Pathfinder: Kingmaker

I finally finished this game, the final dungeon is a slog. It’s an interesting concept for sure, but high-level Pathfinder is just not great. Strategy stops mattering and it’s all about is your build right for this encounter. Like, is the thing this character stacked relevant against these enemies? For example, against Hitting enemies, You either have an AC of 55 or you just stay the fuck out of the fight because they’ll chew through your HP with 5 attacks. Everything in the final dungeon has gaze attacks, so if you don’t have blind fighting on all your characters, or a Will save of 40, they’re useless.

Pathfinder’s sweet spot is levels 5-10. I know they’re doing their next game as the Mythic campaign, which doubles down on the ridiculousness, and I’m kind of not interested.

Anyway I somehow botched the true ending. Not even sure how I did it, since I completed every research project, got the Briar, and Nyrissa loved my character, so I’m attributing it to a bug.

There are number of boxes you have to check to get the real ending through the most irritating and easy to fail are the dialog choices.

There is a bit with Tristan and the Eye of Abaddon that can also ruin it.

All in all, it’s a decent story but it’s not really worth the effort. Save yourself the trouble and just read a synopsis with the in game quotes.

You can also just buff them with Freedom of Movement. But yeah, I give all my characters Blind Fight as their level 15 feat.

Posts like the handful above make me not want to finish the game.

The last dungeon really is a nightmare hellscape. The fights are trivial if you are prepared for them but there are an ungodly number of them. Enough that you are going to get hit with Baleful Polymorph even with a crazy will save because natural 1’s will occur. This doesn’t make the fights hard, it makes them painful to recover from between. Painful as in a pain in the butt for you as the player.

What’s worse is that these numerous battles mostly in cramped hallways at a point where half your party at least should be wanting Monstrous Size. So good luck with even basic pathing. And there is a puzzle that involves shifting between two planes, except the planes are visually identical. It’s one of the most poorly conceived puzzles I’ve ever seen executed in a game.

I really can’t tell you how much I wouldn’t blame someone for not wanting to finish it. I enjoyed so much about Kingmaker but that was a pretty sour note to end the game on.

On the upside you can rest as much as you want in the final dungeon. In between every room if you feel like it.

Also let me save you a bunch of pain on the final boss. Just win initiative and kill his first form before he AoE dispels all your buffs. If you fail to do that, reload.

I bought the game a while back, maybe last year during the holiday season, but finally got going on a real attempt to play a couple weeks ago.

I only made it an hour or two the first time and got paralyzed trying to figure out what type of character to play. Now that there are quite a few guides to read through, I felt a lot more comfortable just picking one and going with it. For this first time through, I am just following some guides I found on GOG forums.

I just hit level 6 yesterday and just picked up Ekun. I will probably drop Regongar for him and play around with that for a while. Harrim will probably go soon, but I still need to wrap up his class quest.

I was pretty overwhelmed with the start of the baron duties and the kingdom management, but I have tried to follow the advice here and elsewhere and have it on Easy and have been saving 150-200 points for when I need them. I check back every so often and have just completed 10 tasks. Will see if I can keep that going okay.

I have only been using RTWP so far, but am very glad the turn based is there. I love turn based, but haven’t learned the intricacies of it yet in Pathfinder. There is all this talk of 5 foot steps and touch spells and not sure I follow any of that yet, I just set my guys up and let em go to town with a few pauses to position once in a while and set some spells when I want, but it has worked pretty well so far. I definitely need to give turn based an honest try sometime soon.

Overall, though, loving the good ole fashioned D&D with familiar named creatures and the availability of my Monster Manual next to me that I can read up on my foe before I tackle them! I am really impressed with the graphics and music so far. I still have PoE and PoE2, which I just purchased, to go through next (I may just skip PoE, heh).

I do have a question about a companion that I don’t want to mess up. I will add it as a spoiler just in case: I have dropped Amiri as I wanted to try some of the other new characters out and I was only able to find her first monster, Tuskgutter, for her companion quest. I have no idea where or when I may run into another, so I just dropped her for now. Should I grab her and knock those out, cheating to find out where the other monsters are, so I don’t lose her or mess up some ending? I am still in the early-mid chapter 2 and just found out the location from the wizard where the three troll hideouts may be.

"I have dropped Amiri "
You can re-add her whenever you find and are ready for her character quest. There is even an icon to change your group when you are away from the capital (but it will cost you some passing time)

I try to do one sweep of adventures with a group, then sub out different NPCs for the next sweep. Val as the meat shield never swaps out, and Ekun is just too much fun to swap. But I swap Amiri with the dead-elf or Reggie, Harrim for Tristian, and Linzi with Octavia or Jubi. I do not have Nok Nok yet.

I also used real-time combat until I hit an encounter with some creatures with natural invisibility. This “encouraged” me to swap to turn-based for combats as the invisibility going on/off was messing with the NPC AI making them react in ways I did not want and could not control very well. After I learned how to use it, now I really like the turn-based method.
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I got to be honest, I use the Call of the Wild Mod just so that I can make the character I want (although it is missing my favorite class).

If we are being honest, I use the Bag of Tracks mods to make the rest frequency and encumbrance rules not as intrusive. I consider it a QOL improvement :)

I rolled with the same party for most of the game. My MC, Cleric of Zon Kuthon, Val as tank, Jaethal because her undead immunities are awesome, and I specced her as a support buffer and dispeller, Linzi because buffs, Octavia for traps and arcane stuff, and Ekun as DPS. I’d flex out Ekun if I wanted a challenge.

Ekun is so madly OP, at least through the midgame where they immediately give you a completely insane bow for him to use.

I liked how IIRC @Balasarius put it: You don’t even really have to control him, just aim the damage firehose in any ol’ vague direction and watch him powerwash the Definitely Not Forgotten Realms.

My PC performs better than Ekun in a similar role: Ranged Slayer/Deliverer. Sneak attacks from way down town.

Does this game track kills by character? I couldn’t find any character statistics screens, but I am pretty sure my PC has like 5X the amount of kills then any other character.

No kill tracker that I’ve seen.

Ekun gets maybe 1/2 the kills for my whole group combined. My MC is a druid, so his buffed pet is a distant number 2 within my group with Valarie as #3. My MC without pet gets a few kills, but nothing compared to Ekun.

I did just get Nok Nok, so maybe he will move to #2 on the kill list for my group.

Also what is the preferred “normal” difficulty? I am destroying everything on Normal difficulty. Currently LVL 8 chapter 2? The troll threat was already dealt with months ago but there are still unrelated quests nested under the category of Troll Trouble. I guess I am waiting for some hidden timer to trigger the next chapter switch event? Is that how this works?

I am in the exact same spot, although I finished all of the quests under Troll Trouble, all of my Companion Quests, and the Misc ones at the bottom. I believe I am waiting on that time that talks about the next event happening on that one Hill. It should be one of your Kingdom Quests (forget the actual name).

This is my first playthru, though, so I may be completely wrong. I have been meaning to look it up to make sure I am not doing anything wrong! I was going to take the time to explore the map as much as I can, claim some resources, and do some Kingdom quests with my main character and other advisors. I believe I am all caught up and waiting on that timer.

EDIT: I should say on difficulty, I am just on Normal also. I sort of like that challenge level, though, and don’t like to push my challenge in games like this. I am still running RTWP and pausing to select spells to cast periodically, and that is working well. I love turn based, but haven’t turned that on yet. It sounds like normal is a bit on the easy side for most of the game, though. I just keep it there as I like it to be a little easier.

Yea some triggers just need time. As for the dificulty, you probably have a good MC and a balanced party so you can up the difficulty. Normal for me was doable with a roleplay party without efficiency/min-maxing.

@Kelan yeah the haunted hill thing might actually be the “hidden” chapter 2 timer where in chapter 1 it was overt! Good catch. I still have a month.

I noticed Normal difficulty actually has enemies and crit damage set below normal values. WTF. I changed those to the Normal values and played for a while but I haven’t noticed much of difference. Maybe because I am in the twilight period of chapter 2 so the next chapter might wreck me?

I played through until I got the barony, and then sort of fizzled out. Only level 4, but the game began to feel like a min/max slog after a while. I can see all the crunchy goodness that appeals to many, for sure, but I guess my patience for such things has worn thin over the years. That, and the abysmal interface/system for the barony stuff.

That just sounds like total insanity to me. For me coming from the grand old Infinity Engine linage, this is totally and completely 100% my wheelhouse. Where have I been these past years?

I am a leprechaun that found his pot of gold.