Pillars of Eternity - Eat my Cipher!

[Fez]

The upside of being sick is that it was an easy decision to stay in and keep playing instead of being social. I ended up sticking with the Paladin whose stats I posted before and I'm glad I did; I'm not a full tank but I desperately need that survivability, and I'm still the second highest damage dealer in the party (NPCs only, I want the full experience, complete with their asides, conversations, and (limited) banter. I'm eight hours in (closer to 9 really, but I rushed the opening since I'd already seen it with my original Barbarian).

Okay, so Raedric; that was a bitch of a fight. I'd been doing fine on normal, only losing a handful of battles all game. That one took me six tries to get it. But I didn't cheese it, so I've got that going for me.

Also, the game is quite preposterously generous with loot and cash. I'm amassing a fortune very quickly and I'm only 3 hours into the game. Quite a shock after Wasteland 2's near-sociopathic rationing of loot and cash throughout its entire length. PoE's attitude is more, "Feck it, go wild."

There's a money-sink coming up

Upgrading your stronghold. I haven't counted but there's probably at least 20 upgrades, nearly all costing between 900 and 2500 cps each

Trying to find this contact Nedmar (?) in Raedric's Keep. Instead I've just been slaughtering the entire collection of priests and paladins. Maybe they deserve it.

He's on the third floor behind a locked door that requires 4 mechanics+lockpicks or 5 mechanics. I don't think there's a key (maybe there is, but I had 5 mechanics on Durance so I didn't need to find one).

Also, I don't know if it works once you've started killing people on the third floor (inside only), but at the far western bit there's chests with some disguise armor you can wear. There's some resolve checks you need to pass for it to work though

Great game.

ETA: Kana!

is awesome btw. I never would've defeated Raedric without him, a couple well-timed white worm invocations were all that stood between me and defeat. Literally. At the end there, I was down to Aloth who had no spells left, a nearly knocked-out PC, and Kana! He already has more total damage output then any party members besides my PC, and he'll catch up with her soon enough.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Of course I didn't have anyone with sufficient Mechanics to get through that door. I should have known better than to not level a skill like that immediately... though it seems I've missed a party member as I don't have the person you named and haven't found them up through where I am now puttering around (Defiance Bay),

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

Anybody who goes out of their way to make a dwarf right away is my kind of person. I made a mountain dwarf fighter, although I feel like I am kind of regretting that choice since

One of the earlier companions to join the party for good is also a fighter. Not getting much diversity there.

Everybody who has been hype for this game on the forum should get a piece of the commission because I bought this game primarily due to the collective Westeros excitement.

I have a paladin, but I found it useful to have two tanks. My character is more of an off-tank who protects the wings from flanking, while the companion acts as the primary tank.

Current progress:

I ended up going to find the Watcher at Caed Nua. Much to my surprise and delight, after killing the deranged Watcher, a talking statue asked me to be the lord of the keep. I was not expecting that. Since, as Wert says, this game is generous with loot, I managed to buy several upgrades at the outset. I did speed up construction by jumping back and forth through map travel. It reminds me of the homebase in Assassin's Creed II and WoW's garrisons.

Instead of going through the Endless Depths underneath the Keep, I think I'll backtrack to do these quests involving the lord of Gilded Vale that others are mentioning.

[Fez]

Of course I didn't have anyone with sufficient Mechanics to get through that door. I should have known better than to not level a skill like that immediately... though it seems I've missed a party member as I don't have the person you named and haven't found them up through where I am now puttering around (Defiance Bay),

Do you mean Durance or Kana?

Kana is outside Caed Nua. Durance is in Magran's Fork, next to the statue near the top of the map.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Do you mean Durance or Kana?

Kana is outside Caed Nua. Durance is in Magran's Fork, next to the statue near the top of the map.

I went through the Magran's Fork area to help the pregnant lady, but somehow I missed getting Durance in my party. I'll have to backtrack once I get myself out of these catacombs.

Kana might be my favorite if only because when I got him, he came with the arquebus that suddenly solved my problems killing Shadows.

[MerenthaClone]

My upcoming gimmick playthrough of a Valian pike-and-shot company should go well. Chanter, Paladin, then some combination of Paladin, Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue. Chanter's "Ila nocked" will be required for halving the reload speed of my back line, but opening up with a volley of (sneak attack) arquebuses should thin a lot of the mess out as well. Plus, pikes!

e: The nerfs to guns from the beta kind of hurts, but that's okay. It'll be fun. Also, I'll need a better source of fancy hats. I found one in the Black Hound, but that won't outfit a company, now will it?

[Relic]

The upside of being sick is that it was an easy decision to stay in and keep playing instead of being social.

I'm i the same boat. Cheers! :cheers: Here's to putting some work in tonight.

[The Drunkard]

I'm only like four hours in, and I suck. Really struggling against the Shadows and Phantoms that are around.

Made a human with a mohawk and a scruffy beard, gave him the furs/skins look, made him a Ranger, called him Boris. He has a pet stag named Stan.

I think I'm going to hire an adventurer and make him a second tank. Edér and Stan don't seem to be up to it.

[Dragonfish]

Sheesh, you guys are doing a great job of making me want to play this game. I played Planescape: Torment for the first time not too long ago, and though I wasn't particularly enthused by the combat, the writing more than made up for it. Which means that it's probably inevitable that I will pick up PoE sometime soon. However, there is one thing holding me back: I've no idea if my PC can support it. I can't seem to find a way to compare my specs to the recommended or minimum specs for the game (my knowledge of computers being rather light on...well, knowledge). Could one of you fine folks inform me if my computer can shoulder the burden, based on my specs below?

OS: Windows 7 (64-bit)

Processor: Intel Core i5-2410M

Memory: 6 GB

Graphics: Mobile Intel HD Graphics

Thanks in advance

[Altherion]

I'm only like four hours in, and I suck. Really struggling against the Shadows and Phantoms that are around.

Made a human with a mohawk and a scruffy beard, gave him the furs/skins look, made him a Ranger, called him Boris. He has a pet stag named Stan.

I think I'm going to hire an adventurer and make him a second tank. Edér and Stan don't seem to be up to it.

I think the idea behind the place with Shadows is that unless you've fully optimized the character builds, you're supposed to come back later. I'm playing with a Wizard named Telmarath on Hard and while Eder, Aloth and Telmarath could handle small groups of Shadows, more than 3 or so are too much and the Shades are basically impossible -- none of us can reliably hit them and even when we do, we don't hurt them much... and they appear to summon Shadows (WTF?). If you keep exploring, you will meet more characters which should make things easier.

I'm not sure if I'm using my Wizards right. In the old games, they had limited spells per rest just like here -- but at least these spells were guaranteed to hit for half damage or something like that. Here, every spell has an Accuracy-based roll (just like physical attacks) so any spell can miss completely. Except for some well-placed cones of fire, I'm not getting much use out of spells.

Could one of you fine folks inform me if my computer can shoulder the burden, based on my specs below?

OS: Windows 7 (64-bit)

Processor: Intel Core i5-2410M

Memory: 6 GB

Graphics: Mobile Intel HD Graphics

I have a laptop that is from around the same time frame as yours, but with a discreed GPU and it works just fine at the highest resolution. Yours should work, but probably not at high settings.

[Jasta11]

The Temple of Eothas is definitely not something you should tackle right away. You can clear the first floor with 3 party members, the second one you'd need 4+ and preferably to be level 3.

[The Drunkard]

I think the idea behind the place with Shadows is that unless you've fully optimized the character builds, you're supposed to come back later. I'm playing with a Wizard named Telmarath on Hard and while Eder, Aloth and Telmarath could handle small groups of Shadows, more than 3 or so are too much and the Shades are basically impossible -- none of us can reliably hit them and even when we do, we don't hurt them much... and they appear to summon Shadows (WTF?). If you keep exploring, you will meet more characters which should make things easier.

The Temple of Eothas is definitely not something you should tackle right away. You can clear the first floor with 3 party members, the second one you'd need 4+ and preferably to be level 3.

Yeah, after picking up Durance and Kana (and levelling up) I've been able to clear the temple and Raedric's Hold easily-ish. Doubling back seems to help, I think.

Tried to do the bear quest, died. Picked up Althor and Eder, tried to do the temple, died. Picked up Durance and Kana, tried to do Caed Nua, died. After returning with all these guys the bear was a walk in the park, the temple was still hard but not impossible, Raedric's Hold was time consuming but easy (bar the last fight), and now I think I should be able to clear Caed Nua.

The last fight in Raedric's Hold was such a slog. After killing his soft defenders, and after he knocked out Kana and my stag, it was just me wailing on his high-DR paladins, and him wailing on my tank, for ages. Burned through all my spells trying to speed it up.

[Relic]

So i rolled a Cipher in the Inn to add to my party (now at 6 members) and wow, what a great class. I might have to re-roll my main at some point. Anyway im playing on hard (having a limit of 2 camping supplies is rough) and need to min max a bit. I want to make sure i understand the Cipher class. Right now my cipher has a pistol and and attacks from the back row, but since they gain energy with each hit i think a faster weapon is the way to go. Is that correct?

[Fez]

Going pretty well with the Pally, reached Act II

Defiance Bay isn't quite grabbing me as much as the first areas were, but that's an issue I had with the old IE games as well. The cities were never my favorite parts; it always feels too gamey, running around a city talking to every stranger I can find to get all the quests available. On the plus side, I got through all of that, and now am at the stage of actually doing quests. I'm about to enter the catacombs, because of course there's a catacombs level.

Also, there are either two or three different main factions (Dozens, alimancers, the Knights) that I've encountered in Defiance Bay. All of them gave me quests, which I have done nothing on yet, and I'm hoping there's a way I can sabotage the quests for the factions I don't like.

Also, I realized I never went into the temple in Gilded Vale, so I should go back to that at some point; plus at least start the tunnels below my stronghold. I've heard its designed to be slowly progressed throughout the game, and since there's no level scaling I'd like to go through the first parts before they're trivialized.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Defiance Bay adventures

In retrospect, perhaps I ought to have held off on slaughtering the House Doemontel shakedown crew until after I asked them to stop gouging the Salty Mast for bitter squash seeds.

[Maia]

So, after some thought I created a druid instead of a wizard and I couldn't be happier. Pale elf, because I love elves and I liked the looks of this subrace better. Bear form rocks (even more so with additional fire damage talent), it allows me to do lots of melee damage in every fight, gives good protection, and there are good spells and abilities too, for harder battles. Hat off to those of you running a wizard main - in addition to the relative wimpiness of Aloth (so far), learning new spells from other grimoirs costs quite a bit of money. I made a rogue merc at the first opportunity, a boreal dwarf and am rolling with a 5-er party on Hard. I will be sorry to bench her once I find 2 more companions - in fact, IMHO, rogue is a very useful class to have in PoE. But my heart belongs to the spellcasters. Anyway, I am methodically doing all the side-quests and it is going very well. The only 2 downsides are that I have encountered only a couple of Int/Might conversation options so far and that I began to find the voice of my PC slightly irritating. I wonder if I could replace it, somehow? Not that it's a big deal or will make me restart, heh. Also, what is recovery? I can't tell if penalties to recovery from various armors is something that should worry me, or not. I am completely and hopelessly addicted to this game...

[Fez]

Also, what is recovery? I can't tell if penalties to recovery from various armors is something that should worry me, or not. I am completely and hopelessly addicted to this game...

As I understand it, recovery is how long it takes after a character takes an action before they can take another action. I don't know if that includes autoattack or just abilities. So a tank, who is really supposed to just be standing there, doesn't need to worry about it that much (which is why the penalty gets higher on the heavy amor) whereas a caster should probably be more concerned.

Its the mechanic to prevent you from just putting everyone in plate armor.

[Werthead]

Enjoying the game, but it is insanely, punishingly hard in a way that BG never was, even in the early going when you didn't know what the hell was going on. I've amassed a party of 5 and some things got a bit easier (the fungoids, the bear etc) but then I got to the castle with all the shadows and phantoms and every fight just wipes out the party. Having to run out of the castle and all the way back to town to get camping supplies to fully heal is awkward busywork at best. I know they didn't want people spamming rest like they did in the BG days, but between fast travel and fast movement you're not that far from the nearest inn anyway, so they may as well have allowed it.

Great stuff though. Durance is a classic Chris Avellone character, cut from the same cloth as half the PS:T cast and Kreia from KotOR 2.

[MerenthaClone]

So i rolled a Cipher in the Inn to add to my party (now at 6 members) and wow, what a great class. I might have to re-roll my main at some point. Anyway im playing on hard (having a limit of 2 camping supplies is rough) and need to min max a bit. I want to make sure i understand the Cipher class. Right now my cipher has a pistol and and attacks from the back row, but since they gain energy with each hit i think a faster weapon is the way to go. Is that correct?

Focus gained is based on damage, so if you attack frequently and fast, you'll get small amounts of focus steadily while a two-hander or arbalest (for example) will get focus in big, spiky amounts. A few things to note: because of this, biting whip (x1.2 dmg) will increase your Focus gain significantly if you're using slow, strong attacks while Draining Whip (flat +2/hit) will give you lots more focus for fast attacks. Incidentally, take Mental Binding as a level 2 power. Trust me on this. Really.

One minor gripe so far: companions level up before you acquire them, so my Eder arrived with Weapon Focus: Ruffian. Given that I'd rather equip him with other items, I was a little irritated, but eh. I'll survive. It makes beelining for companions on subsequent areas more attractive though. I'll spoiler the locations I've found below for people.

• Aloth: Gilded Vale

Eder: Gilded Vale after you talk to the dwarf woman

Durance: Magran's Fork

Kana: Caed Nua

Sagani: Woodend

Grieving Mother: Dryford

Pallegina: Ondra's Gift, in Defiance Bay

Hiravias: No clue, haven't found him

A couple of bugs of note that I figured I'd pass on. None of them have happened to me, but I thought I'd mention them. All of them are supposedly fixed in a patch that's currently undergoing testing and should be out shortly, so once that drops you should be good.

• Apparently, double-clicking items to equip them can sometimes cause you to lose some passive abilities. Dismissing your companions and re-admitting them will fix this for them, but you'll need cheats or console cmds to fix it for your main. Equipping items by clicking and dragging will not cause the bug, and it does not always occur

Do not equip the Cipher item Drinking Horn of Moderation. It will permanently cause you to lose the ability to gain focus. This, IIRC, persists through save/reload.

Make a save before entering Raedric's Hold. Sometimes, and very inconsistently, the game will not load properly on (iirc) load or map transition. If you're worried about losing progress, hold off on that area until the patch.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Hard is kicking my ass right now. I should probably swallow my pride and kick it down to normal.