PoE is nearly here!

I've run into a couple minor bugs, but overall I'd say it's a pretty good showing for launch. My Pallegina has negative DR with no armor equipped, but that's no big deal. Fortunately, it never occurred to me to doubleclick to equip items, so I avoided that pitfall. I'd recommend colorblind mode if you're not digging the eyeblasting green selection circles, it changes them to a more subtle blue.

 

I've only encountered one bug, although for me rather game breaking one: items with the property "unconquerable", which are supposed to increase focus gain for ciphers, will ultimately remove your ability to gain focus altogether. Now, I did find my main character, who just happens to be a cipher, rather OP in terms of, well, most things that does not include tanking, but this unintended balancing seems a little bit too harsh.

Got the monocle, by the way. After I realized what armor recovery actually meant in terms of combat mechanics, I've switched to a rather nice looking jacket, my trusty pistol and the monocle, to top things off. Doesn't really compensate for the fact that my main character has been nerfed to oblivion, but I've heard that a fix is on its way, so all things considered, it's still a pretty damn good game.

 

From what I have observed, the armor system follows a general rule of 1 base Damage Resist for 5% recovery penalty. Robes give 3 DR for 15%, padded armor gives 4 for 20%, and so on up to brigandine, which gives 10 DR for 50% recovery penalty. Plate is the exception, giving 12 for 50%, but is weak to shock. The only other exception I have found is what I have outfitted my monk with:

Spoiler

The Berathian Priest robes, found in Raedric's Hold, give 2 base DR for 5% recovery penalty. So that's basically one free point of DR. Add the mid-level quality enchantment (available at level 8) and that goes up to 6. Further add a crush-proofing enchantment and couple with the Blunting Belt, and you've got 11 DR pierce and slash, 9 blunt, and 6 everything else, all for the low low price of 5% recovery penalty! Add a +3 Dex ring and two fast weapons with Draining enchantments, and my monk becomes an unfettered, unstoppable killing machine.

 

I like the simplicity of the enchanting system. It opens up for tailored solutions for your characters, but by only giving the player access to certain properties, any unique items that are found are still "unique" by providing options that you would get no where else.

 

I just thought of some quality Pillars of Eternity humour:

"Hey man, it's Aloth - just thought I'd communicate telepathically to see if you wanted to go drinking tomorrow. It'll be me, you and the guys, we're going to get completely wankered at the Black Hound Inn just like old times. You should come, it'd be fun."

"No man I'm sorry I can't. If I go anywhere right now I'm really going to suffer for it. What I'm trying so say is, I've just got engaged..."

Do you get it?!?!?!? Because there's a portion of people who think the engagement mechanic is too restrictive on party movement and tactics due to disengagement attacks, however in real life people often fob off social events on the pre-text their partner wouldn't let them out, ahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahhahah!!!!!

 

Haven't slept since you started playing have you Jojobobojobojo

 

No, not really - was it that obvious? I'll try to reign in my sanity.

 

What happens when you doubleclick items? So far the most obnoxiuos bug is that readrics hold in some instances crashes the game when you try to enter. This is known though and is fixed in the next patch. Other it is that sometimes my party doesn't leave combat when the combat ends, so downed characters doesn't get up, summonings doesn't go awayand so forth, but a save/load fixes this.

 

Double clicking destroys all race and talent bonuses permanently as far as I'm aware - so don't do it. Besides that, saving in the same location where you acquired a companion causes item bonuses to be permanently transferred to them stackable if you reload - which has now happened to me on several companions with huge stacking on people like Eder. It's a bit of a windup seeing as I played on hard and so saved quite regularly, but now it's much easier than it should be through no fault of my own - so I'll probably restart post patch anyway just to feel satisfied regardless of the retrofix on saves with as I've now had a much "easier" time than I should have. But hey, I guess not everyone's as anal as me.

Further, I experienced another bug where one of my one per encounter abilities was locked as "already accessed" that or something like that - so I had to reload wasting a few hours as I could no more Grimoire Slam with Aloth to cancel engagement which is a pretty big deal. Watch for that for the time being.

It's a much buggier release than it should have been, especially as they could have delayed until this was all worked out.

 

Yes, I have found that it is buggier than I initially realized, now that I'm further into the game and have a better idea of what wrong looks like. A word of warning: if you encounter any Ogre Druids, they will cast a Plague of Insects spell that has no duration timer. So after you win the fight, your afflicted party members will continue to take damage until you save and reload.

When I heard about the stacking bonuses on companions, I thought my Eder must have benefited from it since his defense stats were so high; but after crunching the numbers, it turns out his stats were legit, if rather unbalanced IMO.

Spoiler

Taking the Sword and Board style talent adds +6 to your shield deflection bonus, AND adds the ENTIRE deflection bonus to your reflex stat. Now consider that a large shield gives +16 deflection, and can easily be increased to +24 with a mid-level quality enchantment. Such a shield, with sword and board style, grants +30 to deflection AND reflex, at a cost of -8 accuracy. The modal ability, Defender, grants +15 deflection and +10 to reflex/will/fortitude at a cost of -20% attack speed. Throw in a slew of other defensive items, abilities, and the fighter's naturally high defensive stats, and at max level, all four of Eder's defense stats are over 100. And with upgraded Constant Recovery, which can get an additional boost from a certain item, he regens endurance faster than enemies can damage him. So barring a tremendous burst of damage from, say, a dragon, he can pretty much weather any storm. So even if the rest of the party eats a shit sandwich, Eder will still be there, slowly hacking away at the enemy. This led to one comical (and frustrating) battle sequence where he and an enemy plate-clad fighter were the last people standing after a huge bloodbath. Neither of them could out-damage the other's regeneration, and would have kept clobbering each other until somebody ran out of health probably an hour later if I hadn't given up and reloaded.

EDIT: Bugs and quibbles aside, it really is an excellent game. Engrossing setting and story, great visuals, and fun gameplay.

 

I have the constant urge to restart a new character.

 

After my save getting pretty screwed by the stat stacking bug I've rerolled again. I went for a barbarian as I was tired of not having a heavy melee hitter (Eder just doesn't cut it) and I've got to say they're pretty great - Coastal Aumaua with max Might, Dex and Int (which apparently affects the Carnage radius, so it's a pretty big deal) and Resolve 15 so I can maintain concentration, minimum Con and Per (the way I see it Barbarians already have high Endurance, having even more seems a bit pointless, and I'm not too bothered about high interrupt as dishing out damage is really the priority). They are pretty frail with is a big difference to the Paladin I was played before, but the sky high damage and hitting hoards of monsters due to Carnage more than makes up for it.

What do people thinking about Obsidian vetting that poem because of some whiners on Twitter? Seems pretty pathetic they caved to me, though I can see why having good PR is more important than appearing to be transphobic especially over something that trivial.

Lets just hope no one is offended by the elitist notions a monocle represents.

 

The latest update (1.03?) fixed my lack of focus gain (which was mentioned in earlier posts), so I'm pretty satisfied. Still rocking away with ~75 % of all enemies slain by my main character, so those who state that cipher might be the most efficient DPS at the moment are not making up numbers, so to speak.

Also, after a small tip from a friend of mine, all my characters go with a secondary firearm. At the start of combat, everyone fires of one round, often picking off at least one enemy, before Edér and the paladin charges into melée. Fun and efficient, to say the least.

The monocle:

Spoiler

 

*Tips hat and nods*

 

So how many re-rolls have people racked up now? I'm on my fourth - first was because I didn't realise Might affected ranged damage on my Ranger, second was because I thought Rangers sucked and PotD was too hard, third was because of pre-patch bugs easying-up a significant portion of the game through the attribute stacking with my Paladin, and lastly I rerolled my Barbarian as I was getting down into the Endless Paths and after a certain point it now felt like Hard was too easy. I think Path of the Damned is fairly grueling to begin with, but becomes the more enjoyable and balanced difficulty as the game progresses and you level higher - at least for people who like a good level of challenge.

Besides, now I'm playing a Cipher which is pretty much an "easy" Path of the Damned so I should fair better; mainly because I wanted a strong ranged character as one of the things I enjoyed a lot in Arcanum was it being a fantasy setting with guns. Rangers, though okay, can't seem to out-perform the added power of Biting Whip and their animal companions really do suck - I was expecting the bear to be tanky with it's DT and with Resilient Companion to give it even more but it was always getting KOed thereby making holes in my defensive line.

Also now that the dust has settled a little bit, what are people thinking of it? I think it's really really great, the combat system is decent, the setting is decent, the amount of customisation you can have his high and it feels satisfying to be playing a brand new IP with its own identity rather than the countless lazy rehashes of fantasy tropes you get in most new RPGs. I think some mechanics as most people point out may need some tweaking (nerfing things like Petrifying, and maybe stop Ciphers being a better ranger than a Ranger and a better wizard than a Wizard) but all in all it plays pretty damn great now it's been patched.

 

My inability to have serious time to install/play this until likely May, combined with everyone's stories of rerolling behavior, is leading me to believe that this game will destroy me.

 

I've started maybe seven different characters. My first go was a ranger, and I found the kit to be rather unrewarding. Second was a monk, which I played to completion, mostly on normal then bumped to hard late game. The others were just test subjects for various builds, save the latest, which was a fighter built for solo on hard. I'm around mid-game with him, one level shy of max. I agree with Jojo, the game is great in spite of some annoying mechanics.

Now, a few solo-run observations:

Spoiler

After analyzing the various classes available and testing some different builds, I have come to the conclusion that the fighter is the ideal class for a solo run. The spellcasting classes (priest, wizard, cipher, druid) are just too squishy, and many of the spells available cannot target the caster, only allies. Also, because the game disallows casting of pretty much all buff, summon, and charm spells outside of combat, spellcasters will have a hard time initiating a fight on favorable terms without any front line support. With only one damage dealer, fights will often drag on for a long time; so assuming a spellcaster could get tanky enough to survive that long, their per rest/per encounter abilities would likely be exhausted before the fight wrapped up, leaving them nearly powerless. Rangers are generally useless, chanters are merely support, and rogues need allies to flank and distract enemies. That leaves the front-liners: monks, barbarians, paladins, and fighters. Monks and barbs lack the self-healing and defensive abilities that are a must when surrounded by enemies (which will be often on a solo run). Many paladin abilities are geared towards supporting allies, and are less than ideal when you're a party of one. And that leaves only the fighter.

If anyone is interested, I may follow up with some power-gaming/solo-run protips when I have time to write a lengthier post.

 

I have, so far, stuck to my Cipher, although I haven't finished the game yet (but will do in a near future!). At the moment, being max level and at the end of act three (?), my cipher has, approximately, 4/5 of the whole party's kills, which is, in a sense, rather ridiculous. Some powers seems equal to, or better than, many of the same level mage or druid spells in terms of CC or pure damage, with the main difference being that none of the powers are per rest restricted.

I have been considering rolling a monk for a second play-through (I've saved a couple of companion quests for this), but I'm still not certain how well that would suit me. Generally, I play for the RP experience rather than for the challenge, and will, most likely, stick to normal difficulty the second time around. What I've gathered from reading the official PoE forums, the balance between taking and receiving damage with monks might not be the most intuitive.