Pillars of Eternity

Yeah, that’s not a bad move. I tend to use him more as an offtank / support guy, since I don’t really need the extra damage most of the time. Against casters, though, I usually pull out the arquebus and let him and Sagani rip em apart.

Been playing this off and on the past couple of months. Built up the stronghold, and advanced it’s quests to the point where I am now amassing an army to take on the noble who thinks he should own it (what a jerk). Finished two of the three main story quest out of Defiance Bay and am working on the final one (which looks like it might conclude Eder’s personal quest as well). My party is Level 8, and kitted out with all kinds of neat stuff. I’ve collected all the party characters, but am running with Eder, Kana, Aloth, Durance (man, does he kick ass now that I’m using him properly!) and Pallegina (the Paladin). That give me a 4-person melee wall (including my wolf) and a two-person ranged line (my ranger and Aloth), with Durance usually slinging support spells in the middle, and sometimes joining the melee with a wicked flail I looted during some quest.

I was able to go back and shred Searing Falls (only tough fight was the dragon at the end), took down The Forgotten, and have cleaned up Defiance Bay to the point where there are no remaining side quests and my rep there is Champion. I haven’t decided which faction to do the final faction quest for yet…leaning towards the Dozens for no real reason. In the meantime I’m going to finish that third quest out in the ruins, see if I can find Eder some answers, and figure out where that little elf girl ran off too. That should keep me busy for awhile. Pillars of Eternity is a lot of fun, but I feel like I need to have a solid hour or more to sit down with it…and it takes a lot of concentration, so it’s not an every night game for me.

Interesting. Do you find yourself trying to have a dedicated tank to take the big hits and gather the enemies, or with such a melee-heavy pattern do you kinda pair them off with bad guys? I’ve always run a pretty single-tank-heavy strategy, but I’m curious how well other methods might work.

I use Eder as the main tank for engaging the biggest threat. Kana will fight alongside him once the bad guy’s attention is on Eder. Pallegina will tank whatever other threat needs attention along with my wolf, and if there is only one caster my Ranger and Aloth usually explode him/her is short order.

If there are two casters, or multiple ranged threats, I will send Aloth off to the side at the start of the battle, then have him hurl a Fireball, Lightning Bolt or whatever that stream of fire spell is into the rear line of enemies, which usually is enough to kill one outright and damage the others making them easy pickings for my Ranger. I’ll keep the wolf back to guard Aloth in those situations, and possibly use Durance to finish some off as well. Both Eder and Pallegina can occupy multiple melee targets with their proper effects up, so I don’t usually have to worry about them until the ranged/casters are mopped up.

None of this would work nearly as well without Durance. That dude is a lifesaver. I’ll have him drop 2-3 buffs (DR and resistances) at the start of battle, then use either his knockdown spell or the one that freezes enemies while boosting allies stamina. In tougher fights, Consecrated Ground is a must for the stamina restoring pulse every second. Given that he’s also somehow become my best secret spotter (“and the flame reveals something new!”), lockpicker and trap disarmer…I can’t let him go at this point no matter how annoying he becomes!

I’ve been somewhat rushing the last part of the campaign (never finished the game, shame on me!) and I have to say that the final parts of White March part 2 are tedious as shit. Mob stats are way too high and all those monks are just unfun to fight. I’m looking forward to wrapping it up so I can return to the main campaign and hopefully finish that fast (I’m just before the Burial Isle) so I can move on to greener turn based pastures in PoE2.

That was the part I found incredibly tedious and difficult, too. I turned the difficulty way down.

Overall I found this game sort of fine.

There was a lot I found jarring about the setting (weirdly, the most jarring thing I found was the celtic-myth flavoured backdrop filled with American accents!). There was a lot that I found unpleasant about the writing (especially the amount just dropped on you; I desperately needed an accessible world map with a summary of the nations). And some of the classes (priest, monk and cipher, especially) seemed both to foist a great deal of unexpected narrative weight on you without ever exploring that aspect.

But there was a lot I enjoyed, too. I liked Durance’s subplot especially, and how it tied to the game’s main events. Some of the characters were better than others, and they all seemed to have completely different structure for quests and interactions, but they were all engaging in their way. Many of the quests were interesting, and the main quest was enough of a hook (at least, when it showed up to wave and say hi) even if very brief.

(re)read through all 3100+ posts here, as I’m finally committing to my Pillars 1 run. Been posting some thoughts on Twitter, so won’t repeat them here, but largely have gone through the same arc of feelings towards the game as many of you - @inactive_user in particular. I do, overall, like it a lot, especially as I know the lore very well now (and have read the hardcover guidebook, almanac, and even the short story/audiobook) - but not as much as I originally expected. I do expect I’ll like Pillars 2 more. It’s interesting to read some of the initial impressions based upon earlier states of the game, pre-balancing nerfs (such as having access to all level 1-2 spells “per encounter”, which would have been overpowering, imo; or people valuing the utility of the AI addition).

I’m over-leveled for some of the content now (I’m a completist, through and through), and enjoying my cipher main character, while largely alternating through the pre-white march party members to get as much of their quests/stories done as possible. I took an almost year break before resuming my playthrough (essentially immediately prior to Act 3) so I’ve been spending a bunch of time revisiting places just to refresh my memories of the state of things and solving outstanding texts/quests - have “solved” Eder/Aloth’s quests (strange non-closure, which I actually find refreshing) and gotten down to level 14 (?) (the locked door) and made the error of going to the White March battlefield early but culled a few outliers before fleeing, have done the possible bounties, maxed out the stronghold, and just have a couple of Defiance Bay things to do before advancing to Act 3 at level 10. I really am not inclined to enable level scaling either, but we’ll see.

Haha, I have posted in this thread rather a lot, haven’t I?

Two questions:

  1. Do I have to complete PoE 1 before I can start the White March?
  2. Will the turn-based mode ever be ported to PoE 1?

Thanks.

  1. No, but the content ranges in level from (off the top of my head) something like 6+.

  2. I would be surprised but I don’t know that they’ve ever said. Otoh I have no problems with the existing system so shrug.

I know a lot of people hate it, but I actually enjoy real time with pause combat, and think it fits Pillars 1 just fine. RTWP gives the player a lot of control over the speed and tempo of combat…something turn based systems can’t quite achieve.

Agreed. I love turn-based mode, but honestly something like RTwP can have really high tactical highs/rewarding feelings that turn based just can’t achieve. When it clicks, it really clicks, and it’s fun to see all the action happening at once (hopefully in a pace that’s easy to follow). But when it doesn’t click or work, it can feel like chaos, even after hundreds of hours of playing games like PoE it can still be hard for me to follow the action.

PoE 2’s turn-based mode is probably my favorite way to play, because while it lacks those highs, you never get the lows either, and it ends up being a consistently positive experience.

I think they’ve said it’s very unlikely.

No, and completing act 3 actually ends the game entirely. You’re expected to do everything in the White March during the main game content as far as I know (I think there might be an option to skip directly to it from the main menu, but I forget.). You can have it level scale the later original game content to compensate for the extra power you’re accumulating by doing so, though. But yes, be warned that it’s higher level content, with the second part of the DLC being the highest native level content in the game.

The RtWP combat in Kenshi is okay, but I have 100+ men in total, and the combat is really simple. But in a game where you only have 6 party members but dozens of potential spells and feats, I would rather it be turn-based.

I think the real time with pause works well with what they are trying to do with Pillars 2. But … I layed a ton of turnbased (after that weird patch) and I actually like that more.

Finally got past this puzzle, which is where I had given up last year, so far I am enjoying this again on STORY mode.

One thing that really peeved me about this game was after 60 hours it took me to finish, it never told me what a freaking Biawac was.

You learn what those are in the tutorial - they are the storms that your character seem uneffected by, but most others are turned to ash during. It’s a natural thing that occurs near old ruins or the like, or they were forming when the “machines” were turned on, though I’m not sure if it’s clarified for sure or only hinted at their.

But isn’t it also established that it was a Biawac that made your character a Watcher?

I am currently playing the game, just finished the 5th lvl of the Endless Paths of Nua.

That was the machine that did that, not the Biawac (the Biawac was a side effect of the machine being turned on, and the fact that your character in a past life shared a history with the main bad guy in that scene is a twist of fate).