1708

Do you have ToyBox? When I’ve had to backtrack due to a glitch or something else, I turn on the following in ToyBox when I don’t feel like redoing lengthy content like the siege:

  • Up movement speed for party to 2x or whatever you want to set it to.
  • Enable “Always roll 20” for party
  • Enable “Always crit” for party
  • Enable “Always roll 1” for enemies

Then you can just zip through the content in realtime mode and you can get back to where you were pretty quickly.

1709

1710

I’m so in love with the Demon teleport charge. I’m deeply saddened that I’m near a rift at the end of Act 3 which disables all teleportation.

1711

Bit of spoiler stuff here.

I now find myself in the Abyss after the Midnight Fane portion and things have really gone off the rails. It’s so chaotic, even with the journal telling me what to do, I’m feeling a bit lost. Part of the problem is that I can’t find a place to rest that won’t corrupt me to the point I’m no good in combat so I’m hurrying it rather than doing my usual exploring.

Unfortunately, I’m not enjoying this part of the game and I feel I’ve left something undone or skipped something important earlier. I’m sure it’ll iron itself out, but what a massive shift from the crusade above.

1712

You can go back to the Nexus (the place where you first come through) to rest and remove corruption. It becomes a safe zone by the time you first enter the city. You can either do so by walking back the way you came or use any of the portal devices scattered around the city and teleport to it. You just won’t be able to teleport back to that same portal unless you have the coin/key for it.

Other than that, navigating around the city is confusing. I get that they were probably going for it, but I don’t know if it translates particularly well in terms of fun. It’s especially problematic when certain doors/portals bug out and don’t show up, although that’s thankfully only happened to me once. I did spend over an hour trying to figure it out and thinking I was missing something, though. Still peeved about that!

In any case, I found the city does get easier to navigate through as you go. This is especially so when you get coins for the different portals so can just fast travel from spot to spot. Until then, just remember to rotate your camera if it looks like you should be able to get somewhere that is blocked.

You should be able to get to the inn/tavern whatever it’s called in the Lower City pretty quick. This building has three doors which can help you traverse the Lower City. Going out one of the doors will put you right between the lift up to the Middle city and the arena. Use the tavern to traverse to the different sections of the lower city quickly.

1713

Thanks for the tip on resting. I guess I had tried resting out of the area too soon before it was set up as a safe zone so I’ll head back out and check on it. Once that’s managed, I think I’ll be able to calm myself a bit to enjoy the area more than I have.

1714

I bet you did because I did the exact same thing. :) I’m guessing it’s a tech limitation where the area gets swapped out with the “safe zone” version of the Nexus as soon as you leave but until then, it’s still a regular adventure zone.

One of those things that I think should probably be made clear to the player. I can’t speak for others, but I know that before I set foot in a friggin’ demon city I wanted to make sure I was rested up. Especially after the battle that ended Act 3. I rested right before I went into the portal, saw my corruption go up, and figured it was a hostile area.

1715

The way the game handles surprise rounds in TBM drives me nuts.

If I don’t start combat by having my MC do the thing, it skips her turn entirely for the surprise round for reasons. This means she’s flat-footed for the first round of combat, and having a flat-footed tank is Bad™.

So right now I’m opening most combats by having her use Demoralize. Lame!

1716

One more lesson the devs can learn by seeing how Solasta works.

1717

I like when Lann starts combat by shooting someone in the back of the head and is then “surprised” and caught flat-footed for the first round. I guess he thought they wouldn’t retaliate or just couldn’t believe that the demon from the Abyss would survive a single arrow?

1718

TBF, “not having just murdered everything” is an unusual state for Lann to be in.

1719

I concede the point!

What is up with archers in this ruleset anyway? Ekun was stupidly good in Kingmaker. Every other martial type feels like a chump half the time but I’m pretty sure Lann has a 50/50 shot of dropping a demigod in a single round of combat.

1720

It was my mission in the first game to build a MC more useful than Ekun and now in this one more useful than Lann (or axe throwing Wendaug). But yes ranged is great in that you don’t spend the first round moving at 20 ft slowly towards what you are tanking but instead killing what the tank was slow rolling up towards. If charge wasn’t as bugged as it was a pouncing kitsune Lich or horse charge would alleviate that somewhat.

1721

Ranged combat is very generously treated by behaviors in the Owlcat games.

Enemies who never bother so much as looking at the glass cannon if you put a tank in their face make for very effective glass cannons.

1722

Eh, it’s less extreme in Wrath. I can think of several instances where they zeroed in on my MC caster. Even enemy melee will sometimes charge in to get her, absorbing ineffective AOOs along the way.

Mirror Image is her only hope.

1723

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by having some monsters bypass my front line. In fact if seems to work roughly how I would expect - if they act first they sometimes eat an AoO to close on my squishy ones but if I can get a character to attack them first in melee they mostly keep fighting that character.

I’m probably going to go that route after finding myself making an alt that was simply a slightly tweaked version of my existing character.

1724

Very much so. Though even in TT they eventually get to where they are in Owlcat’s games. It just takes a lot of extra feats on top of the pile of feats they already have.

It’s just that it’s usually a looong time before you get to ignore friendlies giving the enemy cover from you. I played with a mod in Kingmaker that fixed flanking and ranged combat and ranged went from mindless damage to probably requiring the most effort to get to be effective.

This is definitely a thing. It’s fairly random, but when it does happen no amount of AoO are going to save you from some giant bruiser that decided your wizard needed to die today. Thankfully, Stoneskin, the Lich DR, mirror image and the like can help a ton, but even those can be hit or miss. For Lich eventually you had like 600 HPs because Blood Feast and the False Life thing combined with high Charisma got silly. But if you lose initiative things and hadn’t built up the Blood Feast Wall of Immortality, things could still go sideways quick.

For non-Liches death can happen fast. My Bard/Rogue often gets beelined and if you are flatfooted it can get ugly fast. I took Uncanny Dodge quick because of it.

1725

Every ranged also has to pay the Point Blank Shot + Precise Shot tax.

1726

I think I am in the final act and have missed a few things so I have some questions about that.

I did the city of iz, and now I am in the close the rift area that opens up after you finish iz.

I am playing a paladin on the angle path and I am only mythic rank 8, so I think I must have missed something. I thought you were supposed to be mythic rank 9 or 10 if you finished all your mythic quests.

  1. So in Iz I had a choice to save the queen or save some library ow knowledge. I am not sure I did either. I took one path, found the sword of valor and some cruaders. There was a door near by so I went into it, then found some demon boss, the first one who opened the pit in act 1, and I killed him. This apparently ends your adventures in the city of Iz. I never found the queen or the library I do not think. What was the right way to do this area?

  2. I had an inner light quest for my angle path. One of the quest steps was to determine the fate of the queen. I never figured out how to do this. How is this done?

  3. When I got back from the abyss, I had a quest to give some item to Hal (or some name like that). I could never find the dude. Google said he was in the 2nd floor of the Inn, but all that was for act 2, not act 4.

  4. I had a quest to find some missing captain dude or something. No clues given in the quest. This quest failed when I entered, what I assumed was the final part of the game. Where is he supposed to be.

  5. I had a quest to get the crusades ready for the final push. This was to own all territory on the map. I did own all territory. There were no demon armies anywhere. What is the effect or point of this quest?

While I am not quite finished, there are two things I need to complain about other than the bugs.

  1. I need a lot more direction on quests. Too many quests were like, talk to X or find X and there are no clues to where X is. I failed a number of quests due to this.

  2. I hated the puzzles, all of them. I aborted Neno’s quest (warning, have a save before you go into the final dungeon, because Neno will leave your party unless you finish that dungeon after entering it)… Neno’s quest dungeon was just puzzles within puzzles. Even after googling some of the solutions, I had no idea what the reasoning was behind the puzzles.

After I finish this, I am going to take a break and it will be refreshing to play as evil. Ill try and use some different party members next time.

1727