Oh totally. I’m being a bit salty for effect here. It’s pretty baked into the system.
To be fair, a game with a complex magic system is guaranteed to have such issues, particularly when the players learn what’s happening under the hood. Mind Flyers are trivial in BG2 by using magic weapon prot + chaotic commands or one high-ac tank or undead summoning.
Sure, but the Mind Flayers in BG2 have multiple solutions. And brute force still works. I didn’t do at all what you mentioned and still cleared the whole compound with satisfaction.
One-note encounters with a prescribed hard counter solution makes it feel like…you have do it this way or you will be frustrated beyond belief. And you will be. At least I definitely was.
This kind of thing is usually reserved for super difficult encounters that require a specialized touch. The BG2 Liches. The Dragon Age: Origins Revenants. That one Mind Flayer Lich Wizard bastard in Storm of Zehir. Etc.
So, uh, what is the counter for the BG2 liches? Asking, uh, for a friend.
(I always just ground away with a lot of reloads until I managed to get their various spells down without anything catastrophic happening to my party.)
Open door, send in Minsc, close, door, wait.
The reminds me of a situation in a RL Pathfinder game, it was the drow campaign. Basically our party was in a dungeon, and my fighter Ffarthlane (half elf whip + shield spec) opened a door. The DM reads the room description and there’s a huge dragon inside. He tells us to roll initiative. My fighter, by the grace of Calistria, wins initiative and acts first. So, I close the door. And we all back up a room.
The dragon is too big to get through the door. We hold in a previous room and buff up, drink potions, heal, etc. When we’re all ready, we go back and trigger actions to opening the door. A breath weapon comes, which of course we buffed against. Fight is trivial.
Why was that dragon lairing in a room where he can’t fit through the door???
Depends if you asking about any lich or the grand Kangaxx.
Because any lich is much easier. The grand Kangaxx fight is a real bitch no matter what. But using high level cleric spells that deal massive damage against undead helps a lot. I don’t know if there is a silver bullet.
It’s been so long I don’t really remember. I think I’m probably just remembering the Kangaxx fight (because how could you forget that?) and thinking that it’s all the liches.
The trick to Kangaxx is you need someone immune to imprisonment, the easiest route to which is to have Korgan (or I think Minsc, but Korgan’s much more effective) or a PC Berserker.
If you don’t mind cheese, the rest of the liches can be dealt with by feeding them summons until they exhaust their high-level spells, then going in and kicking their faces in.
A scroll of protection against undead makes it impossible for Kangaxx to target that character, iirc.
He probably went into his lair, grew a few sizes, and then realized that he could no longer fit back out through the exit of his lair. It’s an all too common quarantine problem.
I just finished Vordakais 's tomb after a 4+ hour night to small hours slog. Completely exhausted with a dead companion to boot, I head back to the capital and immediately there is another crisis…instant transition to chapter V…
No rest for the weary.
That’s where I’m at, took a break weeks ago from the game once reaching the dungeon.
I got stuck months back on this, and had a sub-optimal build for several party members (I tend to just keep leveling people in what they come as, but have seen some pretty good arguments in this thread for mixing things up on a few people I wanted to try) so I started over this weekend, and basically stopped right where I got my barony because it was getting late. I enjoy the kingdom management stuff well enough, so here we go.
Going to review build suggestions here, because I think I’m still a little off, but I like the idea of exploring some different classes.
I just picked up Nok Nok and got him a couple nice daggers. I believe I am still in Chapter 2 even though it is a new category of quests.
I have no idea if I am doing the barony kingdom management well or not, but I constantly have Harrim doing the long research on the curses and try to keep my other advisors doing as much as they can. I have claimed a few new land areas and built just initial settlements there, visited most of them and started their quests/build workshops for the crafters. I have done very little other building in the villages, though, as I barely have enough BP to do the more important tasks, even with purchasing a bunch with most of my gold. So, hopefully I am keeping up well enough. I have also claimed the 15 BP resources nodes everywhere, I believe. I have it set to Easy and checked the can’t fail button, so should be okay. I have also been committing my baron to the two week stat gain/upgrade ones whenever I can and only have one waiting right now.
I had some major delays early on with builds and wondering if I was doing anything right, but I found some suggestions on the GOG forums and just decided to follow them exactly and go for it. They are working well enough so far. I have no idea if they are good or not! I picked the Sylvan Sorcerer myself with the leopard pet (not sure I like the character, but maybe it will grow on me). I am also trying to keep skills balanced between the teams I like to run so far so I have most checks covered well. Otherwise, some of these builds seem strange to me, but I don’t know Pathfinder really at all. These are the ones I have been using, in case they would be useful to anyone else. I can’t remember if these were listed here before or not:
https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/ineffects_guide_v2/page1
Overall, though, I am really enjoying the game and not even close to burning out yet. We will see how I feel when I get to the more frustrating parts that seem to be coming!
If you have Nok-Nok you are on chapter 3: Season of the Bloom. Which is relatively short or I just powered through it fairly quickly. I had a lot of quiet time for kingdom management / side quests / map exploration afterwards.
Call of the Wild added Occultist.
Sadly, the spell list is still a bit scant, but I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.
I’m glad we got the Battle Host, that is one of my favorite archetypes. A bit underpowered, but nice to see a heavily armored spell caster.
Ah yep! That’s it! I did a quick Google search and thought it said something else was Chapter 3, but I didn’t really look closely. Thanks.
I am pretty well caught up on side quests, but have a few I need to work on. Good to hear I will have a little time for that. I do have a lot of Kingdom ones I can’t seem to accomplish yet, but will keep an eye out. I believe some will just take a little longer. I am possibly on the last step of Season of the Bloom now.
My methodology is increasing my settlements by chapter. So I am in chapter 5 right now and I have five settlements. No idea if that is on pace, just winging it.
I think if I have a lot of time left I can do more stuff but I sort of fear that I trigger events earlier by being proactive. I have know idea.
That’s the thing with a CRPG that has timed quests/time mechanics baked-in throughout. Constant pressure. And it is incredible.
So my fears were true. After I cleared chapter 5 there seems to be another chapters worth of time just for side quests / kingdom management / etc.
The problem is all the problems, and my advisor ranks utterly failing to keep up with the raising difficulty of the kingdom events.
Like when I get a problem and there is only one advisor to choose and it says there is a 0% chance of success…I just don’t get it. How do they expect you to have your advisors ranked up so high already? Was I suppose to focus on only a couple of advisors and let the others flail around?
Outside of the kingdom stuff, the actually gameplay is super easy.
Several kingdom buildings can help. I always built Bulletin Boards in every settlement, but that’s only available for lawful characters. There’s a list of buildings here: https://pathfinderkingmaker.gamepedia.com/Kingdom_buildings
IIRC items equipped on the character that increase the stat related to the position (e.g. Councilor = Wisom) also helps.