguments. I'll beat the shit out of people until they comply.

Also, avoiding combat is exactly what you DON'T want with this order. Kill them all.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Res should be high, as high as possible, I think the highest skill check on dialogue is a Res one and it helps you avoid some really unnecessary combat if I'm not mistaken.

I'm a Bleak Walker i don't need to force my will on people with arguments. I'll beat the shit out of people until they comply.

Also, avoiding combat is exactly what you DON'T want with this order. Kill them all.

Reminds me of this (timestamped).

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, an alternative is to use a Death Godlike, which would end up with this:

19 8 19 18 11 3

But i'm not sure i like the idea of not being able to wear helmets.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Res should be high, as high as possible, I think the highest skill check on dialogue is a Res one and it helps you avoid some really unnecessary combat if I'm not mistaken.

I'm a Bleak Walker i don't need to force my will on people with arguments. I'll beat the shit out of people until they comply.

Also, avoiding combat is exactly what you DON'T want with this order. Kill them all.

Reminds me of this (timestamped).

Wow, talk about a blast from the past. The first video is a masterpiece. Didn't remember laughing quite as much at the others they made.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Come on man, if you're gonna be a damage Paladin, you need a big manly twohander, not some fruitcake one handed toothpicks.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Come on man, if you're gonna be a damage Paladin, you need a big manly twohander, not some fruitcake one handed toothpicks.

He's playing the edgelord paladin class and statting as such, so it makes sense that he's a closet rogue.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Come on man, if you're gonna be a damage Paladin, you need a big manly twohander, not some fruitcake one handed toothpicks.

He's playing the edgelord paladin class and statting as such, so it makes sense that he's a closet rogue.

Heh, i could go even more with min/maxing and drop constitution down completely. With deflection being the main defensive stat it would literally feel like playing a rogue, all the more if you threat FoD as a kind of sneak attack.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Come on man, if you're gonna be a damage Paladin, you need a big manly twohander, not some fruitcake one handed toothpicks.

He's playing the edgelord paladin class and statting as such, so it makes sense that he's a closet rogue.

Heh, i could go even more with min/maxing and drop constitution down completely. With deflection being the main defensive stat it would literally feel like playing a rogue, all the more if you threat FoD as a kind of sneak attack.

All the more if you stack that with the rogue training that gives you a half strength sneak attack.

EDIT: This game's old enough, I forget that you've never played it. There are cross-class talents that kinda-sorta are this game's version of multiclassing. Most of them are ass, but the rogue one can be interesting on some characters for that reason. Basically a free damage boost if you have the pick to spare.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Come on man, if you're gonna be a damage Paladin, you need a big manly twohander, not some fruitcake one handed toothpicks.

Is Paladin a two hander or a sword and shielder? Imo, Paladin is primarily a mounted lance fighter. But in crpgs you mostly fight on foot, for which sword and shield seem more appropiate. Plus, two handers could've been used as a more malleable form of defense against mounted warriors. But that's for another thread...

 

[mediocrepoet]

Come on man, if you're gonna be a damage Paladin, you need a big manly twohander, not some fruitcake one handed toothpicks.

Is Paladin a two hander or a sword and shielder? Imo, Paladin is primarily a mounted lance fighter. But in crpgs you mostly fight on foot, for which sword and shield seem more appropiate. Plus, two handers could've been used as a more malleable form of defense against mounted warriors. But that's for another thread...

These all work imo. I also like paladins with maces and flails and other knightly weapons. Dual wielding paladins are the only things I've seen in some types of games that tend to bug me, tbh. Well, that and ranged ones, but that's pretty rare. Dual wielding comes up now and again, esp. in Asian games.