Pillars of Eternity Thread [Pre-Expansion]

[Athelas]

Well, this is interesting:

That looks much better than what lava/magma currently looks like in the game, and it looks like it's it would be animated like the water in the game. Downgrade confirmed?

(Why yes, I'm complaining about the graphics. I'm a true bastion of decline.)

 

[Gord]

Man, they overdid it a bit with the Adra Dragon. Having a difficult fight is nice and all, but having a fight were you have to reload 9 out of 10 tries simply because your party is dead before you can even take a single action is bullshit level of difficulty.

If the dragon, for whatever obscure reason doesn't fire off his screen-wide deathray immediately I do have at least a chance by disabling him (Slicken, Confuse, Paralyze kinda work), but most of the time I don't even get the chance to do so.

 

[Blaine]

I really don't see the distinction between using Eye of Drog and/or Paralysis spells vs. doing it the "non-cheese" way and using spells like blind or using tanks with second chance, or walls of force/fire/summons for the minions.

The distinction is that some approaches require you to use your brain, make well-reasoned, well-timed use of a variety of your characters' abilities, and react to/adapt to changing circumstances as they arise; whereas spamming out rare consumables that prevent the dragon from ever doing anything and just kill it after ten seconds or so really doesn't.

I'm pretty happy with the way I handled the fight. My tank didn't die at all (without spamming healing potions; used one regeneration, I think), the dragon spent about 2/5ths of the fight paralyzed, and I used a variety of abilities to bring it down.

Man, they overdid it a bit with the Adra Dragon. Having a difficult fight is nice and all, but having a fight were you have to reload 9 out of 10 tries simply because your party is dead before you can even take a single action is bullshit level of difficulty.

If the dragon, for whatever obscure reason doesn't fire off his screen-wide deathray immediately I do have at least a change by disabling him (Slciken, Confuse, Paralyse kinda work), but most of the time I don't even get the chance to do so.

I really don't know what they were thinking with the breath attack. I know it's a huge, ancient, and very powerful dragon, but it can strip 2/3+ of the health off a defensive fighter loaded with high-end equipment, covers half the screen, and the only realistic counter is to stunlock the dragon much of the time.

Knockdowns actually do work on it if they miraculously land, but not for very long. Same with paralyze and etc.

 

[A horse of course]

The distinction is that some approaches require you to use your brain, make well-reasoned, well-timed use of a variety of your characters' abilities, and react to/adapt to changing circumstances as they arise; whereas spamming out rare consumables that prevent the dragon from ever doing anything and just kill it after ten seconds or so really doesn't.

I've done it both ways and the difference between the two approaches was minimal in terms of the actual fight. The "proper" way involved tri-tanking the dragon and never moving from the spot whilst the mages ran in and out of range from the side. The only abilities I used were a handful of the same tank and dps-maximizing abilites I used in pretty much every fight anyway and bombarding the shit out of the dragon with high-level spells. The minions make virtually no difference whatsoever since you have to be so powerful walking into the battle that Xaurips are pocket lint and the Adrogans or w/e they're called only turn their victims into blundering morons who use auto-attack for a few seconds, which makes no real difference unless it hits a critical character. The only ability that could really shake up the fight is the Dragon's Breath, which never hit my side characters (during the "successful" attempt) and if it had would simply have killed them outright most of the time (compare to Wing Buffet in BG2 which actually screws up formations and placement rather than being an instant "lol ur ded").


I should also mention that the fact people are calling regular paralysis and petrify spells "cheese" when they're a typical part of spellcaster's tome is rather ridiculous. People are coming up with silly handicaps to make the fight more "legitimate".

inb4 all bosses are patched to be immune to Paralysis, Petrify, Wall of Fire, Slicken and Blind and turn into dps races/gear checks

 

[Blaine]

Well, where is your personal threshold of cheesiness? I consider relying heavily on large quantities of powerful consumables to be very much on the cheesy side.

 

[Bleed the Man]

inb4 all bosses are patched to be immune to Paralysis, Petrify, Wall of Fire, Slicken and Blind and turn into dps races/gear checks

Wouldn't that go heavily against Sawyer's design philosphy?

Another thing would be nerfing those abilities, which already happen to slicken and is very likely to happen to some of them when they go serious with the balance passes

 

[Blaine]

If they nerf PCs' debuffs and crowd control while neglecting to nerf enemies' debuffs and crowd control simultaneously, I'll personally mod the game back to the way it was before "balancing." Currently, I'm okay with my party members being dominated for 10+ seconds despite Prayer Against Treachery, relatively high Will, and that one Talent that adds +10 Defense against Charmed, Dominated, etc. It's happened to Eder numerous times.

I should note however that whenever any of my party members are charmed or dominated, they switch to their ranged weapons due to what I assume is idiotic AI. This has saved me from a bruising or even outright defeat more than a few times, such as when my Monk gets dominated.

I will say that enemy wizards and such ought to have more of the ultra-powerful debuffs in their grimoires, like Call to Slumber Slaughter.

On an unrelated note, has anyone else seen those "X has arrived at the stronghold seeking employment" messages? I've gotten two. The first time, I traveled someplace (about a day and a half); the potential hireling arrived and left all in one go. The second time, I received an arrival message, and couldn't find the potential hireling either in the events tab of the stronghold pane, the hirelings tab, or anywhere at the stronghold. I never received an "X has left" message for that one, either.

Seems buggy as fuck.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I really don't see the distinction between using Eye of Drog and/or Paralysis spells vs. doing it the "non-cheese" way and using spells like blind or using tanks with second chance, or walls of force/fire/summons for the minions.

Well eye of the Drog also makes her take x4 damage so I'd probably draw the line there regarding cheese. That said, I only care about doing fights "properly" that are fun and well designed (Dragon fights in BG2 for example, Draconis being my favourite one), this fight is neither so If I do another playthrough I'll probably just blitz her with Petrify.

 

[Blaine]

By the way, if you've enchanted a certain weapon before placing it in a certain area in order to solve a certain puzzle, you'll get it back in its original, unenchanted state. I suspected that was going to happen when I tried it.

This can actually be useful if you wish to re-enchant the weapon. Personally, I believe enchantment-by-enchantment disenchanting should be a standard option in Pillars of Eternity.

 

[Tigranes]

BG2 dragons had their 'cheesy' breath attacks (Firkraag's was brutal in Ch2 and could easily one-shot characters like Edwin, Shadow Dragon could level-drain your characters down to nothingness, not to mention they had weird rules that confounded your expectations on mage buffs / seeing invisibility), but I don't know if the Adra Dragon is 'too much' compared to that.

I mean, yeah, its breath attack was super strong and super big when I first encountered it, but it was POTD. Ironically this might be the one battle where your impaired mobility, as a result of your positioning relative to the ground level design and your characters' lower movement speeds, might make a big difference in making Adra's breath attack 'cheesy'.

 

[Blaine]

There should be an option to utilize an Engwithan machine that animates the adra statue, which then kicks the dragon like an Association football. She'll smash against the far wall, lose 1/2 her health, and be Prone for ten seconds.

 

[Gord]

What I really dislike about it (on Hard) is the super-high speed of the attack and the *lel, your party is dead* amount of damage in combination, since it makes defending against it almost impossible and means reload unless you park most of your party two screens away.

Using scrolls of paralyze, etc. seems only cheesy to me in so far as they can be acquired easily in large quantities. Preventing the dragon from using his breath attack (which itself is really cheesy) seems almost unavoidable to me, which means that you will need to use some sort of strong CC spell for it, given the tools at your disposal.
The alternative is probably to use hit and run tactics for most of your party.

Apparently Will and Reflex are his weakest points, so you will need to target this. It's also quite funny to charm him and have him use the breath attack on his entourage.

On an unrelated note, has anyone else seen those "X has arrived at the stronghold seeking employment" messages? I've gotten two. The first time, I traveled someplace (about a day and a half); the potential hireling arrived and left all in one go. The second time, I received an arrival message, and couldn't find the potential hireling either in the events tab of the stronghold pane, the hirelings tab, or anywhere at the stronghold. I never received an "X has left" message for that one, either.

Seems buggy as fuck.

Yes, constantly. Maybe I misunderstood something about it, though?

 

[Roguey]

It was specifically DA:O I was referring to. Up to Lothering the game wasn't so bad. Then you get an option of several places to visit. The first one would be Ok. Since they don't actually scale or change or react to your taking more time to get to them there is a problem though. You quickly outlevel all of the other area's. IIRC which I very well may not I think there were 5 areas.

That's not true. http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Challenge_scaling

In any event once you clear out one area the game becomes drastically easier.

This is true, and typical for RPGs. After that, a lot of valleys with a few peaks.

I'm not sure what you were doing when you played DA or how old you were or what kind of mental space you were in but I would suggest that if you doubt me just whack the game on easy and go through lothering and the mages place/guild/tower or w/e it was called. Then whack the game on nightmare and go visit any other area. You will quickly find that auto attack (plus modals) will do the job from there on out. I live with someone who played DA:O as their first ever CRPG without any help and they got sick of right clicking through the game.

I've played it twice on hard, in 2009 and 2013. One can't win with standard attacks alone.

(you can win by setting up character strats with the tactics screen, and/or massive amounts of potion crafting/guzzling but those are not standard attacks)

 

[Bleed the Man]

On an unrelated note, has anyone else seen those "X has arrived at the stronghold seeking employment" messages? I've gotten two. The first time, I traveled someplace (about a day and a half); the potential hireling arrived and left all in one go. The second time, I received an arrival message, and couldn't find the potential hireling either in the events tab of the stronghold pane, the hirelings tab, or anywhere at the stronghold. I never received an "X has left" message for that one, either.

Seems buggy as fuck.

Yes, constantly. Maybe I misunderstood something about it, though?

In my experience, if you have the 8 available hirelings positions covered, the new possible recruit seems not to appear on the hirelings section of the stronghold hub. If you fire one of them, and re-enter it will appear.

But it does seems to be bugged, at this is clearly an unintended event (what I mentioned) and I believe that it wasn't always the case in my playthrough, I seem to remember one instance where I had all the hirelings position covered, and still it appear the special hireling available for hire.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

BG2 dragons had their 'cheesy' breath attacks (Firkraag's was brutal in Ch2 and could easily one-shot characters like Edwin, Shadow Dragon could level-drain your characters down to nothingness, not to mention they had weird rules that confounded your expectations on mage buffs / seeing invisibility), but I don't know if the Adra Dragon is 'too much' compared to that.

You can protect against things in BG2 (spells, potions), what can I do to prepare against Adra Dragon in that regard, use a +3 corrosive damage reduction cloak? The challenge from BG2 Dragons mainly derived from them being supped up fighter/mages basically with good spell selection, AI and mobility in addition to traditional Dragon abilities. Adra Dragon is just a giant stationary blob that can deal and take a lot of punishment, even its wing buffet just does a ton of damage instead of being a tactical ability that scatters you across the battlefield, it's boring. Even DAO dragons did more stuff during the battle.

I mean, yeah, its breath attack was super strong and super big when I first encountered it, but it was POTD. Ironically this might be the one battle where your impaired mobility, as a result of your positioning relative to the ground level design and your characters' lower movement speeds, might make a big difference in making Adra's breath attack 'cheesy'.

As far as I know PotD adds accuracy, not outright damage. In a game without pre-buffing and very limited ways to protect from a specific damage types its attacks just do too much damage to compensate for its narrow range of abilities and lackluster AI.

 

[Athelas]

As far as I know PotD adds accuracy, not outright damage. In a game without pre-buffing and very limited ways to protect from a specific damage types its attacks just do too much damage to compensate for its narrow range of abilities and lackluster AI.

The increase in accuracy turns what are otherwise grazes into hits and hits into crits, which do more damage and bypass DR easier.

You can protect against things in BG2 (spells, potions), what can I do to prepare against Adra Dragon in that regard, use a +3 corrosive damage reduction cloak? The challenge from BG2 Dragons mainly derived from them being supped up fighter/mages basically with good spell selection, AI and mobility in addition to traditional Dragon abilities. Adra Dragon is just a giant stationary blob that can deal and take a lot of punishment, even its wing buffet just does a ton of damage instead of being a tactical ability that scatters you across the battlefield, it's boring.

This is a game where running away from an impending lethal attack gets you killed faster than staying put. The developers don't seem to be big fans of movement-based tactics, to put it mildly.

 

[Old Hans]

Well, this is interesting:

That looks much better than what lava/magma currently looks like in the game, and it looks like it's it would be animated like the water in the game. Downgrade confirmed?

(Why yes, I'm complaining about the graphics. I'm a true bastion of decline.)

knowing this engine, that lava probably cut the framerate by 10 for some reason no one could figure out

 

[ZagorTeNej]

The increase in accuracy turns what are otherwise grazes into hits and hits into crits, which do more damage and bypass DR easier.

Yes, I'm well aware of that. My point was that it doesn't always result in more damage, it just potentially can.

This is a game where running away from an impending lethal attack gets you killed faster than staying put. The developers don't seem to be big fans of movement-based tactics, to put it mildly.

I noticed. To think that I initially believed Sensuki was exaggerating stuff during BB.

 

[A horse of course]

Well, where is your personal threshold of cheesiness? I consider relying heavily on large quantities of powerful consumables to be very much on the cheesy side.

I don't really consider anything you can do in that fight "cheese" except:

Using the multi-priest, multi-seal trick because it strikes me that the developers didn't predict that would be used. But then, using nonsensical pre-battle combinations was all part of the fun in some RPGs, i.e. Morrowind.
Using Fog of War/scripting exploits like killing all the minions before the fight. I suppose you could justify this by saying it's done "stealthily" but the fact combat is initiated as soon as you attack any one of them indicates to me that the Dragon should attack you immediately.
Exploiting the Drog's low movement speed. Whether this is an exploit or legitimate adaption to an enemy's weakness is another argument.

Well eye of the Drog also makes her take x4 damage so I'd probably draw the line there regarding cheese. That said, I only care about doing fights "properly" that are fun and well designed (Dragon fights in BG2 for example, Draconis being my favourite one), this fight is neither so If I do another playthrough I'll probably just blitz her with Petrify.

IMNSHO Eye of Drog is even less cheesey than scrolls of paralysis precisely because it's a regular mage spell, not a one-time consumable. Since when has "using the most powerful spell you have on the most powerful boss in the game" been cheese?

 

[Athelas]

The increase in accuracy turns what are otherwise grazes into hits and hits into crits, which do more damage and bypass DR easier.

Yes, I'm well aware of that. My point was that it doesn't always result in more damage, it just potentially can.

That depends. If a character's defense vs. the enemy's accuracy reaches a certain threshold, they can never be critted/hit/grazed.

 

[Shevek]

They probably just need to tweak the damage a bit on that attack. I remember in beta, the damn crystal eaters were extremely op with their freezing pillar. I am now finding that encounters with them are fine. I am actually really enjoying the encounter design in the later levels of the mega dungeon even though there are heaps of those crystal eaters.

 

[Tigranes]

Oh, there's no question the Adra Dragon has nothing on BG2 dragons. Encounter design, persistently, is POE's embarrassing, shitty backside.

Well eye of the Drog also makes her take x4 damage so I'd probably draw the line there regarding cheese. That said, I only care about doing fights "properly" that are fun and well designed (Dragon fights in BG2 for example, Draconis being my favourite one), this fight is neither so If I do another playthrough I'll probably just blitz her with Petrify.

IMNSHO Eye of Drog is even less cheesey than scrolls of paralysis precisely because it's a regular mage spell, not a one-time consumable. Since when has "using the most powerful spell you have on the most powerful boss in the game" been cheese?[/QUOTE]

Eye of Drog is cheesy because it's designed to be broken cheese. 4x Damage and paralysis? Consistently hits even final boss and hardest optional boss with reasonable accuracy? WTF?

 

[ZagorTeNej]

IMNSHO Eye of Drog is even less cheesey than scrolls of paralysis precisely because it's a regular mage spell, not a one-time consumable. Since when has "using the most powerful spell you have on the most powerful boss in the game" been cheese?

It makes the fight (and any other in the game) trivial. What would you define as cheese? Only exploits?

That depends. If a character's defense vs. the enemy's accuracy reaches a certain threshold, they can never be critted/hit/grazed.

In specific cases yes. I can't remember graze/damage thresholds off the top of my head but in this case I think Adra Dragon's accuracy and my tanks deflection (or whatever defense it targeted) were about equal so I don't think the difference would be that drastic.

 

[Blaine]

Regarding performance: It's worth noting that Pillars of Eternity does not run in true fullscreen, even with the "Fullscreen" box checked. It runs in windowed fullscreen. I know this because certain functions of my computer that never work or appear in true fullscreen (Puush screenshot drag-to-select hotkey, Nvidia update popups, and more) do work/appear in Pillars of Eternity.

Windowed mode, fullscreen or no, can and does have performance impacts on most systems and setups. I'm looking into how to modify the .cfg or whatever so that PoE runs in true fullscreen.

 

[Gord]

They probably just need to tweak the damage a bit on that attack. I remember in beta, the damn crystal eaters were extremely op with their freezing pillar. I am now finding that encounters with them are fine. I am actually really enjoying the encounter design in the later levels of the mega dungeon even though there are heaps of those crystal eaters.

Either the damage should be reduced, so it isn't an ensured instakill on 2/3 of your party, or they have to give the player the possibility to prepare for it in some way.
I wouldn't mind additional effects on it which could be avoided with the right defenses/buffs.