1743

Yeah. Wow, I didn’t RTFM so I assumed a monk should be unarmed. I guess I should start gearing him up!

1744

I was under the impression that it simple gave you a boost beyond the negative impact, not cancelled it out.

1745

Not as long as you pick a god that supports what you were planning on playing anyway.

I mean, don’t take Skaen if you were thinking of being a goodie-two-shoes type. Same goes for Paladins. Don’t be a Bleak whatever if you want to play a nice guy generally speaking.

Wael is probably a bad choice since you’ll want to lie and be a smart ass while never telling the truth or being rational. Eothas would fit the “good guy” build better. Though you can avoid cruel and aggressive, so you’ll mostly just be a lying (which could work for a “good” guy).

I personally enjoyed it quite a bit, but I had no problem playing the hot headed smartass that Magran wanted me to be. And my Holy Radiance was… off the charts, often vaporizing whole groups of enemies with the talents I had in it and the boost from Aggressive and Clever. Especially those poor undead suckers.

You can avoid negative with a talent if you want, so you wont get weaker, but the power of that ability is still keyed off of following the Celebrated Behaviors.

1746

I made a costly mistake on level 2 of the Endless Path

[spoiler]

I climbed down the rope and spent the last several hours trying to make my way back up after killing the drake. With only 2 camping supplies I just couldn’t do it. If I could rest 2 or 3 more times it might not be a problem, but I guess it’s time to reload a save.’[/spoiler]

1747

Just hit the tilde key, hit enter, and type “rest”. I won’t tell.

1748

Yeah, I figured. I really liked on priest of azuth on table top, and I felt that Wae was closest, with rod and quarter staff bonuses.

Are party member priests also affected?

1749

I seem to recall that the ability that gets stronger/weaker for Priests and Paladins only “works” like that for PCs.

1750

Correct. Durance and whatshername don’t get any weaker/stronger based on what you do.

1751

Man, strong argument for my second character to be a Paladin. I really like the companion paladin - I just got an ability that let’s her “haste” a companion!

1752

I’m playing on hard right now but I’m thinking of switching to normal (or restarting, if necessary.) I find that I have to replay most battles at least once, and sometimes (ie. the sporeling battle in the cave, the two goblin king thingys in the temple) many, many more. Is that normal or do you guys breeze through most fights? I’m having fun but it also feels a bit like save scumming, retrying until getting that AoE just right, etc.

I already restarted once, when I was playing with a PC rogue. Cipher seems a lot better so far.

1753

I’ve been on hard from the start and only got stuck on two fights. One was a bounty and as such, designed to be a challenge and the other was a follow-up quest (and my favorite so far in the game for a variety of reasons) that was just a real, real bitch. I rolled the difficulty down for that second one to Easy… and it made 0 difference. It’s possible you can’t actually change the difficulty (which would be a bug) but it’s also possible this particular side-quest didn’t care what my difficulty level was set to. Not sure.

Otherwise, I find Hard to be generally a challenge (in that I can’t just mindlessly attack, I have to use positioning/abilities for almost every fight or I’d be constantly running back to town to rest/heal) with some throw-away common fights here and there. It’s just about perfect for me, though ymmv. Try Normal, my position is play whatever difficulty you have fun at - don’t play on Hard because other’s do - it’s not a competition or a race. In fact, there aren’t even any achievements for the various difficulty levels outside of the Path of the Damned.

1754

When changing difficulty, I’ve noticed it say that the change will take effect on the next map transition. Maybe that was the issue?

I’m currently playing on hard, and am still early on, but am finding it to be right so far. I have to think and make effective use of my abilities in most fights, and I feel a real difference in effectiveness depending on my tactics, which is exactly what I wanted. But yes, I do wind up having to reload on a fairly regular basis.

1755

Hard feels either just right or a touch easy for me in mid-act 2 with a druid main and a generated NPC to serve as my temporary 6th party member.

1756

I haven’t exactly been stuck, but going back to the sporeling fight, that probably took me 6 reloads. I did it with my Cipher (PC), Aloth, Durance and Eder. For the try that succeeded I managed to confuse one of the two big shrooms for a long time and that tied up the other big shroom into attacking it, allowing Aloth to stand there and flame them two or three times. My main kept getting knocked down and eventually knocked out, and Eder took forever fighting just one of the little shrooms. Meanwhile Aloth and Durance were hanging on for dear life against one surviving big guy and a little one, and I think Eder was the only one standing at the end. It was fun, I just don’t know whether to feel cheap about the number of reloads and exploiting the AI tendency of going after a confused foe.

For the temple (which I did without Durance) I found I generally had to reload twice+ for each room that contained 2+ Shades or Phantasms. In comparison, fighting bandits and such in the wilderness so far seems pretty easy.

1757

To be fair, that temple is fucking brutal for when you can get to it.

1758

They call it hard for a reason. If you don’t want to reload and try new tactics, play on normal or easy. I switched to normal myself; not because I was required to think tactically but due to the heavy micromanagement required in every pack of 3 kobolds.

1759

Yeah, I don’t know why some people play on Hard and then use here and there cheats or exploits. If you have reached that point, lower the difficulty and don’t cheat in exchange.

1760

AFAIK the difference between hard and normal (and maybe easy too) is just number and type of enemies you encounter but their stats stay the same. POTD adds even more enemies and makes everything stronger.

Act 1 was was challenging on hard, mainly because I was too cheap to hire additional party members. I had to backtrack a lot to do easier quests first when I hit a wall somewhere.

Act 2 was much easier, a full party makes a big difference and you’re not fighting enemies 3 levels above you. If you do all the side quests you often outlevel them and you have enough gold to get everyone decent, enchanted gear.
At the moment my party is steamrolling pretty much everything with just per encounter abilities but that might just be because I’ve done most act 2 side quests.

1761

Phew, I made it out of the Endless Path on a second attempt. I think I’m going to stay out of there for a while and head over to Defiance Bay. Progress the story. While the combat is good, I don’t like the constant combat in the Endless Path.

Responding to the difficulty level question…

I’ve been playing on Hard since the start and had trouble in the bear cave on my first attempt, but beat it on the 2nd using consumables. Then I had 2 or 3 tough battles in the Temple that I needed to retry. After that it had been smooth sailing until trying to fight my way out of the Endless Path. That was tough. My first 2 battles on the way to Defiance Bay have been easy again. I’m still level 5 in what I imagine is near the end of Act I. I now have my character + 4 of the companions. Didn’t hire anyone yet.

1762

Oh no what have you done?