1741

Never liked monks but that the NPC is evil makes it much easier, Thanks!

1742

The evil NPCs are not bad nor overly evil. They’ll follow you no matter what without much complaint. The Eldritch Scion can even turn CN if you do his personal quest right.

The inquisitor has a pretty interesting personal quest and she should totally turn N at the end, but I think Owlcat just overlooked it.

Nok-Nok is written by Chris Avellone and should be experienced. He has some of the best writing in the game.

None of the NPCs can be made into paladins, but you can recruit a mercenary if you want. They have a smaller point-buy, though.

I made Valerie a Scaled Fist monk on my current run and I’m really enjoying it. It takes her around ten levels to hit her stride, but now she’s a real powerhouse.

1743

I have to jump back in, but I am going to go crazy with the TBS mod, and the new classes.

1744

Just as an FYI, the “any neutral” restriction on druid is ridiculously easy to maintain.

1745

In games like this I usually try to keep my party as close as possible to my alignment - for this run Chaotic Good. But that went out the window with the Chaotic Evil goblin Nok-Nok. He is just too fun to have around. He’s like a mangy little pet that nips people’s heels if they get too close. After letting him in, I opened the gates a little. Overall, I think Owlcat has done a great job with the companions in this game. I have my favourites but I mix and match a lot too.

1746

Got a great action shot this morning.

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1747

Did you start over or continue from your first game? I know you made it pretty far and then started running into issues. Is it balanced a bit better now?

1748

I started completely over, just to make sure none of the previous issues followed me (and that first game was totally broken because of issues with companion quests that didn’t start/couldn’t end and so I got “bad” outcomes with key companions in my party as they thought I didn’t do their questlines). Completely started over, and after 25+ hours (and level 13 now) I am happy to say everything seems to work like you’d expect, no surprises (except good ones).

If I had to criticize something, it would be the game’s lack of quest/journal feedback. I frequently feel like I need to look up where to go next for a given quest, and there are quests to be had in your villages/towns you create that you don’t know to go visit unless you do out of your own natural curiosity. Honestly the game has a huge amount of content and some of it’s just completely hidden and most players will miss it.

As an example of how confusing it can be some times, I recently went into a village and found a half-elf that claimed to have been unfairly accused of stealing, he had taken a loan from a vendor and didn’t steal anything! My dialog options were basically “take this guy away!” or “I’ve got to get going” and finally I just said the latter, and was then given a journal update to go talk to Hassif about this guys loan. The character never mentioned Hassif as a name, and I had to Google who that even was (it’s one of the vendors in your capitol city), so I could talk to him. Just sort of odd and they could do a better job telling you where to go. Sometimes you get little red “!” next to locations for quests, but it’s not consistent when those pop up so you can’t rely on it.

But as far as bugs and stability, everything from quests starting and responses being counted to the math behind your characters skills/feats/equipment and how spells and abilities work all seems to be smooth and working great.

1749

Ooh, I forgot about Kanerah! Lawful Evil, but only barely so. And you can certainly romance her has a LG Paladin.

Her romance is complex, as I suspect all (or most) of them are. I screwed it up a few times before I gave up and found a detailed guide. Still don’t have the romance achievement…

There are still a handful of bugs in the game in the deep corners, mostly related to class abilities. For example, the Eldritch Archer, a Magus archetype. Their key ability (of questionable value) is a feat called Ranged Spellstrike that allows them to cast a ranged touch attack spell, and then fire that spell along their bow. For one roll of the die they effectively get two attacks. Or something. I mean, it’s not like I leveled one up to 19 and never fully understood the benefits of the class, or anything…

Anyway, there’s a metamagic feat the Eldritch Archer (and Magus) can take called Reach Spell that makes a touch attack into a ranged touch attack. Since ranged touch attacks are are the Eldritch Archer’s bread and butter, that should allow the Eldritch Archer to fire the metamagicked spell along their bow with Ranged Spellstrike.

But it doesn’t work.

Also Baleful Polymorph. If you kill an enemy while under its effects you can’t loot them, with the exception of quest items. Devs confirmed it was a bug. Never fixed it.

Like all games that I love, I could spend days complaining about what’s wrong with it.

1750

One of my problems with the game is that whenevre I pause to issue commands I have 3 different spells overlayed over the combat area and I have to navigate by name labels to understand anything that happens.

One more reason to use TB mod in non-trash fights.

1751

One thing the TB mod really makes me wish for is a way to organize abilities by swift, standard and full round. I never can remember what is a swift ability off the top of my head, so I spend a lot of time each turn hovering over every ability in the hotbar scanning for that word…

1752

Well, there are three ability bars so you could do come up with some system that works for you, I’d imagine.

1753

I’m just playing through for my first time and this feels very true for me in act 1. I’ve cleaned out just about everything (and I’ve rested plenty!) and I still have over 30 days left to clear out the Stolen Lands.

1754

@robc04 I wrote a bit more about my experience with this in the other Pathfinder thread, but it reminded me you had asked about this earlier and now I’ve beaten the game from start to finish in it’s current/final state and I had some thoughts. Here they are, from the other thread:

The game is in great shape right now. Having wrapped it up (and now having put 172 hours or so into it) I have really only three main complaints. The rest of the game, by the way, other than these complaints, is awesome and only having three is great. But, I will display them here:

1 - True Sight is still broken, in that it doesn’t seem to do anything. I observed characters with True Sight still being asked to make concealment checks when making attacks against opponents with some sort of displacement or invisibility type effect. Google results showed this was being complained about years ago, so it’s disappointing it never got fixed. Make sure you eventually give your troops Blind Fighting (and it goes up to Improved Blind Fighting and eventually Greater Blind Fighting, I found out, which is awesome) or use spells like Glitterdust, which does work. Don’t waste a 6th level slot on True Sight though.

2 - Some times I had no freaking idea where to go or what to do in order to advance or wrap up a quest, or solve a puzzle for that matter. I feel like I had to alt-tab out and look up a lot of stuff, and “is this something I can do now, or something I have to wait for further developments over” as well. Sometimes the game is good about putting a red “!” next to a location, making it clear that’s where you have a quest to go to, but not always.

3 - This is a major, major spoiler for the final chapter, but I feel like the railroading of Linzi’s fate and how it’s unavoidable is very frustrating because she was a staple in my party (and many new players keep her since she’s your first companion and excellent, to boot) and I really missed her, and then had to use a respec mod to make a new “skill” person for things like perception and trickery checks. Kind of annoying. In the end, it all worked out, but I am blown away there isn’t a way to keep her in your party if you want/can.

Anyway, other than that everything seemed to work (mechanically speaking), quests triggered and played out to varying results that felt good and satisfying, the kingdom management on “auto” was totally fine. I would periodically buy up a bunch of BP just to help the auto-building stuff expand my kingdom for me, and I had the “you can’t lose from kingdom nonsense” option toggled firmly ON, so all that stuff didn’t matter (which is good or it would have made the above list). In fact, I actively really like the aspect of Kingdom Management where you meet people in your throne room and make decisions (often with lasting effects), get new quests, and generally move the story along. That’s super cool to me.

Great, great game, I even think it’s the best D&D game in PC/video game form right now.

1755

Thanks Scott. This is towards the top of my list of tactical RPGs to play again - starting from the beginning. I think the problem I had using the turn based mod was fixed, so I can try that again. So this bumped off Temple of Elemental of Evil as your favorite? That is high praise from you as I know you liked that game a lot.

I think I would kick start the next Pathfinder game if it weren’t so far out in the future. I just hate paying for a game that I won’t play in over a year. So many places have preorder discounts that I probably wouldn’t even save that much money buying now.

1756

It did, which is the highest praise I can give it. And I mean, that’s factoring in the Circle of Eight modpack and additional content the community has created over the years - Kingmaker’s scope is just unparalleled and amazing, in terms of reactive dialog and content from levels 1 through 20 with all the classes, sub-classes, and encounters. It’s not perfect, some times there really should be more ways to react to something for your particular alignment and sometimes the alignment choices don’t really match to the alignment themselves, but generally speaking it’s some impressive stuff.

I still recommend playing with the turn-based mod OFF for most of the game, but keep it installed so you can toggle it on for fights that you just need to slow down and take it easy, some of the encounters can be challenging. They’ve done a good job re-balancing the numbers so Normal feels good for 98% of the game though, but there are a lot of trash mobs and you don’t want to turn-based mode anything where your AI controlled party can thrash through in spectacular, real-time fashion in the blink of an eye when that same battle in TB mode is like 7 minutes long. It’s a big game, and shaving off some of the time with real-time battles will pay off in the long run.

I can understand that - and for many early access games/crowd funding games I agree, but some games I like to think my early contribution helps make the final product that much more polished, so I’m happy to contribute early, and this (Wrath of the Righteous) is one such situation. Plus, I like having a game “already paid for” in the same way I enjoy the sensation of having something pre-ordered - it’s all bought and paid for, all I need to do is pick it up when it’s ready. It’s nice not having to set aside funds later for some things.

1757

to piggy back on what @Scotch_Lufkin was saying, I also really like this game. I’m not sure if it is going to dethrone DOS2 as my current favorite ISO, but… it will be close! I’m 60 hours in now, around level 12. There is a ton of game here. and none of it feels too samey. It’s not a bunch of fed ex quests that all look the same with the names changed. I have some pet peeves, and they stand out in my head because the rest of the game is so good that my complaints are few.

Some of the puzzles and quests are timed, and some of them don’t really let you know what that time is. One or two companion quests for me timed out, and I’m not sure when I could have squeezed one of them in because I had timers going for the main quest line as well. Timers in general are weird in this game and there are definite fail scenarios where if you don’t get quests done by a certain date you lose. 10 hours in that isn’t so bad… but 60 hours in is a little scary seeing these pop up still. On top of that several kingdom options take you out of the game for 14 days, and some of them can tank your kingdom if you aren’t paying attention.

I liked the turned based, but it got too slow. the game is too long, and frankly RTwP if you pay attention is actually nearly identical just with AI thrown in. Everyone is still moving according to a round, and there are like 30 auto pause options in the settings. I much prefer the RTwP on this plauy through.

I kinda sort of wish character building, and to be specific feat building was a little clearer for a Pathfinder newbie. There are a zillion of them, and I’m not sure which ones you need when in order to unlock later ones, etc. can we have a feat tree, or something to see where this build is going?

The NPC companions you get in game are designed with role play in mind, not min maxing. None of them are 100% solid builds. They all have something quirky. For instance one of the clerics you can get is practically worthless as a healer… or a tank… or a damage dealer, but damn if he isn’t entertaining. Many folks who play on the hardest difficult resort to filling their team with mercenaries 100% to get the best builds. You can also download a mod that will allow you to respec anyone in game for 1000 gold.

Likewise, several of your needs for kingdom advisers are very limited, and it would be fairly easy to lock yourself out of a having couple advisers completely due to story choices. As in, you have 3 options for a councilor for example and you can lock out all 3 in the story, so you don’t get that adviser for this play through. Fortunately you can use gold to fix this with a mercenary hired as a kingdom adviser.

1758

You did this on your first full playthrough? Bold move. It’s definitely … weird. The AI works, but my kingdom keeps going into “troubled” status because the AI spends too many BP on building town improvements – even with me buying tons of BP. It also will not build mage towers / teleportation circles in all of your towns, so you have to hoof it everywhere just like in patch 1.0. I also feel I have much less understanding of my kingdom since the AI is doing so much in the background. It’s fine, because I’ve done it four times prior, but I’d hate to do this on my first playthrough.

With your kingdom on “auto” you miss at least 75% of these. There’s one every time a kingdom stat levels up. And some of them have an overarching narrative. For example, Espionage focuses on first defending against the spies of a neighboring kingdom and then ultimately infiltrating their spy headquarters and what to do about it.

1759

Here’s one! It is of course, ugly as hell. Which is probably why it’s not in-game.

Both Ekundayo and Nok-Nok are fantastic. Ekun even has a higher point-buy than the PC.

Most of them are fine. Yeah, Valerie has that 16 CHA, but nothing else really jumps out.

I’ve completed four playthroughs with Harrim as main healer and backup tank, and now on my fifth he’s both as I’ve made Valerie a monk (though at level 10+ a monk can serve as a tank.) Tristian is just terrible. I’ve relegated to making him into an Mystic Theurge just to keep it interesting. Plus that whole “vacation” he takes at the end of chapter 4 doesn’t help. And I just killed him in my evil playthrough.

That sounds hard to achieve on accident. Seems like you’d have to purposely murder or kick out a few companions.

1760

To clarify, my first few play throughs I had this on manual so I did see a lot of that stuff (when it worked). Honestly, a lot of the stuff I remembered still seemed to happen? In any case, I suppose I could dig into it on a future play through, but for this recent one I just wanted to see the game’s conclusion. I had it set to never let me lose through a kingdom fail state, so my stats didn’t matter a lick.