You almost had it!
Dude you left out the first line of the poem, which refers to the goddess. The order was:
fish
moon
rain
moon
fingers
I thought it said the opposite? He is not immune to his water damage spells, but his friends are. At least that was my experience, I made sure he was placed outside of his own AOE but ignored everyone else.
I saw his ability mentioned in a video about him that I watched over the weekend. And when you cast a spell, the feedback shows only yellow circles, so I assumed that means the spells don’t hit friendlies. I never thought to worry about whether the spell can hit him but nobody else.
Spell details.
Also the class ability description
Speaking of companions, nearing 40 hours in and I’m still meeting new companions (although most recent was one of the sidekicks), and only because I had so much to do I wasn’t going into the areas that had them. I didn’t do the Watershapers until 35 hours in, for example, and Tekehu is a major companion. Wish the design introduced the companions a little bit earlier so making changes to party composition was a little easier to take.
Also, anyone have trouble with the Baratto and Velara plotline? I was trying to resolve it peacefully but somehow got roped into killing off both families because Velara went hostile and I didn’t want to support Baratto killing them off (I was leaning Velara but couldn’t manage the vault peacefully). After I noticed the vault didn’t go as I thought I was doing, I tried reloading before going in but the household remained hostile (meaning a choice I made before that must have had an effect), so I left it as is. I think I must have misinterpreted an action along the way that prevented a peaceful outcome, but I guess I’ll save it for another game. Hope I didn’t break something for later in the game.
Thanks. I would never have clicked on the class description. I imagine I’m not alone in that.
I found the fampyr lair Scott had mentioned, but on normal difficulty and at lvl 19 it’s still too easy. One thing I haven’t found is the magma/fire dragon I’ve seen in some videos. Not sure if that’s part of the final section or completely separate.
Created a holy slayer and spent quite a few Berath Blessing points on him and I think combining the double starting skill bonuses and the stat bonuses doubled the latter. He started with a 22 STR after I pushed it to 20 (he’s aumanua), and same for the other stats, all +2.
Isn’t +2 doubling the default +1 though? That sounds right to me?
I thought the stat bonus was +1 for those and the doubling of starter skills for stuff like mechanics, religion, etc.
My holy slayer laid hands on the Whispers of the Endless Paths, arguably the best great sword in the game, and is probably doing more damage than my Votary. I think I’m close to 50 hours with the game now.
I ditched Whispers of the Endless Paths as there’s just not enough penetration for the late game. Though maybe I should try upgrading it to Legendary. Not a fan of how they nerf the damage on cleave weapons, because then I need to pay attention and switch to a different weapon for single target and vice-versa.
I missed this - but yeah, at level 19 on Normal everything will be easy. I think the toughest fampyr lair I tackled I was level 13 or so, and it was pretty freaking brutal. There were like 3 different lairs though, so not sure which one you had been referring to. All of them were rough though. Lots of reloads and approaching with different strategies to complete, it was pretty fun.
and finished…
Steam says 78 hours, but there were many times I had it idling for hours - my guess is that it was closer to 50.
I only made it to level 15 playing on veteran difficulty. Other than the starting missions I pretty much just stuck to the Huana. For the most part most battles were pretty easy. Since I didn’t level as much as i could have, there were times the missions were 3 skulls. Sometimes they did have a difficult battle. The final one was a doozy that I lost the first time and when I fought it the second time I was very aggressive and won.
My party was Eder, Xoti, Tekehu, and Aloth. I thought they were all well done and enjoyed the conversations along the way.
In my final conversation at the end
I asked Eothas to consider taking pity on the souls stuck in the holding area, and he created a haven for them.
The biggest weakest of the game for me was the inconsistent challenge level. It really made it so I didn’t need to consider my actions in battle for much of the game. Also, I’d prefer a turn based system like in Divinity Original Sin - but I think the rest of PoE 2 is better. If I were to play again I wonder if I’d prefer just playing with 2 characters but multiclassing them.
The art was great in the game and I enjoyed going to new areas. I also love the conversation options based on skills and the personalty of my character.
I didn’t like the ship combat at all and avoid it where I could. I paid as little attention as I could to my ship and crew.
I hope I get to meet up with my party again in the DLC that will follow.
Not just the combat but everything about the ship as a replacement for your keep from the first game feels tacked on and underbaked as hell. I vastly prefer the first game’s setting, and exploring its wilderness zones felt a lot more like the BG games than the sequel.
Well I can’t help but firmly disagree. I’ve been playing Deadfire a ton lately. Ship combat seems like a good system in - game. The keep in Pillars? That was weak and annoying. I was constantly annoyed by that keep. And I just did a pillars playthrough.
Deadfire seems like almost a BG2 second hand. The best part of it is trying out new specs. Try a gunner, or a crusader.
Maybe we are all getting a bit cynical. But This game? I have to admit is pretty freakin great.
I enjoyed exploring the keep in PoE1, but the defending it was pretty lame. I ignored that aspect of it just like I ignored the ship.
I liked PoE1 a lot, and I preferred the single land mass for exploration purposes - but I did think PoE 2 had better party conversations, the art was great, and some usability improvements in combat. I’m happy I could essentially ignore the ship stuff, but maybe that was partially because I didn’t sail around much other than the places necessary to complete the Huana and main missions.
Finished at ~65 hours. I did everything. It was much better than PoE1. However… I can’t help but be reminded, once again, how despite their efforts no one ever comes close to Baldur’s Gate 2. My romance with Maia was a joke. It never went anywhere or did anything and in the end if you don’t side with the RDC she leaves you. (Xoti was not an option because of her annoying voice work, but I see there’s already a mod on the Nexus to silence her and the annoying Narrator. Here’s hope for the second play-through.) I still have never seen an RPG the comes close to the depth of the BG2 romances. Maybe I did something wrong, but it really seems like it was bugged or they shouldn’t even have bothered.
Remember BG2 had unique Class Fortress. Sure, some were better than others, but every class had one (PoE1 offered only one, for every class, and it was ultimately a boring disappointment). The ship in PoE2 was not a Class Fortress.
The gear was boring, likely owing to the game’s mechanics. There’s so much loot in BG2 that can get you really excited (Holy Avenger, Girdle of Frost Giant Strength, etc.), but I never found that with anything in PoE2. 15% of hits converted to crits. Ok, whatever.
I really enjoyed the Pirate stuff in PoE2, including capturing the Undead Flagship. But it was a bit of a let-down at the end as the Undead Flagship was crap in battle. The shanties were great, but that’s probably because there were only like three.
The ship combat was pretty bad, and I just mashed the “1” key to close to boarding range as a fast possible – I often took no damage with the Dyrwood ship, whereas you always do if you tell the computer to do it for you. I see there’s also a mod on Nexus to skip the ship combat and go right to boarding. Gee.
Combat mechanics were pretty complex. For example, I couldn’t understand what the numbers above enemies head’s meant. I remember Scott explained it one of his videos, but despite that, I still couldn’t figure it out. So I googled it, and found the same question on Reddit. But if you read the top-most response, you’ll see that he also got it partially wrong! You have read the next guy’s response to him to figure out. That’s insane.
I had to respec my Paladin because I took the “self immolation” ability and she kept killing herself. So dumb. There’s also a mod on Nexus to fix this…
I played without scaling and I enjoyed it that way, because I like feeling powerful and just destroying my enemies.
It’s an excellent game but that just seems to make its faults that more bothersome.
I disagree that it’s “much better” than the original. Its character build and UI are better, combat mechanics are better, as are its graphics, but other than that I think basically every other aspect is inferior to the first game.
Which doesn’t make it a bad game, not at all. I’ve got close to 50 hours in with it so far, and created my 4th build yesterday morning, a Crusader (Unbroken + Goldpact). Dude tanks like a beast while the rest of the party cleans up.
I’m ‘only’ 20 hours in but I am finding myself enjoying POE2 a lot more than the first one. I think there’s something about the level of polish (and better level scaling) that makes me feel that the game is moving along at a much more reasonable pace than the first one (even if it is mostly side quests)
Got my Crusader to 14th level and decided to create a 5th toon, an Evoker. His magic missiles are lethal, because I bought the magic gloves from the bonus merchant at Port Maje and he’s a nature godlike, so that’s 5-6 PLs above his current level when he throws evocation spells around.