1583

I that’s part of the problem. I don’t want to micromanage anything.

1584

I understand completely. That’s when I go read a book.

1585

I don’t mind the camping supplies per se, but I sure lose a lot of fights at the last second. Videogames work best when victory feels desperate without making me replay the encounter again.

I’ve never run out of camping supplies on Hard, so perhaps I need to be more liberal with them. Or get more practice. I’m only 10 hours in.

1586

What difficulty are you playing at and how far are you in? I thought the point of having a combat system more involved than Dragon Age: I is so we have more to do.

At level 4 I haven’t really had to make a lot of camping supply runs or anything. That’s on Hard where I have a limit of 2. After having some tough battles in the Temple of Eothas, combat has been pretty easy (finishing up the side quests I got in the first town).

1587

Combat is enjoyable but I’ve yet to hit that wonderful moment in a real time game where I’m on pause and I have to think really hard what to do about a tricky situation. Dragon Age had this in spades. Even Mass Effect 3 did too.

I’m not sure it’s the game speed so much as the lethality.

Combat might become more intelligible as I get used to it. That happens a lot in busy games. Like I said, it’s still early.

1588

Combat’s definitely busy. That’s still my biggest knock on it. That said, once I learned how to read the chyrons over characters (incoming action, endurance, time until next action starts) it helped me a lot.

I micromanage the shit out of battle. I don’t mind, because I love this kind of combat, but if the Telefrogs of the world want to play on easy mode and enjoy the fantastic story without having to really dig into the guts of the combat, ain’t nothing wrong with that.

I’d say the “oh shit” moments where I pause and stroke my beard thoughtfully for a while are reasonably frequent at this point (16 hours in here, mid-act 2) for me. Definitely the game loves to throw you into combat from dialogue or vignette, and so I’ve had my share of “oh god, Aloth, good luck buddy” moments. Though my party is so efficient on trash at this point that I have had a full spread of daily powers available, so lately (especially since I got 3rd-level spells) I’ve been doing a bit more cutting loose in those situations and just blowing shit up. Eder enjoys the break from doing the heavy lifting that he usually does.

1589

I that’s part of the problem. I don’t want to micromanage anything.

You’re probably playing the wrong game, then. The entire point of the combat system is to micromanage.

1590

The “blindingly obvious thing” is that attrition (=supplies) should be a separate difficulty setting from combat challenge. I want “hard” level combat, but I don’t want to hoard my abilities.

“You’re playing the wrong game” is a bullshit internet bad-faith response. “Don’t like it, don’t play!” is not valid. Fuck anyone who says this sort of thing. We’re here because we love the game, but we don’t think it’s perfect.

Baldur’s Gate had limited AI. Pillars of Eternity would be a better game for many of us if it offered something similar. Enjoy micromanagement? Cool, turn off the AI. Same experience for you, better one for me.

1591

Since I got him (which hasn’t been THAT long; I’m actually falling behind most of you all here in hours played), I think Aloth’s managed to average about 2 actions per combat before dropping. Maybe I’ll just RP it as him having narcolepsy. . .

1592

One thing I wish the game had was information on how much damage on average a slow weapon does vs a fast one, like a DPS rating. If DPS is equal, a slow powerful weapon will be better against something with good damage resistance, but the game doesn’t give any information so you can actually try and figure that out (unless I missed something).

1593

I don’t want combat to be completely hands-off, but there has to be something better than me micromanaging every few seconds of combat for every person in my party. I didn’t think the lack of party AI would be a big deal to me, but it turns out that it is.

Plus, nothing is going to mitigate my dudes getting stuck on invisible environment bounding boxes and jittering around wasting precious seconds because I have to manually click them over there, then back to the fight.

1594

This is avoidable, I think.

  • custom formations to put him the back
  • hiring enough people so he is not the only one the enemies may target
  • using the engagement system (targets engaged in combat must first disengage to attack somebody else)

wizards also have self-defense spells, like magical shields or terror mask/auras.

Poor Aloth :3

1595

Going the wrong direction to avoid a bounding box is bad, but my favorite is using a door as a chokepoint and then some dude rushing in after the first enemy is killed, then getting pinned by engagement and ruining the whole thing.

1596

keep spoilers


I’m pretty sure you only get fatigued if you barely meet the skill checks or don’t have the items to make them easier. You find several camping supplies in the keep itself and there’s two NPCs who let you rest without using up supplies. You can also skip most combat there, it’s probably possible to finish that quest with just one or two rests.

In the endless paths you find at least one rest item on every level. One of the stronghold upgrades is a merchant that sells camping supplies should you need more. So you start out with two and get a free rest for each bigger fight.

I found it pretty balanced so far, the per encounter skills are enough to win most fights and you usually find camping supplies before you run into a big foozle.

1597

Argh, one of my wizards has a spell that’s stuck as “already activated”. Anyone run into this bug? Doesn’t matter what I do it stays greyed out even after camping or removing it from my grimoire.

1598

Try removing him from your party and adding him again.

1599

You can turn off the auto attack option. I think he’ll stay put then until you assign him to a target. Of course that means more micro.

1600

I must have picked that

That’s where the remains are recovered, right?

1601

I don’t want combat to be completely hands-off, but there has to be something better than me micromanaging every few seconds of combat for every person in my party. I didn’t think the lack of party AI would be a big deal to me, but it turns out that it is.

You can queue commands if you want, though it’s a bit shonky and I’d be very wary of leaving things on autopilot for long. But at the end of the day, this a combat system designed around micromanaging abilities and individual characters for maximum tactical advantage, like the old Infinity Engine games. If you’re not looking for that, you’re just not going to enjoy the combat. None of which is to excuse some of the bugs and design choices that make combat fiddlier than it needs to be.

1602

Great point, except the infinity engine games had AI.