Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's new CRPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate

Valderen_sl said:

I'm at 35 hours, level 7 and I just reached Dyrford. I have tons of quest, task, etc left to do, and only level 5 or 6 deep into Cad Nua.

I do read everything though, all the books and souls.

Not sure how much I have left, but I'm sure it's like 20+ hours at least.

I have no clue how it can be done in 30 hours unless you don't read anything, and do only the main storyline.

Click to expand...

Only doing the main story line will leave you under leveled, i'm sure it is doable but then what is the point of skipping shit in a game like this.

I'm just getting the full experience form my first play through. I chose to play on hard because, well, hard.

And now I've learned a valuable lesson about dungeon delving in Pillars of Eternity.

On a side note,


Long story short...I now have a surplus of money, armor, and weapons.

Question about the Lord Raedric scenario...


The Raedric fight was pretty rough, I basically had to just manually assault one of his guards and pull them back to a doorway where I could bottleneck them with my 2 tanks, while all my casters and ranges stayed safely in the room attacking from ranged through the door. I just couldn't even remotely do the encounter at level 3 the proper way, talking to him and then attacking on his throne platform. You're instantly surrounded and can't use much strategy, I died probably 20 times trying to do it that way, after talking to Raedric, and never got close.

The fight is alot easier if you don't talk to him at all and just launch abunch of fireballs from the base of the stairs. Problem is, that tends to bug your game out. I had to use the mod I mentioned earlier to get out of the castle.

I just killed Kolsc and joined the dark side.

I am getting my ass totally stomped by this banshee and her guards in the Heritage tomb. Just going to skip it now, tried the battle about 5 times and didn't get anywhere close.

Was just looking at the Pillars Reddit page

Pillars of Eternity

Holy crap, the dungeon under Cad Nua is 15 levels deep. Looks like levels 1-5 are doable at character level 5, 6-10 are for characters level 8-9ish, and levels 11-15 are for max level, end game

How're the story, side quests, and companion characters' personalities? Is this game more like IWD (another game I dropped early, despite having read the trilogy as a kid)?

I bought PoE, installed it, and just lost motivation very early on and stopped playing. I really liked the way the prologue (and entering the cave scenario) was presented - brought back fond memories of one of my favorite games from childhood called "Betrayal in Antara." But whereas in the beginning of Antara and BG2 you realize how dire your situation is, PoE just seemed very meh in comparison.

I don't care about how difficult (or otherwise) the game is or how awesome some of the classes/spells/weapons/specs/dungeons/whatever are. Is the story good? Do the side quests have decent stories? Do the companions have good stories? Thanks.

joeboo_sl said:

Question about the Lord Raedric scenario...
.

Click to expand...

Carsomyr_sl said:

How're the story, side quests, and companion characters' personalities? Is this game more like IWD (another game I dropped early, despite having read the trilogy as a kid)?

I bought PoE, installed it, and just lost motivation very early on and stopped playing. I really liked the way the prologue (and entering the cave scenario) was presented - brought back fond memories of one of my favorite games from childhood called "Betrayal in Antara." But whereas in the beginning of Antara and BG2 you realize how dire your situation is, PoE just seemed very meh in comparison.

I don't care about how difficult (or otherwise) the game is or how awesome some of the classes/spells/weapons/specs/dungeons/whatever are. Is the story good? Do the side quests have decent stories? Do the companions have good stories? Thanks.

Click to expand...

Yea I'm struggling to find the continuity too. For instance, first town, you help this preggers lady who was the sister of another npc then she's like "thanks bro". First off, fedex side quests are uninteresting and what seemed to be a story hook is just like "k later".

Same thing with miller where there's an obvious dialogue between the two upset dudes were you might actually go after the source of the problem but instead you are forced to just pick between them.

I hope it gets better but so far I'm mostly bored and uninterested. I love the retro game design except that it does a way worse job at "finishing" story and exposing exactly what you can do. Which is fine, except when the dialogue seems to imply you should be able to do more or continue and you are left to wonder if it's bugged, bad dialogue, search item you miss, etc. That part I don't love being back.

Hatorade_sl said:

Only doing the main story line will leave you under leveled, i'm sure it is doable but then what is the point of skipping shit in a game like this.

Click to expand...

The whole game is mainly in act 2. Act 3 is a joke. Stopping to read every book, every soul, sneaking everywhere not to miss that one secret pile of junk then.. yes it will take forever. The game is so different at the start then later. There are no more 3 bell challenges, where you have to find clues to unlock something. I loaded up my 30 hour save just before I jumped down the hole to the last boss( it auto save you there ) and went back and completed the rest of the quests/bounties. I skipped over about 6 hours of stuff.. so 36 hours total and my game is clean of anything to do. I was level 10 when I killed the last boss.. level 12 after(bounties give you a shit ton of exp) cleaning the rest of the game. The dragon in endless was harder then the last boss.

Its almost like the game was rushed, near the end it felt really shitty.

This is the first time I ever completed an RPG fully in a long time. I still haven't even finished Skyrim and have a lot more then 36 hour in it. Same goes with Fallout.

radditsu_sl said:

Cipher is a much more fun playthrough than a rogue. I got to the first town and got the NPC Warrior, Wizard, Priest, and Hired a Ranger. I was wondering if I should go Weapon Focus: Ruffian and dual Stilleto with a blunderbuss to start. Or Weapon Focus: Soldier and go Pike/Arquebus

Click to expand...

Neither, because you shouldn't mix ranged and melee; there aren't enough talent picks and you'll just end up being bad at both. If you want to use ranged, get a blunderbuss and either an arbalest or an arquebus and swap between them depending on enemy DR. I'd pick Biting Whip, Gunner, Marksman, and Penetrating Shot over any of the weapon focus ones, especially since I go with wood elf* for my Cipher. I've tested Two-Handed Style and it does not appear to do anything at all for ranged weapons. Would have been nice if they actually specified that like One-Handed Style does (needlessly, since all ranged weapons are 2H now).

Having a chanter in the group is an absolute must as well imo. The level 2 phrase that makes shooting and reloading much faster is godly if you have 2-3 characters that use heavy ranged weapons to wreck shit.

*-Distant Advantage and Marksman do stack for +10 accuracy on anything 4m or further away, in case anyone else is wondering.

Fun game, has me for sure. Like to see some graphics options tho, it looks ok but wish i knew how to tweak it a bit.

Tuco_sl said:

Vague question:
In my last playthrough of BG1/2, I found that the somewhat archaic inventory system was a chore to work through. I spent more time dealing with inventory management and clicking on inventory / merchant screens than I am comfortable with. Does PoEternity have the same problem?

Click to expand...

it does't at all if you enable the stash option. Basically your "stash" is bank storage of some kind but you can access it anywhere. So i loot to stash.

Never deal with inventory again. +1

Tuco_sl said:

Vague question:
In my last playthrough of BG1/2, I found that the somewhat archaic inventory system was a chore to work through. I spent more time dealing with inventory management and clicking on inventory / merchant screens than I am comfortable with. Does PoEternity have the same problem?

Click to expand...

Vague answer: so-so. I want to say no.

Oh, and one other thing. There was a new version (4.51) of IEMod released this morning that fixes the bugs with it's character respec commands. Now you can relevel all the story companions from level 0 and not make horrible choices like the developer did.

To do it:
Save your game in a new slot.
Open console (` by default) and press Enter.
Type "FindCharacter Eder" -- output in chatlog should be something like "Companion_Eder(Clone)_2" (replace Eder with Aloth, etc. and also note that you don't type the accent in Ed?r's name)
Type "ChangeClass Companion_Eder(Clone)_2 Fighter" (can change to another class if you want a companion for one of the classes not available except as hirelings)

Now you can relevel them from 0 to whatever level they are now, choosing the abilities, spells, talents, etc. that you want them to have.

Stats will still suck though, but we can fix that too:
Go back into the console, and type "AttributeScore Companion_Eder(Clone)_2 might 5" if you want to make him into a proper tank. Note that this requires knowledge of his base stats and what bonuses he has from race, origin, etc. In Ed?r's case it's +1 might from human and +2 resolve from human + Dyrwood origin. So even though I typed might 5 he will end up with 6.

Basically just remember that every character has 75 stat points, then their race either gives them +1/+1 or +2/+1/-1, and their origin gives them another +1; for 78 total points in the end. Base stats need to be in the range of 3-18.

There's also a command called "Skill" which works exactly the same as AttributeScore if you feel like bothering with that as well. Skills are pretty superfluous in this game, and doubly so on companions so there's really not much point. Just make sure everyone has at least 3 in Athletics, and that one character has a lot of points in Mechanics (no idea what the max needed there is, but I'd probably take it to 7 or 8 by the end of the game just to be safe).

When you're done, save the game in a new slot and then reload that game immediately so that item effects and other stuff like that gets reapplied correctly.

There is radius looting, you can loot to stash (which is unlimited i think but huge at least). There is no encumbrance what so ever, each character has 16 inventory slots, the main panel of inventory exposes all of them at once. The inventory experience is still loot the shit out of everything and sell a shit load of junk. But there is no tedium to that aspect other than a bunch of clicking to sell. The only part of the inventory that it misses is some kind of sort feature, but to be honest I've spent very little time caring about my inventory relative to my play time. They added a bunch of streamlined features that I have thoroughly appreciated. Fast mode/Slow mode are fucking amazing.

I too have read everything, even the gold souls and I definitely could never have finished in 30 hours, or your version of reading really isn't. I'm not a slow reader by any means, and in the context of this game I'm not consuming it for speed. I let the voice acting play out when its there, I read all the decision options etc. I think I will get easily 45-50 hours and probably more, I do at times load events in game to see how some of the dialog I don't want to chose reads so that is a fundamental waste of time that would count against my time and I don't reference spoilers unless its a last resort.

I spent most of the weekend inside Defiance Bay doing as many quests as possible to my characters leanings. I always try to consume all the side quests I can before driving the main plot in these kinds of games. I would recommend this game to anyone who wants a baulder's gate experience, with all the flaws that comes with that style of game. Yes you can probably break the combat systems, yes some classes might be better or worse than others, yes you can still do everything however you want with generated perfect stat characters or imperfect personality characters. I currently have 7 voiced companions and I am sure there are more. The content is there, the UI and the hotkeys are good enough - a few things could be improved - like edge panning towards my second monitor doesn't work so hot, but in this style of game the wasd camera controls are my preference. They default bound them to the arrows, the initial key binds were trash.

shabushabu_sl said:

Fun game, has me for sure. Like to see some graphics options tho, it looks ok but wish i knew how to tweak it a bit.

Click to expand...

You can do some pretty cool stuff with ReShade:

That's a custom one I made myself, since I think all the ones uploaded to the SweetFX repository look like ass. Actually, I guessthis oneisn't too bad, but it didn't exist the other day when I was tinkering with it.

Also, IEMod adds in a command "ForceAA 8" (0/2/4 also valid options, 4 being default). That's 8xMSAA in my screenshot above, which I think looks considerably better than 4x. PoE is pretty light on the hardware reqs so I haven't noticed any change to my framerate.