TychoCelchuuu

Project Eternity, Obsidian's Isometric Fantasy RPG

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I can't do it, combat is just so boring. I just spent a minute, literally sixty seconds, watching my guys basic attack the enemies until dead, and the only input I gave during that time was telling my team to attack a new target when their current one died, because on their own initiative all they did was pick their noses. Every fight, I micromanage my team into position (how is the pathfinding this bad?), I fire off my per-encounter clickies then spend way too long just watching basic attacks fly. I've heard people in this thread saying it gets better/more tactical/etc, how far in is that?

 

It probably depends on what difficulty you're playing on how often it's necessary to actually use more tactics, but even on easy there have been encounters that I've run away from and decided to tackle later, so there's that. 

 

As your party size grows and as you level up, I can tell you that it's pretty rare, short of a boss encounter, to end up running out of per encounter abilities in a single fight.

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It probably depends on what difficulty you're playing on how often it's necessary to actually use more tactics

 

I'm on the hardest difficulty. And the problem isn't that I don't have to use tactics, it's that there are no tactics to use. My combat verbs are "Go here", "Basic attack this", and "Fire your boring once/encounter ability". The only choice I can even make with such a limited set of verbs is whether to fire the activated ability at the start of combat, or near the end (and every ability I've found so far is clearly best used at the start). I guess I could put more focus on ranged and try to kite the enemies, but with how awful the pathfinding is, you couldn't pay me to do something that reliant on it.

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I'm on the hardest difficulty. And the problem isn't that I don't have to use tactics, it's that there are no tactics to use. My combat verbs are "Go here", "Basic attack this", and "Fire your boring once/encounter ability". The only choice I can even make with such a limited set of verbs is whether to fire the activated ability at the start of combat, or near the end (and every ability I've found so far is clearly best used at the start). I guess I could put more focus on ranged and try to kite the enemies, but with how awful the pathfinding is, you couldn't pay me to do something that reliant on it.

 

There absolutely are tactics to use.

Area of effect abilities will often affect both friend and foe within a certain range but enemies only at a range beyond that.

Other abilities will draw a line between the caster and target and affect anyone touching that line, so that's something that is best micro'd.

Some abilities lower defenses/resistances which makes subsequent abilities more likely to land a status effect.

Other abilities do a life drain effect where they heal in addition to damaging so are wasted at the beginning of a fight when everyone is unscathed.

 

Using your tanks at a bottleneck to prevent your back line ranged people from getting targeted is a big deal even on easy (although there are some enemies that can teleport which wreak havoc with this).

 

If you've got the majority of your people set up to engage in melee, I'd maybe rethink that. I have 2 tanks and everyone else uses ranged.

 

As for the pathfinding being awful, well maybe over long distances it is, but in the short distance confines of an encounter the only trouble I've had is with trying to get a guy to retreat behind my two tanks, which, having intentionally set them up to hold a bottleneck, is really on me if they then happen to be blocking the way.

 

Also ranged guys will automatically pick a new target with basic attacks if there's one in range, but you probably want to micro that anyways to focus fire.

 

And if you've got someone with high mechanics, setting traps and kiting enemies towards them can be useful.

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As for the pathfinding being awful, well maybe over long distances it is

 

I've found that in any melee involving more than about four combatants, the pathfinding turns from bad to downright malevolent. I've often had them choose to go all the way around to the right (getting engaged along the way) rather than taking two goddamned steps to the left. In a party with a bunch of melee characters, every fight takes 2-3 times as long for everyone to get into melee when I leave them to their own pathfinding rather than micro things.

 

 

There absolutely are tactics to use.

Area of effect abilities will often affect both friend and foe within a certain range but enemies only at a range beyond that.

Other abilities will draw a line between the caster and target and affect anyone touching that line, so that's something that is best micro'd.

Some abilities lower defenses/resistances which makes subsequent abilities more likely to land a status effect.

Other abilities do a life drain effect where they heal in addition to damaging so are wasted at the beginning of a fight when everyone is unscathed.

 

As I originally asked, how far in is that? Because so far I have few enough per-encounter abilities that they deplete in ten seconds, and none of them require any positioning or thought except for my tiny handful of per-rest wizard spells. With those, I rest so rarely, use them up so fast, and get so few of them that I hoard them like JRPG consumables.

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Well if you already have the wizard maybe its just that playing on easy I don't feel the need to be as stingy about resting and per rest abilities as you do. Pretty sure the priest has a per encounter that's a radial damage enemies and heal though so if you have him you should have at least one per encounter ability that doesn't benefit from being fired off right at the beginning.

As for the pathfinding I'm guessing I just don't mind microing a lot more than you.

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As for the pathfinding I'm guessing I just don't mind microing a lot more than you.

 

I don't mind micromanagement in a game like Divinity: Original Sin because it feels rewarding, it lets me do complicated stuff. Here it feels like a tax: all I want is for my dude to run over there and hit the spider with his sword, I'm trying to perform the most basic combat action possible, I should be able to make that happen with one click, not six.

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I agree about the path finding. Last night Kana ran around the entire combat field just to go about 1 and a half steps to his right to line up a shot.

Over all though I quite like the combat. Had a stinker of an encounter last night though against teleporting enemies. Keeping Aloth upright was a major chore. It almost breaks the game that.

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I've found that I just don't use any abilities like rays or walls. Most likely I'll just kill a friend.

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I love the combat. I've spent time saving and reloading to figure out which abilities and enchantments work, and which ones are totally bogus. I've also spent time figuring out the nuts and bolts of the combat, eg. how hits are calculated and all that. I haven't been shy about spending a lot of money on big ticket items and I use potions and food when there is a tough battle. Here's a tip:

In Baldur's Gate 1, if you refused to take a reward you'd usually get some ridiculous extra reward thrust upon you. Sometimes in Pillars a quest giver will offer you a reward, and you can turn it around and give THEM money! Try it sometime, maybe you'll get a deadly family heirloom.

 

 

My attitude to combat in RPGs goes something like this: I really like planning and building a team of combatants and seeing them roll over the enemy. It's not boring to me if the enemy falls to me easily, if I spent a lot of time carefully putting together my arsenal. Don't get me wrong, I pause a lot during combat and I relish those in-combat decisions that make or break an encounter, but what's really fun to me is reading the manual while on the toilet and figuring out the loop holes to a game's systems. :fart:  B). Like my favorite RPGs (Baldur's Gate, Final Fantasy V to name a couple), Pillars totally lets me do this.

 

Wankery about my character:

My character is a rogue with a focus on high accuracy, high damage and critical hits. His unique two-handed sword does around 35 damage per hit, has a high chance to crit, and when it crits it can proc a knockdown. I rush the enemy with a couple of other melee characters and get the rogue in a flanking position. I use one of the Grieving Mother's abilities to buff his defense so he doesn't need to burden himself with heavy armor. Basically the whole party is geared toward letting him do his thing. As long as my rogue standing he will kill a combatant every seven seconds. There are certainly times when you want to throw a fireball or a necrotic arrow, but my strategy is to use casters primarily as a means to buff and debuff. Once you have buffed yourself, and debuffed the enemy, another category of spells and abilities, and thus strategy, becomes available to you.

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I don't understand the combat at all.  Supposedly positioning is important, but apparently I'm too clumsy and enemies will just run past me in a door frame to kill my archer.

 

Here is how I killed insane magic guy:

  • Kept useless wizard in the room while everybody else ran two rooms away.
  • Useless wizard died in less than a second, before he could even open his grimoire.
  • I waited for my chanter to chant long enough to summon some skeletons.
  • The skeletons ran to the other room and hacked at the insane magic guy.
  • Repeat four times until he dies.

 

This is the only winning strategy I can find for this game: hide and wait for skeletons.

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Do you have Eder?

 

I think it's also possible to have the priest by that point without much trouble.

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Do you have Eder?

 

Yeah.  He shoots his arrow once, misses, then switches to his sword and shoves people three times, which supposedly opens enemies up for more damage while they're on the ground but everyone else is a puny weakling.  Eder stays alive the longest, though!

 

I've finally started to just have Durance fire off every single spell and zap people with a stick instead of hiding, and that does a little bit, but if my positioning is off by a little bit he gets swarmed and dies.

 

Also I should probably put this in the Mass Effect romance thread but I'm pretty sure my blue Avatar lady Fleur slept with Eder on the first night and regrets it.  He's a small town, sensitive hunk—charming at first, until you realize he doesn't know any conversation topics besides Eothas and his brother.

 

Meanwhile Aloth wakes me up every night to ask me how I'm feeling.  Not gonna happen, man.

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Also I should probably put this in the Mass Effect romance thread but I'm pretty sure my blue Avatar lady Fleur slept with Eder on the first night and regrets it.  He's a small town, sensitive hunk—charming at first, until you realize he doesn't know any conversation topics besides Eothas and his brother.

 

Meanwhile Aloth wakes me up every night to ask me how I'm feeling.  Not gonna happen, man.

 

You are so lucky that you have missed part of the internet being set aflame by confused nerds blasting Pillars of Eternity for having absolutely no romance options whatsoever... unless you're mocking that fact, in which case, cool.

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Erm. Er. Well, you need to understand how each class works I think. Edur can easily engage and survive multiple enemies at one time. He's your tank, or meat shield as I call him. He goes at the front on his own to tie everyone up. Kana can help, he's fairly durable with a two hand weapon and can deal a bit of damage. Durance, if you have him has enough spells to keep everyone on their feet and enable them to hit more frequently, harder.

Aloth goes to the back alongside your ranger if you have one. Or cipher. Druids can stand just behind Edur. He's a glass cannon so treat him as such. Pound the field of combat with your spells and use your ranger to take any spellcasters. Having the ranger animal companion attack spell casters your ranger is attacking is a very good way of putting them out of commission very quickly.

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You are so lucky that you have missed part of the internet being set aflame by confused nerds blasting Pillars of Eternity for having absolutely no romance options whatsoever... unless you're mocking that fact, in which case, cool.

 

Oh man, I am lucky.  EXAMPLE: "Still upset I cannot smooch Aloth in game he is too perfect this is a crime. Give me my elf kisses."

 

 

Erm. Er. Well, you need to understand how each class works I think. Edur can easily engage and survive multiple enemies at one time. He's your tank, or meat shield as I call him. He goes at the front on his own to tie everyone up. Kana can help, he's fairly durable with a two hand weapon and can deal a bit of damage. Durance, if you have him has enough spells to keep everyone on their feet and enable them to hit more frequently, harder.

Aloth goes to the back alongside your ranger if you have one. Or cipher. Druids can stand just behind Edur. He's a glass cannon so treat him as such. Pound the field of combat with your spells and use your ranger to take any spellcasters. Having the ranger animal companion attack spell casters your ranger is attacking is a very good way of putting them out of commission very quickly.

 

Thanks!  I've been doing mostly that but maybe I need to finally hire a custom character to get an animal friend!

 

And everybody seems to be extremely vulnerable to status effects.  Spirits will confuse my entire party before they can land a hit.  Spiders poison Edér so badly he isn't much of a shield.  I thought a potion or a spell from Durance could alleviate this but nothing I tried did much.

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Hmmmm. Do you have Edur's modal defence skill active? That seems to help enormously I think. The game to me is a bit unbalanced at the start - combat is definitely tailored towards having a group of at least 4. The extra a ranger companion gives you at the start is really useful. Still I remember the dungeon in Gilded Vale being really really hard. Mind you it doesn't help that some of the creature down there can bypass your defences....

I find the combat fascinating to be honest, although sometimes very confusing. First time I shook up my party and added a Druid and a cipher I spent my first battle 20 minutes on hold while I went through each of this spells and abilities before I could even begin to work out what was useful and what wasn't for a given situation.

Exploring the Endless Paths is a good way to learn how to scout, position and fight properly if you haven't already been down there. You'll learn quickly when you are outgunned, and also that you need to set up custom formations.

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If Edér complains about poison much more I swear.

 

I'm still a bit confused by the combat, myself. About all I've managed to figure out is that being surrounded is bad.

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I just spent two and a half hours throwing more than a hundred skeletons at King My-Wife-Gave-Me-A-Hollowborn-Baby, doing an average of one hit point of damage per wave.

 

I hid my party on each side of the throne room: Durance and Fleur in the stairwell and Edér and Kana in the bedroom, and Aloth sacrificing himself as the one to trigger the conversation with the King.  The guards quickly found Durance and Fleur, killing them and taking no damage.  On the other side skeletons slowly weakened a group of three guards.  I had Edér join in, thinking he and three skeletons could handle three Near Death guards, but they all survived and quickly killed the guy who shouldn't be quick to kill.  Only Kana was left.

 

Eventually skeletons killed everyone except for the King and the archer.  They survived about four waves of skeletons without taking a single point of damage.  I decided to send Kana in as a last-ditch effort.  A tutorial tip popped up, mentioning Kana was outmatched by the King—Kana would never score a critical hit and probably wouldn't even hit him.  I hadn't seen a tutorial tip in forever!  Now it was popping up only to tell me: "You can't win."

 

Kana began casting a knock-people-over chant while the skeletons distracted the archer.  The King walked over to Kana, swung his sword once, and killed him.

 

I have been in this castle for almost a day in game and over a week in real life.  I thought I could finish up here and then reshape my party using Sorbicol's advice, but it seems the only way to do that will be to go back to the save from when I first got the stronghold.

 

I've come up with the most miserable, joyless way to play this game: "throw a skeleton at it."

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How on earth are you managing to do no damage?! I'm not criticising I'm genuinely interested! What level are you playing on and what level are your characters?

That fight is a tough one mind, it's sort of a boss battle. Might be better to leave and go back once you are a bit stronger?

I'm playing on normal and although I don't survive every encounter, i don't think I've ever been in a situation where I couldn't at least stand my ground for a couple of minutes.

Kana's arquebus at least should be punching holes in people. What weapon are you using?

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It's been a while, so I'm not 100% sure but I think it's possible to stealth someone in with a ranged weapon and start that fight without talking to him (by shooting at one of his guards before the king himself is even visible in fog of war). That should let you prepare yourself a bit (kite the enemies to an area you've trapped for instance) and not have to sacrifice the talker.

 

But yes that fight is hard and it may be worthwhile to do other things and level up. Accuracy increases with level and accuracy helps with 'you can't hit/do damage' situations.

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But yes that fight is hard and it may be worthwhile to do other things and level up. Accuracy increases with level and accuracy helps with 'you can't hit/do damage' situations.

 

For some reason, the option to travel east to Raedric's Hold instead of south to Defiance Bay wasn't presented to me early in the game, so I'm only making it back there at the beginning of Act 3. So far, it's been pretty great to have everyone shouting at me about how I'm dead meat, but then one-shotting every single one of them. I could probably solo it with my single character, if I wanted... so yeah, if you're having trouble with Raedric, go get a couple levels. It becomes laughably easy after a point, if that's the kind of revenge you're looking for.

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God, this game is so huge, I dropped off for a bit and am coming back to it and am almost overwhelmed with the size and scope of it compared to most games these days.

 

I actually used a tool and went from level 1 to level 5 of the "endless dungeon" which was a near fatal mistake

 

Also, that King Battle was a nightmare for me, I had to drop down the difficulty. 

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Ha I made that mistake in the endless paths as well. In the end I couldn't get out of level 5 (either down to level 6 or back up to level 4) so gave up and went back to an earlier save.

It is a big game, but to me doesn't feel as big as Baldur's Gate. I've not really put my finger on why.

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Taking the advice of Sorbicol and others, instead of fighting the King I just waiked out of the castle.  I hate breaking the roleplaying like that but I'm glad I got to go to Defiance Bay!  There are so many new quests, chatter between party members, and non-combat that it's really enjoyable.

 

I still can't quite get my mind around the Stronghold and how "turns" work (they don't seem to correspond with in-game hours).

 

I purchased the Dungeon as soon as I was able to even though it provided no prestige or security to my stronghold.  I thought: "this will probably have a storyline advantage."

 

And it did!  I randomly ended up fighting a wizard in Defiance Bay.  Mid-fight, he offered to surrender.  I accepted and told him I would throw him in my dungeon.

 

The implementation was a little strange, though.  As soon as I accepted, the screen faded out and back in, the wizard disappearing from the room.  However, all his minions were still there and still attacking me!  Unpaused!  Why would they still want to fight after the guy paying them was gone?

 

Anyway, now I have a wizard in a dungeon.

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