I bought it but I have a "one game at a time" policy and I'm currently running through NWN2: Storms of Zehir. For my first run of SoZ it feels very similar to PoE. I wonder why. . . :P
I think I'm going to hold out and get it when I start a new playthrough. I'm into Act III right now and want to finish up, then maybe move on to something else for a while. I am really enjoying this game. I recently made it all the way to the end of the Endless Paths. The map that comes up when you travel along the master staircase is spectacular! Details like that are a big reason I like this game so much.
Got it last night and jumped back into my last playthrough. My guys are all lvl 12 and fully kitted out, only have the last 3 lvls of the Master below dungeon and the missions for the Gods left to do. Even though I'm running Path of the Damned, I have long since got to the point where nothing could really touch my party, happy to say the expansion changed that. I don't know if I jumped into a really high lvl area or if the expansion scales with party lvl, but so far the combat is great, enemy parties seem to have HLA's, AOE knock back stuns and a super hero jump thing that makes no sense. I actually lost a fight to a group of mercs "because I just blindly charged them, because I thought they would just instantly die like everything else in the game" and had to load. I haven't played enough to comment on the story line just yet, but I'm sure it will be pretty good.
I'm waiting on more reviews. What I have heard so far suggests the expansion is pricey and combat focused. I'm more interested in story focused content. I may wait and see if WM2 is more story focused.
If you found the combat in the main game to be a touch unnecessarily difficult (no, stop you – you, the person who says it was too easy on the hardest setting – first, no one believes you, second, shush), then I’m afraid you won’t be less frustrated here. I couldn’t help think that the original Pillars would have been a twenty hour RPG if it didn’t make every encounter with a group of indentikit bads into a painstaking battle. This is the case here too, and while for the most part the uninterested can switch the difficulty down to Easy to let such fights become matter-of-fact, there are some encounters that are way out of proportion.
The fact is, The White March Part One is good fodder for those coming in fresh and a fine addition for those looking to replay, but isn’t compelling enough on its own for you to come back to Pillars of Eternity if you’ve already finished the game.
Again, that might change with the release of Part Two. The ending of Part One hints at greater repercussions for your actions in Durgan’s Battery, and I’m curious to see whether the second half leans a bit harder towards tying the expansion to the main story—or at least ups the stakes. But for that, we’ll have to wait to find out.
For those Pillars of Eternity fans in desperate need of new game content, The White March - Part 1 is a great first expansion that comes with a wealth of varied content. The part 1 aspect of the title shouldn't put off fans either as the expansion doesn't end with any sort of disappointing cliffhanger or such, it truly feels like a complete package. The majority of content is entertaining to play, especially the focus on the discovering the secrets that lie within Durgan's Battery. Players that can overcome the expansion's high difficulty level will find an entertaining time, while those that enter with low level characters are sure to encounter some frustration.
Overall, The White March adds a lot of new awesome to an already excellent CRPG experience. Original Kickstarter backers get The White March part one (and eventually part two) for free, while it’s only $15 on Steam for non-backers. For the 20 or so hours you’ll get at that price, if you liked Pillars to begin with, this purchase is a no-brainer. Even if just for the excellent story of Durgan’s Battery alone, it’s worth every penny. Just be ready to fight, because this content isn’t a stroll in the park and I don’t think Obsidian would want it any other way.
I think I'll play the expansion when I start a new playthrough. The new content sounds enticing, but not enough so to warrant dropping my existing games for it.
Though I have to say, I find it a bit weird that the RPS reviewer would call the original game "unnecessarily difficult" (or at least imply that). I haven't heard that particular criticism of PoE before, and RPS's critiques are usually more on point.
Josh Sawyer, Adam Brennecke and Brandon Adler were at PAX Prime.
They spoke about the development of Pillars of Eternity in a one hour panel discussion, answered questions from Twitter and the audience and revealed some of their plans for future Pillars of Eternity games.
- There are no plans to port Pillars of Eternity to consoles, though Obsidian may investigate other platforms for future projects.
- Load times will be improved in the next patch, but according to Adam, it will take major refactoring to get them down to as low as he'd like, which can probably only happen in a sequel.
- Josh wanted to make the game's first area after the prologue harder, but it had to be toned down due to playtester complaints. They did let him keep the bear cave.
- Adam's original idea for pre-order items was a space hamster and a floating skull. The former was changed to a pig because Obsidian had a pig model handy, and the latter was nixed by Eric Fenstermaker for lore reasons, although it's apparently coming back for The White March Part 2.
- There will be no more expansion packs after The White March Part 2. After that it's sequel time.
- Brandon thinks releasing the game for Linux was not worthwhile, and in retrospect would have chosen not to support it. Only 1.5% of the player base uses Linux. Later on, it's explained that the problems with Linux support were more logistical than technical in nature. It's unclear if Obsidian will keep Linux compatibility for future projects now that they've already done the hard work, but you probably shouldn't bet on it.
- At one point during the panel, some concept art for future Pillars of Eternity projects (including The White March Part 2) is shown. This includes an area featuring a huge skull reminiscent of Myrkul from Mask of the Betrayer, which we also get to see an initial level blockout of.
- Plans for Pillars of Eternity 2 include: -- Baldur's Gate 2-style strongholds. That is, multiple strongholds, with a focus on content rather than systems (Josh explicitly uses those terms). -- Full multiclassing. --Support for "sub-areas", eg, the ability to enter a house in a town without having to load an entirely new area and without having to take your entire party. -- Expanded AI systems and more customizable party AI. -- Improved modding support for modifying systems, adding items, etc. Adam says that they've already got plans in place for how they're going to do this. -- Josh says he's considering reducing the amount of abilities available for use at higher levels for the sequel, specifically mentioning classes such as the Priest which have all of their spells available at once. -- A Dark Souls-inspired "New Game Plus" mode is being considered for the sequel.
- The success of Pillars of Eternity has changed Obsidian's company culture, and they are now more open to producing smaller games. The Pathfinder tablet game is being developed by ten people.
- When asked about cut quests, Josh mentions an entire cut area in Twin Elms that would have featured some sort of trial called the "Wield of Fates" (or something like that). However, Josh and Adam seem to consider most of the game's cut content to have been bad and worthy of cutting.
Wow, they share a lot of ideas for a sequel. I guess they're more or less settled on the idea that there indeed will be a PoE sequel.
Couldn't play the whole weekend because of a almost game breaking bug. Stupid construct monsters in the workshop place having 200+ deflection and other defenses, which rose every time I loaded. Yeah not much fun, I did figure how to damage them, all I needed to do was use spells that had no save. Like the Priests AOE electrical armour thing. But I'm pretty sure path of the damned increases enemy HP, so I kept getting the damned thing to near death, then running out of effective spells. Still waiting for a patch.
Couldn't play the whole weekend because of a almost game breaking bug. Stupid construct monsters in the workshop place having 200+ deflection and other defenses, which rose every time I loaded. Yeah not much fun, I did figure how to damage them, all I needed to do was use spells that had no save. Like the Priests AOE electrical armour thing. But I'm pretty sure path of the damned increases enemy HP, so I kept getting the damned thing to near death, then running out of effective spells. Still waiting for a patch.
Beta 2.01 is already live but I don't think this is going to fix the deflection issue in the white march yet. I haven't reached the expansion areas yet and I can't comment on it. Nevertheless I was unhappy because of two bugs: 1-(new) Gaun's pledge permanent effect (or at least icon) on your characters - got this bug when the wielder of the flail was charmed at the entrance of CN and hit the party. I had to reload and monitor the event. 2-(old) Those bastard Xaurip priests can cast spells through walls (and no line of sight). I can experience it on the second CN dungeon map which is rather dense in the PotD mode...
Bit sad to hear they're probably dropping the Linux release (hopefully just for the sequel and not White March 2, which I've paid for when backing). I know Obsidian says only 1.5% of the userbase uses Linux, but they said they would release on Linux and they haven't really supported it technically.*
When I asked the devs of Shadowrun about Linux support, they said it was easy enough with Unity to release a Linux version. After hearing Obsidian say they may drop Linux support, I think I'm going to go over and give extra thanks to Harebrained Schemes for their support.
*Since release some Linux players have experienced a near game-stopping bug where all the area tiles are shuffled and scrambled when an area is loaded. All areas have a chance of loading scrambled, requiring re-loads to load properly. Certain areas never load un-scrambled. To pass the game, I had to blindly click through a few areas, not knowing what was on the ground. (Not to mention the constant re-loads and long loading times.) This was still true when I played the game in July, and the problem had been reported days just after launch. I'm patient. I'm sure they'll fix the problem eventually, but I'm no longer bothering with their games on launch.
I neeeed to finish NWN2 SoZ so I can play this XD I'm going to start a new character as a Death Godlike (Elf Bodytype) Priest. I'm going to take the summon 2 skellybros talent and then I can RP as my fav D&D char of whom is a Drow Cleric Necromancer n_n.
I'M SO HYPE. But must beat NWN2 SoZ. I planned to do SoZ, then the OC, and then MOTB followed by Mysteries of Westgate but this expansion demands my attention.
Yay the beta patch fixed the deflection bug so I can play again. I got the rogue NPC and holy hell she is strong, really squishy, but strong. The strange thing is her stats are trash, she has 10 MIT "it could possible be 13, I'm not sure, it's still bad though" and 10 DEX, which make her the worst rogue ever. I think I'm gonna play a rogue on my next playthrough.
Also here is a tip, not a spoiler. When you get "the Grey Sleeper" you won't find the answers to any of it's riddles in the White March.
Well max level is 14, I feel somewhat disappointed. I was sure it was 15, but I guess I must of imagined that. Still this game gives way too much exp, I have only done white march and I maxed out"I did go there on lvl 12 but still". I haven't killed a single dragon this playthrough and I still have the other bit of the expansion to do, plus all of the Gods quests and whatnot. They could have totally given us another level or 2. I hate hitting max level in any game, especially when there is still a lot of content to complete.
@SmilingSword , comments like yours (and many others) are why I still haven't bought Pillars of Eternity. I just have a feeling I am not going to like it for more than a partial playthrough, or one full playthrough at the most. I even turned it down when I could have caught it for 33% off on Steam, which was still more than I'm willing to pay at this point.
I'll buy it and at least give it a fair chance to be fun for me for $20, but no more. So I'll probably be waiting at least a couple more years before I'll finally try it.
@BelgarathMTH well I do complain about this game a fair bit and I will admit it's not exactly perfect. I have to say I love PoE, the combat is great once you get used to it, particularly the dragon battles, well two of them anyway, the third is a push over even on PotD. really the two good ones put old ascension Abi to shame. The story is above average and the NPC's are great. The world is really well thought out, the lore of the worlds races and various factions plus it's history are all very interesting. It doesn't really compare to BG2, but it is better than about 90% of the RPGs I've played in the last 10 years. What I'm trying to say is maybe give it a try next time it's on special, you might be pleasantly surprised
@SmilingSword , well I will say that there has been one and only one very spoilery story tease that interests me about PoE, and that is
that the gods of the PoE realm might be fraudulent "sufficiently advanced technology" types of fantasy characters. I like to play any and all combinations of fighter-paladin-mage-clerics, and the idea of a young devotee of the gods, weak in strength, dexterity, and constitution, while strong in intelligence, wisdom, and charisma, using his youthful ideals of divine gifts of magic combined with unexpected ability to fight in melee "out of nowhere", using stat-enhancing buff spells, upon his late adolescent and young adulthood maturity, magically, strongly appeals to me. However, the posts I've seen about combat mechanics and character building in PoE cause me great concern. Plus, the entire game will have minus two to Charisma for me just because it's not D&D. I love, love, love any fantasy story that takes my love of the imagined "God" of humanity, and then rewards and teases (and punishes) it through story telling.
So, I will still be waiting for a price break point for the game that reduces the "gambled" risk of buying things I can't afford on my income and budget to about $20.
EDIT: P.S. - if anyone still doesn't know this about me, my entire fantasy game persona is highly influenced by Star Wars, and from that, in more serious academic follow-through study, to Joseph Campbell. No story that's not a "Hero's Journey" really ever appeals to me enough to win my intense devotion.
Update 2.0.2 has been made available for The Pillars of Eternity and The White March part I.
Major Fixes
GOG Galaxy achievements now work. A party member using a movement speed modifying item now should walk at the same speed as the rest of the party outside of combat. Added more optimizations for save and load. Fixed an issue where some players were not able to talk to the Steward of Caed Nua to start The White March quest lines. Fixed issues with Respec not working correctly with some edge case abilities and talents. Fixed some problems that were being reported with self-targeting abilities (Like Frenzy). Fixed problems with chanters not being able to set their chants properly after they have retrained. Abilities
All Summoned weapons are now considered universal weapon type. Fixed a number of issues with Nature's Bounty. Items
Soulbound weapons are properly unbound when the bound soul dies. Fixed issue where weapon switching recovery could go negative. Draining Item Mod should only drain 15% attack speed now. Shadowflame from Ninguath's Grimiore is now 4th level. Removed enchantment cost of the Cumbersome item mod. Lowered the enchantment cost for Spellstriking Confuse and Spellstriking Thrust of Tattered Veil. Quests
Small Balance changes to the Alpine and Sky Dragon attacks. Fixed a number of issues with the Devil of Caroc's reactivity in the soul awakening quest. The Hunter's Favor should properly resolve if Thyrsc and Suldrun are killed before completion. Stronghold attacks can now happen if the player level is over 13. Caroc and Zahua now have a place in the stronghold. Alpine Dragon is now set to never gib. Vamrel's conversation will only fire once now. Miscellaneous Notes
Quick items on the ability bar are now sorted by slot. Afflictions display like other status effects on the party bar. Fix a number of hotkey binding issues and bugs. Accuracy for Bestiary entries now account for stances and shields. Fixed a problem with Accuracy being reported incorrectly until the party enters combat.
@Awong124 and @elminster , thank you so much for announcing the sale here. I would have missed it otherwise. I bought it yesterday and started playing.
So far I've only gotten through the starting area and to the first town, and recruited Eder and that elf wizard. There is a *huge* amount of dialogue, so progress through the game will be slow. I want to take my time on my first playthrough and really take everything in, though.
I don't know what my long-term, final impression will be, but my initial impression is that it plays almost *exactly* like Baldur's Gate - pretty impressive. The lore seems very deep and rich, but the names of people, places, and things are very exotic and hard to remember. The "watcher" thing seems pretty interesting, even though it's another way to make Charname a "special snowflake". I guess that's the standard trope for all epic storytelling.
I have no idea what I'm doing with my character building, so I'll probably totally mess up my character and all the party members. I'm really going to try to avoid restartitis, though. We'll see if the temptation to restart with better metaknowledge comes up, but as they say, you only get one first time.
Whelp, I've been playing every day during my Fall Break, and according to Steam, I've put in 26 hours as of today, Thursday. So far, I'm only playing on "normal" difficulty, because I don't care to do any challenge runs until I have way more experience with the game, and I am finding it challenging enough for a noob on "normal".
I have in fact succumbed to restartitis. I just made my fifth character and started over. But that's a good thing, as long as I don't do it again after I finally finish Act I (probably several weeks from now). It means I'm *very* into the game, and I don't want to go too far into it until I'm absolutely sure I've got just the right Charname for my first time.
The character I've gotten farthest with was my Moon Godlike paladin I just left. I had taken my stronghold, but not gone below to the dungeons yet. The thought of eventually dungeon-diving the place is very exciting to me. I had found a path to go to Defiance Bay, but did not actually go there. I did not confront Raedric, thinking that I'd better have a full, well-leveled and well-geared party before I challenge the most powerful evil overlord of the starting area.
I had constructed a party of six including Eder, Aloth, Kana, Durance, and had just added the dwarf ranger. I talked to Durance at that point, and I decided that he is a total nutcase, fanatically worshipping an evil deity that represents every moral value I oppose, and that I had better just restart the game and be the priest/healer myself. I find it interesting that there is only one deity available to PC priests in the setting that is clearly good and of the light, and that that deity is supposedly dead. "It is a dark time in the world..."
I worry about playing the party priest, mechanically, because Eder is the only front-line tank npc I have found so far, which means I don't have an off-tank.
I know there is an npc paladin to meet eventually, but please don't spoil me with her location. I'd rather play blind until I find her myself.
I can't see myself ever playing anything other than a Moon Godlike. That passive healing power is just *too* good. I prefer paladins and priests, but even with just those two classes appealing to me so far, there are a lot of variations in builds I'll likely wind up trying.
So, anyway, I could go on, but TL:DR - this is a good game. I'm glad I waited for patch 2.0 and got it on a half-price sale.
Durance is a great piece of writing, yeah, as well as acting. But there's no way I'd every let a guy like that into any party if I wasn't playing a game
I did not confront Raedric, thinking that I'd better have a full, well-leveled and well-geared party before I challenge the most powerful evil overlord of the starting area.
You chose wisely. Back when I played my first game I thought that there was no way a modern game, even by "Here have a Cazadore nest on level 2 because you went in the wrong direction" Obsidian, would ever throw at me a "boss" battle that I couldn't possible be beat at that time, because I am an arrogant ass in that way.
Well, a few tries and a whole bunch of tpks later, and it was becoming very clear to me that I was in the wrong.
Comments
:P
I am really enjoying this game. I recently made it all the way to the end of the Endless Paths. The map that comes up when you travel along the master staircase is spectacular! Details like that are a big reason I like this game so much.
But now I think I've got everything I've wanted from PoE and currently don't need more of it.
The constant rule-tampering irritates me anyway.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/27/pillars-of-eternity-the-white-march-review/
If you found the combat in the main game to be a touch unnecessarily difficult (no, stop you – you, the person who says it was too easy on the hardest setting – first, no one believes you, second, shush), then I’m afraid you won’t be less frustrated here. I couldn’t help think that the original Pillars would have been a twenty hour RPG if it didn’t make every encounter with a group of indentikit bads into a painstaking battle. This is the case here too, and while for the most part the uninterested can switch the difficulty down to Easy to let such fights become matter-of-fact, there are some encounters that are way out of proportion.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2975283/software-games/pillars-of-eternity-the-white-march-part-one-review-just-another-chapter-in-a-long-excellent-tale.html
The fact is, The White March Part One is good fodder for those coming in fresh and a fine addition for those looking to replay, but isn’t compelling enough on its own for you to come back to Pillars of Eternity if you’ve already finished the game.
Again, that might change with the release of Part Two. The ending of Part One hints at greater repercussions for your actions in Durgan’s Battery, and I’m curious to see whether the second half leans a bit harder towards tying the expansion to the main story—or at least ups the stakes. But for that, we’ll have to wait to find out.
http://gamingnexus.com/Article/4905/Pillars-of-Eternity-The-White-March---Part-1/
For those Pillars of Eternity fans in desperate need of new game content, The White March - Part 1 is a great first expansion that comes with a wealth of varied content. The part 1 aspect of the title shouldn't put off fans either as the expansion doesn't end with any sort of disappointing cliffhanger or such, it truly feels like a complete package. The majority of content is entertaining to play, especially the focus on the discovering the secrets that lie within Durgan's Battery. Players that can overcome the expansion's high difficulty level will find an entertaining time, while those that enter with low level characters are sure to encounter some frustration.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/1029/feature/10020/Pillars-of-Eternity-The-White-March-Part-One-Review.html
Overall, The White March adds a lot of new awesome to an already excellent CRPG experience. Original Kickstarter backers get The White March part one (and eventually part two) for free, while it’s only $15 on Steam for non-backers. For the 20 or so hours you’ll get at that price, if you liked Pillars to begin with, this purchase is a no-brainer. Even if just for the excellent story of Durgan’s Battery alone, it’s worth every penny. Just be ready to fight, because this content isn’t a stroll in the park and I don’t think Obsidian would want it any other way.
Though I have to say, I find it a bit weird that the RPS reviewer would call the original game "unnecessarily difficult" (or at least imply that). I haven't heard that particular criticism of PoE before, and RPS's critiques are usually more on point.
They spoke about the development of Pillars of Eternity in a one hour panel discussion, answered questions from Twitter and the audience and revealed some of their plans for future Pillars of Eternity games.
http://www.twitch.tv/pax2/v/13457385?t=1h43m15s
(starts at around 1:43:15)
- There are no plans to port Pillars of Eternity to consoles, though Obsidian may investigate other platforms for future projects.
- Load times will be improved in the next patch, but according to Adam, it will take major refactoring to get them down to as low as he'd like, which can probably only happen in a sequel.
- Josh wanted to make the game's first area after the prologue harder, but it had to be toned down due to playtester complaints. They did let him keep the bear cave.
- Adam's original idea for pre-order items was a space hamster and a floating skull. The former was changed to a pig because Obsidian had a pig model handy, and the latter was nixed by Eric Fenstermaker for lore reasons, although it's apparently coming back for The White March Part 2.
- There will be no more expansion packs after The White March Part 2. After that it's sequel time.
- Brandon thinks releasing the game for Linux was not worthwhile, and in retrospect would have chosen not to support it. Only 1.5% of the player base uses Linux. Later on, it's explained that the problems with Linux support were more logistical than technical in nature. It's unclear if Obsidian will keep Linux compatibility for future projects now that they've already done the hard work, but you probably shouldn't bet on it.
- At one point during the panel, some concept art for future Pillars of Eternity projects (including The White March Part 2) is shown. This includes an area featuring a huge skull reminiscent of Myrkul from Mask of the Betrayer, which we also get to see an initial level blockout of.
- Plans for Pillars of Eternity 2 include:
-- Baldur's Gate 2-style strongholds. That is, multiple strongholds, with a focus on content rather than systems (Josh explicitly uses those terms).
-- Full multiclassing.
--Support for "sub-areas", eg, the ability to enter a house in a town without having to load an entirely new area and without having to take your entire party.
-- Expanded AI systems and more customizable party AI.
-- Improved modding support for modifying systems, adding items, etc. Adam says that they've already got plans in place for how they're going to do this.
-- Josh says he's considering reducing the amount of abilities available for use at higher levels for the sequel, specifically mentioning classes such as the Priest which have all of their spells available at once.
-- A Dark Souls-inspired "New Game Plus" mode is being considered for the sequel.
- The success of Pillars of Eternity has changed Obsidian's company culture, and they are now more open to producing smaller games. The Pathfinder tablet game is being developed by ten people.
- When asked about cut quests, Josh mentions an entire cut area in Twin Elms that would have featured some sort of trial called the "Wield of Fates" (or something like that). However, Josh and Adam seem to consider most of the game's cut content to have been bad and worthy of cutting.
Wow, they share a lot of ideas for a sequel. I guess they're more or less settled on the idea that there indeed will be a PoE sequel.
Still waiting for a patch.
I haven't reached the expansion areas yet and I can't comment on it. Nevertheless I was unhappy because of two bugs:
1-(new) Gaun's pledge permanent effect (or at least icon) on your characters - got this bug when the wielder of the flail was charmed at the entrance of CN and hit the party. I had to reload and monitor the event.
2-(old) Those bastard Xaurip priests can cast spells through walls (and no line of sight). I can experience it on the second CN dungeon map which is rather dense in the PotD mode...
This game is really great.
I think Wasteland 2 faced the problem too.
It does not mean they will stop developing for the Linux platform.
I'm going to start a new character as a Death Godlike (Elf Bodytype) Priest. I'm going to take the summon 2 skellybros talent and then I can RP as my fav D&D char of whom is a Drow Cleric Necromancer n_n.
I'M SO HYPE. But must beat NWN2 SoZ. I planned to do SoZ, then the OC, and then MOTB followed by Mysteries of Westgate but this expansion demands my attention.
Also here is a tip, not a spoiler. When you get "the Grey Sleeper" you won't find the answers to any of it's riddles in the White March.
They could have totally given us another level or 2. I hate hitting max level in any game, especially when there is still a lot of content to complete.
I'll buy it and at least give it a fair chance to be fun for me for $20, but no more. So I'll probably be waiting at least a couple more years before I'll finally try it.
It doesn't really compare to BG2, but it is better than about 90% of the RPGs I've played in the last 10 years.
What I'm trying to say is maybe give it a try next time it's on special, you might be pleasantly surprised
So, I will still be waiting for a price break point for the game that reduces the "gambled" risk of buying things I can't afford on my income and budget to about $20.
EDIT: P.S. - if anyone still doesn't know this about me, my entire fantasy game persona is highly influenced by Star Wars, and from that, in more serious academic follow-through study, to Joseph Campbell. No story that's not a "Hero's Journey" really ever appeals to me enough to win my intense devotion.
Major Fixes
GOG Galaxy achievements now work.
A party member using a movement speed modifying item now should walk at the same speed as the rest of the party outside of combat.
Added more optimizations for save and load.
Fixed an issue where some players were not able to talk to the Steward of Caed Nua to start The White March quest lines.
Fixed issues with Respec not working correctly with some edge case abilities and talents.
Fixed some problems that were being reported with self-targeting abilities (Like Frenzy).
Fixed problems with chanters not being able to set their chants properly after they have retrained.
Abilities
All Summoned weapons are now considered universal weapon type.
Fixed a number of issues with Nature's Bounty.
Items
Soulbound weapons are properly unbound when the bound soul dies.
Fixed issue where weapon switching recovery could go negative.
Draining Item Mod should only drain 15% attack speed now.
Shadowflame from Ninguath's Grimiore is now 4th level.
Removed enchantment cost of the Cumbersome item mod.
Lowered the enchantment cost for Spellstriking Confuse and Spellstriking Thrust of Tattered Veil.
Quests
Small Balance changes to the Alpine and Sky Dragon attacks.
Fixed a number of issues with the Devil of Caroc's reactivity in the soul awakening quest.
The Hunter's Favor should properly resolve if Thyrsc and Suldrun are killed before completion.
Stronghold attacks can now happen if the player level is over 13.
Caroc and Zahua now have a place in the stronghold.
Alpine Dragon is now set to never gib.
Vamrel's conversation will only fire once now.
Miscellaneous Notes
Quick items on the ability bar are now sorted by slot.
Afflictions display like other status effects on the party bar.
Fix a number of hotkey binding issues and bugs.
Accuracy for Bestiary entries now account for stances and shields.
Fixed a problem with Accuracy being reported incorrectly until the party enters combat.
So far I've only gotten through the starting area and to the first town, and recruited Eder and that elf wizard. There is a *huge* amount of dialogue, so progress through the game will be slow. I want to take my time on my first playthrough and really take everything in, though.
I don't know what my long-term, final impression will be, but my initial impression is that it plays almost *exactly* like Baldur's Gate - pretty impressive. The lore seems very deep and rich, but the names of people, places, and things are very exotic and hard to remember. The "watcher" thing seems pretty interesting, even though it's another way to make Charname a "special snowflake". I guess that's the standard trope for all epic storytelling.
I have no idea what I'm doing with my character building, so I'll probably totally mess up my character and all the party members. I'm really going to try to avoid restartitis, though. We'll see if the temptation to restart with better metaknowledge comes up, but as they say, you only get one first time.
I have in fact succumbed to restartitis. I just made my fifth character and started over. But that's a good thing, as long as I don't do it again after I finally finish Act I (probably several weeks from now). It means I'm *very* into the game, and I don't want to go too far into it until I'm absolutely sure I've got just the right Charname for my first time.
The character I've gotten farthest with was my Moon Godlike paladin I just left. I had taken my stronghold, but not gone below to the dungeons yet. The thought of eventually dungeon-diving the place is very exciting to me. I had found a path to go to Defiance Bay, but did not actually go there. I did not confront Raedric, thinking that I'd better have a full, well-leveled and well-geared party before I challenge the most powerful evil overlord of the starting area.
I had constructed a party of six including Eder, Aloth, Kana, Durance, and had just added the dwarf ranger. I talked to Durance at that point, and I decided that he is a total nutcase, fanatically worshipping an evil deity that represents every moral value I oppose, and that I had better just restart the game and be the priest/healer myself. I find it interesting that there is only one deity available to PC priests in the setting that is clearly good and of the light, and that that deity is supposedly dead. "It is a dark time in the world..."
I worry about playing the party priest, mechanically, because Eder is the only front-line tank npc I have found so far, which means I don't have an off-tank.
I know there is an npc paladin to meet eventually, but please don't spoil me with her location. I'd rather play blind until I find her myself.
I can't see myself ever playing anything other than a Moon Godlike. That passive healing power is just *too* good. I prefer paladins and priests, but even with just those two classes appealing to me so far, there are a lot of variations in builds I'll likely wind up trying.
So, anyway, I could go on, but TL:DR - this is a good game. I'm glad I waited for patch 2.0 and got it on a half-price sale.
Well, a few tries and a whole bunch of tpks later, and it was becoming very clear to me that I was in the wrong.